Although more than 600 existing Rhetorical Devices sounds a lot and can indeed be quite overwhelming, specific research questions will require more fine-tuned and detailed annotation that has not been provided for yet. In such cases, users are encouraged to create new items as desired and necessary, without asking for permission. The username and time will be included, so that others can find out how created this. There is currently no mechanism for removing Rhetorical Devices, but they can be renamed (in the future users will be able to at least remove their own creations, as long as there are no references.) In the meantime, if necessary you can leave a comment below and an administrator will have a look.
A new Rhetorical Device can be created when the attempt to assign one does not yield a suitable item. The same interface dialog can also be called up from an existing item to modify it.
The following screencast shows the whole process of defining a new Rhetorical Device:
It is very important to hook the new item into the existing hierarchy of items. In this case, the new ‘ADHORTATIO UNMARKED’ is defined as a special case of ADHORTATIO, which already exists and is therefore set as the hypernym (broader term). Note also how references to items defined in the Bibliography can be added to the definition.
The resulting definition of the Rhetorical Device ‘ADHORTATIO UNMARKED’ is shown in the following figure:
Note how the ontology is connected to this item, and the location in the text is also registered. There is also an ‘Edit’ button, which can be used to modify the definition, if that becomes necessary.