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Expressive means. Stylistic devices.
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Expressive means are such lexical, morphological, syntactical, phonetic and grammatical forms of language, which are used for logical or emotional intensification of speech. There’re expressive means on any level of language.
On the phonetic level- intonation patterns and stress.
On the morphological level we find a lot of ex.means: diminutive suffixes (daddy, booklet, piggy)
Some linguists point out the capacity of some tenses. Pr Perf is more emotional than Past Simple. It makes the action prominent. That’s why Past Simple is used in the case “sorry, I interrupted u’.
We use Pr Perf when we want to intensify the action (have u heard the news?). it’s not only the inquiry of the info, it may contain implification (surprise, shock). The Pres Ind in one of its meanings (the dramatic present) is surely an expressive means on the morphological level. It’s used to denote past action, but the pres form makes it more vivid. The Pres Cont brings the action to the foreground. It has a great illustrative force and sometimes acquires a distinct emotive meaning (she’s constantly grumbling). On the syntactical level we find patterns of different emphatic constructions, Indirect word order in declarative and exclamatory sentences (never have I seen such a nasty film). These are cases of obligatory inversion, but the sentences however are expressive. These cases of obligatory inversion are the expressive means (clever girl that she is).
The lexical level of any language is very rich in expressive means. Here we find interjections, intensifications. Interjections render the speaker’s immediate reaction. Intensifications: among them we find “horribly, awfully” (that’s terribly kind of u). the words like “awfully, pretty” lost their logical meaning and acquired a motive sense. We must also mention proverbs and sayings, and phraseological units. They also belong to the expressive means of the lexical level if the language. They express people’s historical and life experience in the most laconic way. They don’t only perform a nominating function, but also means of emotional facts.(a white elephant, in a golden cage, a wolf in a sheep’s clothing).
Sayings and proverbs are developed sentences which reflect common people’s experience. (never say never, there’s no smoke without a fire).
Phraseologiacal units are more expressive than non-phras.
Expressive means are expressive and emotive and they exist in the language as ready-made units. They’re reproduced in speech; they belong to the whole community of people speaking this language. They’re registered in dictionaries.
A stylistic device is a literary model in which semantic and structural features are blended so that it represents a generalized pattern. A sd combines some general semantic meaning with a certain linguistic resulting in stylistic effect. Sd are deliberately specified expressive and neutral means developed as special literary devices. They exist to carry a literary message. From this definition it’s clear that sd are not only fact of language but of literature. They have been developed to carry a literary message. This definition is certainly correct but rather wide and it admits of several interpretations.
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Sd are really phenomena of very complicated nature and different linguistic schools interpret sd differently.
The national British Language school as many representatives of America connect sd with the principle of defeated expectancy. The term was introduced by Mr. Refatte. The essence of the principle is our speech is automatic. 1 element determines the appearance of another element. We easily guess what may follow next. It’s connected with the rule of semantic agreement. (зеленый шум Тютчев=green years). We don’t expect such connotations. Our expectancy is defeated. Psychologically we’re surprised, our reading slows down. We see better on what we’re stumbled and it means we come across a sd.
Some linguists say that all sd are based on defeated expectancy.
There’s another interpretation of the stylistic devices offered by American linguist Chomsky. He called it “semi-marked structures”. Marked means correct. Semi-marked are grammatically correct but lexically strange. (colorless green ideas sleep furiously). At first sight line makes no sense, but in the context of a poem it becomes meaningful and admits interpretation.
The prague scientists interpret sd as facts of foregrounding. Foregrounding is the ability of the language element (sound, word) to obtain extra significance, to say more in different context. (эта школа связывает стилистические приемы с возможностью прирощения смысла у опр.языковых единиц.) every sd and expressive means is more than a neutral construction. Representatives of this school pay to the context which actualizes foregrounds.
Our Russian school points out that the fact that the mechanism for sd exists in the language itself (repetition, comparison, substitution). This mechanism can be actualized and this produces sd. Strange, but all these theories are right, they don’t exclude each other. Sd are complicated structures, they may be interpreted from different angles and representatives from different schools pay attention to diff features.
1)Classification of st devices.
2)Lexical st devices based on the interaction of two meanings.
1. The st devices all develop connotation. The classification of SD is not an easy task, because it seems possible to introduce one principle which will be true of all sd, that’s why linguists take into the consideration several factors: 1. Language level on which sd are actualized. There’re sd which are phonetical, graphical, lexical, syntactical. The term “figure of speech” is applied to syntactical sd.
2. Lexical sd based on the interaction of two meanings: a denotative meaning and a connotation, a primary and secondary meanings.
