LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 11 : 8 August 2011
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.

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Some Rhetoric Devices That We Can Use in Our Writing

M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.

When you write your paper or dissertation, you need to have clarity of writing. You also need to keep the attention of your reader on what you want to communicate to him or her. You can do this through several ways: you give life to what you write, enliven your writing, animate it, and give spirit to it. An excellent example is given in the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary: Fresh flowers enliven the room. It means providing or offering something new, something colorful or attractive, something most desirous, etc. In essence, you should induce in them an emotive response. All these aim at winning or gaining and capturing their mind and intellect to your side! While doing so, you also restate, that is, state the information in different ways, which will emphasize your points.

These techniques or devices are generally called rhetorical devices. These devices include the following:

1. Alliteration. When we alliterate, we use a consonant, a vowel or a combination of these two repeatedly in the words in a sentence or a number of sentences that occur/recur.

Merriam-Webster Online defines alliteration for English as follows: “the repetition of usually initial consonant sounds in two or more neighboring words or syllables (as wild and woolly, threatening throngs) —called also head rhyme, initial rhyme.” Indian languages use consonants, vowels, and syllables for this purpose.

Alliteration has been a major device used by political leaders, orators and heroes and heroines in movies and plays in India. If you want to be a great demagogue writer, Indian languages provide you with great facilities. However, be always moderate in the use of this device. Otherwise you will be easily carried away by the mesmerizing sounds. Moreover, you should also know that a demagogue is defined as “a leader who makes use of popular prejudices and false claims and promises in order to gain power; a leader championing the cause of the common people in ancient times” (Merriam Webster Dictionary). Truly, a dangerous doubled-edged sword!

Many of our errors in English in our writing originate from our earnest desire to impress others with our mastery of vocabulary. Attracted by the alliteration device, our students and we start using this device, often with awkward results.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Adjunct Teacher
St. John's Matriculation School
Malayan Street
Tenkasi 627 811
Tamilnadu, India
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