II. In your books of either home reading or individual reading find the above mentioned expressive means and stylistic devices and comment upon their structure and stylistic function.
III. Do the following exercises:
Exercise I. Indicate the causes and effects of the following cases of alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia:
1. He swallowed the hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin.
2. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew,
The furrow followed free (S.C.).
3. The Italian trio tut-tutted their tongues at me (Т.С.).
4. You, lean, long, lanky lam of a lousy bastard! (O'C.).
5. “Luscious, languid and lustful, isn't she?” “Those are not the correct epithets. She is-or rather was surly, lustrous and sadistic” (E.W.).
6. “Sh-sh”. “But I am whispering”. This continual shushing annoyed him (A.H.).
7. Twinkle, twinkle, little star,
How I wonder what you are.
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky (Ch.R.).
8. Dreadful young creatures-squealing and squawking (C.).
9. The quick crackling of dry wood aflame cut through the night (St.H.).
Exercise II. Think of the causes originating graphon (young age, a physical defect of speech, lack of education, the influence of dialectal norms, affectation, intoxication, carelessness in speech, etc.):
1. He began to render the famous tune “I lost my heart in an English garden, Just where the roses of England grow” with much feeling: “Ah-ee last mah-ee hawrt een ahn Angleesh gawrden, Jost whahr thah rawzaz ahv Angland graw” (H.C.).
2. She mimicked a lisp: “I don’t weally know wevver I’m a good girl. The last thing he’ll do would be to be mixed with a howwid woman” (J.Br.)
3. “All the village dogs are no-'count mongrels, Papa says. Fish-gut eaters and no class a-tall; this here dog, he got insteek” (К.К.).
4. My daddy's coming tomorrow on a nairplane (S.).
5. After a hum a beautiful Negress sings “Without a song, the dahay would nehever end” (U.).
6. Oh, well, then, you just trot over to the table and make your little mommy a gweat big dwink (E.A.).
7. “I allus remember me man sayin' to me when I passed me scholarship – 'You break one o'my winders an' I'll skin ye alive'” (St.B.).
8. He spoke with the flat ugly “a” and withered “r” of Boston Irish, and Levi looked up at him and mimicked “All right, I'll give the caaads a break and staaat playing” (N.M.).
9. “Whereja get all these pictures?” he said. “Meetcha at the corner. Wuddaya think she's doing out there?” (S.).
10. Lookat him go. D'javer see him walk home from school? You're French Canadian, aintcha? (J.K.).
Exercise III. State the functions and the type of the following graphical expressive means:
1. Piglet, sitting in the running Kanga's pocket, substituting the kidnapped Roo, thinks:
| this | shall | take | |||||||||
| “If | is | I | never | to | |||||||
| flying | really | It” | (M.). |
2. Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo
We haven't enough to do-oo-oo (R.K.).
3. “Hey, – he said, – is it a goddamn cardroom? or a latrine? Attensh – HUT! Da-ress right! DHRESS!” (J.).
4. When Will's ma was down here keeping house for him – she used to run in to see me, real often (S.L.).
5. He missed our father very much. He was s-1-a-i-n in North Africa (S.).
6. His voice began on a medium key, and climbed steadily up till it reached a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word, and then plunged down as if from a spring board:
| beds | |||||||||||
| flowery | |||||||||||
| on | |||||||||||
| skies | |||||||||||
| the | |||||||||||
| to | |||||||||||
| carried | |||||||||||
| be | |||||||||||
| I | |||||||||||
| “Shall | of ease, |
| blood | |||||||||||
| throu' | |||||||||||
| sailed | |||||||||||
| and | |||||||||||
| prize | |||||||||||
| the | |||||||||||
| toe | |||||||||||
| fought | |||||||||||
| others | |||||||||||
| Whilst | у seas?” | (M.T.). |
7. We'll teach the children to look at things. Don't let the world pass you by, I shall tell them. For the sun, I shall say, open your eyes for that laaaarge sun (A.W.)
8. Now listen, Ed, stop that, now. I'm desperate. I am desperate, Ed, do you hear? (Dr.)
9. Adieu you, old man, grey. I pity you, and I de-spise you (D.).
10. “ALL our troubles are over, old girl, – he said fondly. We can put a bit by now for a rainy day” (S.M.).
Exercise IV. State the function of graphon in captions, posters, advertisements, etc. repeatedly used in American press, T.V.:
1. Weather forecast for today: Hi 59, Lo 32, Wind lite.
2. We recommend a Sixty seconds meal: Steak-Umm.
3. Best jeans for this Jeaneretion.
4. Dolls and Dollars.
5. Follow our advice: Drinka Pinta Milka Day.
6. Terry’s Floor Fashions: We make ‘em – you walk on em. Our offer is $ 15.00 WK.
7. Thanx for the purchase.
8. Everybody uses our wunnerful Rackfeed Drills.
Exercise V. Analyse the cases of spoonerisms:
1. Three cheers for our queer old dean!
2. Is it kisstomary to cuss the bride?
3. The Lord is a shoving leopard.
4. A blushing crow.
5. A well-boiled icicle.
6. You were fighting a liar in the quadrangle.
7. Is the bean dizzy?
8. “Someone is occupewing my pie. Please sew me to another sheet”. “You have hissed all my mystery lectures. You have tasted a whole worm. Please leave Oxford on the next town drain”.
Reference list:
1. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Part III. P. 123–135; Part VI. P. 252–264.
2. Aрнольдд И.В. Стилистика. Гл. V. C. 275–296; Гл. VI. С. 296–316.
3. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. P. 13–22.
LEXICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC
DEVICES BASED ON THE INTERACTION
OF THE NOMINATIVE
AND CONTEXTUALLY IMPOSED MEANING
Seminar 2
There are three big subdivisions in this class of devices and they all deal with the semantic nature of a word or phrase. However the criteria of selection of means for each subdivision are different and manifest different semantic processes.
1. In the first subdivision the principle of classification is based on the interaction of different types of a word’s meanings: dictionary, contextual, derivative, nominal, and emotive. The stylistic effect of the lexical means is achieved through the binary opposition of dictionary and contextual or logical and emotive or primary meaning and derivative meanings of a word.
2. The principle for distinguishing the second big subdivision according to I.R.Galperin is entirely different from the first one and is based on the interaction between two lexical meanings simultaneously materialized in the context. This kind of interaction helps to call special attention to a certain feature of the object described.
3. The third subdivision comprises stable word combinations and their interaction with the context.
Essential Terms:
metaphor is a trope which consists in the use of words (word combinations) in transferred meanings by way of similarity or analogy. Metaphor is the application of a name or a descriptive term to an object to which it is not literally applicable. This is an implied comparison. It is based on analogy or association: 1) Art is a jealous mistress (Emerson); 2) His voice was a dagger of corroded brass (S. Lewis); 3) They walked alone, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate (W.S.Gilbert); 4) From Settin in the Baltic to Trestie in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent (Winston Churchill).
Technically, the subject to which the metaphor is applied is the tenor (“political situation, resulting in the division of the world into two antagonistic parts” in example 4 above), whereas the metaphorical term is the vehicle (“an iron curtain”). The third notional element of metaphor is the ground, i.e. the basis for drawing the comparison, the feature the tenor and the vehicle have in common.
There are three types of metaphorical transfer possible:
1) the transfer of the name of one object to another:
e.g. Life's but a walking shadow; a poor player... (Shakespeare);
2) the transfer of the mode of action:
e.g. I hope this will have cushioned your loss.
Leaving Daniel to his fate, she was conscious ofjoy springing
in her heart (Bennett);
3) the transfer of the typical characteristics:
e.g. The fog comes on little cat feet (Sandburg).
antonomasia (a variant of METAPHOR) a trope which consists in the use of a proper name to denote a different person who possesses some qualities of the primary owner of the name: 1) Every Caesar has his Brutus (O'Henry); 2) He took little satisfaction in telling each Mary (= any female), shortly after she arrived, something... (Th. Dreiser); 3) Your fur and his Caddy are a perfect match. I respect history: “Don't you know that Detroit was founded by Sir Antoine de la Mothe Caddilac, French fur trader” (J. O’Hara).
metonymy is a SD based on association, the name of one thing is used in place of the name of another, closely related to it. There is an objectively existing relation between the object named and the object implied: 1) from the cradle to the grave; 2) The Crown of Great Britain is still a good-looking elderly lady; 3) Will you have another cup?
SYNECDOCHE (a variant of METONYMY) – a trope which consists in putting part for the whole, the concrete for the general, or vice versa: 1) Two heads are better than one; 2) The hat went away.
irony – a trope which consists in: a) the use of evaluative (meliorative) words in the opposite meanings (cf. ENANTIOSEMY): You’re in complimentary mood today, aren’t you? First you called my explanation rubbish and now you call me a liar; b) “worsening” of the meliorative connotation of a word: I’m very glad you think so, Lady Sneerwell; c) the acquisition of a pejorative connotation by a non-evaluative word: Jack: If you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt. – Algernon: Your aunt; Ironic use of words is accompanied by specific suprasyntactic prosody.
zeugma (a variant of SYLLEPSIS) – a figure of speech using a verb or adjective with two nouns, to one of which it is strictly applicable while the word appropriate to the other is not used: 1) to kill the boys and / destroy / the luggage; 2) with weeping eyes and / grieving / hearts; 3) Michael... suggested to the camera that it would miss the train. It at once took a final photograph of Michael in front of the hut, two cups of tea at the manor, and its departure (J. Galsworthy).
pun (or PLAY UPON WORDS) – a figure which consists in a humorous use of words identical in sound but different in meaning, or the use of different meanings of the same word: “What's the matter with the boy?” – exlaimed Wardle. “Nothen's the matter with me”, – replied Joe, nervously. “Have you been seeing any spirits?” – inquired the old gentleman. “Or taking any?” – added Ben Allen.
interjections and exclamatory words are words we use when we express our feelings strongly and which may be said to exist in language as conventional symbols of human emotions. Heaven, good gracious!, dear me!, God!, Come on!,Look here!, dear, by the Lord!, God knows!, Bless me!, Humbug! and many others of this kind are not interjections as such; a better name for them would be exclamatory words generally used as interjections, i.e. their function is that of the interjection.
epithet is an attributive characterization of a person, thing or phenomenon. Having a logical meaning, it acquires in the context emotive meaning, rendering the subjective attitude of the writer towards the concepts he evaluates. Semantically we distinguish:
– fixed (logical/usual/objective) epithets are fixed word-combination which have become traditional: sweet smile; blue sky;
– affective (emotive) epithets serve to convey the emotional evaluation of the object by the speaker: gorgeous, nasty, magnificent;
– figurative (transferred/metaphoric) epithets are formed of metaphors, metonymies and similes expressed by adjectives: the smiling sun.
