Figures of co-occurrence: identical, different or opposite.

Figures of identity:

Simile (an explicit statement of partial identity: affinity, likeness, similarity of 2 objects):

My heart is like a singing bird. (Rosetti)

as dead as a door-nail

as mad as a march hare

as bright as a button

as cool as a cucumber

as blind as a bat

as proud as a peacock

Among ready-made similes there are many without a trace of alliteration:

to fit like a glove

to smoke like a chimney

as fat as a pig

as drunk as a lord

Logical comparison:

She sings like a professional soloist.

He talks French like a born Frenchman.

The changes in agriculture are as slow as they were last year.

She sings like a nightingale. He talks French like a ma­chine-gun.

Our agricultural reform is as slow as a snail.

Similie:

She sings like a nightingale.

He talks French like a ma­chine-gun.

Our agricultural reform is as slow as a snail.

Hyperbolic similes:

"He held out a hand that could have been mistaken for a bunch of bananas in a poor light." (Gardner)

"She heaved away from the table like a pregnant elephant." (ibid.)

The following negative simile is at the same time a litotes:

"His eyes were no warmer than an iceberg." (McBain)

Irony:

"Brandon liked me as much as Hiroshima liked the atomic bomb." (McBain)

'Extended', or 'sustained' similes:

"They eased me through a door as if I were a millionaire invalid with four days to live, and who hadn't as yet paid his doctor's bill." (Chase)

"The rye bread was a little dry and the chicken looked as if it had a sharp attack of jaundice before departing this earth." (Chase)

Quasi-identity.

Another problem arises if we inspect certain widespread cases of 'active identification' usually treated as tropes; when we look at the matter more closely, they turn out to be a special kind of syntagmatic phenomena - 'tropes predicated' or perhaps 'tropes pre-deciphered':

Your neighbour is an ass

Jane is a real angel

Other types of illogical identification: cases when the subject (theme, topic) and the predicative (rheme, comment) do not imply comparison, do not claim similarity, but expressly point out a real connection between the two objects:

"That old duffer? He's oil, I guess."

"Caracas is in Venezuela, of course." "What's it like?"

"Why, it's principally earthquakes and Negroes and monkeys and malarial fever and volcanoes." (O’ Henry)

Some of quasi-identities manifest special expressive force, chiefly when the usual topic — comment positions change places: the metaphoric (metonymical) name appears in the text first, the direct, straightforward denomination following it:

"The machine sitting at that desk was no longer a man: it was a busy New York broker." (O’ Henry)

"... she shot at me with two blue pellets which served her as eyes." (Chandler)

Synonymous replacements – the use of synonyms or synonymousphrases to avoid monotony or as situational substitutes:

He brought home numberless prizes. He told his mother countless stories. (Thackeray)

I was trembly and shaky from head to foot.

You undercut, sinful, insidious hog. (O’Henry)

Figures of inequality:

Specifying, or clarifying synonyms:

"You undevout, sinful, insidious hog," says I to Murkison. (O’Henry)

"Joe was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish dear fellow." (Dickens)

Climax (gradation of emphatic elements growing in strength).

What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? (O’Henry),

Anti-climax (back gradation - instead of a few elements growing in intensity without relief there unexpectedly appears a weak or contrastive element that makes the statement humorous or ridiculous):

Awoman who could face the very devil himself or a mouse—goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. (Twain)

Zeugma (combination of unequal, or incompatible words based on the economy of syntactical units):

She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief. (Dickens)

"At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humor, put on kimono, airs and the water to boil for coffee." (O’Henry)

Pun (play upon words based on polysemy or homonymy):

What steps would you take if an empty tank were coming toward you? - Long ones.

OFFICER. What steps [= measures] would you take if an enemy tank were coming toward you?

SOLDIER. Long ones.

DICKIE: I suppose you are thinking of Ada Fergusson.

PENELOPE: I confess she hadn't entirely slipped my mind.

DICKIE: Hang Ada Fergusson.

PENELOPE: I think it's rather drastic punishment.

CANNIBAL COOK: Shall I stew both those cooks we captured from the steamer?

CANNIBAL KING: No, one is enough. Too many cooks spoil the broth.

Disguised tautology (semantic difference in formally coincidental parts of a sentence, repetition here does not emphasize the idea but carries a different information in each of the two parts):

For East is East, and West is West... (Kipling)

"'Well,' he said vaguely, 'that's that,' and relapsed into a thoughtful silence." (Christie)

"Make yourself an honest man and then you may be sure there is one rascal less in the world”. (Carlyle)

Figures of contrast

Oxymoron (a logical collision of seemingly incompatible words).

E.g. His honour rooted in dishonour stood,

And faith unfaithful kept Mm falsely true. (Tennyson)

O brawling love! O loving hate!

O any thing! of nothing first create.

O heavy lightness! serious vanity!

Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms! (Shakespeare)

"I am preferably a man of mildness, but now and then, I find myself in the middle of extremities." (O’ Henry)

"I also assure her that I'm an Angry Young Man. A black humorist. A white Negro. Anything." (M. Richler)

Paradox (a seemingly absurd thought in fact well-founded statement:

It was too implausible not to be fact… (T. Capote)

Antithesis (anti-statement, active confrontation of notions used to show the contradictory nature of the subject described):

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 era of, incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of Darkness... Hope... Despair. (Dickens)

His fees were high, his lessons were light. (O’Henry)

 

Литература:

1. Знаменская Т.А. Стилистика английского языка. Основы курса. М., 2004.

2. Мороховский А.Н. Cтилистика английского языка. Киев, 1989.

3. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. M., 1977.

4. Leech G.A. A Linguistic Guide to Poetry. L., 1973.

5. Skrebnev Y.M. Fundamentals of English. М., 1994.

 

Lecture 4.