The emphase is a rhetorical stylistic device, which is difficult to recognize, because it becomes clear in the spoken language. Emphasis is the elucidation of a general concept in order to show a particular feature of this concept. The emphasis is achieved by the context and the emphasis and gives the concept an additional, narrower meaning.
The term can be derived from the Greek (ἐμφαίνω ~ emphaínō). Emphaínō can be translated into something with clearness, which is why we can interpret the style figure as an illustration of what has been said. This translation shows what is at stake here: the clarification and excellence of a word, whereby this gives a new, wider meaning. Let us look at an example.
Happy jauchzet big and small:
Here I am human, here I can be!
The above example is the last verses from Goethe’s Osterspaziergang and are therefore from Faust. This sentence is expressed by the scholar when he observes how well the people feel in the festive turmoil, and concludes that all must shout, “Here I am man, here I may be!”
By definition, a human is a mammal from the order of primates. However, the expression is not meant to mean that the lyrical ego points out that it and the other humans are mammals and belong to the genus of the monkeys, but there is probably something more behind it.
The emphasis here calls a general concept (man) to show a particular feature of the concept (feeling of life). For example, it might be that someone who is allowed to be human can behave as people do. The emphase thus emphasizes the humanity of the concept.
I just want to live!
This exclamation (→ Exclamation) works according to the same scheme as the above example from Goethe’s Faust. Here the general concept of life is emphasized by the emphasis, whereby a single, but especially special, feature is removed by the emphasis.
Whoever lives is not dead, could be a general definition of the concept. However, anyone who expresses the fact that he only wants to live still calls a special feature of the word. Maybe he wants to do his thing and act as he likes. However, except in this context, he does not express that he simply wants to be alive.
Men are not always soldiers, but soldiers always men!
The above example is a commercial slogan of the German Bundeswehr and also here a general term is called (men), which is clearly emphatically emphasized in the repetition (→ anadiplos). In the first mention of the concept we are dealing with the general concept, the masculine, but after the comma the emphase refers to the attributes of the man (masculinity).
Note: The examples of the emphasis are mainly evident by the emphasis. In doing so, they name a general term (human being, life) and thus characterize a particular feature of it.
Thus the emphase is related to the stylistic means of the Synekdoche, in which a part stands for the whole (Pars pro toto) or the whole for a part (Totum per parte). (Ex: living under one roof instead of house)
The emphase in the play
It was described how the emphase is to be understood as a rhetorical style figure. However, a general meaning has also been established which, in principle, it is understood as an emphasis.
This is about the fact that the emphasis is used as a means for expressing views, and thus represents a particularly emphatic, enthusiastic and therefore agreeing form of the utterance. Gerd Hergenlübben uses the expression Emphasen for stage, according to which image, word and gesture can be used in a drama as emphase (emphasizing what has been said).
Means of emphatic representation in the theater
Phonetics: Through emphasis and the lifting of one’s own voice, the attention can be placed on a certain detail and thus strengthened.
Syntax: The rhetorical question, the exclamation (exclamation) and the very clear emphasis can move the spoken word into the focus of the recipient (viewer, reader).
Declamation: Anyone who declaims, artistically carries forward something, but he can also make speech pauses. Such pauses of art can emphasize a concept used before or after it.
Body language: In the drama, the means of mimicry and gesture are still available, in order to emphasize a concept emphatically and thus to intensify it.
The emphasis in the letterpress
We also refer to a form of typographical emphasis as an emphasis, and this can also be used in a literary text and can function as a stylistic device.
This means in the area of typography (letterpress printing) the highlighting of individual text sections, such as, for example, by bold and italic writing, as well as the use of a different color, underlay, font or other adaptation of the font and the typeface.
Note: The rhetorical style of the emphase can be enhanced. If, for example, the Bundeswehr were to change the above slogan in such a way that the repetition of the emphase men was written in bold form, the whole would be even stronger and clearer.
Example: “Not all men are soldiers, but soldiers always men!”
Effect and function of the emphase
It is very difficult to ascribe to a stylistic device a clear function or effect which is always valid. But one can try to describe the effect a figure has.
Short overview: effect, effect and function of the style figure
The emphase calls a general concept and nevertheless means only a single feature of this. This is especially evident in the immediate context and by the emphasis on the utterance.
As a result, the stylistic means has an intensifying effect. Above all, when it is understood merely as the emphasis of what is said (acting).
Since the emphase also describes a shift in meaning and only indirectly says what it means, it can well be counted as a group of the tropics, as well as metaphor, irony, metonymy and synekdoche (the theorist Quintilian counts them, for example, to the tropics).
