Zum Gebrauch rhetorischer Figuren der Hinzufügung in deutschen Grabinschriften

Abstract

Use of rhetorical figures of repetitionin German funerary inscriptions

The semantic structure of funerary inscriptions has a dual character. The onomastic-genealogial part is characterized by stereotypical forms of expression and performs a referential function. Its opposi­tion, the emotive text-component, eulogy, is dominated by the function of self-expression, with no­ticeable linguistic elegance. The present article examines the use of rhetorical figures of repetition in the German funerary inscriptions dating from the period 1790–2010 and analyzes closely their poet-ic function. The study shows that the analyzed texts contain a lot of different rhetorical figures of repetition, which confirms the poetic function of the investigated genre.