- We'll be looking at rhetorical devices
or as some say rhetorical techniques or literary devices.
From a public speaking standpoint
these are the ways you can use words creatively
to make your message more persuasive, enhance your message
and make it more likely to stick.
So let's get into the details.
(upbeat music)
Welcome back, I'm Alex Lyon
and this week we'll look at the top 10 rhetorical devices.
There are lots more out there,
I've just looked over everything I could find
and narrowed it down to the techniques
that I think are most practical
for public speaking and presentation skills.
And it's important to say that I didn't invent these,
I'm just synthesizing what I've picked over
and seen over the years
that has worked well for other speakers.
And by the way, I have a free PDF download on the seven tips
to make you a more confident public speaker.
You can find that in the link below this video.
And if you wanna work on your public speaking more,
please check it out.
First, we'll look at two ways to enhance the sound of words
that will make your message more engaging and interesting.
One is alliteration which is the repetition
of the first letters in words that come close together
in a phrase or a sentence.
And there are dozens of popular brands
that use this technique
to give their names rhythm and emphasis.
You'll notice that these letter are consonants,
so companies like Dunkin Donuts, Bed, Bath and Beyond,
Coca-Cola, KitKat, Weight Watchers.
If you have ever wondered why some brand names stand out,
it might be because they use alliteration
to make their names pop.
Alliteration is a go to option for speakers
when you have to make an impact without many words.
That's why so many song writers use alliteration.
Like The Beatles, "Let it be"
Paul McCartney wrote "Whisper words of wisdom, let it be."
That's three W sounds in four words.
And it makes it sound amazing.
Great song writers and poets are masters at alliteration
and it's great for public speaking
because you can drop it in just about anywhere
to add emphasis and the sound of authority to your idea.
Like John F Kennedy said in his inaugural speech,
he wanted us to "Break the bonds of mass misery."
That's two B's and two M's at the beginnings of those words
and it sounds amazing.
I found some nice examples online from Maya Angelou,
the famous writer and speaker.
In one of her poems she used phrases like,
"Seldom see through" or "Worms waiting."
And "Shadows shouts."
In Martin Luther King Junior's "I have a dream" speech,
he said he wanted our nation to
"Rise from the dark and desolate"
and the "Trials and tribulations."
These are all great examples of alliteration.
Number two, rhyming is another way
to take advantage of the sound of words.
A good rhyme makes your message shine.
Okay, that's cheesy, I'm not a rhymer myself,
it's not my style, but again,
we see rhymes in a lot of songs and poems
because rhymes add emphasis to your ideas.
Like alliteration, you can enhance your message
by just changing a few words in the right places,
so the internal sounds of the words are the same.
These song titles might ring a bell.
Crocodile rock, lean on me, sweet dreams are made of these.
The list goes on because they emphasize the vowel sounds
within the words.
One of the most famous rhymes was in a speech
by the well known lawyer, Johnnie Cochran,
to the jury in his defense of OJ Simpson in the 1990's.
So, a piece of evidence in the trial was a bloody glove
that was found on OJ's property
and it was a pretty damning piece of evidence,
except for the fact that OJ's hand didn't really fit
into the glove the right way.
And in his speech to the jury,
his lawyer, Johnnie Cochran said,
"If it doesn't fit, you must acquit."
So Cochran could have explained it the long way,
he could have said, look, he tried the bloody glove on
for you and it was so tight he couldn't even get his hands
into it, so clearly it was somebody else's glove,
the real murderer's glove.
But instead he made it pop,
he made it stand out with a quick rhyme.
If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.
If rhyming is a natural style for you, then try it out.
In the right spot a good rhyme can elevate your message
but don't overdo it because rhyming too much
can sound cheesy, like when I tried earlier.
Both alliteration and rhyme take advantage
of the sound of your words
and make your message more engaging and interesting.
Next in our top 10, let's look at three rhetorical devices
that use comparison for the sake of similarity.
These comparisons engage listeners' imagination
and draws deeper into the message.
Number three, an analogy describes one item in terms
of anther item in an interesting way to add emphasis.
This engages listeners' imaginations
and connects things in our mind, it draws us in.
In Harry Potter, one of the characters said to another,
"Longbottom, if brains were gold,
"you'd be poorer than Weasley, and that's saying something."
So here, JK Rowling is using an analogy
by comparing intelligence with gold.
In JFK's inaugural speech he said,
"Those who had foolishly sought power
"by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside it."
