Standard English

 

Semantic classification:

1.  Metaphoric epithet is based on metaphor:

“The submarine laughter was swelling, rising, ready to break the surface of silence.”(A.Huxley) 

“The dawn with silver-sandalled feet crept like a frightened girl.” (O.Wilde)

2.  Transferred epithet transfers the quality of one object upon its nearest neughbour:

He lay all night on his sleepless pillow.

Restless pace; unbreakfasted morning;

Isabel shrugged an indifferent shoulder.

The sound of the solemn bells.

The smiling attention of the stranger.

Periphrasis is a combination of words used instead of the word denoting the object. It indicates a new feature of the notion. It both names and describes.

Periphrastic synonyms: the cap and gown (“student body”), my better half (“my wife”), the seven-hilled city (“Rome”).

Stylistic periphrasis:

“I understand you are poor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. (Ch.Dickens) - (mother).

“The lamp lighter made his nightly failure in attemting to brighten up the street with gas.” (Ch.Dickens) - (lit the street lamps).

      1. Attic salt – аттическая соль, утонченный ум, остроумие;

The three sisters – богини судьбы;

The Prince of Darkness – принц тьмы.

      2. John Bull –  a typical Englishman;

The three R’s  - reading, writing, ‘rithmetic;

The Iron Duke – Duke of Wellington.

 

 

3. The Land of Cakes – Scotland;

     The Big Apple – New York.

The eternal city - Rome.

Euphemism is a word or a phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a more acceptable one.

To die -      to pass away   to depart                           to kick the bucket

                   to expire         to join the majority          to go west

                   to be no more                                           to give up the ghost

Religious: gosh, my (god);

Medical: intoxication (drunkenness); mentally-ill patients (the insane);

Parliamentary:

“When Sir Winston Churchill, some years ago termed a parliamentary opponent a ‘purveyor of terminological inexactitudes’, every one in the chamber knew he meant ‘liar’. Sir Winston had been ordered by the Speaker to withdraw a stronger epithet. So he used the euphemism, which became famous and is still used in the Commons. It conveyed the insult without sounding offensive, and it satisfied the Speaker.” (James Feron “In Commons, a Lie is Inexactitude”, “The New York Times”, 1964)

Political: undernourishment of children in India (starvation).

Real euphemisms: a four- letter word (an obscenity);     

“a woman of a certain type” (a prostitute).

Hyperbole (overstatement) is an expression of an idea in an exceedingly exaggerate language.

  “And I will love thee still, my dear,

           Till all the seas gang dry.”   (R.Burns)                      

“I’d cross the world to find you a pin.” (A.Coppard)

          “These three words (Dombey and Son) conveyed the one idea of Mr.Dombey’s life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre.” (Ch.Dickens)

Language hyperbole: a thousand pardons; scared to death; immensely obliged;     I’d give the world to see him.

Meioses  (lessening, understatement) is an expression of an idea in an excessively restrained language.

He knows a thing or two.

How do you like this pond? (about the ocean)

Really! (You amaze me!)

Rather! (Superb!)

I don’t care a pin / straw about it.

Irony is a stylistic device by which the words are made to convey the meaning opposite to their direct meaning. It is an intentional distraction of the primary meaning. Both the writer and the reader understand that the word is used in the meaning contrary to its primary direct meaning.

It is the context that produces the irony. The word containing irony is marked by a stress and specific intonation.

“It must be delightful to find oneself in a foreign country without a penny in one’s pocket.”

(Context) “This coherent speech was interrupted by the entrance of the Rochester coachman, to announce that….” (Ch.Dickens)

A cliché is generally defined as an expression that becomes trite. It has lost its precise meaning by constant reiteration; in other words it has become stereotyped.

Rosy dreams of youth; deceptive smile;

          (the press) effective guarantees; the whip and carrot policy; buffer zone; bumper-to bumper traffic; crushing defeat; diamond in the rough; stony silence.

“She was unreal, like a picture and yet had an elegance which made Kitty feel all thumbs.” (S.Maugham)

Proverbs and sayings are brief statements showing in condensed form the accumulated life experience of the community and serving as conventional practical symbols for abstract ideas. They are usually didactic and image bearing. Many of them have metre, rhyme and alliteration; brevity manifests itself also in omission of connectives.

They can be handled not in their fixed form but with modifications.

“Come!” he said, ”  milk is spilt.”(J.Galsworthy)  (from ‘It is no use crying over spilt milk’)

“Proof of the Pudding” (Headline of the editorial in the Daily Worker)    (from ‘The proof of the pudding is in the eating’)

An epigram is a stylistic device akin to a proverb, the only difference being that epigrams are coined by individuals whose names we know, while proverbs are the coinage of the people.

