Figures of wordplay
These are generally used to please the ear of your audience, so in a legal argument may be used in moderation when opening and closing (although try and avoid punning in court!)
Wordplay and Puns
Antanaclasis - this involves the repetition of a word in two different senses.
Example :
If we don't hang together, we'll hang separately —Benjamin Franklin
Note: This is also a trope of repetition.
Paranomasia (punning)
Example :
Don't let your metaphoric retch exceed your metaphoric gasp
Syllepsis -Using a word differently in relation to two or more words that it modifies or governs (sometimes called zeugma).
Example :
There's a certain type of woman that would rather press grapes than clothes — Ad for Peck & Peck suits
Onomatopoeia Use of words whose sound correspond with their semantic value.
Examples:
The buzzing of innumerable bees...
From Alexander Pope comes this famous example of the correspondence between sound and sense:
'Tis not enough no harshness gives offense,
The sound must seem an echo of the sense:
Soft is the strain when Zephyr gently blows,
And the smooth stream in smoother numbers flows;
but when loud surges lash the sounding shore,
The hoarse, rough verse should like the torrent roar:
When Ajax strives some rock's vast weight to throw,
The line too labors, and the words move slow;
Not so, when swift Camilla scours the plain,
Flies o'er the unbending corn, and skims along the main.
Acknowledgement
The above information on individual rhetorical techniques is reproduced from the website “Silva Rhetoricae” (www.rhetoric.byu.edu ) under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 licence. Credit for this content lies with Professor Gideon O Burton of Brigham Young University.