Connotational Meanings of a Word.

The Role of the Context in the Actualization of Meaning.

The idea of previous chapters was to illustrate potential possibilities of linguistic units more primitive than the word, found at lower levels of language structure and yet capable of conveying additional information when foregrounded in a specially organized context.

The forthcoming chapter is going to be one of the longest and most important in this book, for it is devoted to a linguistic unit of major significance - the word, which'names, qualifies and evaluates the micro-and marcrocosm of the surrounding world. The most essential feature of a word is that it expresses the concept of a thing, process, phenomenon, naming (denoting) them. Concept is a logical category, its linguistic counterpart is meaning. Meaning, as the outstanding scholar L. Vygotsky put it, is the unity of generalization, communication and thinking. An entity of extreme complexity, the meaning of a word is liable to historical changes, of which you know from the course of lexicology and which are responsible for the formation of an expanded semantic structure of a word. This structure is constituted of various types of lexical meanings, the major one being denotational, which informs of the subject of communication; and also including connotational, which informs about the participants and conditions of communication.

The list and specifications of connotational meanings vary with different linguistic schools and individual scholars and include such entries as pragmatic (directed at the perlocutionary effect of utterance), associative (connected, through individual psychological or linguistic associations, with related and nonrelated notions), ideological, or conceptual (revealing political, social, ideological preferences of the user), evaluative (stating the value of the indicated notion), emotive (revealing the emotional layer of cognition and perception), expressive (aiming at creating the image of the object in question), stylistic (indicating "the register", or the situation of the communication).

The above-mentioned meanings are classified as connotational not only because they supply additional (and not the logical/denotational) information, but also because, for the most part, they are observed not all at once and not in all words either. Some of them are more important for the act of communication than the others. Very often they qverlap.

So, all words possessing an emotive meaning are also evaluative (e.g. "rascal", "ducky"), though this rule is not reversed, as we can find non-emotive, intellectual evaiuation (e.g. "good", "bad"). Again, all emotive words (or practically all, for that matter) are also expressive, while there are hundreds of expressive words which cannot be treated as emotive (take, for example the so-called expressive verbs, which not only denote some action or process but also create their image, as in "to gulp" = to swallow in big lumps, in a hurry; or "to sprint" = to run fast).

The number, importance and the overlapping character of connotational meanings incorporated into the semantic structure of a word, are brought forth by the context, i.e. a concrete speech act that identifies and actualizes each one. More than that: each context does not only specify the existing semantic (both denotational and connotational) possibilities of a word, but also is capable of adding new ones, or deviating rather considerably from what is registered in the dictionary. Because of that all contextual meanings of a word can never be exhausted or comprehensively enumerated. Compare the following cases of contextual use of the verb "to pop" in Stan Barstow's novel "Ask Me Tomorrow":

1. His face is red at first and then it goes white and his eyes stare as if they'll pop out of his head.

2. "Just pop into the scullery and get me something to stand this on."

3. "There is a fish and chip shop up on the main road. I thought you might show your gratitude by popping up for some."

4. "I've no need to change or anything then." "No, just pop your coat on and you're fine."

5. "Actually Mrs. Swallow is out. But she won't be long. She's popped up the road to the shops."

6. "Would you like me to pop downstairs and make you a cup of cocoa?"

In the semantic actualization of a word the context plays a dual role: on one hand, it cuts off all meanings irrelevant for the given communicative situation. On the other, it foregrounds one of the meaningful options of a word, focusing the communicators' attention on one of the denotational or connonational components of its semantic structure.

The significance of the context is comparatively small in the field of stylistic connotations, because the word is labelled stylistically before it enters some context, i.e. in the dictionary: recollect the well-known contractions -vulg., arch., si., etc., which make an indispensable part of a dictionary entry. So there is sense to start the survey of connotational meanings with the stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary.

Stylistic Differentiation of the Vocabulary:

Literary Stratum of Words. Colloquial Words

The word-stock of any given language can be roughly divided into three uneven groups, differing from each other by the sphere of its possible use. The biggest division is made up of neutral words, possessing no stylistic connotation and suitable for any communicative situation; two smaller ones are literary and colloquial strata respectively.

Literary words serve to satisfy communicative demands of official, scientific, poetic messages, while the colloquial ones are employed in non-official everyday communication. Though there is no immediate correlation between the written and the oral forms of speech on one hand, and the literary and colloquial words, on the other, yet, for the most part, the first ones are mainly observed in the written form, as most literary messages appear in writing. And vice versa: though there are many examples of colloquialisms in writing (informal letters, diaries, certain passages of memoirs, etc.), their usage is associated with the oral form of communication.

Consequently, taking for analysis printed materials we shall find literary words in authorial speech, descriptions, considerations, while colloquialisms will be observed in the types of discourse, simulating (copying) everyday oral communication - i.e., in the dialogue (or interior monologue) pf a prose work.

When we classify some speech (text) fragment as literary or colloquial it does not mean that all the words constituting it have a corresponding stylistic meaning. More than that: words with a pronounced stylistic connotation are few in any type of discourse, the overwhelming majority of its lexis being neutral. As our famous philologist L.V. Shcherba once said - a stylistically coloured word is like a, drop of paint added to a glass of pure water and colouring the whole of it.

Neither of the two named groups of words, possessing a stylistic meaning, is homogeneous as to the quality of the meaning, frequency of use, sphere of application, or the number and character of potential users. This is why each one is further divided into the general, i.e. known to and used by most native speakers in generalized literary (formal) or colloquial (informal) communication, and special bulks. The latter ones, in their turn, are subdivided into subgroups, each one serving a rather narrow; specified communicative purpose.

So, among special literary words, as a rale, at least two major subgroups are mentioned. They are:

1. Terms, i.e. words denoting objects, processes, phenomena of science, humanities, technique.

2. Archaisms, i.e. words, a) denoting historical phenomena which are no more in use (such as "yeoman", "vassal", "falconet"). These are historical words.

b) used in poetry in the XVII-XIX cc. (such as "steed" for "horse"; "quoth" for "said"; "woe" for "sorrow"). These are poetic words.

c) in the course of language history ousted by newer synonymic words (such as "whereof = of which; "to deem" = to think; "repast" = meal; "nay" = no) or forms ("maketh" = makes; "thou wilt" = you will; "brethren" = brothers). These are called archaic words (archaic forms) proper.

Literary words, both general (also called learned, bookish, high-flown) and special, contribute to the message the tone of solemnity, sophistication, seriousness, gravity, learnedness. They are used in official papers and documents, in scientific communication, in high poetry, in authorial speech of creative prose.

Colloquial words, on the contrary, mark the message as informal, non-official, conversational. Apart from general colloquial words, widely used by all speakers of the language in their everyday communication (e.g. "dad", "kid", "crony", "fan", "to pop", "folks"), such special subgroups may be mentioned:

1. Slang forms the biggest one. Slang words, used by most speakers in very informal communication, are highly emotive and expressive and as such, lose their originality rather fast and are replaced by newer formations. This tendency to synonymic expansion results in long chains of synonyms of various degrees of expressiveness, denoting one and the same concept. So, the idea of a "pretty girl" is worded by more than one hundred ways in slang.

In only one novel by S. Lewis there are close to a dozen synonyms used by Babbitt, the central character, in reference to a girl: "cookie", "tomato", "Jane", "sugar", "bird", "cutie", etc.

The substandard status of slang words and phrases, through universal usage, can be raised to the standard colloquial: "pal", "chum," "crony" for "friend"; "heavies", "woolies" for "thick panties"; "booze" for "liquor"; "dough" for "money"; "how's tricks" for "how's life"; "beat it" for "go away" and many many more - are examples of such a transition.

2. Jargonisms stand close to slang, also being substandard, expressiveand emotive, but, unlike slang they are used by limited groups of people,united either professionally (in this case we deal with professionalJargonisms, or professionalisms), or socially (here we deal withjargonisms proper). In distinction from slang, Jargonisms of both typescover a narrow semantic field: in the first case it is that, connected withthe technical side of some profession. So, in oil industry, e.g., for theterminological "driller" (буровщик) there exist "borer", "digger","wrencher", "hogger", "brake weight"; for "pipeliner" (трубопроводчик)- "swabber", "bender", "cat", "old cat", "collar-pecker", "hammerman";for "geologist" - "smeller", "pebble pup", "rock hound", "witcher", etc.From all the examples at least two points are evident: professionalismsare formed according to the existing word-building patterns or presentexisting words in new meanings, and, covering the field of specialprofessional knowledge, which is semantically limited, they offer a vastvariety of synonymic choices for naming one and the same professionalitem.

Jargonisms proper are characterized by similar linguistic features, but differ in function and sphere of application. They originated from the thieves' jargon (l'argo, cant) and served to conceal the actual significance of the utterance from the uninitiated. Their major function thus was to be cryptic, secretive. This is why among them there are cases of conscious deformation of the existing words. The so-called back jargon (or back slang) can serve as an example: in their effort to conceal the machinations of dishonest card-playing, gamblers used numerals in their reversed form: "ano" for "one", "owt" for "two", "erth" for "three".

Anglo-American tradition, starting with E. Partridge, a famous English lexicographer, does not differentiate between slang and Jargonisms regarding these groups as one extensive stratum of words divided into general slang, used by all, or most, speakers and special slang, limited by the professional or social standing of the speaker. This debate appears to concentrate more on terminology than on essence. Indeed slang (general slang) and jargonisms (special slang) have much in common: are emotive, expressive, unstable, fluctuating, tending to expanded synonymity within certain lexico-semantic groups and limited to a highly informal, substandard communication. So it seems appropriate to use the indicated terms as synonyms.

3. Vulgarisms are coarse words with a strong emotive meaning, mostly derogatory, normally avoided in polite conversation. History of vulgarisms reflects the history of social ethics. So, in Shakespearian times people were much more linguistically frank and disphemistic in their communication than in the age of Enligtenment or the Victorian era, famous for its prudish and reserved manners. Nowadays words which were labelled vulgar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are considered such no more. In fact, at present we are faced with the reverse of the problem: there are practically no words banned from use by the modern permissive society. Such intensifiers as "bloody", "damned", "cursed", "hell of", formerly deleted from literature and not allowed in conversation, are not only welcomed in both written and oral speech, but, due to constant repetition, have lost much of their emotive impact and substandard quality. One of the best-known American editors and critics Maxwell Perkins, working with the serialized 1929 magazine edition of Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms found that the publishers deleted close to a dozen words which they considered vulgar for the publication. Preparing the hard-cover edition Perkins allowed half of them back ("son of a bitch", "whore", "whorehound," etc.). Starting from the late fifties no publishing house objected to any coarse or obscene expressions. Consequently, in contemporary West European and American prose all words, formerly considered vulgar for public use (including the four-letter words), are accepted by the existing moral and ethical standards of society and censorship.

4. Dialectal words are normative and devoid of any stylistic meaning in regional dialects, but used outside of them, carry a strong flavour of the locality where they belong. In Great Britain four major dialects are distinguished: Lowland Scotch, Northern, Midland (Central) and Southern. In the USA three major dialectal varieties are distinguished: New England, Southern and Midwestern (Central, Midland). These classifications do not include many minor local variations Dialects markedly differ on the phonemic level: one and the same phoneme is differently pronounced in each of them. They differ also on the lexical level, having their own names for locally existing phenomena and also supplying locally circulating synonyms for the words, accepted by the language in general. Some of them have entered the general vocabulary and lost their dialectal status ("lad", "pet", "squash", "plaid").

Each of the above-mentioned four groups justifies its label of special colloquial words as each one, due to varying reasons, has application limited to a certain group of people or to certain communicative situations.

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What can you say about the meaning of a word and its relation to the concept of an object (entity)?

2 What types of lexical meaning do you know and what stipulates their existence and differentiation?

3 What connotational meanings do you know? Dwell on each of them, providing your own examples.

4. What is the role of the context in meaning actualization?

5. What registers of communication are reflected in the stylistic-differentiation of the vocabulary?

6. Speak about general literary words illustrating your elaboration with examples from nineteenth- and

twentieth-century prose.

7. What are the main subgroups of special literary words?

8 What do you know of terms, their structure, meaning, functions?

9. What are the fields of application of archaic words and forms?

10. Can you recognize general colloquial words in a literary text? Where do they mainly occur?

11. What are the main characteristics of slang?

12. What do you know of professional and social jargonisms?

13. What connects the stock of vulgarisms and social history?

14. What is the place and the role of dialectal words in the national language? in the literary text?

15. To provide answers to the above questions find words belonging to different stylistic groups and

subgroups:

a) in the dictionary, specifying its stylistic mark ("label");

b) in your reading material, specifying the type of discourse, where you found it -authorial speech (narration description, philosophising) or dialogue.