“Mighty is he who conquers himself.” (S.Maugham)

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever.”  (Keets)  

A Quotation is a repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech and the like used by way of authority, illustration, proof or as a basis for further speculation on the matter in hand.

           “Ecclesiastes said, “that all is vanity” –

Most modern preachers say the same, or show it

By their examples of the Christianity…” (G.G.Byron)

Allusion is a reference to specific places, persons, literary characters or historical events that, by some association, have come to stand for a certain thing or an idea.

“No little Grandgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with the famous cow with the crumpled horn that tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow that swallowed Tom Thumb; it had never heard of those celebrities.” (Ch.Dickens “Hard Times”) (“The House that Jack Built”; “The History of Tom Thumb”)

I don’t know him. He is single-eyed like the famous admiral. (Admiral Nelson)

A newspaper headline: “’Pie in the sky’ for Railmen” (“Daily Worker”) (the refrain of the workers’ song: “You’ll get pie in the sky when you die.”)

The Tories were accused in the House of Commons yesterday of “living in an Alice in Wonderland world” on the question of nuclear arms for Germany. (L.Carrol “Alice in Wonderland”)

C.Bernstein, B.Woodward “All the President’s Men”. («Вся президентская рать»)

(“Humpty Dumpty sat on the wall,

Humpty Dumpty had a great fall…

                                 … all the King’s men…       (…вся королевская рать)

cannot put Humpty Dumpty together again.”  –/nursery rhyme/).

Decomposition of set phrases (Violation of phraseological units) consists in reviving the independent meanings of the component parts. In other words it makes each word of the combination acquire its literal meaning.

“Little John was born with a silver spoon in his mouth which was rather curly and large.” (J.Galsworthy)

Why wait to see which way Smith jumps. -  К чему ждать, что предпримет Смит? / to see (watch) which way the cat jumps – занимать выжидательную позицию/

The Chancellor of the Exchequer’s finger in rail pay pie. –Министр финансов вмешался в конфликт по поводу повышения заработной платы железнодорожникам. /to have a finger in the pie – участвовать в каком-то деле, приложить к чему-то руку/

To swim with the new tide. – пойти по новому пути. /to swim with the tide – плыть по течению/

 Oxymoron is a combination of two words (mostly an adjective and a known or an adverb with an adjective) in which the meanings of the two clash, being opposite in sense.

(awfully nice/ frightfully happy; mighty small)

“Oh, the sweetness of the pain.” (J.Keats)

“Doomed to liberty.” (O.Henry)

“I despise its very vastness and power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the haughtiest beggars, the plainest beauties, the lowest sky-scrapers, the dolefulest pleasures of any town I ever saw.” (O.Henry “The Duel”)

 Paradox is a statement contradictory to what is accepted as a self-evident or proverbial truth.

“I think that life is far too important a thing ever to talk seriously about it.” (O.Wilde)

“I never like giving information to the police. It saves them trouble.” (G.Green)

“Wine costs money, blood costs nothing.” (G.B.Shaw)

Zeugma is the use of a word in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to two adjacent words in the context, the semantic relations being on the one hand literal, and on the other, transferred.

Mr. S. took his hat and his leave. /to take leave/

“He had a good taste for wine and whiskey and an emergency bell in his bedroom.” (G.Green)

“Either you or your head must be off.” (L.Carrol)  /to be off/

Pun (paronomasia, a play on words) is a figure of speech emerging as an effect created by words similar or identical in their sound form and contrastive or incompatible in meaning.

“The Importance of Being Earnest" (O.Wilde)

“Bow to the board,” said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears that were lingering in his eyes; and seeing no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that.” (Ch.Dickens “Oliver Twist”)

 

Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices

Structural syntactical stylistic devices are in special relations with the intonation involved.

Only after dinner did I make up my mind to go there.

I made up my mind to go there only after dinner.

It was in 1958 that the first   Tchaikovsky contest was held in Moscow.

The first Tchaikovsky contest was held in1958 in Moscow.

The English affirmative sentence is regarded as neutral if it maintains the regular word order, i.e., Subject – Verb (Predicate) – Object. Any other order of the parts of the sentence may also carry the necessary information, but the impact on the reader will be different.

Stylistic inversion makes prominent this or that member of the sentence and through it renders some emotional colouring to the whole sentence. Stylistic inversion should not be regarded as a violation of the language, but it realizes the potentialities of the language.

The following patterns of stylistic inversion are most frequently met in both English prose and English poetry. Specific intonation pattern is the inevitable satellite of inversion.

1. The object is placed at the beginning of the sentence.

“Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not.” (Ch.Dickens)

2. Postposition of the attribute.

“With fingers weary and worn…” (Thomas Hood)

“Once upon the midnight dreary…” (E.A.Poe)

3. a)  The predicative is placed before the subject.

