Hyperbole

E.g. You couldn't hear yourself think for the noise.

Meosis (understatement, litotes).

E. g. It's not unusual for him to come home at this hour.

According to Skrebnev this is the most primitive type of renaming.

Figures of quality comprise 3 types of renaming:

• transfer based on a real connection between the object of nomi­nation and the object whose name it's given.

This is called metonymy in its two forms: synecdoche and periphrasis.

E- g. I'm all ears; Hands wanted.

Periphrasis and its varieties euphemism and anti-euphemism.

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

2.2. Different classifications of expressive means

E. g. Ladies and the worser halves; I never call a spade a spade, I ca it a bloody shovel.

• transfer based on affinity (similarity, not real connection metaphor.

Personification— attributing human properties to lifeless objects.

E.g. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year! (Milton)

Antonomasia defined as a variety of allusion, because in Skrebnev's view it's the use of the name of a historical, literary, mythological or biblical personage applied to a person described. Some of the most famous ones are Brutus (traitor), Don Juan (lady's man).

It should be noted that this definition is only limited to the allusive nature of this device. There is another approach (cf. Galperin and others) in which antonomasia also covers instances of transference of common nouns in place of proper names, such as Mr. Noble Knight, Duke the Iron Heart.

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

2.2. Different classifications of expressive means

Allegory expresses abstract ideas through concrete pictures.

E. g. The scales of justice; It's time to beat your swords into ploughshar

It should be noted that allegory is not just a stylistic term, but als a term of art in general and can be found in other artistic forms: painting, sculpture, dance, and architecture.

• transfer by contrast when the two objects are opposed implies irony.

Irony (meaning «concealed mockery», in Greek eironeia) is a device based on the opposition of meaning to the sense (dictionary and contextual). Here we observe the greatest semantic shift between the notion named and the notion meant.

Skrebnev distinguishes 2 kinds of ironic utterances:

— obviously explicit ironical, which no one would take at their fac
value due to the situation, tune and structure.

E. g. A fine friend you are! That's a pretty kettle offish!

— and implicit, when the ironical message is communicated agaii
a wider context like in Oscar Wilde's tale «The Devoted Friend» I
where the real meaning of the title only becomes obvious after
you read the story. On the whole irony is used with the aim of
critical evaluation and the general scheme is praise stands for j
blame and extremely rarely in the reverse order. However when |
it does happen the term in the latter case is astheism.

E. g. Clever bastard! Lucky devil!

One of the powerful techniques of achieving ironic effect is the mixture of registers of speech (social styles appropriate for the occasion): high-flown style on socially low topics or vice versa.

Syntagmatic stylistics

Syntagmatic stylistics (stylistics of sequences) deals with the stylistic functions of linguistic units used in syntagmatic chains, in linear combinations, not separately but in connection with other units. Syntagmatic stylistics falls into the same level determined branches.

Syntagmatic phonetics deals with the interaction of speech sounds and intonation, sentence stress, tempo. All these features that charac­terise suprasegmental speech phonetically are sometimes also called prosodic.

So stylistic phonetics studies such stylistic devices and expressive means as alliteration (recurrence of the initial consonant in two or more words in close succession). It's a typically English feature because ancient English poetry was based more on alliteration than on rhyme. We find a vestige of this once all-embracing literary device in proverbs and sayings that came down to us.

E. g. Now or never; Last but not least; As good as gold.

With time its function broadened into prose and other types of texts.

It became very popular in titles, headlines and slogans.

». g. Pride and Prejudice. (Austin)

^posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club. (Dickens)

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

2.2. Different classifications of expressive means

Work or wages/; Workers of the world, unite!

Speaking of the change of this device's role chronologically we should make special note of its prominence in certain professional areas of modern English that has not been mentioned by Skrebnev. Today alliteration is one of the favourite devices of commercials and advertising language.

E. g. New whipped cream: No mixing or measuring. No beating or bothering.

Colgate toothpaste: The Flavor's Fresher than ever—It's New. Improved. Fortified.

Assonance (the recurrence of stressed vowels).

E. g.... Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden; /| shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore. (Рое)

Paronomasia (using words similar in sound but different in meaning with euphonic effect).

The popular example to illustrate this device is drawn from E. A. Poe's Raven.

E.g. And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting Rhythm and meter.

Rhyme is another feature that distinguishes verse from prose and consists in the acoustic coincidence of stressed syllables at the end of verse lines.

