It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. (r. Chandler)

It is used:

• to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

• to give rhythm to the utterance.

Anaphora implies identity of one or several initial elements in some successive sentences.

e.g. Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gaunly. (R. Wright)

It is used:

• to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

• to give rhythm to the utterance.

Anticlimax consists in adding one weaker element to one or several strong ones, mentioned before.

e.g. In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. (R. Chandler)

The weakest element added to one or several strong ones receives prominence due to an interruption in the pattern of predictability. The effect produced is called “defeated expectancy”.

Anticlimax is used:

• to attract the reader’s attention;

• to produce humorous or satirical effect, e.g. I cannot take another minute of it! The Army is brutal, dehumanized and full of morons. It’s time something was done. When I get back to the barracks, I’ll write my mother about it;

• to decline from a noble, impressive tone to a less exalted one, e.g. I’ll read you a chapter of the Bible or buy you a drink.

Paradoxes can also be built on anticlimax. Paradox is an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense but that may have some truth in it yet, e.g. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious (O. Wilde)

Antithesis [æn′tІθІsІs] consists in putting together two ideas that are quite opposite.

e.g. Imagination was given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is. (anonymous)

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. (R.W. Emerson)

The term “antithesis” has a broad range of meanings. According to I.R. Galperin, only stylistic opposition which arises out of the context may be called antithesis. Logical opposition based on antonyms and displaying no additional shade of meaning can not be regarded as “antithesis”. However, some scholars (Y.M. Skrebnev) consider that this term denotes any opposition, really or presumably contrastive, e.g. from top to toe; dead or alive; black or white, etc.

There are two varieties of antithesis:

• two opposed notions may refer to the same object of thought, e.g. I had walked into that reading-room a happy healthy man, I crawled out a decrepit wreck. (J.K. Jerome)

• two different objects are opposed to each other and are given opposite characteristics. The device serves to emphasize their incompatibility, e.g. To a General setting before the maps eighty miles away, matters are proceeding as planned <…>, but to the soldiers everything is going wrong. Here antithesis accentuates the difference between the two levels of the battle – the peril and commotion of the battlefield is opposed to the peace and quite of the Headquarters.

Antithesis stands close to oxymoron. The difference between them is structural: oxymoron is a single combination of words, syntactically connected but semantically incongruent, while antithesis is a confrontation of two separate phrases (sentences or even paragraphs) of opposite meaning. Usually antithesis is based on parallel constructions: e.g. To err is human. To forgive is divine.

Antithesis may be used in every type of emotional speech:

• to create certain rhythmic effect;

• to compare two objects or to set a contrast between them;

• to (dis)connect words, clauses or sentences and to (dis)unite their senses;

• to give a point and vivacity to the utterance.

Antonomasia [ֽæntәnә ′meІzІә] is the use of a common name as a proper name and vice versa. A title, epithet, or descriptive phrase may serve as a substitute for a personal name. It includes “speaking names”, characterizing the person meant, e.g. Mr. Snake, Mrs. Dirty Fringe, Mr. Altruism.

e.g. He is still Mr. New Broom, slightly feared. (D. Lodge)

There are two types of antonomasia: trite and genuine. In trite antonomasia the association between the name and the qualities of the bearer is a result of long and frequent usage (Don Juan, Brutus). In genuine antonomasia this association is unexpected, fresh, e.g. He’d met Miss Original Pure and planned to marry her (F. Weldon). Antonomasia may serve:

• to designate a member of a group or class;

• to characterize the bearer of the name;

• to create humorous effect, e.g. When I eventually met Mr. Right I had no idea that his first name was Always. (R. Rudner)

Aposiopesis [ֽæpousaiou′pisІs] denotes intentional break in the narrative.

e.g. He had a gopher-wood stave with which… well, some of the animals carry stripes to this day. (J. Barnes)

He almost smiled. And I was grateful. He is a source of guilt and annoyance to me now, but he was my friend, and – … (J. Banville)

In works of fiction, aposiopesis is used for some stylistic effect:

• the emotional or the psychological state of the speaker depriving him of the ability to express himself in terms of language: e.g. Now I hear it – yes, I hear it, and have heard it. Long – long– long – many minutes, many hours, many days, have I heard it – yet I dared not – oh, pity me, miserable wretch that I am! – I dared not – I dared not speak! We have put her living in the tomb! (E.A. Poe).

• unwillingness to proceed;

• speaker’s uncertainty as to what should be said (to threaten, to beg);

• hint, warning, promise etc. The author breaks his narration and invites the reader to give to his own imagination.

Aposiopesis should not be confused with unintentional break in the narrative, when the character’s speech is interrupted by the interlocutor. Such instances are of no stylistic significance.

Assonance is the repetition of the same stressed vowels followed by different consonants in two or more neighbouring words.

e.g. Old age should burn and rave at close day.

Rage, rage, against the dying of the light (D. Thomas).

Assonance is used:

• to enrich ornament within the line: e.g. Strips of tinfoil winking like people.

• to substitute the end – rhyme;

• to give a sense of fluidity to the verse;

• to give the poet more flexibility.

Asyndeton is deliberate omission of conjunctions.

e.g. The day, water, sun, moon, night – I do not have to purchase these things with money (T.M. Plautus)

e.g. I loved the noise, the smell, the movement, the quick angers, the gesticulations, the extravagance of ground-level French racing (D. Francis).