“A good generous prayer it was.” (Mark Twain)

            b)The predicative stands before the link verb and both are placed before    the subject .

            “Rude am I in my speech…” (W.Shakespeare)

4. The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence.

“Eagerly I wished the morrow.” (E.A.Poe)

“My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall.” (Dryden)

5.  Both modifier and predicate stand before the subject.

“In went Mr. Pickwick.” (Ch.Dickens)

“Down dropped the breeze…” (Coleridge)

 

Detached construction is one of the secondary parts of the sentence placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to. The detached part, being torn away from its referent, assumes a greater degree of significance and is given prominence by intonation.

(Attribute) “She stood there, white with horror.”

“Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and unsteady in his gait.” (Thackerey)

(Adverbial modifier) “He entered the room, his hands in his pockets.

“How do you like the Army?” Mrs. Silburn asked. Abruptly

,conversationally.   (J.D.Salinger)

(Prepositional object) “It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an old house.”      (J.Galsworthy)              

(Apposition) “They put him under laughing gas, poor lad.”

A variant of detached construction is parenthesis. Parenthesis is a qualifying or explanatory word, phrase, clause, sentence, or other sequence which interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it, having often characteristic intonation and indicated in writing by commas, brackets or dashes.

“The main entrance (he had never ventured beyond) was a combination of glass and iron.”

“Bossiney’s aunt (Louisa was her name) was in her kitchen when June was announced.” (J.Galsworthy)

“That bit of gold meant food, life and power to go on writing and – who was to say? – may be to write something that would bring him many pieces of gold.”

Parallelism (Parallel construction) is based upon a recurrence of syntactically identical sequences which lexically are completely or partially different.

Partial parallelism

“It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses – that man your navy and recruit your army, - that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair.”        (Byron)

 

Complete parallelism (Balance)

“The seed ye sow – another reaps,

The robes ye weave – another wears,

          The arms ye forge – another bears.”  (P.B.Shelley)

Chiasmus is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but it has a cross order of words and phrases. It is a combination of inversion and balance.

  “He rose and down sat she.”

         “Down dropped the breeze,

         The sails dropped down.” (Coleridge)

        Chiasmus may also be achieved by change from active into passive voice or vice versa.

        “The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. (Ch.Dickens)

Repetition is based upon a repeated occurrence of one and the same word or word-group. Its main stylistic function is to point out certain parts of the utterance and to pay attention of the reader or listener to the key words of the utterance.

        “I would not mind him if he wasn’t so conceited and didn’t bore me, bore me, and bore me.” (E.Hemingway)

          Repetition is classified according to compositional design.

Anaphora – repetition of the first word or word-group in several successive sentences, clauses or phrases.

         “I love your hills, and I love your dales. And I love your flocks a-bleating.” (J.Keats)

          “Supposing his head had been held under water for a while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had been strangled.

            Supposing this way, that way. Supposing anything but getting unchained from the one idea for that was inexorably impossible.” (Ch.Dickens)

 

 

Epiphora –a  repetition of the final word or word-group.

         “He ate meat with them, drank wine with them; automobiled with them, and studied them.”

          “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…” (J.Brain)

Framing (Ring repetition) – repetition of the same unit at the beginning and at the end of the same sentence or paragraph.

         “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.” (E.Hemingway) Anadiplosis (Catch repetition, linking) – the last word or phrase of one part of an utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together.

          “Three fishers went sailing out into the west,

          Out into the west as sun went down.”

          “…all was old and yellow with decay. And decay was the smell and being of that room.” (B.Davidson)

Chain repetition – the linking device is used several times in one utterance.

          “A smile would come into Mr. Pickwick’s face: the smile extended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and thy roar became general.” (Ch.Dickens)

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

Synonym repetition – repetition of the same idea by using synonymous words and phrases which by adding a slightly different nuance of meaning intensify the impact of the utterance.

         “lord and master”; “act and deed”; “pure and simple.”

         “The treaty was pronounced null and void.”

         “To fulfill and execute alliances and treaty obligations.”

 

 

Contextual synonyms

          “…are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes?

         Is there not blood enough upon your penal code?” (Byron)

          “The poetry of earth is never dead…

          The poetry of earth is ceasing never…” (Keats)

Tautology – the repetition of the same word in different grammar forms, the repetition of the same word or phrase or of the same idea or statement in other words.

         “And all the night long he dreamed a pleasant dream of how he’ll marry a princess.”

         “audible to the ear”; “visible to the eye”; “all unanimously agreed”.

Pleonasm – the use of more words than necessary to express the meaning; redundancy of expression.

          “It was a clear starry night and not a cloud was to be seen.”

          He was the only survivor, no one else was saved but him.”