Here's an example to illustrate dactylic meter and rhyme given in Skrebnev's book

Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care, Fashion'd so slenderly Young and so fair.

(Hood)

Syntagmatic morphology deals with the importance of grammar forms used in a paragraph or text that help in creating a certain stylistic effect.

We find much in common between Skrebnev's description of this area and Leech's definition of syntagmatic deviant figures. Skrebnev writes: «Varying the morphological means of expressing grammatical notions is based... upon the general rule: monotonous repetition of morphemes or frequent recurrence of morphological meanings expressed differently...» (47, p. 146).

He also indicates that while it is normally considered a stylis­tic fault it acquires special meaning when used on purpose. He describes the effect achieved by the use of morphological syn­onyms of the genetive with Shakespeare— the possessive case (Shake­speare's plays), prepositional o/-phrase (the plays of Shakespeare) and an attributive noun (Shakespeare plays) as «elegant variation» of style.

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

2.2. Different classifications of expressive means

Syntagmatic lexicology studies the «word-and-context» juxtaposition that presents a number of stylistic problems—especially those con- nected with co-occurrence of words of various stylistic colourings.

Each of these cases must be considered individually because each literary text is unique in its choice and combination of words. Such phenomena as various instances of intentional and unintentional lexical mixtures as well as varieties of lexical recurrence fall in wifl this approach.

Some new more modern stylistic terms appear in this connection-stylistic irradiation, heterostylistic texts, etc. We can observe this sor of stylistic mixture in a passage from O'Henry provided by Skrebnev:

Jeff, says Andy after a long time, quite unseldom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business... (47, p. 149).

Syntagmatic syntax deals with more familiar phenomena since it has to do with the use of sentences in a text. Skrebnev distinguishes purely syntactical repetition to which he refers

parallelism as structural repetition of sentences though often accom- panied by the lexical repetition

E. g. The cock is crowing, The stream is flowing...

(Wordsworth)

and lexico-syntactical devices such as

anaphora (identity of beginnings, initial elements).

E. g. If only little Edward were twenty, old enough to marry well and fend for himself, instead often. If only it were not necessary to provide a dowaryforhis daughter. If only his own debts were less. (Rutherfurd)

Epiphora (opposite of the anaphora, identical elements at the end of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, stanzas).

E. g. For all averred, I had killed the bird. That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! Said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow!

(Coleridge)

Framing (repetition of some element at the beginning and at the end of a sentence, paragraph or stanza).

E. g. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. (Dickens)

Anadiplosis (the final element of one sentence, paragraph, stanza is repeated in the initial part of the next sentence, paragraph, stanza.

E.g. Three fishers went sailing out into the West. Out into the West, as the sun went down.

(Kingsley)

Chiasmus (parallelism reversed, two parallel syntactical constructions contain a reversed order of their members).

E. g. That he sings and he sings, and for ever sings he— I love my Love and my Love loves me!

(Coleridge)

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

2.2. Different classifications of expressive means

Syntagmatic semasiology or semasiology of sequences deals with semantic relationships expressed at the lengh of a whole text. As distinct from paradigmatic semasiology which studies the stylistic effect of renaming syntagmatic semasiology studies types of names used for linear arrangement of meanings.

Skrebnev calls these repetitions of meanings represented by sense units in a text figures of co-occurrence. The most general types of] semantic relationships can be described as identical, different orl opposite. Accordingly he singles out figures of identity, figures of\ inequality and figures of contrast.

Figures of identity

Simile (an explicit statement of partial identity: affinity, likeness, similarity of 2 objects).

E. g. My heart is like a singing bird. (Rosetti)

Synonymous replacement (use of synonyms or synonymous phrases to avoid monotony or as situational substitutes).

E. g. He brought home numberless prizes. He told his mother counties stories. (Thackeray)

E.g. I was trembly and shaky from head to foot.

Figures of inequality

Clarifying (specifying) synonyms (synonymous repetition used to

characterise different aspects of the same referent).

E.g. You undercut, sinful, insidious hog. (O'Henry)

Climax (gradation of emphatic elements growing in strength).

E. g. What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? (O'Henry).

Anti-climax (back gradation—instead of a few elements growing in intensity without relief there unexpectedly appears a weak or contrastive element that makes the statement humorous or ridiculous).

E. g. The woman who could face the very devil himself or a mouse—goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. (Twain)

Zeugma (combination of unequal, or incompatible words based on the economy of syntactical units).

E. g. She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief. (Dickens)

Pun (play upon words based on polysemy or homonymy).

