We explain what anaphora is, what it is for and examples of this rhetorical figure. Also, what is the cataphor and what is it used for.
What is anaphora?
Anaphora is called a rhetorical figure or literary figure, which It 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 the case of prose.
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.
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.
Examples of anaphora
Some diverse examples of anaphora are the following:
- !Run, run, that I reach you!
- Together we will achieve the goal. Together we will succeed. Together, never separated.
- Green the fig leaf on his forehead / green the aurora borealis announcement
- “Here it was Troy, here my misfortune “
- Goes up down that road, goes up and go up again, until you conquer the top.
- I walked so many ways to be among you … So many and so long that they wouldn’t believe me.
- This was a man so, so envious, that …
- Green, that I love you green.
- We had accomplished. We had finally defeated.
- Then I saw her: the from the green eyes, of the tight pants, of the unmatched face.
What is the cataphor?
The cataphor is a linguistic figure consisting of the anticipated reference to an idea or subject that will be made explicit later in the sentence, in other words, to the resource that consists of using deictics or pronouns to refer to something that will be made clear later. For example, in the sentence:
“From the first time the I saw, I knew that Laura would be my wife ”.
The second pronoun la, highlighted, anticipates the arrival of Laura, the subject of which it is spoken, therefore the full meaning of “la” can only be completed at the end of the sentence, and not at the beginning when reading said pronoun. This is known as a cataphor.
Other possible examples of a cataphor:
- Barely it We saw him arrive, we confirmed that Miguel was in love.
- In a pocket it he had a Smith & Wesson revolver that had been his father’s.
- A She raised her hand alone: it was the professor’s wife.