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QUESTIONS FOR DISCUSSION

1. Types of repetition.
Repetition-is a stylistic device in which a word or a phrase is
used multiple times. It can be found throughout literature.
Most commonly, we can find it in poetry and speeches to
create rhythm or emphasize a word or phrase.
We can classify repetition into 4 types: anaphora, epiphora,
framing, and catch repetition (anadiplosis).
Anaphora: is the repetition of a word or group of words at the
beginning of successive clauses or sentences.
Examples:
Charles Dickens in "A tale of Two cities": “It was the best of
times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the
winter of despair.”
J. Salinger in "The Catcher in the Rye": “It rained on his lousy
tombstone, and it rained on the grass on his stomach. It rained
all over the place.”
Robert Frost: The poet uses anaphora in “Fire and Ice,” a
poem that begins with the words: “Some say the world will
end in fire, some say in ice.”
Polonius in Shakespeare's "Hamlet": Doubt thou the stars are
fire;
Doubt that the sun doth move;
Doubt truth to be a liar;
But never doubt I love.

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Anaphora is frequently can be spotted in the speeches. Let's

take Winston Churchill's speech in 1940 wen he asserted his
conviction to resist the anticipated Nazi invasion: " «..we shall
not flag or fail. We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in
France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight
with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we
shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall
fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we
shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the
hills; we shall never surrender.»
We may also observe anaphora in the songs, for example a
splendid song "Every Breath You Take" by The Police:
" Every breath you take
Every move you make
Every bond you break
Every step you take
I’ll be watching you."
" I burn down my house and build it up again
(Tell 'em)
I burn it down twice just for the fun of it" "Mount Everest" by
Labrinth
Pretty woman, walkin' down the street
Pretty woman the kind I like to meet
Pretty woman I don't believe you, you're not the truth
In Ukrainian language, we also have anaphora: Тобі одній,
намріяна царівно, Тобі одній дзвенять мої пісні, Тобі одній в
моєму храмі дивно Пливуть молитви і горять огні.
"Ой хто, хто Миколая любить,
Ой хто, хто Миколаю служить..."

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Epiphora: is the device utterly opposite of anaphora. It

contains one or many repeating words at the end of the
neighbouring lines or sentences. Now and then, epiphora
might be called epistrophe.
Examples:
"Fie, fie, thou shamest thy shape, thy love, thy wit,
Which, like a userer, abound'st in all,
And uses none in that true sense indeed
Which should bedeck thy shape, thy love, thy wit."
- Friar Laurence in William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet,
Act 3
If you had known the virtue of the ring,
Or half her worthiness that gave the ring,
Or your own honour to contain the ring,
You would not then have parted with the ring. "Merchant in
Venice" by W. Shakespeare.
Epistrophe in songs:
In her song “Single Ladies” Beyonce uses epistrophe in the
chorus of the song.
“‘Cause if you liked it then you should have put a ring on it
If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring on it
Don’t be mad once you see that he want it
If you liked it then you should’ve put a ring”.
MOVIES: "She's safe, just like I promised. She's all set to
marry Norrington, just like she promised. And you get to die
for her, just like you promised."
- Jack Sparrow, Pirates of the Caribbean
SPEECHES: "There is nothing wrong with America that cannot
be cured by what is right with America."- Bill Clinton

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And that government of the people, by the people, for the

people, shall not perish from the Earth. - Abraham Lincoln
For no government is better than the men who compose it,
and I want the best, and we need the best, and we deserve the
best. - John F. Kennedy
Framing: is a type of repetition wen it is arranged in the form
of a frame, the initial parts of the sentence is repeated at the
end, hence forms so called 'frame'.
Examples:
"No wonder his father wanted to know what Bosinney meant,
no
wonder." G. Galsworthy.
Nothing ever happened in that little town, left behind by the
advance of civilization, nothing (S. Maugham).
He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being
that didn’t want to kill or to be killed. So he ran away from the
battle (St. Heym).
We can also spot framing in movies:
Alan Turing tells his own story to the police in "The Imitation
Game"
The Grand Budapest Hotel is also a great example of a
Framing Device that adds depth to the overall narrative. The
elderly Zero Moustafa comments on how the main narrative
ends, giving the overall story some much necessary thematic
resonance.
Catch repetition: In catch repetition the end of one clause or
sentence is repeated at the beginning of the following one.
It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.
Arise, fair sun, and kill the envious moon... W. Shakespeare