According to N.A. Sitnova, in colloquial speech the most frequent are conditional and temporal asyndetic adverbial clauses:

e.g. “You want anything, you pay for it” (J. Osborne).

Absence of connecting elements:

• imparts dynamic force to the text,

• has the effect of speeding up rhythm of a passage;

• makes a single idea more memorable.

Chiasmus is a kind of parallelism (reverse parallelism) in which the word order followed in the first phrase or clause is inverted in the second.

e.g. Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them. (R.G. Ingersoll)

It is used:

• to bring in some additional meaning;

• to emphasise certain parts of the utterance;

• to break the monotony of parallel constructions;

• to contribute to the rhythmical quality of the utterance.

Climax (Gradation) denotes such an arrangement of notions, expressed by words, word-combinations or sentences in which what precedes is less significant than what follows. e.g. I am not in recession. I’m doing fine. I’m well-off. I’m almost rich. (D. Lodge)

There are three indispensable constituents of climax:

• the distributional constituent: close proximity of the component parts arranged in increasing order of importance or significance;

• the syntactical pattern: parallel constructions with possible lexical repetition;

• the connotative constituent: the explanatory context which helps the reader to grasp the gradation.

According to I. Galperin, there are three types of climax:

• logical climax is intensification of logical importance of the component parts, e.g. He speculates that these people are the ones he sent off on various missions, and perhaps some of them, or many of them, or all of them did not fare so terribly well (P.Auster);

• emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning, e.g. She felt nervous, scared, terrified to death.;

• quantitative climax is an evident increase in the volume, quantity, size, dimension of the corresponding concepts, e.g. When a person has ugly thoughts every day, every week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until it gets so ugly you can hardly bear to look at it (R. Dahl).

Climax is used:

• to intensify the logical importance or emotional (nervous) strain;

• to show the increase in the volume, quantity, size, etc.

Detachment is tearing a secondary part of the sentence away from the word it refers to, and gaining some independence and greater degree of significance. Detached parts are separated by means of commas and dashes. e.g. She set her face and gazed under half-dropped lids at the funeral, stoic, fate-like. (D.H. Lawrence)

It is used:

• to emphasise a word or a phrase;

• to impart some additional syntactical meanings to the word or a phrase.

Ellipsis means the omission of one or both principle parts of a sentence.

e.g. If word got out, just think what would happen. Dogs as smart as men? A blasphemous assertion. (P. Auster)

The missing parts are either present in the context, or they are implied by the situation (supplied by the context). Ellipsis becomes an expressive means in literature as a means of imitating the direct speech of characters.

e.g. - Are you married?

-Yeah.

- Kids?

- Two.

- Terrific! (N. Boyd)

Ellipsis shows that the speaker spares his time, reduces redundancy of speech. It may also reveal such emotions as excitement, impatience, sharpness, delight, etc.

In works of fiction, elliptical sentences are also used to impart brevity, a quick tempo, sometimes emotional tension to the author’s narrative, e.g. Students were ever so quiet then. You wouldn’t believe. Ever so thin and grey-looking. Well, it was all the poor food we/d had, wasn’t it? Even bread on coupons (J. Gardam).

Ellipsis is often employed as a means of dynamic description, e.g. The spout was black, I believe, and on the label there was a picture of some grinning idiot boy. A wholesome, idealized numskull with perfectly groomed hair. No cowlicks for that lunkhead, no wobbles in the part for that pretty fellow (P. Auster).

It is used:

• to reproduce the direct speech of characters;

• to impart brevity, a quick tempo and emotional tension to the narrative;

• as a means of dynamic description.

  Emphatic construction “It is he...who” is turning the simple sentence into a complex one. e.g. It was only then that I realized it was she I had seen on the lawn that day at Professor Something’s party. (J. Banville)

  Emphatic construction with “do” reveals a certain degree of logical and emotional emphasis.

e.g. Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her. (W. Wordsworth)

Emphatic punctuation. Punctuation marks play an important role in emotional and expressive intensifying an utterance. They can be used to show the author’s attitude towards the things and phenomena described, to arrest the reader’s attention, to indicate some concealed meanings, etc.

Thus, close succession of exclamatory sentences conveys a very strong upsurge of emotions. E.g., Moloch! Solitude! Filth! Ugliness! Ashcans and unobtainable dollars! Children screaming under the stairways! Boys sobbing in armies! Old men weeping in the parks! (A. Ginsberg). When the exclamation mark is placed at the end of a sentence, the nature of which is not exclamatory, it may express the speaker’s irony. If it is used to close questions, it conveys extreme emotions, e.g. What on earth are you doing! Stop!

Dots can indicate emotional pauses in speech caused by doubt, excitement or any other feelings depriving the speakers of the ability to express themselves in terms of language. E.g. That’s to say…you understand…the dusk…the strain…waiting…I confess... I imagined…for a second…

Emotional pauses can also be indicated by the dash. “Please – not that”. The dash standing before the word makes this word conspicuous and being isolated, it becomes the peak of the whole utterance. E.g. Emily Dickinson’s poems bristle with odd dashes and capitalization, each word and each meaning appear before the reader’s eye as if it were new: