Rhetorical schemes and Construction Grammar

Abstract Formal rhetorical figures (schemes) have been largely neglected by Construction Grammar (CxG). The losses of this omission are substantial. Like metaphors, schemes leverage general-purpose neurocognitive principles and evoke communicative functions. They give utterances salience and memorability, making them highly compatible with usage-based models, and they align form with function. Their association with ludic functions also makes them of considerable interest to creativity-of-everyday-language linguists. Focusing on inverse-repetition figures (exemplified by “all for one and one for all”) and a few collocate figures, this paper argues for integrating rhetorical schemes much more fully into CxG.