Metaphor. Is a sd which is based on the interaction of the denotative of the word and some connotation. The second meaning is foregrounded(выдвигается вперед). Metaphor is based on comparison. Two objects are compared because they have some common features or property; actually Metaphore is the act of main exchange. The traditional term is “transference”. (he was in the sunset of his days)
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Comparison is implicit (содержится внутри), it’s not on the surface, it’s implied. In metaphor the realization of two meanings is obligatory. The degree of expressiveness in a metaphor depends on the semantic distance between the objects compared. The wider is the gap the more expressive is the metaphor. The objects compared belong to different semantic classes. (at the last moment before the windy collapse of the day I went down to town. His voice was a dagger of crowded brass). There’s an opinion that the expressiveness depends on the part of speech. Galperin thinks that verbs make the most expressive metaphors. Nouns are in the 2nd place and adjectives- the last. This conclusion is difficult either to prove or disapprove, because we find expressive metaphors among various parts of speech. (the windy collapse of the day. John was springing in his heart. My life is cold and dark and dreary). Metaphors are fresh, Original, genuine when first used and they’re hackneyed when they are often repeated. Metaphores very often become a source of phraseological units. (a storm of indignation, floods of tears, the ray of hope, a shadow of a smile). Metaphors may be developed in complicated in complicated and many-sided images, expressed not by 1 word but a whole fragment. (memory is the seem stress and capricious one at that, memory runs her needle in and out, up and down, we now not what comes next, or what comes after.) in a developed Metaphor usually the initial image(a metaphorical word) is given additional details. Sometimes expanded Metaphor can combine a cluster of heterogeneous images brought together for the sake of emphasizing one idea. If a Metaphor involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects we deal with personification. (the town pretended to be a shelter. Notre dame squats in the dark)
Metonymy is another sd which is based on the interaction of accepted dictionary meaning, and its new contextual meaning. The mechanism of actuating the Metonymy is different it’s not comparison, but substitution. Substitution becomes possible as the objects have common grounds of existence and reality. In Metonymy we deal with contiguity of two things. One thing is associated with another because they actually exist together. The following types of connection are most frequent.: an object and its material (will u have another cup? She was wearing a very good silk) and instrument and the action it performs.(the pen is mightier than the sword), container and the substance. Kukharenko points out that this scope of metonymycal transferences is much more limited than that of metaphor, because contiguity doesn’t exist between only two objects, while the speaker can compare everything. We should distinguish between tryded metaphor (the press, the crown) and speech metonymy which is always fresh and unexpected. Metonymy performs a certain literary image function. Very often it creates ironical and satirical connotations in the text which reveals the writers’ and the characters’ attitude. (The one in the brown suit gaped at her. Blue suit greened, might even have winked. But big nose in the grey suit still stared and he had small angry eyes and didn’t even smile.) (the man looked a rather old 45) (each face on entering had struggled to conceal dismay on seeing others there)
Synecdoche. Is a metonymycal sd which is based on substitution. A part is put for the whole, or an individual for a class, or the singular number for the plural. (the war of jungle and mountain and marsh and paddy fields where the enemy simply disappear, but they arm and on peasant dress). (the painting was one misty view of sky, sea and valley)
Antonomasia. Is another metonymycal device based on the substitution of a proper name for a common noun, or vice versa. Such kind of substitution involves the interaction of the nominal meaning of the word and a denotational one. The nominal meaning of a proper name is suppressed by its denotational meaning, and the denotational meaning acquires a new nominal semantic component. Generally proper names have no logical denotational meaning. It has only nominal meaning. But the names MAY acquire logical meaning. In the days of the war all Russian soldiers were Ivans for the Germans and the Germans were Fritzes for the Russians.
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Types of Antonomasia
1. Speaking names (плюшкин, mr snake, mr begpide). The name implies a certain characteristic of a person. Very often speakers use common nouns for a quick characterization of person. Among common nouns they choose such a name which immediately gives a spontaneous characterization of a person (ms tomboy, miss sarcastic). (The next speaker was a tall gloomy man so smth smb)
2. A long line… (mrs who always….)
Epithet. A word or a phrase expressing some quality of a person, thing, idea or phenomena. It serves to emphasize a certain property or a feature. Epithets are generally used attributively but some linguists consider it also used predicatively. (she had a dazzling smile). Linguists don’t agree about the place of it among other sd. Galperin thinks it’s a lexical sd. Arnold- lexical syntactical sd. We must remember the expressive power of an epithet is actualized through the interaction of denotational meaning of a word and secondary emotive connotation.
