 |
Lexico-syntactical stylistic devices (LSSD)
|
|
|
|
Questions and tasks
Task 1
Comment on linguistic properties of sentences which are foregrounded in lexico-syntactical stylistic devices (LSSD). Speak on antithesis, its structure, semantic and stylistic functions. Comment on the structure and stylistic functions of the following example of antithesis:
1.“Too brief for our passion, too long for our peace,
Were these hours – can their joy or their bitterness cease?” (Byron)
2. Mrs. Nork had a large home and a small husband. (S.L.)
3. He … ordered a bottle of the worst possible port wine, at the highest possible price. (D.)
4. It is safer to be married to the man you can be happy with than to the man you cannot be happy without. (E.)
5. In marriage the upkeep of woman is often the downfall of a man. (E.)
6. 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 epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light,, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us,we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (D.)
Give other examples of antitheses and comment on their stylistic functions.
Task 2
Speak about climax, its types: emotive, qualitative, quantitative and negative forms of climax, their structural organization. What is their stylistic function? Define the type of climax in the following passage:
1. “Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and year by year, the baron got the worst of some disputed question.” (Dickens)
2.” It must be a warm pursuit in such a climate”, observed Mr. Pickwick.
“Warm! – red hot! Scorching! – glowing!” (D.)
3. A storm’s coming up. A hurricane. A deluge. (Th.W.)
4. Of course it’s important. Incredibly, urgently, desperately important. (D.S.)
5. “I’ll smash you. I’ll crumble you, I’ll powder you. Go to the devil!” (D.)
6.”Be careful,” said Mr. Jingle – not a look”.
“Not a wink,” said Mr. Tupman.
“Not a syllable. – Not a whisper.” (D.)
7. He who only five months before had sought her so eagerly with his eyes and intriguing smile. The liar! The brute! The monster! (Dr.)
Task 3
What is anticlimax? Comment on its stylistic function. How is paradox created in the following example of anticlimax?
“They were absolutely quiet; eating no apples, cutting no names, inflicting no pinches, and making no grimaces, for full two minutes afterwards”. (Dickens)
Task 4
Speak about a simile, its semantic structure. Discuss different types of a simile (epic, disguised, trite, developed simile). What are the main functions of a simile in the following example?
|
|
|
“Milk-churns stand at Coronation Corner like short silver policemen. The town ripples like a lake in the waking breeze. Night in the four-ale, quiet as a domino”. (D.Thomas)
Task 5
What is litotes? Differentiate between litotes and understatement. Discuss most frequently used structures of litotes and its stylistic functions. Comment on the usage and stylistic functions of the following cases of litotes:
“…she was not unlike Morgiana in the ‘Forty Thieves’” (Dickens)
“And Captain Trevelyan was not overpleased about it” (Christie).
“A chiseled, ruddy face completed the not-unhandsome picture” (Pendleton)
Task 6
Speak about semantic types of periphrasis (logical, figurative, and euphemistic). What type is favoured in contemporary prose and why? What are the main stylistic functions of periphrasis in the following passages?
“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)
Task 7
Read this folk-lore fairy-tale and say in which way the tail influences its length.
THE TAIL
J. F. Campbell
There was a shepherd who went out to the hill to look after his sheep. It was misty and cold, and he had much trouble to find them. At last he had them all but one; and after much searching he found that one too in a peat-hag, half drowned; so he took off his plaid, and bent down and took hold of the sheep’s tail, and he pulled! The sheep was heavy with water, and he could not lift her, so he took off his coat and he pulled! But it was too much for him, so he spit on his hands, and took a good hold of the tail and he PULLED! And the tail broke! And if it had not been for that this tale would have been a great deal longer.
Questions and tasks:
1. What type of gradation(s) does the tale present?
1. Does the gradation make itself explicit in the tale in any other way(s) than through the usage of graphical means? 
2. What do the graphical stylistic devices (italicisation and capitalisation) highlight in the tale? Why are they used in this particular order?
3. Identify the elements of the structural division of a literary work in the tale, such as the exposition (or/and the narrative hook), the chain of events (also called complications), the climax and the denouement.
In fact, this story has two climaxes, because the word can be used in two senses: as a literary term it means culmination, the most exciting moment in the story, and, as a term naming a stylistic device, it is also known as gradation.
Task 8
Identify the types of gradation in the following excerpts from the novel by John Barth (The Floating Opera):
· Betty June told me all her troubles – and they were dramatic, real troubles! Woman had never loved man, it seemed to me, as she loved Smitty, and yet he ignored her. She wouldn’t have cared what he did to her – he might beat her and curse her (a thrilling notion to a seventeen-year-old!) – if only he’d acknowledged her devotion, but he ignored her. She would even suffered torture for him (together we dreamt up the tortures she’d be willing to suffer, considering each soberly); would even have died for him (we discussed, in detail, various unpleasant deaths) for the merest crumb of reciprocal passion. But Smitty remained oblivious.
|
|
|
· But alas, with Mr. Mack all other things weren’t equal. Not only did his physical well-being deteriorate in his last years, through arthritis to leukaemia to the grave; his sanity deteriorated also, gradually, along the continuum from relative normalcy through marked eccentricity to gibbering idiocy.
· If I was demoralized by Dad's death, I was paralyzed by the five thousand dollars and the note.
