S tylistic semasiology

1. Figures of replacement

2. Figures of co-occurrence

Semasiology is a branch of linguistics connected with the meaning of words.

1. Figures of replacement

1/ Figures of quantity: hyperbole, understatement, litotes.

2/ Figures of quality

• metonymical group: metonymy, synecdoche, periphrasis, allusion;

• metaphorical group: metaphor, personification, metaphorical antonomasia, epithet; and irony

F

He’s as big as a house!

I’m so hungry I could eat a horse!

That’s the worst idea in the world.

IGURES OF QUANTITY

H yperbole is the use of a word, a word-group or a sentence which exaggerates the real degree of a quantity of the thing spoken about.

“It isn’t very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain.”

U nderstatement consists in lessening, reducing the real quantity of the object of speech.

To say I LOVE YOU is an understatement.

L itotes is a specific variety of understatement consisting in expressing the lessened degree of quantity of a thing by means of negation of the antonym that expresses the positive idea but in a somewhat lessened degree.

It’s not impossible.

I’m not unhappy.

He is not unlike his dad.

ANALYZING A POEM

 

There was an Old Man of Coblenz, 

The length of whose legs was immense;

He went with one prance, 

From Turkey to France,

That surprising Old Man of Coblenz.

What is the poem about? What do you see? What do you feel?

What’s unusual with the hero in the poem? Are his qualities exaggerated or lessened?

What is the effect of such stylistic device?

1. Read the following sentences, define the type of the figure of quantity.

1. The girls were dressed to kill. 2. Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old. 3. She was a giant of a woman. Her bulging figure was encased in a green crepe dress and her feet overflowed in red shoes. She carried a mammoth red pocketbook that bulged throughout as if it were stuffed with rocks. 4. "No. I've had a profession and then a firm to cherish." said Ravenstreet not without bitterness. 5. I wouldn't say "no" to going to the movies.  6. We danced on the handkerchief-big space between the speak-easy tables. 7. She was a sparrow of a woman. 

F IGURES OF QUALITY: Metonymical group

M etonymy is the use of a single characteristic to identify a more complex entity. It is based on different type of relation between the dictionary and contextual meanings, a relation based not on identification but on some kind of association connecting two concepts which these meanings represent.

2. Read and define the metonymy examples. Explain their meaning

1. The White House says that …

2. T

   West End is the hands of London.

   he truck hit me (my car) from behind.

3. The press has made my life hell.

4. T oday, we will be performing Shakespeare.

5. The Pentagon has made an announcement.

6. I didn’t like that book. 7) He has brains.

S ynecdoche is a variety of metonymy. It consists in using the name of a part to denote the whole, or vice versa.

P eriphrasis is a description of an object instead of its name.