Lexical Stylistic Devices:
Metaphor - transference of names based on the associated likeness between two objects
1. The clock had struck, time was bleeding away.
2. Money burns a hole in my pocket.
3. Another night, deep in the summer, the heat of my room sent me out into the streets.
Personification involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects.
1. Here and there a Joshua tree stretched out hungry black arms as though to seize these travelers by night, and over gray waster a dismal wind moaned constantly, chill and keen and biting.
2. I closed the door, and my stubborn car refused to open it again.
3. The flowers nodded their heads as if to greet us.
4. The frogs began their concert.
(pronouns, capitalization, human qualities)
Metonymy is based on close relations objectively existing between the part and the body itself.
1. We don`t hire long hairs.
2. He was too fond of the bottle.
3. Being tired and dirty for days at a time and then having to give up because flesh and blood just couldn`t stand it.
Irony – the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning.
1. Contentedly Sam Clark drove off, in the heavy traffic of three Fords and the Minniemashie House Free Bus.
3. Stony smiled the sweet smile of an alligator.
Sarcasm
But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world.
… As he great champion of freedom and national independence he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it Colonization.
Hyperbole is a lexical stylistic device in which emphasis is achieved through deliberate exaggeration.
1. God, I cried buckets. I saw it thousands of times.
2. The girls were dressed to kill.
3. She has a nose that`s at least three inches long.
4. I was so hungry, I could eat an elephant.
Understatement – when the size, shape, dimensions, characteristic features of the object are not overrated, but intentionally underrated.
1. A woman of pocket size
2. Her eyes were open, but only just. “Don`t move the tiniest part of an inch”.
Epithet is a descriptive literary device that describes a place, a thing or a person in such a way that it helps in making the characteristics of a person, thing or place more prominent than they actually are.
1. She gave him a lipsticky smile.
2. She protested vehemently (неистово).
3. It was an old, musty (заплесневелый), fusty (затхлый, несвежий), narrow-minded, clean and bitter room.
Oxymoron (pl.- oxymora) - is a figure of speech in which two opposite ideas are joined to create an effect.
1. He caught a ride home to the crowded loneliness of the barracks.
2. Her lips were livid (мертвенно-бледный) scarlet.
3. She cried silently.
4. Loud silence
5. Awfully nice
Zeugma. We deal with zeugma when polysemantic verbs that can be combined with nouns of most varying semantic groups are deliberately used with two or more homogeneous members which are not connected semantically, as in such example: “He took his hat and his leave”.
1. There comes a period in every man`s life, but she`s just a semicolon in his.
2. “Sally”, said Mr.Bently in a voice almost as low as his intentions, “let`s go out to the kitchen”.
Pun is a form of word play that suggests two or more meanings, by exploiting multiple meanings of words, or of similar-sounding words, for an intended humorous or rhetorical effect.
1. I am going to give you some advice. – Oh! Pray don`t. One should never give a woman anything that she can`t wear in the evening
2. There is not a single man in this hotel that`s half alive. – But I am not a single man. – Oh, I don`t mean that. Anyway, I hate single men. They always propose marriage.
Semantically false chaina variation of zeugma when the number of homogeneous members, semantically disconnected, but attached to the same verb, increases.
1. He had his breakfast and his bath.
2. A young girl who had a yellow smock (сорочка, платье) and a cold in the head that did not go on too well together was helping an old lady…
3. He installed a wall-to-wall carpet in the living room, an oak table in the dining room, a dishwasher in the kitchen, and more than occasionally Miss Bigelow in the bedroom
Violation of phraseological units – restoring the literal original meaning of the word, which lost some of its semantic independence and strength in a phraseological unit or cliche.
1. It was raining cats and dogs and one puppet and two kittens landed on my window-cell.
2. He finds time to have a finger or a foot in most things that happen round here.
3. Little John was born with a silver spoon in his mouth which was rather curly and large.
Antonomasia is a lexical stylistic device in which a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice versa. Logical meaning serves to denote concepts and thus to classify individual objects into groups (classes). The nominal meaning of a proper name is suppressed by its logical meaning and acquires the new – nominal – component. Nominal meaning has no classifying power for it applies to one single individual object with the aim not of classifying it constituting a definite group, but, on the contrary with the aim of singling it out of the group of similar objects, of individualizing one particular object. The word “Mary” does not indicate if the denoted object refers to the class of women, girls, boats, cats, etc. But in example: “He took little satisfaction in telling each Mary, something…” the attribute “each”, used with the name, turns it into a common noun denoting any woman. Here we deal with a case of antonomasia of the first type.
Another type of antonomasia we meet when a common noun is still clearly perceived as a proper name. So, no speaker of English today has it in his mind that such popular English surnames as Mr.Smith or Mr.Brown used to mean occupation and the color. While such names as Mr.Snake or Mr.Backbite immediately raise associations with certain human qualities due to the denotational meaning of the words “snake” and “backbite”.
Antonomasia is created mainly by nouns, more seldom by attributive combinations (as in “Dr.Fresh Air”) or phrases (as in “Mr.What’s-his-name’).