Rhetorical Techniques

Diction:

Perhaps the first rhetorical choice a writer makes—and all writers make this choice, whether they realize it or not—is diction, or what words to use. Different words, even if they ostensibly mean the same thing, have different connotations, as the poet W. H. Auden well understood. And different audiences have different expectations about appropriate diction. Academic writing requires a more formal diction than everyday talk or journalism, and within academe writing in the natural sciences requires a more formal diction than writing in the humanities. I'm no great fan of formality in writing, but on the other hand one does need to know and respect the conventions of academe and other professional forums for serious writing:

Parallelism

Parallelism is one of the most useful and flexible rhetorical techniques. It refers to any structure which brings together parallel elements, be these nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs, or larger structures. Done well, parallelism imparts grace and power to passage:

The prince's strength is also his weakness; his self-reliance is also isolation.
In Machiavelli's world, Sheldon Wolin observes, moral ends have been replaced by ironies; answers have been replaced by questions.
The characters are all watching one another, forming theories about one another, listening, contriving . . . .
One side sees Lincoln as a bold and shrewd leader, sincerely committed to abolishing slavery; the other sees him as an opportunistic politician, concerned only to defend the union in any way possible.

Problems with faulty parallelism are very common, because many people know what they want to say, and don't scrutinize what they actually write.

Repetition

Repetition is one of the most useful tools available to writers. Repetition allows a writer or speaker to hammer home an idea, image, or relationship, to force the reader or listener to pay attention. Two classic examples of the incredible power of repetition are Mark Antony's "They are all honorable men" speech in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar (3.2), and Martin Luther King, Jr.'s "I have a dream" speech at the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in 1963.

But many writers, especially young writers, fear repetition, apparently believing that repeating a word within a single sentence or short passage is bad style. H. W. Fowler, author of the old but still recommended Fowler's Modern English Usage (1st ed., 1926), called this tendency elegant variation, and observed, "There are few literary faults so widely prevalent."

Using tenses consistently

Tense refers to the time (past, present, or future) in which actions occur. If you start a passage in one tense, don't change the tense without reason:

ORIGINAL / REVISION
Though Machiavelli has said that religion is vital to politics, he dismisses Christianity as harmful. / Though Machiavelli says that religion is vital to politics, he dismisses Christianity as harmful.
The historical present

The Historical present: One convention in academic writing that often gives students difficulty is what tense to use when discussing a text. One's first inclination is probably to use the past tense when discussing a book written in the past. But that's not what is usually done. Most textual analysis and commentary is written in the present tense, a convention sometimes called thehistorical present:

ORIGINAL / REVISION
Machiavelli also said that Christianity made people slothful. / Machiavelli also says that Christianity makes people slothful.
Hamlet told Ophelia he never loved her. / Hamlet tells Ophelia he never loved her.
Alliteration

Alliteration: means beginning two or more stressed syllables with the same letter or sound:

Throughout the play we are made to witness the force of politics to shape and shatter lives.
The rule of three

This is an old trick of the trade that doesn't get mentioned a lot nowadays (it's called tricolon in classical rhetoric), but that crops up all the time in good writing. The idea is simple: lists of all kinds (of things, qualities, actions, reasons, examples, etc.) tend to come across most powerfully when they contain three items. Of course that doesn't mean you should manipulate your material to make it fit. Sometimes you'll want to put two, four, or more items in a list. But when you've got flexibility in what to say, keep the rule of three in mind:

Coriolanus doesn't hide his contempt for the commoners, he doesn't flatter them, he doesn't try to soften his image.
A generation ago most scholars believed that an overarching worldview—conservative, deeply Christian and essentially medieval in its commitment to order and hierarchy—shaped the concerns and defined the intellectual limits of Shakespeare and other Elizabethan dramatists.

The third term is often slightly larger in its focus than the first two, enfolding them to make a more general point.

Humor

Humor and other flourishes like slang should be used sparingly. Academic writing has room for wry observation and ironic observations, but belly laughs and outright jokes don't tend to go over very well. Something that seemed hilarious when you were writing it will likely seem foolish in the cold light of day.

First and second person

Are the first and second person (I, me, my; we, us, our; you, your) appropriate in academic writing? As for the first person, yes, as long as it is used properly. It occurs in much writing even in the hard sciences. Scientists frequently speak of "our research" and "our findings" (though some teachers and editors agree with Mark Twain's disdain for the editorial "we"). As for the first person singular, one finds it even in the most serious scientific writing. E. O. Wilson, a prominent Harvard biologist, notes his formal use of the first person, but also the limits he observed: "very little emotion was expressed beyond the occasional 'I was interested in the problem of . . .' or 'It turned out, to my surprise, that. . . .' " Thus both sides of the debate over the propriety of the first person are in a sense right: it's okay to use I even in the most formal settings, but not to venture into editorializing and emotion. In less formal academic settings (including student writing, by and large) and in some fields like literary studies, it's even acceptable to write with a certain amount of personal reaction and feeling. The right amount of "me-ness" in one's writing will vary from field to field, journal to journal, teacher to teacher: as you gain expertise in a particular field, you'll learn what the rules are.

You is rather a different kettle of fish. It really doesn't belong in the most formal academic writing. Directly addressing the reader changes the dynamic of the essay or paper. In the hard sciences this would rarely be appropriate, though in the humanities one finds the second person more often. I happen to use it a fair amount (in part because one of my favorite old authors, Machiavelli, used it very cleverly), but others will see it differently.

Questions and exclamations

Direct questions work well in academic writing, but exclamations don't. See the discussion in Punctuation for further thoughts.

Placing emphasis

If you want to summon up emphasis, a far better technique than exclamation marks is to take advantage of the natural rhythm of English sentences. Here's an important rule good writers know explicitly or implicitly: The end of a sentence packs the most wallop. The most common sentence patter puts familiar information at the beginning of sentences, and new information at the ends of sentences. Thus each sentence can be seen to be a kind of little bridge to what has already been presented: the sentence starts out on familiar ground and then takes a step forward. Good writing consists of linking these many little steps into a sustained argumentative journey (of course with a few bold exceptions every so often).

C. Tim DeMarte 2005 Used with permission