EXERCISES

I. State the type and function of literary words in the following examples:

1. "I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings." (D.)

2. "I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice. As a man sows so let him reap." (O.W.)

3. Isolde the Slender had suitors in plenty to do her lightest hest. Feats of arms were done daily for her sake. To win her love suitors were willing to vow themselves to perdition. But Isolde the Slender was heedless of the court thus paid to her. (L.)

4. "He of the iron garment," said Daigety, entering, "is bounden unto you, MacEagh, and this noble lord shall be bounden also." (W.Sc.)

5. If manners maketh man, then manner and grooming maketh poodle. (J. St.)

6. "Thou art the Man," cried Jabes, after a solemn pause, leaning over his cushion. "Seventy times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage - seventy times seven did I take council with my soul - Lo! this is human weakness: this also may be absolved. The first of the seventy first is come. Brethren - execute upon him the judgement written. Such honour have all His saints." (E. Br.)

7. At noon the hooter and everything died. First, the pulley driving the punch and shears and emery wheels stopped its lick and slap. Simultaneously the compressor providing the blast for a dozen smith-fires went dead. (S. Ch.)

8. "They're real!" he murmured. "My God, they are absolutely real!" Erik turned. "Didn't you believe that the neutron existed?" "Oh, I believed," Fabermacher shrugged away the praise. "To me neutrons were symbols л with a mass of Mn = 1.008. But until now I never saw them." (M.W.)

9. Riding back I saw the Greeks lined up in column of march. They were all still there. Also, all armed. On long marches when no action threatened, they had always piled their armour, helmets and weapons in their carts, keeping only their swords; wearing their short tunics (made from all kinds of stuff, they had been so long from home) and the wide straw hats Greeks travel in, their skins being tender to sun. Now they had on corselets or cuirasses, helmets, even grades if they owned them, and their round shields hung at their backs. (M.R.)

10. There wasn't a man-boy on this ground tonight did not have a shield he cast, riveted or carved himself on his way to his first attack, compounded of remote but nonetheless firm and fiery family devotion, flag-blown patriotism and cocksure immortality strengthened by the touchstone of very real gunpowder, ramrod minnie-ball and flint. (R.Br.)

11. Into the organpipes and steeples

Of the luminous cathedrals,

Into the weathercocks' molten mouths

Rippling in twelve-winded circles,

Into the dead clock burning the hour

Over the urn of sabbaths...

Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever

Glory glory glory

The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder.

(D. Th.)

12. If any dispassionate spectator could have beheld the countenance of the illustrious man, whose name forms the leading feature of the title of this work, during the latter part of this conversation, he would have been almost induced to wonder that the indignant fire that flashed from his eyes, did not melt the glasses of his spectacles - so majestic was his wrath. His nostrils dilated, and his fists clenched involuntarily, as he heard himself addressed by the villain. But he restrained himself again -he did not pulverize him.

"Here," continued the hardened traitor tossing the licence at Mr. Pickwick's feet; "get the name altered - take home the lady - do for Tuppy." (D.)

II. Think of the type of additional information about the speaker or communicative situation conveyed by the following general and special colloquial words:

1. "She's engaged. Nice guy, too. Though there's a slight difference in height. I'd say a foot, her favor." (T.C.)

2. "You know Brooklyn?"

"No. I was never there. But I had a buddy at Myer was from Brooklyn." (J.)

3. I didn't really do anything this time. Just pulled the dago out of the river. Like all dagos, he couldn't swim. Well, the fellow was sort of grateful about it. Hung around like a dog. About six months later he died of fever. I was with him. Last thing, just as he was pegging out, he beckoned me and whispered some excited jargon about a secret (Ch.)

4. "Here we are now," she cried, returning with the tray. "And don't look so miz." (P.)

5. "What's the dif," he wanted to know. (Th.S.)

6. Going down the stairs he overheard one beanied freshman he knew talking to another. "Did you see that black cat with the black whiskers who had those binocks in front of us? That's my comp рrоf." (В. М.)

7. "Don't you intend to get married?" asked Eugene curiously. "I don't know," she replied, "I'd want to think about that. A woman-artist is in a d - of a position anyway," using the letter d only to indicate the word "devil". (Dr.)

8. "There we were... in the hell of a country - pardon me - a country of raw metal.

...It's like a man of sixty looking down his nose at a youth of thirty and there's no such God-darned - pardon me - mistake as that. (G.)

9. "All those medical bastards should go through the ops they put other people through. Then they wouldn't talk so much bloody nonsense or be so damnably unutterably smug." (D. C.)

10. "I thought of going to the flicks," she said. "Or we could go for a walk if it keeps fine." (J.Br.)

11. "Let me warn you that the doc is a frisky bacheldore, Carol. Come on, now, folks, shake a leg. Let's have some stunts or a dance or something." (S.L.)

12. "Goddamn sonofabitching stool," Fishbelly screamed, raining blows on Bert's head. "Lawd Gawd in heaven, I'll kill, kill every chink-chink goddamn chinaman white man on this sonofabitching bastard earth." (Wr.)

13. There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of unwashed crocks in the kitchen. (A. T.)

14. "Of course I've spent nine years around the Twin Cities - took my B.A. and M.D. over at the U, and had my internship in a hospital in Minneapolis." (S.L.)

15. "How long did they cook you?" Dongeris stopped short and looked at him. "How long did they cook you?" "Since eight this morning. Over twelve hours." "You didn't unbutton then? After twelve hours of it?"

"Me? They got a lot of dancing to do before they'll get anything out of me." (Т. Н.)

16. "Nix on that," said Roy. "I don't need a shyster quack to shoot me full of confidence juice. I want to go through on my own steam." (B. M.)

17. "Go in there, you slob. I hope you get a hell of a lot of fun out of it. He looks too damned sick." (H.)

18. Just then Taylor comes down. "Shut up and eat," my mother says to him before he can open his mouth. In less than five minutes my father is back. "Keep the kids home," he says.

"My God," my mother says wearily, "them under foot all day." (Sh. Gr.)

19. "Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky." (T.C.)

20. "Never heard anything so bloody daft in all my life." (J.Br.)

21. "You know. The mummies - them dead guys that get buried in them toons and all." (S.)

22. His expenses didn't go down... washing cost a packet, and you'd be surprised the amount of linen he needed. (S.M.)

23. "We'll show Levenford what my clever lass can do. I'm looking ahead, and I can see it. When we've made ye the head scholar of the Academy, then you'll see what your father means to do wi' you. But ye must stick in to your lessons, stick in hard." (A. C.)

24. Wee modest crimson tipped flow'r,

Thou's met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crash amang the stoure

Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my pow'r

Thou bonnie gem.

(R. B.)

25. "That's so, my lord. I remember having tae du much the same thing, mony years since, in an inquest upon a sailing vessel that ran aground in the estuary and got broken up by bumping herself to bits in a gale. The insurance folk thocht that the accident wasna a'tegither straightforward. We tuk it upon oorsels tae demonstrate that wi' the wind and tide setti' as they did, the boat should ha' been wellaway fra' the shore if they started at the hour they claimed tae ha' done. We lost the case, but I've never altered my opeenion." (D.S.)

III. Compare the neutral and the colloquial (or literary) modes of expression:

1. "Also it will cost him a hundred bucks as a retainer."

"Huh?" Suspicious again. Stick to basic English.

"Hundred dollars," I said. "Iron men. Fish. Bucks to the number of one hundred. Me no money, me no come. Savvy?" I began to count a hundred with both hands. (R.Ch.)

2. "...some thief in the night boosted my clothes whilst I slept. I sleep awful sound on the mattresses you have here." "Somebody boosted...?" "Pinched. Jobbed. Swiped. Stole," he says happily. (K.K.)

3. "Now take fried, crocked, squiffed, loaded, plastered, blotto, tiddled, soaked, boiled, stinko, viled, polluted."

"Yes," I said.

"That's the next set of words I am decreasing my vocabulary by", said Atherton. "Tossing them all out in favor of-"

"Intoxicated?" I supplied.

"I favor fried," said Atherton. "It's shorter and monosyllabic, even though it may sound a little harsher to the squeamish-minded."

"But there are degrees of difference," I objected. "Just being tiddled isn't the same as being blotto, or-"

"When you get into the vocabulary-decreasing business," he interrupted, "you don't bother with technicalities. You throw out the whole kit and caboodle - I mean the whole bunch," he hastily corrected himself. (P.G.W.)

4. "Do you talk?" asked Bundle. "Or are you just strong and silent?" "Talk?" said Anthony. "I, burble. I murmur. I gurgle - like a running brook, you know. Sometimes I even ask questions." (Ch.)

5. "So you'll both come to dinner? Eight fifteen. Dinny, we must be back to lunch. Swallows," added Lady Mont round the brim of her hat and passed out through the porch.

"There's a house-party," said Dinny to the young man's elevated eyebrows. "She means tails and a white tie."

"Oh! Ah! Best bib and tucker, Jean." (G.)

6. "What do you really contemplate doing?" "No Plaza? Not even when I'm in the ohips?" "Why are you so rich?" (J.O'H.)

7. "Obviously an emissary of Mr. Bunyan had obtained clandestine access to her apartment in her absence and purloined the communication in question." It took Lord Uffenham some moments to work this out, but eventually he unravelled it and was able to translate it from his butler's language. What the man was trying to say was that some low blister, bought with Bunyan's gold, had sneaked into the girl's flat and pinched the bally things. (P.G.W.)

8. ''I say, old boy, where do you hang out?" Mr. Pickwick responded that he was at present suspended at the George and Vulture. (D.)

9. "The only thing that counts in his eyes is solid achievement. Sometimes I have been prostrate with fatigue. He calls it idleness. I need the stimulation of good company. He terms this riff-raff. The plain fact is, I am misunderstood." (D. du M.)

10. "The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial outlay."

"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has a pippin of an idea but it's going to cost a bit." (P.G.W.)

11. Mrs. Sunbury never went to bed - she retired, but Mr. Sunbury who was not quite so refined as his wife always said: "Me for Bedford." (S.M.)

12. "He tried those engineers. But no soap. No answer." (J.O'H.)

13. "You want to know what I think? I think you're nuts. Pure plain crazy. Goofy as a loon. That's what I think." (J.)

14. The famous Alderman objected to the phrase in Canning's inscription for a Pitt Memorial "He died poor" and wished to substitute "He expired in indigent circumstances." (Luc.)

15. "I am Alpha and Omega - the first and the last," the solemn voice would announce. (D. du M.)

16. The tall man ahead of him half-turned saying "Gre't God! I never, I never in all my days seen so many folks." Mr. Munn thought that he, too, had never seen so many people, never before. (R.W.)

17. It may sound to some like cold-blooded murder of the English tongue, but American kids have been speaking a language of their own since they annoyed their Pilgrim parents at Plymouth Rock.

Ask a teen-ager today what he thought of last night's rock show. If he liked it, it was "wicked" or "totally awesome". But if he didn't, it was "groady" or "harsh".

Young people punctuate their sentences with slang. They drop phrases that would make Professor Henry Higgins turn over in his grave. Twice.

"It's just like a dictionary that only teen-agers understand," said Michael Harris, 17, a high school student in Richmond, Va. "You go home and you have to spell it for your parents. They don't even know what you're talking about."

But this has been going on for years. Slang is as old as English itself, says Stuart Berg Flexner, editor-in-chief of the Random House Dictionary, author of the Dictionary of American Slang.

It offended puritan parents that their Pilgrim children took their traditional farewell - God be with you - and turned it into "good-bye", Flexner says.

Today's words are obsolete tomorrow.

"I may call somebody a jerk, but today they would call him a nerd," says Flexner, 54. "Each generation seems to want to have some of its own words."

"It's not so much to shut out adults - although that's a part of it. It gives them identity with their own age group. They sort of belong to their own club," he says.

There is valleytalk and preppyspeak, jocktalk and street language.

Take Moon Unit Zappa's Valley Talk. The daughter of famed rocker Frank Zappa was 14 years old when her dad sat her before a microphone and documented her language in a pop song.

"Gag me with a spoon," she says to show disgust. "Groady to themax."

Legions of youngsters across America picked it up. The song, and language, was a coast-to-coast hit. But that killed it.

"Valley Speak is out," reports Jane Segal, 16, a reformed Valley Girl at Santa Monica High School. "It went out after the song was played to death. It was really popular, and then everyone got so sick of the stupid song they quit saying that stuff."

