Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Mad Style

Here's four rhetorical terms that I find especially interesting.

Dendrographia-- creating an illusion of reality through vivid description of a tree:

He sits down at the base. Its trunk is thick and confident with boughs that sway heavily in the wind; yet in the right light, its gold leaves shimmer like glass and fall fragilely to the ground.

Scheme-- an artful deviation from the ordinary arrangement of words:

(In Yoda's voice) "When nine hundred years old you reach, look as good you will not, hmmm?" 

Litotes-- Deliberate understatement, especially when expressing a thought by denying its opposite:

It's not that there's anything "wrong" with you, exactly. All I'm trying to say is...you're kind of a giant bitch.
Intimation-- Hinting at a meaning but not stating it explicitly:

Alright, alright, I'm sorry. I didn't mean it in that way. It's just that -- if I were to ever see you stranded on the side of the highway during a rainstorm, I would probably swerve and hit all the mud puddles as fast as I can.

No comments:

Post a Comment