Public Speaking : Stylistic Devices

• the last word in one sentence is repeated at or very near the beginning of the next sentence.
• "Tonight, we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution.”

• Normally occurring conjunctions (and, or, but, for, nor, so, yet) are omitted
• "Be one of the few, the proud, the Marines."

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• Repeating variations on a phrase
• "Every time you break the seal on that liquor bottle, that's a Government's seal you're breaking! Oh, I say and I say it again, ya been had! Ya been took! Ya been hoodwinked! Bamboozled! Led astray! Run amok! This is what He does.”

• Repetition of the first and last words in a clause over successive clauses.
• My brother need not be idealized, or enlarged in death beyond what he was in life, to be remembered simply as a good and decent man, who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it.

• Repetition of  the first word or set of words in one sentence, clause, or phrase
• 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

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• The pairing of contrasting words or ideas
• "But we must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we're armed because we mistrust each other."

• Figure of addition in which adjacent nouns or noun substitutes with one elaborating the other.
• John Fitzgerald Kennedy, a great and good President, a friend of all people of goodwill, a believer in the dignity and equality of all human beings, a fighter for justice, an apostle of peace, has been snatched from our midst by the bullet of an assassin.

• An explicit comparison is made between two things highlighting their similarity
• I don't think there's anything certainly more unseemly than the sight of a rock star in academic robes. It's a bit like when people put their King Charles spaniels in little tartan sweats and hats. It's not natural, and it doesn't make the dog any smarter.

• Repeating a word or phrase at the end of successive sentences or phrases
• “...and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth."

• Deliberatively saying excessive conjunctions
• "We must change that deleterious environment of the 80's, that environment which was characterized by greed and hatred and selfishness and mega-mergers and debt overhang...."

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