"No one ever says 'Gag me' anymore," she says. "'Totally' is still hanging on, and everyone uses' "like". They say it everywhere, just sprinkle it in. I do it subconsciously, I use it like "um."

Flexner considers slang.a reflection of American pop culture. Words come and go like No. 1 hit songs. Once a word is widely known it may be dropped, relegated to the used-slang bin alongside "swell" from the '50s and "groovy" from the '60s.

Others stick around like golden oldies.

"There are classics. Once" a good phrase comes along it's pretty hard to replace it," says Scott Wenger, 19, a New York University student. "Flipped" out still means crazy and "pulling an allnighter" still means to study.hard until all hours of the morning for exams."

Teen-agers may dream up slang, but adults use it too. Julia Shields, 42, a high school English teacher in Charlottesville, Va., is an avowed user.

"I love slang, think it's colorful, wonderful, metaphoric. Some of it is quite clever," she says. "I hate it, but I call everything "neat". It's such a horrible, vague, meaningless word. But I use it in every sentence."

Slang is not the talk of board rooms and diplomatic sessions. Because young people spend more time informally than adults, and slang is a product of relaxing the rules, high schools and college campuses are breeding grounds for it. (C. R.)

IV. Speak about the difference between the contextual and the dictionary meanings of italicized words:

1. Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was the citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. (J.J.)

2. He does all our insurance examining and they say he's some doctor. (S.L.)

3. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic. (S.L.)

4. "What do you think?" The question pops their heads up. (K.K.)

5. We tooled the car into the street and eased it into the ruck of folks. (R.W.)

6. He inched the car forward. (A.H.)

7. "Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And - and - we drifted into a sort of understanding - I suppose I should call it an engagement -"

"You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it." (B.Sh.)

8. He sat with the strike committee for many hours in a smoky room and agonized over ways and means. (M.G.)

9. Betty loosed fresh tears. (Jn.B.)

10. When the food came, they wolfed it down rapidly. (A.M.)

11. He had seen many places and been many things railroad foreman, plantation overseer, boss mechanic, cow-puncher, and Texas deputy-sheriff. (J.R.)

12 Station platforms were such long, impersonal, dirty, ugly things, with too many goodbyes, lost hearts, and tears stamped into the concrete paving. (A. S.)

13. "Let me say, Virginia, that I consider your conduct most unbecoming. Nor at all that of a pure young widow."

"Don't be an idiot. Bill. Things are happening."

"What kind of things?"

"Queer things." (Ch.)

14. I need young critical things like you to punch me up. (S.L.)

15. Oh! the way the women wear their prettiest every thing' (T.C.)

Lexical Stylistic Devices

Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Play on Words. Irony. Epithet.

Hyperbole. Understatement. Oxymoron

You know by now that among multiple functions of the word the main one is to denote, denotational meaning thus being the major semantic characteristic of the word. In this paragraph we shall deal with the foregrounding of this particular function, i.e. with such types of denoting phenomena that create additional expressive, evaluative, subjective connotations. We shall deal in fact with the substitution of the existing names approved by long usage and fixed in dictionaries by new, occasional, individual ones, prompted by the speaker's subjective original view and evaluation of things. This act of name-exchange, of substitution is traditionally referred to as transference, for, indeed, the name of one object is transferred onto another, proceeding from their similarity (of shape, colour, function, etc.), or closeness (of material existence, cause/ effect, instrument/result, part/whole relations, etc.).

Each type of intended substitution results in a stylistic device (SD) called also a trope. The most frequently used, well known and elaborated among them is a metaphor - transference of names based on the associated likeness between two objects, as in the "pancake", or "ball", or "volcano" for the "sun"; "silver dust", "sequins" for "stars"; "vault", "blanket", "veil" for the "sky".

From previous study you know that nomination - the process of naming reality by means of the language - proceeds from choosing one of the features characteristic of the object which is being named, for the representative of the object. The connection between the chosen feature, representing the object, and the word is especially vivid in cases of transparent "inner form" when the name of the object can be easily traced to the name of one of its characteristics. Cf.: "railway", "chairman", "waxen". Thus the semantic structure of a word reflects, to a certain extent, characteristic features of the piece of reality which it denotes (names). So it is only natural that similarity between real objects or phenomena finds its reflection in the semantic structures of words denoting them: both words possess at least one common semantic component. In the above examples with the "sun" this common semantic component is "hot" (hence - "volcano", "pancake" which are also "hot"), or "round" ("ball", "pancake" which are also of round shape).

The expressiveness of the metaphor is promoted by the implicit simultaneous presence of images of both objects - the one which is actually named and the one which supplies its own "legal" name. So that formally we deal with the name transference based on the similarity of one feature common to two different entities, while in fact each one enters a phrase in the complexity of its other characteristics. The wider is the gap between the associated objects the more striking and unexpected - the more expressive - is the metaphor.

If a metaphor involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects, we deal with personification, as in "the face of London", or "the pain of the ocean".

Metaphor, as all other SDs, is fresh, orginal, genuine, when first used, and trite, hackneyed, stale when often repeated. In the latter case it gradually loses its expressiveness becoming just another entry in the dictionary, as in the "leg of a table" or the "sunrise", thus serving a very important source of enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Metaphor can be expressed by all notional parts of speech, and functions in the sentence as any of its members.

When the speaker (writer) in his desire to present an elaborated image does not limit its creation to a single metaphor but offers a group of them, each supplying another feature of the described phenomenon, this cluster creates a sustained (prolonged) metaphor.

Exercise I. Analyse the given cases of metaphor from all sides mentioned above - semantics, originality, expressiveness, syntactic function, vividness and elaboration of the created image. Pay attention to the manner in which two objects (actions) are identified: with both named or only one - the metaphorized one - presented explicitly:

1. She looked down on Gopher Prairie. The snow stretching without break from street to devouring prairie beyond, wiped out the town's pretence of being a shelter. The houses were black specks on a white sheet. (S.L.)

2. And the skirts! What a sight were those skirts! They were nothing but vast decorated pyramids; on the summit of each was stuck the upper half of a princess. (A.B.)

3. I was staring directly in front of me, at the back of the driver's neck, which was a relief map of boil scars. (S.)

4. She was handsome in a rather leonine way. Where this girl was a lioness, the other was a panther - lithe and quick. (Ch.)

5. His voice was a dagger of corroded brass. (S.L.)

6. Wisdom has reference only to the past. T-he future remains for ever an infinite field for mistakes. You can't know beforehand. (D.H.L.)

7. He felt the first watery eggs of sweat moistening the palms of his hands. (W. S.)

8. At the last moment before the windy collapse of the day, I myself took the road down. (Jn. H.)

9. The man stood there in the middle of the street with the deserted dawnlit boulevard telescoping out behind him. (Т.Н.)

10. Leaving Daniel to his fate, she was conscious of joy springing in her heart. (A.B.)

11. He smelled the ever-beautiful smell of coffee imprisoned in the can. (J. St.)

12. We talked and talked and talked, easily, sympathetically, wedding her experience with my articulation. (Jn.B.)

13. "We need you so much here. It's a dear old town, but it's a rough diamond, and we need you for the polishing, and we're ever so humble...". (S.L.)

14. They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate. (W.G.)

15. Geneva, mother of the Red Cross, hostess of humanitarian congresses for the civilizing of warfare! (J.R.)

16. She and the kids have filled his sister's house and their welcome is wearing thinner and thinner. (U.)

17. Notre'Dame squats in the dusk. (H.)

18. I am the new year. I am an unspoiled page in your book of time. I am your next chance at the art of living.

I am your opportunity to practice what you have learned during the last twelve months about life.

All that you sought the past year and failed to find is hidden in me; I am waiting for you to search it out again and with more determination.

All the good that you tried to do for others and didn't achieve last year is mine to grant - providing you have fewer selfish and conflicting desires.

In me lies the potential of all that you dreamed but didn't dare to do, all that you hoped but did not perform, all you prayed for but did not yet experience. These dreams slumber lightly, waiting to be awakened by the touch of an enduring purpose. I am your opportunity. (Т. Н.) *

19. Autumn comes And trees are shedding their leaves, And Mother Nature blushes Before disrobing. (N. W.)

20. He had hoped that Sally would laugh at this, and she did, and in a sudden mutual gush they cashed into the silver of laughter all the sad" secrets they could find in their pockets. (U.)

21. All across the Union audiences clamour for her arrival, which will coincide with that of the new century. For we are at the fag-end, the smouldering cigar-butt, of a nineteenth century which is just about to be ground out in the ashtray of history. (An.C.)

Metonymy, another lexical SD, - like metaphor - on losing its originality also becomes instrumental in enriching the vocabulary of the language, though metonymy is created by a different semantic process and is based on contiguity (nearness) of objects or phenomena. Transference of names in metonymy does not involve a necessity for two different words to have a common component in their semantic structures, as is the case of metaphor, but proceeds from the fact that two objects (phenomena) have common grounds of existence in reality. Such words as "cup" and "tea" have no linguistic semantic nearness, but the first one may serve the container of the second, hence - the conversational cliche "Will you have another cup?", which is a case of metonymy, once original, but due to long use, no more accepted as a fresh SD.

"My brass will call your brass," says one of the characters of A. Hailey's Airport to another, meaning "My boss will call your boss." The transference of names is caused by both bosses being officers, wearing uniform caps with brass cockades.

The scope of transference in metonymy is much more limited than that of metaphor, which is quite understandable: the scope of human imagination identifying two objects (phenomena, actions) on the grounds of commonness of one of their innumerable characteristics is boundless while actual relations between objects are more limited. This is why metonymy, on the whole,- is a less frequently observed SD, than metaphor.

Similar to singling out one particular type of metaphor into the self-contained SD of personification, one type of metonymy - namely, the one, which is based on the relations between a part and the whole - is often viewed independently as synecdoche.

As a rule, metonymy is expressed by nouns (less frequently - by substantivized numerals) and is used in syntactical functions characteristic of nouns (subject, object, predicative).

Exercise II. Indicate metonymies, state the type of relations between the object named and the object implied, which they represent, lso pay attention to the degree of their originality, and to their syntactical function:

1. He went about her room, after his introduction, looking at her pictures, her bronzes and clays, asking after the creator of this, the painter of that, where a third thing came from. (Dr.)

2. She wanted to have a lot of children, and she was glad that things were that way, that the Church approved. Then the little girl died. Nancy broke with Rome the day her baby died. It was a secret break, but no Catholic breaks with Rome casually. (J.O'H.)

3. "Evelyn Glasgow, get up out of that chair this minute." The girl looked up from her book. "What's the matter?"

"Your satin. The skirt'll be a mass of wrinkles in the back." (E. F.)

4. Except for a lack of youth, the guests had no common theme, they seemed strangers among strangers; indeed, each face, on entering, had straggled to conceal dismay at seeing others there. (T.C.)

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

6. Dinah, a slim, fresh, pale eighteen, was pliant and yet fragile. (С. Н.)

7. The man looked a rather old forty-five, for he was already going grey. (K. P.)

8. The delicatessen owner was a spry and jolly fifty. (T. R.)

9. "It was easier to assume a character without having to tell too many lies and you brought a fresh eye and mind to the job." (P.)

10. "Some remarkable pictures in this room, gentlemen. A Holbein, two Van Dycks and if I am not mistaken, a Velasquez. I am interested in pictures." (Ch.)

11. You have nobody to blame but yourself. The saddest words of tongue or pen. (I.Sh.)

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

13. There you are at your tricks again. The rest of them do earn their bread; you live on my charity. (E.Br.)

14. I crossed a high toll bridge and negotiated a no man's land and came to the place where the Stars and Stripes stood shoulder to shoulder with the Union Jack. (J. St.)

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

16. He made his way through the perfume and conversation. (I.Sh.)

17. His mind was alert and people asked him to dinner not for old times' sake, but because he was worth his salt. (S.M.)

18. Up the Square, from the corner of King Street, passed a woman in a new bonnet with pink strings, and a new blue dress that sloped at the shoulders and grew to a vast circumference at the hem. Through the silent sunlit solitude of the Square this bonnet and this dress floated northwards in search of romance. (A.B.)

19. Two men in uniforms were running heavily to the Administration building. As they ran, Christian saw them throw away their rifles. They were portly men who looked like advertisements for Munich beer, and running came hard to them. The first prisoner stopped and picked up one of the discarded rifles. He did not fire it, but carried it, as he chased the guards. He swung the rifle like a club, and one of the beer advertisements went down (I.Sh.)

As you must have seen from the brief outline and the examples of metaphor and metonymy, the first one operates on the linguistic basis (proceeding from the similarity of semantic components of a word), while the latter one rests solely on the extralinguistic, actually existing relations between the phenomena denoted by the words.

