Thursday, December 10, 2009

Repetition, Repetition, Repetition

Can't tell your anaphora from your exergasia? Think that conduplicatio and ploce are only useful in bed? Blogger spell-checker couldn't help. Mustard Grammar is here to help.

Conduplicatio (con-do-plih-CAT-eeoh): Figure of repetition in which the key word or words in one phrase, clause, or sentence is/are repeated at or very near the beginning of successive sentences.

A ploce is a figure of speech in which a word is separated or repeated by way of emphasis.

Anaphora is a rhetorical term for the repetition of a word or phrase at the beginning of successive clauses or verses.

Exergasia is a form of parallelism where one idea is repeated and only the way it is stated is changed.

I tell you this whilst aware that the English language graduates amongst you probably knew it already. I didn't. All four words were in my daily newspaper this week. Worth the £1 I think.

3 comments:

Caroline Too said...

you know, I'm not sure I'm any the wiser...

I'm pretty certain that I use one of these devices quite a lot in liturgies and poems... as a way of setting up a rhythm apart from anything else...

but i wasn't at all sure which one I use by the end..
but thanks, anyway st... you've given me some more long words to puzzle over at lunchtime! :-)

Mike Peatman said...

I thought an anaphora was a eucharistic prayer. I remember referring to the anaphora of St Basil once in an essay. In fact, here it is http://bit.ly/7f4RKl

RHK said...

Hello!

Some examples? The first two from the Bard, the third from Dr Martin Luther King...

Conduplicatio: Hamlet refers to his naughty Uncle Claudius: 'O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!' (Hamlet 1.5)

Anaphora: 'Mad world! Mad kings! Mad composition!' (King John 2.1)

Exergasia:
Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy;

now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice;

now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood;

now is the time to make justice a reality for all God’s children. '