Types of repetition and why you should teach them – part 1

‘Happiness is the longing for repetition.’ Milan Kundera

There are lots of different, complicated names for types of repetition. Why should English teachers bother to teach them? After all, pupils have got enough to remember in the new exams without overburdening them with other unnecessary, fancy-sounding, difficult-to-spell terms.

I’ve written before about why I think it is important to teach complex terminology.  With repetition, I  think it’s really worth the effort to go beyond using the basic idea of ‘repetition’ as a catch-all term for something that happens more than once.

In part 2 of this blog I’ll explain why, by looking at specific examples. To begin with, let’s have a look in detail at why ‘repetition’ is an unhelpfully amorphous term:

Selected types of repetition (definitions from Dr. Gideon Burton, Brigham Young University)

Repetition of words

Anaphora – Repetition of the same word or group of words at the beginning of successive clauses, sentences, or lines. (‘O night with hue so black! O night, which ever art when day is not! O night, O night, alack, alack, alack!’ A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Anadiplosis – The repetition of the last word of one clause or sentence at the beginning of the next. (‘The general who became a slave. The slave who became a gladiator. The gladiator who defied an emperor.’ Tagline for the movie Gladiator)

Diacope – Repetition of a word with one or more between, usually to express deep feeling. (‘She wondered whether, if her chances had been different, she might have met a different man.’ Madame Bovary)

Epistrophe (also called epiphora) – Ending a series of lines, phrases, clauses, or sentences with the same word or words – the opposite of anaphora. (‘If you’re so funny/
Then why are you on your own tonight?/And if you’re so clever/Then why are you on your own tonight?/If you’re so very entertaining/Then why are you on your own tonight?’ The Smiths ‘I Know it’s over’)

Epizeuxis – Repetition of words with no others between, for vehemence or emphasis. (‘Education, education, education’ Speech by Tony Blair)

Polysyndeton (also known as syndetic listing) – Employing many conjunctions between clauses. (‘He pulled the blue plastic tarp off of him and folded it and carried it out to the grocery cart and packed it and came back with their plates and some cornmeal cakes in a plastic bag and a plastic bottle of syrup.’ The Road)

Symploce – A combination of anaphora and epistrophe. (‘Where there is doubt, may we bring faith. Where there is despair, may we bring hope’.) Mendacious speech by Thatcher.

Repetition of clauses, phrases

Isocolon – A series of similarly structured elements having the same length. A kind of parallelism. (‘What the hammer?/what the chain?/In what furnace was thy brain?’ William Blake ‘The Tyger’)

Repetition of ideas

Commoratio – Dwelling on or returning to one’s strongest argument. (‘This parrot is no more. It has ceased to be. It’s expired and gone to see its maker! This is a late parrot. It’s a stiff! Bereft of life! It rests in peace! If you hadn’t nailed it to the perch it would be pushing up the daisies! It’s run down the curtain and joined the choir invisible! This is an ex-parrot!’ Monty Python Sketch)

Homiologia – Tedious and inane repetition. (‘Today you are you! That is truer than true! There is no one alive who is you-er than you!’ Dr Seuss)

Pleonasm – Use of more words than is necessary semantically. Rhetorical repetition that is grammatically superfluous. (‘Naan bread’: ‘naan’ already means ‘bread’. We also use CIT Teams at my school, which when expanded means ‘College Improvement Team Teams’)

Repetition of letters, syllables, sounds

Alliteration – Repetition of the same sound at the beginning of two or more stressed syllables. (‘Gawain,’ said the green knight,/’By God, I’m glad/the favour I’ve called for will/fall from your fist.’ Sir Gawain and the Green Knight)

Assonance – Repetition of similar vowel sounds, preceded and followed by different consonants, in the stressed syllables of adjacent words. (‘…viddy him swim in his blood.’ A Clockwork Orange)

Consonance – The repetition of consonants in words stressed in the same place, but whose vowels differ. (‘…glazzies tight shut…’ A Clockwork Orange)

Sibilance – A more specific type of alliteration that relies on the repetition of soft consonant sounds in words to create a whooshing or hissing sound in the writing. (‘…some shivering starry grey-haired ptitsa in a shop and go smecking off with the till’s guts.’ A Clockwork Orange)

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Mark