Our next concern is a cluster of SDs, which are united into a small group as they have much in common both in the mechanism of their formation and in their functioning. They are - pun (also referred to as paronomasia), zeugma, violation of phraseological units, semantically false chains, and nonsense of non-sequence. In the stylistic tradition of the English-speaking countries only the first two are widely discussed. The latter two, indeed, may be viewed as slight variations of the first ones for, basically, the foursome perform the same stylistic function in speech, and operate on the same linguistic mechanism: namely, one word-form is deliberately used in two meanings. The effect of these SDs is humorous. Contextual conditions leading to the simultaneous realization of two meanings and to the formation of pun may vary: it can be misinterpretation of one speaker's utterance by the other, which results in his remark dealing with a different meaning of the misinterpreted word or its homonym, as in the famous case from the Pickwick Papers When the fat boy, Mr. Wardle's servant, emerged from the corridor, very pale, he was asked by his master: "Have you been seeing any spirits?" "Or taking any?" - added Bob Alien. The first "spirits" refers to supernatural forces, the second one - to strong drinks.

Punning may be the result of the speaker's intended violation of the listener's expectation, as in the jocular quotation from B. Evans "There comes a period in every man's life, but she is just a semicolon in his." Here we expect the second half of the sentence to unfold the content, proceeding from "period" understood as "an interval of time", while the author has used the word in the meaning of "punctuation mark" which becomes clear from the "semicolon", following it.

Misinterpretation may be caused by the phonetic similarity of two homonyms, such as in the crucial case of O. Wilde's play The Importance of Being Ernest.

In very many cases polysemantic verbs that have a practically unlimited lexical valency and can be combined with nouns of most varying semantic groups, are deliberately used with two or more homogeneous members, which are not connected semantically, as in such examples from Ch. Dickens: "He took his hat and his leave", or "She went home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair". These are cases of classical zeugma, highly characteristic of English prose.

When the number of homogeneous members, semantically disconnected, but attached to the same verb, increases, we deal with semantically false chains, which are thus a variation of zeugma. As a rule, it is the last member of the chain that falls out of the thematic group, defeating our expectancy and producing humorous effect. The following case from S. Leacock may serve an example: "A Governess wanted. Must possess knowledge of Romanian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, German, Music and Mining Engineering."

As you have seen from the examples of classical zeugma, the tiesbetween the verb on one hand and each of the dependent members, onthe other, are of different intensity and stability. In most cases one ofthem, together with the verb, forms a phraseological unit or a cliche, inwhich the verb loses some of its semantic independence and strength(Cf.: "to take one's leave" and "to take one's hat"). Zeugma restores theliteral original meaning of the word, which also occurs in violation ofphraseological units of different syntactical patterns, as in Galsworthy'sremark: "Little Jon was born with a silver spoon in his mouth which wasrather curly and large." The word "mouth", with its content, is completelylost in the phraseological unit which means "to have luck, to be bornlucky". Attaching to the unit the qualification of the mouth, the authorrevives the meaning of the word and offers a very fresh, original andexpressive description.

Sometimes the speaker (writer) interferes into the structure of the word attributing homonymous meanings to individual morphemes as in these jocular definitions from Esar's dictionary: professorship -- a ship full of professors; relying - telling the same story again; beheld - to have somebody hold you, etc.

It is possible to say thus that punning can be realized on most levels of language hierarchy. Indeed, the described violation of word-structure takes place on the morphological level; zeugma and pun - on the lexical level; violation of phraseological units includes both lexical and syntactical levels; semantically false chains and one more SD of this group - nonsense of non-sequence - on the syntactical level.

Nonsense of non-sequence rests on the extension of syntactical valency and results in joining two semantically disconnected clauses into one sentence, as in: "Emperor Nero played the fiddle, so they burnt Rome." (E.) Two disconnected statements are forcibly linked together by cause / effect relations.

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 jn a man. A sympathetic character and full lips. (I.Sh.)

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

4. I believed all men were brothers; she thought all men were husbands. I gave the whole mess up. (Jn.B.)

5. In December, 1960, Naval Aviation News, a well-known special publication, explained why "a ship" is referred to as "she": Because there's always a bustle around her; because there's usually a gang of men with her; because she has waist and stays; because it takes a good man to handle her right; because she shows her topsides, hides her bottom and when coming into port, always heads for the buyos." (N.)

6. When I am dead, I hope it may be said:

"His sins were scarlet, but his books were read." (H. B.)

7. Most women up London nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners and French novels. (O.W.)

8. I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry. (H )

9. "Bren, I'm not planning anything. I haven't planned a thing in three years... I'm - I'm not a planner. I'm a liver."

"I'm a pancreas," she said. "I'm a --" and she kissed the absurd game away. (Ph. R.)

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

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

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

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

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

14. My mother was wearing her best grey dress and gold brooch and a faint pink flush under each cheek bone. (W.G1.)

15. Hooper laughed and said to Brody, "Do you mind if I give Ellen something?"

"What do you mean?" Brody said. He thought to himself, give her what? A kiss? A box of chocolates? A punch in the nose?

"A present. It's nothing, really." (P.B.)

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

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

18. Some writer once said: "How many times you can call yourself a Man depends on how many languages you know." (M.St.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What lexical meanings of a word can you name? Which of them, in most cases, is the most important one?

2. What SDs are based on the use of the logical (denotational) meaning of a word?

3. What is a contextual meaning? How is it used in a SD?

4. What is the difference between the original and the hackneyed SDs?

5. What is a metaphor? What are its semantic, morphological, syntactical, structural, functional peculiarities?

6. What is a metonymy? Give a detailed description of the device.

7. What is included into the group of SDs known as "play on words"? Which ones of them are the most frequently used? What levels of language hierarchy are involved into their formation?

8. Describe the difference between pun and zeugma, zeugma and a semantically false chain, semantically false chain and nonsense of non-sequence.

9. What meanings of a word participate in the violation of a phraseological unit?

10. What is the basic effect achieved by the play on words?

11. Find examples of each of the discussed stylistic devices in your home reading.

12. Try and find peculiarities in the individual use of various SDs by different authors known to you from your courses of literature, interpretation of the text, home reading.

In all previously discussed lexical SDs we dealt with various transformations of the logical (denotational) meaning of words, which participated in the creation of metaphors, metonymies, puns, zeugmas, etc. Each of the SDs added expressiveness and originality to the nomination of the object. Evaluation of the named concept was often present too, but it was an optional characteristic, not inherent in any of these SDs. Their subjectivity relies on the new and fresh look at the object mentioned, which shows the latter from a new and unexpected side. In irony, which is our next item of consideration, subjectivity lies in the evaluation of the phenomenon named. The essence of this SD consists in the foregrounding not of the logical but of the evaluative meaning. The context is arranged so that the qualifying word in irony reverses the direction of the evaluation, and the word positively charged is understood as a negative qualification and (much-much rarer) vice versa. Irony thus is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning, So, like all other SDs, irony does not exist outside the context, which varies from the minimal - a word combination, as in J. Steinbeck's "She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator," - to the context of a whole book, as in Ch: Dickens, where one of the remarks of Mr. Micawber, known for his complex, highly bookish and elaborate style of speaking about the most trivial things, is introduced by the author's words "...Mr. Micawber said in his usual plain manner".

In both examples the words "sweet" and "plain" reverse their positive meaning into the negative one due to the context, micro- in the first, macro- in the second case.

In the stylistic device of irony it is always possible to indicate the exact word whose contextual meaning diametrically opposes its dictionary meaning. This is why this type of irony is called verbal irony. There are very many cases, though, which we regard as irony, intuitively feeling the reversal of the evaluation, but unable to put our finger on the exact word in whose meaning we can trace the contradiction between the said and the implied. The effect of irony in such cases is created by a number of statements, by the whole of the text. This type of irony is called sustained, and it is formed by the contradiction of the speaker's (writer's) considerations and the generally accepted moral and ethical codes. Many examples of sustained irony are supplied by D. Defoe, J. Swift or by such XX-ieth c. writers as S. Lewis, K. Vonnegut, E. Waugh and others.

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. The book was entitled Murder at Milbury Manor and was a whodunit of the more abstruse type, in which everything turns on whether a certain character, by catching the three-forty-three train at Hilbury and changing into the four-sixteen at Milbury, could have reached Silbury by five-twenty-seven, which would have given him just time to disguise himself and be sticking knives into people at Bilbury by six-thirty-eight. (P.G.W.)

2. 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.)

3. "I had a plot, a scheme, a little quiet piece of enjoyment afoot, of which the very cream and essence was that this old man and grandchild should be as poor as frozen rats," and Mr. Brass revealed the whole story, making himself out to be rather a saintlike holy character. (D.)

4. The lift held two people and rose slowly, groaning with diffidence. (I.M.)

5. England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle would go out. Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and there being nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there has been no Government (D.)

6. 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.)

7. She's a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge's second term, I'll eat my spare tire, rim and all. (R.Ch.)

8. With all the expressiveness of a stone Welsh stared at him another twenty seconds apparently hoping to see him gag. (R.Ch.)

9. "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.)

10. 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.)

11. 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.)

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

13. A local busybody, unable to contain her curiosity any longer, asked an expectant mother point-blank whether she was going to have a baby. "Oh, goodness, no," the young woman said pleasantly. "I'm just carrying this for a friend." (P.G.W.)

14. Sonny Grosso was a worrier who looked for and frequently managed to find, the dark side of most situations. (P. M.)

15. Bookcases covering one wall boasted a half-shelf of literature. (T.C.)

16. I had been admitted as a partner in the firm of Andrews and Bishop, and throughout 1927 and 19281 enriched myself and the firm at the rate of perhaps forty dollars a month. (Jn.B.)

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

18. He could walk and run, was full of exact knowledge about God, and entertained no doubt concerning the special partiality of a minor deity called Jesus towards himself. (A.B.)

19. 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.)

20. All this blood and fire business tonight was probably part of the graft to get the Socialists chucked out and leave honest businessmen safe to make their fortunes out of murder. (L. Ch)

21. He spent two years in prison, making a number of valuable contacts among other upstanding embezzlers, frauds and confidence men whilst inside. (An.C.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is irony, what lexical meaning is employed in its formation?

2. What types of irony do you know? What is the length of the context needed for the realization of each of them?

3. What are the most frequently observed mechanisms of irony formation? Can you explain the role of the repetition in creating irony?

4. Can you name English or American writers known for their ingenuity and versatility in the use of irony?

5. Find cases of irony in books you read both for work and pleasure.

Antonomasia is a lexical SD in which a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice versa, i.e. a SD, in which the nominal meaning of a proper name is suppressed by its logical meaning or the logical meaning acquires the new - nominal -- component. Logical meaning, as you know, serves to denote concepts and thus to classify individual objects into groups (classes). Nominal meaning has no classifying power for it applies to one single individual object with the aim not of classifying it as just another of a number of objects constituting a definite group, but, on the contrary, with the aim of singling it out of the group of similar objects, of individualizing one particular object. Indeed, the word "Mary" does not indicate whether the denoted object refers to the class of women, girls, boats, cats, etc., for it singles out without denotational classification. But in Th. Dreiser we read: "He took little satisfaction in telling each Mary, shortly after she arrived, something...." The attribute "each", used with the name, turns it into a common noun denoting any female. Here we deal with a case of antonomasia of the first type.

Another type of antonomasia we meet when a common noun serves as an individualizing name, as in D. Cusack: "There are three doctors in an illness like yours. I don't mean only myself, my partner and the radiologist who does your X-rays, the three I'm referring to are Dr. Rest, Dr. Diet and Dr. Fresh Air."

Still another type of antonomasia is presented by the so-called "speaking names" - names whose origin from common nouns is still clearly perceived. So, in such popular English surnames as Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown the etymology can be restored but no speaker of English today has it in his mind that the first one used to mean occupation and the second one - color. While such names from Sheridan's School for Scandal as Lady Teazle or Mr. Surface immediately raise associations with certain human qualities due to the denotational meaning of the words "to tease" and "surface". The double role of the speaking names, both to name and to qualify, is sometimes preserved in translation. Cf. the list of names from another of Sheridan's plays, The Rivals: Miss Languish - Мисс Томней; Mr. Backbite - М-р Клевентаун; Mr. Credulous - М-р Доверч; Mr. Snake - М-р Гад, etc. Or from F. Cooper: Lord Chatterino - Лорд Балаболо; John Jaw -- Джон Брех; Island Leap-High - Остров Высокопрыгия.

