24. Lexico-syntactical stylistic devices

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 the lexico-semantic aspect of the utterance. They are known as lexico-syntactical SDs.

Antithesis: opposition, or contrast of ideas or words in a balanced or parallel construction. (In marriage is up keep a woman is often downfall for a man. Youth is lovely - Age is lonely.)

Climax: arrangement of words, phrases, or clauses in an order of ascending power. Last emphatic word in 1 phrase or clause is repeated as the 1^st emphatic word of the next. (He worked hard, read a lot, made tests & then won the Noble Prize)

Anticlimax: when tension grows, but in the end we have an unexpected result.

Simile: explicit comparison between 2 things using 'like' or 'as'. (My love is like a red rose. Sly as a fox, busy as a bee.)

Litotes: the way of expressing double negation. (Not so impossible. Not too bad)

Periphrasis is a very peculiar stylistic device which basically consists of using a roundabout form of expression instead of a simpler one, i.e. of using a more or less complicated syntactical structure instead of a word. Depending on the mechanism of this substitution, periphrases are classified into figurative (metonymic and metaphoric), and logical. The main function of periphrases is to convey a purely individual perception of the described object. To achieve it the generally accepted nomination of the object is replaced by the description of one of its features or qualities, which seems to the author most important for the characteristic of the object, and which thus becomes foregrounded.

The often repeated periphrases become trite and serve as universally accepted periphrastic synonyms: "the gentle / soft / weak sex" (women); "my better half (my spouse); "minions of Law" (police), etc.

25. Stylistic function and stylistic context

Like other linguistic disciplines stylistics deals with the lexical, grammatical, phonetic and phraseological data of the language. However there is a distinctive difference between stylistics and the other linguistic subjects. Stylistics does not study or describe separate linguistic units like phonemes or words or clauses as such. It studies their stylistic function. Stylistics is interested in the expressive potential of these units and their interaction in a text. Stylistics focuses on the expressive properties of linguistic units, their functioning and interaction in conveying ideas and emotions in a certain text or communicative context. Stylistics interprets the opposition or clash between the contextual meaning of a word and its denotative meaning. Accordingly stylistics is first and foremost engaged in the study of connotative meanings.

In brief the semantic structure (or the meaning) of a word roughly consists of its grammatical meaning (noun, verb, adjective) and its lexical meaning. Lexical meaning can further on be subdivided into denotative (linked to the logical or nominative meaning) and connotative meanings. Connotative meaning is only connected with extra-linguistic circumstances such as the situation of communication and the participants of communication. Connotative meaning consists of four components:

1. Emotive (express various feelings or emotions);

2. Evaluative (charges the word with negative, positive, ironic or other types of connotation conveying the speaker's attitude in relation to the object of speech);

3. Expressive (increases or decreases the expressiveness of the message);

4. Stylistic (a word possesses stylistic connotation if it belongs to a certain functional style or a spe­cific layer of vocabulary).