Assonance, Alliteration or Anaphora

Question

What do each of these terms mean and what is the difference between them:

assonance

alliteration

anaphora

Answer 1

All three of these things are "literary devices" or tools that writers use to get a reader's attention.

Assonance is when the writer uses the same internal sound over and over. In "The Elephant's Child" by Rudyard Kipling, Kipling writes, "Then the Bi-Coloured-Python-Rock-Snake uncoiled himself very quickly from the rock, and spanked the Elephant's Child with his scalesome, flailsome tail." The words scalesome, flailsome and tail all have that same internal /a/ sound. The pattern of the /oo/ sound in "How much wood could a woodchuck chuck if a woodchuck could chuck wood" is another example of assonance.

Alliteration is when the writer uses the same beginning sound over and over. Tongue-twisters are a common example of this. Sally sells seashells by the seashore. The many words that begin with /s/ are an example of alliteration. Another example of alliteration from "The Elephant's Child" is the great grey-green greasy Limpopo River. All of the g's in that phrase collectively form an example of alliteration.

Anaphora is similar to both alliteration and assonance in that it involves repeating something; however, that's where the similarity ends! While both alliteration and assonance involve the repeating of sounds, anaphora involves the repeating of words. Anaphora involves repeating the same word or phrase at the beginning of several sentences. Here are some examples of anaphora:

In Psalm 118 verses 1-4 repeat the phrase, "His faithful love endures forever."

In Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech, the phrase "Let freedom ring" is repeated.

In Dr. Seuss' book Green Eggs and Ham, Sam repeats the phrase, "I would not like them" on almost every page!