Lexico-Syntactical Stylistic Devices
Antithesis. Climax. Anticlimax. Simile. Litotes. Periphrasis
Syntactical stylistic devices add logical, emotive, expressive information to the utterance regardless of lexical meanings of sentence components. There are certain structures though, whose emphasis depends not only on the arrangement of sentence members but also on their construction, with definite demands on the lexico-semantic aspect of the utterance. They are knownas lexico-syntactical SDs.
Antithesis is a goodexample of them: syntactically antithesis is just another case of parallel constructions. But unlike parallelism, which is indifferent to the semantics of its com-ponents, the two рarts of an antithesis must be semantically opposed to each other, as in the sad maxim of O. Wilde: "Some people have much to live on, and little to live for", where "much" and "little" present a pair of antonyms, supported by the contextual opposition of postpositions "on" and "for". Another example: "If we don't know who gains by his death we do know who loses by it." (Ch.) Here, too, we have the leading antonymous pair "gain-lose" and the supporting
one, made stronger by the emphatic form of the affirmativeconstruction-"don't know / do know".
Antithesis as a semantic opposition emphasized by its realization in similar structures, is often observed on lower levels of language hierarchy, especially on the morphemic level where two antonymous affixes create a powerful effect of contrast: "Their pre-money wives did not go together with their post-money daughters." (H.)
The main function of antithesis is to stress the hetero-geneity of the described phenomenon, to show that the latter is a dialectical unity of two (or more) opposing features.
Exercise I. Discuss the semantic centres and structural peculiarities of antithesis:
1. Mrs. Nork had a large home and a small husband.
(S.L.)
2. Don't use big words. They mean so little. (O. W.)
3. 1 like big parties. They're so intimate. At small parties
there isn't any privacy. (Sc. F.)
4. There is Mr. Guppy, who was at first as open as
the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as
midnight. (D.)
5. Such a scene as there was when Kit came in! Such
a confusion of tongues, before the circumstances were related,
and the proofs disclosed! Such a dead silence when all was
told! (D.)
6. Rup wished he could be swift, accurate, compassionate
and stern instead of clumsy and vague and sentimental. (I. M.)
|
|
|
7. His coat-sleeves being a great deal too long, and his
trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in
his clothes. (D.)
8. There was something eery about the apartment house,
an unearthly quiet that was a combination of overcarpeting
and underoccupancy. (H. St.)
9. It is safer to be married to the man you can be
happy with than to the man you cannot be happy without.
(E.)
10. Then came running down stairs a gentleman with
whiskers, out of breath. (D.)
11. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times,
it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,
it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair;
we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (D.)
12. Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron, and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses and little crowded groceries and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said "Whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches", by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men" and he would have meant the same thing. (J.St.)
Assignments for Self-Control
1. Comment on linguistic properties of sentences which
arc foregrounded in lexico-syntactical stylistic devices.
2. What do you know about antithesis? Why is it viewed
separately from parallel constructions?
3. Have you ever met in your home-reading cases of
antithesis in which the structure of a word was also used
in the creation of the SD?
|
|
|
Another type of semantically complicated parallelism is presented by climax, in which each next word combination
(clause, sentence) is logically more important or emotionally
stronger and more explicit: "Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!" (D.) " I am firm, thou art obstinate, he is pig-headed." (B. Ch.) If to create antithesis we use antonyms (or their contextual equivalents), in climax we deal with strings of synonyms or at least semantically related words belonging to the same thematic group.
The negative form of the structures participating in the formation of climax reverses the order in which climax-components are used, as in the following examples: "No tree, to shrub, no blade of grass that was not owned." (G.) It is the absence of substance or quality that is being emphasized by the negative form of the climax, this is why relative synonyms are arranged not in the ascending but in the
descending order as to the expressed quality or quantity. Cf.: "Be careful," said Mr. Jingle. "Not a look." "Not a wink," said Mr. Tupman. "Not a syllable. Not a whisper." (D.)
Proceeding from the nature of the emphasized phenomenon it is possible to speak of 1ogical, emotive or quantitative types of climax. The most widely spread model of climax is a three-step construction, in which intensification of, logical importance, of emotion or quantity (size, dimensions) is gradually rising from step to step. In emotive climax though, we rather often meet a two-step structure, in which the second part repeats the first one and is further strengthened by an intensifier, as in the following instances: "He was so helpless, so very helpless." (W. D.) "She felt better, immensely better." (W. D.) "I have been so unhappy here, so very very unhappy." (D.)