We must distinguish between common attributes and epithets (a sweet cake and a sweet smile. A golden cup \ gold hands. A silver spoon/ a silvery voice). Epithets always foreground a subjective quality of a thing. They may be expressed by diff structures and diff parts of speech. They are expressed by a clause, word, phrase, and sometimes it looks like a sentence very much. Among the group of 1 word we may find readymade epithets. They exist in the language as readymade units. As a rule they are literary words of elevated register. (wonderers. Maidenly.) in this group we may also find words of low speech (killing thrilling) here we also find metaphorical epithets. These are words with an expressive connotation. (wonderful. Miraculous. He managed a crooked smile. His voice has a metallic authority. Death like jobs. Night marrished sounds. Satanic thoughts).
The second group is made of epithets of syntactic character. In this case we deal with a peculiar transference when words connected with a certain sense are used to characterize notions of another sense (a sweet life, liquid liricizm, velvet oblibion)
The third group includes such units which result from anthropological treatment of the world. People ascribe human feature to things or phenomena. Some of these epithets are the so-called transferring epithets which result from a metonymical operation when a feature denoting one thing is torn away from its wearer and ascribed to another wearer (a sleepless night, a restless day)
The 4th group includes ep which are based on sound imitation (I listen to the soldiers outside to their clinking, clanking labour). Any attribute may become an ep, when a traditional combinability is violated and the reader’s expectancy is defeated (there were 450 inhabitants for each uninhabitable square mile).
An ep can be expressed by a word combination, very often prepositional noun phrases. Among phrases we must mention a particular structure “inverted ep”- a structure in which the words seem to change their places (she was a flower of a girl). These combinations are based on implicit comparison. The syntactical structure and the semantic relations in these combinations contradict each other. The subject evaluative emotional element is found not in the noun attribute but in the head word (a devil of a sea, a dog of a brother, a long night shirt of a raincoat). This structural type doesn’t exist in the Russian lang. there’s still another type of ep which is impossible in Russian because a phrase and sometimes the whole sentences may be placed a preposition to a nous without any formal connection. They function as if they were one word (he is like this never-far-from-tragic look). It’s the so-called phrase or sentence ep. The expressiveness of ep depends on a number of factors: on its novelty, on the originality of the collocation. In every language there’re collocations in which a certain ep is permanently connected with one and the same noun. These are so-called fixed ep (красно солнышко, чисто поле, красна девица, добрый молодец, green fields, merry old England, dark forests, fair lady). There’re language ep, though they are not new, which have a certain stylistic connotation, because they have been very often used in legends, proverbs. They acquired a specific high flow connotation. They’re incompatible with everyday speech. Ep are very expressive when they’re based on metaphorical comparison or metonymical transference (the smiling sum, the frowning cloud). Ep may belong to a verb, qualifying an action, then ep are expressed by an adverb (he laughed heartily, he lied magnificently). Some linguists (Arnold) think nouns can also perform the qualifying function in a very expressive way. In this case they are also peculiar ep used either in exclamatory sentences or as post-positive attribute (you, ostrich! What a picture cried the ladies. Oh the sweets!!!-сладенькие мои).
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Irony. Is based on simultaneous realization of two logical meanings- dictionary and contextual, but the two meanings stand in opposition to each other (how nice of you, late again! Wonderful, 20 mistakes in 15 words!!!) actually ironical words are used in the meaning opposite to their accepted dictionary meaning. The context is arranged so, that the second meaning becomes more prominent. It’s foregrounded. In irony we observe the collision of two meanings. So it’s a device in which the contextual evaluating meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning. The context for irony may be different. It may be a word combination, a sentence, a paragraph. If it’s possible to indicate the exact word, whose contextual meaning clearly opposes it’s dictionary meaning we speak about verbal irony. But there’re many cases when we can’t indicate only one ironical word, but we feel that the meaning can’t be treated directly. The sentence or a fragment means the opposite to what is stated in it. Very often the general connotation is negative. In this case we deal with sustained irony (ironic effect is created by the whole text- with all the expressiveness of a stone he stared at him for another 20 sec). Many St.d may create an ironic effect, and may be treated as cases of sustained irony (the lift had two people and rose slowly growing with indifference, she’s charming ladies with a face like a bucket of mud).
Pun. Is a play upon words. There’re special st.d which make a word materialize several dictionary meanings. Puns are actualized as the simultaneous realizations of two meanings. They can result from misinterpretation (have you been seeing any spirits or taking any? There’s only one brand of tobacco allowed here three nunes: none today, none tomorrow, none the day after). Misinterpretation is caused here by the phonetic similarity. (“good morning” said Bingo and he meant it because the grass was shining)
Zeugma. In Z one word is deliberately used in two meanings- one direct, the other is indirect. The classical structure of Z is a V+noun1+noun2. But the semantic relations of the V and the N are different. (The boys took their places and their books. Madorra took art lessons from the professors and his heart. They walked along the seashore picking up shells and acquaintances). Z is a strong and effective means of making both means very visible. Each meaning stands out very clearly and they clash producing a humorous effect. Z sometimes may be realized in a longer unit than the sentences. it may take a decomposed form- the Verb may be used twice, with one noun an then with the other (May’s mother always stood on her gentity and Doll’s mother never stood on anything but her active little feet).
