TWO OVERLOOKED FIGURES OF SPEECH Every writer and poet knows all about figures of speech–or do they?  Indeed, there’s rhyme, alliteration, irony, metaphor, synecdoche, you name it.  Everyone who’s taken a writing course in college, or sometimes even in high school for that matter, has heard of these and quite a few more.  So what’s the problem?  There are two speech figures that most literati are aware of, to be sure, but often don’t fully appreciate for their potential utility. One is based on word sound, the other on word meaning. Both, to some scholars, are mere literary curiosities. That‘s too bad, because these two figures offer great possibilities for enriching both prose and poetry.  They are assonance and kenning. Every poet, ad copy writer, greeting card author and political speech writer knows what alliteration and rhyme are, and just how to use them.   But how many of these folks know what assonance is, or if they do, how to use it correctly?  If they don’t, it’s a shame, because this third word sound option has real potential for enriching both written and oral literary and persuasive communication.  Simply stated, assonance is the third repetitive sound possibility, being based on vowel sounds in the middle of words.  Whereas alliteration deals with the front ends of words, i.e. a “real red roof,” and rhyme is all about their back end sounds, as in a “bad sad  fad,” assonance centers on word middles.  An example is “ride the pie-eyed fire.”  Here the long “I” sound repeats four times, but none of the words are either alliterative or rhyming.  Of course in actual prose or poetry, there’s no reason all three repetitive sound effects or two of the three can’t team up.–Consider, “French food eaten in June gets one in the mood to feast fully soon.” Another interesting application of assonance is some poets have used it as a sort of half way form between traditional rhyming and completely blank verse poetry.  For example, Emily Dickinson  was fond of substituting assonance for rhyme on the ends of poetic lines. Assonance first appeared in English in medieval ballads, and was known orally before its use became standardized within these songs, poems and stories when persons began writing them down.  During the Nineteenth Century, Edgar Allan Poe and Algernon Swinburne frequently worked assonance into their poems.   More  recently, Gerard Manley Hopkins appears to have made a concerted effort to expand assonance into more widespread poetic use.  Dylan Thomas was the most recent poet and writer to use it extensively, and was probably the speech figure‘s most enthusiastic proponent. While assonance was pioneered by medieval troubadours and largely developed by poets over the last 200 years, it never-the-less has application beyond those literary forms.  For instance, the same effect that allowed Emily Dickinson to bridge a gap between rhyming and fully blank verse poetry can serve a similar function for ad copy.  A particular copywriting task may appear unsuited to alliteration or rhyme, because the product being promoted needs serious treatment, an example being a new prescription medication.  Using alliteration could create a childish image for an adult-oriented product, and doing the ad in rhyming lines might come across as “corny.”  Assonance can help the copy writer develop line to line cohesion without conveying an overly poetic image.Likewise, the greeting card industry has seen a gradual, long-term movement toward greater reliance on blank verse.  However, use of both alliteration and rhyme is still quite alive and well there, too.  In blank verse card verses, assonance can help lines read more smoothly.  In cards that are more traditionally poetic, assonance will help build stronger emotional impacts, teaming up with rhyme to increase the number of recurring sounds in a given card‘s message. Speeches and other serious orations, because they are verbal, have something in common with those medieval ballads.  Here, the speech writer is searching for greater sound cohesion over a sequence of words, just like the old-time balladeer was.  Obviously, alliteration or rhyme has less application in a serious message, notwithstanding US criminal defense lawyer Johnny Cochrane’s famous, “If it (the glove) doesn’t fit, you must acquit.”  Assonance allows for a more subtle way to guaranty smooth flow of prose.But what if someone is just a “plain old writer?”  He or she either writes fiction stories or does nonfiction articles–no poetry, no ad copy, no greeting cards, no speeches.  Is assonance of any use?  Assonance can help story and article writers in two ways.–First of all, when dialogue occurs in a story, assonance can help smooth it out, so words impact the reader more.  For example, which reads more smoothly?  ”I love you so much, my beautiful darling, you are the light of my life, my whole reason for being here, the very essence of my every thought, my sweetheart!” or “I love you, over and over.  You move me to find new solutions to old problems.  I think of you often;  I must prove to you that above all, I choose you because!” The second example contains two assonant themes, short “O” (love, solutions, of, often), and long “O” (over, move, to, old, prove, choose).  The first example, while indeed passionately stated, has many internal vowel sounds, none of them assonant. It does have one assonant pair, light and life, but its long “I” sound fails to recur, so anyimpact isn‘t carried through.  But what about nonfiction?  Here, article writers don’t have the luxury of manufacturing dialogue.  They can, however, fashion descriptive prose so it reads more convincingly, albeit more subtly, than do repeated sounds found in fiction or poetry.  Many article writers sneak an occasional alliteration or rhyme into their work, but have to take care lest these figures distract readers from factual content.  Assonance, because it’s not as overtly obvious, can sometimes help. For instance, here are two sentences from a hypothetical engineering article about wind turbines.  Sentence Number One:  ”Vertical bladed turbines are not self-starting, whereas propeller types automatically begin turning when the wind blows.”  Sentence Number Two:  ”When wind blows, a propeller just goes; vertical blade turbines need other energy  to begin rotating.”  The second example contains an assonant long “O” (blows, goes, rotating) and short “E” ( propeller, vertical, energy, begin).  Both sentences contain sixteen words.  What then, about assonance?  It has wide applicability across the entire writing spectrum.  Because [...]