Anaphora is the rhetorical figure that consists of the repetition of ideas or terms with a discursive or aesthetic purpose.
Anaphora is a rhetorical figure that consists of repeating terms or ideas on purpose with an aesthetic or discursive intention. The etymology of the term, which has several uses, leads us to a Greek word that can be translated as "repetition" and that came to Latin as anaphŏra .
For example: «I always think of you, / I always have your face in mind. / I always remember that summer night, / I always long for the other . In this case, the anaphora consists of the reiteration of the word "always" at the beginning of each verse .
Anaphora, on the other hand, is a fragment of the liturgy that has different correspondences according to the rite in question.
Anaphora in oratory
In the field of oratory , anaphora can be used to emphasize ideas . This is a resource that political leaders often use in electoral campaigns. A presidential candidate can state in a speech: «I am not going to accept pressure from the powerful; I will not give in to the threats of corporations; I am not going to leave aside my convictions; "I am not going to forget my commitments to the people..." As you can see, the anaphora used implies repeating "I'm not going to" at the beginning of the different sentences.
It is important to take care of the way in which this resource is used, since it can be ineffective if it is abused or if inappropriate parts are repeated. On the other hand, anaphora is not always necessary, another reason why we should study its potential effects before including it in a text . When more than one word is repeated, the length of the sentence should not be excessive, as this could cause some interference in the message.
All this leads us to think that anaphora is a very difficult resource to use effectively and with good taste. Far from being a mere and arbitrary repetition of words, it serves to group a series of ideas and concepts that we wish to emphasize and highlight , without interrupting the flow of the text and in a way that can remain engraved in the reader's mind if done. in an aesthetic and moderate way.
Anaphora is important in oratory.
The concept in linguistics
For linguistics , anaphora is the identity link established between an element of grammar and one or more terms that were previously mentioned. In this area it has three very different meanings, although they are related in a certain way:
- The use of an expression that can only be interpreted with the help of another, which is found in the context of the discourse and is called antecedent .
- The expression itself (usually a pronoun) whose meaning depends on another that can also be found in the context. In this case we speak of deictics , that is, words whose meaning depends on the sender and that can only be determined based on it.
- Faced with a restrictive interpretation of the two previous points, we understand by anaphora only those cases in which the context is before the anaphora. On the contrary, we can speak of cataphora to refer to deictics that have a referent located after them in the text.
To understand this meaning of the term anaphora, let's look at the following example: "Before she was promoted to marketing director, Adela worked in the technical service sector" ; As can be seen, the pronoun "la" refers to "Adela", and is found before we can understand its meaning , which is why it responds to what is described in point 2, although it can also be a cataphora, depending on the vision. restricted from point 3. This is all part of the linguistics concept known as endophora .