ABSTRACT
This chapter includes another set of rhetorical devices useful for emphasis: irony, understatement, litotes, and hyperbole. Irony involves a statement whose true meaning is different from its apparent meaning. Often the ironic or implied meaning is the opposite of the literal meaning. Understatement deliberately expresses an idea as less important than it actually is. Litotes is a form of understatement created by denying the opposite of the idea. Hyperbole is the opposite of understatement, since instead of diminishing an idea, it exaggerates it. Style Check 3 discusses emphatic positioning—how words in a sentence can be more or less emphasized depending on where they are placed in the sentence. It’s in the Cloud asks students to do some research about email etiquette and write up a report about that. Salt and Pepper discusses stylistic fragments and their possible use in writing. The chapter ends with a Review Questions quiz and Questions for Thought and Discussion, asking students to think personally about rhetoric and their writing lives ahead.
