SDs and EMs Based on Arrangement of Sentences in a Paragraph

A. Chaotic enumerationis also called heterogeneous enumeration. It is the deliberate piling in a homogeneous syntactical line words so different semantically that they produce a humorous effect or express the idea of chaos.

E.g. A disorderly rush begins – my parents, my wives, my girls, my children, my farm, my animals, my money, my music lessons, my drunkenness, my brutality, my teeth, my face, my soul!

B.Gradation (Climax) is an arrangement of words in a sentence or sentences in a paragraph which secures a gradual increase in logical significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance, e.g.: «it was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city».

God knows I loved her. For eight years I worshipped the ground she trod on.

She was intelligent & well-read. She was tender, unselfish & disinterested. In fact, she was too good to be true.

C. Suspense. It is a compositional device which consists in arranging the less important parts at the beginning, the main idea being withheld till the end of the sentence.

E.g. He wanted – it’s strange, it’s grotesque – he wanted to be a gentleman. There was one subject in which her interest never failed. She followed it with great energy. No obstacle prevented her from returning to it, no chance word was so remote that she could not use it to come back to this subject & in effecting this she displayed a cleverness of which no one considered her capable. On this subject she could be witty, vivacious, philosophic, tragic, & inventive. There was no end and no limit to its variety. This subject was herself.

The function of suspense is to keep the reader in a state of uncertainty and expectation, to prepare the reader for the only logical conclusion of the utterance.

e.g. «If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you…

And which is more, you’ll be a man, my son» (R.Kipling «If»).

Suspense always requires long stretches of speech or writing, but it is framed in one sentence. Separate sentences would violate the principle of constant emotional tension which is characteristic of this device.

D. Antithesis(Greek for «setting opposite», from ἀντί against + θέσις position) means a direct contrast or exact opposition to something created by linguistic means, mostly by antonyms. If it’s used to describe the same object or concept, it reveals its contradictory nature. If applied to different objects or concepts, antithesis brings out the antagonistic features deliberately contrasted for effect.

E.g. The room was so small & this exhibit so large, that I had got a feeling of wanting the air.

She was sour, but she liked sweet things.

Sometimes antithesis doesn’t convey an idea of contrast, it makes the utterance emphatic due to the clash between the form & the meaning.

E.g. Derrick hadn’t chosen me for my emotional depth, or even for my intellectual great size.

I could see her applauding success. I could not so easily see her pitying & sympathizing with failure.

Antithesis is the basic idea of yin and yang. Hell is the antithesis of Heaven; disorder is the antithesis of order. It is the juxtaposition of contrasting ideas, usually in a balanced way.

In rhetoric, it is a figure of speech involving the bringing out of a contrast in the ideas by an obvious contrast in the words, clauses, or sentences, within a parallel grammatical structure, as in the familiar phrase «Man proposes, God disposes» is an example of antithesis, as is John Dryden's description in «The Hind and the Panther»: «Too black for heaven, and yet too white for hell».

In grammatical usage, antithesis is often expressed by means of an antonym, such as high – low, to shout – to whisper, lightness – heaviness, etc; but the force of the antithesis is increased if the words on which the beat of the contrast falls are alliterative, or otherwise similar in sound, as: «The fairest but the falsest of her sex».

Among English writers who have made the most abundant use of antithesis are Pope, Young, Johnson, and Gibbon; and especially Lyly. It is, however, a much more common feature in French than in English; while in German, with some striking exceptions, it is conspicuous by its absence.

Gradation (Climax) A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative.

Logical climax is based on the relative importance of the component parts from the point of view of the concepts embodied in them. It goes from things of miner importance to things of more value in a text. The relative importance may be evaluated both objectively and subjectively, the author’s attitude towards the objects in question being disclosed.

Emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning, as in the example (‘lovely’, ‘beautiful’, ‘fair’).

Quantitative climax is an evident increase in the volume (number, measure, time, etc.) of the corresponding concepts, e.g.: «Little by little, bit by bit, day by day, year after year he got the worst of some disputed question» (Ch. Dickens).