Climax suddenly interrupted by an unexpected turn of the thought which defeats expectations of the reader (listener) and ends in complete semantic reversal of the emphasized idea, is called аnticlimax.Тоstress the abruptness of the change emphatic punctuation (dash, most often) is used between the ascending and the descending parts of the anticlimax. Quite a few paradoxes are closely connected with anticlimax.
|
|
|
Exercise II. Indicate the type of climax. Pay attention to its structure andthe semantics of its components:
1. He saw clearly that the best thing was a cover story
or camouflage. As he wondered and wondered what to do,
he first rejected a stop as impossible, then as improbable,
then as quite dreadful. (W. G.)
2. "Is it shark?" said Brody. The possibility that he at
last was going to confront the fish - the beast, the monster,
the nightmare - made Brady's heart pound. (P. B.)
3. If he had got into the gubernatorial primary on his
own hook, he would have taken a realistic view. But this
was different. He had been called. He had been touched. He had been summoned. (R. W.)
4. We were all in all to one another, it was the morning
of life, it was bliss, it was frenzy, it was everything else
of that sort in the highest degree. (D.)
5. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had
no knowledge of the brightness outside. (D.)
6. "I shall be sorry, I shall be truly sorry to leave you,
my friend." (D.)
7. "Of course it's important. Incredibly, urgently, desperately
important." (D. S.)
8. "I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got
from her minister when she was sick. He wrote Jane a letter
and on the envelope the address was like this: Jane Crofut;
The Crofut Farm; Graver's Corners; Sutton County; New
Hampshire; United States of America." "What's funny about
it?" "But listen, it's not finished: the United States of America;
Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth;
the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God - that'swhat it said on the envelope." (Th. W.)
9. "You have heard of Jefferson Brick, I see, Sir," quoth
the Colonel with a smile. "England has heard of Jefferson
Brick. Europe has heard of Jefferson Brick." (D.)
10. After so many kisses and promises - the lie given toher dreams, her words, the lie given to kisses, hours, days,weeks, months of unspeakable bliss. (Dr.)
|
|
|
11. For that one instant there was no one else in the
room, in the house, in the world, besides themselves. (M. W.)
12. In marriage the upkeep of woman is often the downfall
of man. (Ev.)
13. Fledgeby hasn't heard of anything. "No, there's not
a word of news," says Lammle. "Not a particle," adds Boots.
"Not an atom," chimes in Brewer. (D.)
14. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They
can discover everything except the obvious. (O. W.)
15. This was appalling - and soon forgotten. (G.)
16. He was unconsolable - for an afternoon. (G.)
17. In moments of utter crises my nerves act in the most
extraordinary way. When utter disaster seems imminent my
whole being is simultaneously braced to avoid it. I size up
the situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract my muscles,
take a firm grip of myself, and without a tremor always
do the wrong thing." (B. Sh.)
Assignments for Self-Control
1. Speak about the SD of climax and its types.
2. In what way does the. structure of an emotive climax
differ from that of other types?
3. What can you say about the negative form of the
climax?
4. What is an anticlimax?
5. Is every paradox expressed by a climax?
A structure of three components is presented in a stylistic device extremely popular at all times - simile. Simile is an imaginative comparison of two unlike objects belonging to two different classes. The one which is compared is called the tenor, the onewith which it is compared, is called the vehicle. The tenor and the vehicle form the two semantic poles of the simile, which are connected by one of the following link words: "like", "as", "as though", "as like", "such as", "as ... as", etc. Simile should not be confused with simple (logical, ordinary) comparison. Structurally identical, consisting of the tenor, the vehicle and the uniting formal element, they are semantically different: objects belonging to the same class are likened in a simple comparison, while in a simile we deal with the likening of objects belonging to two different classes. So, "She is like her mother" is a simple comparison, used to state an evident fact. "She is like a rose" is a simile used for purposes of expressive evaluation, emotive explanation, highly individual description.
The tenor and the vehicle may be expressed in a brief "nucleus" manner, as in the above example, or may be extended. This last case of sustained expression of likeness is known as epic, or Homeric simile.
