© 1999 by Robert N. Gaines. All rights reserved.

I. Kinds of Style

A. Clear--designed for teaching; simple thoughts, direct or simple modes, usual word choice, normal composition , low complexity, little use of figures.

George Bush, "Defense of Saudi Arabia" (15): "I want to be clear about what we are doing and why. America does not seek conflict, nor do we seek to chart the destiny of other nations. But America will stand by her friends. The mission of our troops is wholly defensive. Hopefully, they will not be needed long. They will not initiate hostilities, but they will defend themselves, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and other friends in the Persian Gulf." (Great Speeches for Criticism and Analysis, 3d ed., Appendix [Diskette], ed. Lloyd Rohler and Roger Cook [Greenwood, IN: Alistair Press, 1998].

B. Impressive--designed for emotional transportation; impressive thoughts, striking modes, unusual word choice, careful composition, high complexity, high use of figures.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (16): "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. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, one day, right there in Alabama, little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls as sisters and brothers. I have a dream today! I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plain, and the crooked places will be made straight and the glory of the Lord will be revealed and all flesh shall see it together." (Great Speeches 299-300)

C. Moral--designed to convey truth or character; otherwise like the clear style.

Lyndon Johnson, "The Voting Rights Act of 1965" (38-39): "My first job after college was as a teacher in Cotulla, Texas, in a small Mexican-American school. Few of them could speak English and I couldn't speak much Spanish. My students were poor and they often came to class without breakfast; hungry. And they knew even in their youth the pain of prejudice, they never seemed to know why people disliked them, but they knew it as so because I saw it in their eyes. I often walked home late in the afternoon after the classes were finished wishing there was more that I could do. But all I knew was to teach them the little that I knew, hoping that it might help them against the hardships that lay ahead."And somehow you never forget what poverty and hatred can do when you see its scars on the hopeful face of a young child. I never thought then, in 1928, that I would be standing here in 1965. It never even occurred to me in my fondest dreams that I might have the chance to help the sons and daughters of those students, and to help people like them all over this country. But now I do have that chance. And I'll let you in on a secret--I mean to use it. And I hope that you will us it with me." (Great Speeches 198-99)

D. Swift--designed to compress thoughts in a brief space; any thought, quick modes, short words, smooth composition, any complexity, quick figures.

John Kennedy, "Address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association" (4): "But because I am a Catholic, and no Catholic has ever been elected President, the real issues in this campaign have been obscured--perhaps deliberately in some quarters less responsible than this. So it is apparently necessary for me to state once again--not what kind of church I believe in, for that should be important only to me, but what kind of America I believe in." (Great Speeches 32)

E. Sweet--designed to please or entertain the audience; moderate thoughts, any mode, pleasant words, smooth composition, moderate complexity, high use of figures

John Kennedy, "Inaugural Address" (4): "Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans--born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage--and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today, at home and around the world." (Great Speeches 236)

A. Thought--the basic idea that does not change when the approach and expression varies (for example, equality of persons before the law).

B. Approach--Included here are all figures of thought, i.e. modes of presenting ideas other than direct statement. Note that approaches may sometimes be combined (e.g., Barbara Jordan combines antithesis with accumulation in her "Statement on the Articles of Impeachment" at paragraph 22).


1. Question

Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Statement on the KAL 007 Disaster" (8): "But if pilot error was responsible for this tragic mistake, why has the Soviet Government not said so? Why has it lied? And why is it complementing its murderous attack on KAL 007 with a lying attack on the United States for provocation and aggression?" (Great Speeches, Appendix)

2. Narrative

Al Gore, "Vice Presidential Acceptance" (36-39): "Three years ago, my son, Albert, was struck by a car crossing the street after watching a baseball game in Baltimore. Tipper and I watched as he was thrown 30 feet through the air and scraped another 20 feet on the pavement after he hit the ground.

"I ran to his side and held him and called his name, but he was limp and still, without breath or pulse. His eyes were open with the empty stare of death. And we prayed, the two of us there in the gutter, with only my voice. His injuries inside and out were massive, and for terrible days he lingered between life and death. Tipper and I spent the next 30 days and nights there at his bedside.