E. g. What steps would you take if an empty tank were coming toward you?—Long ones.

Disguised tautology (semantic difference in formally coincidental parts of a sentence, repetition here does not emphasise the idea but carries a different information in each of the two parts).

E. g. For East is East, and West is West... (Kipling)

Figures of contrast

Oxymoron (a logical collision of seemingly incompatible words).

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

Practice Section

E. g. His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

(Tennyson)

Antithesis (anti-statement, active confrontation of notions used tol show the contradictory nature of the subject described).

E. g. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the era of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of Darkness... Hope... Despair. (Dickens)

His fees were high, his lessons were light. (O'Henry)

An overview of the classifications presented here shows rather varie approaches to practically the same material. And even though thej contain inconsistencies and certain contradictions they reflect tluj scholars' attempts to overcome an inventorial description of devices, They obviously bring stylistic study of expressive means to an advanced level, sustained by the linguistic research of the 20'^л century that allows to explore and explain the linguistic nature of the stylistic function. This contribution into stylistic theory made by modem' linguistics is not contained to classifying studies only. It has inspired exploration of other areas of research such as decoding stylistics or stylistic grammar that will be discussed in further chapters.

Practice Section

1. What is the relationship between the denotative and connotative meanings of a word?

Can a word connote without denoting and vice versa?

What are the four components of the connotative meaning and

how are they represented in a word if at all?

2. Expound on the expressive and emotive power of the noun thing in the following examples:

Jennie wanted to sleep with me—the sly thing/ But I told her I should undoubtedly rest better for a night alone. (Gilman)

-/ believe, one day, I shall fall awfully in love.

-Probably you never will, said Lucille brutally. That's what most old

maids are thinking all the time.

Yvette looked at her sister from pensive but apparently insouciant eyes.

Is it? she said. Do you really think so, Lucille? How perfectly awful for

them, poor things! (Lawrence)

She was an honest little thing, but perhaps her honesty was too rational. (Lawrence)

So they were, this queer couple, the tiny, finely formed little Jewess with

her big, resentful, reproachful eyes, and her mop of carefully-barbed black, curly hair, an elegant little thing in her way; and the big, pale-eyed young man, powerful and wintry, the remnant, surely of some old uncanny Danish stock... (Lawrence)

3. How do the notions of expressive means and stylistic devices
correlate? Provide examples to illustrate your point.

4. Compare the principles of classifications given in chapter 2.
Which of them seem most logical to you? Sustain your view.

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

Practice Section

Draw parallels between Leech's paradigmatic and syntagmatic deviations and Skrebnev's classification. Apply these criteria to the analysis of the use of brethren and married in the following examples. Consider the grammatical category of number in A and the nature of semantic transfer in B. Supply the kind of tables suggested by Leech to describe the normal and deviant features of similar character.

Comment on the kind of deviation in the nonce-word sistern in A and the effect it produces.

A. Praise God and not the Devil, shouted one of the Maker's male shills
from the other side of the room.

The criminal lowered his eyes and muttered at his shoes:

Ah cut anybody who bruise me with Latin, goddammit.

Listen to him take the Mighty name in vain, brethren and sistern/ said

Reinhart. (Berger)

B. My father was still feisty in 1940— he was thirty years old and
restless, maybe a little wild beneath the yoke of my mother's family. He
truly had married not only my mother but my grandmother as well, and
also the mule and the two elderly horses and the cows and chickens and
the two perilous-looking barns and the whole rocky hundred acres of
Carolina mountain farm. (Chappel)

5. What kind of syntagmatic deviation (according to Leech) is observed in the following instance? What is the term for this device in rhetoric and other stylistic classifications? Where does it belong according to Galperin and Skrebnev?

And in the manner of the Anglo-Saxon poetry that was its inspiration, he ended his sermon resoundingly:

High on the hill in sight of heaven,

Our Lord was led and lifted up.

That willing warrior came while the world wept,

And a terrible shadow shaded the sun

For us He was broken and gave His blood

King of all creation Christ on the Rood.

(Rutherfurd)

6. What types of phonographic expressive means are used in the sentences given below? How do different classifications name and place them?

Стоп, now. I'm not bringing this up with the idea of throwing anything back in your teeth—my God. (Salinger)

Little Dicky strains and yaps back from the safety of Mary's arms. (Erdrich)

Why shouldn't we all go over to the Metropole at Cwmpryddygfor dinner one night?" (Waugh)

I hear Lionel's supposeta be runnin away. (Salinger) Who's that dear, dim, drunk little man? (Waugh) No chitchat please. (O'Hara)

/ prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone—a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer... (Salinger)

* Here Cwmpryddyg is an invented Welsh town, an allusion to the difficult Welsh language.

