Literary Language: Linguistic Forms and Rhetorical Figures

Literary Language

Literary language is used by writers in their works to create a new reality, a fantasy world, through verbal language, which is also used in everyday communication. While other arts, like music or painting, have their own languages.

Linguistic Forms

Normally, the register of literary text is educated, caring, and sometimes very complex and elaborate, especially in poetry. The special use of language is due to its peculiar communicative situation: literary communication is unilateral to an unknown reader or listener, is conditioned by the social value of literary tradition (genres, techniques, styles, etc.), from which the writer cannot escape, and their goal is aesthetic.

Although, as stated above, it is difficult to define the characteristics of literary language, we note that among those that characterize the language or the literary text, ambiguity and connotation are highlighted. Ambiguity, powered by polysemy, augments the ability to suggest emotions and feelings, characteristic of the literary text (as opposed to the monosemy of scientific or technical language). The same applies to the evocative power of connotative vocabulary, through the meanings that are added through subjective associations. For example, llegro, cold knife, and death are associated with the following verses: Caballito llegro. / Where do you carry your dead rider? [...] Caballito cold. / What a fine flower! My knife! (Federico García Lorca) or Mars (god of war), fierce and angry, the violence of war in the fiery Mars angry (Garcilaso de la Vega).

The literary text's linguistic resources are diverse and affect all levels of language (phonetic, grammatical, and lexical-semantic):

• The use of verse or prose
• The expressiveness of the syntax (order, repetition, passive constructions, etc.) and punctuation
• The use of direct and indirect discourse
• The use of verbal and sentence patterns
• The richness of the lexicon
• The selection of the narrative person
• The choice of a tone (irony, sarcasm, humor, etc.)

Among them, we must stress the use of rhetorical and stylistic figures.

Rhetorical Figures

Rhetorical figures are the most important resource to divert language from daily use, searching for the unexpected. In moving away from routine use, they provide elegance, grace, and power of expression. Although they are also used in common language, both conversational (it has a snout that is what steps, hyperbole) and informative (Coach supports the rudeness of their stars, metaphor) - and in advertising (the One Who is Unique, par excellence) - in literary language, they appear in greater numbers and with artistic intention.

Rhetorical figures also affect the three levels of language: phonetic, grammatical, and lexical-semantic.

Phonetic Level

In the phonic level, the following figures are included:

• Alliteration: the deliberate repetition of sounds to produce a particular sound effect (a hundred storms a horrible noise)
• Paronomasia: a play on words caused by the proximity of two terms whose phonemes are similar, though not their meanings (even glasses with layers of Latterine shake their flakes)
• Rhetorical question: a question asked without expecting an obvious answer (Will you intuit when callus, why cry?)

Grammatical Level

At the grammatical level (morphological and syntactic), it is necessary to mention these figures:

• Anaphora: the repetition of a word or words at the beginning of the verse or phrase (in the words of shadow, / with the sound of Vimto, / scented forest)
• Asyndeton: the absence of conjunctions, which provides a rapid pace