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"When people ask you what happened here, tell them the
North remembers. Tell them, Winter came for House Frey"
Game of Thrones.
Chain repetition: presents several successive anadiploses.
Examples: Education leads to knowledge; knowledge leads to
understanding; understanding leads to tolerance; tolerance
leads to harmony.
"Curiosity leads to exploration; exploration leads to discovery;
discovery leads to innovation; innovation leads to progress."
Successive repetition: is a string of closely following each
other reiterated units.
Examples: The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep,
And miles to go before I sleep. from a poem "Stopping by
Woods on Snowy Evening" by Robert Frost.
Mercutio: "If love be blind, love cannot hit the mark. Now will
he sit under a medlar tree and wish his mistress were that
kind of fruit as maids call medlars when they laugh alone. O,
Romeo, that she were, O that she were an open et cetera, thou
a poperin pear!" by Shakespeare "Romeo and Juliet".
Write about the purpose
2. Inversion.
Inversion is the change of the normal order of words. They are
reversed, and thus leading to a different kind of effect.
The purpose of inversion is to emphasize a particular
statement, way of thinking, or even entire passage for the
reader. Authors may want their readers to note what is being
said in one section of text more so than in another. The

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sentence, is surely, sounds gramatically incorrect. For

example, we have a sentence "Tomorrow we will go to the
park.", but using inversion it will sonund like this: "Tomorrow
to the park we will go." Now and then, inversion happens
naturally, namely "What a terrible turn of events we have."
We've got 4 patterns of stylistic inversion:
Predicative+(link verb)+subject=Charming and seductive was
his smile.
Adverbial modifier + Subject + Predicate=Confidently they
waltzed into the broad parlour.
Adverbial modifier + Predicate + Subject=Directly in front of
them stood a towering castle.
Object - at the beginning of the sentence=Uncertain decision
was she making.
Attributes - after the modified noun (which is oftenly spotted
in poetry)=
"Of vagrant dwellers in the houseless woods, / Or of some
Hermit's cave, where by his fire." by W. Wordsworth "Lines
composed a Few miles Above Tintern Abbey"
There are 2 types of inversion:
Full inversion: When the whole predicate is put before the
subject.
Examples: "Behind the mountains, casting a warm glow across
the valley, set the sun."
"Happily in the park until the sun went down played the
children."
"In the center of the courtyard stood the old tree, with
branches reaching toward the sky."
Examples in literature:

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''It matters not how strait the gate,

How charged with punishments the scroll'' (''Invictus'' by
William Ernest Henley)
''To be, or not to be
that is the question.'' (Hamlet by William Shakespeare)
"In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit."
(J.R.R. Tolkein, The Hobbit, 1937)
"There on the tiny stoop sat Pecola in a light red sweater and
blue cotton dress."
(Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye. Holt, Rinehart and Winston,
1970)
"Not in the legions
Of horrid hell can come a devil more damned
In ills to top Macbeth."
(William Shakespeare, Macbeth)
Partial inversion: is predicative / adverbial modifier / object +
S+P.
Examples: Horrendous her hair was! Love she hasn't got.
Examples in literature: "What they talked of all evening long,
no one remembered next day."
(Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine, 1957)
"Not until the seventeenth century did the fork appear in
England."
(Henry Petroski, The Evolution of Useful Things. Alfred A.
Knopf, 1992)
"There's a lady wants to see you. Miss Peters her name is."
(P.G. Wodehouse, Something Fresh, 1915)