"Our family was lifted and healed in no small measure by an incredible outpouring of love and compassion and prayers from thousands and thousands of people, most of whom we never even knew.

"Albert is plenty brave and strong, and with the support of three wonderful sisters, Korrina, Kristin and Sarah, and two loving parents, who helped him with his exercises every morning and prayed for him every night, he pulled through. And now, thank God, he has fully recovered and runs and plays and torments his older sisters like any little boy." (Great Speeches, Appendix)


3. Understatement

Barbara Jordan, "Statement on the Articles of Impeachment" (1): "Earlier today we heard the beginning of the preamble to the Constitution of the United States. 'We the people'--it's a very eloquent beginning. But when that document was completed on the seventeenth of September in 1787, I was not included in that "We the people." I felt somehow for many years that George Washington and Alexander Hamilton just left me out by mistake." (Great Speeches 163)

4. Hyperbole--overstatement

Barbara Jordan, "Statement on the Articles of Impeachment" (23): "If the impeachment provision in the Constitution of the United States will not reach the offenses charged here, then perhaps that eighteenth century Constitution should be abandoned to a twentieth century paper shredder." (Great Speeches 165)

5. Antithesis--juxtaposition of contrary or contrasting ideas

Jesse Jackson, "Common Ground and Common Sense" (43): "I was not born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I had a shovel programmed for my hand." (Great Speeches, Appendix)

6. Comparison (including example)

Al Gore, "Vice Presidential Acceptance" (6): "Our country is in trouble. And while George Bush and Dan Quayle have been making excuses for deadlock and delay, people in other nations, inspired by the eternal promise of America, have torn down the Berlin Wall, brought communism to its knees and forced a racist government in South Africa to turn away from apartheid." (Great Speeches, Appendix)

7. Personification--representation of non-living beings or inanimate objects as speaking or acting

Martin Luther King, "I have a Dream" (4-5): "When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men, yes, black men as well as white men, would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

"It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked "insufficient funds.'" (Great Speeches 298)


8. Vivid Description (places, actions, persons, characters)

Jesse Jackson, "Common Ground and Common Sense" (28): "They work in hospitals. I know they do. They wipe the bodies of those who are sick with fever and pain. They empty their bedpans. They clean out their commode. No job is beneath them, and yet when they get sick, they cannot lie in the bed they made up every day." (Great Speeches, Appendix)

9. Division--separation of the alternatives related to a question and a resolution of each through argument

Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Statement on the KAL 007 Disaster" (8-11): "Why did the Soviet Union violate these norms? Why have they lied about it? Two reasons most often advanced to explain why the Soviet pilot shot down the airliner are, first, that it was a mistake-the mistake of a trigger-happy pilot who, with his ground controller, followed a philosophy of shoot now, identify later. But if pilot error was responsible for this tragic mistake, why has the Soviet Government not said so? Why has it lied? And why is it complementing its murderous attack on KAL 007 with a lying attack on the United States for provocation and aggression?

"As I considered this question, my mind returned to a debate that took place in this Security Council some 21 years ago, when my distinguished predecessor, Governor Adlai Stevenson of Illinois, called the attention of the Council to the unmistakable evidence that a series of facilities for launching offensive nuclear missiles were being installed in the Western hemisphere. Soviet representative Ambassador Zorin flatly denied those charges and, as Soviet representatives so often do, coupled his denial with a vicious attack on the United States. Calling our attention to threatening Soviet behavior, Zorin asserted, only masked the United States' own aggression and piracy. But Adlai Stevenson too had evidence to back up his charge, photographic evidence as irrefutable as the audio tapes we have heard today. The fact is that violence and lies are regular instruments of Soviet policy. Soviet officials regularly behave as though truth were only a function of force and will; as if the truth were only what they said it is; as if violence were an instrument of first resort in foreign affairs.

"We are reminded once again that the Soviet Union is a State based on the dual principles of callousness and mendacity dedicated to the rule of force. Here is how Lenin described the dictatorship of the proletariat in 1920. He said, and I quote:

The scientific concept of dictatorship means nothing more than unrestricted power, absolutely unimpeded by law or regulations and resting directly on force.