Structurally we distinguish:
– simple epithets (built like simple adjectives): true love; wide sea;
– compound epithet (built like compound adjectives): heart-burning sigh;
– phrase/sentence epithets – a phrase or even a sentence which has lost its independence and come to refer to a noun describing human behaviour or look (used with the words: 'attitude', 'look', 'expression'). The words in the phrase or sentence epithet are hyphenated or written in inverted commas: a move-if-you-dare expression (“a move-if-you-dare” expression); She looked at me with that please-don’t-touch-me look of hers. (She looked at me with that “ please don’t touch me” look of hers);
– reversed (inverted) epithet – two nouns connected in an “of” – phrase where one part is metaphorical: this devil of a woman; the prodigy of a child;
– chain of epithets – a number of epithets which give a many-sided description of an object. Each next epithet is stronger than the previous one, the last is the strongest (from the speaker's point of view): her large blue crying crasy eyes.
oxymoron is a figure of speech by means of which contradictory words (notions) are combined: 1) To live a life half-dead, a living death (Milton); 2) Thou art to me a delicious torment (Emerson); 3) And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true (A. Tennyson).
I. Speak on the following:
1. Lexical EMs & SDs based on the interaction of the nominative and contextually imposed meaning:
a) metaphor;
b) antonomasia;
c) metonymy;
d) irony.
2. Lexical EMs & SDs based on the interaction of the nominative and the derivative logical meaning:
a) zeugma;
b) pun.
3. Lexical EMs & SDs based on the interaction of the logical and the emotive meaning:
a) interjections and exclamatory words;
b) epithets;
c) oxymoron.
II. In your books of either home reading or individual reading find the above mentioned expressive means and stylistic devices and comment upon their structure and stylistic function.
III. Do the following exercises:
Exercise I. Study the following examples of metaphor identifying the tenor, vehicle and ground for comparison as well as naming the type of metaphorical transfer:
1. And the skirts! What a sight were those skirts! They were nothing but vast decorated pyramids; on the summit of each was stuck the upper half of a princess (A.B.).
2. She was handsome in a rather leonine way. Where this girl was a lioness, the other was a panther-lithe and quick (Ch.).
3. He felt the first watery eggs of sweat moistening the palms of his hands (W.S.).
4. He smelled the ever-beautiful smell of coffee imprisoned in the can (J.St.).
5. They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate (W.G.).
6. Geneva, mother of the Red Cross, hostess of humanitarian congresses for the civilizing of warfare! (J.R.).
7. Autumn comes
And trees are shedding their leaves,
And Mother Nature blushes
Before disrobing (N.W.).
Exercise II. Indicate metonymies, state the type of relations between the object named and the object implied, which they represent, also pay attention to the degree of their originality, and to their syntactical function:
1. He went about her room, after his introduction, looking at her pictures, her bronzes and clays, asking after the creator of this, the painter of that, where a third thing came from (Dr.).
2. She wanted to have a lot of children, and she was glad that things were that way, that the Church approved. Then the little girl died. Nancy broke with Rome the day her baby died. It was a secret break, but no Catholic breaks with Rome casually (J.O'H.).
3. “Evelyn Clasgow, get up out of that chair this minute”. The girl looked up from her book.
“What's the matter?”
“Your satin. The skirt'll be a mass of wrinkles in the back” (E.F.).
4. She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms (A.B.).
5. “Some remarkable pictures in this room, gentlemen. A Holbein, two Van Dycks and if I am not mistaken, a Velasquez. I am interested in pictures” (Ch.).
6. I crossed a high toll bridge and negotiated a no man's land and came to the place where the Stars and Stripes stood shoulder to shoulder with the Union Jack (J.St.).
7. He made his way through the perfume and conversation (I.Sh.).
Exercise III. Analyse various cases of play on words, indicate which type is used, how it is created, what effect it adds to the utterance:
1. After a while and a cake he crept nervously to the door of the parlour (A.T.).
2. There are two things I look for in a man. A sympathetic character and full lips (I.Sh.).
3. Dorothy, at my statement, had clapped her hand over mouth to hold down laughter and chewing gum (Jn.B.).
4. “Someone at the door”, – he said, blinking. “Some four, I should say by the sound”, – said Fili (A.T.).
5. He may be poor and shabby, but beneath those ragged trousers beats a heart of gold (E.).
6. Babbitt respected bigness in anything: in mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth or words (S.L.).
7. Men, pals, red plush seats, white marble tables, waiters in white aprons. Miss Moss walked through them all (M.).
8. My mother wearingher best grey dress and gold brooch and a faint pink flush under each cheek bone (W.Gl.).
9. “There is only one brand of tobacco allowed here – ‘Three nuns’. None today, none tomorrow, and none the day after” (Br.B.).
10. “Good morning”, – said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining and the grass was very green (A.T.).
Exercise IV. In the following excerpts you will find mainly examples of verbal irony. Explain what conditions made the realization of the opposite evaluation possible. Pay attention to the part of speech which is used in irony, also its syntactical function:
1. When the war broke out she took down the signed photograph of the Kaiser and, with some solemnity, hung it in the men-servants' lavatory; it was her one combative action (E.W.).
2. From her earliest infancy Gertrude was brought up by her aunt. Her aunt had carefully instructed her to Christian principles. She had also taught her Mohammedanism, to make sure (L.).
3. “Well. It's shaping up into a lovely evening, isn't it?”
“Great”, – he said.
“And if I may say so, you're doing everything to make it harder,
you little sweet” (D.P.).
4. Mr. Wholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business, but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater attorneys to be a most respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice which is a mark of respectability, he never takes any pleasure, which is another mark of respectability, he is reserved and serious which is another mark of respectability. His digestion is impaired which is highly respectable (D.).
5. Several months ago a magazine named Playboy which concentrates editorially on girls, books, girls, art, girls, music, fashion, girls and girls, published an article about old-time science-fiction (M.St.).