Antonomasia is created mainly by nouns, more seldom by attributive combinations (as in "Dr. Fresh Air") or phrases (as in "Mr. What's-his name"). Common nouns used in the second type of antonomasia are in most cases abstract, though there are instances of concrete ones being used too.

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. "You cheat, you no-good cheat - you tricked our son. Took our son with a scheming trick, Miss Tomboy, Miss Sarcastic, Miss Sncerface." (Ph. R.)

2. A stout middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting on the edge of a great table. I turned to him.

"Don't ask me," said Mr. Owl Eyes washing his hands of the whole matter. (Sc.F.)

3. To attend major sports event most parents have arrived. A Colonel Sidebotham was standing next to Prendergast, firmly holding the tape with "FINISH". "Capital," said Mr. Prendergast, and dropping his end of the tape, he sauntered to the Colonel. "I can see you are a fine judge of the race, sir. So was I once. So's Grimes. A capital fellow, Grimes; a bounder, you know, but a capital fellow. Bounders can be capital fellows; don't you agree. Colonel Slidebottom... I wish you'd stop pulling at my arm, Pennyfeather. Colonel Shybottom and I are just having a most interesting conversation." (E.W.)

4. I keep six honest serving-men

(They taught me all I know);

Their names are What and Why and When

And How and Where and Who.

I send them over land and sea,

I send them east and west;

But after they have worked for me

I give them all a rest.

I let them rest from nine till five,

For I am busy then,

As well as breakfast, lunch, and tea,

For they are hungry men.

But different folk have different views.

I know a person small -

She keeps ten million serving-men,

Who get no rest at all.

She sends 'em abroad on her own affairs,

From the second she opens her eyes -

One million Hows, two million Wheres,

And seven million Whys. (R. K.)

5. "Her mother is perfectly unbearable. Never met such a Gorgon." "I don't really know what a Gorgon is like, but I am quite sure, that

Lady Bracknell is one. In any case, she is a monster without being a myth."(O.W.)

6. Our secretary is Esther D'Eath. Her name is pronounced by vulgar relatives as Dearth, some of us pronounce it Deeth. (S. Ch.)

7. When Omar P. Quill died, his solicitors referred to him always as O.P.Q. Each reference to O.P.Q. made Roger think of his grandfather as the middle of the alphabet. (G. M.)

8. "Your fur and his Caddy are a perfect match. I respect history: don't you know that Detroit was founded by Sir Antoine de la Mothe Cadillac, French fur trader." (J.O'H.)

9. Now let me introduce you - that's Mr. What's-his-name, you remember him, don't you? And over there in the corner, that's the Major, and there's Mr. What-d'you-call-him, and that's an American. (E.W.)

10. 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.G1.)

11. 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.)

12. 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.)

13. The next speaker was a tall gloomy man. Sir Something Somebody. (P.)

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

15. She's been in a bedroom with one of the young Italians, Count Something. (I.Sh.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is antonomasia? What meanings interact in its formation?

2. What types of antonomasia do you know? Give examples of each.

3. Do you remember any speaking names from the books you have read?

4. Give examples of personages' names used as qualifying common nouns.

Epithet is probably as well known to you as metaphor, because it is widely mentioned-by the critics, scholars, teachers, and students discussing a literary work. Epithet expresses characteristics of an object, both existing and imaginary. Its basic feature is its emotiveness and subjectivity: the characteristic attached to the object to qualify it is always chosen by the speaker himself. Our speech ontologically being always emotionally coloured, it is possible to say that in epithet it is the emotive meaning of the word that is foregrounded to suppress the denotational meaning of the latter.

Epithet has remained over the centuries the most widely used SD, which is understandable - it offers ample opportunities of qualifying every object from the author's partial and subjective viewpoint, which is indispensable in creative prose, publicist style, and everyday speech. Through long and repeated use epithets become fixed. Many fixed epithets are closely connected with folklore and can be traced buck to folk ballads (e.g. "true love", "merry Christmas", etc.). A number of them have originated in euphemistic writing of the late sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (e.g. "a valiant youth", "a trembling maiden", "dead silence", etc.). Those which were first found in Homer's poetry and have been repeated since, are known as Homeric epithets (e.g. "swift-footed Achilles", "rosy-fingered dawn").

The structure and semantics of epithets are extremely variable which is explained by their long and wide use. Semantically, there should be differentiated two main groups, the biggest of them being affective (or emotive proper). These epithets serve to convey the emotional.evaluation of the object by the speaker. Most of the qualifying words found in the dictionary can be and are used as affective epithets (e.g. "gorgeous", "nasty", "magnificent", "atrocious", etc.).

The second group - figurative, or transferred, epithets - is formed of metaphors, metonymies and similes (which will be discussed later) expressed by adjectives. E.g. "the smiling sun", "the frowning cloud", "the sleepless pillow", ''the tobacco-stained smile", "a ghpst-like face", "a dreamlike experience". Like metaphor, metonymy and simile, corresponding epithets are also based on similarity of characteristics of - two objects in the first case, on nearness of the qualified objects in the second one, and on their comparison in the third.

In the ovei vvhelming majority of examples epithet is expressed by adjectives or qualitative adverbs (e.g. "his triumphant look" = he looked triumphantly).* Nouns come next. They are used either as exclamatory sentences ("You, ostrich!") or as postpositive attributes ("Alonzo the Clown", "Richard of the Lion Heart").

Epithets are used singly, in pairs, in chains, in two-step structures, and in inverted constructions, also as phrase-attributes. All previously given examples demonstrated single epithets. Pairs are represented by two epithets joined by a conjunction or asyndetically as in "wonderful and incomparable beauty" (O.W.) or "a tired old town" (H.L.). Chains (also called strings) of epithets present a group of homogeneous attributes varying in number from three up to sometimes twenty and even more. E.g. "You're a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature." (D.) From the last example it is evident that if a logical attribute (which in our case is the word "old") is included into the chain of epithets it begins to shine with their reflected light, i.e. the subjectivity of epithets irradiates onto the logical attribute and adapts it for expressive purposes, along with epithets proper.

Two-step epithets are so called because the process of qualifying seemingly passes two stages: the qualification of the object and the qualification of the qualification itself, as in "an unnaturally mild day" (Hut.), or "a pompously majestic female". (D.) As you see from the examples, two-step epithets have a fixed structure of Adv + Adj model.

Phrase-epithets always produce an original impression Cf.: "the sunshine-in-the-breakfast-room smell" (J.B.), or "a move-if-you-dare expression". (Gr.) Their originality proceeds from the fact of the rare repetition of the once coined phrase-epithet which, in its turn, is explained by the fact that into a phrase-epithet is turned a semantically self-sufficient word combination or even a whole sentence, which loses some of its independence and self-sufficiency, becoming a member of another sentence, and strives to return to normality. The forcible manner of this syntactical transformation is the main obstacle for repeated use of such phrasally-structured epithets.

A different linguistic mechanism is responsible for the emergence of one more structural type of epithets, namely, inverted epithets They are based on the contradiction between the logical and the syntactical: logically defining becomes syntactically defined and vice versa. E.g. instead of "this devilish woman", where "devilish" is both logically and syntactically defining, and "woman" also both logically and syntactically defined, W. Thackeray says "this devil of a woman". Here "of a woman" is syntactically an attribute, i.e. the defining, and "devil" the defined, while the logical relations between the two remain the same as in the previous example - "a woman" is defined by "the devil".

All inverted epithets are easily transformed into epithets of a more habitual structure where there is no logico-syntactical contradiction. Cf.: "the giant of a man" (a gigantic man); "the prude of a woman" (a prudish woman), etc. When meeting an inverted epithet do not mix it up with an ordinary of-phrase. Here the article with the second noun will help you in doubtful cases: "the toy of the girl" (the toy belonging to the girl); "the toy of a girl" (a small, toylike girl), or "the kitten of the woman" (the cat belonging to the woman); "the kitten of a woman" (a kittenlike woman).

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. Across the ditch Doll was having an entirely different reaction. With all his heart and soul, furiously, jealously, vindictively, he was hoping Queen would not win. (J.)

3. During the past few weeks she had become most sharply conscious of the smiling interest of Hauptwanger. His straight lithe body - his quick, aggressive manner - his assertive, seeking eyes. (Dr.)

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

5. 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.)

6. Where the devil was heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too. (Js.H.)

7. She has taken to wearing heavy blue bulky shapeless quilted People's Volunteers trousers rather than the tight tremendous how-the-West-was-won trousers she formerly wore. (D.B.)

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

9. In the cold, gray, street-washing, milk-delivering, shutters-coming-off-the-shops early morning, the midnight train from Paris arrived in Strasbourg. (H.)

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

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

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

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

14. He loved the afterswim salt-and-sunshine smell of her hair. (Jn.B.)

15. I was to secretly record, with the help of a powerful long-range movie-camera lens, the walking-along-the-Battery-in-the-sunshine meeting between Ken and Jerry. (D.U.)

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

17. She spent hausfrau afternoons hopping about in the sweatbox of her midget kitchen. (T.C.)

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

19. He thoroughly disliked this never-far-from-tragic look of a ham Shakespearian actor. (H.)

20. "What a picture!" cried the ladies. "Oh! The lambs! Oh, the sweets! Oh, the ducks! Oh, the pets!" (K.M.)

21. A branch, cracking under his weight sent through the tree a sad cruel thunder. (T.C.)

22. There was none of the Old-fashioned Five-Four-Three-Two-One-Zero business, so tough on the human nervous system. (A. Cl.)

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

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

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

26. He sat with Daisy in his arms for a long silent time. (Sc.F.)

27. From the Splendide Hotel guests and servants were pouring in chattering bright streams. (R.Ch.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What lexical meaning is instrumental in the formation of epithets?

2. What semantic types of epithets do you know?

3. What structural types of epithets do you know?

4. What parts of speech are predominantly used as epithets and why?

5. When reading a book pay attention to the type and distribution of epithets there and to what defines the quantity and the quality of epithets in a literary work.

Hyperbole - a stylistic device in which emphasis is achieved through deliberate exaggeration, - like epithet, relies on the foregrounding of the emotive meaning. The feelings and emotions of the speaker are so raffled that he resorts in his speech to intensifying the quantitative or the qualitative aspect of the mentioned object. E.g.: In his famous poem "To His Coy Mistress" Andrew Marvell writes about love: "My vegetable love should grow faster than empires."

Hyperbole is one of the most common expressive means of our everyday speech. When we describe our admiration or anger and say "I would gladly see this film a hundred times", or "I have told it to you a thousand times" - we use trite language hyperboles which, through long and repeated use, have lost their originality and remained signals of the speaker's roused emotions.

Hyperbole may be the final effect of another SD - metaphor, simile, irony, as we have in the cases "He has the tread of a rhinoceros" or "The man was like the Rock of Gibraltar".

Hyperbole can be expressed by all notional parts of speech. There are words though, which are used in this SD more often than others. They are such pronouns as "all", ''every", "everybody" and the like. Cf.: "Calpurnia was all angles and bones" (H. L.); also numerical nouns ("a million", "a thousand"), as was shown above; and adverbs of time ("ever", "never").

The outstanding Russian philologist A. Peshkovsky once stressed the importance of both communicants clearly perceiving that the exaggeration, used by one of them is intended as such and serves not to denote actual quality or quantity but signals the emotional background of the utterance. If this reciprocal understanding of the intentional nature of the overstatement is absent, hyperbole turns into a mere lie, he said.

Hyperbole is aimed at exaggerating quantity or quality. When it is directed the opposite way, when the size, shape, dimensions, characteristic features of the object are hot overrated, but intentionally underrated, we deal with understatement. The mechanism of its creation and functioning is identical with that of hyperbole, and it does not signify the actual state' of affairs in reality, but presents the latter through the emotionally coloured perception and rendering of the speaker. It is not the actual diminishing or growing of the object that is conveyed by a hyperbole or understatement. It is a transient subjective impression that finds its realization in these SDs. They differ only in the direction of the flow of roused emotions. English is well known for its preference for understatement in everyday speech - "I am rather annoyed" instead of "I'm infuriated", "The wind is rather strong" instead of "There's a gale blowing outside" are typical of British polite speech, but are less characteristic of American English.

Some hyperboles and understatements (both used individually and as the final effect of some other SD) have become fixed, as we have in "Snow White", or "Liliput", or "Gargantua".

Trite hyperboles and understatements, reflecting their use in everyday speech, in creative writing are observed mainly in dialogue, while the author's speech provides us with examples of original SDs, often rather extended or demanding a considerable fragment of the text to be fully understood.

