Epizeuxis (pronounced ep-i-zook-sis)
A
literary or rhetorical device used as a figure of speech in which a word or
phrase is repeated emphatically with the intention of producing some desired
effect.
1580–1590:
From the Modern Latin epizeuxis, from
the Ancient Greek ἐπίζευξις
(epízeuxis) (a fastening together, a
joining; in rhetoric the repetition (of words), from ἐπιζευγνύναι (epizeugnúnai),
the construct being epi- (the epi- prefix was from the Ancient Greek ἐπί (epí) (on top of; in addition to (in a
special use in chemistry), it denotes an epimeric (of or pertaining to an
epimer (any diastereoisomer that has the opposite configuration at only one of
the stereogenic centres) form)).+ zeûxis
(the yoking (of oxen)); a joining) a verbal noun from ζευγνύναι (zeugnúnai) (to yoke, to join). Epizeuxis is a noun; the noun plural is epizeuxes.
In
speeches and in debate (that term often used generously when they’re involved),
politicians use epizeuxis essentially because they’ve been taught to follow
what works in advertising: use simple words and phrases (preferably a TWS
(three word phrase)), endlessly repeated in a manner of delivery something like
a school teacher uses with the less bright children. There’s seems a tendency among the more
cynical commentators to suggest the less sincere a politician is, the more they’re
inclined to be epizeuxistic and while that’s impressionistic, cases like Sir
Tony Blair (b 1953; UK prime-minister 1997-2007 (education, education, education))
and Dr Kevin Rudd (b 1957; Australian prime-minister 2007-2010 & 2013 (jobs, jobs, jobs))
do come to mind. Still, in the hands of
a master rhetorician, an epizeuxis, especially if unexpected, can be effective.
In the 1964 US
presidential election Lyndon Johnson (LBJ, 1908–1973; US president 1963-1969)
faced the Republican nominee Barry Goldwater (1909–1998), the contest dubbed by
some as “a crook versus a kook”. Only
days before the poll, LBJ turned up at Cresent City’s Jung Hotel in New Orleans
to deliver a campaign speech which he began conventionally enough, telling the
audience of 1500 Louisiana democrat faithful he would enforce the new civil
rights law, guaranteeing every American free access to all public
accommodations, which had passed with Senate support from “…two thirds of the
Democrats and three-fourths of the Republicans.” Years later, he would note the applause “…was less than
overwhelming.” He then paused
before telling them of the words spoken to him by an old, dying Texas
senator who had told house speaker Sam Rayburn (1882–1961) he wished he was
well enough because “I would like to go back down there and make them one more
Democratic speech. I have one in
me. Poor old state, they haven’t heard a
real Democratic speech in 30 years. All they ever hear at election time is
Nigra, Nigra, Nigra.”
Even
south of the Mason-Dixon Line, in 1964 for a president to utter the “N-word” (albeit
in the form of a “polite southernism”) was startling and the reports in the
press spoke of “...a
collective gasp in the room” before the Southern audience gave the
Southern president “…a five-minute standing ovation.” It should though be remembered that in his
massive biography (The Years of Lyndon
Johnson, four of five volumes (1982-2012) thus far published), Robert Caro
(b 1935) did note the conversion to racial equality came late in his life, his
earlier uses of “Nigra,
Nigra, Nigra” having a harsher edge.
Still, LBJ did achieve much to advance civil rights in the US and had
the war in Vietnam not consumed his presidency, he would now be remembered
differently although it was the reaction to his domestic policies which
triggered the birth and growth of the “New Right” and the neo-liberal economic
order which staged history’s greatest corporate takeover (ie most of the
planet). Political scientists have
written much on the roots and evolution of the “New Left” but there remains a
tendency to focus on the Reagan-Thatcher era (Ronald Reagan (1911-2004; US
president 1981-1989) & Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013; UK prime-minister
1979-1990) as a kind of sudden “revolution” rather than something which really began
in the wake of Goldwater’s massive defeat in 1964.
