Persuasive Rhetoric

Persuasive Rhetoric Techniques
• Rhetorical questions: Think of these as questions
that do not require answers. Writers use this
technique to show that their arguments make the
answers obvious.
• Repetition: Repeating the point tells the audience
that it is especially important; repeating a form of
expression tells the audience that the ideas express
in the same way are related.
– Parallelism is a form of repetition. There are parallel
clauses at the beginning of sentences.
– For example: “We have warned them…We have reminded them
of the circumstances…We have appealed to them…We have
conjured them.” Patrick Henry’s Speech in the Virginia Convention