Anaphora

In practice

Anaphora is the repetition of the same word or phrase at the start of successive sentences, lines or clauses. "We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields" is anaphora, and so is the opening of A Tale of Two Cities, where every clause begins "it was the." The repeated words become a drumbeat that the rest of each line plays against.

Writers use anaphora to build emphasis, rhythm and feeling. Each repetition raises the stakes a little, so a list that might sound flat in plain prose starts to climb. That is why it belongs to speeches, sermons, protest songs and the big moments in screenplays, where a character needs to move a room rather than inform it.

The common mistake is using it without a build. Anaphora works when each new line adds something, a larger claim, a sharper image or a turn, and when it stops before the audience gets ahead of it. Three or four repetitions usually do the work; a dozen sounds like a list read aloud.

A coach turns a list into a climb

The coach repeats "they think" four times, and each line goes further than the one before: tired, scared, beaten, and finally wrong about who these players are. The last repetition breaks the pattern into a command, which is how good anaphora often ends. The structure gives an ordinary pep talk a shape the room can feel.

What anaphora is

Anaphora is a rhetorical device in which a word or group of words is repeated at the beginning of neighboring clauses, sentences or lines of verse. Merriam-Webster defines it as repetition of a word or expression at the beginning of successive phrases, clauses, sentences or verses, especially for rhetorical or poetic effect. The name comes from a Greek word meaning "carrying back," because each line carries the reader back to the same start.

It is one of the oldest devices in literature and speech. The Psalms, the Beatitudes in the Gospel of Matthew ("Blessed are the poor in spirit … Blessed are they that mourn") and classical oratory all use it. Poets such as Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg built whole poems on it, and modern speechwriters rely on it for the lines audiences remember.

In linguistics, anaphora has a second, unrelated meaning: a word such as a pronoun that refers back to something earlier, as "she" refers to "the coach" in "The coach spoke and she was angry." Writers searching for anaphora in a poem or a speech almost always mean the rhetorical device.

Anaphora examples

Martin Luther King Jr.'s 1963 speech at the March on Washington is the best-known modern example. He repeats "I have a dream" at the start of sentence after sentence, then "let freedom ring," so the speech rises in waves. Winston Churchill's 1940 speech to Parliament repeats "we shall fight" through a list of places until the final "we shall never surrender."

Charles Dickens opens A Tale of Two Cities with a run of contrasting clauses that all begin "it was the": the best of times, the worst of times, the age of wisdom, the age of foolishness. The repetition makes the contradictions feel like a single, overwhelming era. In poetry, Whitman's Leaves of Grass and Ginsberg's Howl use long lines that start the same way to build a chant.

Film dialogue uses it at climaxes and in speeches. The repeated phrase gives an actor something to build on, and gives editors a natural rhythm to cut to. Songs use it constantly, as in choruses that open each line with the same words, which is part of why they are easy to remember.

Anaphora vs. epistrophe and other repetition

Epistrophe is the mirror image of anaphora: the repeated words come at the end of each clause instead of the beginning. Lincoln's "government of the people, by the people, for the people" ends three phrases with the same words. Using both together, the same start and the same end, is called symploce.

Anaphora is a specific kind of repetition, defined by its position. Simply repeating a word somewhere in a passage is repetition, not anaphora. Alliteration repeats a sound at the start of nearby words, not a whole word at the start of a line, so "Peter Piper picked" is alliteration, while "Every day, every night, every hour" is anaphora.

Parallelism, giving neighboring clauses the same grammatical shape, often travels with anaphora, but the two can appear separately. Anaphora makes parallelism audible: when every line starts with the same words, the listener hears that the lines are meant to be weighed against each other.

Anaphora in speeches and screenplays

Anaphora is at home in spoken language because a listener cannot reread. The repeated opening tells the ear where each new idea begins, and the pattern builds anticipation for the next one. That is why speechwriters reach for it in the passage they want quoted the next day.

In a screenplay it belongs to characters who are performing: a lawyer's closing argument, a general before battle, a candidate on a stage, a parent finally saying what they have held back. Used in ordinary conversation, it can make a character sound rehearsed, which can itself be a choice when the character is giving a prepared speech or hiding behind one.

Because it is so recognizable, anaphora is easy to parody. A villain who speaks in grand repetitions can sound pompous, and a sitcom character can use it to deflate a moment. The device is the same; the context decides whether it moves the audience or makes them laugh.

How to write anaphora

Choose a short, strong opening phrase. Two to four words are easiest for an audience to hear and remember. The phrase should carry the meaning of the passage on its own, as "I have a dream" and "we shall fight" do, so that each repetition restates the point.

Make each line climb. Order the clauses so that the stakes, the images or the emotion rise from first to last. If the lines could be shuffled without losing anything, the anaphora is decoration; if the order matters, it is structure.

Know when to stop or turn. Three or four repetitions usually make the pattern clear. End the run with a line that breaks or completes it, a different opening, a command or a short final sentence, so the audience feels the release that the build has been promising.