He's comparing a desire for power
to messing with a wild tiger, it's very colorful.
Martin Luther King Junior used an analogy
by comparing justice with flowing water.
He said, "We will not be satisfied
"until justice rolls down like waters,
"and righteousness like a mighty stream."
Analogies like other forms of comparison
help listeners connect dots in our mind,
maybe for the first time.
And that engages our imaginations
and draws listeners deeper into the message.
Number four, a metaphor is a fairly direct comparison
when you state that one thing is another thing.
I found this metaphor online, "Money is nuts.
"As long as I have enough squirreled away in my tree trunk
"I'll be able to survive the winter."
A famous metaphor is that
"The eyes are the window to the soul."
Metaphors engage our imagination
because nuts are not literally money
and I'm not literally a squirrel, but a metaphor says,
for creative purposes, that they're the same.
And that helps us visualize what the speaker is saying.
So my eyes are not literally windows,
but a metaphor directly says that they are
and we as listeners know the difference
but metaphors stretch our imaginations in a visual way
to make the message more interesting.
Number five, a simile is very close to a metaphor
but adds the word like or as to the comparison.
So instead of the metaphor,
"The eyes are the window to the soul."
Which is direct, you could say,
the eyes are like a window to the soul,
that's adding the word like to qualify the comparison.
So using the word as might sound like this, you could say,
that as a person, he's as a happy as a puppy.
So for a metaphor, you'd say something along the lines of,
he's a happy puppy.
Adding the word as softens that connection.
So some people might say those extra words, like and as,
weaken the connection between the two things.
So why are you using a simile ever
if it's a little weaker connection instead of a metaphor?
Well it really depends upon your message
and the way the wording sounds.
Ultimately you should use whatever sounds the best
and supports your point.
These rhetorical devices, analogy, metaphor
and simile rely on comparisons, on similarity
to engage listeners' imaginations
and make a message more interesting.
The next three rhetorical devices
in our top 10 stretch a message
through emphasis or exaggeration.
Six, amplification is where we emphasize a point
by adding or embellishing on something we just said,
like using adjectives for instance.
This clarifies the message and adds emphasis
by making it sound more colorful and more poetic.
An example I found online was,
"Love, real love, takes time."
So we're not talking about mere infatuation,
we're talking about love, real love.
Adding the word real embellishes
or adds clarity to the word love.
I saw something very similar about religion.
Somebody said "Religion, true religion" to make their point.
In other words, we're not talking about
what your parents made you to go to church
or the religion you grew up with,
we're talking about real devotion.
A famous example of amplification was
in Martin Luther King Junior's "I have a dream" speech.
He said, "America has given us a bad check,
"a check which has come back marked insufficient funds."
So on the one hand he's using a metaphor,
and we talked about metaphors a moment ago,
that says our constitution is a check.
Then he amplifies it by saying the word, a bad check,
a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.
He's using a metaphor and then using amplification
to pump up that metaphor.
This example shows us that you can get really creative
and combine these rhetorical devices.
Number seven, hyperbole is another way to say exaggeration.
But it's an exaggeration to make a point,
often in a humorous way.
You might do this in a story that you're telling,
you might say for example, "So there I was face down
"in a puddle of water in my business suit,
"you know, for the third time that week."
So that adds an exaggeration, for the third time that week.
Hyperbole, this type of exaggeration, works well
because listeners know that you didn't literally mean
you fall down like that three times a week,
but the exaggeration adds a layer of emotion
that listeners can relate to.
It feels as if you fall down three times a week.
And you can certainly use exaggerations
in a non humorous way.
But exaggeration is one of the main ways
that comedians make jokes.
They take something simple that they notice
that seems a little off and then they blow it up
to the point where it's funny.
So a statement like,
"I felt like I hadn't slept since 2018."
Sounds much more interesting and humorous
than saying I was really tired.
The danger of using hyperbole and exaggeration of course
is that you don't want to over use it.
And sometimes this can be one of the main ways
or the only way that some speakers try
to enhance their message with humor.
So like all of these, don't over use this.
Number eight, another way to add emphasis
or exaggerate is through personification.
This is where you give something that's not human,
human qualities and personal characteristics.
When you exaggerate like this, when you elevate something
to human status and give it a character,
your message becomes catchy, more colorful, more memorable.
Maya Angelou used personification
by describing "Sighing trees".
This elevates the experience of trees
by giving them human emotions of sadness.
