To Join or Not to Join – That’s the Rhetorical Device

Last month I introduced the concept of rhetorical devices. We started with a couple familiar devices that students of English would know if they’d been paying attention in school—metaphor, simile, and analogy. So much for the basics. Let’s explore a few literary tools whose names are far less well known, but that you’ve likely seen or used. You probably just didn’t know they had a specific name or function.

Asyndeton

You may spot the technique in these sentences:

·         We came, we saw, we conquered.

·         The fair goers spent the day eating, walking, resting, riding, laughing.

·         God is relentless, personal, intensely private.

You probably notice that none of these sentences uses a conjunction (joiner) in a series of words or phrases. That’s asyndeton—omitting the conjunction in series to give a particular effect. ...asyndeton ... steps up the pacing or rhythm and gives the sentence a punch, a more precise and concise meaning. #writer #writerslife Click To Tweet It helps to convey a sense of spontaneity, immediacy, incompleteness.

Notice how leaving out the conjunction and in the third sentence, God is relentless, personal, intensely private, gives the feeling that the sentence is not complete, that there is more to God than these three attributes—a wholly appropriate feeling when writing about God.

Asyndeton comes from Latin and Greek, syndeton meaning connected; the prefix a renders it unconnected or without conjunctions. An asyndeton can be used in a series of words, phrases or sentences, or between sentences and clauses.

Conversely, polysyndeton is the repetition of a conjunction. While it is structurally the opposite of asyndeton it has a similar effect of multiplying, growing energy, and building up.

·         Armed with diapers and bottles and formula and blankets, the new parents left the hospital.

You get the sense that these folks are embarking on a monumental task, don’t you?

Polysyndeton is most effective when used with three or four elements. Notice the strength piling on the ands gives to Spencer Tracy’s pro-evolution argument in the 1960 movie, Inherit the Wind:

“Can’t you understand? That if you take a law like evolution and you make it a crime to teach it in the public schools, tomorrow you can make it a crime to teach it in the private schools? And tomorrow you may make it a crime to read about it. And soon you may ban books and newspapers. And then you may turn Catholic against Protestant, and Protestant against Protestant, and try to foist your own religion upon the mind of man. If you can do one, you can do the other. Because fanaticism and ignorance is forever busy, and needs feeding.”

Both asyndenton and polysyndeton are useful tools in giving greater power to your words, establishing a rhythm that creates a feeling of rising action, giving the impression there’s more that could be said. #authors #writing Click To Tweet But leave it to a truly inspired writer to skillfully shift from polysyndeton to asyndeton.

Behold, the Lord maketh the earth empty, and maketh it waste, and turneth it upside down, and scattereth abroad the inhabitants thereof. And it shall be, as with the people, so with the priest; as with the servant, so with his master; as with the maid, so with her mistress; as with the buyer, so with the seller; as with the lender, so with the borrower; as with the taker of usury, so with the giver of usury to him (Isaiah 24:1-2 KJV).