Rhetorical Strategies: Any Device Used to Analyze the Interplay Between a Writer/Speaker, a Specific Audience, and a Particular Purpose
RHETORICAL STRATEGIES: ANY DEVICE USED TO ANALYZE THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN A WRITER/SPEAKER, A SPECIFIC AUDIENCE, AND A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. 1. Abstract diction: (compare to concrete diction) Abstract diction refers to words that describe concepts rather than concrete images (ideas and qualities rather than observable or specific things, people, or places.) These words do not appeal imaginatively to the reader's senses. Abstract words create no "mental picture" or any other imagined sensations for readers. Abstract words include: Love, Hate, Feelings, Emotions, Temptation, Peace, Seclusion, Alienation, Politics, Rights, Freedom, Intelligence, Attitudes, Progress, Guilt, etc. Try to create a mental picture of "love." Do you picture a couple holding hands, a child hugging a mother, roses and valentines? These are not "love." Instead, they are concrete objects you associate with love. Because it is an abstraction, the word "love" itself does not imaginatively appeal to the reader's senses. "Ralph and Jane have experienced difficulties in their lives, and both have developed bad attitudes because of these difficulties. They have now set goals to surmount these problems, although the unfortunate consequences of their experiences are still apparent in many everyday situations." 2. Absolutes: an adverbial clause that has a nonfinite verb or no verb at all (the clause is missing “was” or “were” or it is replaced by a verbal, making it dependent). The prisoners marched past, their hands above their heads. (The prisoners marched past. Their hands were above their heads.) The work having been finished, the gardener came to ask for payment. (The work was finished. The gardener came to ask for payment.) “But I knew her sick from the disease that would not go, her legs bunched under the yellow sheets, the bones gone limp as worms.”—Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street “We pretended with our heads thrown back, our arms limp and useless, dangling like the dead.”—Sandra Cisneros, The House on Mango Street 3.
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