If you remember, in a metaphor two unlike objects (actions, phenomena) were identified on the grounds of possessing one common characteristic. In a simile two objects are compared on the grounds of similarityof some quality. This feature which is called foundation of a simile, may be explicitly mentioned as in: "He stood immovable likea rock in a torrent" (J. R.), or "His muscles are hard as rock". (Т. С.) You see that the "rock" which is the vehicle of two different similes offers two different qualities as their foundation-"immovable" in the first case, and "hard" in the second. When the foundation is not explicitly named, the simile is considered to be richer in possible associations, because the fact that a phenomenon can be qualified in multiple and varying ways allows to attach at least some of many qualities to the object of comparison. So "the rose" of the previous case allows to simultaneously foreground such features as "fresh, beautiful, fragrant, attractive", etc. Sometimes the foundation of the simile is not quite clear from the context, and the author supplies it with a key, where he explains which similarities led him to liken two different entities, and which in fact is an extended and detailed foundation. Cf.: "The conversations she began behaved like green logs: they fumed but would not fire." (Т. С.)
A simile, often repeated, becomes trite and adds to the stock of language phraseology. Most of trite similes have the foundation mentioned and conjunctions "as", "as ... as" used as connectives. Cf.: "as brisk as a bee", "as strong as a horse", "as live as a bird" and many many more.
Similes in which the link between the tenor and the vehicle is expressed by notional verbs such as "to resemble", "to seem", "to recollect", "to remember", "to look like", "to appear", etc. are called disguised, because the realization of the comparison is somewhat suspended, as the likeness between the objects seems less evident. Cf.: "His strangely taut, full-width grin made his large teeth resemble a dazzling miniature piano keyboard in the green light." (J.) Or: "The ball appeared to the batter to be a slow spinning planet looming toward the earth." (В. М.)
Exercise III. Discuss the following cases of simile. Pay attention to the semantics of the tenor and the vehicle, to the brief or sustained manner of their presentation. Indicate the foundation of the simile, both explicit and implicit Find examples of disguised similes, do not miss the link word joining the two parts of the structure:
1. The menu was rather less than a panorama, indeed,
it was as repetitious as a snore. (O. N.)
2. The topic of the Younger Generation spread through
the company like a yawn. (E. W.)
3. Penny-in-the-slot machines stood there like so many
vacant faces, their dials glowing and flickering - for nobody.
(B.N.)
4. As wet as a fish-as dry as a bone;
As live as a bird - as dead as a stone;
As plump as a partridge - as crafty as a rat; As strong as a horse - as weak as a cat;
As hard as a flint - as soft as a mole;
As white as a lily - as black as coal;
As plain as a pike - as rough as a bear;
As tight as a drum - as free as the air;
As heavy as lead - as light as a feather;
As steady as time - uncertain as weather; As hot as an oven - as cold as a frog;
As gay as a lark - as sick as a dog;
As savage as a tiger - as mild as a dove;
As stiff as a poker-as limp as a glove;
As blind as a bat-as deaf as a post;
As cool as a cucumber - as warm as toast; As flat as a flounder - as round as a ball; As blunt as a hammer-as sharp as an awl;
As brittle as glass-as tough as gristle;
As neat as a pin-as clean as a whistle;
As red as a rose - as square as a box. (O. N.)
5. She has always been as live as a bird. (R. Ch.)
6. She was obstinate as a mule, always had been, from
a child. (G.)
7. Children! Breakfast is just as good as any other meal
and I won't have you gobbling like wolves. (Th. W.)
8. Six o'clock still found him in indecision. He had had
no appetite for lunch and the muscles of his stomach fluttered
as though a flock of sparrows was beating their wings against
his insides. (Wr.)
9. And the cat, released, leaped and perched on her
shoulder: his tail swinging like a baton, conducting rhapsodic
music. (Т. С.)
10. He felt that his presence must, like a single drop of
some stain, tincture the crystal liquid that was absolutely
herself. (R. W.)
11. He has a round kewpie's face. He looks like an
enlarged, elderly, bald edition of the village fat boy, a sly
fat boy, congenitally indolent, a practical joker, a born grafter
and con merchant. (O'N.)
12. You could have knocked me down with a feather
when he said all those things to me. I felt just like Balaam
when his ass broke into light conversation. (S. M.)
13. Two footmen leant against the walls looking as waxen
as the clumps of flowers sent up that morning from
hothouses in the country. (E. W.)
