Assignments on Stylistic Semasiology

Exercise 1. State the type of each figure of speech in the  following cases:

1. They swarmed up in front of Sherburn's palings as thick as they could jam together, and you couldn't hear yourself think for the noise (Twain).

2. The face wasn't a bad one; it had what they called charm (Galsworthy).

3. It (the book) has a - a - power, so to speak, a very exceptional power, in fact, one may say, without exaggeration it is the most powerful book of the month... (Leacock).

4. Large houses are still occupied while weavers' cottages stand empty... (Gaskell).

5. I looked at the First of the Barons. He was eating salad – taking a whole lettuce leaf on his fork and absorbing it slowly, rabbit-wise - a fascinating process to watch (Mansfield).

Exercise 2. Compare hyperbole and understatement:

1. «It must have been that caviar,» he was thinking. «That beastly caviar.» He violently hated caviar. Every sturgeon in the Black Sea was his personal enemy (Huxley).

2. Calpurnia was all angles and bones; her hand was as wide as a bed slat and twice as hard (Lee).

3. This boy, headstrong, willful, and disorderly as he is, should not have one penny of my money, or one crust of my bread, or one grasp of my hand, to save him from the loftiest gallows in all Europe (Dickens).

4. They were under a great shadowy train shed... with passenger cars all about and the train moving at a snail pace (Dreiser).

5. Her eyes were open, but only just. «Don't move the tiniest part of an inch» (Salinger).

Exercise 3. State the type of relations between the object named and the object implied in the following examples of metonymy:

1. She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, multitude of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self- possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms (Bennett).

2. It must not be supposed that stout women of a certain age never seek to seduce the eye and trouble the meditations of man by other than moral charms (Bennett).

3. For several days he took an hour after his work to make inquiry taking with him some examples of his pen and inks (Dreiser).

4. The praise... was enthusiastic enough to have delighted any common writer who earns his living by his pen... (Maugham).

5. He was interested in everybody. His mind was alert, and people  askedhim to dinner not for old times' sake, but because he was worth his salt (Maugham).

Exercise 4. Specify the type of transfer of meaning used to create the following figures of quality. State the type of each figure:

1. It beinghis habit not to jump or leap, or make an upward spring, at anything in life, but to crawl at every thing (Dickens).

2. The Face of London was now strangely altered... the voice of Mourning was heard in every street (Defoe).

3. Thenwould come six or seven good years when there might be - 20 to 25 inches of rain, and the land would shout with grass

( Steinbeck).

4. Stoneysmiled the sweet smile of an alligator (Steinbeck).

5. I have only one good quality - overwhelming belief in the brains and heartsof our nation, our state, our town (Lewis).

 

Exercise 5. State the type of each figure of speech in the following examples and specify the functions performed by them:

1. Mr. Dombey's cup of satisfaction was so full at this moment, however, that he felt he could afford a drop or two of its contents, even to sprinkle on the dust in the by-path of his little daughter (Dickens).

2. And the first cab having been fetched from the public house, where he had been smoking his pipe, Mr. Pickwick and his portmanteau were thrown into the vehicle (Dickens).

3. Once upon a midnight dreary,

While I pondered weak and weary

Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore...

(E.A.Poe)

4. I have but one simile, and that's a blunder,

For wordless woman, which is silent thunder.

(Byron)

5. Those three words (Dombey and Son) conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey's life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the sun and moon were made to give them light.
Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits, to preserve inviolate a system of which they were a centre. Common abbreviations took new meanings in his eyes, and had sole reference to them. A.D. had no concern with Anno Domini, but stood for Anno Dombey - and Son (Dickens).

Exercise 6. Analyze the following abstracts paying special attention to the functions performed by figures of speech:

1. A dead leaf fell in Soapy’s lap. That was Lack Frosts card. Jack

is kind to the regular denizens of Madison Square, and gives fair

warning of his annual call. At the corners of four streets he

hands his pasteboard to the North Wind, footman of the mansion

of All Outdoors, so that the inhabitants thereof may make ready

(O’Henry. The Cop and the Anthem).

2. On the opposite side of the street was a restaurant of no great pretensions. It catered to large appetites and modest purses. Its crockery and atmosphere were thick; its soup and napery thin. Into this place Soapy took his accusive shoes and telltale trousers without challenge. At a table he sat and consumed beefsteak, flapjacks, doughnuts and pie. And then to the waiter he betrayed the fact that the minutest coin and himself were strangers (O'Henry. The Cop and the Anthem).

3. In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and there with his icy fingers. Over on the east side this ravager strode boldly, smiting his victims by scores, but his feet trod slowly through the maze of the narrow and moss-grown «places».

Mr. Pneumonia was not what you would call a chivalric old gentleman. A mite of a little woman with blood thinned by California zephyrs was hardly fair game for the red-fisted, short-breathed old duffer. But Johnsy he smote... (O'Henry. The Last Leaf).

Exercise 7. Analyze the abstract from the short story «Mac-American» by John Reed paying special attention to figures of speech and their functions:

«Speaking of Sport», said Mac, «the greatest sport inthe world is hunting niggers. After I left Burlington, you remember, I drifted down South. I was out to see the world from top to bottom, and I had just found out I could scrap. God! The fights I used to get into... Well, anyway, I landed up on a cotton plantation down in Georgia, near a place called Dixville; and they happened to be shy of an overseer, so I stuck.

I remember the night perfectly, because I was sitting in my cabin writing home to my sister. She and I always hit it off, but we couldn't seem to get along with the rest of the family... Well, as I say, I was siting there writing by the light of a little oil lamp. It was a sticky, hot night, and the window screen was just a squirming nass of bugs. It made me itch all over to see 'em crawling around. All of a sudden, I picked up my ears, and the hair began to stand right up on my head. It was dogs - bloodhounds - coming licketty-split in the dark. I don't know whether you fellows ever heard a hound bay when he's after a human... Any hound baying at night is about the lonesomest, doomingest sound in the world. But this was worse than that. It made you feel like you were standing in the lark, waiting for somebody to strangle you to death - and you couldn’ get away!

For about a minute all I heard was the dogs, and then somebody, or some Thing, fell over my fence, and heavy feet -inning went right past my window, and a sound of breathing. You know how a stubborn horse breathes when they are choking him around the neck with a rope? That's way.

I was out on my porch in one jump, just in time to see the dogs scramble over my fence. Then somebody I could see yelled jut, so hoarse he couldn't hardly speak, «Where'd he go?»

«Past the house, and out back!» says I, and started to run. There was about twelve of us. I never did find out what that nigger did, and I guess most of the men didn't either. We didn't care. We -an like crazy men, through the cotton field, and the woods swampy from floods, swam the river, drove over fences, in a way.hat would tire out a man ordinarily in a hundred yards. And we -.ever felt it. The spit kept dripping out of my mouth, - that's was the only thing that bothered me. It was full moon, and every once n a while when we came to an open place somebody would yell, There he goes!» and we'd think the dogs had made a mistake, and take after a shadow. Always the dogs ahead, baying like bells. Say, did you ever hear a bloodhound when he's after a human? It's like a bugle! I broke my shins on twenty fences, and I banged my head on all the trees in Georgia, but I never felt it...»

Mac smacked his lips and drank.

«Of course», he said, «when we got up to him, the dogs had just about torn that coon to pieces».