In rhetoric
& literary use, the devices related to epizeuxis includes “anaphora, “diacope”,
“contrastive reduplication” while in song writing and poetry there’s also “incremental
repetition” (where a line is repeated with slight variations to advance the
narrative or argument) and “refrain” (where a phrase or line repeated regularly,
usually at the end of a stanza or verse.
Epizeuxis (known also as palilogia) involves the immediate repetition of
words or phrases without any intervening words and often reinforced with, if
written, an exclamation mark or if spoken, some sort of gesture. As a device to convey vehemence, it works by emphasizing
some point by (1) repetition & (2) delivery in quick succession. It’s not the most refined of devices and in
literature is best used with some infrequency because the power of its novelty
fades fast although if deployed for comic effect, it can be used more often. Joseph Conrad’s (Józef Teodor Konrad
Korzeniowski, 1857–1924) use of “The horror, the horror!” in Heart of Darkness (1899) is a classic
example of the effect but as endlessly used in advertising, it’s often just
intrusive.
Anaphora
(from the Ancient Greek ἀναφορά
(carrying back)) is the repetition of words or phrases at the beginning of
successive sentences or clauses. Borrowing from poetry and often the chorus
passages from various forms of music, it creates emphasis and rhythm. It was a favourite of William Shakespeare
(1564–1616) and “This
blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England” from Richard II
(1595) illustrates how he used anaphora to make language flow. The companion term is epistrophe (or
epiphora), the repeating of words at a clauses' end. The combination of anaphora and epistrophe
results in symploce.
A diacope
(from the Ancient Greek diakopḗ
(cut in two) involves the repetition of words or phrases with a few
intervening words, the emphasis achieved by a “sandwiching” (a special class of
interpolation in structural linguistics) the repeated elements. Again, Shakespeare provides perhaps the most
famous example in English in having the Danish prince say “To be or not to be” (Hamlet
(circa 1600) and a classically simple example is Ian Fleming’s (1908–1964)”Bond, James Bond”. In linguistics there are three classes of
diacope: (1) Vocative Diacope in which the repeated words are separated by
nouns which directly are addressed (ie the noun must address something, or
someone), (2) Elaborative Diacope where an adjective is used between the
repeated words to enhance the meaning of the repeated word and (3) The extended
diacope where for even more emphasis a word is repeated more than twice.
Lindsay Lohan and her then “girlfriend-girlfriend” Samantha Ronson (b 1977) at the release of her twin Charlotte Ronson's Spring 2009 line, New York Fashion Week, Bryant Park, New York, September 2008. Among women, the “girlfriend-girlfriend” contrastive reduplication distinguishes “a friend who is female” from “a female lover”, the latter once often known by the euphemism “special friend”. (although author and one-time communist Jessica Mitford (1917-1996) liked "you-know-what-bian" which never caught on) In this context “girlfriend” is exemplified by the gang of four in the HBO television series Sex and the City (1998–2004), based on Candace Bushnell’s (b 1958) compilation (the book Sex and the City (1996)) of columns (1994-1996) under the same title written for the New York Observer. The same thing could be achieved by the adoption of the convention of using “girl friend” for friends and “girlfriend” for lovers (as men use the word) but that really works only in writing or with the addition of visual clues.
Contrastive
reduplication (CR to the practitioners who treat the analysis as “phrasal focus
movement (PFM)” although in the way of academic life it’s also called “identical
constituent compounding” (ICC), “lexical cloning (LC)” “contrastive focus reduplication”
(CFR) or “double construction” (DC), all grouped under the rubric of “syntactic
reduplication” (SR)) is a widely practiced phenomenon of conversational speech in
which a word or larger constituent is reduplicated to single out a default or
prototypical meaning, one of the duplicates receiving or imparting the contrastive
(focal) stress. Sometimes used in
conjunction with “air quotes”, structurally CR often makes no sense if deconstructed
literary but they are widely understood:
“Do you
like him or like-like him?” is in no way ambiguous, the first “like”
interpreted as the default (dictionary” definition, the “duplicated like”
carrying the “loaded” meaning. In
English, the first part of the reduplicant bears contrastive intonational
stress.
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