Alliteration
Alliteration is a literary device that involves the repetition of initial consonant sounds in a series of words within close proximity. It is often used in poetry, prose, and advertising to create rhythm, emphasis, and memorable phrases. Alliteration can add musicality to language and enhance the aesthetic appeal of written or spoken communication.
4 Key excerpts on "Alliteration"
eBook - ePubWriting with Clarity and Style
A Guide to Rhetorical Devices for Contemporary Writers
- Robert A. Harris(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...14 Sound An elegant style owes much to the beauty of the words. —Demetrius As mentioned in Style Check 1 at the end of the first chapter, most readers subvocalize when they read silently, thus making the rhythm of your writing an important aspect. In addition to rhythm, writing has sounds, sounds that readers hear in their minds as they read. The devices in this chapter will help you add appropriate aural qualities to your writing, whether you need smoothness, harshness, rhythm, musicality, or some other quality. Alliteration Alliteration (uh lit uh RAY shun) is formed by repeating the same sound at the beginning of successive words or words related to each other in some way. The most familiar form of Alliteration is the repetition of consonants in word pairs. Without Alliteration : The late delivery of parts resulted in an unwanted delay in production. With Alliteration : The late delivery of parts resulted in a disheartening delay in production. In the example above, disheartening delay is alliterated because both words in the phrase begin with the consonant sound d. As the example below shows, alliterated phrases such as mature marriage are memorable because they call a little extra attention to themselves and because of the repetition of initial consonant sound. Without Alliteration : Jonathan was the child of mature parents, who were calm and relaxed. With Alliteration : Jonathan was the product of a mature marriage, whose partners were calm and relaxed. Alliteration adds not only a bit of music to your writing but an emphasis on ideas that will help your reader recall a key concept better. Note the difference between remembered regard and remembered esteem in the following example. Without Alliteration : After she grew up, she never forgot those words of praise. This treasure of remembered esteem stayed with her throughout her adult life. With Alliteration : After she grew up, she never forgot those words of praise...
eBook - ePubA Writer's Craft
Multi-Genre Creative Writing
- Kendall Dunkelberg(Author)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Bloomsbury Academic(Publisher)
...Usually in English, true rhyme includes the last stressed syllable and any unstressed syllables that follow it, so SYLLable would rhyme with BILLable, but not necessarily with ABle, since the vowel sound and the stress is off. Some might allow it as a slant rhyme or off rhyme variant, though. Some writers revel in multisyllabic rhyme, even rhyming several words with one polysyllabic word. For examples, pick up just about any poem by Lord Byron, especially “Don Juan,” where he uses multisyllabic rhyme for ironic and quite humorous effect. Besides rhyme, there are other ways to structure the sound of your language. Repetition of any sounds heightens the interest or, if overdone, adds to the humor, potentially. If really overdone, it can even become annoying. Alliteration is one familiar technique that involves repeating the initial sounds of words. Some people only consider the repetition of initial consonants as Alliteration (e.g. two ticklish turtles trying to tango), but others, myself among them, consider initial vowels alliterative as well (e.g. any actors adding apples and artichokes). Probably two or three words that alliterate at a time are plenty unless you’re writing a book for early readers or you are trying for humorous or annoying effect! Similarly, the repetition of any consonant sound across a string of words can pattern it. This is called consonance, and the consonant sounds do not have to come at the beginning of the word, they can come in the middle or at the end. Some definitions of consonance disallow the use of initial consonants, though that seems somewhat arbitrary. As long as most of the repeated sounds are in the middle or at the end, then it won’t sound like Alliteration...
eBook - ePub- Katie Wales(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Yet extensive Alliteration was regularly used as a means of COHESION in so-called alliterative verse, which flourished in England before the Norman Conquest; and again in the north and west of the country in the fourteenth century (e.g. Piers Plowman, Sir Gawain and the Green Knight). The alliterated syllables are also the strongly ACCENTED or STRESSED syllables, and so are related to the RHYTHMIC pattern. As well as what can be seen as continuous Alliteration (x x x x) there are patterns of transverse Alliteration (x y x y), etc. The extent to which Alliteration in such poetry can also be EXPRESSIVE is a matter of dispute. It seems hard to deny associations in such lines as: The sn aw sn itered ful sn art, that sn ayped the wilde (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight) (i.e. ‘The snow came shivering down very bitterly, so that it nipped the wild animals’). Alliteration as a device of FORM has occasionally been exploited in later literature by poets such as Gerard Manly Hopkins and W.H. Auden. For Hopkins in particular it takes its significance from its co-occurrence with other phonological patterns such as ASSONANCE, e.g.: I caught this m orning m orning’s m inion, kingdom of daylight’s d auphin, d apple- d awn- d rawn Falcon, in his riding … (The Windhover) ■ alveolar In PHONETICS, a consonant articulated when the tip and blade of the tongue touch the ridge (alveolum) behind the upper teeth; which is one of the significant parts of the mouth for English consonants. Hence the PLOSIVES /t/ and /d/ are alveolar ; also the FRICATIVES /s/ and /z/, and the nasal /n/ (pronounced with the nose passage open). ■ ambiguity; ambivalence Ambiguity is double (or multiple) meaning: an ambiguous expression has more than one interpretation. The concept has, however, special implications in different disciplines. (1) Linguists would see ambiguity as a linguistic universal, common to all languages, one of the inevitable consequences of the arbitrariness of language, i.e...
eBook - ePub- Mick Short(Author)
- 2018(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Remember that the use of phonetic symbols is not entirely consistent from one phonetics textbook to the next. 4.2 Alliteration, assonance, rhyme and related matters The terms in the title of this section should be familiar, but it will help us to go over their definitions in some detail. To do so, we will use the examples listed below. It should be borne in mind that these phonetic schemes are themselves examples of phonetic parallelism, and therefore are often interpretable via the 'parallelism rule' described in 2.3. In the examples below, the phonetic schemes which are discussed are emboldened. 4.2.1 Alliteration Alliteration primarily involves the repetition of the same or similar consonants: Example 1 A dreadful winter passed, each day severe M isty when m ild, but c old when c lear. (George Crabbe, 'Tale 17: Resentment', lines 351—2) Mere, the /m/ Alliteration in the first half of the second line binds together the concepts of mistiness and mildness and brings out the contrast with the second half of the line, which in turn exhibits Alliteration, binding together the words cold and clear. The next example shows that Alliteration primarily involves sounds and not spelling: Example 2 These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see, Are others' g ain, but k illing c ares to me: (George Crabbe, 'The Village', I, 216—17) Killing and cares alliterate, and bind the meanings of the words together in spite of the fact that their initial sounds are represented by different letters. If alliterating sounds are also spelled the same this will help to make the Alliteration more obvious, but Alliteration can occur even when there is no 'spelling Alliteration'. In general, sounds seem to be more salient than spellings...
