Public Speaking Tips for the Top Ten Rhetorical Techniques
What is a rhetorical technique?
Answer:
Any successful action or pattern of words that helps get the message across.
Before the advent of PowerPoint, handouts, and slides, a speaker understood that their audience would only ever remember a small part of their presentation.
Over time, it became clear that certain patterns of words and styles of delivery would increase the likelihood of their message being retained.
As such, ‘rhetorical techniques’ were not ‘manufactured’; instead, speakers became aware of ‘what worked’.
Which means:
- Silence can be a rhetorical technique.
- Asking a series of questions can be a rhetorical technique.
- Organising your thoughts into patterns of three is also a rhetorical technique!
Most rhetorical schemes, as the format of the three lines above suggests, use repetition, rhythm, and contrast as a basis for creating their effect.
For instance, consider the ‘silence’ in line one, the ‘sound’ of the questions in line two, and the ‘structure’ in line thre,e and each phrase is longer than the one before.
Hear how the repetition of ‘rhetorical technique’ at the end of each line creates its own rhythm and expectation over the three lines.
The use of ‘threes’ is always very satisfying to listen to, as it gives the speaker the chance to set up balance and rhythm in the phrase; it gives the speaker the choice of creating an emphasis by repeating an identical word or phrase three times or creating a contrast by changing that expectation; it allows the speaker to escalate from ‘big’ to ‘bigger’ to ‘biggest’, or show ‘same’, ‘same’ and then ‘different’.
The speaker can then choose to add to the impact of their words by increasing or decreasing in volume and or pace as they say them, or they can employ the effect of an interrupted cadence in music, where one and two suggest a progression in one direction and three surprises us by taking us in another direction.
Pythagorean philosophy regarded ‘Three’ as the first real number.
Three points on a page are required to plot that most stable of shapes: a triangle.
Two points can only ever give a single line, and one point is just a dot!
Something happening twice might be by chance, something happening three times suggests a pattern.
However, the use of ‘two’ is also effective, particularly in highlighting contrast.
Rather than just emphasising a progression or reinforcing a message, a speaker may choose to dramatise a point by setting up a contrast or comparison: either v or; on the one hand, on the other; black v white:
- same / same;
- same / different;
- similar to a degree.
Words are wonderful things, and once we become aware of sound and meaning, we can use them to great effect.
There are many rhetorical techniques and often they blend into each other, and several can be used simultaneously, ‘stacked’ on top of each other. I have chosen to highlight ten that I like, and rather than calling them by their clever Greek names, I will describe them simply in terms of what they do.
10 top rhetorical techniques
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Paired phrases
We may want to express two ideas next to each other, and one approach is to express them in a similar form. Sometimes this happens naturally as you contrast a person’s ‘talking big’ with their ‘acting small’.
More often, one will have to do a little bit of finessing in order to create two matching phrases.
Think of the idealised phrase;
‘tall, dark, and handsome’
We might decide to contrast that elusive ideal with a very different reality.
Slightly contrived, but very effectively, we can set up a paired contrast word by word.
‘He was not so much ‘tall, dark and handsome’, as ‘small, pale and creepy’
Note the choice of the word ‘creepy’ rather than ‘ugly’ to avoid the contrast looking too mechanical.
Sometimes it will take a little more manipulation before we have created our balanced pair.
John F Kennedy does this in the very opening of his famous Inaugural Address of 1961:
‘We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom’
The speech writer liked the phrase ‘celebration of freedom’
and was clearly struggling to find a balancing phrase, because the natural wording would be
‘the victory of a party’ – but that does not balance, so he forces the words into the matching format of
‘a noun of noun’
Once he has done that, he allows the form of the phrases to unite the two phrases in our heads:
‘not a’….’but a…’; 'victory' and 'celebration' are both multi-syllable words; and party and freedom are both two-syllable words.
Thus, even though ‘victory of party’ and ‘celebration of freedom’ have little in common in terms of their meaning they have been yoked together structurally to create that connection.
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Creating a chain of ideas
Following on from ‘celebration of freedom’ having little in common in meaning with ‘victory of party’, one very convincing technique is to join a series of words together in a chain, so that the form of their delivery suggests a connection which might otherwise not exist.
Many arguments are a battle between one person suggesting a cause and effect between two events, and the other person asserting that there was no causal connection at all, claiming the two events just happened to follow each other in time.
Creating a structured chain is a way of making random events sound like they are more tightly linked
My favourite example is Yoda’s wise words in Star Wars:
‘Fear leads to anger, anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering’
The power of the technique stems from repeating the end word of one phrase as the beginning word of the next phrase. I could continue…
…’suffering leads on to self-pity, self-pity leads on to self-indulgence, self-indulgence leads on to chocolate and chocolate leads on to spots.’
Does fear necessarily lead to spots? Probably not, but by yoking the words together, I create the impression of an inevitable chain of connection.
