Epizeuxis: Figure of emphasis in which the same word (or words) is/are repeated two or more times over in immediate succession; repetition of the same word, word, word....

Ex: Email Subject Line: "Federal Register Notice - Advanced notice of proposed rulemaking November 17, 2021"

"Please, please, please send out a retraction and corrected email for this. 'Advanced' and 'advance' are two completely different words. You are trying to give us advance notice of upcoming changes. There is nothing particularly advanced about this notification. In [an] era of increasingly advanced phishing schemes, one thing being taught to all of us is to be on the lookout for bad grammar as a telltale sign."

-- William Eidenmuller, MD

Further Examples

"You wanna know what I make? I make kids wonder. I make 'em question. I make 'em criticize. I make 'em apologize -- and mean it. I make 'em write, write, write. And then I make 'em read. I make 'em spell: definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful, definitely beautiful -- over and over and over again, until they will never misspell either one of those words again."

-- delivered by Taylor Mali

"What kind of America do we want over the next 20-25 years? Do we want an America that’s going to be able to compete in a global marketplace with two serious challengers: China and India. Over the next 20-25 years China and India will emerge as serious, serious, serious global players. And we will have to compete with them."

-- J.C. Watts, Keeping American Competitive in the Global Marketplace

"So, they sent me to a salon where they gave me a perm, and after a few days all my hair fell out and I had to shave my head. And then they really didn't like the way I looked -- ‘cause now I am black and bald and sitting on TV. Not a pretty picture. But even worse than being bald, I really hated, hated, hated being sent to report on other people's tragedies as a part of my daily duty, knowing that I was just expected to observe, when everything in my instinct told me that I should be doing something. I should be lending a hand."

-- Oprah Winfrey, Stanford Commencement Address

"Korben Dallas! Here he is. The one and only winner of the Gemini Croquet contest This boy is fueled, like FIRE! So start melting ladies 'cause the boy is hotter than hot. He's hot Hot! HOT!!"

-- delivered by Chris Tucker (from the movie The 5th Element)



"War appears inevitable. But I continue to hope that the cloud will lift. Perhaps Saddam will yet turn tail and run. Perhaps reason will somehow still prevail. I, along with millions -- scores of millions -- of Americans, will pray, Pray, PRAY for the safety of our troops."

-- Robert C. Byrd, The Arrogance of Power

"The rich nations and the poor nations have different responsibilities, but one responsibility we all have -- and that is action. Action. Action. Action. The current stalemate between the developed and the developing worlds must be broken. It is time to came together in a new international agreement that can be embraced by rich and poor nations alike."

-- Arnold Schwarzenegger, United Nations Address on Climate Change

"On Commencement Day, speechmakers are expected to offer advice -- as though you need any, as though anything said today could aid your making sense of our one-damn-thing-after-another world. But things are too confused, too loud, too dangerous to make advice an option. You need to hear something much more relevant on this day. You need to hear the most important message thus far in the third millennium. You need to hear a maxim so simple, so clear, and so evocative that no one could misconstrue its meaning or miss its weighty issue -- so, here goes. It’s not a statement, but it's a request, It's not a bit of advice, but it's a plea: Help. HELP. HEEEELLLLLLP."

-- Tom Hanks, Commencement Address at Vassar College

"Isn't it extraordinary that the Prime Minister of our country can't even urge his Party to support his own position?! Yeah.

Weak!

Weak!

Weak!

-- Tony Blair, 1997 House of Commons exchange with Prime Minister John Major

"And we must build effective coalitions capable of confronting dangerous regimes like Iran and North Korea. It’s time for more than just tough talk. Just like you -- probably just so tired of hearing the talk, talk, talk."

-- Sarah Palin, Tea Party Convention Keynote Speech



"I lost my mom to cancer and my dad's going through it right now and I -- that was the first place where I stopped was pop's house. Started crying in front of him and told him I loved him and that 'you've got nothing to worry about now except getting better.' So we're a happy bunch of group. We're a very, happy, happy, happy, as some of my friends would say."

-- William Seeley, Powerball Jackpot Press Conference

See also: Phil Robertson, My Life and Legacy as the Duck Commander

williamseeleyepizeuxis

"If you're watching and you're in an evacuation area -- get out. Don't take a chance. Time is running out. This [ Hurricane Matthew] is clearly either going to have a direct hit or come right along our coast; and we're going to have hurricane-force winds. There are no excuses -- you need to leave. Evacuate. Evacuate. Evacuate."

-- Florida Governor, Rick Scott on Hurricane Matthew Protocol

Mr. LaBoeuf: It is you who have nothing to offer, Cogburn. A sad picture, indeed. This is no longer a manhunt. It is a debauch. The Texas Ranger presses on. Alone.

Rooster Cogburn: Take the girl. I bow out.

Mr. LaBoeuf: A fine thing to decide, once you brought her into the middle of the Choctaw Nation.

