Lexical level lexical Stylistic Devices

Parallel Constructions. Chiasmus (хиазм)
As you must have seen from the brief description, repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. Besides, repetition adds rhythm and balance to the utterance. The latter function is the major one in parallel constructions which may be viewed as a purely syntactical type of repetition for here we deal with the reiteration of the structure of several successive sentences (clauses), and not of their lexical "flesh". True enough, parallel constructions almost always include some type of lexical repetition too, and such a convergence produces a very strong effect, foregrounding at one go logical, rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance.
Reversed parallelism is called chiasmus. The second part of a chiasmus is, in fact, inversion of the first construction. Thus, if the first sentence (clause) has a direct word order – SPO, the second one will have it inverted – OPS.


Exercise II. From the following examples yon will get a better idea of the functions of various types of repetition, and also of parallelism and chiasmus:
1. I wake up and I'm alone and I walk round Warley and I'm alone; and I talk with people and I'm alone and I look at his face when I'm home and it's dead. (J.Br.)
2. "To think better of it," returned the gallant Blandois, "would be to slight a lady, to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry towards the sex, and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character." (D.)
3. I might as well face facts; good-bye "Susan, good-bye a big car, good-bye a: big house, good-bye power, good-bye the silly handsome dreams. (J.Br.)
4. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. (O.W.)
5. I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot, give him the boot, give him the boot – I drew a deep breath. (J.Br.)
6. Now he understood. He understood many things. One can be a person first. A man first and then a black man or a white man. (P. A.)
7. Obviously – this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously. (W.D.)
8. And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her. (A.B.)
9. When he blinks, a parrot-like look appears, the look of some heavily blinking tropical bird. (A. M.)
10. And everywhere were people. People going into gates and coming out of gates. People staggering and falling. People fighting and cursing. (P. A.)
11. Then there was something between them. There was. There was. (Dr.)
12. He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn't want to kill or be killed. So he ran away from the battle. (St.H.)
13. "Secret Love", "Autumn Leaves", and something whose title he missed. Supper music. Music to cook by. (U.)
14. Living is the art of loving.
Loving is the art of caring.
Caring is the art of sharing.
Sharing is the art of living. (W.H.D.)


Inversion
Inversion which was briefly mentioned in the definition of chiasmus is very often used as an independent SD in which the direct word order is changed either completely so that the predicate (predicative) precedes the subject; or partially so that the object precedes the subject-predicate pair. Correspondingly, we differentiate between