Exercise VII. In the following examples concentrate on cases of hyperbole and understatement. Pay attention to their originality or stateness, to other SDs promoting their effect, to exact words containing the foregrounded emotive meaning:

1. I was scared to death when he entered the room. (S.)

2. The girls were dressed to kill. (J.Br.)

3. Newspapers are the organs of individual men who have jockeyed themselves to be party leaders, in countries where a new party is born every hour over a glass of beer in the nearest cafe. (J.R.)

4. I was violently sympathetic, as usual. (Jn.B.)

5. Four loudspeakers attached to the flagpole emitted a shattering roar of what Benjamin could hardly call music, as if it were played by a collection of brass bands, a few hundred fire engines, a thousand blacksmiths' hammers and the amplified reproduction of a force-twelve wind. (A. S.)

6. The car which picked me up on that particular guilty evening was a Cadillac limousine about seventy-three blocks long. (J.B.)

7. Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. (Sc.F.)

8. He didn't appear like the same man; then he was all milk and honey - now he was all starch and vinegar. (D.)

9. She was a giant of a woman. Her bulging figure was encased in a green crepe dress and her feet overflowed in red shoes. She carried a mammoth red pocketbook that bulged throughout as if it were stuffed with rocks. (Fl. O'C.)

10. She was very much upset by the catastrophe that had befallen the Bishops, but it was exciting, and she was tickled to death to have someone fresh to whom she could tell all about it. (S.M.)

11. Babbitt's preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general European War. (S.M.)

12. The little woman, for she was of pocket size, crossed her hands solemnly on her middle. (G.)

13. We danced on the handkerchief-big space between the speakeasy tables. (R.W.)

14. She wore a pink hat, the size of a button. (J.R.)

15. She was a sparrow of a woman. (Ph. L.)

16. And if either of us should lean toward the other, even a fraction of an inch, the balance would be upset. (O.W.)

17. He smiled back, breathing a memory of gin at me. (W.G.)

18. About a very small man in the Navy: this new sailor stood five feet nothing in sea boots. (Th.P.)

19. She busted herself in her midget kitchen. (T.C.)

20. The rain had thickened, fish could have swum through the air. (T.C.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What meaning is foregrounded in a hyperbole?

2. What types of hyperbole can you name?

3. What makes a hyperbole trite and where are trite hyperboles predominantly used?

4. What is understatement? In what way does it differ from hyperbole?

5. Recollect cases of vivid original hyperboles or understatements from your English reading.

Oxymoron is a stylistic device the syntactic and semantic structures of which come to clashes. In Shakespearian definitions of love, much quoted from his Romeo and Juliet, perfectly correct syntactically, attributive combinations present a strong semantic discrepancy between their members. Cf.: "O brawling love! О loving hate! О heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!"

As is clearly seen from this string of oxymorons, each one of them is a combination of two semantically contradictory notions, that help to emphasize contradictory qualities simultaneously existing in the described phenomenon as a dialectical unity. As a rule, one of the two members of oxymoron illuminates the feature which is universally observed and acknowledged while the other one offers a purely subjective, individual perception of the object. Thus in an oxymoron we also deal with the foregrounding of emotive meaning, only of a different type than the one observed in previously discussed SDs. The most widely known structure of oxymoron is attributive, so it is easy to believe that the subjective part of the oxymoron is embodied in the attribute-epithet, especially because the latter also proceeds from the foregrounding of the emotive meaning. But there are also others, in which verbs are employed. Such verbal structures as "to shout mutely" (I.Sh.) or "to cry silently" (M.W.) seem to strengthen the idea, which leads to the conclusion that oxymoron is a specific type of epithet. But the peculiarity of an oxymoron lies in the fact that the speaker's (writer's) subjective view can be expressed through either of the members of the word combination.

Originality and specificity of oxymoron becomes especially evident in non-attributive structures which also, not infrequently, are used to express semantic contradiction, as in "the stree' damaged by improvements" (O. H.) or "silence was louder than thunder" (U.).

Oxymorons rarely become trite, for their components, linked forcibly, repulse each other and oppose repeated use. There are few colloquial oxymorons, all of them showing a high degree of the speaker's emotional involvement in the situation, as in "damn nice", "awfully pretty".

Exercise VIII. 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. They were a bloody miserable lot - the miserablest lot of men I ever saw. But they were good to me. Bloody good. (J. St.)

4. He behaved pretty busily to Jan. (D. C.)

5. Well might he perceive the hanging of her hair in fairest quantity in locks, some curled and some as if it were forgotten, with such a careless care and an art so hiding art that it seemed she would lay them for a pattern. (Ph. S.)

6. There were some bookcases of superbly unreadable books. (E.W.)

7. 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.)

8. "Heaven must be the hell of a place. Nothing but repentant sinners up there, isn't it?" (Sh. D.)

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

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

11. It was an open secret that Ray had been ripping his father-in-law off. (D.U.)

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

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

14. Haven't we here the young middle-aged woman who cannot quite compete with the paid models in the fashion magazine but who yet catches our eye? (Jn. H.)

15. Their bitter-sweet union did not last long. (A. C.)

16. He was sure the whites could detect his adoring hatred of them. (Wr.)

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

18. He opened up a wooden garage. The doors creaked. The garage was full of nothing. (R.Ch.)

19. She was a damned nice woman, too. (H.)

20. A very likeable young man with a pleasantly ugly face. (A. C.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is an oxymoron and what meanings are foregrounded 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 had learnt individual lexical stylistic devices and the linguistic mechanism which operates in each of them, we may pass on to the general stylistic analysis on the lexical level. Your main task is to indicate how and through what lexical means additional logical, emotive, expressive information 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 Chenonceaux Herald to the Duchy of Aquitaine, "Hullo," he said. "Isn't it a repulsive party? What are you going to say 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 bram 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-comer 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.)

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, those teak-built, copper-bottomed iron-fastened, brazen-faced, ard 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.G1.)

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 led 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 for him to peer 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.)

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 felt 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.)

CHAPTER III. SYNTACTICAL LEVEL

Main Characteristics of the Sentence. Syntactical SDs. Sentence Length. One-Word Sentences. Sentence Structure. Punctuation. Arrangement of Sentence Members. Rhetorical Question. Types of Repetition. Parallel Constructions. Chiasmus. Inversion. Suspense. Detachment. Completeness of Sentence Structure. Ellipsis. One-Member Sentences. Apokoinu Constructions. Break. Types of Connection. Polysyndeton. Asyndeton. Attachment

Stylistic study of the syntax begins with the study of the length and the structure of a sentence. It appears, the length of any language unit is a very important factor in information exchange, for the human brain can receive and transmit information only if the latter is punctuated by pauses.

Theoretically speaking a sentence can be of any length, as there are no linguistic limitations for its growth, so even monstrous constructions of several hundred words each, technically should be viewed as sentences.

Indeed, psychologically, no reader is prepared to perceive as a syntactical whole those sentences in which the punctuation mark of a full stop comes after the 124th word (Joyce Carol Oates. Expensive People), or 128th word (E. Hemingway. The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber), or 256th word (T. Pynchon. The Crying of Lot 49), or 631 st word (N. Mailer. Why Are We in Vietnam ?), or even after 45 whole pages of the text (J. Joyce. Ulysses).

Unable to specify the upper limit of sentence length we definitely know its lower mark to be one word. One-word sentences possess a very strong emphatic impact, for their only word obtains both the word-and the sentence-stress. The word constituting a sentence also obtains its own sentence-intonation which, too, helps to foreground the content. Cf.: "They could keep the Minden Street Shop going until they got the notice to quit; which mightn't be for two years. Or they could wait and see what kind of alternative premises were offered. If the site was good. - If. Or. And, quite inevitably, borrowing money." (J.Br.) As you see, even synsemantic conjunctions, receiving the status of sentences are noticeably promoted in their semantic and expressive value.

Abrupt changes from short sentences to long ones and then back again, create a very strong effect of tension and suspense for they serve to arrange a nervous, uneven, ragged rhythm of the utterance.

There is no direct or immediate correlation between the length and the structure of a sentence: short sentences may be structurally complicated, while the long ones, on the contrary, may have only one subject-predicate pair. Cf.: "Through the windows of the drag-store Eighth street looked extremely animated with families trooping toward the center of the town, flags aslant in children's hands, mother and pa in holiday attire and sweating freely, with patriarchal automobiles of neighbouring farmers full of starched youngsters and draped with bunting." (J.R.) Almost 50 words of this sentence cluster around one subject-predicate centre "Eighth street looked animated".

At the same time very short sentences may boast of two and more clauses, i.e. may be complex, as we observe in the following cases: "He promised he'd come if the cops leave." (J.B.) "Their father who was the poorest man in town kept turning to the same jokes when he was treated to a beer or two." (A. S.) Still, most often, bigger lengths go together with complex structures.

Not only the clarity and understandability of the sentence but also its expressiveness depend on the position of clauses, constituting it. So, if a sentence opens with the main clause, which is followed by dependent units, such a structure is called loose, is less emphatic and is highly characteristic of informal writing and conversation. Periodic sentences, on the contrary, open with subordinate clauses, absolute and participial constructions, the main clause being withheld until the end. Such structures are known for their emphasis and are used mainly in creative prose. Similar structuring of the beginning of the sentence and its end produces balanced sentences known for stressing the logic and reasoning of the content and thus preferred in publicist writing.

A word leaving the dictionary to become a member of the sentence normally loses its polysemy and actualizes only one of its meanings in the context. The same is true about the syntactical valency: a member of the sentence fulfils one syntactical function. There are cases, though, when syntactical ambivalence is preserved by certain members of a sentence which fact creates semantic ambiguity for it allows at least two different readings of the sentence. In the now famous quotation from N. Chomsky "The shooting of the hunters..." the second part may be regarded both as an attribute ("whose shooting" = who was shooting) and as аи object ("whose shooting" = who was shot). Another sentence, composed by Yu. Apresyan to prove the effectiveness of transformational procedures, shows a much bigger syntactical ambivalence, for practically each of its members can be viewed as playing more than one syntactical role, which brings the total number of possible readings of the sentence to 32 semantic variants. Here it is: "Приглашение рабочих бригад вызвало осуждение товарища Иванова".

Sometimes syntactical ambivalence, like the play on words on the lexical level, is intentional and is used to achieve a humorous effect. Cf.: "Do you expect me to sleep with you in the room?" (B.Sh.) Depending on the function of "with you" the sentence may be read "to sleep with you! in the room" (and not in the field, or in the garden) or "to sleep with you in the room" (and not alone, or with my mother). The solution lies with the reader and is explicated in oral communication by the corresponding pausation and intonation. To convey them in the written form of speech order of words and punctuation are used.

The possibilities of intonation are much richer than those of punctuation. Indeed, intonation alone may create, add, change, reverse both the logical and the emotional information of an utterance. Punctuation is much poorer and it is used not alone, but emphasizing and substantiating the lexical and syntactical meanings of sentence-components. Points of exclamation and of interrogation, dots, dashes help to specify the meaning of the written sentence which in oral speech would be conveyed by the intonation. It is not only the emphatic types of punctuation listed above that may serve as an additional source of information, but also more conventional commas, semicolons and full stops. E.g.: "What's your name?" "John Lewis." "Mine's Liza. Watkin." (K.K.) The full stop between the name and the surname shows there was a pause between them and the surname came as a response to the reaction (surprise, amusement, roused interest) of John Lewis at such an informal self-introduction.

Exercise I. Comment on the length, the structure, thecommunicative type and punctuation of sentences, indicatingconnotations created by them:

1. The sick child complained that his mother was going to read to him again from the same book: "What did you bring that book I don't like to be read aloud to out of up for?" (E.)

2. Now, although we were little and I certainly couldn't be dreaming of taking Fonny from her or anything like that, and although she didn't really love Fonny, only thought mat she was supposed to because she had spasmed him into this woild, already, Penny's mother didn't like me. (J.B.)

3. The congregation amened him to death; a big sister, in the pulpit, in her long white robe, jumped up and did a little shout; they cried. Help him, Lord Jesus, help him! and the moment he sat down, another sister, her name was Rose and not much later she was going to disappear from the church and have a baby - and I still remember the last time I saw her, when I was about 14 walking the streets in the snow with her face all marked and her hands all swollen and a rag around her head and her stockings falling down singing to herself- stood up and started singing. (J.B.)

