Chiasmus consists of the exchange of the order of those elements that make up two sequences.
Chiasmus is a notion that comes from a Greek concept, referring to something whose disposition is crossed. The term is used to name a literary figure that involves exchanging the order of the elements of two sequences.
Chiasmus, therefore, is made from the repetition of identical phrases or terms, but in a crossed manner and preserving symmetry . This generates a particular meaning in the expression and reinforces an idea, since the repeated repetition causes surprise and leads to reflection on what was said.
This figure is present in the work of many of the great authors of literature, and is used to play with the different aspects of language to produce different effects on the reader, such as moments of humor or tragedy, always accessible after the pertinent reflection. It is worth mentioning that this figure also appears in the cinema, although not as frequently.
Structuring of the chiasmus
The structuring of the chiasmus can be understood in the manner of enumeration, in which the elements are repeated in inverted order: 1-2-3-3-2-1 . Let's see how chiasmus develops with an example .
1: I woke up. / 2. I took a book. / 3. I started reading. / 3. I finished reading. / 2. I left the book. / 1. I fell asleep.
The chiasmus would be expressed in this way: “I woke up, picked up a book and started reading. When I finished reading, I put the book down and fell asleep."
Another example of chiasmus is the following: “When I try to remember I don't remember, but sometimes I remember without looking for it.” As you can see, there is an exchange of order: what chiasmus highlights is that, if the person makes an effort to remember something, they cannot remember it. But nevertheless, sometimes memories appear in your mind even if you are not making an effort for it.
Chiasmus requires some reflection to understand the meaning.
Promotion of abstract thinking
In addition to encouraging reflection on the part of the recipient, chiasmus can also be used to encourage abstract thinking .
It is important to highlight the importance of paying careful attention to the content of a chiasmus to be able to understand it; Since it is a not very direct way of communicating a message , it is normal that it is necessary to listen to or read it in its entirety to decipher its meaning.
These characteristics, this not very direct nature of the chiasmus, do not make it attractive for certain people, especially for those who have some type of concentration disorder or for those who feel intimidated by texts sometimes called far-fetched , which require attention and effort. to be understood. It is usually essential to combine mere semantic interpretation with a combination of conceptual associations to get closer to the meaning of a structure like this.
Chiasmus as a pun
In rhetoric, there is a type of chiasmus called a pun or commutation , which consists of crossing the syntactic functions of words, in addition to having the aforementioned characteristics. In short, this literary figure, which is within the category of repetition , serves to rearrange the elements of a sentence in a different way in another, to change their order so that they are inverted and their meaning is opposite to what they had. in the first.
An example of this type of chiasmus is the following: "There are many people who are poor although they deserve wealth, while others are rich and deserve poverty." As can be seen, as in the example of memories, presented in a previous paragraph, the words "poor" and "rich" change position to constitute a chiasmus. However, since it is a pun, its syntactic functions are also crossed: in the first proposition, the "poor" are , while in the second this attribute is attributed to the "rich."