3. Detachment. Suspense.

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Sometimes one of the secondary parts of a sentence by some

specific consideration of the writer is placed so that it seems
formally independent of the word it logically refers to. Such
parts of structures are called detached.
Detached constructions in their common forms make the
written variety of language akin to the spoken variety where
the relation between the component parts is effectively
materialized by means of intonation. In the English language
detached constructions are generally used in the belles-lettres
prose style and mainly with words that have some explanatory
function. Detached construction as a stylistic device is a
typification of the syntactical peculiarities of colloquial
language. It can be graphically emphasized with comma, full
stop, or dash.
Examples: "Constructed in the 19th century, the building
exhibits a blend of architectural styles."
"With a peace treaty, the war concluded, and it was signed by
the warring nations."
"Detailed painting with petite flowers-a splendid work of art."
Suspense is a literary strategy or technique employed to
heighten the emphasis or excitement of the conflict's
resolution. In a story, suspense toys with the reader's
expectations and curiosity while simultaneously serving the
purpose of giving the ending (or the solution of the given
conflict) a stronger emotive impact after its timely arrival. In
other words, suspense mostly results from the author
withholding plot details or suggestively emphasizing others to
entice, confuse, or otherwise stress the reader.

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Peopel may observe suspense in mystery books and detective

books as often as in some adventure or fantasy books.
Suspense is also found in stories where the reader wonders if
a character is going to succeed or wonders what will happen
to a character.
Writers create suspense through:
• Clues: Details that hint that something might happen or
actual clues found during mystery
• Setting: Putting the setting in a scary place, not making it
clear where the characters are, adding a storm, setting the story
at night, etc.
• Imagery: Adding words and word pictures to make the mood
of the story scary, angry, confusing, etc. "It was a dark and
stormy night."
• Foreshadowing: Giving a hint about what is to come.
• Questions: Creating questions in the reader's mind. Having a
character ask questions.
Dramatic Irony: Letting the reader in on information
characters don't know. For example, the murderer is hiding
around the corner.
Overall, I'd say that suspense is created to generate anxiety
and stimulate anticipation.
Examples of suspense in books:
Every single book of Agatha Christie is imbued with suspense
and keeps readers immersed in reading. Let's take as an
example her prominent novel "And then there were None".
Since the beginning, a reader knows that 10 different people
are gathered together on a deserted island, and each of the
gradually dies one by one. Moreover, not only the majority of

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deaths creates suspense, but also a little counting rhyme "Ten

little soldiers went out to dine, One choked his little self and
then there were nine." and so on.
In “The Hunger Games,” Katniss is in the arena, fighting for
her life, and the suspense builds as she comes closer and
closer to winning. -a dramatic cliffhanger.
For a suspense example, in the book Gone Girl by Gillian
Flynn, the protagonist Nick is suspected of killing his wife,
Amy. However, throughout the book, the reader is misled as
various clues suggest that different people may have been
responsible for her death. In the end, it is revealed that Nick
actually did kill Amy, but he used red herrings to mislead the
police and cast suspicion on other people.-red herrings to
mislead readers.
Examples in movies:
"Avengers: Infinity War" when Doctor Strange raises his finger
showing that there's only one choice to win over Thanos, but
the audience will figure it out in the last Avengers movie.
The same thing with the TV-show "Game of Thrones", when
Jon Snow murders Daenerys after kissing her.
Also, BBC "Sherlock", when the director keeps suspense by
making Sherlock dead and making the fans to worry about the
character and anticipate for the next seasons.
Actually, such series as Game of Thrones, Sherlock they are
gorged with suspense throughout the whole time.
4. Ellipsis. Apokoinu construction.
Ellipsis is the omission (removal) of one or more words from a
clause. The rest of the sentence can be understood through
context, so the omitted words are not necessary to the

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meaning of the sentence. Using ellipsis often reduces the need

for repetition, as any unnecessary words can just be left out.
Ellipsis can also refer to the ellipsis symbol (...), which is used
to mark the use of ellipsis. It is mainly used in literature to
show a pause or a trailing thought.
We've got 5 main types of ellipsis: gapping, pseudogapping,
stripping, verb and noun phrase ellipsis.
Gapping: takes place when any words are left out in a
sentence (such as the omission of verbs, adjectives, nouns,
etc.)
"My dress is black, and my sister's dress is too." This sentence
omits the adjective "black".
Pseudogapping: happens when the main verb from a verb
phrase is left out of a sentence.
"Emily was walking a dog yesterday, and Jean is today." In this
sentence, the omitted word is "walking."
Stripping: occurs when everything besides a single
element is omitted from a sentence. The sentence often ends
with a particle, such as "too," "as well," or "also."
"Mary told Steve to dress up for the party, and Kevin too."
Here, "Mary told [name] to dress up for the party" is omitted
from the second clause, leaving only "Kevin."
Verb phrase: when a whole verb phrase (a group of words
made up of a verb and a direct or indirect object) is omitted.
"I want to go to the zoo, and my sister wants to as well."
Noun phrase: occurs when part of a noun phrase (a group of
words that contains a noun and any modifiers) is omitted from
a sentence.

