HAVE YOU EVER USED POLYSYNDETON FOR EMPHASIS?

We are focusing on a word today. It will improve your speech and writing.

 Polysyndeton: This is the use of coordinate clauses or multiple conjunctions in close succession. When you repeat a particular form of conjunction in the same sentence, it results in what is known as polysyndeton. A lot of times, the conjunction that is repeated in the sentence is "and."

Examples

1. They lived and laughed and loved and left.

2. “Let the whitefolks have their money and power and segregation and sarcasm and big houses and schools and lawns like carpets, and books, and mostly--mostly--let them have their whiteness."

(Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings,1969)

3. "There were frowzy fields, and cow-houses, and dunghills, and dustheaps, and ditches, and gardens, and summer-houses, and carpet-beating grounds, at the very door of the Railway. Little tumuli of oyster shells in the oyster season, and of lobster shells in the lobster season, and of broken crockery and faded cabbage leaves in all seasons, encroached upon its high places."

(Charles Dickens,Dombey and Son,1848)

Polysyndeton is employed for rhetorical effect that draws attention to a specific aspect of a piece of writing or speech. In other words, you infuse polysyndeton into your speech or writing for emphasis.

Exercise

1. Create examples of your own. Don’t be scared that you could be wrong. That’s the way we learn.

2. What effect do you think polysyndeton has on our utterances and writings?

...................................................................................................................

Don't forget that we are still in the business of writing, publishing, and editing your scripts. Send us a message: 09095179926

#polysyndeton #writing #speech #rehetoricaldevice #effect