XIII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2021

Enumeration is a rhetorical device used for listing details, or a process of mentioning words or phrases step by step. In fact, it is a type of amplification or division in which a subject is further distributed into components or parts. Writers use enumeration to elucidate a topic, to make it understandable for the readers. It also helps avoid ambiguity in the minds of the readers.

There is hardly anything in this enumeration that could be regarded as making some extra impact on the reader. Each word is closely associated semantically with the following and preceding words in the enumeration, and the effect is what the reader associates with natural scenery. The utterance is perfectly coherent and there is no halt in the natural flow of the communication. In other words, there is nothing specially to arrest the reader’s attention; no effort is required to decipher the message: it yields itself easily to immediate perception.

Examples of Enumeration in Literature:

“Cast down your bucket among these people who have, without strikes and labour wars, tilled your fields, cleared your forests, builded your railroads and cities, and brought forth treasures from the bowels of the earth, and helped make possible this magnificent representation of the progress of the South. Casting down your bucket among my people, helping and encouraging them as you are doing on these grounds, and to education of head, hand, and heart, you will find that they will buy your surplus land, make blossom the waste places in your fields, and run your factories.” (The Atlanta Compromise Address by Booker T. Washington).

Booker describes people by adding their qualities one by one, which helps the audience to gain a real understanding of the writer’s ideas.

“Among such as deal in multitudes of words, none are comparable to the sober deliberate talker, who proceedeth with much thought and caution, maketh his preface, brancheth out into several digressions, findeth a hint that putteth him in mind of another story, which he promiseth to tell you when this is done; cometh back regularly to his subject, cannot readily call to mind some person’s name, holding his head, complaineth of his memory; the whole company all this while in suspense; at length says, it is no matter, and so goes on. And, to crown the business, it perhaps proveth at last a story the company hath heard fifty times before; or, at best, some insipid adventure of the relater.” (Hints Toward an Essay on Conversation by Jonathan Swift).

In this example, by using enumeration, Swift describes a sober, deliberate talker, and then adds details of his qualities, making his message clear to understand.

By using enumeration, writers lay emphasis on certain ideas to elaborate them further. In fact, enumeration easily creates an impression on the minds of the readers. The details and listing make it easy for them to convey the real message they want to impart. However, if there is no use of enumeration in a text, it might become difficult for the reader to get the true meanings of ideas.

References:

Galperin I.R. English Stylistics. Moscow, 2014. – p. 216-217

Обидина Н.В. Stylistics. Московский педагогический государственный университет, 2011.

В.В. Гуревич. English Stylistics. Стилистика английского языка; учеб, пособие — 3-е изд. — М.: Флинта: Наука, 2008.

ШаховскийВ.И. English Stylistics. М.: Либроком, 2013.