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Oral language that is artfully arranged and infused with rhythm draws listeners in and leaves a lasting impression on audience members. You can create a cadenced arrangement of language through rhetorical devices such as repetition, alliteration, and parallelism.

Use Repetition to Create Rhythm

Repeating key words, phrases, or even sentences at various intervals throughout a speech creates a distinctive rhythm and thereby implants important ideas in listeners’ minds. Repetition works particularly well when delivered with the appropriate voice inflections and pauses.

In a form of repetition called anaphora, the speaker repeats a word or phrase at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, or sentences. For example, in his speech delivered in 1963 in Washington DC, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. repeated the phrase “I have a dream” numerous times, each with an upward inflection followed by a pause. Speakers have made use of anaphora since earliest times. For example, Jesus preached:

Blessed are the poor in spirit. . . .

Blessed are the meek. . . .

Blessed are the peacemakers. . . .¹²

Repetition can help to create a thematic focus for a speech. Speakers often do this by using both anaphora and epiphora in the same speech. Rather than at the beginning of successive statements, in epiphora (also called epistrophe) the repetition of a word or phrase appears at the end of them. In a speech to his New Hampshire supporters, Barack Obama used both anaphora and epiphora to establish a theme of empowerment (italics added):

It was a creed written into the founding documents that declared the destiny of a nation: Yes we can.

It was whispered by slaves and abolitionists as they blazed a trail toward freedom through the darkest of nights: Yes we can.

It was sung by immigrants as they struck out from distant shores and pioneers who pushed westward against an unforgiving wilderness: Yes we can.¹³

Use Alliteration for a Poetic Quality

Alliteration is the repetition of the same sounds, usually initial consonants, in two or more neighboring words or syllables. Alliteration lends speech a poetic, musical rhythm. Classic examples of alliteration in speeches include phrases such as Jesse Jackson’s “Down with dope, up with hope” and former U.S. Vice-President Spiro Agnew’s disdainful reference to the U.S. press as “nattering nabobs of negativism.”

Experiment with Parallelism

The arrangement of words, phrases, or sentences in a similar form is known as parallelism. Parallel structure can help the speaker emphasize important ideas, and can be as simple as orally numbering points (“first, second, and third”). Like repetition, it also creates a sense of steady or building rhythm.¹⁴ Speakers often make use of three parallel elements, called a triad:

. . . of the people, by the people, and for the people . . .—Abraham Lincoln

Parallelism in speeches often makes use of antithesis—setting off two ideas in balanced (parallel) opposition to each other to create a powerful effect:

One small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. —Neil Armstrong on the moon, 1969

For many are called, but few are chosen. —Matthew 22:14