Rhetoric is the art of speaking or writing in an effective way. Rhetorical devices are old-timey tools with very contemporary applications—for politicians, speechwriters, fiction authors, poets, advertisement agencies, and songwriters, among others.
A familiarity with stylistic rhetorical devices enhances your creative writing—and your appreciation of just how basic Trump’s rhetoric is.
But of course we know this—his tricks are few; he leans on repetition more than any other type of rhetorical device.1
![illustrations on the lid of a vintage child's toy toolbox; a drawing of a little blond boy in overalls and the text "busy boy tool box with soft plastic tools""](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!SfQp!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F209a6b5b-daeb-4c26-be63-15139437d60b_1526x690.png "illustrations on the lid of a vintage child's toy toolbox; a drawing of a little blond boy in overalls and the text "busy boy tool box with soft plastic tools""")
I’ve pulled together examples of poets absolutely rocking some of the rhetorical tools in Trump’s sparse and infantile toolbox: anaphora, conduplicatio, epizeuxis, polyptoton, and invective.
Where relevant, I’ve put in bold the areas of the cited texts that most demonstrated each device.
Anaphora:
Repeating a word/phrase at the start of each new successive clause or phrase.
Excerpt from June Jordan’s “Poem About My Rights”:
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[...] I am very familiar with the problems of the C.I.A. and the problems of South Africa and the problems of Exxon Corporation and the problems of white America in general and the problems of the teachers and the preachers and the F.B.I. and the social workers and my particular Mom and Dad/I am very familiar with the problems because the problems turn out to be me I am the history of rape I am the history of the rejection of who I am I am the history of the terrorized incarceration of my self I am the history of battery assault and limitless armies against whatever I want to do with my mind and my body and my soul [...]
*
(Trump: “We will make America strong again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And we will make America great again.”)
Conduplicatio:
Repeating a word or phrase somewhere in neighbouring phrases or clauses.
Excerpt from “This Is Not A Small Voice” by Sonia Sanchez:
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[...] This is not a small love you hear this is a large love, a passion for kissing learning on its face. This is a love that crowns the feet with hands that nourishes, conceives, feels the water sails mends the children, folds them inside our history where they toast more than the flesh where they suck the bones of the alphabet and spit out closed vowels. This is a love colored with iron and lace. This is a love initialed Black Genius. [...] *
(Trump: “It’s going to be a victory for the people. A victory for the wage-earner, the factory worker, a victory for the everyday citizen […]”)
Epizeuxis:
Repeating the same word or phrase without any other words in between.
Excerpt from “Domestic Violence” by Roger Reeves:
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[...] They stood beyond The queer parliament of the dead, and so I rushed over But could not make it to their portion of the field, The edge disappearing, the banks moving back from me. “We are not permitted,” they said. “We are not The dead of this dead. A different light. But go.” And then I heard my name; well, not my name But the name of my name, “Till, Till, Till.”
(If you’re not already familiar, read about Emmet Till here.)
*
(Trump: “We weren’t expected to win too much, and now we’re winning, winning, winning the country. And soon the country’s going to start winning, winning, winning.”)
Polyptoton:
The repeated use of a word in slightly different ways/forms.
“Voodoo V: ENEMY BE GONE” by Patricia Smith:
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The storm left a wound seeping, a boulevard yawning, some memories fractured, a kiss exploded, she left no stone resting, a bone army floating, rats sated, she left the horizon sliced and ornery, she left in a hurry, in a huff, in all her glory, she took with her a kingdom of sax and dream books, a hundred scattered chants, some earth burned in her name, and she took flight, all pissed and raucous, like a world-hipped woman makin’ room.
*
(Trump: “It's time to unite. And we're going to try, we're going to try, we have to try, and it's going to happen. Success will bring us together. I've seen that. I've seen that. I saw that in the first term.”)
Invective:
Using harsh or insulting language to attack a person or thing.
(Trump: “Can you believe this guy? He's got the smallest neck I've ever seen and the biggest head. We call them watermelon head. I'd say, how could that big fat face stand on a neck that looked like this finger? How can it? It was the weirdest thing. It's a -- it's a mystery, nobody can understand it.”)
*
A poem about Trump from Terrance Hayes’ book, American Sonnets for My Past and Future Assassin:
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The umpteenth thump on the rump of a badunkadunk Stumps us. The lunk, the chump, the hunk of plunder. The umpteenth horny, honky stump speech pumps A funky rumble over air. The umpteenth slump In our humming democracy, a bumble bureaucracy With teeny tiny wings too small for its rumpled, Dumpling of a body. Humpty-Dumpy. Frumpy Suit. The umpteenth honk of hollow thunder. The umpteenth Believe me. The umpteenth grumpy, Jumpy retort. Chump change, casino game, tuxedo, Teeth bleach, stump speech. Junk science. Junk bond. Junk country, stump speech. The umpteenth boast Stumps our toe. The umpteenth falsehood stumps Our elbows & eyeballs, our Nos, Whoahs, wows, woes.
Writing Challenge
Use rhetoric to help startle readers awake. Write a poem of dissent or a call-to-action using a combination of 2–3 of the above-listed rhetorical devices. Like Hayes, Smith, Reeves, Sanchez and Jordan, strengthen these simple devices using more complex tools—such as imagery, metaphor, cleverness, sonic devices, erasure, typography, geography, and tools of engagement.
A 2023 paper published in the Indonesian Journal of Applied Linguistics found 7 types of repetition-based rhetorical devices when they analyzed some of his early-pandemic-era speeches.
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