6. Apart from splits based on politics, racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds and specific personality differences, we're just one cohesive team (D.U.).
7. I had been admitted as a partner in the firm of Andrews and Bishop, and throughout 1927 and 1928 I enriched myself and the firm at the rate of perhaps forty dollars a month (Jn.B.).
8. Last time it was a nice, simple, European-style war (I.Sh.).
9. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. As the great champion of freedom and national independence he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it Colonization (B.Sh.).
Exercise V. Analyse the following cases of antonomasia. State the type of meaning employed and implied; indicate what additional information is created by the use of antonomasia; pay attention to the morphological and semantic characteristics of common nouns used as proper names:
1. Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon (O.W.).
2. Cats and canaries had added to the already stale house an entirely new dimension of defeat. As I stepped down, an evil-looking Tom slid by us into the house (W.Gl.).
3. Kate kept him because she knew he would do anything in the world if he were paid to do it or was afraid not to do it. She had no illusions about him. In her business Joes were necessary (J.St.).
4. In the moon-landing year what choice is there for Mr. and Mrs. Average-the programme against poverty or the ambitious NASA project? (M.St.).
5. We sat down at a table with two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble (Sc.F.).
Exercise VI. Discuss the structure and semantics of epithets in the following examples. Define the type and function of epithets:
1. He has that unmistakable tall lanky “rangy” loose-jointed graceful closecropped formidably clean American look (I.M.).
2. He's a proud, haughty, consequential, turned-nosed peacock (D.).
3. The Fascisti, or extreme Nationalists, which means black-shirted, knife-carrying, club-swinging, quick-stepping, nineteen-year-old-pot-shot patriots, have worn out their welcome in Italy (H.).
4. Harrison-a fine, muscular, sun-bronzed, gentle-eyed, patrician-nosed, steak-fed, Gilman-Schooled, soft-spoken, well-tailored aristocrat was an out-and-out leaflet-writing revolutionary at the time (Jn.B.).
5. Her painful shoes slipped off (U.).
6. She was a faded white rabbit of a woman (A.C.).
7. And she still has that look, that don't-you-touch-me look, that women who were beautilul carry with them to the grave (J.B.).
8. Ten-thirty is a dark hour in a town where respectable doors are locked at nine (T.C.).
9. “Thief! – Pilon shouted. – Dirty pig of an untrue friend!”(J.St.).
10. He acknowledged an early-afternoon customer with a be-with-you-in-a-minute nod (D.U.).
11. His shrivelled head bobbed like a dried pod on his frail stick of a body (J.G.).
12. The children were very brown and filthily dirty (V.W.).
13. Liza Hamilton was a very different kettle of Irish. Her head was small and round and it held small and round convictions (J.St.).
Exercise VII. In the following sentences pay attention to the structure and semantics of oxymorons. Also indicate which of their members conveys the individually viewed feature of the object and which one reflects its generally accepted characteristic:
1. He caught a ride home to the crowded loneliness of the barracks (J.).
2. Sprinting towards the elevator he felt amazed at his own cowardly courage (G.M.).
3. He behaved pretty lousily to Jan (D.C.).
4. There were some bookcases of superbly unreadable books (E.W.).
5. Absorbed as we were in the pleasures of travel-and I in my modest pride at being the only examinee to cause a commotion-we were over the old Bridge (W.G.).
6. Harriet turned back across the dim garden. The lightless light looked down from the night sky (I.M.).
7. Sara was a menace and.a tonic, my best enemy; Rozzie was a disease, my worst friend (J.Car.).
9. A neon sign reads: “Welcome to Reno-the biggest little town in the world” (A.M.).
10. Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield are Good Bad Boys of American literature (V.).
11. You have got two beautiful bad examples for parents (Sc.F.).
Reference list:
1. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Part IV (B). P. 139–164.
2. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Гл. 1, §13–14. С. 123–136; Гл. 2, §1–6. C. 150–175.
3. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. P. 47–70; 73–76.
LEXICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS
AND STYLISTIC DEVICES
PECULIAR USE OF SET EXPRESSIONS
STYLISTIC FUNCTIONING
OF MORPHOLOGIVAL FORMS
Seminar 3
Essential Terms:
simile (or LITERARY COMPARISON) a figure of speech which consists in an explicit likening of one thing to another on the basis of a common feature: 1) Bees flew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers (Laurie Lee); 2) Marjorie… appeared quite unconscious of the rarity of herself... wearing her beauty like a kind of sleep (Laurie Lee).
periphrasis – a figure of speech which names a familiar object or phenomenon in a round – about or indirect way (by means of a circumlocution instead of a word):
1) Of all the days that's in the week
I dearly love but one day –
And that's the day that comes between
A Saturday and Monday;
2) I understand you are poor and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced (Dickens).
Periphrases are classified into:
a) figurative (metonymic and metaphoric) – phrase-metonymies and phrase-metaphors: The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of the fighting in Africa (I.Sh.);
b) logical – phrases synonymic with the words which were substituted by periphrases: Mr. Du Pont was dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires (M.St.).
Periphrasis may be also considered euphemistic when offers a more polite qualification instead of a coarser one.
euphemism. I. A trope in which an unpleasant or offensive thing is described by an indirect, polite or conventional word: With my various friends we had visited most of these tiny, dark, smoky bars, and drunk drinks of minute size and colossal price and watched the female ‘ hostesses ’ at their age-old work (G. Durrell).