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

Practice Section

Sense of sin is sense of waste. (Waugh)

Colonel Logan is in the army, and presumably «the Major» was a soldier at the time Dennis was born. (Follett)

7. Comment on the types of transfer used in such tropes as metaphor, metonymy, allegory, simile, allusion, personification, antonomasia. Compare their place in Galperin's and Skrebnev's systems. Read up on the nature of transfer in a poetic image in terms of tenor, vehicle and ground: И. В. Арнольд Стилистика современного английского языка. М., 1990. С. 74-82. Name and explain the kind of semantic transfer observed in the following passages.

The first time my father met Johnson Gibbs they fought like tomcats. (Chappel)

/ love plants. I don't like cut flowers. Only the ones that grow in the ground. And these water lilies... Each white petal is a great tear of milk. Each slender stalk is a green life rope. (Erdrich)

/ think we should drink a toast to Fortune, a much-maligned lady. (Waugh)

...the first sigh of the instruments seemed to free some hilarious and potent spirit within him; something that struggled there like the Genius in the bottle found by the Arab fisherman. (Cather)

But he, too, knew the necessity of keeping as clear as possible from that poisonous many-headed serpent, the tongue of the people. (Lawrence)

lily had started to ask me about Eunice. «Really, Gentle Heart», she said, «what in the world did you do to my poor little sister to make her skulk away like a thief in the night?» (Shaw)

The green tumour of hate burst inside her. (Lawrence)

She adjusted herself however quite rapidly to her new conception of people. She had to live. It is useless to quarrel with your bread and butter. (Lawrence)

...then the Tudors and the dissolution of the Church, then Lloyd George, the temperance movement, Non-conformity and lust stalking hand in hand through the country, wasting and ravaging. (Waugh)

When the stars threw down their spears, And water'd heaven with their tears, Did he smile his work to see?

(Blake)

As distinct from the above devices based on some sort of affinity, real or imaginary, there are a number of expressive means based on contrast or incompatibility (oxymoron, antithesis, zeugma, pun, malapropism, mixture of words from different stylistic strata of vocabulary), Their stylistic effect depends on the message and intent of the author and varies in emphasis and colouring. It maybe dramatic, pathetic, elevated, etc. Sometimes the ultimate stylistic effect is irony. Ironic, humorous or satiric effect is always built on contrast although devices that help to achieve it may not necessarily be based on contrast (e. g. they may be hyperbole, litotes, allusion, periphrasis, metaphor, etc.)

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

Some of the basic techniques to achieve verbal irony are:

• praise by blame (or sham praise) which means implying the opposite of what is said;

• minimizing the good qualities and magnifying the bad ones;

• contrast between manner and matter, i. e. inserting irrelev; matter in presumably serious statements;

• interpolating comic interludes in tragic narration;

• mixing formal language and slang;

• making isolated instances seem typical;

• quoting authorities to fit immediate purpose;

• allusive irony: specific allusions to people, ideas, situations, etc. that clash discordantly with the object of irony;

• connotative ambivalence: the simultaneous presence of incom­patible but relevant connotations.

Bearing this in mind comment on the humorous or ironic impact of the following examples.

Explain where possible what stylistic devices effect the techniques of verbal irony.

—Have you at any time been detained in a mental home or similar

institution? If so, give particulars.

I was at Scone College, Oxford, for two years, said Paul.

The doctor looked up for the first time.—Don't you dare to make jokes

here, my man, he said, or I'll have you in the strait-jacket in less than

no time. (Waugh)

I like that. Me trying to be funny. (Waugh)

Practice Section

I drew a dozen or more samples of what I thought were typical examples of American commercial art....I drew people in evening clothes stepping out of limousines on opening nights—lean, erect, super-chic couples who had obviously never in their lives inflicted suffering as a result of underarm carelessness—couples, in fact, who perhaps didn't have any underarms....I drew laughing, high-breasted girls aquaplaning without a care in the world, as a result of being amply protected against such national evils as bleeding gums, facial blemishes, unsightly hairs, and faulty or inadequate life insurance. I drew housewives who, until they reached for the right soap flakes, laid themselves wide open to straggly hair, poor posture, unruly children, disaffected husbands, rough (but slender) hands, untidy (but enormous) kitchens. (Salinger)