Rooster Cogburn: I bow out. I wash my hands.

Mattie Ross: Look, gentlemen, we cannot fallout in this fashion, not so close to our goal -- with Tom Chaney nearly in hand.  

Rooster Cogburn: In hand? If he is not in a shallow grave somewhere between here and Fort Smith, he is gone. Long gone. Thanks to Mr. LaBoeuf, we missed our shot. We barked and the birds have flown. Gone! Gone! Gone! Lucky Ned and his cohort gone; your 50 dollars gone; gone the whiskey, seized in evidence. Trail is cold, if there ever was one. I'm -- I'm a foolish old man who's been drawn into a wild goose chase by a harpy in trousers and a nincompoop.

-- delivered by Jeff Bridges, Matt Damon, Hailee Steinfield (from the movie True Grit)

"Fate looked down kindly on us when she chose Neil to be the first to venture to another world and to have the opportunity to look back from space at the beauty of our own. It could have been another, but it wasn't. And it wasn't for a reason. No one, no one, but no one could have accepted the responsibility of his remarkable accomplishment with more dignity and more grace than Neil Armstrong."

-- delivered by Eugene Cernan, Eulogy for Neil Armstrong

 

"It's great to be able to stop when you've planned a thing that's wrong. And be able to do something else instead -- and think this song:

'I can stop when I want to. Can stop when I wish. Can stop, stop, stop anytime....And what a good feeling to feel like this! And know that the feeling is really mine. Know that there's something deep inside that helps us become what we can. For a girl can be someday a lady, and a boy can be someday a man.'

 -- Fred Rogers, Senate Statement on PBS Funding

John Madden:  "Jim McMahon got that penalty. He uses a cadence to draw 'em off sides. As he said, he said, 'I always get 'em when I go 'hut, hut, HUT!'...and then 'hut' -- and [the ball is snapped] on four.

Pat Summerall: "I think you just got half of our audience, too."

-- delivered by John Madden and Pat Summerall, Annoncing NFL Chicago Bears vs. Los Angeles Rams game, 12 January 1986.

 

"The most effective way to prevent infections and save lives is breaking the chains of transmission. And to do that, you must test and isolate. We have a simple message for all countries: test, test, test. Test every suspected case."

-- delivered by Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Opening Statement on the Novel Corona Virus

"The most decent and honorable person I ever met was my friend, George [H.W.] Bush. One of nature’s noblemen. His epitaph? Perhaps just a single letter, the letter "L" for loyalty. It coursed through his blood: loyalty to his country; loyalty to his family; loyalty to his friends; loyalty to the institutions of government; and always, always, always a friend to his friends."

-- Alan Simpson, Eulogy for George H.W. Bush

Note: A discursive moment also rich in anaphora

"I hope you will bear with me in my attempt to summarize the lessons we learned from PNoy. First, take pride in your work. Anything even near the neighborhood of sloppy was just simply unacceptable. We learned how to proofread, check every last decimal point, and vet, vet, vet. 'Cross your T's and dot the I's,'  he would always remind us."

-- Julia Abad, Remarks at the Public Wake for President Benigno S. Aquino III

"Yes! Yes! Somebody holler: 'Move mountain!' 'Move mountain!' 'Move this mountain.' 'This mountain!' 'The mountain in my life!' ''The mountain in my finances!' 'This mountain!' Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Yes! Look at somebody and say, 'Move that thing! Move it out of your....'"

-- T.D. Jakes, All I Have is a Seed on My Side

"Sixty years ago when John Nuckolls and his team proposed that lasers could be used to produce fusion ignition in the laboratory, the laser had just been invented. It was far from the mature tool we know today. This is really what national labs are for -- tackling the most difficult scientific challenges head-on, learning from the inevitable setbacks, and building toward the next idea. Lawrence Livermore has been at the center of the ICF [Inertial confinement fusion] community across these many decades, and ICF has been a centerpiece of our lab. Indeed, people often say that LLNL stands for 'Lasers, Lasers, nothing but Lasers.' But I think our motto sums up our approach nicely: 'Science and technology on a mission.'"

-- Kim Budil, 12/13/22 Remarks at DOE/NNSA Announcement of Fusion Ignition Achievement

"These are American citizens. I don't care if they're Jewish or Christian or Muslim. We rescued everybody. We do not leave our people behind ever, ever, ever."

-- Bryan Stern of Project Dynamo, Tampa Airport Remarks On the Arrival of American Citizens Trapped in Israel During the Israel-Hamas War.

"Most of the losses of jobs we have in Juarez were for the recession in [the] United States, not for insecurity. Our main problem in Mexico is not insecurity. No, our main problem is lack of jobs, jobs, jobs."

-- Héctor Murguía Lardizábal, (from the documentary The New Juarez)

Rhetorical Figures in Sound

Online Speech Bank

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American Rhetoric.
Created by Michael E. Eidenmuller.
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