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It is no news that any propositional content, any idea can be verbalized in several different ways. So “May I offer you a chair?”, “Take a seat, please”, “Sit down” have the same proposition (subject-matter) but differ in the manner of expression, which in its turn, depends on the situational conditions of the communication act. So, the same thought, idea, opinion can be expressed in more than one way. For example: a) King Charles was publicly decapitated. (Bookish or literary style); b) King Charles was publicly beheaded (neutral style); c) They chopped off King Charles’s head in the sight of anyone who cared to see it done (colloquial style).
Climax suddenly interrupted by an unexpected turn of the thought which defeats expectations of the reader is called anticlimax.
The ideas expressed may be arranged in ascending order of significance, or they may be poetical or elevated, but the final one, which the reader expects to be the culminating one, as in climax, is trifling or farcical. There is a sudden drop from the lofty or serious to the ridiculous. A typical example is Aesop’s fable “The Mountain in Labour.”
“In days of yore, a mighty rumbling was heard in a Mountain. It was said to be in labour, and multitudes flocked together, from far and near, to see what it would produce. After long expectations and many wise conjectures from the by-standers – out popped, a Mouse! ”Here we have deliberate anticlimax, which is a recognized form of humour. Anticlimax is frequently used by humorists like Mark twain and Jerome K. Jerome.
Another example of anticlimax is: “This war-like speech, received with many a cheer, had filled them with desire of fame, and beer.”
Antithesis In order to characterize a thing or phenomenon from a specific point of view, it may be necessary not to find points of resemblance or association between it and some other thing or phenomenon, but to find points of sharp contrast, that is, to set one against the other, for example:
"A saint abroad, and a devil at home." (Bunyan) "Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven." (Milton)
A line of demarcation must be drawn between logical opposition and stylistic opposition. Any opposition will be based on the contrasting features of two objects. These contrasting features are represented in pairs of words which we call antonyms, provided that all the properties of the two objects in question may be set one against another, as 'saint' —'devil', 'reign'—'serve', 'hell'—'heaven'. Many word-combinations are built up by means of contrasting pairs, as up and down, inside and out, from top to bottom and the like. Stylistic opposition, which is given a special name, the term antithesis, is of a different linguistic nature: it is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of the literary contrasting pairs, as in:
"Youth is lovely, age is lonely, Youth is fiery, age is frosty;" (Longfellow)
Here the objectively contrasted pair is 'youth' and 'age'. 'Lovely' and lonely' cannot be regarded as objectively opposite concepts, but being drawn into the scheme contrasting 'youth' and 'age', they display certain features which may be counted as antonymical. This is strengthened also by the next line where not only 'youth' and 'age' but also 'fiery' and 'frosty' are objective antonyms. It is not only the semantic aspect which explains the linguistic nature of antithesis, the structural pattern also plays an important role. Antithesis is generally moulded in parallel construction. The antagonistic features of the two objects or phenomena are more easily perceived when they stand out in similar structures.
Antithesis has the following basic functions: rhythm-forming (because of the parallel arrangement on which it is founded); copulative; dissevering; comparative. These functions often go together and inter-mingle in their own peculiar manner. But as a rule antithesis displays one of the functions more clearly than the others. This particular function will then be the leading one in the given utterance.
Questions for Self-Control:
1. Why is syntax figuratively called the “sinews of style”? Comment on the statement.
2. What is the difference between the grammatical and stylistic inversion? Give examples to support your answer.
3. What patterns of stylistic inversion are commonly used in the English language?
4. Give the definition of syntactic repetition. What types of repetition do you know? What are their functions?
5. Describe the functions of detachment . Give examples.
6. What is the difference between the lexical and syntactical repetition? Can they both be used in the same sentence? What is chiasmus? Give examples of parallel constructions and chiasmus.
7. What is the difference between the homogeneous and heterogeneous enumeration? What are their functions?
8. Give the definitions of the following stylistic means: climax, anticlimax, antethesis.
Literature
1. Н.Л. Еремия Пособие по практической стилистике и стилистической интерпретации текста. Кокшетау, 2006
2. Н.М. Разинкина.
