ʿIlm al-maʿānī explains why an utterance suits its audience and occasion. ʿIlm al-bayān studies figurative and indirect ways of presenting meaning. ʿIlm al-badīʿ identifies semantic and verbal refinements that strengthen expression.
This final practice has combined sentence types, restriction, fronting and emphasis with analyses of metaphor and non-similarity-based figures, and then contrasted meaningful opposition, wordplay and repetition.
Mastery consists in reading accurately and explaining meaning, grammar, device and rhetorical effect in a single coherent argument.