Connotation. Its kinds and sources

Denotation is factual m-ng of the word. “Connotation” - “con”-”together”, “tare”-”mean”. It suggests an additional shade of m-ng, rendering an emotion, an attitude, etc. not every word possesses connotations. If a word is neutral and have no synonyms – it's usually have no connotations. But practically any word can acquire connotation either in a set expression (education is a window to the world), or it may acquire connotation in the text. Most words are polysemantic and their primary m-ng may be devoid of connotation, whereas other m-ngs may be heavy with connotations. Some words may sound poetic or high-flown in one m-ng and quite ordinary in another one. (“expire” - выдохнуть, «to breathe one's last” at first). Sometimes a neutral word may acquire a poetic m-ng in a unique text. Synonyms may sometimes emerge as textual antonyms due to their textual connotations (лошадь — конь). God made the woman beautiful and the devil makes her pretty. Here “pretty” - “tempting, leading man into sin, evil”.

Kinds of connotations

1. emotive (rendering a feeling – darling, белый-беленький)

2. evaluative (a matter of reasoning, judgement – stubborn-obstinate, miserly-thrifty)

3. expressive (intensity of quality – huge-big, grab-take)

4. stylistic (colloquial, high-flown, neutral)

5. pragmatic (those which are required by certain words or set expressions due to certain cultural beliefs, values or due to certain events that make an imprint on national consciousness)

Sources of connotation

There are 2 main sources:

1. synonymical relations (parents – father – daddy, commence – begin – go ahead)

2. relations between the direct and figurative meaning (“Don't be such a pig”)

There are 2 minor sources:

1. relations of formal similarity (crash, dash, splash; glare, glitter, glimmer, glisten; mr. Gradgrind)

2. restriction – the word is expected in a more or less narrower environment (cyclotron, to hibernate – впадать в спячку

Literary stylistics makes use of these sources of language connotation and adds many others (repetition - “Boots, boots, boots, boots... R.Kipling, defeated expectancy)

Lexical Stylistic Devices

1. Vocabulary as the main source of imagery

2. Approaches to classifying tropes

3. The main components of a trope

4. Characterisation of each trope

5. Stylistic use of set expressions

Imagery is created in a text, esp. in a literary one, by all the layers of the language (by a specific phonetic arrangement – rhythm, rhyme, sound repetition). Imagery is also built by syntactical devices (parallel constructions, rhetorical questions and other patterns of arrangement), but the main role in imagery building belongs to vocabulary. The greater part of vocabulary devices are associated with figurative m-ng. These are called tropes. Yet there are some lexical devices which create connotation without being based on figurative use (use of synonyms, esp. if they increase in intensity or antonyms, violation of predictability “Какие одержал он пораженья, какие он победы потерпел»)

Classification of tropes is a very controversial issue.

Metaphor, epithet, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, personification, allegory, antonomasia, periphrasis, hyperbole, understatement (=meiosis-litotes), simile (художественное сравнение), oxymoron, pun, zeugma

I.Galperin

Semantic classification. It shows how different types of lexical m-ng interact

M.Ruznetz, Yu.Screbnev A Functional classification

Every trope is based on the following 4 components:

1. The tenor – обозначаемое the old man

2. The vehicle – обозначающее fox

3. The ground cunning

4. The mechanism as

The old man is as cunning as a fox.

Sometimes all the 4 components are given explicitly, but it is not necessary for all of them to be actually expressed. (The old man is like a fox).

The old man is a fox ( no ground and mechanism)

Beware of the old fox – he may betray you (only vehicle)

Vehicle is indispensable

Simile

Simile is a lexical device based on explicit comparison of 2 objects or phenomena belonging to different classes. Sometimes a simile may compare objects of the same class if one of them is concrete and the other is an abstract concept. (The nurse looks after him like a mother). A simile is the most explicit of all tropes. It either possesses all the 4 components or 3 with the ground omitted, but the mechanism is always present explicitly.

Tropes and simile is no exception can be either trite - тривиальный (language) or genuine.

“His eyes were so much too small for his moon of a face that they seemed to have been originally made for someone else” (“Hard times”)

“He stood … as hard and cold as the weather” (“Dombey and Son”)

“He had no more idea of money than a cow”

“Ye had reminded James as he said afterwards of a hungry cat”