 |
Peculiar Use of Set Expressions
|
|
|
|
A cliche is generally defined as an expression that has become hackneyed and trite. It has lost its precise meaning by constant reiteration: in other words it has become stereotyped. Cliche is a kind of stable word combination which has become familiar and which has been accepted as a unit of a language: e.g. rosy dreams of youth, growing awareness.
Proverbs are short, well-known, supposedly wise sayings, usually in simple language. E.g. Never say never. You can't get blood of a stone.
Proverbs are expressions of culture that are passed from generation to generation. They are words of wisdom of culture - lessons that people of that culture want their children to learn and to live by. They are served as some symbols, abstract ideas. Proverbs are usually dedicated and involve imagery. E.g. Out of sight, out of mind.
Epigram is a short clever amusing saying or poem. E.g. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
Quotation is a phrase or sentence taken from a work of literature or other piece of writing and repeated in order to prove a point or support an idea. They are marked graphically: by inverted commas: dashes, italics: All hope abandon, ye who enter (Dante)
Allusion is an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing. The use of allusion presupposes knowledge of the fact, thing or person alluded to on the part of the reader or listener. “ You too, Brutus?” (Shakespeare)
Proverbs, sayings, quotations, allusions and paradoxes are based on the interplay of primary and secondary meanings being also a variety of occasional PU: “to drop a handkerchief and relations”.
Paradox is a statement which though it appears to be self-contradictory, nevertheless involves truth or at least an element of truth. – O. Wilde’s paradoxes: “It’s simply washing one’s clean linen in public”.
Occasional PU are often used in the language of advertising - Our Love is Blinds (Love is blind); Sofa, So Good! (So far, so good); Smirnoff’s Silver is for people who want a silver lining without the cloud. (Every cloud has a silver lining).
Stylistic functions of PU:
a) Compressing information; “ The Moon and Sixpence”, a bird in the hand, birds of feather.
b) Foregrounding some elements, creating a comic effect: to drop a handkerchief and relations.
c) Expressing the message of the book; “ In Chancery”, To Let”, “The Silver Spoon”.
d) Motivating the events: “ Murder is out ” in Jolion’s letter to his son.
e) Characterizing personages, events, etc.: “He was a jolly good fellow: no side or anything like that, he could never set the Thames on fire… they were quite content to give a leg up to a man who would never climb as high as to be an obstacle to themselves”.(S.Mau occasional gham)
f) Creating a comic, ironical, satirical effect: “Ashes to ashes, and clay to clay, if your enemy doesn’t get you, your own folk may”. (J.Thurber)
|
|
|
Seminar 4
Stylistic Phraseology
Questions and tasks
Task 1
Define the basic stylistic effect achieved by the violation of the following set phrases and idioms in the sentences below:
1. “Can Mr. Herring swim? – Like several fishes! (To swim like a fish).” (Woodehouse)
2. “He who laughs last, takes too long to get the joke” (O.Wilde)
3. “Time is the waste of money” (H.)
4. Dorothy, at my statement, had clapped her hand over mouth to hold down laughter and chewing gum. (Jn.B.)
5. “Some fly East, some fly West, some fly over the cuckoo’s nest”. (L.Keisy:The Fly Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)
Task 2
Analyze the story and indicate what meanings of a word participate in violation of Ph. U. and restoration of their direct, dictionary meaning:
RED HERRING
Once upon a time there lived an old herring, who happened to be in love with a white elephant. When the yellow press, always nosing around, learned of the affair, they screamed blue murder because everyone thought it was a disgrace for the white elephant, who was rumored to be of the blue blood, to have a romantic involvement with the plebian red herring. Some guessed, however, that the red herring was just a red herring and the white elephant was in fact carrying on with a black sheep who was of an aristocratic origin. The white elephant’s father turned grey overnight, saw red in the morning, was about to beat his son black and blue but showed white feather, went and painted the town red instead.