4. Than Roy no one could show a more genuine cordiality to a fellow novelist. (S.M.)

5. Such being at bottom the fact, I think it is well to leave it at that. (S M.)

6. Yet at least Mucho, the used car salesman, had believed in the cars. Maybe to excess: how could he not, seeing people poorer than him come in, Negro, Mexican, cracker, a parade seven days a week, bringing the most Godawful of trade-ins: motorized metal extensions of themselves, of their families and what their whole lives must be like, out there so naked for anybody, a stranger like himself, to look at, frame cockeyed, rusty underneath, fender repainted in a shade just off enough to depress the value, if not Mucho himself, inside smelling hopelessly of children, supermarket booze, two, sometimes three generations of cigarette smokers, or only of dust - and when the cars were swept out you had to look at the actual residue of these lives, and there was no way of telling what things had been truly refused (when so little he supposed came by that out of fear most of it had to be taken and kept) and what had simply (perhaps tragically) been lost: clipped coupons promising savings of 5 to 10 cents, trading stamps, pink flyers advertizing specials at the market, butts, tooth-shy combs, help-wanted ads. Yellow Pages torn from the prione book, rags of old underwear or dresses that were already period costumes, for wiping your own breath off the inside of a windshield with so you could see whatever it was, a movie, a woman, or car you coveted, a cop who might pull you over just for drill, all the bits and pieces coated uniformly, like a salad of despair, in a grey dressing of ash, condensed exhaust, dust, body wastes - it made him sick to look, but he had to look (Th.P.)

7. Soldiers with their cartridges gone wandered aimlessly out of the chapparal, dragging their rifles and plunged into the brush again on the other side of the railroad, black with powder, streaked with sweat, their eyes vacantly on the ground. (J.R.)

8. Strolling up and down the Main Street, talking in little groups on the corners, lounging in and out of strike headquarters were hundreds of big strong-faced miners in their Sunday best. (J.R.)

9. I am, he thought, a part of all that I have touched and that has touched me, which having for me no existence save that I gave to it, became other than itself by being mixed with what I then was, and is now still otherwise, having fused with what I now am, which is itself a cumulation of what I have been becoming. (T.W.)

10. I like people. Not just empty streets and dead buildings. People. People. (P. A.)

11. "You know so much. Where is she?" "Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think she's married and quieted down." (T.C.)

12. "Jesus Christ! Look at her face!" Surprise. "Her eyes is closed!" Astonishment. "She likes it!" Amazement.

"Nobody could take my picture doing that!" Moral disgust. "Them goddam white folks!" Fascinated fear. (Wr.)

13. What courage can withstand the ever-enduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? (W. I.)

14. "You talk of Christianity when you are in the act of banging your enemies. Was there ever such blasphemous nonsense!" (B.Sh.)

15. What is the good of sitting on the throne when other fellows give all the orders? (B.Sh.)

16. And what are wars but politics

Transformed from chronic to acute and bloody? (R. Fr)

17. Father, was that you calling me? Was it you, the voiceless and the dead? Was it you, thus buffeted as you lie here in a heap? Was it you thus baptized unto Death? (D.)

18. "Let us see the state of the case. The question is simple. The question, the usual plain, straight-forward, common-sense question. What can we do for ourself? What can we do for ourself?" (D.)

19. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one... single - more... inch... of... curve-Then his feathers raffled, he stalled and fell. (Rch. B.)

20. "Jake, will you get out!" said Magdalen. (I.M.)

21. A boy and a girt sat on stools drinking pop. An elderly man alone - someone John knew vaguely by sight - the town clerk? - sat behind an empty Coca-Cola bottle. (P. Q.)

22. What your doctor learned: biggest A.M.A. convention ever is full of medical news about remedies and treatments he may (sob!) be using on you. (M.St.)

23. The neon lights in the heart of the city flashed on and off. On and off. On. Off. On. Off. Continuously. (P. A.)

24. Bagdworthy was in seventh heaven. A murder! At Chimneys! Inspector Badgworthy in charge of the case. The police have a clue. Sensational arrest. Promotion and kudos for the afforementioned Inspector. (Ch.)

25. What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief.Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt. (S.R.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. Comment on the length of the sentence and its stylistic relevance.

2. What do you know about one-word sentences?

3. Is there any correlation between the length and the structure of the sentence?

4. Can syntactical ambivalence be put to stylistic use?

5. What punctuation marks do you know and what is their stylistic potential?

Punctuation also specifies the communicative type of the sentence. So, as you well know, a point of interrogation marks a question and a full stop signals a statement. There are cases though when a statement is crowned with a question mark. Often this punctuation-change is combined with the change of word-order, the latter following the pattern of question. This peculiar interrogative construction which semantically remains a statement is called a rhetorical question. Unlike an ordinary question, the rhetorical question does not demand any information but serves to express the emotions of the speaker and also to call the attention of listeners. Rhetorical questions make an indispensable part of oratoric speech for they very successfully emphasize the orator's ideas. In fact the speaker knows the answer himself and gives it immediately after the question is asked. The interrogative intonation and / or punctuation draw the attention of listeners (readers) to the focus of the utterance. Rhetorical questions are also often asked in "unanswerable" cases, as when in distress or anger we resort to phrases like "What have I done to deserve..." or "What shall I do when...". The artificiality of question-form of such constructions is further stressed by exclamation marks which, alongside points of interrogation, end rhetorical questions.

The effect of the majority of syntactical stylistic devices depends on either the completeness of the structure or on the arrangement of its members. The order in which words (clauses) follow each other is of extreme importance not only for the logical coherence of the sentence but also for its connotational meanings. The following sprawling rambling sentence from E. Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, with clauses heaping one over another, testifies to the carelessness, talkativeness and emotionality of the speaker: "Well, Tony rang up Michael and told him that I'd said that William, thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael's book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it." (E.W.) More examples showing the validity of the syntactical pattern were shown in Exercise I on the previous page.

One of the most prominent places among the SDs dealing with the arrangement of members of the sentence decidedly belongs to repetition. ' We have already seen the repetition of a phoneme (as in alliteration), of a morpheme (as in rhyming, or plain morphemic repetition). As a syntactical SD repetition is recurrence of the same word, word combination, phrase for two and more times. According to the place which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence (utterance), repetition is classified into several types:

1. anaphora: the beginning of two or more successive sentences (clauses) is repeated - a..., a..., a... . The main stylistic function of anaphora is hot so much to emphasize the repeated unit as to create the background textile nonrepeated unit, which, through its novelty, becomes foregrounded. The background-forming function of anaphora is also evident from the kind of words which are repeated anaphorically. Pay attention to their semantics and syntactical function in the sentence when working with Exercise II.

2. epiphora: the end of successive sentences (clauses) is repeated -...a, ...a, ...a. The main function of epiphora is to add stress to the final words of the sentence.

3 framing: the beginning of the sentence is repeated in the end, thus forming the "frame" for the non-repeated part of the sentence (utterance) - a... a. The function of framing is to elucidate the notion mentioned in the beginning of the sentence. Between two appearances of the repeated unit there comes the developing middle part of the sentence which explains and clarifies what was introduced in the beginning, so that by the time it is used for the second time its semantics is concretized and specified.

4. catch repetition (anadiplosis). the end of one clause (sentence) is repeated in the beginning of the following one -...a, a.... Specification of the semantics occurs here too, but on a 'more modest level.

5. chain repetition presents several successive anadiploses -...a, a...b, b...c, c. The effect is that of the smoothly developing logical reasoning.

6. ordinary repetition has no definite place in the sentence and the repeated unit occurs in various positions - ...a, ...a..., a.. . Ordinary repetition emphasizes both the logical and the emotional meanings of the reiterated word (phrase).

7. successive repetition is a string of closely following each other reiterated units - ...a, a, a... This is the most emphatic type of repetition which signifies the peak of emotions of the speaker.

As you must have seen from the brief description, repetition is a powerful means of emphasis. Besides, repetition adds rhythm and balance to the utterance. The latter function is the major one in parallel constructions which may be viewed as a purely syntactical type of repetition for here we deal with the reiteration of the structure of several successive sentences (clauses), and not of their lexical "flesh". True enough, parallel constructions almost always include some type of lexical repetition too, and such a convergence produces a very strong effect, foregrounding at one go logical, rhythmic, emotive and expressive aspects of the utterance.

Reversed parallelism is called chiasmus. The second part of a chiasmus is, in fact, inversion of the first construction. Thus, if the first sentence (clause) has a direct word order - SPO, the second one will have it inverted - OPS.

Exercise II. From the following examples yon will get a better idea of the functions of various types of repetition, and also of parallelism and chiasmus:

1. I wake up and I'm alone and I walk round Warley and I'm alone; and I talk with people and I'm alone and I look at his face when I'm home and it's dead, (J.Br.)

2. Babbitt was virtuous. He advocated, though he did not practice, the prohibition of alcohol; he praised, - though he did not obey, the laws against motor-speeding. (S.L.)

3. "To think better of it," returned the gallant Blandois, "would be to slight a lady, to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry towards the sex, and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character." (D.)

4. Halfway along the righthand side of the dark brown hall was a dark brown door with a dark brown settie beside it. After I had put my hat, my gloves, my muffler and my coat on the settie we three went through the dark brown door into a darkness without any brown in it. (W.G)

5. I might as well face facts; good-bye "Susan, good-bye a big car, good-bye a: big house, good-bye power, good-bye the silly handsome drearns. (J.Br.)

6. I really don't see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. (O.W.)

7. I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot, give him the boot, give him the boot - I drew a deep breath. (J.Br.)

8. Of her father's being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure. (D.)

9. Now he understood. He understood many things. One can be a person first. A man first and then a black man or a white man. (P. A.)

10. She stopped, and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking.

Abandoning the traveller, she hurried towards the parlour; in the passage

she assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the

knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long. (A.B.)

11. Obviously - this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously. (W.D.)

12. And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her. (A.B.)

13. When he blinks, a parrot-like look appears, the look of some heavily blinking tropical bird. (A. M.)

14. And everywhere were people. People going into gates and coming out of gates. People staggering and falling. People fighting and cursing. (P. A.)

15. Then there was something between them. There was. There was. (Dr.)

16. He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn't want to kill or be killed. So he ran away from the battle. (St.H.)

17. Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of B. Inn Alley. (D. du M.)

18. "Secret Love", "Autumn Leaves", and something whose title he missed. Supper music. Music to cook by. (U.)

19. Living is the art of loving.

Loving is the art of caring.

Caring is the art of sharing.

Sharing is the art of living. (W.H.D.)

20. I came back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory: mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the dear noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life. (D.)

21. If you know anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at "all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast, think of me, and conquer that reason and let it be known! (D.)

22. I notice that father's is a large hand, but never a heavy one when it touches me, and that father's is a rough voice but never an angry one when it speaks to me. (D.)

23. From the offers of marriage that fell to her Dona Clara, deliberately, chose the one that required her removal to Spain. so to Spain she went. (O.W.)

24. There lives at least one being who can never change - one being who would be content to devote his whole existence to your happiness - who lives but in your eyes - who breathes but in your smile - who bears the heavy burden of life itself only for you. (D.) 25. It is she, in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the roof of his dignity and pride, he has never had a selfish thought. It is she, whom he has loved, admired, honoured and set up for the world to respect. It is she, who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love. (D.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is a rhetorical question?

2. What types of repetition do you know?

3. Comment on the functions of repetition which you observed in your reading.

4. Which type of repetition have you met most often? What, in your opinion, makes it so popular?

5. What constructions are called parallel?

6. Have you ever observed chiasmus? What is it?

Inversion which was briefly mentioned in the definition of chiasmus is very often used as an independent SD in which the direct word order is changed either completely so that the predicate (predicative) precedes the subject; or partially so that the object precedes the subject-predicate pair. Correspondingly, we differentiate between partial and a complete inversion.

The stylistic device of inversion should not be confused with grammatical inversion which is a norm in interrogative constructions. Stylistic inversion deals with the rearrangement of the normative word order. Questions may also be rearranged: "Your mother is at home?" asks one of the characters of J. Baldwin's novel. The inverted question presupposes the answer with more certainty than the normative one. It is . the assuredness of the speaker of the positive answer that constitutes additional information which is brought into the question by the inverted wprd order. Interrogative constructions with the direct word order may. be viewed as cases of two-step (double) inversion: direct w/o --» grammatical inversion --» direct w/o.

Still another SD dealing with the arrangement of members of the sentence is suspense - a deliberate postponement of the completion of the sentence. The term "suspense" is also used in literary criticism to denote an expectant uncertainty about the outcome of the plot. To hold the reader in suspense means to keep the final solution just out of sight. Detective and adventure stories are examples of suspense fiction. The - theme, that which is known, and the rheme, that which is new, of the sentence are distanced from each other and the new information is withheld, creating the tension of expectation. Technically, suspense is organized with the help of embedded clauses (homogeneous members) separating the predicate from the subject and introducing less important facts and details first, while the expected information of major importance is reserved till the end of the sentence (utterance).