14. The Dorset Hotel was built in the early eighteen
hundreds and my room, like many an elderly lady, looks its
best in subdued light. (J. Br.)
15. For a long while -for many years in fact - he had notthought of how it was before he came to the farm. Hismemory of those times was like a house where no one lives and where the furniture has rotted away. But tonight it wasas if lamps had been lighted through all the gloomy deadrooms. (T. C.)
16. It was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its
sorrow welled out of it as purely, naturally and unstoppably
as water out of a woodland spring. (J. F.)
17. He ached from head to foot, all zones of pain seemingly
interdependent. He was rather like a Christmas tree whose
lights wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb
is defective. (S.)
18. Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate,
but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all nor for how long she will stay. (Gr. M.)
19. You're like the East, Dinny. One loves it at first
sight or not at all and one never knows it any better. (G.)
20. He felt like an old book: spine defective, covers dull,
slight foxing, fly missing, rather shaken copy. (J. Br.)
21. Susan at her piano lesson, playing that thing of
Scarlatti's. The sort of music, it struck him, that would
happen if the bubbles in a magnum of champaign were to
rush up rhythmically and as they reached the surface, burst
into sound as dry and tangy as the wine from whose depth
they had arisen. The simile pleased him so much. (A. H.)
22. There was no moon, a clear dark, like some velvety
garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose thinned
branches, resembling plumes, stirred in the still, warm
air. (G.)
23. There are in every large chicken-yard a number of
old and indignant hens who resemble Mrs. Bogart and when
they are served at Sunday noon dinner, as fricasseed chicken
with thick dumplings, they keep up the resemblance. (S. L.)
24. H. G. Wells reminded her of the rice paddies in her
native California. Acres and acres of shiny water but never
more than two inches deep. (A. H.)
25. On the wall hung an amateur oil painting of what
appeared to be a blind man's conception of fourteen whistling
swan landing simultaneously in the Atlantic during a half-
gale. (Jn. B.)
26. Today she had begun by watching the flood. The
water would crouch and heave at a big boulder fallen off
the bluff-side and the red-and-white foam would fly. It
reminded her of the blood-streaked foam every heave would
fling out of the nostrils of a windbroke horse. (R. W.)
27. I'm not nearly hot enough to draw a word-picture
that would do justice to that extraordinarily hefty crash.
Try to imagine the Albert Hall falling on the Crystal Palace
and you will have got the rough idea. (P. G. W.)
28. Her startled glance descended like a beam of light,
and settled for a moment on the man's face. He was
fortyish and rather fat, with a moustache that made her
think of the yolk of an egg, and a nose that spread itself.
His face had an injected redness. (W. D.)
29. Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions
she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl bunched
in its soft feathers against the wires of a cage. The supple
erectness of her body was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel exercise, as though there were no longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect. (G.) 30. Someone might have observed in him a peculiar resemblance to those plaster reproductions of the gargoyles of Notre Dame which may be seen in the shop windows of artists' colourmen. (E. W.)
Assignments for Self-Control
1. What is a simile and what is a simple comparison?
2. What semantic poles of a simile do you know?
3. Which of the link words have you met most often?
4. What is the foundation of the simile?
5. What is the key of the simile?
6. What is a trite simile? Give examples.
7. What is an epic simile?
8. What is a disguised simile?
9. What are the main functions of a simile?
10. Find examples of similes in your reading. State their
type, structure and functions.
Litotes isa two-component structure in which two negations are joined to give a positive evaluation. Thus "not unkindly" actually means "kindly", though the positive effect is weakened and some lack of the speaker's confidence in his statement is implied. The first component of a litotes is always the negative particle "not", while the second, always negative in semantics, varies in form from a negatively affixed word (asabove) to a negative phrase.
Litotes is especially expressive when the semantic centre of the whole structure is stylistically or / and emotionally coloured, as in the case of the following occasional creations: "Her face was not unhandsome" (A. H.) or "Her face was not unpretty". (К. K.)
The function of litotes has much in common with that of understatement - both weaken the effect of the utterance. The uniqueness of litotes lies in its specific "double negative" structure and in its weakening only the positive evaluation.
The Russian term "литота " corresponds only to the English "understatement" as it has no structural or semantic limi-tations.
Дата добавления: 2018-04-05; просмотров: 7240; Мы поможем в написании вашей работы! |
Мы поможем в написании ваших работ!