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"Greta ate two cupcakes, but I ate three." In this sentence, the
word "cupcakes" is omitted from the noun phrase "three
cupcakes." With this whole phrase included, the sentence
would read, "Greta ate two cupcakes, but I ate three
cupcakes."
Examples of ellipsis:
This passage is an example of how ellipses are used in modern
literature. In this scene, narrator Nick Carraway leaves a party
with Mr. McKee, who invites him to lunch:

“Come to lunch someday,” he suggested, as we groaned down in

the elevator.
“Where?”
“Anywhere.”
“Keep your hands off the lever,” snapped the elevator boy.
“I beg your pardon,” said Mr. McKee with dignity, “I didn’t
know I was touching it.”
“All right,” I agreed, “I’ll be glad to.”
. . . I was standing beside his bed and he was sitting up between
the sheets, clad in his underwear, with a great portfolio in his
hands.
Instead of following this conversation with a lunch scene,
Fitzgerald uses the ellipsis to omit what happened between the
two men after leaving the party. The untold events are left to
the reader to imagine, though many have seen the omission as
implying a sexual relationship.

I guess that we should also emphasize the iceberg theory. The

trust writers place in readers can be best exemplified by the
iceberg theory. Pioneered by American writer Ernest

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Hemingway, the iceberg theory is a writing technique that

emphasizes minimalism, focusing solely on the narrative
rather than the theme behind the story.
Movies: Chronological jumps can be present in subtler ways.
There’s an implied time jump in most of the Harry
Potter films, as they barely showing the summers that pass
between the school years. These jumps are designed so the
viewer barely registers them and instead focuses on the
important parts of the narrative instead. Regardless of how
subtle or evident these ellipses appear, the primary function
of this device is to further the storyline along.
Apokoinu construction: An omission of the pronominal
(sometimes adverbial) connective creating a blend of the
main and subordinate clauses so that the predicative or
object of the first one is simultaneously used as the subject of
the second one. This construction is most likley to be used in
OE literature.
Examples: He owns a car needs frequent repairs. (which)
There's a book written by a famous author. (which)
I met a man speaks fluent French. (who)
He works with a colleague graduated from Harvard. (who)
She has a cat behaves like a dog. (that) In the shadow of the
ancient castle, there stood a figure wrapped in a cloak, whose
eyes gleamed with an otherworldly light. (who)
Within the haunted mansion, a mirror hung on the wall
reflects the images of those long departed. (which)
Amidst the foggy moor, I glimpsed a solitary tree, its branches
reaching out like spectral fingers. (that)
5. Break-in-the-narrative/aposiopesis.

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Break-in-the-narrative: is when a sentence is purposefully left

incomplete or cut off. It’s caused by an inability or
unwillingness to continue speaking. This allows the ending to
be filled in by the listener’s imagination. In order to show
aposiopesis in a sentence, one may use the em dash (--) or
ellipsis (…).
Aposiopesis type: audience-respecting
This type of aposiopesis does not to include details or thoughts
which may be offensive or unpleasant to readers or listeners.
For example, while discussing a court case in front of a jury, a
lawyer may state:
After the suspect… Well, you’ve read the court documents.
After the heinous crime was completed, the suspect fled the
scene. Aposiopesis type: surprising
This type of aposiopesis does not give information that the
audience wants or expects to receive. This gains the
audience’s interest in the information that will later be
revealed. For example, it is often used in newscasts:
On tonight’s newscast, we will begin to discover what happens
when two animals become unlikely friends… Read the whole
story on our site!
Aposiopesis type: emotional
Similar to emphatic aposiopesis, emotive aposiopesis does not
finish a sentence due to an emotional outburst. This type of
aposiopesis does not finish an idea in order to express that it is
beyond description. Imagine an angry man who is so angry he
can’t even think of what he wants to do to express that anger:
I’m so angry, I could – I could--!
Aposiopesis type: transition

