V. A raison de coeur
That's right, I pay my hotel bill every day, and reregister every day, too, despite the fact that the hotel offers weekly and monthly and even seasonal rates for long-term guests. It's no eccentricity, friend, nor any sign of stinginess on my part: I have an excellent reason for doing so, but it is a raison de coeur, if I may say so – a reason of the heart and not of the head.
Doubly so; literally so. Listen: eleven times the muscle of my heart contracted while I was writing the four words of the preceding sentence. Perhaps six hundred times since I began to write this little chapter. Seven hundred thirty-two million, one hundred thirty-six thousand, three hundred twenty times since I moved into the hotel. And no less than one billion, sixty-seven million, six hundred thirty-six thousand, one hundred sixty times has my heart beat since a day in 1919, at Fort George G. Meade, when an Army doctor, Captain John Frisbee, informed me, during the course of my predischarge physical examination, that each soft beat my sick heart beat might be my sick heart's last. This fact – that having begun this sentence, I may not live to write its end; that having poured my drink, I may not live to taste it, or that it may pass a live man's tongue to burn a dead man's belly; that having slumbered, I may never wake, or having waked, may never living sleep – this for thirty-five years has been the condition of my existence, the great fact of my life: had been so for eighteen years already, or five hundred forty-nine million, sixty thousand, four hundred eighty heartbeats, by June 21 or 22 of 1937. This is the enormous question, in its thousand trifling forms (Having heard tick, will I hear tock? Having served, will I volley? Having sugared, will I cream? Itching, will I scratch? Hemming, will I haw?), toward answering which all my thoughts and deeds, all my dreams and energies have been oriented.
* Note: “A raison de Coeur” is the French for “A reason of the heart”.
Questions and tasks:
1. What stylistic device lies at the basis of the fragment? Name the type(s).
2. Identify other syntactical stylistic devices and comment on their role in the episode.
3. How is the force of these schemes of speech enhanced by stylistic devices belonging to other levels of language (lexical, phonetic, etc.)?
4. One line contains an imitation of a tongue twister. What scheme of speech is typical of this “verse” form?
RECOMMENDED LITERATURE:
1. Сенюшкина Т. В. Пособие по лингвостилистическому анализу текста (английский язык). Часть I. Для студентов факультета лингвистики. М., Институт международного права и экономики имени А.С. Грибоедова. - 2006
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2. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Pp. 191 -246.
3. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. Pp. 84-100.
4. Kukharenko V.A. Seminars in Style. Pp. 85 – 102.
UNIT 8
Stylistic grammar
An Outline
1. Stylistic functions of grammar categories and the role of transposition.
2. Transposition of lexico-grammatical classes of nouns.
3. Stylistic function of articles, genitive case, plural number.
4. Stylistic functions of different grammatical categories in different parts of speech.
1) Stylistic transposition of pronouns.
2) Adjectives, stylistic function of degrees of comparison.
3) Stylistic functions of verbal categories.
4) Stylistic functions of adverbs.
Style is less investigated on the morphological level than on any other one because very many scholars hold the opinion that stylistic connotations appear only when the use of grammatical phenomenon departs from the normative usage and functions on the outskirts or beyond the system of Standard language.
Nevertheless stylistic connotations don’t necessarily mean the violation of the normative speech patterns. They are based on different cases of transposition.
Transposition is the usage of different parts of speech in unusual grammatical meaning which breaks the usual correlation within a grammatical category and is used to express the speaker’s emotions and his attitude to the object of discussion. It is the shift from one grammatical class to another, controversy between the traditional and situational reference on the level of morphology. (I.V.A.)
1. Transposition of lexico-grammatical class (LGC) of NOUNS:
Transposition of nouns is based on the usage of nouns in unusual lexico-grammatical class (LGC), thus causing a stylistic effect. According to their usual LGC they are subdivided into:
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1) Personal nouns (agents) (man, woman, children)
2) Living beings (birds, cats, dogs)
3) Collective nouns (mankind, peerage)
4) Material nouns (water, stone)
5) Abstract nouns (clarity, kindness), etc.
Transposition from one LGC to another causes expressive, evaluative, emotive and functional connotations. Thus transposition of personal nouns denoting animals to those denoting people causes metaphorization and appearance of zoo morphemes: ass, bear, beast and bitch. Pig, donkey, monkey may have tender but ironical connotation, while swine, ass, ape acquire rude, negative coloring. Negative connotation is intensified by emphatic constructions: you impudent pup, you filthy swine”.
I was not going to have all the old tabbies bossing her around just because she is not what they call “our class” (A.Wilson)
Emotive and expressive connotations are achieved in transposition of abstract nouns into personal nouns (abstract nouns used in plural): “The chubby little eccentricity:: a chubby eccentric child.”
Transposition of parts of speech (A>N): “Listen, my sweet (coll.)”, a man of intelligence, a flush of heat (bookish).
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