3. Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices (3)

Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices are based on the interaction of different types of word meanings: dictionary, contextual, derivative, nominal, and emotive. These devices enrich speech, add imagery, irony, and emotional depth, and are often used in fiction, poetry, and rhetoric.

Main Body: Metaphor is a hidden comparison based on similarity: “Dear Nature is the kindest Mother still.” (Byron)

Metonymy replaces one thing with another closely related to it: “The camp, the pulpit and the law…” (Shelley)

Irony says the opposite of what is meant: “It must be delightful to find oneself in a foreign country without a penny.”

Polysemy is the use of a word in several related senses: “Massachusetts was hostile to the American flag…”

Zeugma uses one word in two different senses: “She plunged into intimacy and into the room.” (Shaw)

Pun is a play on words with double meaning, often humorous: “One trains the mind, the other minds the train.”

Interjections and exclamatory words convey strong emotions: “Ah,” “Oh,” “Bah!” (Byron)

Epithet gives a subjective emotional coloring to a noun: “…searching with a frown for the fugitive armhole.” (Nabokov)

Oxymoron combines contradictory terms: “Proud humility”, “populous solitude.” (Byron)

Antonomasia replaces a proper name with a descriptive phrase or vice versa: “Mr. Facing-Both-Ways does not get very far.”

Lexical devices work through the interplay of meaning—literal, contextual, emotional, and figurative. They make speech more expressive, memorable, and impactful by appealing to the intellect, imagination, and emotions of the reader or listener.

4. Publicistic and newspaper style

The publicistic and newspaper styles serve the main functions of informing the public and shaping opinion. They are central to journalism, media, and political discourse, combining elements of factual reporting, evaluation, and emotional influence. These styles stand at the intersection of other functional styles like scientific, official, and conversational speech.

Main Body: The publicistic style includes genres such as articles, essays, sketches, travelogues, propaganda texts (slogans, leaflets), and oratory (speeches, debates). It is expressive, evaluative, and often emotionally charged. Features include stylistic novelty, documentary precision, the use of argumentation, and social orientation. It uses both formal and informal elements, drawing vocabulary from bookish, colloquial, and even scientific styles. Figurative language (metaphors, paraphrases), neologisms, and clichés are also common.

The newspaper style, a substyle of publicist style, is genre-diverse: editorials, brief news reports, reports, interviews, essays, advertisements. Its graphic features include columns, headlines, italics, and symbols for layout clarity.

Linguistically, both styles use a neutral and bookish vocabulary, proper names, statistics, and emotive language. Grammar tends to favor declarative sentences, collective singular nouns, expressive adjectives, and syntactic devices like inversion, parallelism, and parcellation. Compositionally, newspaper texts follow the “inverted pyramid” principle or a three-part structure, foregrounding the most important information.

In sum, publicistic and newspaper styles blend information, evaluation, and expression. They rely on a mix of linguistic, stylistic, and structural tools to influence readers, convey facts, and maintain public engagement across diverse genres and media formats.