In a similar way the famous painter, Bob Ross,
used to describe trees that he painted
as "Happy trees" and clouds as "Happy clouds".
And that was decades ago,
but people still use that phrase today.
It's become a cultural expression to say happy trees.
That shows you how powerful personification is
for making your message stick.
In the Avengers movie, one of the characters says
that this space cube,
called the Tesseract, is "misbehaving".
The writers gave this impersonal cube a personality
and it made it instantly more compelling
and an important part of the story.
To me the best place to use personification
is in your stories or examples in your presentations.
So instead of saying, the economy has been unpredictable,
you could personify the economy,
make it sound like a person.
You could say, the economy is having mood swings.
So that gives a mood, a personal human quality
to the economy and it helps you make your point
in a more memorable way.
So these three rhetorical devices, amplification,
hyperbole and personification use embellishment,
exaggeration and emphasis to take a message
to that next creative level.
And the last two in our top 10 are really powerful,
they are both about the structure
of your message and your sentences.
A clever structure can add a lot of cohesion
and authority to what you're saying.
So number nine is parallelism
or some people call it simply parallel structure.
Quick examples of parallelism
are expressions like "Easy come, easy go."
"Like father, like son"
Parallel just means side by side,
going in the same direction.
And you can arrange your wording like this.
One of my favorite short examples
is when Peter Parker's Uncle Ben says to young Spiderman,
"With great power comes great responsibility."
Now that concept, on it's own, is a great idea,
but one of the reasons it sticks
is because of the parallel structure of the wording.
So you can use this in short sentences
but you can also use this parallel structure more generally
in the overall main points of your message.
This will give your message the feeling of balance
and cohesion because the parts
of your message will match and repeat.
It adds smoothness and unity to your message.
And this is often done by starting
or ending the different talking points in your message
with the same phrases.
And can you handle one more example from Martin Luther King?
I really hope so because he was awesome at this stuff,
he used parallel structure masterfully
in his "I have a dream" speech.
With the phrase, "I have a dream."
Now a lot of people assume that he only said it
in that famous quotation, "I have a dream
"that my four children will one day live in a nation
"where they will not be judged by the color of their skin
"but by the content of their character."
But in fact, that was the fourth point in a row,
he made that started with the phrase, I have a dream.
And he used it a total of eight times in about 60 seconds.
That parallel structure, that repetition built the momentum
of his central point each time.
If he had only said it once, I have a dream,
I don't believe it would have had such lasting impact.
So you look for ways to use parallelism on key sentences
and parallel structure to frame the main points
of your message consistently.
And number 10, our last rhetorical device is antithesis,
and it is powerful.
This is closely related to parallelism
because it uses structure deliberately.
Antithesis is where you make a connection between two things
but by contrasting them.
The first part of the statement is a reference point
that the second part of the message contrasts with.
And this enhances the speaker's point,
the point they're trying to make
because the speaker's representing their idea
as the new and improved way.
So for example, on my college campus where I teach,
there's a famous quotation by Ralph Waldo Emerson
carved in a boulder.
He once said, " It's not the length of life,
"but the depth of life."
Now to me, contrasting that second part of the statement
with the first has way more impact
than just saying the second part, that life is about depth.
That sounds rather ordinary.
That doesn't have as much impact,
but by using antithesis it really elevates his point.
Probably one of the most famous examples was by JFK,
stating that "Ask not what your country can do for you,
"ask what you can do for your country."
So yes, on the one hand, this is parallel structure,
but what really makes these messages stand out
is the antithesis elements of them.
So he's contrasting the second part with the first.
Another powerful illustration
was the point made by Bill Clinton
at the Democratic National Convention years ago.
Which I think is clearly inspired
by the structure of JFK's line.
Clinton said, "People the world over
"have always been more impressed by the power of our example
"than by the example of our power."
Can you see how those are alike
in their antithesis structure?
So in your message, you might have an idea
that you're contrasting with that's out there,
that your idea stands in contrast with,
and you can use this antithesis technique
to make your idea stand out more and make it more memorable.
And again, I see this as a type of parallelism
except in this case, one part is contrasting
with another part.
So those are what I consider the top 10 rhetorical devices
and some suggestions about how you could use them
in a public speaking situation.
So question of the day, which one is your favorite?
I would love to hear your comments
in that section below the video.
And don't forget to look at that free PDF download
on the seven tips to make you a more confident speaker.
That link is in the description below the video.
So thanks, God bless and I will see you soon.