Robert Penn Warren

Graphon is very good at conveying the atmosphere of authentic live communication, of the informality of the speech act. Some amalgamated forms, which are the result of strong assimilation, became clichés in contemporary prose dialogue: gimme (give me),

lemme (let me), gonna (going to), gotta (got to), coupla (couple of), mighta (might have), willya (will you), etc.

Graphon is an efficient way of conveying the intensity of the stress, emphasizing and foregrounding the stressed words.

Types of graphons:

1. changes of the type (italics, capitalization), i. e. emphasis of both logical and emotional significance;

2. spacing of graphemes (hyphenation, multiplication), i. e. intensity of speech in commands with the help of multiplication and capitalization. Hyphenation suggests the rhymed or clipped manner of speech.

Summing up, we should say that graphons are widely applied for recreating of the individual and social peculiarities of the speaker as well as the atmosphere of the communication act, all aimed at emphasizing the author’s attitude and point of view.

14. Lexical stylistic devices and expressive means. Metaphor, metonymy, irony

Metaphor is a lexical stylistic device which denotes transference of meaning based on similarity. In metaphor different phenomena, objects, qualities are compared. For example: the leg of the table. The word leg is a metaphor.

Metaphors may be of different types. Simple metaphors are expressed by a word or a phrase (man cannot live by bread only). Complex (prolonged, sustained) metaphors include more than one element of the text.

Metaphors may also be fresh (genuine, original) and trite. The first are metaphors which are absolutely unexpected, are quite unpredictable. For example: his words were coming so fast; they were leap-frogging themselves (“Farewell, My Lovely” by Raymond Thornton Chandler; July 23, 1888, Chicago, Illinois, United States – March 26, 1959, La Jolla, California, United States). The latter are those that have been overused in speech and lost their originality and expressiveness (flight of fancy, floods of tears).

A subtype of metaphor is called personification. It establishes resemblance between inanimate objects and human quality. For example: She had been asleep, always, and now life was thundering imperatively at all her doors (Chapter 14, “Martin Eden” by John Griffith “Jack” London (born John Griffith Chaney); January 12, 1876, San Francisco, California, United States – November 22, 1916, Glen Ellen, California, United States).

Metonymy is a lexical stylistic device which denotes the transference of meaning based on contiguity. On metonymy there is an objectively existing relation between the object named and the object implied. For example, he encountered a strange face running hastily downstairs.

There are different types of metonymic relations:

1. the name of a contour is used instead of its contents (the whole town was in the streets);

2. the name of a part is used instead of the name of the whole (this type is also called synecdoche: he was followed into the room by a pair of heavy boots);

3. a proper name is used for a common one or vice versa (Mr. Know-It-All);

4. the name of a characteristic feature of an object is used instead of the object (the massacre of innocence);

5. the name of an instrument is used instead of the name of an action or its doer (he earned his living by pen).

Ironyan implied discrepancy between what is said and what is meant. Three kinds of irony: 1. verbal irony is when an author says one thing and means something else. 2. dramatic irony is when an audience perceives something that a character in the literature does not know. 3. irony of situation is a discrepency between the expected result and actual results.

15. Simile. Epithet

Simile is based on comparison of two things that are dissimilar. The presence of formal elements is necessary. To such elements we refer different connectives, suffixes and hyphen.

It is worthwhile to mention that comparative constructions are not regarded as similes if no image is created, when the object with which somebody is compared is not accepted as a generally known example of the quality (John skates as beautifully as Kate does). Unlike simile, metaphor contains a covered comparison which is also included into the figurative meaning of the word.

Epithet is a stylistic device that is based on interplay of a dictionary and contextual meanings in an attributive word, phrase or sentence. It contains an expressive characteristic of an object. Epithets are always subjectively evaluative. They create an image, while simple adjectives indicate those features of the object which are generally recognized as inherent properties of the thing spoken about. The epithet may be an attributive or adverbial modifier (a cutting smile, to smile cuttingly).

There are different types of epithets: simple (a thrilling story), compound (a snow-white skin), phrasal (they are used attributively and are hyphenated: I-told-you-so satisfaction), sentence (Fool!), reversed (a shadow of a mile), transferred (a sleepless pillow) and fixed (used in poetry and folklore: true love, dark forest).