A guide to successful communication in translation, by Ernst-August Gutt, 1992. Rhetorical impact refers to the effect some utterance has upon its hearer. Rhetorical impact has to do with the total bundle of semantics , pragmatics , and speaker intention . Rhetorical impact is sometimes rather different from the normal impact expected from use of a particular language form. This is always true of rhetorical questions, which have the grammar of questions but the meaning of strong statements or rebuke.
Rhetoric is the study of the various kinds of forms and impact that utterances have.
Return to Index Rhetorical question Rhetorical questions are frequently used in the Bible. Since not all languages use rhetorical questions, we cannot always use the forms of questions when translating rhetorical questions. But you have made it a den of robbers. Return to Index Rhetorical parallelism Rhetorical parallelism is the most frequent Hebraic poetic structure found in the Bible. It consists of repeated parallel terms in one or more lines of a poetic couplet.