Literature always plays an essential role in most people’s spirit life.  Though the explosion of information and the revolution of high technology, especially the internet,  for a few recent decades have given us various kinds of entertainments, literature still one of the oldest and most favorite ways of entertaining, learning and experiencing life. 

Besides, every literary works reflect authors’ talents, one of that is the way they use the language to express their ideas and to impress the readers. There are many ways the writers have been using to make the language become such a valuable and flexible means of transferring the ideas. Sometimes, a simple way of forming a sentence or a bit strange order of words can make the ideas become so impressive and unforgettable – inversion is one of those ways which creates great effects for literary works. 

Inversion is a special language feature. It is used to give emphasis or to be rhetorical in more formal situations, in political speeches, on news, in day-to-day conversations and especially in literature.

Inversion, as it may seem, is simply a reversal of what is considered the normal or usual order of the constituent parts. In fact, to English learners, it is not easy to understand and use inversion correctly. To apply this structure, writers not only have to master the normal grammatical structures of sentences but also the unusual or abnormal ones. Inversion is used a lot in English as well as Vietnamese literature, especially in poetry. Many writers prefer to use it as both a grammatical structure and literary device because it is able to make readers come to the same idea with new ways of approaching, so that things will seem to be new and more impressive. Moreover, in order to use inversion in their works, the authors must take into account the skill of using the language, how to organize and develop their writing. They must choose the right sentences and ideas to apply this stylistic device that it will promote the best effect, otherwise the sentences will be so tangled and difficult for the readers to understand what the authors want to reveal.

One strong motivation for my choice is the fact that the use of inversion in literature has a great appeal to most of readers. Right when readers look at a phrase or sentence in which there is a strange order of words (or a group of words), they will think that there must be something special about this point that the author wants them to notice. Therefore, inversion somehow immediately draws readers’ attention to the exact point that the writer emphasizes. Another interesting thing about inversion is that there are grammatical rules for reversing words for phrases, but many writers also create their own ways which often give stronger effect for being unexpected.

Without inversion, the spoken and written languages would become so monotonous, boring and will not attract much attention from listeners or readers. Therefore, inversion as a syntactical stylistic device will help the speakers and writers transfer the information to the listeners, readers effectively. According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary [33, p. 84] “Inversion is reversal of normal order of words”; so inversion obviously is the mode of changing order of words in a sentence in order to get a certain communicative target. If we want the listeners to understand, perceive the exact meaning of the utterances, we should use inversion. 

In Vietnamese, inversion is also described by many Vietnamese authors through their books. All the authors considered inversion to be a stylistic device is used for emphasizing, enhancing and a tool for satisfying the rhymes in poetry.

Hàn Sĩ Nguyên [82] stated that “Đảo ngữ là thủ pháp lật ngược các thành phần trong một câu xuôi, thường dùng để nhấn mạnh” (Inversion is the technique of inverting canonical word order sentences usually for the sake of emphasis”. 

In the book entitled “Phong cách học TiếngViệt” (Vietnamese Stylistics), Đinh Trọng Lạc and Nguyễn Thái Hòa [63, p.240] stated that, “Trong trường hợp đảo vị trí thành phần câu mà nội dung thông báo không thay đổi, ta có phép đảo ngữ tu từ.” (When the reversal of the normal orders of constituents of a sentence does not affect the basic content of the utterance, it is called stylistic inversion.)

In “99 phương tiện và biện pháp tu từ Tiếng Việt” (99 Vietnamese rhetorical devices) Đinh Trọng Lạc [60, p.111 - 115] stated that “Đảo ngữ là hiện tượng vi phạm có chủ định trật tự chuẩn mực của các đơn vị lời nói nhằm mục đích tách ra một thành tố nghĩa – cảm xúc nào đó” (Inversion is the phenomena of violating the standard order of speech elements with the aim to separate a certain meaning or emotion element).

Although each of the authors above had a different ways of speaking, they unify in the content of inversion as the method of changing the order of the syntactical constituents but still keeping the basic content of the utterance.