In rhetoric, 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. 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.”[1]
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.