"It is this principle of force, this mentality of force, that lies at the root of the Korean Air Line tragedy. This is the reality revealed to the world by the tragedy. It is a reality we must all ponder as we consider threats to peace and human rights that face us today." (Great Speeches, Appendix)

10. Accumulation--when points scattered in an argument are collected for impressive effect

Barbara Jordan, "Statement on the Articles of Impeachment" (22): "The Constitution charges the President with the task of taking care that the laws be faithfully executed, and yet the President has counseled his aides to commit perjury, willfully disregarded the secrecy of grand jury proceedings, conceal[ed] surreptitious entry, attempt[ed] to compromise a federal judge while publicly displaying his cooperation with the processes of criminal justice." (Great Speeches 165)


C. Expression

1. Word choice

a. Literalness (proper versus tropic uses)

b. Expectedness (usual versus unusual--including foreign words)

c. Contemporeity (archaisms, typical words, new words--including neologisms)


2. Composition

a. Collision of consonants

b. Collision of vowels

c. Repetition of sounds

d. Expected orders


3. Complexity

a. Length of clauses

b. Number of clauses in sentences

c. Interrelation of clauses (coordinate versus subordinate)


4. Figures

a. Schemes--unusual collocations of words, usually for a pleasing or attractive acoustic effect. Note that multiple schemes may be combined.

1) Anaphora, repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of several successive clauses.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (3): "But one hundred years later, the Negro still is not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segregation and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land."


2) Anastrophe, repetition at the beginning of one clause of the same word (or phrase) that concluded the preceding clause.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (6): "So we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice."

Jesse Jackson, "Common Sense and Common Ground" (43): "Suffering breeds character. Character breeds faith."


3) Antistrophe, repetition of the same word or phrase at the end of successive phrases or clauses.

Abraham Lincoln, "Gettysburg Address" (3): ". . . and that the government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

4) Parechesis, the repetition of the same sound in words in close or immediate succession. When the same sound is repeated at the beginning of the words in question, alliteration arises.

John Kennedy, "Inaugural Address" (6), ". . .we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends," (10) "to enlarge the area in which its writ may run."

Jesse Jackson, "The Rainbow Coalition" (11): "But our healthy competition should make us better, not bitter."


5) Rhyme, where ends of clauses (and perhaps phrases) have the same or like sounds.

Jesse Jackson, "The Rainbow Coalition" (11), "The team that got us here must be expanded, not abandoned;" (47), "I challenge them to put hope in their brains, and not dope in their veins."

6) Asyndeton, the absence of conjunctions in a series of coordinated words or phrases.

Lyndon Johnson, "The Voting Rights Bill of 1965" (26): "These are the enemies: poverty, ignorance, disease."

7) Polysyndeton, the repetition of conjunctions in a series of coordinate words or phrases.

John Kennedy, "Inaugural Address" (13): ". . . let both sides join in creating a new endeavor: not a new balance of power, but a new world of law, where the strong are just and the weak secure and the peace preserved."

8) Chiasmus, the crosswise arrangement of contrasted pairs to give alternate stress.

John Kennedy, "Inaugural Address" (18): "And so my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country."

Jesse Jackson, "The Rainbow Coalition" (47): " . . . just because you're born in a slum, does not mean the slum is born in you . . ."


9) Isocolon, the use of two or more sequent phrases or clauses containing an equal number of syllables.

Lyndon Johnson, "The Voting Rights Act of 1965" (21): "And we ought not, and we can not, and we must not wait another eight months before we get a bill."

10) Parisosis, the use of clauses (or phrases) that are parallel in grammatical structure.

Abraham Lincoln, "Gettysburg Address (3): "But in a larger sense, we cannot dedicate--we cannot consecrate--we cannot hallow--this ground."

b. Tropes

1) Antonomasia--the use of an epithet or title in place of a name--your Honor, Professor, "Poolboy"; or use of a proper name instead of a noun--Don Juan for lover, Apicius for gourmand, Solon for a wise person or law-giver.