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Used mostly in speech-making, the transition aposiopesis ( or

transitio-aposiopesis ) is used to make a transition from one
subject to another. By removing the conclusion from one idea,
the speaker immediately gains the listeners’ interest in the
next section of the speech: And, in conclusion… Well, enough
of that. Let’s move on to the next point.
Examples in literature: An example of this may be found in
Shakespeare’s King Lear.Lear is so upset he cannot think of
proper punishment for his misbehaving daughters: I will have
revenges on you both
That all the world shall – I will do such things--
What they are yet, I know not; but they shall be
The terrors of the earth!
Mark Twain’s Aunt Polly is overcome with emotion but is
unable to complete her thought: he looked perplexed for a
moment, and then said, not fiercely, but still loud enough for
the furniture to hear:
“‘Well, I lay if I get hold of you I’ll--‘
Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that
year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that’s no
matter—tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms
farther.… And then one fine morning— So we beat on, boats
against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past.
These emotional lines come from the narrator of the novel, N.
Carraway, where he comments on Gatsby's mental state and
his intentions.
Movie: In a very different example, Mr. Darcy expresses his
love to Elizabeth in Pride & Prejudice. Overcome with
emotion, he can hardly speak:

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If, however… your feelings have changed… I would have to tell

you, you have bewitched me body and soul, and I love… I
love… I love you.
6. Polysyndeton and asyndeton. Attachment.
Polysyndeton: is the repeated use of coordinating conjunctions
to connect different items in a sentence. The repetition of
conjunctions—and, but, or, nor—in close succession is a
deliberate style choice to place emphasis on each listed word
or phrase. The effect is often an excited or serious mood. The
word polysyndeton comes from the Greek sundetos, which
means “bound together.”
Polysyndeton creates a rhythmic cadence, sometimes speeding
the tempo up and sometimes slowing it down. If a character is
speaking excitedly or anxiously, polysyndeton can convey that
feeling.
Examples: Charles Dickens, Dombey and Son: Charles
Dickens frequently used polysyndeton throughout his work. In
this story, Dickens uses the literary device to emphasize
disrepair in a town that is resistant to change. “There were
frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps,
and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-
beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway.”
William Shakespeare, Othello: Shakespeare uses
polysyndeton when Othello lists the number of torturous ways
to die as he tries to determine if his wife has been unfaithful.
The compounding effect of this list emphasizes Othello’s
anxiety: "If there be cords, or knives, or poison, or fire, or
suffocating streams, I'll not endure it."

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Asyndeton: is a device that excludes conjunctions (and, nor,

or, but, so, yet), specifically the conjunction and.
For example, Julius Caesar used asyndeton when he famously
wrote, “Veni, Vidi, Vici” or “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
Caesar could’ve said, “I came, I saw, and I conquered,” but the
deliberate omission of “and” worked better.
Examples:
“We saw no houses, no smoke, no footprints, no boats, no
people.” William Golding’s Lord of the Flies.
Due to the fact that Ch. Dickens was also a fan of this device
we may spot it here in "A Tale of Two Cities": “It was the best
of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it
was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was
the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the
season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the
winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had
nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we
were all going direct the other way . . .”
In songs: Queen’s “We Will Rock You” of course.
Take the opening verse, for example. It features this
asyndeton:
Buddy, you’re a boy, make a big noise
Playing in the street, gonna be a big man someday
Queen left out the connectives “and” to make this lyric more
impactful.
In speeches: Winston Churchill’s speeches inspired the world.
One of his most famous quotes includes an asyndeton:

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“We shall go on to the end. We shall fight in France, we

shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength
in the air . . . we shall never surrender.”
Attachment: The second part of the utterance is separated
from the first one by a full stop though their semantic and
grammatical ties remain very strong. The second part is an
afterthought and is often connected with the beginning of the
utterance with the help of a conjunction which foregrounds
the latter.
It wasn’t his fault. It was yours. And mine.
7. Parallel construction. Rhetorical question.
Parallel construction: or parallelism is a grammatical and
rhetorical term for creating a sense of linguistic balance by
repeating elements within a sentence, over the course of
several sentences, or in a longer work or speech.
For example: That’s one step for man, one giant leap for
mankind.
For a first example of parallelism, read this excerpt from
Martin Luther King, Jr.’s famous speech: I have a dream
that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true
meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident,
that all men are created equal. I have a dream that one
day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and
the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down
together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that one
day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the
heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of
oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and
justice.

