Symploce

Symploce, from the Greek 'symplokē' ('interweaving'), is the rhetorical figure that combines anaphora (repetition at the beginning of successive clauses) with epistrophe (repetition at the end). The effect is a tight frame: the middle of each clause changes while the outer words hold still, so the varying content is heard against a fixed refrain.

The figure suits political oratory because the frame does the work of insistence and the middle does the work of argument. When Bill Clinton said 'When there is no vision, the people perish. When there is no ambition, the people perish. When there is no hope, the people perish', the outer wording — the anaphora at one end, the epistrophe at the other — turns three distinct claims into a single drumbeat.

Because symploce is a compound figure, it is also demanding. It requires three or more clauses to feel like a pattern rather than a coincidence, and the middle terms need to be genuinely parallel — noun to noun, verb to verb — for the frame to sound intentional rather than laboured.

Common mistake: pulling off the anaphora but letting the epistrophe drift. If the closing words wobble ('the people perish', 'the nation falls', 'the state collapses'), the pattern breaks and the reader hears only the opening repetition. Symploce is a two-handed grip; loosen either hand and the figure falls.