Rhetorical Schemes
(Figures of Speech)
parallelism
Similarity of structure in a pair or series of related words, phrases, or clauses.
-"It is certain that if you were to behold the whole woman, there is that dignity in her aspect, that composure in her motion, that complacency in her manner, that if her form makes you hope, her merit makes you fear."
(Richard Steele, Spectator, No. 113)
isocolon
A succession of phrases of approximately equal length and corresponding structure.
-"The louder he talked of his honor, the faster we counted our spoons." (Emerson)
antithesis
Juxtaposition of contrasting ideas in balanced phrases.
-"Love is an ideal thing, marriage a real thing." (Goethe)
zeugma
Use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use is grammatically or logically correct with only one.
-"Here thou, great ANNA! whom three realms obey,
Dost sometimes counsel take--and sometimes tea."
(Alexander Pope, The Rape of the Lock)
anastrophe
Departure from normal word order for the sake of emphasis.
Anastrophe occurs whenever normal syntactical arrangement is violated for emphasis:
Glistens the dew upon the morning grass. (Normally: The dew glistens upon the morning grass)
parenthesis
Insertion of some verbal unit in a position that interrupts the normal syntactic flow of the sentence.
-"The moral flabbiness born of the exclusive worship of the bitch-goddess success. That--with the squalid cash interpretation put on the word success--is our national disease."
(William James, Letter to H. G. Wells)
ellipsis
Omission of one or more words, which must be supplied by the listener or reader.
-"If youth knew, if age could." (Henri Estienne)
asyndeton
Omission of conjunctions between words, phrases, or clauses
-"Dogs, undistinguishable in mire. Horses, scarcely better--splashed to their very blinkers. Foot passengers, jostling one another's umbrellas, in a general infection of ill temper . . .." (Charles Dickens, Bleak House)
polysyndeton
Style that employs a great many conjunctions
"We lived and laughed and loved and left." (James Joyce, Finnegans Wake)
alliteration
Repetition of initial consonant sound.
-"In a somer seson, whan soft was the sonne,
I shope me into shroudes, as I a shepe were;"
(William Langland, 14th century)
anaphora
Repetition of the same word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.
-"I think I could turn and live with animals, they are so placid and self-contained,
I stand and look at them long and long.
They do not sweat and whine about their condition,
They do not lie awake in the dark and weep for their sins,
They do not make me sick discussing their duty to God,
Not one is dissatisfied, not one is demented with the mania of owning things,
Not one kneels to another, nor to his kind that lived thousands of years ago,
Not one is respectable or unhappy over the whole earth."
(Walt Whitman, Song of Myself, part 32)
epistrophe
Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words.
What lies behind us and what lies before us are tiny compared to what lies within us." —Emerson .
anadiplosis
Repetition of the last word of one line or clause to begin the next.
-"When I give I give myself."
(Walt Whitman)
chiasmus
A verbal pattern in which the second half of an expression is balanced against the first but with the parts reversed. (Similar to antimetabole, chiasmus also involves a reversal of structures in successive phrases or clauses.) The adjectival form is chiastic.
(Pronunciation: "ky-AZ-mus")
--"I flee who chases me, and chases who flees me." (Ovid)
erotesis [erotema]
Rhetorical question implying strong affirmation or denial..
-"Was I an Irishman on that day that I boldly withstood our pride?
or on the day that I hung down my head and wept in shame and silence over the humiliation of Great Britain?"
(Edmund Burke, Speech in the Electors of Bristol)
hypophora
Raising questions and answering them. (Also known as anthypophora.)
-"What is honor? A word. What is in that word honor? What is that honor? Air--a trim reckoning! Who hath it? He that died a Wednesday. Did he feel it? No. Doth he hear it? No. 'Tis insensible then? Yea, to the dead. But will it not live with the living? No. Why? Detraction will not suffer it. Therefore I'll none of it. Honor is a mere scutcheon--and so ends my catechism."
( Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part One V.i)
epiplexis
Asking questions to reproach rather than to elicit answers.
-"Have you no shame?"