II. A figure of speech which consists in describing an unpleasant or offensive object or phenomenon in a polite round-about way (a variant of periphrasis): They think we have come by this horse in some dishonest manner (Dickens).
hyperbole – a trope which consist in a deliberate exaggeration of a feature essential to an object or phenomenon (cf. MEIOSIS). The function is to intensify the feature: Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old (Sc. Fitzgerald).
meiosis – a trope which consists in a deliberate understatement: a sparrow of a woman; a tiny apartment.
decomposition of a set phrase is alike to pun (play upon words), it is the interplay between the literal meaning and the phraseological meaning (i.e. figurative):
– I'm eating my heart out.
– It's evidently a diet that agrees with you. You are growing fat on it
(Maugham).
allusion is a reference to characters and events of mythology, legends, history, specific places, literary characters that, by some association, have come to stand for a certain thing or idea. They are based on the accumulated experience and knowledge of the writer who expects a similar knowledge of the reader. The full impact of an allusion comes to the reader who is aware of the origin of the word, phrase, place or character allude to: The town gossips called her Virgin Jekyll and Miss Hyde (N. Mailer).
The allusion here is to R.L. Stevenson’s story “a strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”.
MORPHEMIC REPETITION – repetition of the affix in a number of adjacent words: It was there again, more clearly than before: the terrible expression of pain in her eyes; unblinking, unaccepting, unbelieving pain.
THE EXTENSION OF MORPHEMIC VALENCY – a stylistic device which is based on ascribing of a morpheme of one part of speech to another, which is normally not correlated with this part of speech: “ Mr. Hamilton, you haven’t any children, have you?” “Well, no. And I’m sorry about that I guess. I am sorriest about that”.
I. Speak on the following:
1. Figure of identity:
a) simile;
b) periphrasis & euphemism as a variant of periphrasis.
2. Figures of inequality:
a) hyperbole;
b) meiosis.
3. Particular use of set expressions:
a) decomposition of a set phrase;
b) allusion.
4. The stylistic functioning of grammatical forms:
a) morphemic repetition and the extension of morphemic valency.
II. In your books of either home reading or individual reading find the above mentioned expressive means and stylistic devices and comment upon their structure and stylistic function.
III. Do the following exercises:
Exercise I. Discuss the following cases of simile. Pay attention to the semantics of the tenor and the vehicle, to the briefer sustained manner of their presentation. Indicate the foundation of the simile, both explicit and implicit. Find examples of disguised similes, do not miss the link word joining the two parts of the structure:
1. The menu was rather less than a panorama, indeed, it was as repetitious as a snore.
2. The topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a yawn.
3. Penny-in-the-slot machines stood there like so many vacant faces, their dials glowing and flickering – for nobody.
4. As wet as a fish – as dry as a bone; as live as a bird – as dead as a stone; as plump as a partridge – as crafty as a rat; as strong as a horse – as weak as a cat; as hard as a flint – as soft as a mole; as white as a lily – as black as coal; as plain as a pike – as rough as a bear; as tight as a dram – as free as the air; as heavy as lead – as light as a feather; as steady as time – uncertain as weather; as hot as an oven – as cold as a frog; as gay as a lark – as sick as a dog; as savage as a tiger – as mild as adove; as stiff as a poker – as limp as a glove; as blind as a bat – as deaf as a post; as cool as a cucumber – as warm as toast; as flat as a flounder – as round as a ball; as blunt as a hammer – as sharp as an awl; as brittle as glass – as tough as gristle; as neat as a pin – as clean as a whistle; as red as a rose – as square as a box.
5. She has always been as live as a bird.
Exercise II. In the following examples concentrate on cases of hyperbole and understatement. Pay attention to their originality or staleness, to other SDs promoting their effect, to exact words containing the foregrounded emotive meaning:
1. I was scared to death when he entered the room (S.).
2. The girls were dressed to kill (J.Br.).
3. Newspapers are the organs of individual men who have jockeyed themselves to be party leaders, in countries where a new party is born every hour over a glass of beer in the nearest cafe (J.R.).
4. I was violently sympathetic, as usual (Jn.B.).
5. Four loudspeakers attached to the flagpole emitted a shattering roar of what Benjamin could hardly call music, as if it were played by a collection of brass bands, a few hundred fire engines, a thousand blacksmiths' hammers and the amplified reproduction of a force-twelve wind (A.S.).
6. The car which picked me up on that particular guilty evening was a Cadillac limousine about seventy-three blocks long (J.B.).
7. Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old (Sc.F.).
8. He didn't appear like the same man; then he was all milk and honey-now he was all starch and vinegar (D.).
9. She was a giant of a woman. Her bulging figure was encased in a green crepe dress and her feet overflowed in red shoes. She carried a mammoth red pocketbook that bulged throughout as if it were stuffed with rocks (Fl.O'C.).
10. She was very much upset by the catastrophe that had befallen the Bishops, but it was exciting, and she was tickled to death to have someone fresh to whom she could tell all about it (S.M.).
11. Babbitt's preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general European War (S.M.).
12. The little woman, for she was of pocket size, crossed her hands solemnly on her middle (G.).
13. We danced on the handkerchief-big space between the speak-easy tables (R.W.).
14. She wore a pink hat, the size of a button (J.R.).
15. She was a sparrow of a woman (Ph.L.).
16. And if either of us should lean toward the other, even a fraction of an inch, the balance would be upset (O.W.).
17. He smiled back, breathing a memory of gin at me (W.G.).
18. About a very small man in the Navy. This new sailor stood five feet nothing in sea boots (Th.P.).
19. She busied herself in her midget kitchen (Т.С.).
20. The rain had thickened, fish could have swum through the air (T.C.).
Exercise III. Analyse the given periphrases from the viewpoint of their semantic type, structure, function and originality:
1. His face was red, the back of his neck overflowed his collar and there had recently been published a second edition of his chin.
