Techniques are the 'how' of a particular work - they are the devices that the author uses to communicate his or her meaning to the reader.
simile
A figure of speech in which two essentially unlike things are compared, often in a phrase introduced by like or as.
"How like the winter hath my absence been"
"So are you to my thoughts as food to life"
metaphor
Two unlike things are compared for emotional, dramatic or poetic effect.
Winston Churchill, in a radio address to the British people on June 18, 1940, compared the efforts to defeat Hitler as rising to "broad sunlit uplands." Churchill likened defeat at Hitler's hand to sinking "into the abyss of a new dark age."
extended metaphor
More than one comparison is made that is based on a metaphor already introduced into the speech.
Robert Lanham Owen compared democracy to religion in his speech "Democracy's Achievement"
personification
That which is not human is assigned human attributes.
Note how St. Francis of Assisi personifies birds in a sermon by addressing them as "little sisters." The title "Sermon to the Birds" even presumes that birds, as an audience, possess human qualities and act by making moral choices. The sermon is dated at 1220.
alliteration
Repetition of the initial sounds of words.
In a speech on civic participation in 1920, Will Harris, Chairman of the Republican Party, used alliteration in the phrase "I
plead for
patriotism in
peace as
well as in
war."
assonance
The repetition of identical or similar vowel sounds, especially in stressed syllables, with changes in the intervening consonants.
"tilting at windmills", "d
apple-dawn-drawn F
alcon"
consonance
Repetition of consonant sounds.
"ba
re
ruined choi
rs."
enjambment
The continuation of a syntactic unit from one line or couplet of a poem to the next with no pause.
Some day I will go to Aarhus
To see his peat-brown head,
The mild pods of his eye-lids,
His pointed skin cap.
(the first two lines are enjambed)
rhythm/rhyme
Rhythm is created by alternating sentence length. Rhyme and wordplay are created by using words with the same or similar sound in close approximation with one another. A play on words can also be accomplished with homophones, words that sound the same but have different meaning.
In a speech to the Democratic National Convention in 1984, the Rev. Jesse Jackson used each of these sound devices, along with alliteration and antithesis.
idiom
A speech form or an expression of a given language that is peculiar to itself grammatically or cannot be understood from the individual meanings of its elements.
"keep tabs on"
parallel sentence structure
Repeating the same phrase, often to serve the same grammatical function in a sentence, creates parallel structure and enhances rhythm. Most people just refer to this as repetition for emphasis.
In a speech to mark the signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, President Lyndon B. Johnson repeats the phrase "We believe" at the start of a string of sentences, and another phrase " forbids it" to end another sequence of sentences to create a parallel structure.
antithesis
Repeating a parallel syntactic structure with contrasting terms or a reversal of words.
Senator Edward Kennedy's eulogy to his brother Robert, presented at St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York on June 8, 1968, set up a parallel structure of contrasts ending in one of Robert F. Kennedy's favorite quotations by George Bernard Shaw: "Some men see things as they are and ask 'Why?' I dream things that never were and say 'Why not?'"
juxtaposition
A placing or being placed in nearness or side by side.
". . . the juxtaposition of 'flowery' prose with the brute epithets of barnyard and street."
"One of the things that made the diary [of Anne Frank] so poignant . . . is the awful juxtaposition of the ordinary and the horrific, the mundane and the unimaginable."
rhetorical question
A rhetorical question is answered silently in the mind of the listener. A sequence of repeated, rhetorical questions creates a rhythm.
Governor Adlai Stevenson, a candidate for the US Presidency in 1952, asked a series of rhetorical questions beginning with the phrase "Who shall say" and culminating with the question: "Who shall say that the American Dream has ended?"
hyperbole/minimisation
Word choices emphasise the significance of something - even overstating its importance, or de-emphasise through understatement.
In 1927 Charles Lindbergh was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross for his flight across the Atlantic in the "Spirit of St. Louis." In a speech presented in Washington on June 11, 1927, President Calvin Coolidge used hyperbole to praise Lindbergh's "splendid achievement". In receiving the award, Lindbergh minimised the effort, suggesting he had made the trans-Atlantic flight simply to see Europe.
sensory imagery
By using words that describe sensory experience a speaker can create a profound image and appeal to the sense memory of the audience.
Al Gore, speaking in Oklahoma City to mark the anniversary of the bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building, effectively used seasonal images of winter and spring, and thermal images of cold and warmth in his speech of tribute to those who died in the bombing.
synecdoche
A figure of speech in which a part is used for the whole (as
hand for sailor), the whole for a part (as
the law for
police officer), the specific for the general (as
cutthroat for
assassin), the general for the specific (as
thief for
pickpocket), or the material for the thing made from it (as
steel for
sword).
For example, using
wheels for
car, as in, "I need some new wheels."
foot
A unit of stressed and unstressed syllables, used to establish a meter.
meter
A regular tempo established by recurring numbers of feet within a line. Some common patterns are dimeter, two feet per line; trimeter, three feet per line; tetrameter, four feet per line; pentameter, five feet per line; hexameter, six feet per line. Thus, a line with four trochaic feet is called trochaic tetrameter. A line with five iambic feet is iambic pentameter.
caesura
A significant pause within a line, often indicated with punctuation:
"All nature is but art, unknown to thee;
All chance, direction, which thou canst not see . . ."
free verse
Poetry that does not use traditional meter or rhyme.
blank verse
Lines of unrhymed iambic pentameter.
And I have felt
A presence that disturbs me with the joy
Of elevated thoughts; a sense sublime
Of something far more deeply interfused,
Whose dwelling is the light of setting suns
verse paragraph
Line groups of irregular length, which function much like paragraphs in prose.
stanza
A grouping of lines within a poem. A group of two lines is called a couplet. A three line stanza is called a tercet. A four line stanza is a quatrain, and a five line stanza is a quintet. Two other common lengths are a sestet, six lines; and an octave, eight lines.
I suppose these last few are aspects of poetry that are helpful to know as opposed to actual language techniques. Occasionally they are used as techniques, though.
This list is not exhaustive, either - there are many many other techniques! If you're
really dedicated, check out the following websites as well:
http://www.dawsoncollege.qc.ca/text/learningcentre/techniques.html
http://www.circleofa.com/articles/art_techniques.html