by Stella Mcintyre

Created on: April 23, 2009

Alliteration is the repetition of sounds at the beginning of words. Its effect is twofold. Firstly it draws attention to and emphasizes a phrase and secondly, it can create connotations that significantly add to the understanding and enjoyment of a writer's meaning.

Although most commonly used in literature, most particularly poetry, alliteration can also be found in non-fiction writing: leaflets, newspaper headlines, advertising and merchandizing. Alliteration is a useful tool in persuasive writing so crops up frequently in leaflets asking for charitable donations, as in "dig deep" or "put your money where your mouth is". A newspaper needs an attention grabbing headline in order to sell copy. "Obama Offers Optimism to Oppressed" is a good example of an alliterative headline. Phrases like "Pick up a Penguin", "Mighty Mouse" and "Polly Pocket" are amongst the myriad examples of alliteration being used to sell products and services.

But its use in poetry really shows what alliteration can do for adding depth of meaning. The repetition of a particular sound adds resonance. For example Robert Frost's use of alliterative sibilants in Nothing Gold Can Stay - "subsides" and "sank", are evocative of the serpent in the Garden of Eden. This adds to the theme of a Felix Culpa in the poem.
Frost also uses the repetition of aspirants: "Her hardest hue to hold" to recreate the sense of hushed awe felt when experiencing the beauty of early dawn and spring.

Simon Armitage uses alliterative labial plosives in Cataract Operation:

"From pillar to post, a pantomime
of damp, forgotten washing"

This recreates the puffs of wind blowing the washing about.

Poets will use certain letters or sounds to bring about cultural connotations in their readers' minds. Sibilants bring to mind snakes, a common image for evil as with the biblical serpent; the sound of the wind in trees or to create a hushed reverential tone. Soft sounds like "L" and "M" are used in lullabies whilst harsher sounds create a feeling of hardness; guttural "G", hard "C" and "K" are all commonly used for this purpose.

Alliteration can also recreate a sensory memory. Seamus Heaney deftly recreates sound, feel, smell, taste and sight in his use of imagery and figurative language. In Digging, the alliterative sibilants in "spade sinks" recreates the sound of the spade edge sliding into the soil whilst the harsher "gravelly ground" reflects not just the sound of gravel but its hard roundness as well.

Heaney uses sibilant alliteration later in the poem, "squelch and slap", combined with onomatopoeia to firmly place the physical world he is describing within the mind of the reader. We are prepared then for the "curt cuts through living roots" as this works well as a description of the physical world of manual labor in the poem. The choice of this alliteration takes us further to understand that the "curt cuts" are also the harsh words said between father and son because the son has chosen to cut himself off from the "living roots" of family traditions.

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