2. His huge leather chairs were kind to the femurs.
3. He would make some money and then he would come back and marry his dream from Blackwood.
4. The villages were full of women who did nothing but fight against dirt and hunger and repair the effects of friction on clothes.
5. I took my obedient feet away from him.
Exercise IV. Explain the meaning of these euphemisms:
1. “I expect you’d like a wash, – Mrs. Thompson said. The bathroom’s to the right and the usual offices next to it”.
2. Why, in the name of all the infernal powers, Mrs. Merdle...?
3. He did not talk to them; they had already been told exactly what each of them was to do, and who was to do what in case the first-choice man kicked the bucket or was otherwise out.
4. Brown came to see me yesterday, and from what he told me, the poor chap doesn’t seem to have a shirt to his back. He has been out of employment for over a year now!
5. She did one good thing – the dumb girl in that Russian play. But she can’t speak for nuts; you’re following the sense of her words all the time.
Exercise VI. Pay attention to the stylistic function of various lexical expressive means used individually and in convergence:
1. Constantinople is noisy, hot, hilly, dirty and beautiful. It is packed with uniforms and rumors (H.).
2. Across the street a bingo parlour was going full blast; the voice of the hot dog merchant split the dusk like an axe. The big blue blared down the street (R.Ch.).
3. “I guess, – said Mr. Hiram Fish sotto voce to himself and the world at large, – that this has been a great little old week” (Ch.).
4. The good ships Law and Equity, these teak-built, copper-bottomed, iron-fastened, brazen-faced, and not by any means fast-sailing Clippers, are laid up in ordinary (D.).
5. An enormous grand piano grinned savagely at the curtains as if it would grab them, given the chance (W.Gl.).
6. On little pond the leaves floated in peace and praised heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over them (G.).
7. From the throats of the ragged black men, as they trotted up and down the landing-stage, strange haunting notes. Words were caught up, tossed about, held in the throat. Word-lovers, sound-lovers-the blacks seemed to hold a tone in some warm place, under their red tongues perhaps. Their thick lips were walls under which the tone hid (Sh.A.).
8. It was relief not to have to machete my way through a jungle of what-are-you-talking-aboutery before I could get at him (J.A.).
9. Outside the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed with fat stomachs (J.R.).
10. The owner, now at the wheel, was the essence of decent self-satisfaction; a baldish, largish, level-eyed man, rugged of neck but sleek and round of face-face like the back of a spoon bowl (S.L.).
11. His fingertips seemed to caress the wheel as he nursed it over the dark winding roads at a mere whispering sixty (L.Ch.).
12. We plunged in and out of sun and shadow-pools, and joy, a glad-to-be-alive exhilaration, jolted through me like a jigger of nitrogen (Т.С.).
13. These jingling toys in his pocket were of eternal importance like baseball or Republican Party (S.L.).
Exercise VI. State the function of the following cases of morphemic repetition:
1. She unchained, unbolted and unlocked the door (A.B.).
2. It was there again, more clearly than before: the terrible expression of pain in her eyes; unblinking, unaccepting, unbelieving pain (D.U.).
3. We were sitting in the cheapest of all the cheap restaurants that cheapen that very cheap and noisy street, the Rue des Petits Champs in Paris (H.).
4. Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi's people brought him home in triumph (H.C.).
5. The procession then re-formed; the chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was recommenced (D.).
6. We are overbrave and overfearful, overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers, we're oversentimental and realistic (P.St.).
7. There was then a calling over of names, and great work of signing, sealing, stamping, inking, and sanding, will exceedingly blurred, gritty and undecipherable results (D.).
8. Three million years ago something had passed this way, had left this unknown and perhaps unknowable symbol оf its purpose, and had returned to the planets – or to the stars (A.C.).
9. “Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling fool parrot! Sit down!” (D.).
Exercise VII. Analyze the morphemic structure and the purpose of creating the occasional words in the following examples:
1. The girls could not take off their panama hats because this was not far from the school gates and hatlessness was an offence (M.Sp.).
2. David, in his new grown-upness, had already a sort of authority (I.M.).
3. That fact had all the unbelievableness of the sudden wound (R.W.).
4. Lucy wasn't Willie's luck. Or his unluck either (R.W.).
5. She was waiting for something to happen or for everything to un-happen (Т.Н.).
6. “You asked him”.
“I'm un-asking him”, – the Boss replied (R.W.).
7. She was a young and unbeautiful woman (I.Sh.).
8. “Mr. Hamilton, you haven't any children, have you?”
“Well, no. And I'm sorry about that, I guess. I am sorriest about
that” (J.St.).
9. To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged, by Belladonna Took's son! (A.T.).
Reference list:
1. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Part IV. P. 166–177; 187–189.
2. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. P. 23–28; 70–73; 108–113; 115–118.
SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS
AND STYLISTIC DEVICES:
COMPOSITIONAL PATTERNS
OF SYNTACTICAL ARRANGEMENT
Seminar 4
Within the language as a system there establish themselves certain definite types of relations between words, word-combinations, sentences and also between larger spans of utterances. The branch of language science which studies the types of relations between the units enumerated is called syntax.
In the domain of syntax, however, as it has been justly pointed out by L.A.Bulakhovsky, it is difficult to distinguish between what is purely grammatical, i.e. marked as corresponding to the established norm, and what is stylistically marked, i.e. showing some kind of vacillation of these norms.
Generally speaking, the examination of syntax provides a deeper insight into the stylistic aspect of the utterance.
Stylistics takes as an object of its analysis the expressive means and stylistic devices of the language which are based on some significant structural point in an utterance, whether it consists of one sentence or a number of sentences.
