Exercise.

State a stylistic device used and classify its function in the context:

1. (The actress is all in tears). Her manager: “Now what’s all this Tosca stuff about?” (Maugham)

2. Money burns a hole in my pocket. (T.Capote)

3. “You’ve got nobody to blame but yourself.”

“The saddest words of tongue or pen.” (I.Shaw)

4. Stoney smiled the sweet smile of an alligator. (Steinbeck)

5. God, I cried buckets. I saw it ten times. (T.Rawson)

6. It was an unanswerable reply and silence prevailed again. (Dickens)

7. “Where did you pick up Dinny, Lawrence?”

“In the street.”

“That sounds improper.” (Galsworthy)

8. She always glances up, and glances down, and doesn’t know where to look, but looks all the prettier. (Dickens)

2. Syntactical stilistic devices

Syntactical stilistic devices deal with the syntactical arrangement of the utterance which creates the emphasis of the latter irrespective of lexical meanings of the employed units.

The principal criteria for classifying syntactical stylistic devices are:

• the juxtaposition of the parts of the utterance;

• the type of connection of the parts;

• the peculiar use of colloquial constructions;

Devices built on the principle of juxtaposition:

Inversion (deals with the displacement of the predicate – complete inversion – or with the displacement of secondary members of the sentence – partial inversion): Out came the chaise – in went the horses – on sprung the boys – in got the travellers. (Dickens)

Detached constructions (through them secondary members of the sentence acquire independent stress and intonation which leads to their emphatic intensification): I have to beg you for money. Daily! (S. Lewis)

Parallel constructions (involve repetition of the whole structure of the sentence): If you have anything to say, say it, say it. (Dickens)

Chiasmus (also called reversed parallelism, when the second sentence repeats the structure of the first sentence, only in reversed manner): I looked at the gun, and the gun looked at me. (R.Chandler)

Repetition (depends on the position occupied by the repeated unit):

• ordinary repetition (offers no fixed place for the repeated unit – aa…, ..a…, a.a., .aaa.., …a., etc.): …the photographs of Lotta Lindbeck he tore into small bits across and across and across. (E.Ferber)

• anaphora (a word or phrase is repeated at the beginning of successive clause or poetic line): He sat, still and silent, until his future landlord accepted his proposals and brought writing materials to complete the business. He sat, still and silent, while the landlord wrote. (Dickens)

• epiphora (repetition of words or phrases at the end of consecutive clauses or sentences): He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn’t want to kill or be killed, so he ran from the battle. (St.Heym)

• framing (the word at the beginning is repeated at the end – a…a, b…b.): In those days men were men, and women were women.

• anadiplosis (repetition of the last word or phrase in one clause at the beginning of the next): You know – how brilliant he is, what he should be doing. And it hurts me. It hurts me every day of my life. (W.Deeping)

• chain repetition (…a, a…b, b…c, c…d): Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of B.Inn Alley. (D.du Maurier)

• morphological repetition (a morpheme is repeated to achieve humorous effect): Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi’s people brought him home in triumph. (H.Caine)

Suspense (through the separation of predicate from subject or from predicative, by the deliberate introduction between them of a phrase, clause or sentence): All this Mrs.Snagsby, as an injured woman and the friend of Mrs.Chadband, and the follower of Mr.Chadband, and the mourner of the late Mr.Tulkinghorn, is here to certify. (Dickens)