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Rhetorical address

Device
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

A direct appeal or invocation to an absent person, abstract concept, or inanimate object

Detailed Definition
Rhetorical address is a poetic technique where the speaker directly invokes an absent person, abstract concept, or inanimate object (apostrophe), using second-person pronouns to create intimacy or urgency; from John Donne’s “Death, be not proud” to contemporary eco-poems addressing rivers, it animates the nonhuman and heightens emotional stakes through imagined dialogue.
Example
Example in poetry:
John Donne’s “Death, be not proud” addresses mortality directly; Percy Bysshe Shelley’s “Ode to the West Wind” invokes the wind as “Destroyer and Preserver”; Walt Whitman’s “O Captain! My Captain!” mourns Lincoln; Claudia Rankine’s “Citizen” addresses “you” to implicate reader in racism.
Additional Notes
Rhetorical address directly speaks to an absent person, abstract concept, or inanimate object (apostrophe); heightens emotional intensity and is common in odes and elegies.
Also Known As
Apostrophic address direct invocation lyrical appeal vocative utterance Direct address Apostrophe
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