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Semantically false chain. When the number of homogeneous members semantically disconnected but attached to the same verb becomes more than two as in Z we deal with semantically false chains. Some linguists think that it’s a variant of Z though there’s exaggeration in it (a governess wanted, must possess knowledge of Romanian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, german, music and mining engineering).
Oxymoron. Is a st dev the syntactic and semantic structure of which come to clichés usually it’s a combination of 2 words. Mostly an adj and a noun. Or an adv and adj. in which the meanings of the 2 are opposite. (холодная оттепель 61. Мрачная весна. Молчаливое признание. Speaking silence. Pleasantly ugly face). In Ox the primary meaning of quialifing /////// some converse clichés reslipped from orig oxymorons.(awfully nice). O as a stdev helps to emphasize contradict qualities. It emphases a person’s subjunctive individual perception of an object. The emotive meaning of O is always stronger, it’s deliberately foregrounded as in Epithet. (there were some bookcases of unreadable books) O relations can be observed between words in the sentence which are syntactically independent of each other. But semantically they create a kind of contrast. Galperin says that such structures can be looked up on as intermediate between O and энсисесис. () relations as in O can sometimes be observed in an adj and its limitator. (he opened up a wooden garage the garage was full of nothing).
Simile. Here we can speak about comparison which is not sd, but the simile is. Simile enters a group of sd such as periphrases, euphemisms, hyperbole. All st of this group intensify and underline a certain quality of an object. Simile is a structure of 3 components. it shows the comparison between 2 objects belonging to different semantic classes. If the objects belong to 1 class- then it’s a comparison. (the boy is like his father). Similie as a rule is based on 3 components: the object which is compared, the image it’s similar to and the formal component. In simile the comparison is explicit, formally expressed (my life is like a red red rose)
The connective element may be expressed by the word of different morphological status. Connective words are – as ….as, like as, such as, as if, as though as, - words that imply comparison (look, seem, resemble), - forms of the conjunctive mood (might, could). (she might have been a ghost for all that noise she made).
S possesses a great illustrative force, because it creates a certain image which arouses a certain association. That’s why the writers resert to similes when they need to describe abstract things. S makes them visible, it also may be combined with other st.d.
Periphrasis. Based not on the comparison but on the substitution. It’s the substitution of an object by a phrase that has some particular feature of this object. Periphrasing often offers a longer and more complicated structure instead of possible. P are also decoded. It’s not always an easy thing to understand the real meaning of a P in the text. and the texts that have lots of p are very difficult to understand. P have 2 functions in the text: it brings out a certain feature of an object, it reveals the author’s attitude to an object, which may me humorous, sarcastic or ironical. P participates in character’s drawing. (he was helpless, his legs refusing their natural and necessary office). P is based on a 3-word combination or a whole sentence for the name of a thing or a person. Depending on the type of supposition there’re 2 types of P: metonymical (is always a substitution of 1name for another), metaphorical (implies a kind of comparison). Among lang P we find “the sword” for ”army”, ”the crown” for ”power”. Speech P are always the author’s creation.
Euphemism. Another st.d based on substitution of a word or a word combination for some word or expression which is not offensive. It’s a variation of Periphrasis, because we also deal here with the renaming. The lang of E is known to all community of people and speech occasional Es are created by the writers. Galperin says that Es are white-wahsing st.d. they make unpleasant notions sound acceptable. The use of many lang Es goes back to older times when many words were tabooed by the churc h(mentioning the devil was banned).
Hyperbole and understatement. Hyp is an st.d in which the effect is achieved by deliberate exaggeration. The aim of it is to intensify the features of the object described to develop this feature to the absurdity. It’s a lexical device, but very often it may take a sentence or even a fragment. It also occurs in everyday speech. Sometimes it becomes a conversational cliché. (haven’ seen u for ages).
Und is aimed also at the exaggeration, but the qualities are underrated. They don’t describe the reality, but the speaker’s attitude. (she wore a hat of a size of a button)
Both devices can be blended with other st.d. Sometimes they are the result of using the other st.d.
Море- это небо, которое можно потрогать (metaphor) беспощадная жалость (oxymoron).
Simile (love seems to be a war when based on mercenary interests)
Periphrasis – substitution.
Euphemism (оптимизация штатов, человек прошел сквозь жизнеутверждающее испытание- чуть не отбросил коньки)
Hyperbole
Understatement (преуменьшение, литота)
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