Your friend asks for your advice on polishing his speech. He has researched and organized his speech well, and practiced it enough to feel comfortable delivering it, but feels he needs help with his language choices to make it more interesting and memorable. What advice might you give him concerning figurative language, drama, and cadence? Explain at least one device in each of those categories.
What will be an ideal response?
Figurative language creates interest because it deviates from the ordinary, expected meanings of words. Figurative language involves using metaphors, similes, or personification. A metaphor is an indirect comparison. A simile is a comparison using like or as. Personification is giving an object or idea the characteristics of a person.
Drama is created by phrasing something in an unexpected way. Three devices that can help achieve verbal drama are omission, inversion, or suspension. (1) Omission is leaving out a word or phrase that the audience expects to hear. (2) Inversion is reversing the word order of a sentence or phrase, and (3) suspension is withholding a key word or phrase until the end of the sentence.
Cadence is the rhythm of the speech created through verbal devices. Cadence may be achieved using such stylistic devices as parallelism, antithesis, repetition, and alliteration. (1) Parallelism occurs when the grammatical structure of several phrases or sentences is the same. (2) Antithesis is a two-part parallel structure in which the second part contrasts in meaning with the first. (3) Repetition of an important word or phrase can add emphasis to a key idea and memorability to a message. (4) Alliteration is repeating the initial consonant sound of several words that are in close proximity to one another to create cadence.
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