Exercise III. Analyse various cases of play on words, indicate which type is used, how it is created, what effect it adds to the utterance:

1. After a while and a cake he crept nervously to the door of the parlour. (A. T.)

2. There are two things I look for in a man. A sympathetic character and full lips. (I. Sh.)

3. Dorothy, at my statement, had clapped her hand over mouth to hold down laughter and chewing gum. (Jn. B.)

4. "Someone at the door," he said, blinking.       

"Some four, I should say by the sound," said Fili. (A. T.)

5. He may be poor   and shabby, but beneath those ragged trousers beats a heart of gold. (E.)

6. Babbitt respected bigness in anything: in mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth or words. (S. L.)

7. Men, pals, red plush seats, white marble tables, waiters in white aprons. Miss Moss walked through them all. (M.)

8. My mother wearingher best grey dress and gold brooch and a faint pink flush under each cheek bone. (W. Gl.)

9. "There is only one brand of tobacco allowed here - 'Three nuns'. None today, none tomorrow, and none the day after." (Br. B.)      

10. Good morning," said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining and the grass was very green. (A. T.)

 

 

Exercise IV. In the following excerpts you will find mainly examples of verbal irony. Explain what conditions made the realization of the opposite evaluation possible. Pay attention to the part of speech which is used in irony, also its syntactical function:

1. When the war broke out she took down the signed photograph of the Kaiser and, with some solemnity, hung it in the men-servants' lavatory; it was her one combative action. (E. W.)

2. From her earliest infancy Gertrude was brought up by her aunt. Her aunt had carefully instructed her to Christian principles. She had also taught her Mohammedanism, to make sure. (L.)

3. "Well. It's shaping up into a lovely evening, isn't it?"

"Great," he said.

"And if I may say so, you're doing everything to make it harder, you little sweet." (D. P.)

4. Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business, but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed by the greater attorneys to be a most respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice which is a mark of respectability, he never takes any pleasure, which is another mark of respectability, he is reserved and serious which is another mark of respectability. His digestion is impaired which is highly respectable. (D.)

5. Several months ago a magazine named Playboy which concentrates editorially on girls, books, girls, art, girls, music, fashion, girls and girls, published an article about old-time science-fiction. (M. St.)

6. Apart from splits based on politics, racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds and specific personality differences, we're just one cohesive team. (D. U.)

7. I had been admitted as a partner in the firm of Andrews and Bishop, and throughout 1927 and 1928 I enriched myself and the firm at the rate of perhaps forty dollars a month. (Jn. B.)

8. Last time it was a nice, simple, European-style war. (I. Sh.)

9. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. As the great champion of freedom and national independence he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it Colonization. (B. Sh.)

Exercise V. Analyse the following cases of antonomasia. State the type of meaning employed and implied; indicate what additional information is created by  the use of antonomasia; pay attention to the morphological and semantic characteristics of common nouns used as proper names:

1. "Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon." (O.W.)
2. Cats and canaries had added to the already stale house an entirely new dimension of defeat. As I stepped down, an evil-looking Tom slid by us into the house. (W. Gl.)  

3. Kate kept him because she knew he would do anything in the world if he were paid to do it or was afraid not to do it. She had no illusions about him. In her business Joes were necessary. (J. St.)

4. In the moon-landing year what choice is there for Mr. and Mrs. Average-the programme against poverty or the ambitious NASA project? (M. St.)

5. We sat down at a table with two girls in yellow and three men, each one introduced to us as Mr. Mumble. (Sc. F.)

Exercise VI. Discuss the structure and semantics of epithets in the following examples. Define the type and function of epithets:

 

1. He has that unmistakable tall lanky "rangy" loose-jointed graceful closecropped formidably clean American look. (I. M.)

2. He's a proud, haughty, consequential, turned-nosed peacock. (D.)

3. The Fascisti, or extreme Nationalists, which means black-shirted, knife-carrying, club-swinging, quick-stepping, nineteen- year-old-pot-shot patriots, have worn out their welcome in Italy. (H.)

4. Harrison-a fine, muscular, sun-bronzed, gentle-eyed, patrician-nosed, steak-fed, Gilman-Schooled, soft-spoken, well-tailored aristocrat was an out-and-out leaflet-writing revolutionary at the time. (Jn. B.)

5. Her painful shoes slipped off. (U.)

6. She was a  faded white rabbit of a woman. (A. C.)

7. And she still has that look, that don't-you-touch-me look, that women who were beautilul carry with them to the grave. (J. B.)

8. Ten-thirty is a dark hour in a town where respectable
doors are locked at nine. (T. C.)

9."Thief!" "Pilon shouted. "Dirty pig of an untrue friend!"(J. St.)

10. He acknowledged an early-afternoon customer with a be-with-you-in-a-minute nod. (D. U.)

11. His shrivelled head bobbed like a dried pod on his frail stick of a body. (J. G.)       

12. The children were very brown and filthily dirty. (V. W.)

13. Liza Hamilton was a very different kettle of Irish. Her head was small and round and it held small and round convictions. (J. St.)

 

Exercise VII. In the following sentences pay attention to the structure and semantics of oxymorons. Also indicate which of their members conveys the individually viewed feature of the object and which one reflects its generally accepted characteristic:

1. He caught a ride home to the crowded loneliness of the barracks. (J.)
2. Sprinting towards the elevator he felt amazed at his own cowardly courage. (G. M.)

3. He behaved pretty lousily to Jan. (D. C.)

4. There were some bookcases of superbly unreadable books. (E. W.)
6. Absorbed as we were in the pleasures of travel-and I in my modest pride at being the only examinee to cause a commotion-we were over the old Bridge. (W. G.)

7. Harriet turned back across the dim garden. The lightless light looked down from the night sky. (I. M.)

8. Sara was a menace and.a tonic, my   best enemy; Rozzie was a disease, my worst friend. (J. Car.)

9. A neon sign reads "Welcome to Reno-the biggest little town in the world." (A. M.)      

10. Huck Finn and Holden Caulfield are Good Bad Boys of American literature. (V.)

11. You have got two beautiful bad examples for parents. (Sc. F.)

 

Reference list:

 

Galperin I. R. Stylistics. - Part IV (B). p.p. 139-146,148-164.

Арнольд И. В. Стилистика §11-12 с. 82-92; 94-95.

Kukharenko V. A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. - p.p. 22-24; 37-38; 40-41; 42-44; 46-47; 53-55; 60-61.