Epithet in place of name(s)

Hubert Humphrey, "Vice Presidential Acceptance Speech" (14):"The temporary spokesman of the Republican Party-yes the temporary Republican spokesman is not only out of tune with the great majority of his countrymen he is even out of step with his own party. In the last 3 1/2 years most Democrats and Republicans have agreed on the great decisions our nation has made, but not the Republican spokesman, not Senator Goldwater."

Ronald Reagan, "Tribute to the Challenger Astronauts" (2): "And perhaps we've forgotten the courage it took for the crew of the shuttle; but they, the Challenger Seven, were aware of the dangers, but overcame them and did their jobs brilliantly."

Proper name for a noun

Barbara Jordan, "Keynote Address" [Democratic National Convention 1976] (1): "A lot of years passed since 1832, and during that time it would have been most unusual for any national political party to ask a Barbara Jordan to deliver a keynote address, but tonight I am here."

Lloyd Bentsen, "Vice Presidential Debate, 1988": [to Dan Quayle] "I knew Jack Kennedy. Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy."


2) Metonymy--uses an expression from an object associated by contiguity or possession to suggest the object meant.

Reference to Effect in place of Cause (Contiguity)

Jesse Jackson, "Common Sense and Common Ground (10): "When we do not come together we never win. In 1968, division and despair in July led to our defeat in November. In 1980, rancor in the spring and the summer led to Reagan in the fall. When we divide we cannot win."

Reference to Thing Contained in place of Container (Possession)

Geraldine Ferraro, "Vice Presidential Acceptance Speech (3): "I became and assistant district attorney, and I put my share of criminals behind bars."


3) Synecdoche--reference to a part instead of the whole and reference to the whole instead of a part.

Part for Whole

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (16): "I have a dream that one day, down in Alabama, with its vicious racists, with its governor having his lips dripping with the words of interposition and nullification . . ."

Jesse Jackson, "Common Sense and Common Ground" (4): "My right and my privilege to stand here before you has been won, won in my lifetime, by the blood and the sweat of the innocent."

Whole for Part

John Kennedy, "Inaugural Address (20): "Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. [Kennedy refers to the United States of America by use of a more encompassing term; see, The Concise Oxford Companion to the English Language, s.v. "synecdoche."]


4) Catachresis--the inexact use of a like and kindred word in place of the precise word, e.g., on-line "manual" or "weighty" speech.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (3): "One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land."

Jesse Jackson, "Common Sense and Common Ground" (27): " What's the fundamental challenge of our day? It is to end economic violence. Plant closing without notice, economic violence."


5) Metaphor--when language applying to one thing is applied to another, because the similarity seems to justify the transference.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (2): "Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope for millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice.

a) Allegory--created by extending a metaphor

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (2): "It [Emancipation Proclamation] came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity."


6) Metalepsis--use of a partial synonym, e.g., "chant" for say.

Franklin Roosevelt, "First Inaugural Address" (5): "Yes, the money-changers have fled from their high seats in the temple of our civilization."

7) Onomatopoiia--making a word out of a sound, a form of imitation, e.g., "cackle," "buzz."

Jeane Kirkpatrick, "Statement on the KAL 007 Disaster" (7): " In the days following the destruction of KAL 007, Soviet leaders and the Soviet press have said repeatedly they do not understand what all the fuss is about. They began by accusing the United States of creating a hullabaloo about nothing, and more recently they have accused us of a provocation, implying, though never quite saying, that we provoked them into shooting down an airliner that strayed into their space, provoked them into violating the internationally agreed upon standards and practices of behavior."

8) Antiphrasis--irony, the use of words to express a meaning different from and particularly contrary to the literal meaning.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (13): "Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering."

Also, litotes, the use of words to express a positive meaning by negating the contrary.

Martin Luther King, "I Have a Dream" (13): "I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulation."


5. Rhythm is the pattern of stressed and unstressed syllables asthe discourse is pronounced

a. Ends of clauses and sentences

b. Beginnings of clauses and sentences

c. Internal to clauses and sentences