Digital Digressions

Here are two recent videos that use rhetoric to encourage (or do they?) people to vote in the upcoming election. The first is another celebrity-infused compilation reminiscent of will.i.am’s “Yes We Can” song & video (and will.i.am is in this video, too). Here’s “Don’t Vote”:

The second is from the Colbert Report, and it takes a slightly different approach. This is “Voter Abstinence”:

Now, for everyone who wonders why I don’t do more work with classical rhetoric in my work (and for the grad students in Robyn’s theory seminar who recently read an article by Richard Lanham), here are a fun list of many (but not all — not by a long shot!) of the classical rhetorical figures and tropes* employed in the “Don’t Vote” video:

• aetiologia: giving a cause or reason
• amphidiorthosis: to hedge or qualify a charge made in anger
• anaphora: repetition of the same word at the beginning of successive clauses or verses
• antistrophe: repetition of a closing word or words at the end of several successive clauses, sentences, or verses
• apophasis: pretending to deny what is really affirmed
• commoratio: emphasizing a strong point by repeating it several times in different words
• contrarium: one of two opposite statements is used to prove the other
• dehortatio: dissuasion; advice to the contrary
• diallage: bringing several arguments to establish a single point
• epimone: refrain: frequent repetition of a phrase or question
• homiologia: tedious, redundant style
• indignatio: arousing the audience’s scorn and indignation
• palilogia: repetition for vehemence or fullness
• paraenesis: warning of impending evil
• pleonasmus: needless repetition
• sarcasmus: a bitter gibe or taunt
• tautologia: repetition of the same idea in different words

Can you find them all?

(X-posted to the Composition Practicum.)

* All figures and tropes can be found in: Lanham, Richard A. A Handlist of Rhetorical Terms Second Edition. Berkeley: U of California P, 1991.