A specific arrangement of sentence members is observed in detachment, a stylistic device based on singling out a secondary member of the sentence with the help of punctuation (intonation). The word-order here is not violated, but secondary members obtain their own stress and intonation because they are detached from the rest of the sentence by commas, dashes or even a full stop as in the following cases: "He had been nearly killed, ingloriously, in a jeep accident." (I.Sh.) "I have to beg you for money. Daily." (S.L.) Both "ingloriously" and "daily" remain adverbial modifiers, occupy their proper normative places, following the modified verbs, but - due to detachment and the ensuing additional pause and stress - are foregrounded into the focus of the reader's attention.

Exercise III. Find and analyse cases of detachment, suspense and inversion. Comment on the structure and functions of each:

1. She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza's boy. Around the mouth. (S.)

2. He observes it all with a keen quick glance, not unkindly, and full rather of amusement than of censure. (V.W.)

3. She was crazy about you. In the beginning. (R.W.)

4. How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant country, of resting places under the free broad sky, of rambles in the fields and woods, and paths not often trodden-how many tones of that one well-remembered voice, how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind - how many visions of what had been and what he hoped was yet to be - rose up before him in the old, dull, silent church! (D.)

5. It Was not the monotonous days uncheckered by variety anduncheered by pleasant companionship, it was not the dark dreary eveningsor the long solitary nights, it was not the absence of every slight and easypleasure for which young hearts beat high or the knowing nothing ofchildhood but its weakness and its easily wounded spirit, that had wrungsuch tears from Nell. (D.)

6. Of all my old association, of all my old pursuits and hopes, of all the living and the dead world, this one poor soul alone comes natural to me. (D.)

7. Corruption could not spread with so much success, though reduced into a system, and though some ministers, with equal impudence and folly, avowed it by themselves and their advocates, to be the principal expedient by which they governed; if a long and almost unobserved progression of causes and effects did not prepare the conjuncture. (Bol.)

8. I have been accused of bad taste. This has disturbed me not so much for my own sake (since I am used to the slights and arrows of outrageous fortune) as for the sake of criticism in general. (S.M.)

9. On, on he wandered, night and day, beneath the blazing sun, and the cold pale moon; through the dry heat of noon, and the damp cold of night; in the grey light of morn, and the red, glare of eve. (D.)

10. Benny Collan, a respected guy, Benny Collan wants to marry her. An agent could ask for more? (T.C.)

11. Women are not made for attack. Wait they must. (J. C.)

12. Out came the chase - in went the horses - on sprang the boys -in got the travellers. (D.)

13. Then he said: "You think it's so? She was mixed up in this lousy business?" (J.B.)

14. And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all the hamlets which they had been passing. Only to the eyes of a Kennicot was it exceptional. (S.L.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What syntactical stylistic devices dealing with arrangement of sentence members do you remember?

2. What types of inversion do you know? Which of them have you met more often and why?

3. What is suspense, how is it arranged and what is Us function?

4. What do you know about detachment and punctuation used with detached sentence members?

5. What sentence members are most often detached?

6. Find in your reading material cases of all syntactical SDs based on the re-arrangement or intended specific arrangement of sentence members.

The second, somewhat smaller, group of syntactical SDs deals not so much with specificities of the arrangement as with the completeness of sentence-structure. The most prominent place here belongs to ellipsis, or deliberate omission of at least one member of the sentence, as in the famous quotation from Macbeth: What! all my pretty chickens and their dam // at one fell swoop?

In contemporary prose ellipsis is mainly used in dialogue where it is consciously employed by the author to reflect the natural omissions characterizing oral colloquial speech. Often ellipsis is met close to dialogue, in author's introductory remarks commenting the speech of the characters. Elliptical remarks in prose resemble stage directions in drama. Both save only the most vital information letting out those bits of it which can be easily reassembled from the situation. It is the situational nature of our everyday speech which heavily relies on both speakers' awareness of the conditions and details of the communication act that promotes normative colloquial omissions. Imitation of these oral colloquial norms is created by the author through ellipsis, with the main function of achieving the authenticity and plausibility of fictitious dialogue.

Ellipsis is the basis of the so-called telegraphic style, in which connectives and redundant words are left out. In the early twenties British railways had an inscription over luggage racks in the carriages: "The use of this rack for heavy and bulky packages involves risk of injury to passengers and is prohibited." Forty years later it was reduced to the elliptical: "For light articles only." The same progress from full completed messages to clipped phrases was made in drivers' directions: "Please drive slowly" "Drive slowly" "Slow".

The biggest contributors to the telegraphic style are one-member sentences, i.e. sentences consisting only of a nominal group, which is semantically and communicatively self-sufficient. Isolated verbs, proceeding from the ontological features of a verb as a part of speech, cannot be considered one-member sentences as they always rely on the context for their semantic fulfilment and are thus heavily ellipticized sentences. In creative prose one-member sentences are mostly used in descriptions (of nature, interior, appearance, etc.), where they produce the effect of a detailed but laconic picture foregrounding its main components; and as the background of dialogue, mentioning the emotions, attitudes, moods of the speakers.

In apokoinu constructions the omission of the pronominal (adverbial) connective creates a blend of the main and the subordinate clauses so that the predicative or the object of the first one is simultaneously used as the subject of the second one. Cf: "There was a door led into the kitchen." (Sh. A.) "He was the man killed that deer." (R.W.) The double syntactical function played by one word produces the general impression of clumsiness of speech and is used as a means of speech characteristics in dialogue, in reported speech and the type of narrative known as "entrusted" in which the author entrusts the telling of the story to an imaginary narrator who is either an observer or participant of the described events.

The last SD which promotes the incompleteness of sentence structure is break (aposiopesis). Break is also used mainly in the, dialogue or in other forms of narrative imitating spontaneous oral speech. It reflects the emotional or/and the psychological state of the speaker: a sentence may be broken because the speaker's emotions prevent him from finishing it. Another cause of the break is the desire to cut short the information with which the sentence began. In such cases there are usually special remarks by the author, indicating the intentional abruptness of the end. (See examples in Exercise IV). In many cases break is the result of the speaker's uncertainty as to what exactly he is to promise (to threaten, to beg).

To mark the break, dashes and dots are used. It is only in cast-iron structures that full stops may also appear, as in the well-known phrases "Good intentions, but", or "It depends".

Exercise IV. Discuss different types of stylistic devices dealing with the completeness of the sentence:

1. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind. (D.)

2. Malay Camp. A row of streets crossing another row of streets. Mostly narrow streets. Mostly dirty streets. Mostly dark streets. (P. A.)

3. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side. (D.)

4. A solemn silence: Mr. Pickwick humorous, the old lady serious, the fat gentleman cautious and Mr. Miller timorous. (D.)

5. He, and the falling light and dying fire, the time-worn room, the solitude, the wasted life, and gloom, were all in fellowship. Ashes, and dust, and ruin! (D.)

6. She merely looked at him weakly. The wonder of him! The beauty of love! Her desire toward him! (Dr.)

7. Ever since he was a young man, the hard life on Earth, the panic of 2130, the starvation, chaos, riot, want. Then bucking through the planets, the womanless, loveless years, the alone years. (R.Br.)

8. H. The waves, how are the waves? C.: The waves? Lead. H.: And the sun? C.: Zero.

H.: But it should be sinking. Look again. C.: Damn the sun. H.: Is it night already then? C: No.

H.: Then what is it? C: Grey! Grey! GREY! H.: Grey! Did I hear you say grey? C.: Light black. From pole to pole. (S. B.)

9. I'm a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip, Texas. (T.C.)

10. "I'll go, Doll! I'll go!" This from Bead, large eyes larger than usual behind his hornrimmed glasses. (J.)

11. A black February day. Clouds hewn of ponderous timber weighing down on the earth: an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The second day of Kennicott's absence. (S.L.)

12. And we got down at the bridge. White cloudy sky, with mother-of-pearl veins. Pearl rays shooting through, green and blue-white. River roughed by a breeze. White as a new file in the distance. Fish-white streak on the smooth pin-silver upstream. Shooting new pins. (J. C.)

13. This is a story how a Baggins had an adventure. He may have lost the neighbours' respect, but he gained - well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end. (A. T.)

14. "People liked to be with her. And --" She paused again, " - and she was crazy about you." (R.W.)

15. What I had seen of Patti didn't really contradict Kitty's view of her: a girl who means well, but. (D.U.)

16. "He was shouting out that he'd come back, that his mother had better have the money ready for him. Or else! That is what he said: "Or else!" It was a threat." (Ch.)

17. "Listen, I'll talk to the butler over that phone and he'll know my voice. Will that pass me in or do I have to ride on your back?''

"I just work here," he said softly. "If I didn't --" he let the rest hang in the air, and kept on smiling. (R.Ch.)

18. I told her, "You've always acted the free woman, you've never let any thing stop you from --" He checks himself, goes on hurriedly. "That made her sore." (J.O'H.)

19. "Well, they'll get a chance now to show -" Hastily: "I don't mean - But let's forget that." (O'N.)

20. And it was unlikely that anyone would trouble to look there -until - until - well. (Dr.)

21. There was no breeze came through the door. (H.)

22. I love Nevada. Why, they don't even have mealtimes here. I never met so many people didn't own a watch. (A. M.)

23. Go down to Lord and Taylors or someplace and get yourself something real nic&to impress the boy invited you. (J. K.)

24. There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out and not love of the wife he married. (J. St.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What syntactical stylistic devices deal with the completeness of sentence-structure?

2. What types of ellipses do you know and where is each of them used predominantly?

3. What member of the sentence represents "one-member sentences"?

4. Where are apokoinu constructions used?

5. What additional information about the act of communication and its participants is conveyed by the

break?

6. What punctuation is used in the break?

7. Find examples of the above-mentioned SDs in your reading.

The arrangement of sentence members, the completeness of sentence structure necessarily involve various types of connection used within the sentence or between sentences. Repeated use of conjunctions is called polysyndeton; deliberate omission of them is, correspondingly, named asyndeton. Both polysyndeton and asyndeton, have a strong rhythmic impact. Besides, the function of polysyndeton is to strengthen the idea of equal logical (emotive) importance of connected sentences, while asyndeton, cutting off connecting words, helps to create the effect of terse, energetic, active prose.

These two types of connection are more characteristic of the author's speech. The third type - attachment (gap-sentence, leaning sentence, link) on the contrary,' is mainly to be found in various representations of the voice of the personage - dialogue, reported speech, entrusted narrative. In the attachment the second part of the utterance is separated from the first one by a full stop though their semantic and grammatical ties remain very strong. The second part appears as an afterthought and is often connected with the beginning of the utterance with the help of a conjunction, which brings the latter into the foregrounded opening position. Cf: "It wasn't his fault. It was yours. And mine. I now humbly beg you to give me the money with which to buy meals for you to eat. And hereafter do remember it: the next time I shan't beg. I shall simply starve." (S.L.); "Prison is where she belongs. And my husband agrees one thousand per cent." (T.C.)

Exercise V. Specify stylistic functions of the types of connection given below:

1. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping smelly tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women struggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again - quiet and magical. (J. St.)

2. "What sort of a place is Dufton exactly?"

"A lot of mills. And a chemical factory. And a Grammar school and a war memorial and a river that runs different colours each day. And a cinema and fourteen pubs. That's really all one can say about it." (J.Br.)

3. By the time he had got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, and red in the face, and annoyed. (A. T.)

4. Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face, and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and splashed him, and rinsed him, and towelled him, until he was as red as beetroot. (D.)

5. Secretly, after the nightfall, he visited the home of the Prime Minister. He examined it from top to bottom. He measured all the doors and windows. He took up the flooring. He inspected the plumbing. He examined the furniture. He found nothing. (L.)

6. With these hurried words Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed the postboy on one side, jerked his friend into the vehicle, slammed the door, put up the steps, wafered the bill on the street-door, locked it, put the key into his pocket, jumped into the dickey, gave the word for starting. (D.)

7. "Well, guess it's about time to turn in." He yawned, went out to look at the thermometer, slammed the door, patted her head, unbuttoned his waistcoat, yawned, wound the clock, went to look at the furnace, yawned and clumped upstairs to bed, casually scratching his thick woolen undershirt. (S.L.)

8. "Give me an example," I said quietly. "Of something that means something. In your opinion." (T.C.)

9. "I got a small apartment over the place. And, well, sometimes I stay over. In the apartment. Like the last few nights." (D.U.)

10. "He is a very deliberate, careful guy and we trust each other completely. With a few reservations." (D.U.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What types of connecting syntactical units do you know? Which of them are used to create additional information and achieve a specific effect?

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