· I lived through 1920, through 1921, through 1922, through 1923. In the summers I lived on at the fraternity house and worked as stonemason, a brush salesman, a factory labourer, a lifeguard at one of the city pools, a tutor of history, even, and once actually a ditch digger. To my great surprise I was alive on the commencement day, if not entirely sober, and lived to walk off Gilman Terrace with my diploma – pale, weak, educated. I had lost twenty pounds, countless prejudices, much provincialism, my chastity (what had remained of it), and my religion.
· There have been other changes in my attitude during my life, but none altered my outward behaviour and manner as markedly as this one. I was uninvolved; I was unmoved; I was a saint.
Supplement
Read the beginning of the chapter A raison de coeur* from John Barth’s novel and comment on its title.
V. A raison de coeur
That's right, I pay my hotel bill every day, and reregister every day, too, despite the fact that the hotel offers weekly and monthly and even seasonal rates for long-term guests. It's no eccentricity, friend, nor any sign of stinginess on my part: I have an excellent reason for doing so, but it is a raison de coeur, if I may say so – a reason of the heart and not of the head.
Doubly so; literally so. Listen: eleven times the muscle of my heart contracted while I was writing the four words of the preceding sentence. Perhaps six hundred times since I began to write this little chapter. Seven hundred thirty-two million, one hundred thirty-six thousand, three hundred twenty times since I moved into the hotel. And no less than one billion, sixty-seven million, six hundred thirty-six thousand, one hundred sixty times has my heart beat since a day in 1919, at Fort George G. Meade, when an Army doctor, Captain John Frisbee, informed me, during the course of my predischarge physical examination, that each soft beat my sick heart beat might be my sick heart's last. This fact – that having begun this sentence, I may not live to write its end; that having poured my drink, I may not live to taste it, or that it may pass a live man's tongue to burn a dead man's belly; that having slumbered, I may never wake, or having waked, may never living sleep – this for thirty-five years has been the condition of my existence, the great fact of my life: had been so for eighteen years already, or five hundred forty-nine million, sixty thousand, four hundred eighty heartbeats, by June 21 or 22 of 1937. This is the enormous question, in its thousand trifling forms (Having heard tick, will I hear tock? Having served, will I volley? Having sugared, will I cream? Itching, will I scratch? Hemming, will I haw?), toward answering which all my thoughts and deeds, all my dreams and energies have been oriented.
* Note: “A raison de Coeur” is the French for “A reason of the heart”.
Questions and tasks:
1. What stylistic device lies at the basis of the fragment? Name the type(s).
2. Identify other syntactical stylistic devices and comment on their role in the episode.
3. How is the force of these schemes of speech enhanced by stylistic devices belonging to other levels of language (lexical, phonetic, etc.)?
4. One line contains an imitation of a tongue twister. What scheme of speech is typical of this “verse” form?
RECOMMENDED LITERATURE:
1. Сенюшкина Т. В. Пособие по лингвостилистическому анализу текста (английский язык). Часть I. Для студентов факультета лингвистики. М., Институт международного права и экономики имени А.С. Грибоедова. - 2006
|
|
|
2. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Pp. 191 -246.
3. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. Pp. 84-100.
4. Kukharenko V.A. Seminars in Style. Pp. 85 – 102.
UNIT 8
Stylistic grammar
An Outline
1. Stylistic functions of grammar categories and the role of transposition.
2. Transposition of lexico-grammatical classes of nouns.
3. Stylistic function of articles, genitive case, plural number.
4. Stylistic functions of different grammatical categories in different parts of speech.
1) Stylistic transposition of pronouns.
2) Adjectives, stylistic function of degrees of comparison.
3) Stylistic functions of verbal categories.
4) Stylistic functions of adverbs.
Style is less investigated on the morphological level than on any other one because very many scholars hold the opinion that stylistic connotations appear only when the use of grammatical phenomenon departs from the normative usage and functions on the outskirts or beyond the system of Standard language.
Nevertheless stylistic connotations don’t necessarily mean the violation of the normative speech patterns. They are based on different cases of transposition.
Transposition is the usage of different parts of speech in unusual grammatical meaning which breaks the usual correlation within a grammatical category and is used to express the speaker’s emotions and his attitude to the object of discussion. It is the shift from one grammatical class to another, controversy between the traditional and situational reference on the level of morphology. (I.V.A.)
1. Transposition of lexico-grammatical class (LGC) of NOUNS:
Transposition of nouns is based on the usage of nouns in unusual lexico-grammatical class (LGC), thus causing a stylistic effect. According to their usual LGC they are subdivided into:
1) Personal nouns (agents) (man, woman, children)
2) Living beings (birds, cats, dogs)
3) Collective nouns (mankind, peerage)
4) Material nouns (water, stone)
5) Abstract nouns (clarity, kindness), etc.
Transposition from one LGC to another causes expressive, evaluative, emotive and functional connotations. Thus transposition of personal nouns denoting animals to those denoting people causes metaphorization and appearance of zoo morphemes: ass, bear, beast and bitch. Pig, donkey, monkey may have tender but ironical connotation, while swine, ass, ape acquire rude, negative coloring. Negative connotation is intensified by emphatic constructions: you impudent pup, you filthy swine”.
I was not going to have all the old tabbies bossing her around just because she is not what they call “our class” (A.Wilson)
Emotive and expressive connotations are achieved in transposition of abstract nouns into personal nouns (abstract nouns used in plural): “The chubby little eccentricity:: a chubby eccentric child.”
Transposition of parts of speech (A>N): “Listen, my sweet (coll.)”, a man of intelligence, a flush of heat (bookish).
|
|
|
