Anaphora
Anaphora is a rhetorical figure or literary figure, which is used to give the written text a greater beauty or greater expressive power, and which consists of the repetition of a word or several, at the beginning of a sentence or a verse, in the case of poetry, or of a word or a syntactic group, in that of prose. Anaphora and difference with cataphora
This literary figure should not be confused with the grammatical or linguistic term that bears the same name ( anaphora ), and which consists of referring a term by means of a pronoun or a deictic before the noun appears in the following sentence.
Anaphora is often used in poetic texts, especially in rhymes, or in oratory pieces, since repetition gives them a more powerful, more spectacular effect on what is read. This power has to do with the musicality and rhythm of the language. Anaphora and difference with cataphora
This resource is classified within the rhetorical figures of repetition, that is, those that bet on the reuse of some element of the written text. Other examples of this are polysyndeton, parallelism, pun, chiasmus, paronomasia, or diaphora, to name just a few from the same category.
Differences between cataphora and anaphora
To recognize the cataphor or the anaphora, it is enough to look at where they ask us to look for the missing information: if it promises us that the information will come later, it is a cataphor; while if the information we must rescue it from what has been said previously, we are facing an anaphora.
For example: in the sentence “Mary did not do the homework and that is why she did not want to come”, the pronoun “that” refers to everything previously said, that is, to the fact that “Mary did not do the homework”, which it was said at the beginning of the sentence. So this is an anaphoric reference.
On the other hand, in the sentence “That night I made two friends, who are Pedro and Martín”, the noun phrase “two friends” gives us information that will be clarified or developed later since we will know who the two friends are towards the end. of prayer. Anaphora and difference with cataphora
Examples of anaphora
Some diverse examples of anaphora are the following:
- Run, run, I reach you!
- Together we will achieve the goal. Together we will succeed. Together, never apart.
- Green grape leaf on his forehead/green the aurora borealis announcement
- ” Here was Troy, here my misery”
- Go up that road, go up and back up, until you conquer the top.
- I walked so many paths to be among you … So many and so long, you wouldn’t believe me.
- This was a man so, so envious, that …
- Green, I love you green.
- We had achieved it. We had finally defeated him.
- Then I saw her: the one with the green eyes, the tight pants, the matchless face.