I made a Jell-0 salad.—Oh, she says, what kind?— The kind full of nuts and bolts, I say, plus washers of all types. I raided Russel's toolbox for the special ingredients. (Erdrich)

Was that the woman like Napoleon the Great? (Waugh)

They always say that she poisoned her husband... there was a great deal of talk about it at the time. Perhaps you remember the case?—No, said Paul—Powdered glass, said Flossie shrilly,—in his coffee.—Turkish coffee, said Dingy. (Waugh)

You folks all think the coloured man hasn't got a soul. Anythin's good enough for the poor coloured man. Beat him, put him in chains; load him with burdens... Here Paul observed a responsive glitter in Lady Circumference's eye. (Waugh)

In the south they also drink a good deal of tequila, which is a spirit "lade from the juice of the cactus. It has to be taken with a pinch of salt. (Atkinson)

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

Practice Section

«They could have killed you too, he said, his teeth chattering. If you had arrived two minutes earlier. Forgive me. Forgive all of us. Dolce Italia. Paradise for tourists.» He laughed eerily. (Shaw)

He was talking very excitedly to me, said the Vicar... He seems deeply interested in Church matters. Are you quite sure he is right in the head? I have noticed again and again since I have been in the Church that lay interest in ecclesiastical matters is often a prelude to insanity. (Waugh)

So you're the Doctor's hired assassin, eh? Well, I hope you keep a firm hand on my toad of a son. (Waugh)

9. Explain why the following sentences fall into the category of quasi-questions, quasi-statements or quasi-negatives in Skreb-nev's classification. What's their actual meaning?

—/ wish I could go back to school all over again.—Don't we all, he said. (Shaw)

Are all women different? Oh, are they! (O'Hara)

/ don't think no worse of you for it, no, darned if I do. (Lawrence)

If it isn't diamonds all over his fingers! (Caldwell)

Devil if I know what to make of these people down here. (Christie)

Contact my father again and I'll strangle you. (Donleavy)

Don't you ever talk to Rose?

Rose? Not about Mildred. Rose misses Mildred as much as I do. We

don't even want to see each other. (O'Hara)

10. Why are instances of repetition in the sentences given below
called disguised tautology? How does it differ from regular
tautology? What does this sort of repetition imply?

Life is life.

There are doctors and doctors.

A small town's a small town, wherever it is, I said. (Shute)

I got nothing against Joe Chapin, but he's not me. I'm me, and another man is still another man. (O'Hara)

Well, if it can't be helped, it can't be helped, I said manfully. (Shaw)

Milan is a city, which cannot be summed up in a few words. For Dalian speakers, the old Milanese dialect expression «Milan I'e Milam- (Milan is just Milan) is probably the best description one can give. iPeroni)

Beer was beer, too, in those days—not the gassy staff in bottles. (Dickens)

11. Does the term anti-climax (back-gradation) imply the opposite
of climax (gradation)? What effect does each of these devices
provide? How is it achieved in the following cases:

—Philbrick, there must be champagne-cup, and will you help the men putting up the marquee? And Flags, Diana!... No expense should be spared... And there must be flowers, Diana, banks officers, said the Doctor with an expensive gesture. The prizes shall stand among the banks of flowers-Flowers, youth, wisdom, the glitter of jewels, music, said ihe Doctor. I here must be a band.

Chapter 2. Expressive Resources of the Language

—I never heard of such a thing, said Dingy. A band indeed/ You'll be having fireworks next.

—Andfireworks, said the Doctor, and do you think it would be a good thing to buy Mr. Prendergast a new tie? (Waugh)

We needed a kind rain, a blessing rain, that lasted a week. We needed wafer. (Erdrich)

At first there were going to be forty guests but the invitation list grew larger and the party plans more elaborate, until Arthur said that with so many people they ought to hire an orchestra, and with an orchestra there would be dancing, and with dancing there ought to be a good sized orchestra. The original small dinner became a dinner dance at the Lantenengo Country Club. Invitations were sent to more than three hundred persons... (O'Hara)

Even the most hardened criminal there—he was serving his third sentence for blackmail—remarked how the whole carriage seemed to be flooded with the detectable savour of Champs-Elysee in early June. (Waugh)

Hullo, Prendy, old wine-skin! How are things with you?

Admirable, said Mr. Prendergast. I never have known them better. I

have just caned twenty-three boys. (Waugh)

Chapter 3

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