Week One: Research on Rhetoric Devices

To gain an insight further into the brief and how I am going to approach it, I did some research into what rhetoric devises were in a broad sense and examples of them used within design. 


A rhetorical device uses words in a certain way to convey meaning or to persuade. It can also be a technique to evoke an emotion on the part of the reader or audience. 

Notes: Basically you want your poster to convey a meaning within your chosen topic, where you persuade your audience to feel a certain way about something, which makes them 'believe' in what you are saying in the poster. 

Rhetorical Devices in Writing

Here are examples of rhetorical devices with a definition and an example:

• Alliteration - the recurrence of initial consonant sounds - rubber baby buggy bumpers
• Allusion - a reference to an event, literary work or person - I can’t do that because I am not Superman.
• Amplification - repeats a word or expression for emphasis - Love, real love, takes time.
• Anaphora - repeats a word or phrase in successive phrases - "If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?” (Merchant of Venice, Shakespeare)
• Antithesis - makes a connection between two things - “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” (Neil Armstrong)
• Hyperbole - an exaggeration - I have done this a thousand times.
• Metaphor - compares two things by stating one is the other - The eyes are the windows of the soul.
• Simile - compares one object to another - He smokes like a chimney.

Notes: These can be used in the body copy of the poster if I do use body copy, through maybe a slogan or heading. Some of them could be conveyed in a visual sense too. 

information retrieved from:
http://examples.yourdictionary.com/examples-of-rhetorical-devices.html

Further rhetoric devises:

ADYNATON

You’ll no doubt have heard of hyperbole, in which an over-exaggeration is used for rhetorical effect, like, “he’s as old as the hills,” “we died laughing,” or “hyperbole is the best thing ever.” But adynaton is a particular form of hyperbole in which an exaggeration is taken to a ridiculous and literally impossible extreme, like “when pigs fly!” or “when Hell freezes over!”

ANADIPLOSIS

Anadiplosis is an ingenious and memorable rhetorical device in which a repeated word or phrase is used both at the end of one sentence or clause and at the beginning of the next. As with practically all rhetorical devices, William Shakespeare liked using it (“She being none ofyour flesh and blood, your flesh and blood has not offended the king”), but you can thank George Lucas for what is now probably the best-known example: “Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate. Hate leads to suffering.”

ANTHYPOPHORA

You know when you pose a question for dramatic effect and then immediately answer it yourself? That’s anthypophora.

ASTERISMOS

Right. Okay. Here goes. Asterismos is the use of a seemingly unnecessary word or phrase to introduce what you’re about to say. Semantically it’s fairly pointless to say something like “listen!” before you start talking to someone, because they are (or at least should be) already listening. Rhetorically, however, asterismos is a seriously clever way of subconsciously drawing attention to what you’re about to say.

CHIASMUS

Apart from the fact that it’s part of a great speech, one of the reasons why John F. Kennedy’s famous “ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country” line is so striking is that is a fine example of chiasmus, a clever rhetorical formation in which the order of a pair of words or phrases in one clause (your country, you) is inverted in the next (you, your country). This gives a rhythmic and instantly memorable criss-cross pattern, AB-BA, which appropriately enough takes its name from the X-shaped Greek letter chi.

TMESIS

Tmesis is the proper name for that fan-bloody-tastic technique of splitting a word in half by inserting another word inside it. More often than not, the word being inserted in the other is a swearword (you can provide your own examples for that), but it needn’t always be—tmesis can be used any-old-how you like.

Notes: Again these could be shown both written or visually

http://mentalfloss.com/article/60234/21-rhetorical-devices-explained

Whilst reading Rhetoric in Graphic Design by Barbara Emanuel, I found some useful points to consider/utilise throughout my design process for the poster. 

http://www.slideshare.net/barbara_emanuel/rhetoric-design

Visual Rhetoric:
Notes: Utilise these strategies within your poster

I extracted the meanings of each of these, in further in depth to grasp a further understanding, to ensure that when I design my poster I am applying them correctly. 

Rhetoric Glossary

Pastiche: A pastiche is a piece of visual communication design that mimics or imitates the style, character or aesthetic of one or more artist/ designers. Unlike parody, pastiche acknowledges and celebrates the work or design that it imitates.

Parody: A parody (also burlesque, send up, spoof or lampoon), in visual communication design, is an imitative work that is designed to imitate, mimic, or comment on and trivialise an original piece of design, its subject and at times its creator, by means of satiric or ironic imitation.

Satire: Satire is a genre of literature. In visual communication design, it is often employed as a strategy for holding up to ridicule the vices, follies, abuses and shortcomings of individuals, corporations, government or society itself. Although satire is usually meant to be humorous, its greater purpose is often constructive social criticism, using wit as a weapon and as a tool to draw attention to both particular and wider issues in society. A feature or satire is strong, as in militant, irony or sarcasm. Exaggeration, juxtaposition, comparison, analogy, and double entendre are all frequently used in satirical design.

Irony: The expression of one’s meaning by using language that normally signifies the opposite, typically for humorous or emphatic effect.

Metaphor: In visual, spoken and written language, metaphor is a figure of speech, a rhetorical device describing associations, comparisons and resemblances between two or more unrelated things. For example, “All the world’s a stage and all the men and women merely players”.

Metonymy: Is a figure of speech in which a thing or concept is called not by its own name but rather by the name of something associated in meaning with that thing or concept. Both metaphor and metonymy involve the substitution of one thing for another. In metaphor, this takes the form of analogy or likeness whereas in metonymy substitution is based on an understood association or contiguity. For example, ‘Hollywood’ for the US film industry and ‘Wellywood’ for the Wellington- based film industry; ‘scarfies’ for Otago University students; ‘crown’ for royalty, ‘hand’ for the workers; red for blood, black for death, green for nature.