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Examples in literature:
“Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day; teach a man to
fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This famous English
proverb is a very good parallelism example being employed in
rhetoric. We can subconsciously sense a pattern in the
sentence even if we do not exactly know what that pattern is.
In this passage from A Farewell to Arms, Hemingway
uses repetition and parallelism to create a rhythm that gives
his simple style a precise and powerful effect. This repetition
continues the matter-of-fact tone in which the narrator is
describing the events of the war. This particular parallelism
could also be called an example of epistrophe because its
repetition occurs at the end of successive clauses. Up the river
the mountains had not been taken; none of the mountains
beyond the river had been taken. That was all left for next
year.
Parallelism in President George W. Bush's Address to
the Nation on Terrorism (September 20th, 2001). We
have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers,
working past exhaustion. We've seen the unfurling of flags, the
lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers—
in English, Hebrew, and Arabic.
Parallelism is an important tool at any writer's disposal, and
can be used for a variety of purposes:
To emphasize the relationship between two or more sentences
in a paragraph, or two or more ideas within a single sentence.
To compare or contrast two different things or ideas.
To create a stronger sense of rhythm in a text.
To drive home a point through repetition.

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To elaborate on an idea.
Reversed parallelism (chiasmus): s a two-part sentence or
phrase, where the second part is a mirror image of the first.
Like many other rhetorical devices, the purpose of chiasmus is
partially cosmetic. It doesn’t alter the content of what’s said; it
merely presents that content in a more stylistic package. This
is not to say that stylish text is shallow text. To the contrary,
stylish text can be particularly efficacious because it’s more
likely to linger in a reader’s memory, whereas a line of
standard-issue prose can be forgotten within minutes.
 Examples: “Let us never negotiate out of fear, but let us
never fear to negotiate.” (John F. Kennedy)

 “Love without end, and without measure Grace.” (John

Milton, Paradise Lost)
 “Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.” (Lord
Byron, “Don Juan”)
“Laura, I don’t hate you because you’re fat. You’re fat because
I hate you.” From the movie "Mean Girls".
Rhetorical question: is a question that is not asked in order to
receive an answer from the audience or reader. It’s just posed
to make a point.
Sometimes a rhetorical question will just be left open, but
other times the speaker will immediately go on to answer it. In
either case, no answer from the audience is expected.
Rhetorical questions are so common in everyday speech that
it’s hard to define their overall effect. It’s just part of the way
people speak in real life, so using a rhetorical question here
and there can make your writing sound more natural. In

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addition, a question gives the feel of a dialogue, because the

reader feels as though he or she is being addressed directlyby
the writer.
Examples of rhetorical questions:
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other
name would smell as sweet!” (Juliet, Romeo and Juliet)
One of Shakespeare’s most famous lines is a rhetorical
question. In this line, Juliet is raising the question to prove a
point – that names don’t mean anything and it shouldn’t
matter if Romeo’s last name is unacceptable to her parents.
“You mean you can’t take less,” said the Hatter: “it’s very
easy to take more than nothing.”
“Nobody asked your opinion,” said Alice.
“Who’s making personal remarks now?” the Hatter asked
triumphantly.
The Hatter concludes their testy exchange by asking a
rhetorical question whose answer (that Alice is making
personal remarks) is obvious to everyone.
"Shall I compare thee to a summers' day?" - William
Shakespeare
"Is it not crystal clear, then, comrades, that all the evils of this
life of ours spring from the tyranny of human beings? - George
Orwell, 'Animal Farm'
"Wonder how long Potter's going to stay on his broom this
time? Anyone want a bet? What about you, Weasley? Harry
Potter.
Authors, playwrights, speech writers and musicians use
rhetorical questions for a variety of reasons:
To challenge the listener

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To emphasize an idea
To raise doubt
To demonstrate that a previously asked question was obvious.

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