What better way to get your point across than to repeat yourself over and over and over again? Bryan's speech contains several instances of this rhetorical technique, but some are hidden in long over winded passages making them not so obvious to find.

Here's an example. This paragraph was a bit long, so we did some very crafty editing on it just so you could get the drift:

Republicans who used to…Republicans who were…Republicans who used to… Republicans who formerly…Republicans who, in times past…Republicans who gloried…Republicans who three years ago… (9)

Okay Bryan we get it, you don't like Republicans. Sheesh.

And we're sure the audience got the message too.

This isn't the only instance that Bryan used this repetitive technique during his speech. It's hard to think about the power of amplification when reading a text, but have you ever heard a speaker do something like this? It can get you all riled up if done right. Especially if the speaker is pounding his or her fists on the podium and screaming on top of their lungs.

Bryan probably wasn't doing that last part, but he did make use of several repeated phrases when he wanted to really drive the point home. In the paragraph that we quoted above, Bryan was obviously trying to push his audience into feeling a bit of hatred towards the Republican Party.

He also used the technique in the final paragraph, beginning nearly every sentence with "Behold a republic" (112). He really wanted to audience to leave the room remembering Bryan's vision of government.

We at Shmoop also like to call it "the ol' jackhammer technique" since the point is to repeatedly pound an idea into someone's head over and over and over…