Практикум по стилистике
3. Ю.М. Скребнев Основы стилистики английского языка: Учебник для ин-тов и фак.иностр.яз. – 2-е изд., испр. – М.:ООО «Издательство Астрель», 2000
4. I.R. Galperin. Stylistics. – Moscow,1977
5. V.A. Kuharenko. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. – M.:Высшая школа,1986
6. V.A. Maltzev. Essays of English Stylistics. – Мн.: Высшая школа,1984
7. T.A. Znamenskaya. Stylistics of the English Language. М., Комкнига, 2006
Lecture 6.
The transposition of syntactic structure.
Rhetorical questions.
Syntactic structures may be used in meanings other than their primary ones. Every syntactical structure has its definite function, which is sometimes called its structural meaning. Among syntactical stylistic devices there are 2 in which this transference of structural meaning is to be seen: a) rhetorical questions; b) litotes.
The rhetorical question is a special syntactical SD the essence of which consists in reshaping the grammatical meaning of the interrogative sentence. In other words, the question is no longer a question but a statement expressed in the form of an interrogative sentence. Thus there is interplay of two structural meanings: 1) that of the question; 2) that of the statement.
Both are materialized simultaneously. Ex.: “Is there not blood enough upon your penal code?”
Rhetorical questions are used in complex sentences with the subordinate clause. Negative-interrogative sentences have a peculiar nature. There is always an additional shade of meaning implied in them: doubt, assertion, suggestion. They have emotive meaning and modality. “Have I not suffered things to be forgiven?”
Rhetorical questions due to their power of expressing a variety of modal shades of meaning, are most often used in Publicistic style and particularly in oratory, where the rousing of emotions is the effect generally aimed at.
Litotes.
L i t o t e s is a stylistic device consisting of a peculiar use of negative constructions. Litotes is a deliberate understatement used to produce a stylistic effect. It is not a pure negation, but a negation that includes affirmation. So the negation in litotes must not be regarded as a mere denial of the quality mentioned.
The negation plus noun or adjective serves to establish a positive feature in a person or thing. But this positive feature is somewhat diminished in quality. Let’s compare 2 pairs of sentences: 1) it’s not a bad thing. = It’s a good thing.
2) He is no coward. = He is a brave man.
“Not bad” is not equal to “good” although the two constructions are synonymous. The same can be said about the 2-nd pair. In both cases the negative construction is weaker than the affirmative one – but the negative constructions here have a stronger impact on the reader than the affirmative one. The latter have no additional connotation; the former – have. That is why such constructions are regarded as stylistic devices. Litotes is a device with the help of which 2 meanings are materialized simultaneously: the direct (negative) and transferred (affirmative).
The stylistic effect of litotes depends mainly on intonation.
The negation does not merely indicate the absence of the quality mentioned but suggests the presence of the opposite quality. Ex.: “Mr. X was a man of honour – Mr. X was a man of his word – Mr. X was no deceiver …”
A variant of litotes is a construction with two negations, as in not unlike, not unpromising, not displeased and the like. Two negatives make a positive.
Ex.: “Soames, with his lips and his squared chin was not unlike a bulldog.” In this sentence the litotes may be interpreted as some what resembling. Litotes is used in different styles of speech, excluding those which may be called the matter-of-fact-style, like official style and scientific prose. In poetry it is sometimes used in order to express the inexpressible.
In Shakespeare's Sonnet No. 130 is to some extent illustrative in this respect. Here all the hackneyed phrases used by the poet to depict his beloved are negated with the purpose of showing the superiority of the earthly qualities of "My mistress." The first line of this sonnet 'My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun' is a clear-cut litotes although the object to which the eyes are compared is generally perceived as having only positive qualities.
3.Elipses, One-member Sentences. One-Word sentences.
The length and structure of every language unit is a very important factor in information exchange, as the human brain can receive and transmit information if only the latter is punctuated by pauses. 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 the only word obtains both the word and the sentence stress. The word constituting a sentence also obtains its own sentence intonation, which helps to foreground the content.
