Amplification
Amplification is a rhetorical device writers use to decorate a sentence or assertion with the aid of adding similarly records. The objective is to increase clarity and well worth of the announcement or sentence. They commonly use it whilst a simple sentence is abrupt, and can't carry the preferred implications. Writers then use amplification to make structural additions, and give similarly meanings with the aid of describing and repeating a certain statement or idea. The motive of this rhetorical tool is to convey the readers’ attention to an concept, which they will omit otherwise.
Examples of Amplification in Literature
Example #1: Our Mutual Friend (by way of Charles Dickens)
“Mr. And Mrs. Veneering have been bran-new human beings in a bran-new residence in a bran-new sector of London. Everything approximately the Veneerings became spick and span new. All their furniture become new, all their pals were new, all their servants were new, their area became new, … their harness turned into new, their horses had been new, their images have been new, they themselves had been new, they had been as newly-married as turned into lawfully compatible with their having a bran-new baby …”
In this excerpt, Dickens amplifies the phrase “bran-new,” and then describes it similarly through giving more details about everything, inclusive of furniture, friends, servants, vicinity, horses, pictures, etc.
Example #2: Northern Exposure (by way of Chris Stevens)
“Goethe’s very last words: ‘More mild.’ Ever for the reason that we crawled out of that primordial slime, that’s been our unifying cry: ‘More light.’ Sunlight. Torchlight. Candlelight. Neon. Incandescent … Light is metaphor. Thy phrase is a lamp unto my feet. Rage, rage towards the death of the light. Lead, Kindly Light, amid the encompassing gloom, Lead Thou me on! The night time is dark, and I am a long way from home — Lead Thou me on! Arise, shine, for thy light has come. Light is knowledge. Light is life. Light is mild.”
You can note that emphasis is at the “light” in the excerpt given above. Moving on from literal which means to the metaphorical that means of the light, the speaker is describing the reason of mild in human lives.
Example #3: The Twits (with the aid of Roald Dahl)
“If a person has ugly mind, it begins to reveal on the face. And when that person has ugly mind every day, each week, every year, the face gets uglier and uglier until you can hardly undergo to examine it.
A individual who has good thoughts can't ever be ugly. You can have a wonky nostril and a crooked mouth and a double chin and stick-out teeth, but when you have good thoughts it will shine from your face like sunbeams and you may always look lovely.”
Here on this excerpt, Dahl elaborates to explain intensive the manner an ugly person can emerge as uglier, and how a beautiful character stays beautiful, despite having bodily imperfections.
Example #4: All Stories Are True (with the aid of John Edgar Wideman)
“A massive tree centuries antique holds out towards the percentages here across from my mother’s residence, one of the largest bushes in Pittsburgh, anchored in a green tangle of weeds and bushes, trunk thick as a Buick, black as night after rain soaks its striated hide… If it ever tore unfastened from its moorings, it'd overwhelm her residence like a sledgehammer … “
In this example, John Edgar Wideman gives an improved and enriched description of a massive vintage tree. He time and again describes how it has anchored itself in conjunction with weeds and bushes against his mother’s house.
Example #5: The Scarlet Letter (by way of Nathaniel Hawthorne)
“It is a touch remarkable, that—though disinclined to talk 0ver a good deal of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal pals—an autobiographical impulse have to twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.”
This creation with the aid of Nathaniel Hawthorne in his well-known novel, The Scarlett Letter, uses amplification. The speaker explains that he is resolved to put in writing his autobiography. Instead of telling it simply, he makes use of in-intensity language to add the main idea into it.
Function of Amplification
By the usage of amplification, writers repeat some thing they already have said with the cause to feature more records and information to the unique description. In writing and speech, amplification tends to spotlight the importance of an concept, to stimulate an emotional response a number of the audience. In fact, it adds an exaggeration, will increase the rhetorical effect, and emphasizes to similarly problematic definitions, descriptions, and arguments in a piece. Amplification also highlights the persuasive elements of an idea by elaborating the purpose why it needs to be considered. Besides, in innovative writing, it attracts readers’ attention to the maximum vivid, notion provoking, and compelling parts of a narrative.
Popular Literary Devices
- Ad Hominem
- Adage
- Allegory
- Alliteration
- Allusion
- Ambiguity
- Anachronism
- Anagram
- Analogy
- Anapest
- Anaphora
- Anecdote
- Antagonist
- Antecedent
- Antimetabole
- Antithesis
- Aphorism
- Aposiopesis
- Apostrophe
- Archaism
- Archetype
- Argument
- Assonance
- Biography
- Cacophony
- Cadence
- Caricature
- Catharsis
- Characterization
- Cliché
- Climax
- Colloquialism
- Comparison
- Conflict
- Connotation
- Consonance
- Denotation
- Deus Ex Machina
- Dialect
- Dialogue
- Diction
- Didacticism
- Discourse
- Doppelganger
- Double Entendre
- Ellipsis
- Epiphany
- Epitaph
- Essay
- Ethos
- Eulogy
- Euphemism
- Evidence
- Exposition
- Fable
- Fallacy
- Flash Forward
- Foil
- Foreshadowing
- Genre
- Haiku
- Half Rhyme
- Hubris
- Hyperbaton
- Hyperbole
- Idiom
- Imagery
- Induction
- Inference
- Innuendo
- Internal Rhyme
- Irony
- Jargon
- Juxtaposition
- Limerick
- Line Break
- Logos
- Meiosis
- Memoir
- Metaphor
- Meter
- Mood
- Motif
- Narrative
- Nemesis
- Non Sequitur
- Ode
- Onomatopoeia
- Oxymoron
- Palindrome
- Parable
- Paradox
- Parallelism
- Parataxis
- Parody
- Pathetic Fallacy
- Pathos
- Pentameter
- Persona
- Personification
- Plot
- Poem
- Poetic Justice
- Point of View
- Portmanteau
- Propaganda
- Prose
- Protagonist
- Pun
- Red Herring
- Repetition
- Rhetoric
- Rhyme
- Rhythm
- Sarcasm
- Satire
- Simile
- Soliloquy
- Sonnet
- Style
- Superlative
- Syllogism
- Symbolism
- Synecdoche
- Synesthesia
- Syntax
- Tautology
- Theme
- Thesis
- Tone
- Tragedy
- Tragicomedy
- Tragic Flaw
- Transition
- Utopia
- Verisimilitude