Respond: Tropes
RESPOND •
Use online sources (such as American Rhetoric’s Top 100 Speeches at americanrhetoric.com/top100speechesall.html) to find the text of an es-say or a speech by someone who uses figures of speech liberally. Pick a paragraph that is rich in figures and rewrite it, eliminating every bit of figurative language. Then read the original and your revised version aloud to your class. Can you imagine a rhetorical situation in which your pared-down version would be more appropriate?