Syntactical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

Represented Speech renders the character's thoughts which were not uttered aloud. It is a purely literary phenomenon never appearing in oral speech.

E.g.: He looked at the distant green wall. It would be a long walk in this rain, and a muddy one.... Anyway, what would they find? Lots of trees.

Parallel Construction is a device in which the necessary condition is identical, or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession.

E.g.: "There were,..., real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and real china cups to drink it out of, and plates of the same to hold the cakes and toast in ". (Dickens)

Parallel constructions (or parallelism) present identical structure of two or more successive clauses or sentences.

E.g.: Passage after passage did he explore; room after room did he peep into.

Chiasmus (Reversed Parallel Construction) is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but it has a cross order of words and phrases.

E.g.: "Down dropped the breeze, The sails dropped down." (Coleridge) "His jokes were sermons, and his sermons jokes". (Byron)

Chiasmus is a pattern of two steps where the second repeats the structure of the first in a reversed manner.

E.g.: Mr. Boffin looked full at the man, and the man looked full at Mr. Boffin.

Rhetorical Question is a statement in the form of a question which needs no answer.

E.g.: Why do we need refreshment, my friends? Why can we not fly? Is it because we are calculated to walk?

Elliptical Sentence is a sentence where one of the main members is omitted.

E.g.: "Very windy, isn't it?" - "Very." - "But it's not raining." - "Not yet." - "Better than yesterday."

Repetition is an expressive means of language used when the speaker is under the stress or strong emotion.

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 case as that." (Dickens)

Repetition is observed when some parts of the sentence or sentences are repeated. It is employed as a means of emphasis.

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.

• Anaphora is when the repeated word (or phrase) comes at the beginning of two or more consecutive sentences, clauses or phrases.
• Epiphora is when the repeated unit is placed at the end of consecutive sentences, clauses or phrases.
• Anadiplosis is structured so that the last word or phrase of one part of one part of an utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together.
• Framing is an arrangement of repetition in which the initial parts of a syntactical unit, in most cases of a paragraph, are repeated at the end of it.

Enumeration is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity, remote though it may seem.

E.g.: "Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and his sole mourner." (Dickens)

Suspense is arranging the matter of a communication in such a way that the less important, subordinate parts are amassed at the beginning, the main idea being withheld till the end of the sentence. Thus the reader's attention is held and his interest is kept up.

E.g.: "Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. Was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw." (Charles Lamb)

Climax (Gradation) is an arrangement of sentences (or homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance.

E.g.: "Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed question." (Dickens)

Anticlimax is an arrangement of ideas in ascending order of significance,or they may be poetical or elevated, but the final one, which the reader expects to be the culminating one, as in climax, is trifling or farcical. There is a sudden drop from the lofty or serious to the ridiculous.

E.g.: "This war-like speech, received with many a cheer, Had filled them with desire of flame, and beer." (Byron)

Antithesis is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs.

E.g.: "A saint abroad, and a devil at home." (Bunyan) "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." (Milton)

Antithesis is a structure consisting of two steps, the lexical meanings of which are opposite to each other.

E.g.: In marriage the upkeep of a woman is often the downfall of a man.

Asyndeton is a connection between parts of a sentence or between sentences without any formal sign, the connective being deliberately omitted.

E.g.: "Soames turned away; he had an utter disinclination for talk, like one standing before an open grave, watching a coffin slowly lowered." (Galsworthy)

Polysyndeton is the connection of sentences, or phrases, or syntagms, or words by using connectives (mostly conjunctions and prepositions) before each component part.

E.g.: "The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect." (Dickens)

Ellipsis imitates the common features of colloquial language, where the situation predetermines not the omission of certain members of the sentence, but their absence.

E.g.: "Nothing so difficult as the beginning." (Byron)

Inversion is broken word order.

E.g.: Into a singularly restricted and indifferent environment Ida Zobel was born.

Break-in-the-Narrative (Aposiopesis) is a break in the narrative used for some stylistic effect.

E.g.: "You just come home or I'll..."

Litotes is a peculiar use of negative constructions aimed at establishing a positive feature in a person or thing.

E.g.: "He was not without taste..." "It troubled him not a little... "

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