7. The syntactical expressive means based on reiteration

Chiasmus (reversed parallel constructions) is a SD based on the repetition of a syntactic pattern of two successive sentences or parts of a sentence, in which the word-order of one of the sentences is inverted as compared to that of the other.

E.g. He kissed her, she allowed him to be kissed.

E.g. He looked at the gun, and the gun looked back at him.

The device is effective as it helps to lay stress on the second part of the utterance, which is opposite in structure. Chiasmus can appear only when there are two successive or coordinate parts of a sentence.

Repetition is an EMs of the language used when the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion.

E.g. «Stop!» - she cried. «Don’t tell me! I don’t want to hear; I don’t want to hear what you’ve come for. I don’t want to hear.» Here repetition is not a SD; it is a means by which the excited state of the speaker’s mind is shown.

When used as a SD, repetition acquires quite different functions. It does not aim at making a direct emotional impact. On the contrary, repetition aims at logical emphasis to fix the attention of the reader on the key-word of the utterance.

E.g. For that was it! Ignorant of the long stealthy march of passion, and of the state of which it had reduced Fleur; ignorant of how Soames had watched her, ignorant of Fleur’s reckless desperation...- ignorant of all this, everybody felt aggrieved. (Galsworthy)

Repetition is classified according to compositional patterns:

• Anaphora – the repeated word comes at the beginning of two or more sentences. (e.g. above)

• Epiphora – the repeated unit is placed at the end of the consecutive sentences.

E.g. I am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the rest of mankind, in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in such a case as that. (Dickens)

• Framing – repetition arranged in the form of a frame: the initial parts of a syntactic unit, in most cases of a paragraph, are repeated at the end of it.

E.g. Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road and asking guidance. Poor, little doll’s dressmaker. (Dickens)

• Anadiplosis (or linking repetition) - the last word or phrase of one part of an utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together.

E.g. Freeman and slave... carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (Marx, Engels)

• Chain-repetition – the linking repetition used several times.

E.g. A smile would come into Mr. Pickwick’s face: the smile extended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and the roar became general. (Dickens)

Enumeration is a SD by which separate things, objects, phenomena, actions, etc. are named one by one so that they produce a chain of homogeneous parts of speech. Enumeration as a SD has no continuous existence in their manifestation. Sometimes the grouping of absolutely heterogeneous notions occur only in isolated instances to meet some peculiar purpose of the writer.

E.g. There Harold gazed on a work divine,

A blending of all beauties: stream and dells,

Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine

And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells

From grey but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells. (Byron)