The structural syntactical aspect is sometimes regarded as the crucial issue in stylistic analysis, although the peculiarities of syntactical arrangement are not so conspicuous as the lexical and phraseological properties of the utterance. However there are 2 general principles on which most of the syntactical means are built:
1. The juxtaposition of different parts of the utterance.
2. The way the parts of the utterance are connected with each other.
In addition to these two large groups of expressive means and stylistic devices two others may be singled out:
3. Those based on the peculiar use of colloquial constructions.
4. Those based on the use of structural meaning.
Unlike the syntactical expressive means of the language, which are naturally used in discourse in a straight-forward natural manner, syntactical stylistic devices are perceived as elaborate designs aimed at having a definite impact on the recipient.
Essential Terms:
inversion – the reversal of the normal order of words in a sentence, for the sake of emphasis (in prose) or for the sake of the metre (in poetry): Dark they were and golden-eyed (Bradbury).
The stylistic inversion has the following patterns:
1) the object is placed at the beginning of the sentence (before the subject);
2) the attribute is placed after the word it modifies;
3) the predicative is placed before the subject;
4) the predicative is placed before the link-verb and both are placed before the subject;
5) the adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence;
6) both the adverbial modifier and the predicate are placed before the subject.
Various types of stylistic inversion are aimed at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the sentence.
* Note: It is important to draw a line of demarcation between grammatical inversion and stylistic inversion. Stylistic inversion does not change the grammatical type of the syntactical structure. Compare the following:
They slid down.
Did they slide down? (grammatical inversion).
Down they slid (stylistic inversion).
** Note: The sphere in which all sorts of inversion can be found is colloquial speech. Here it is not so much a stylistic device as the result of spontaneity of speech and the informal character of the latter.
PARENTHESIS (PARENTHETIC WORDS, PHHRASES AND SENTENCES) mostly evaluate what is said or supply some kind of additional information. Parenthetic elements comprising additional information are a kind of protest against the linear character of the text. Parenthetic segments perform a number of stylistic functions, such as:
(a) the creation of a second plane, or background to the narrative;
(b) the creation of a mingling of ‘voices’ of different speech parties
(‘polyphony’);
(c) focusing on the information in parentheses.
Special punctuation marks the usage of parenthesis. It usually includes using dashes or brackets; commas are possible but infrequent. Besides, parentheses are independent enough to function as exclamatory or interrogative segments of declarative sentences.
DETACHED CONSTRUCTION (detachment) – one of the secondary parts of the sentence is detached from the word it refers to and is made to seem independent of this word. Such parts are called detached and marked off by brackets, dashes or commas or even by full stops or exclamation marks: I have to beg you for money! Daily!
parallel construction (or SYNTACTIC PARALLELISM) – a figure based on the use of the similar syntactic pattern in two or more sentences or syntagms:
1) When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead –
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken.
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot (P.B. Shelley);
2) I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison and ye came into me (St. Matthew).
chiasmus (reversed parallel constructions) – a figure of speech based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern with a reverse word-order (see: SYNTACTIC PARALLELISM):
1) Let the long contention cease:
Geese are swans, and swans are geese (M. Arnold);
2) Beauty is truth, truth beauty t – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know (Keats);
3) But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first
(St. Matthew).
SUSPENsE (retardation) is a deliberate delay in the completion of the expressed thought. What has been delayed is the main task of the utterance, and the reader awaits the completion of the utterance with an everincreasing tension. A suspence is achieved by a repeated occurrence of phrases or clauses expressing condition, supposition, time and the like, all of which hold back the conclusion of the utterance: “ Mankind, – says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend was obliging enough to read and explain to me, – for the firsteventy thousand ages ate their meat raw ” (Ch.L.).
I. Speak on the following:
Compositional patterns of syntactical arrangement:
1) inversion;
2) parenthesis;
3) detachment;
4) parallel constructions;
5) reversed parallel constructions (chaismus);
6) suspense.
II. In your books of either home reading or individual reading find the above mentioned expressive means and stylistic devices and comment upon their structure and stylistic function.
III. Do the following exercises:
Exercise I. Find and analyse cases of detachment, suspense and inversion. Comment on the structure and functions of each:
1. She was crazy about you. In the beginning (R.W.).
2. Of all my old association, of all my old pursuits and hopes of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me (D.).
3. On, on he wandered, night and day, beneath the blazing sun, and the cold pale moon; through the dry heat of noon, and the damp cold of night; in the grey light of morn and the red glare of eve (D.).
4. Benny Collan, а respected guy, Benny Collan wants to marry her. An agent could ask for more? (T.C.).
5. Women are not made for attack. Wait they must (J.C.).
6. Out came the chase – in went the horses – on sprang – the boys – in got the travellers (D.).
7. Then he said: “You think it's so? She was mixed up in this lousy business?” (J.B.).
8. And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all the hamlets which they had been passing. Only to the eyes of a Kennicot was it exceptional (S.L.).
Exercise II. Find and analyse cases of detachment, parenthesis, and suspense. Comment on the structure and functions of each:
1. I regarded us as lost souls, condemned by the Fates (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos – I remember looking them up, and weeping at the justice of their names) never to consummate our love, separated by prior commitments and by barriers of position and caste (be sure I never mentioned this to her!), et cetera, et cetera (B.).
2. She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza’s boy. Around the mouth (S.).
3. He observes it all with a keen quick glance, not unkindly, and full rather of amusement than of censure (V.W.).
4. It was not the monotonous days uncheckered by variety and uncheered by pleasant companionship, it was not the dark dreary evenings or the long solitary nights, it was not the absence of every slight and easy pleasure for which young hearts beat high or the knowing nothing of childhood but its weakness and its easily wounded spirit, that had wrung such tears from Nell (D.).