Completeness of sentence structure is also important. The most prominent place here belongs to ellipses, or deliberate omission of at least one member of the sentence. Ellipses is mainly used in dialogue where it is employed by the author to reflect the natural omissions characterizing oral colloquial speech. Ellipses is also the basis for the so-called telegraphic style, in which connectives and redundant words are left out. The same applies to directions. Instead of the sentence “Please drive slowly” one may see the single word “Slow” on the street sign.
The biggest contributors to the telegraphic style are one-member sentences, i.e. sentences containing only a nominal group, which is semantically and communicatively self-sufficient. In creative prose one-member words are usually 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 speaker.
Polysyndeton is a repetition of conjunction in close succession, for example, when connecting homogeneous parts, or clauses, or sentences. The function of polysyndeton is to impart the idea of equal logical importance of connected elements, e.g.:
The looms, and wheels, and hands, all out of gear for an hour. (Charles Dickens)
Asyndeton is a deliberate avoidance of conjunctions. Asyndeton helps to create the effect of terse, energetic, active prose, e.g.:
Mr. Gradgrind rapidly assented; Mr. Sleary rapidly turned out from a box a smock frock, a felt hat, and other essentials; the whelp rapidly changed clothes behind a screen of baize; Mr Sleary rapidly brought beer, and washed him white again. (Charles Dickens)
She was so old that her skin was like bark; her mouth was closed as tight as a nutcracker over her toothless gums; and her small red eyes flickered between eyelids which looked as if they had worn away. (Ellen Glasgow)
Break-in-the-narrative (aposiopesis)
Break is a stylistic device that promotes the incompleteness of sentence structure. It is used mostly in the dialogue and reflects the emotional and/or psychological state of the speaker. Break is usually caused by unwillingness to proceed; or by the supposition that what remains to be said can be understood by the implication embodied in what was said; or by uncertainty as to what should be said or by the speaker’s emotions preventing him/her from finishing the sentence. To mark the break dashes and dots are used.
Questions for Self-Control:
1. What is the function of rhetorical questions in creative prose? What is their function in oratory?
2. What is litotes? Give a definition. Give examples in the English and kazkakh/Russian languages.
3. Speak about the importance of the sentence length and its structure. What types of sentences do you know? Give examples.
4. What types of syntactic connection do you know? What do we call a deliberate repetition of conjunctions between sentences or clauses? What do we call a deliberate avoidance of any conjunctions?
5. What is aposiopesis? What is its function?
Literature
1. Н.Л.
Еремия Пособие по
2.
Н.М. Разинкина. Практикум по
стилистике английского и
3. Ю.М. Скребнев Основы стилистики английского языка: Учебник для ин-тов и фак.иностр.яз. – 2-е изд., испр. – М.:ООО «Издательство Астрель», 2000
4. I.R. Galperin. Stylistics. – Moscow,1977
5. V.A. Kuharenko. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. – M.:Высшая школа,1986
6. V.A. Maltzev. Essays of English Stylistics. – Мн.: Высшая школа,1984
7. T.A. Znamenskaya. Stylistics of the English Language. М., Комкнига, 2006
Lecture 7
The Belles-Lettres Style
1. The Belles-lettres Style. General Notion.
2. The language of poetry
3. The language of emotive prose
4. The language of drama
1. The belles - lettres style or the style of imaginative literature
A functional style of language is a system of language means which serves a definite aim in communication. Each style can be recognized by one or more leading features which are especially conspicuous. The belles - lettres style includes the language of poetry (verse), emotive prose (fiction), and the language of drama otherwise it is called the style of creative literature.
The purpose (the cognitive function) is not to prove but only to suggest a possible interpretation of the phenomena of life by forcing the reader to See the viewpoint of the writer.
