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LOYOLA COLLEGE (AUTONOMOUS), CHENNAI 600 034
B.A.DEGREE EXAMINATION -ENGLISH LITERATURE
SIXTH SEMESTER APRIL 2018
EL 6609- RHETORIC AND STYLISTICS
Date: 21/04/2018 Dept. No. Max. 100 Marks
Time: 09:00-12:00
I.Answer any FIVE of the following questions in about 50 words each
1. Define Rhetoric.
2. What is Persuasive communication?
3. Write a brief note on Cicero's approach to Rhetoric.
4. What is Understatement?
5. What is Style?
6. What is Interrogation?
7. What is Florid style?
8. How is Rhetoric presented in political campaigns?
II.Attempt any FOUR of the following questions in about 200 words each choosing
not more than Two from each section. (4x10=40)
Section-A
9. Write a note on the characteristics of Persuasive communication
10. Expatiate on types of Rhetorical Proof.
11. Elaborate on the five canons of Rhetoric.
Section-B
12. What are various types of Style?
13. Trace the role of Rhetoric in Media discourse
14. What do you know about corporate discourse?
III Answer the following questions in about 500 words each (3x15=45)
15. Write a note each on Classical rhetoricians

Elaborate on Rhetorical devices.
16. How does Rhetoric play a pivotal role in the discourse of Present day society?

Comment on the various aspects of Stylistics.
17. Analyze the following speech in terms of rhetorical devices and figures of speech.
Some one will say: Yes, Socrates, but cannot you hold your tongue, and then you
may go into a foreign city, and no one will interfere with you? Now I have great
difficulty in making you understand my answer to this. For if I tell you that to do
as you say would be a disobedience to the God, and therefore that I
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cannotold my tongue, you will not believe that I am serious; and if I say again that daily to discourse about virtue, and of those other things about which you hear me examining myself and others, is the greatest good of man, and that the unexamined life is not worth living, you are still less likely to believe me. Yet I say what is true, although a thing of which it is hard for me to persuade you. Also, I have never been accustomed to think that I deserve to suffer any harm. Had I money I might have estimated the offence at what I was able to pay, and not have been much the worse. But I have none, and therefore I must ask you to proportion the fine to my means. Well, perhaps I could afford a mina, and therefore I propose that penalty: Plato, Crito, Critobulus, and Apollodorus, my friends here, bid me say thirty minae, and they will be the sureties. Let thirty minae be the penalty; for which sum they will be ample security to you.
DEATH BEFORE DISHONOR
Not much time will be gained, O Athenians, in return for the evil name which you will get from the detractors of the city, who will say that you killed Socrates, a wise man; for they will call me wise, even although I am not wise, when they want to reproach you. If you had waited a little while, your desire would have been fulfilled in the course of nature.For I am far advanced in years, as you may perceive, and not far from death. I am speaking now not to all of you, but only to those who have condemned me to death. And I have another thing to say to them: you think that I was convicted because I had no words of the sort which would have procured my acquittal—I mean, if I had thought fit to leave nothing undone or unsaid. Not so; the deficiency which led to my conviction was not of words—certainly not. But I had not the boldness or impudence or inclination to address you as you would have liked me to do, weeping and wailing and lamenting, and saying and doing many things which you have been accustomed to hear from others, and which, as I maintain, are unworthy of me. I thought at the time that I ought not to do anything common or mean when in danger: nor do I now repent of the style of my defence; I would rather die having spoken after my manner, than speak in your manner and live. For neither in war nor yet at law ought I or any man to use every way of escaping death. Often in battle there can be no doubt that if a man will throw away his arms, and fall on his knees before his pursuers, he may escape death; and in other dangers there are other ways of escaping death, if a man is willing to say and do anything.
The difficulty, my friends, is not to avoid death, but to avoid unrighteousness; for that runs faster than death. I am old and move slowly, and the slower runner has overtaken me, and my accusers are keen and quick, and the faster runner, who is unrighteousness, has overtaken them. And now I depart hence condemned by you to suffer the penalty of death,—they too go their ways condemned by the truth to suffer the penalty of villainy and wrong; and I must abide by my award—let them abide by theirs. I suppose that these things may be regarded as fated,—and I think that they are well.