Stylistic devices and figures of speech

In short: Stylistic devices are linguistic tricks that make texts and speeches more vivid, more forceful or more beautiful. They appear in poems and novels as well as in advertising, headlines and everyday language.

In more detail: Ancient rhetoric described and named many of these figures. Anyone who recognises them understands better how a text works and can also use them deliberately.

In detail

• Metaphor: A word is used in a figurative sense without a “like” signalling the comparison, for example when people speak of the “river of time”.
• Simile: Two things are explicitly linked with “like” or “as”, for example “strong as a bear”.
• Personification: Inanimate things or ideas are given human qualities, for example when “the wind whispers”.
• Alliteration: Several consecutive words begin with the same sound, which is especially popular in slogans and set phrases.
• Anaphora: Several sentences or lines begin with the same words, which strongly emphasises a statement.
• Tricolon: A list of three parts sounds complete and memorable, like the famous “Veni, vidi, vici” (I came, I saw, I conquered).
• Hyperbole: A deliberate exaggeration, such as “I’ve told you a thousand times”, makes a statement more dramatic.
• Irony: You say the opposite of what you mean and rely on the listener recognising the real meaning.
• Rhetorical question: A question to which no answer is expected, because it already contains a statement (rhetorik-grundlagen-ueberzeugend-sprechen, wie-sprachen-sich-wandeln).