sleepy rhetorics!!! with me!
what? another rhetoric lesson? again? i know its amazing how much my brain relies on linguistics to make me feel something. ok.
isocolon- two or more clauses that are right after eachother and are of grammatically equal length.
there are three types of isocolon! (you're welcome: i shortened them into one post bc my heart screams to explain each with too much detail)
-Bicolon is two grammatically equal structures (clauses).
-Tricolon is (you guessed it) three grammatically equal structures. a good example of this is abraham lincon's "of the people, by the people, for the people." i like to think he (or the writer of this speech) simple stumbled across this line and thought it sounded cool because of their subconscious love of grammatically equal clauses.
-Tetracolon is where four parallel grammatical structures are written after eachother. an example of this is in richard ii, in which he lists off things. i guess i will write the quote. bear with. "i'll give my jewels for a set of beads, my gorgeous palace for a hermitage, my gay apparel for an almsman’s gown, my figured goblets for a dish of wood." this listing is effective for reasons i will let you figure out, as i am putting my mental energy in being vaguely angry about writing out that quote. it means nothing to me. sorry shakespeare.
ah yes, the three sexualities.
explaining is hard: examples!
the most well known one here (and by here i mean earth) is the classic "roses are red, voilets are blue"! the two clauses are the same in length and structure- noun, verb, adjective, noun verb adjective. we get it. it is an example of bicolon! the original poem (/nursery rhyme) that was writtin in 1784 is also a use of isocolon (this time, its tricolon)- "the rose is red, the voilet is blue, the honey is sweet, and so are you". no idea why we adapted it and im too tired to google it. so,
another example of isocolon is the well known phrase of julius ceaser- "veni, vidi, vici". which obviously translated- latin's dead, get over it- is "i came, i saw, i conquered". julius ceaser was a dick. he burned down the library of alexandra. he deserved to be stabbed the planned amount. that is all.
the obligatory (but still exciting) third example is charles dickens! remember when he was all like "it was the best of times, it was the worst of times"? and we like ok buddy pick a lane (who is elane and why do we have to pick her). 'tis isocolon, my friends! the repitition makes us focus on the ~content~
i know what you're thinking: "oh great jess, with your great hair, with your amazing eyes, your sexy brain, why do writers use isocolon? and did you only write this rhetorical question to use tricolon?" yes i did. wasnt the tricolon nice, though? the way you listed off blind compliments for me? each clause was structured the same so the brain is drawn to the contents. the contents, of course, being that i have great hair, amazing eyes, and a sexy brain.
politicians use isocolon a lot because its persuasive, like abe linkydink we saw before with his "for people" stuff. its nice, it gives a structured flow, and it makes me feel tingly things in my heart to mention it in english assessments (sidenote: exactly how many "s"s are there in assessment?)
its a long post i get that. you didnt have to read it but uhh u did. :). some people reblogged and liked last time so i was like hey ill do it again. blame them. also blame the lovely person that left a bote saying it was interesting- i forgot your @ but you made my heart feel nice. im going to tag it dark academia again to trick my people. goodbye.
