Some simple rhetorical devices by Joe Carillo

I smile when some people denigrate rhetoric as if it were some shameful thing, like dirty laundry not to be seen in public. Rhetoric, the art of using language to persuade or influence others, is not like that at all. Everybody does it most of the time. The father who, seeing his daughter in a navel-exposing blouse, chides her sotto voce with the words “Nikki, Nikki, Nikki...”, is a bonafide rhetor. So, too, is the storeclerk who, when you haggle prices to rock bottom, grimaces and gently tells you, “ Si ma’am naman! ” (“Oh, ma’am!”) instead of calling you acheapskate, which you most likely are. Also not to be ignored as rhetor is the lone attractive woman you accost in the street who shrugs you off with a petulant “What do you think I am?” instead of saying “You are mistaken if you think I’m a prostitute.”Everybody is a rhetor except the innocent child, who still has that rare state of mind to describe human actions and thoughts the way they really are: “Mom, the emperor must be nuts, he does not have any clothes on!” ...