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Assignments for Self-Control. 1. What is an oxymoron and what meanings are fore- grounded in its formation?
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1. What is an oxymoron and what meanings are fore-
grounded in its formation?
2. Why are there comparatively few trite oxymorons and
where are they mainly used?
3. Give some examples of trite oxymorons.
After you have learnt individual lexical stylistic devices and the linguistic mechanism which operates in each of them, we may pass on to general stylistic analysis on the lexical level.* Your main task is to indicate how and through what lexical means additional logical, emotive, expressive informa-tion is created. In many cases you will see a number of lexical units used in convergence to still more enhance the expressiveness and emphasis of the utterance.
Exercise IX. 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. At Archie Schwert's party the fifteenth Marquess of
Vanburgh, Earl Vanburgh de Brendon, Baron Brendon, Lord
of the Five Isles and Hereditary Grand Falconer to the
Kingdom of Connaught, said to the eighth Earl of Balcairn,
Viscount Erdinge, Baron Cairn of Balcairn, Red Knight of
Lancaster, Count of the Holy Roman Empire and Chenon-
ceaux Herald to the Duchy of Aquitaine, "Hullo," he said.
"Isn't it a repulsive party? What are you going to say
* Samples of the general stylistic analysis on the lexical level are given in Supplement 1 on p. 180.
about it?" for they were both of them as it happened, gossip writers for the daily papers. (E. W.)
3. 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.)
4. Lester was all alone. He listened to his steps, as if
they weren't his at all but somebody else's. How long can
a guy stand this without going nuts? Wattinger has been
a good boy but it got him and he was blown to smithereens;
they say they'd seen his arm sailing through the air; higher
and higher, an arm alone rising to meet God. He wondered
whether, up there, they'd accept an arm in place of the
whole man. His soul couldn't possibly have been in the
arm; it was in your heart or in your guts or in your
brain but not in your arm. (St. H.)
5. For me the work of Gertrude Stein consists in a
rebuilding, an entire new recasting of life, in the city of
words. Here is one artist who has been able to accept
ridicule, to go live among the little housekeeping words,
the swaggering bullying street-corner words, the honest working,
money-saving words, and all the other forgotten and neglected
citizens of the sacred and half forgotten city. (Sh. A.)
6. Only a couple of the remaining fighters began to attack
the bombers. On they all came, slowly getting larger. The
tiny mosquitoes dipped and swirled and dived in a mad,
whirling dance around the heavier, stolid horseflies, who
nevertheless kept serenely and sedately on. (J.)
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7. "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.)
8. 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.)
9. An enormous grand piano grinned savagely at the
curtains as if it would grab them, given the chance. (W. Gl.)
10. Duffy was face to face with the margin of mistery
where all our calculations collapse, where the stream of time
dwindles into the sands of eternity, where the formula fails
in the test-tube, where chaos and old night hold sway and
we hear the laughter in the ether dream. (R. W.)
11. Mrs. Ape watched them benignly, then squaring her
shoulders and looking (except that she had really no beard
to speak of) every inch a sailor strode resolutely forrad to
the first-class bar. (E. W.)
12. The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on. (K. S.)
13. On that little pond the leaves floated in peace and
praised Heaven with their hues, the sunlight haunting over
them.(G.)
14. 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.)
15. It was a 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.)
16. Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice,
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire. But if it had to perish twice
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice. (R. Fr.)
17. Outside the narrow street fumed, the sidewalks swarmed
with fat stomachs. (J. R.)
18. 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.)
19. His fingertips seemed to caress the wheel as he
nursed it over the dark winding roads at a mere whispering
sixty. (L. Ch.)
20. 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. (T. C.)
21. They were both wearing hats like nothing on earth,
which bobbed and nodded as they spoke. (E. W.)
22. These jingling toys in his pocket were of eternal
importance like baseball or Republican Party. (S. L.)
23. He might almost have been some other man dreaming
recurrently that he was an electrical engineer. On the other
side of the edge, waiting forhim topeer into it late at night or whenever he was alone and the show of work had stopped, was illimitable unpopulated darkness, a greenland night; and only his continuing heart beats kept him from disappearing into it. Moving along this edge, doing whatever the day demanded, or the night offered, grimly observant (for he was not without fortitude), he noticed much that has escaped him before. He found he was attending a comedy, a show that would have been very funny indeed if there had been life outside the theatre instead of darkness and dissolution. (P.)
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24. Poetry deals with primal and conventional things-the
hunger for bread, the love of woman, the love of children,
the desire for immortal life. If men really had new sentiments,
poetry. could not deal with them. If, let us say, a man
did not feel a bitter craving to eat brass fenders or mahogany
tables, poetry could not express him. If a man, instead of
falling in love with a woman, fell in love with a fossil
or a sea anemone poetry could not express him. Poetry can
only express what is original in one sense-the sense in
which we speak of original sin. It is original not in the
paltry sense of being new, but in the deeper sense of being
old; it is original in the sense that it deals with origins.
(G. K. Ch.)
25. His dinner arrived, a plenteous platter of food – but no plate. He glanced at his neighbors. Evidently plates were an affectation frowned upon in the Oasis cafe.
Taking up a tarnished knife and fork, he pushed aside the underbrush of onions and came face to face with his steak.
First impressions are important, and Bob Eden knew at once that this was no meek, complacent opponent that confronted him. The steak looked back at him with, an air of defiance that was amply justified by what followed. After a few moments of unsuccessful battling, he summoned the sheik. "How about a steel knife?" inquired Bob.
"Only got three and they're all in use," the waiter replied.
Bob Eden resumed the battle, his elbows held close, his muscles swelling. With set teeth and grim face he bore down and cut deep. There was. a terrible screech as his knife skidded along the platter, and to his horror he saw the steak rise from its bed of gravy and onions and fly from him. It travelled the grimy counter for a second then dropped on to the knees of the girl and thence to the floor.
Eden turned to meet her blue eyes filled with laughter.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I thought it was a steak, and it seems to be a lap dog." (D. B.)
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