Hyperbole
Meiosis (Litotes)
(Figures
of Quantity) Tropes
(Figures
of Quality)
Metaphor (Personification)
Epithet
Irony
Metonymy (Synecdoche)
Antonomasia
Allegory
Allusion
Litotes: a trope in which an affirmative is expressed by the negative or vice versa:
“It was not without a certain wild pleasure I ran before the wind (Jane Eyre).
Structural patterns of litotes:
the presence of the key-element “not”.
“It is not unreasonable.”
the key-element “too” + “not”.
“I am not too sure.”
the key-element “rather, pretty, scarcely, etc…”
Irony: opposition of what is said to what is meant:
“The garden bore witness to a love of growing plants which extended to many types commonly known as weeds. (J. Wain)
Epithet: a word (a group of words) carrying an expressive (emotive) characterization of an object described: “Full many a glorious morning have I seen..."
Epithets:
1) tautological: “green grass”
2) evaluative: “a pompously majestic female”
3) descriptive: “an unnaturally mild day”
metaphorical:”the smiling sun”
metonymical: “the sleepless pillow”
Oxymoron: a conjunction of seemingly contradictory notions: “And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true” (A.Tennison).
Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement not meant to be taken literally to express a highly emotional attitude towards the thing described: “He was all starch and vinegar.”
Zeugma: two homogeneous members grammatically, but semantically different, “Killing time with a book was not much better than killing pheasants and time with a gun.”
Semantically false chain is a variety of zeugma consisting of a number of homogeneous members, semantically disconnected, but attached to the same verb. It is based on the effect of defeated expectancy and produces a humorous effect. Ex.: “Babbitt respected bigness in anything: in mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth of words”. (S.L.)
Pun (play on words) is based on simultaneous realization of two meanings of a polysemantic
word or the usage of two homonyms in the same context:
Have you ever seen him at the bar?
Thousand times. He was a drunkard.
Prof. Galperin’s classification:
Lexical SD:
Table 9 Classification of Lexical Stylistic Devices (LSD)(I.R.Galperin, V.A.Kucharenko)
Interrelation of 2 Logical m-gs
Interrelation Of
Logical & Emotive m-gs
Interrelation Of
Logical & Nominal
Interrelation of
Logical &
Phrasal m-gs
Metaphor Metonymy Irony
Epithet Oxymoron Hyperbole
Antonomasia
Zeugma Pun
Semantically False
Chain
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Syntactical SD (SSD) – I.R.Galperin
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Repetition:
Ordinary:
Anaphora: a…; a…; a…;
Epiphora: …a; …a; …a;
Anadiplosis: a…b; b…c;
Chain repetition: a…b; b…c; c…d …
Successive repetition: a…b, b, b …
Framing.
I love your hills,
I love your walls,
I love your flocks and bleating.
/Keats/
I wake up & I am alone
& I walk round Warley & I am alone;
& I talk to people & I am alone
& I look at his face when I’m home & it’s dead. (J.Br.)
Living is the art of loving.
Loving is the art of caring.
Caring is the art of sharing.
Sharing is the art of living. (W.H.D.)
Parallel constructions are based on the repetition of the whole syntactical structure of several successive sentences.
He had been called.
He had been touched.
He had been summoned. (R.W.)
Chiasmus is reversed parallelism:
“I looked at the gun and the gun looked at me” (R.Ch.)
Polysyndeton: an insistent repetition of a connective between words, phrases, clauses.
“They were from Milan and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier.”
Asyndeton: a deliberate avoidance of connectives: “People sang, people fought, people loved.”
Aposiopesis: a sudden intentional break in the narrative, dialogue: “Well, I never …”
Ellipsis: an intentional omission of one or more words: “a poor boy … no father, no mother, no any one.
Apokoinu constructions
(the omission of the pronominal / adverbial connective, that creates a blend of the main and subordinate clauses so that the predicate or the object of the first one is simultaneously used as the subject of the second one, as in “There was a door led into the kitchen”(Sh.A.), thus the impression of clumsiness of speech is produced);
Detachment: singling out a secondary member of a sentence: “She was crazy about you. In the beginning.
Attachment: The second part of the utterance is separated by a full stop from the first as if in afterthought: “a lot of mills. And a chemical factory. And a Grammar school. And a war memorial…”