Students Have a Right to Fail

September 9, 2006

Rhetorical Situation

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Audience:	adafdfadfafs
Topic:
Purpose:
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I am but a poor speaker; my words stumble from my tongue (or keyboard) like bleary-eyed tosspots after a night's carouse. But I'll do what I can with my poor skills to discuss rhetoric. "Doesn't everyone know what a rhetorical question is?" I hear you ask. But questions that don't require answers are not what rhetoric is all about. Rhetoric is the art of speaking or writing well. And rhetorical devices are techniques for speaking or writing well; weapons in the arsenal of the speaker or writer, tools in the toolbox.

Longtime readers have seen plenty of rhetorical devices discussed in these columns: syllepsis and zeugma, euphemisms, alliteration, oxymorons and tautologies, and of course plenty of paronomasia, among others. Many other such devices are well known: irony, metaphor, onomatopoeia, and so on. But there are also plenty of rhetorical devices which are commonly practiced but are not commonly referred to by name. For example, the insertion of a word or phrase into the middle of a word is called tmesis, one of my favorite words. So next time you hear someone use the phrase "a whole nother," or exclaim "fan-fucking-tastic!", you'll know they're engaging in tmesis. Similarly widely practiced is pleonasm, or (as I noted in a recent column) repetition. For that matter, over-wordiness in general has a name: perissologia.

Personal Reflection for this Essay