5. Here is a long passage – what an enormous perspective I make of it! – leading from Peggoty’s kitchen to the front door (D.).
6. I have been accused of bad taste. This has disturbed me not so much for my own sake (since I am used to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune) as for the sake of criticism in general (Mgh.).
7. … he was struck by the thought (what devil’s whisper? – what evil hint of an evil spirit?) – supposing that he and Roberta – (no, say he and Sondra – no, Sondra could swim so well, and so could he) – he and Roberta were in a small boat somewhere and it should capsize at the very time, say, of this dreadful complication which was so harassing him? What an escape! What a relief from a gigantic and by now really destroying problem! On the other hand – hold – not so fast! – for could a man even think of such a solution in connection with so difficult a problem as this without committing a crime in his heart, really – a horrible, terrible crime? (Dr.).
8. The main entrance (he had never ventured to look beyond that) was a splendiferous combination of a glass and iron awning, coupled with a marble corridor lined with palms (Dr.).
That bit of gold meant food, life… power to go on writing and – who was to say? – maybe to write something that would bring in many pieces of gold (J.L.).
Reference list:
1. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Part V. P. 191–193; 202–219.
2. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Гл. IV. С. 217–223.
3. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. P. 89–90; 93–95.
SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS
AND STYLISTIC DEVICES:
COMPOSITIONAL PATTERNS
OF SYNTACTICAL ARRANGEMENT
Seminar 5
Essential Terms:
repetition is based upon a repeated occurrence of one and the same word-group. And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her (A.B.). Depending upon the position a repeated unit occupies in the utterance there are several types of repetition:
Anaphora – the beginning of some successive sentences, syntagms, lines, etc. (with the same sounds, morphemes, words or word-combinations) is repeated – a…, a…, a…. The main stylistic function of anaphora is not so much to emphasize the repeated unit as to create the background for the nonrepeated unit, which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded.
Epiphora – repetition of the final word or word-group especially in poetry when some stanzas end with the same line – …a, …a, …a. The main function of epiphora is to add stress to the final words of the sentence.
Anadiplosis (Catch Repetition) – a figure which consists in the repetition of the same word at the end of one and at the beginning of the following sense-groups (or lines). Thus the two or more parts are linked …a, a…. Specification of the semantics occurs here too, but on a more modest level.
Chain Repetition – a string of several successive anadiplosis: …a, a…b, b…c, c…. It smoothly develops logical reasoning.
Framing – the beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end, thus forming the “frame” for the non-repeated part of the sentence (utterance) – a… a. The function of framing is to elucidate the notion mentioned in the beginning of the sentence. Between two appearances of the repeated unit there comes the developing middle part of the sentence which explains and clarifies what was introduced in the beginning, so that by the time it is used for the second time its semantics is concretized and specified.
Successive Repetition is a string of closely following each other reiterated units – … a, a, a …. This is the most emphatic type of repetition which signifies the peak of emotions of the speaker.
Ordinary Repetition emphasizes both the logical and the
emotional meanings of the reiterated word (phrase). In this type of repetition the repeated element has no definite place in the sentence or utterance.
prolepsis (syntactic tautology) – a figure of syntactic anticipation, the use of words not applicable till a later time. In prolepsis the noun subject is repeated in the form of a corresponding personal pronoun: Miss Tilly Webster, she slept forty days and nights without waking up (O’H.).
CLIMAX (gradation) is a figure based upon such an arrangement of parts of an utterance which secures a gradual increase in semantic significance or emotional tension: I don’t attach any value to money, I don’t care about it, I don’t know about it, I don’t want it, I don’t keep it, it goes away from me directly.
The increase in significance may be: logical, emotional or quantitative.
Logical – the relative importance of the components is looked from the point of view of the concepts embodied in them. Every successive word or word-combination in logical climax is semantically more important than the previous one.
Emotive climax is based on the relative emotive meaning. It is mainly found in one sentence as emotive charge cannot hold long. It is usually based on repetition of the semantic centre, usually expressed by an adjective or adverb and the introduction of an intensifier between the repeated items.
Quantitative is an evident increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts: numerical increase, concepts of measure and time.
ANTICLIMAX (BATHOS) is the reverse of climax. It is the descent from the sublime to the ridiculous. In this figure of speech emotive or logical importance accumulates only to be unexpectedly broken and brought down. The sudden reversal usually brings forth a humorous or ironic effect. Many paradoxes are based on anticlimax: America is the Paradise for women. That is why, like Eve, they are so extremely anxious to get out of it!
Very close to Bathos stands Paradox, a stylistic device presenting a self-contradicting idea, which nonetheless seems true (in the words of Yu. Skrebnev, it is a “seemingly absurd though in fact well-founded statement”). The slogans from 1984 by George Orwell illustrate this.
 |
In the framework of the Inner Party’s perverted logic there still is a certain sense in this nonsense: the less you know – the stronger you are, as you will be unable to commit thoughtcrime; being a slave, you do not have to be responsible for decisions made, which is a true way to freedom; to avert the danger of an inner war the country must be exhausted by a continuous and fruitless war with equally omnipotent neighbours.
antithesis (a variant of Syntactic Parallelism) – a figure of speech based on parallel constructions with contrasted words (usually antonyms):
1) Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword! (O. Wilde);
2) God made the country, and man made the town (Cowper).
nonsense of non-sequence rests on the extension of syntactical valency and results in joining two semantically disconnected clauses in