AP Language Rhetorical Devices Review

My only love sprung from my only hate!

Too early seen unknown, and known too late!

Prodigious birth of love it is to me,

That I must love a loathèd enemy.

• anecdote

• paradox

• juxtaposition

• anaphora

It seemed to me that a careful examination of the room and the lawn might possibly reveal some traces of this mysterious individual. You know my methods, Watson. There was not one of them which I did not apply to the inquiry. And it ended by my discovering traces, but very different ones from those which I had expected.

• diction

• ethos

• pathos

• anecdote

Behind me stands a wall that encircles the free sectors of this city, part of a vast system of barriers that divides the entire continent of Europe...Yet it is here in Berlin where the wall emerges most clearly...Every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar...

General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!

• diction

• allusion

• pathos

• logos

Along the roads, laurels, viburnum and alder, great ferns and wildflowers delighted the traveler's eye through much of the year… The roadsides, once so attractive, were now lined with browned and withered vegetation as though swept by fire.

• paradox

• allusion

• metaphor

• juxtaposition

I like to talk to myself, it’s one of the greatest pleasures in life. Quite often, I will have a long conversation by myself and I’m that clever that I do not understand a word that I am saying

• repetition

• anecdote

• anaphora

• simile

We have petitioned; we have remonstrated; we have supplicated; we have

prostrated ourselves before the tyrannical hands of the ministry and

parliament. Our petitions have been slighted; our remonstrances have

produced additional violence and insult; our supplications have been

disregarded; and we have been spurned, with contempt, from the foot of the throne.

• repetition

• concession

• allusion

• diction

The state has not produced one iota of medical evidence to the effect that the crime Tom Robinson is charged with ever took place. It has relied instead upon the testimony of two witnesses whose evidence has not only been called into serious question on cross-examination, but has been flatly contradicted by the defendant. The defendant is not guilty, but somebody in this courtroom is.

• ethos

• pathos

• logos

• allusion

So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania...

• anaphora

• repetition

• analogy

• metaphor

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

• parallel structure

• diction

• metaphor

• allusion

"We must accept this result and look toward the future," she said. "Donald Trump is going to be our president. We owe him an open mind and the chance to lead."

• contrast

• compare

• analogy

• concessionary statement