If only the interested parties had used their grey matter, they could have easily seen that there was a strong attachment between the white elephant and the pretty white crow with delicate green fingers.
Soon another sensation came as a bolt from the blue and in a week no one remembered the poor red herring who was always in a blue mood, always dressed in black and severely tortured by the green-eyed monster.
[op. cit. Г.Г.Молчанова. Pp. 327-328]
RECOMMENDED LIRERATURE:
1. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. Стр. 150 – 165.
2. Кухаренко В. А. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. Pp. 29-33.
3. Кухаренко В. А. Seminars in Style. Pp. 6-22.
4. Молчанова Г.Г. Английский как неродной: текст, стиль, культура, коммуникация. М., Медиа Групп, 2007 – 384 с.
5. Freeborn D. Style Text Analysis and Linguistic Criticism. London, 1996.
6. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Pp. 57 - 119
7. Gurevitch V.V. English Stylistics. Moscow, 2005.
8. Widdowson H.G. Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature. Longman, 1975.
UNITS 5-7
Stylistic semasiology
An Outline
1. Tropes and figures of speech.
a) The metaphorical group;
b) The metonymical group;
c) Irony.
2. Expressive means (EM) and stylistic devices (SD), their different classifications.
a) Lexical Stylistic Devices (LSD).
b) Syntactical Stylistic Devices (SSD).
c) Lexico - syntactical Stylistic Devices (LSSD).
Stylistic semasiology studies the expressive resources of the language, which are represented by the oldest categories of rhetoric, i.e. tropes and figures of speech (I.V.Arnold, U.Screbnev), expressive means and stylistic devices (I.R.Galperin, V.A.Kucharenko). Tropes and figures of speech are based on imagery which is realized through the interrelation of different components of denotational and connotational meaning of words and word combinations.
|
|
|
In philosophy "image" denotes the result of reflection of the object of reality in man's consciousness. On the sensible level our senses, ideas might be regarded as images. On a higher level of thinking images take the form of concepts, judgments, and conclusions. Depending on the level of reflecting the objective reality (sensual and conceptual) there are 2 types of images:
1. Art images – reflect the objective reality inhuman life. While informing us of a phenomenon of life they simultaneously express our attitude towards it.
2. Literature images - deal with a specific type of artistic images, verbal images are pen - pictures of a thing, person or idea expressed in a figurative way in their contextual meaning and in music by sounds. The overwhelming majority of linguists agree that a word is the smallest unit being able to create images because it conveys the artistic reality and image. On this level the creation of images is the result of the interaction of two meanings: direct (denotation) and indirect (figurative ). Lexical expressive meanings in which a word or word combination is used figuratively are called tropes. Their verbal meaning has the following structure:
1. Tenor (direct thought) objective; (T)
2. Vehicle (figurative thought) subjective; (V)
3. Ground of comparison is the common feature of T and V; (G)
4. The relation between T and V;
5. The technique of identification (The type of trope);
Prof. Screbnev’s classification of TROPES:
Figures of QUANTITY:
Hyperbole; Meiosis: Understatement and Litotes.
Figures of QUALITY:
METAPHOR: Periphrasis, Allusion, Personification, Allegory.
METONYMY: Synecdoche.
Antonomasia. Irony. Epithet.
Table 8
Prof. Arnold’s classification of TROPES:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Tropes are EM based on the transfer of meaning or figurative use of the words and expressions within one and the same paradigm. (I.V.A.) e.g. She is the heart of society (trope).
Tropes:
a) deal with concrete thing or idea e.g. Thirsty wind.
b) embrace the whole book e.g. War and Peace.
c) create visual images: e.g. the cloudy life age of the sky
d) create aural images by sound imitations: “ The moan of doves in immemorial elms, and murmuring of innumerable bees” (Tennyson).
Figures of speech refer to specific combinations of words and specific syntactical structures imaginatively used. They are correlated in time (syntagmatically). Ex.: She is as beautiful as a rose (figure of speech).
|
|
|
