Graphical Expressive Means
Graphon is the intentional violation of the graphical shape of a word (or word combination) used to reflect its authentic pronunciation.
Graphons, indicating irregularities or carelessness of pronunciation, were occasionally introduced into English novels as well as journalism at the beginning of the 18th century and since then have acquired an ever growing frequency of usage and also popularity among writers, journalists and advertisers (early to bed and early to rise – no use unless you advertise).
They also have a widening scope of actions.
Graphon proved to be an extremely concise but effective means of supplying information about the speaker’s origin, social and educational background. physical or emotional condition, etc. The famous William Makepeace Thackeray’s (18 July 1811, Calcutta, India – 24 December 1863, London, England) character - butler Yellowplush - impresses his listeners with the learned words pronouncing them as sellybrated (celebrated), bennyviolent (benevolent), illygitmit (illegitimate), jewimle (juvenile), or the no less famous Mr. Babbitt (a novel by S. Lewis published in 1922) uses peerading (parading), Eytalians (Italians), peepul (people), so the reader obtains not only the vivid image and the social, cultural, educational characteristics of the personages, but also both Thackeray’s and Sinclair Lewis’ (February 7, 1885, Sauk Centre, Minnesota – January 10, 1951, Rome, Italy) sarcastic attitude to them.
It is an effective means of revealing physical defects of speakers. For example, “ the b-b-b-b-bas-tud - he seen me c-c-c-c-coming ” in Robert Penn Warren’s (April 24, 1905, Guthrie, Kentucky, USA – September 15, 1989, Stratton, Vermont, USA) Sugar Boy’s speech in the novel All the King's Men (1946).
Graphon is very good at conveying the atmosphere of authentic live communication, of the informality of the speech act. Some amalgamated forms, which are the result of strong assimilation, became clichés in contemporary prose dialogue: gimme (give me), lemme (let me), gonna (going to), gotta (got to), coupla (couple of), mighta (might have), willya (will you), etc.
Robert Penn Warren
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Types of graphons:
1) changes of the type (italics, capitalization), i. e. emphasis of both logical and emotional significance;
2) spacing of graphemes (hyphenation, multiplication), i. e. intensity of speech in commands with the help of multiplication and capitalization. Hyphenation suggests the rhymed or clipped manner of speech.
Summing up, we should say that graphons are widely applied for recreating of the individual and social peculiarities of the speaker as well as the atmosphere of the communication act, all aimed at emphasizing the author’s attitude and point of view.
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