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The subtle use of the same sounds
That was maybe not so subtle - as the repetition of the letter ‘s’ was fairly obvious at the start of three of the words in the phrase above, however not so obvious was the ‘s’ sound in the middle of the word ‘use’.
Using the phrase ‘subtle use of the same sounds’ is a typically ‘unsubtle’ use of this technique in Public Speaking – and there is nothing wrong with that, because Public Speaking is usually not aiming to be subtle, it is aiming to make a point.
If I cut it down to ‘the subtle use of sound’ the effect is not so stark, but the repetition creates a pleasant effect.
You will often find that memorable phrases in a speech resonate because there is an internal balance in the phrase. The speaker might have been lucky in stumbling across the arrangement, or more likely, a bit of work went into the construction, but the effect should be of something natural and spontaneous.
We don’t need to try to become poets - that might be too contrived - we just need to be on the lookout for the most natural means of expressing an idea.
A speaker telling of her love of nature talked about the joy experiencing ‘the birds, the buds and the balmy days of summer.’ (Note the use of three as short, short, long )
On a much more poetic level, here is a line from WB Yeats.
Listen to all the ‘l’s and ‘s’s breaking gently on the shore:
‘I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore’
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Expanding Three
‘Big, bigger, biggest.’
This is a wonderful technique as it can establish the connection from a particular to the universal, as Robinson’s Barley Water once said:
‘For you, your children and your children’s children.’
Not only do we have the idea of expansion through the generation in the meaning, but we also have it in the size of each part:
‘you, children, children’s children ‘
follows the pattern of one syllable, two syllables, four syllables – literally doubling each time.’
Shakespeare uses a similar rhythmical expansion with
‘Friends, Romans, Countrymen...’
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Contracting Three
If I want to show you how your action can affect the wider world, I could use an expanding three, as above;
But if I wanted to show you how the world is affecting you, I can do the opposite.
‘Addiction to social media is a disease in our society, it is affecting the lives of our children, it is affecting the lives of each one of us.’
John Donne told us that
‘no man is an island….. every man is a piece of the continent’ - we are all connected.
Making a connection or comparison is a fundamental format for setting out an argument, and expanding or contracting threes is a very memorable way of connecting the specific and the universal.
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Dramatic Contrast
This can be built on the contrast in meaning of two simple words that imply a more profound relationship by how they are used in the sentence:
Barak Obama was ‘the first black man in the White House’
The simple ‘black/white’ contrast highlights a moment of great cultural significance
As does Bertrand Russell’s brilliant summing up of the effects of war:
‘War does not decide who is right,
War decides who is left.’
We can also use the contrasting words to highlight a contrast in expectation or behaviour
‘short on detail, long on spin’
‘quick to judge, but slow to take responsibility.’
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Repetition
The use of repetition can be as crude or a creative as you wish.
In the simplest and bluntest terms, like Tony Blair, you can list your priorities as:
‘Education, Education and Education’
It is not very subtle, but it will have the desired effect
Or like Barak Obama, you can create ebb and flow by building up a tension in three phrases (short, short, long) all starting with the same words and then releasing the tension with a big ‘BUT’ that take us in another direction
‘They said this day would never come.
They said our sights were set too high.
They said this country was too divided, too disillusioned to ever come together around a common purpose.
BUT…..’
Those three ‘THEY saids’ are crying out for a contrasting ‘But WE’
A creative writing teacher may challenge you to find another word to avoid the repetition, but repetition in speaking ensures the message gets across ‘plain and simple’.
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Rhetorical Questions
What is a rhetorical question?
That was one!
Most people would define a rhetorical question as a question that does not require a direct answer, but you may want a direct answer:
By a show of hands, how many people here…?
You may not require a spoken answer from the audience, but they will still answer in their head.
Rhetorical questions (in fact, most rhetorical devices) are also a useful way of winning time, as you gather your thoughts?
‘So why do I say this? …..Why is it so important?.....What message am I trying to get across?’
gives me time to gather my thoughts before I make my next point.
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Silence
Effective Public Speaking is all about contrast -creating a vocal sound that is varied, engaging, and animated - and the greatest contrast to sound is silence. Silence can be used in many ways:
- to allow your words to resonate
- to give yourself a moment as you highlight a break in the thought process
- to build up to a dramatic statement
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Simplicity
For the message to be clear, a lot of preparation is required.
A tidy flowerbed requires a lot of weeding.
Pascal’s quote:
‘I am sorry I wrote you such a long letter, I did not have time to write a short letter.’
sums this up perfectly.
Every rhetorical form or technique exists to aid clarity, and will only be effective if the underlying message is already clear in the speaker’s mind.
So the last key rhetorical tip is in fact the first one we need to consider:
Be clear about what you want to say.
And if that clarity is not immediately there, keep digging until you find it.
Until you can say the message in a ‘nutshell’, you do not have the clarity to apply all those threes, twos, and contrasts properly.
