INDIRECT REFERENCE: METONYMY
If you “talk down” to people, they will become annoyed. You need to give them some work to do to understand you and trust they can make the connections necessary. One important way to do this goes by the name “metonymy.”
Generally, metonymy means not naming something directly, but referring to something associated with it or something that allows your audience to deduce it. More specifically, it substitutes the cause for the effect or effect for the cause, a proper name for one of its attributes or an attribute for a proper name. A classic example is Phyllis Diller’s referring to her mother-in-law as “Moby Dick.”
Christmas time gives several examples. We feely call someone a (before nervous breakdown) Scrooge or a (pre-cardio-enlargement) Grinch.
Or this:
This year I’m fed up with Christmas.
I won’t play that jolly old elf.
Unlike you peasants
Who buy others presents,
I’m spending it all on myself.
COMMON BEGINNINGS
The easiest rhetorical device to use in a speech is also one of the most powerful. Anaphora involves beginning each paragraph, section, sentence, clause, or whatever, with the same word or phrase. Churchill used it frequently as in his well-known speech on Dunkirk, delivered on June 4, 1940:
"We shall fight in France,
we shall fight on the seas and oceans,
we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air.
we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be,
we shall fight on the beaches,
we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets,
we shall fight in the hills,
we shall never surrender."
The Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., used it in his most famous speech: "I have a dream..." and later in the same speech with the phrase, "Let freedom ring..."
An anaphora typically is derived from the outline of the speech. Instead of using subheadings or bullet points, the speaker can introduce each point with the same introductory phrase.
What phrase? The best choices are either a restatement of the important point ("we shall fight...") or a common feeling tone ("I have a dream").
