alliteration as a stylistic device
TRANSCRIPT
LITERARY
STYLISTICS
ALLITERATION
WHAT IS ALLITERATION?
DEFINITION
In a basic definition of alliteration, we would
say that the initial consonant sounds of
words are repeated. Some examples: sweet,
sweep, swallow. But the technical definition
is a relationship between words when the
following is present:
• Consonants just before the first accented
vowels are the same.
• The vowels are not pronounced alike.
• The following consonants are different.
Here are a few examples:
sweet – swallow, lime – like, fellow – fat
J. A. Cuddon’s Definition
• It is a figure of speech in which consonant,
especially at the beginning of words, or
stressed syllables, are repeated. It is a very old
device related to verse but it is used in prose.
In old English poetry Alliteration was a
continual and an essential part of the metrical
scheme.
Examples
• "The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free;
We were the first that ever burst
Into that silent sea."
(Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rime of the Ancient
Mariner")
• "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
(Henry David Thoreau, Walden)
• Alliteration is common in nonsense verse:
Be lenient with lobsters, and ever kind to
crabs,
And be not disrespectful to cuttle-fish or
dabs;
Chase not the Cochin-China, chaff not the ox
obese,
And babble not of feather-beds in company
with geese.
It is found also in tongue-twisters:
1. Angela Abigail Applewhite ate anchovies
and artichokes.
2. Bertha Bartholomew blew big, blue
bubbles.
• It is in jingles:
Dingle dingle doosey,
The cat’s in the well,
The dog’s away to Bellingen
To buy the bairn a bell.
• And in Pater, beloved of drill sergeants and the like:
Now then, you horrible shower of heathen, have I
your complete hattention? Hotherwise I shall
heave the whole hairy lot of you into the salt
box where you will live on hopeful
hallucination far as long as hit pleases God and
the commanding hofficer.
• Alliteration gave the language a musical
quality. It played the same role as rhyme in
Old English poetry.
• Alliteration is wildly used in Modern English.
• Songs, nursery rhymes, newspaper headlines
and adds often contain ALLITERATION
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