According to Wikipedia (https://en。wikipedia。org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016), the 2016 American presidential election was the 58th quadrennial presidential election。 In the beginning of 2016, each party’s candidates sought the presidential nomination for their party through the method of primary elections。 Traditionally, the primary elections were indirect elections。 Then the party’s delegates held a national congress to determine its presidential candidate to run on the party’s behalf。 On July 19, 2016, businessman Donald Trump won the Republican Party’s presidential candidate after defeating Texas Senator Ted Cruz, Florida Senator Marco Rubio and several other candidates in the Republican primary elections。 Seven days later, on July 26, 2016, after the competition with Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders and others in the Democratic primary elections, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton won the Democratic Party’s presidential candidate。 After that the presidential campaign officially kicked off。 Trump and Hillary spent a large amount of money in carrying out the campaign trail, such as taking advertisement battle, delivering speech, meeting representative voters, proceeding public debates and so on。 They elaborated domestic and foreign policies with the purpose of winning voters’ votes and trust。 On November 8, 2016, the general election began, every citizen in the country had the power to vote, which were called popular vote。 But in the general election, these citizen voters voted to select the member of the Electoral College。 The Electoral College had the absolute right to directly elect the President and Vice President。 Though Hillary won the popular vote, taking 48% of the vote compared to Trump’s 46%, Trump won the electoral vote and thus became the President。 On January 20, 2017, Donald Trump held the presidential inauguration。论文网

All in all, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump were the two final candidates, and finally Trump won。 But unlike previous elections, this time before the final result came out, nearly all American mainstream media tended to support Hillary, which could be seen from the use of rhetorical devices in the news reports。 Therefore, this thesis does not lie in the final result—who won the election, but the rhetoric used in the news reports of The Washington Post—how to use rhetorical devices to persuade readers to accept their ideas (Kazemian and Hashemi, 2014)。

2。2 Rhetorical Devices Used in News Reports 

Rhetorical device is one of the most apparent features of news reports。 Using rhetorical devices properly, readers can not only appreciate vividness of the news style but also grasp ideas which the writers express and accept values which the news reports transmit。 

This part emphasizes several specific rhetorical devices in the particular context (Bennett, 2011), such as simile, metaphor, rhetorical question, hyperbole and so on。 The author elaborates each rhetorical device’s definition and illustrates its use by exemplification。 By classifying these rhetorical devices, readers will have a better understanding of their functions and persuasive nature。

Table 1 Frequency of Rhetorical Devices in Samples

Categories of rhetorical devices Percentage

Simile 40 (13。3%)

Metaphor 51 (17。1%)

Rhetorical question 35 (11。7%)

Allusion 8 (2。7%)

Sarcasm 46 (15。3%)

Antithesis 28 (9。3%)

Parallelism 32 (10。7%)

Hyperbole 30 (10。0%)

Pun