Sunday, September 12, 2021

"I Believe You"

Over the course of the last month, I've been copying the lyrics in the booklet from the Justus album into Google Documents so that they're more accessible.  While transcribing "I Believe You," I noticed a couple rhetorical features.

Most of the lines start with "I believe..." or "I believe you...."  This repetition is a device called anaphora.  Its function here is to indicate the completeness of the narrator's belief.

I also noticed two merisms, a device where two opposites are named in order to indicate a broad range.  "I believe you on a sunny day" (the first line of the first verse) is paired with "I believe you on a rainy night" (the first line of the second verse), and in an-other section, "I believe you warm" is paired with "I believe you cold."  Regardless of what the conditions may be, the narrator still "believe[s] you."