Aposiopesis (break-in-the-narrative)

Aposiopesis is a device of suddenly breaking off in the middle of a sentence as if unwilling or unable to continue:

If you go on like this….

Aposiopesis expresses such meanings as threat, warning, doubt, indecision, excitement.

Asyndeton

Asyndeton is deliberate omission of structurally significant conjunctions and connectives:

John could not have done such a silly thing, he is enough clever that.

The communicative function of the asyndeton is to make speech dynamic and expressive

Parceling

Parceling is an intentional splitting of a sentence into smaller parts separated by full stops:

I don’t know who this man is. At all.

The communicative function of the parceling are:

• To reflect the atmosphere of unofficial communication and spontaneous speech

• To reflect the speaker’s state of mind, his emotions such as nervousness, irritation, excitement

• To make information more concrete and detailed

Repetition

Stylistic repetition of language units in speech (separate words, word-combinations or sentences) is one of the most frequent and potent stylistic devices.

There are such structural types of repetition:

• Consecutive repetition of sentence parts and separate sentences:

Never take the rifle again. Put it back. Put it back. Put it back.

• Anaphora - the repetition of a word or a word-combination at the beginning of each consecutive syntactic structure:

Victory is what we need. Victory is what we expect.

• Epiphora – the repetition of a language unit at the end of each consecutive syntactic structure:

It is natural to be scared in a case like that. You are sure to be petrified in a case like that

• Framing – the repetition of the initial part of a language unit at the end of this unit:

Poor Mary. How much Jack loved her! What will he do now? Poor Mary.

Linking or reduplication - the repetition of the final component of a syntactic structure at the beginning of a sequential syntactic structure:

It was because of that dreadful occurrence. That dreadful occurrence had changed it all.

• Chiasmus (reversed parallel construction). – a cross order repetition of language units:

The jail might have been the infirmary; the infirmary might have been the jail

The communicative function of the repetition is to emphasize a certain component of the utterance.

ENUMERATION

Enumeration is a syntactic device of naming objects so that there appears a chain of homogeneous parts of the sentence:

There were cows, hens, goats and sheep in the village

The communicative function of the enumeration is to create the effect of a great quantity of objects.

POLYSYNDETON

Polysyndeton is a stylistically motivated redundant repetition of conjunctions or prepositions:

The dog barked, and pulled Jack, and growled, and raged.

The communicative function of the polysyndeton lies in rhythmical organization of the utterance, to underline the most important part of the information

PARALLEL CONSTRUCTIONS

Parallelism is a stylistic device of producing two or more syntactic structures according to the same syntactic pattern:

Mary cooked dinner, John watched TV, Pete played tennis.

The communicative function of the parallelism is to create rhythm, to make speech persuasive, to underline important information

INVERSION

Inversion is the syntactic phenomenon of intentional changing word-order of the initial sentence model.

There are two basically different types of inversion: grammatical and stylistic.

Grammatical inversion is devoid of stylistic information. It is just a technical means of forming different types of questions:

Have you done the translation?

Was she a student 5 years ago?

Stylistic inversion is a change of word-order which gives logical stress or emotional colouring to the language units placed in an unusual syntactic position.

Syntactic inversion is typical of the predicate, predicative and all the sec­ondary parts of the sentence:

To the disco Hilda went.

Little chances Benny had.