Anaphora, epiphora and framing

Anaphora - the beginning of two or more successive sentences (clauses) is repeated, Ex:. “ Farewell to the mountains high covered with snow!

Farewell to the straits and green valleys below!

Farewell to the forests and wild-hanging woods!

Farewell to the torrents and loud-pouring floods!” (Burns)

Ex.: Best for baby. Best for you. (Johnson & Johnson - shampoo).

The main stylistic function of anaphora is not so much to emphasize the repeated unit as to create the background for the nonrepeated unit, which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded. The background-forming function of anaphora is also evident from the kind of words which are repeated anaphorically.

Epiphora: is the repetition at the end of successive sentences (or clauses). Ex: Financial power. Human power. Market power. (bank slogan)

Ex.: “Now this gentleman had a younger brother of still better appearance than himself, who had tried life as a cornet of dragoons, and found it a bore; and had afterwards tried it in the train of an English minister abroad, and found it a bore …” (Dickens)

Epiphora contributes to rhythmical regularity of speech, making prose resemble poetry. It may be combined with anaphora and parallelism.

The main function of epiphora is to add stress to the final words of the sentence.

Framing is a particular kind of repetition in which the two repeated elements occupy the most prominent positions – the initial and the final, i.e. the beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end, thus forming the "frame" for the non-repeated part of the sentence (utterance) – Ex.: “ Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder ” (Dickens). The function of framing is to elucidate the notion mentioned in the beginning of the sentence. Between two appearances of the repeated unit there comes the developing middle part of the sentence which explains and clarifies what was introduced in the beginning, so that by the time it is used for the second time its semantics is concretized and specified.