Anacoluthon is a figure of speech that interrupts the grammatical flow of a sentence, often to start another sentence. It can be used intentionally or unintentionally, mimicking speech or thought, and is common in poetry and stream-of-consciousness writing. It can also be used as a rhetorical device to place the argument at the beginning of the sentence. Anacoluthon is classified as a “figure of disorder” in rhetoric.
Anacoluthon is a figure of speech in which the grammatical flow of a sentence is interrupted, often to start another sentence. It can be done intentionally, as a rhetorical device, or unintentionally, in which case it would be a grammatical error. Common uses of anacoluthon include mimicking speech or thought and moving important information to the beginning of a sentence.
In casual conversation, people often speak in ways that would not be considered grammatical in formal speech or writing. Anacoluthon is an example of this and could be used in writing to mimic informal, slurred or ungrammatical speech. For example, if a fiction writer were describing the speech of a character waking up after a head injury, he might write: “The last thing I saw was… Where’s the elephant?” This would be ungrammatical speech on the part of the character, but potentially excellent rhetoric on the part of the writer.
This type of anacoluto is common in poetry, particularly comedies or dramatic monologues. The Victorian poet Robert Browning, for example, often wrote dramatic monologues from the point of view of characters who were often a little maverick, if not downright crazy. In his poem “Mr. Sludge, the Medium”, a phony spiritualist pleads with an angry customer not to expose his deception of him: “You gave me – (that was very kind of you) / These studs”. The ungrammatical interjection “very kind of you” underlines the frantic nervousness of the speaker.
Another use of anacoluthon is in stream of consciousness, which is meant to represent thoughts as closely as possible. Because the thoughts are not always completely coherent and rarely completely grammatical, this style of writing lends itself to anacoluto. Stream-of-consciousness writing was popularized in the modernist literary era by writers such as James Joyce.
As a rhetorical device in nonfiction writing or speech, the anacoluthon may sometimes be used to place the argument at the beginning of the sentence, even though it may not fit grammatically. For example, someone might say, “Those puppies peeking over the edge of the building – do you think they’re in danger of falling over?” Putting “those puppies” at the start of the sentence immediately alerts the listener to the topic of conversation, which could be beneficial if the puppies are actually in danger.
Anacoluthon is classified as a “figure of disorder” in rhetoric. In general, a noise figure is any sentence whose syntax does not match what is expected. It should not, however, be confused with hyperbatus, another disturbing figure that refers to the displacement of a word or phrase from its intended position in the sentence.
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