Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices

The interac­tion of different types of a word’s meanings: dictionary, contextual, derivative, nominal, and emotive.

A. Means based on the interplay of dictionary and contextual meanings: metaphor: Dear Nature is the kindest Mother still. (Byron).

‘Speed!” he shouted. And pushed it up to one hundred and five miles an hour and tore the breath out of his mouth (R.D. Bradbury).

… but hearing only the scream of the car(R.D. Bradbury).

The thunder faded (R.D. Bradbury).

metonymy: The camp, the pulpit and the law For rich man’s sons are free. (Shelly)

irony: It must be delightful to find oneself in a foreign country without a penny in one’s pocket.

…Well, c’est la vie, as Eric so originally says. (V. Nabokov. Pnin).

B. Means based on the interaction of primary and derivative meanings:

polysemy: Massachusetts was hostile to the American flag, and she would not allow it to be hoisted on her State House;

zeugma: May’s mother always stood on her gentility, and Dot’s mother never stood on anything but her active little feet. (Dickens)

“Dora, plunging at once into privileged intimacy and into the middle of the room”. (B. Shaw)

The pun: “Bow to the board,” said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears that were ling/g/erring (сдерживать, удерживать) in his eyes; and seeing no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that’. (Dickens)

Puns are often used in riddles and jokes, for example, in this riddle: What is the difference between a schoolmaster and an engine-driver? (One trains the mind and the other minds the train.)

C. M eans based on the opposition of logical and emotive meanings:

interjections and exclamatory words:

All present life is but an interjection

An ‘Oh’ or ‘Ah’ of joy or misery,

Or a ‘Ha! ha!’ or ‘Bah!’—a yawn or ‘Pooh!’

Of which perhaps the latter is most true.

(Byron)

Epithet (an adjective or descriptive phrase used to chracterise a person or object with the aim to give them subjective evaluation): a well-matched, fairly-balanced give-and-take (взаимные уступки, компромисс, обмен любезностями) couple. (Di­ckens).

… as he was helping her into her coat and as usual searching with a frown for the fugitive armhole. (V. Nabokov. Pnin).

… two monstrous status on primitive eyes of stone… (V. Nabokov. Pnin).

Oxymoron (a figure of speech in which opposite or contradictory ideas are combined): peopled desert, populous solitude, proud humility. (Byron)

D. Means based on the interaction of logical and nominal meanings:

Antonomasia (the use of a proper name in place of a common one or vice versa to emphasise some feature or quality): Mr. Facing-Both-Ways does not get very far in this world (The Tunes)

II. The principle for distinguishing is based on the interaction between two lexical meanings simultaneous­ly materialised in the context.

simile: treacherous as a snake, faithful as a dog, slow as a tortoise.

…morose étagères with bits of dark-looking glass in the back as mouruful as the eyes of old apes (V. Nabokov. Pnin).

“Maidens, like moths, are ever caughtby glare” (Byron).

… two limpy old ladies in semitransparent rain-coats, like potatoes on cellophane (V. Nabokov, ‘Pnin’)

Periphrasis/ circumlocution (renaming of an object by a phrase that emphasizes some particular feature of the object): a gentleman of the long robe (a lawyer); the fair sex, (women).

… an old inn frequented only by the peaceful sons of traffic (W. Irving).

Logical periphrasis: instruments of destruction (Dickens); the most pardonable of human weaknesses (Dickens); the object of his admiration (Dickens); that proportion of the population which... is yet able to read words of more than one syllable, and to read them without perceptible movement of the lips= ‘half-literate’.

Figurative periphrasis: ‘the punctual servant of all work’ (Dickens); ‘in disgrace with fortune and men’s eyes’ (Shakespeare); ‘to tie the knot’.

Euphemism is a word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a conventionally more acceptable one: In private I should call him a liar. In the Press you should use the words: ‘Reckless disregard for truth’. (Galsworthy).

To pass away, to expire, to be no more, to depart, to join the majority, to be gone.

1) religious: Father, Mother, Son, children.

2) moral: smock/shift/chemise/combination/step-in; a woman of a certain type; a four-letter word; to glow – to sweat.

3) medical: madhouse – lunatic asylum – mental hospital; idiots, imbeciles, the feeble-minded – low, medium and high-grade mental defectives; insane – person of unsound mind, mentally-ill patients;;

4) parliamentary: liar – a purveyor of terminological inexactitudes, jackass/goose; dog, rat, swine/halfwit, Tory clot;

5) political: tension – uprising; undernourishment – starvation; capitalists – free enterprises; profit – savings; the building up of labour reserves – unemployment; dismissal/discharge/firing – the reorganization of the enterprise.

Hyperbole: The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in and the sun and the moon were made to give them light. (Dickens).

“He was so tall that I was not sure he had a face.” (O. Henry).

III. The subdivision comprises stable word combinations in their interaction with the context:

A cliche is an expression that has become hackneyed and trite: clockwork precision, crushing defeat, the whip and carrot policy, rosy dreams of youth, the patter of little feet, deceptively simple, effective guarantees, immediate issues, statement of policy, reliable sources, buffer zone, to grow by leaps and bounds, to withstand the test of time, to let bygones bygones, to be unable to see the wood for the trees, to upset the apple-cart, to have an ace upon one’s sleeve, the patter of the rain, part and parcel, a diamond in the rough.

Proverbs and sayings.

Typical features: rhythm, sometimes rhyme and/or alliteration. But the most characteristic feature of a proverb or a saying lies not in its formal linguistic expression, but in the content-form of the utter­ance: brevity + the actual wording becomes a pattern which needs no new wording to suggest extensions of meaning which are contextual

Proverbs are brief statements showing in condensed form the accumulated life experience of the community and serving as conventional practical symbols for abstract ideas:

To cut one’s coat according to one’s cloth.

Early to bed and early to rise, Makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Come! he said, milk’s spilt. (Galsworthy).

First come, first served.

Out of sight, out of mind.

Epigrams.

An epigram is a stylistic device akin to a proverb, the only difference being that epigrams are coined by individuals whose names we know, while proverbs are the coinage of the people:

Art is triumphant when it can use convention as an instru­ment of its own purpose. A God that can be understood is no God.

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. (Keats)

Quotations:

A quotation is a repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech and the like used by way of authority, illustration, proof or as a basis for further speculation on the matter in hand. Quotations are usually marked off in the text by inverted commas (“ “), dashes (—), italics or other graphical means: Ecclesiastes said, ‘that all is vanity’. (Byron)

Allusions:

An allusion is an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological, biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing. An allusion is only a mention of a word or phrase which may be regarded as the key-word of the utterance:

“ Where is the road now, and its merry incidents of life’, old honest, pimple-nosed coachmen? I wonder where are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead?” (Thackeray).

“Shakespeare talks of the herald Mercury

New lighted on a heaven-kissing hill;

And some such visions cross’d her majesty

While her young herald knelt before her still.

‘Tis very true the hill seem’d rather high,

For a lieutenant to climb up; but skill

Smooth’d even the Simplon’s steep, and by God’s blessing

With youth and health all kisses are heaven-kissing.”

(Byron)