The Bedford Glossary of Critical and Literary Terms - Ross Murfin 2018

Rhetorical figures (schemes)

Rhetorical figures (schemes): One of the two major divisions of figures of speech, the other being tropes. Unlike tropes, which turn one word or phrase into a representation of something else, rhetorical figures involve a less radical use of language to achieve special effects. The major rhetorical figures are antithesis, apostrophe, chiasmus, oxymoron, paradox, parallelism, rhetorical questions, syllepsis, and zeugma. Other rhetorical figures include amplification, anaphora, antonomasia, aposiopesis, asyndeton, hyperbaton, hysteron proteron, paralipsis, periphrasis, and pun (paranomasia).