The common features are as follows: 1. Individual, distinctive properties, aesthetic-cognitive effect; 2. a vocabulary which will reflect to a greater or lesser degree of author's personal evaluation of things or phenomena; 3. genuine (not trite) imagery; 4. The use of the words in contextual and very often in more than one “dictionary meaning” (to create either humorous effect or metaphorical one), or at least greatly influenced by the lexical environment; 5. A peculiar individual selection of vocabulary and syntax, a kind of lexical and syntactical idiosyncrasy; 6. The introduction of the typical features of colloquial language to a full degree (in plays), in a lesser degree- (in emotive prose) or a slight degree, if any – (in poetry).
2. The Language of Poetry:
Poetry (from the Greek “poiesis”, a "making" or “creating”) is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning. Poetry may be written independently, as discrete poems, or may occur in conjunction with other arts, as in poetic drama, hymns or lyrics. Poetry might be defined, initially, as a kind of language that says more and says it more intensely than does ordinary language. William Wordsworth defined poetry as "the spontaneous overflow of powerful feelings, recollected in tranquillity." Poetry is the most condensed and concentrated form of literature, saying most in the fewest number of words.
Poetry often uses particular forms and conventions to expand the literal meaning of the words, or to evoke emotional or sensual responses. Devices such as assonance, alliteration, onomatopoeia and rhythm are sometimes used to achieve musical or incantatory effects. Poetry's use of ambiguity, symbolism, irony and other stylistic elements of poetic diction often leaves a poem open to multiple interpretations. Similarly, metaphor and simile create a resonance between otherwise disparate images—a layering of meanings, forming connections previously not perceived. Kindred forms of resonance may exist, between individual verses, in their patterns of rhyme or rhythm.
Whereas ordinary speech and writing, called prose, are organized in sentences and paragraphs, poetry in its simplest definition is organized in units called lines as well as in sentences, and often in stanzas, which are the paragraphs of poetry. Stanzas are denominated by the number of lines included. Thus a collection of two lines is a couplet (or distich), three lines a triplet (or tercet), four lines a quatrain, five lines a quintain (or cinquain), six lines a sestet, and eight lines an octet. These lines may or may not relate to each other by rhyme or rhythm. For example, a couplet may be two lines with identical meters which rhyme or two lines held together by a common meter alone. Stanzas often have related couplets or triplets within them.
The most commonly used accentual-syllabic meter in English language poetry is iambic pentameter, in which unaccented and accented syllables alternate in lines of ten syllables. Other kinds of repetition in poetry include rhyme, the recurrence of sound clusters; assonance, the echoing of vowels; and consonance, the echoing of consonants. Many early poems included refrains, the repetition of lines or whole phrases.
With its resemblance to the rhythmic pattern of the English language, even a fairly strict iambic pentameter line can result in the surprisingly natural rhythm of these lines by the 19th-century English poet Christina Rossetti:
We found her hidden just behind those screens,
The mirror gave back all her loveliness.
A queen in opal or in ruby dress,
A nameless girl in freshest summer-greens,
A saint, an angel—–every canvas means
The same one meaning, neither more nor less.
(“In an Artist's Studio,” 1896)
Prosody is the study of the meter, rhythm, and intonation of a poem. Rhythm and meter, although closely related, should be distinguished. Meter is the definitive pattern established for a verse (such as iambic pentameter), while rhythm is the actual sound that results from a line of poetry.
English and Russian are stress-timed languages. Varying intonation also affects how rhythm is perceived.
Genres of Poetry:
In addition to specific forms of poems, poetry is often thought of in terms of different genres and subgenres. A poetic genre is generally a tradition or classification of poetry based on the subject matter, style, or other broader literary characteristics.
Narrative poetry is a genre of poetry that tells a story. Broadly it subsumes epic poetry, but the term "narrative poetry" is often reserved for smaller works, generally with more appeal to human interest.
Narrative poetry may be the oldest type of poetry. Many scholars of Homer have concluded that his Iliad and Odyssey were composed from compilations of shorter narrative poems that related individual episodes and were more suitable for an evening's entertainment.
Epic poetry is a genre of poetry, and a major form of narrative literature. It recounts, in a continuous narrative, the life and works of a heroic or mythological person or group of persons. Examples of epic poems are Homer's Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil's Aeneid, the Nibelungenlied,
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