Compound Devices
| Cite this page | |
|---|---|
| 🔗 DOI | 10.64393/balagha.compound.devices |
| Date | 14 February 2026 |
As mentioned in the Design Principles of the Encyclopedia of Arabic Rhetoric, rhetorical devices are treated as atomic units, which means that each rhetorical device corresponds to a single underlying mechanism such as deletion, substitution, repetition, contrast, or projection.
Compound devices are rhetorical configurations in which two or more independent rhetorical devices co-occur in a structured manner. They are not independent devices but patterned combinations of other rhetorical devices. The compound device's name label is viewed as a descriptive convenience only. Consequently, compound devices do not have independent pages in the Encyclopedia; they are described alongside their constituent rhetorical devices.
This approach towards compound devices is an analytical layer that goes beyond what the classical sources describe. Classical Arabic rhetoric does not recognise compound devices. It treats them as independent devices in their own right. The Encyclopedia deliberately decomposes compound devices into their constituent atomic mechanisms. This is a consequence of the Encyclopedia's aim of analysing rhetorical devices as atomic units.
The significance of this for rhetorical device identification is that when a compound device is identified, each of its constituent mechanisms should also be identified independently.
List of Compound Devices
- Parallel Antithesis (المقابلة) - a combination of Antithesis and Parallelism.
Page history
- 2026-03-27 - Updated Compounded Devices with enhanced explanations of compound devices, and DOI added.
- 2026-02-14 - Page created: Compound Devices.
