I have another question regarding rhetorical devices. I didn't know where to put it. I hope someone here will know the answer. I know that a trope that eliminates conjunctions is asyndeton. Like these as simple examples: Little, yellow, different. Veni Vidi Vici. We've probably all seen another type of phrase that's pretty ubiquitous on the Internet. I was wondering if it had a name. This particular thing is the division of a three word phrase by periods. Like this: Best. Song. Ever. Obviously this is different. It's a single phrase that actually goes together. It's divided up to put a stress on each individual word. Does this have a particular name? I thought it was a relatively new phenomenon. Anyone know?
"Veni vidi vici" is not a rhetorical device. It was Caesar's response to what he had done in Gaul (France): "I came, I saw, I conquered." Perhaps these other "devices" are tech-idioms...certainly not the domain of proper English. Aren't they often used as an abbreviated way to shortcut construction of complete sentences; thereby saving time?
I'm fairly certain this device doesn't have a name. In high school, my teachers would have called it sentence fragments, and forbid it. Although when students would attempt it, it was not in the way you used it above (separating the words of the sentence to emphasize every word equally). Instead, it would usually be a list. For example: Canons blasting. Drums beating. Smoke filling the air. A civil war battlefield was not a pleasant place to be... I recall my peers using constructions like that, usually in an attempt to embellish their openings/introductions. I also recall the teacher saying "Sentence fragments! Not allowed!" But that's all I've got for ya.
Yeah, that's asyndeton. Nice example of it too. Someone's gonna have to name this other one. It's become common enough to warrant it.
I teach literature and I have to deal w/ this **** all the time. The example that began this discussion is a perfect example of what one of my mentors told me about the confusion btw the different rhetorical devices and tropes: "Poets don't sit around and think about whether or not the verse they are writing is going to be any specific rhetorical device. Poets create. Scholars dedicated to the study of creativity categorize what poets have created. Metonimia? Sinecdoque? Es la misma vaina. (It's all the same ****.) The key is to understand the metaphoric usage of language." This absolutely saves my hide every single semester. But I'd say my mentor would advise that it's time for scholars to classify this!