Which rhetorical device is used in the following statement from Mark Twain's speech, "Adviceto Youth"?

"If a person offend you, and you are in doubt as to whether it was intentional or not, do not resort to extreme measures; simply watch your chance and hit him with brick."

a. alliteration
b. understatement
c. parallelismallusion
d. analogy

b. understatement

Explanation:

The Cambridge Dictionary defines understatement as "a statement that describes something in a way that makes it seem less important, serious, bad, etc. than it really is, or the act of making such statements". In the speech we see that Twain states that if you get offended by someone, you should not take extreme measures, just simply hit them with a brick whenever possible. We saw that "hit him with the brick" is the understatement, making the action seem less serious.

the correct answer is b. in order to explain a point clearly in an essay, it is always better to include a clear example of your ideas. including an scenario in which a family is affected by consumerism will support your argument as well as supporting details, such as quotations from experts and statistics. option a could be correct, but statistics and quotations are supporting ideas rather than clear explanations. choices c and d are simply inadequate. they do not add information about the effects of consumerism, rather they are strategies for engaging the reader