Amplification (rhetoric)

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

In rhetorical usage, amplification refers to the act and the means of extending thoughts or statements to increase rhetorical effect, to add importance, or to make the most of a thought or circumstance (Oxford English Dictionary). While amplification can refer to exaggeration — or stylistic vices (figures of excess and superfluity such as hyperbole) — as a means for developing multiple forms of expression for a thought, amplification, “names an important point of intersection where figures of speech and figures of thought coalesce” (Silva Rhetoricae).

[edit] As arrangement

As arrangement, amplification involves identifying parts of a whole text as a process (division) where each part may be subject to strategies of amplification. As such a process, amplification is a set of strategies that together constitute the classical canon of discovery (or invention) of rhetorical arguments.

[edit] References

Silva Rhetoricae