English Stylistics for Translators. Стилистика английского языка для переводчиков. Учебное пособие

PART V

SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC

DEVICES

Stylistics takes as the object of its analysis the expressive means and stylistic devices of the language which are based on some significant structural point in an utterance, whether it consists of one sentence or a string of sentences. At the same time, the peculiarities of the structural design with particular emotional colouring may be patterned and presented as a special system which we usually call “stylistic patterns”. Stylistic syntactical patterns may be viewed as variants of the general syntactical models of the language.

A. THE STRUCTURAL CHARACTERISTICS OF THE TEXT

The Syntactical Whole

The syntactical whole may be defined as a combination of sentences presenting a structural and semantic unity backed up by rhythmic and melodic unity.

Syntactical units are connected to achieve the desired effect and it is often by the manner they are connected that the desired effect is secured. A syntactical whole may occupy the whole of the paragraph and coincide with the paragraph.

A paragraph is a graphical term used to name a group of sentences marked off by indentation at the beginning and a break in the line at the end. In fact the paragraph as a category is half linguistic, half logical. As a logical category it is characterized by coherence and relative unity of the ideas expressed, as a linguistic category it is a unit of utterance marked off by purely linguistic

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means. Paragraph structure in the belles-lettres and publicist styles, in the styles of official documents is different.

The Paragraph

The paragraph as a compositional device is aimed either at facilitating the process of apprehending what is written, or indicating a certain reaction on the part of the reader. This reaction is generally achieved by intentionally grouping the ideas so as to show their interdependence or interrelation. That is why the paragraph, from a mere compositional device turns into a stylistic one.

The paragraph in some styles, such as scientific, publicist and others generally has a topic sentence, i.e. a sentence which embodies the main idea of the paragraph or which may be interpreted as a keysentence disclosing the chief thought of the writer.

Structural syntactical stylistic devices are reviewed as elaborate designs aimed at having a definite impact on the reader. Any stylistic device is meant to be understood as a device and has a desired stylistic effect.

B. COMPOSITIONAL PATTERNS OF SYNTACTICAL

ARRANGEMENT

Stylistic Inversion

Word order is a main syntactical problem in many languages. The English language has developed a fixed word order which in the great majority of cases shows the subject of the sentence. The fixed word order is “Subject – Predicate – Object ” or (S-P-O).

But in Dickens’ much quoted sentence: “Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not.” The fixed word order is changed. The inverted order in this sentence is backed up by two other stylistic devices: antithesis and parallel construction.

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Stylistic inversion aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance. Stylistic inversion should not be regarded as a violation of the norms of the Standard English. It is only the practical realization of what is potential in the language itself.

The examples of inversion are:

‘With fingers weary and worn ...” (Th. Hood), “Once upon a midnight dreary...” (E. Poe), “A good generous prayer it was.” (M. Twain), “Rude am I in my speech...” (W. Shakespeare), Eagerly I wished the morrow.” (E. Poe),

“My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall.” (Dryden), “In went Mr. Pickwick.” (Ch. Dickens),

“Down dropped the breeze...” (S. Coleridge).

These models comprise the most common and recognized models of inversion. Inverted word order, or inversion, is one of the forms of what are known as emphatic constructions.

Detached Constructions

Sometimes the writer places one of the secondary parts of the sentence so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to. Such parts of structures are called detached. The detached part, being torn away from its referent, assumes a greater degree of significance and is given prominence by intonation.

For example, “Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and rather unsteady in his gait.” (W. Thackeray).

The essential quality of detached construction lies in the fact that the isolated part represents a kind of independent whole but it cannot rise to the rank of a primary member of the sentence. Detached construction makes the written variety of the language akin to the spoken variety and becomes a peculiar device bridging the norms of written and spoken language. This stylistic device is akin to

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inversion. But detached construction produces a much stronger effect, as in the sentence: “I want to go,’ he said, miserable.” (J. Galsworthy).

In the English language detached constructions are generally used in the belles-lettres prose style. A variant of detached construction is parenthesis which is “a qualifying, explanatory or

appositive word, phrase, clause, sentence, or other sequence which interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it,

having often a characteristic intonation and indicated in writing by commas, brackets or dashes”, explains Random House Dictionary of the English Language.

Parallel Construction

Parallel construction is a device when identical or similar syntactical structure is used in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence as in:

“ There were, ..., real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and

real china cups to drink it out of, and plates of the same to hold the cakes and toast in.” (Ch. Dickens)

Parallel constructions are often backed up by repetition of words (lexical repetition) and conjunctions and prepositions (polysyndeton). Parallel construction is most frequently used in enumeration, antithesis and in climax, thus consolidating the general effect achieved by these stylistic devices.

In the belle-lettres styles parallel construction carries an emotive function, in scientific prose it is used for logical principle of arranging ideas. Parallel construction is mainly used as a technical means in building up other stylistic devices, in particular antithesis and climax.

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Chiasmus (Reversed Parallel Construction)

Chiasmus belongs to the group of stylistic devices based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but it has a cross order of words and phrases. The structure of two successive sentences or parts of a sentence may be described as reversed parallel construction, the word order of one of the sentences being inverted as compared to that of the other as in:

“Down dropped the breeze,

The sails dropped down.” (Coleridge)

Chiasmus is a syntactical, not a lexical device, i.e. it is only the arrangement of the parts of the utterance which constitutes this stylistic device.

In the famous epigram by Byron: “In the days of old men made the manners; Manners now make men,” there is no inversion, but there is a lexical device. Both parts of the parallel construction have the same, the normal word order.

However, the witty arrangement of the words has given the utterance an epigrammatic character. This device may be classed as lexical chiasmus. Chiasmus will always bring in some new shade of meaning.

Repetition

Repetition is an expressive means of language used when the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion. It shows the state of mind of the speaker, as in the following passage from J. Galsworthy:

“Stop!” – she cried, “Don’t tell me! I don’t want to hear; I don’t want to hear what you’ve come for. I don’t want to hear.” Here the repetition is not a stylistic device.

When used as a stylistic device, repetition acquires quite different functions. It does not aim at making a direct emotional impact, it aims at logical emphasis, necessary to fix the attention of the reader on the key-word of the utterance.

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For example: “For that was it! Ignorant of the long and stealthy march of passion, and of the state to which it had reduced Fleur; ignorant of how Soames had watched her, ignorant of Fleur’s reckless desperation... – ignorant of all this, everybody felt aggrieved.” (J. Galsworthy)

Repetition is classified according to compositional design. If the repeated word (or phrase) comes at the beginning of two or more sentences, clauses or phrases, we have anaphora. If the repeated unit is placed at the end of the sentence, clauses or phrases we have the type of repetition called epiphora. There are compositional

designs called framing, linking or reduplication, chain repetition.

In the “The song of the Shirt” by Th. Hood different forms of repetition are employed.

“Work – work – work!

Till the brain begins to swim! Work – work – work

Till the eyes are heavy and dim! Seam, and gusset, and band,

Band, and gusset and seam Till over the buttons I fall asleep, And sew them on in a dream.”

Of course the main idea, that of long and exhausting work, is expressed by lexical means, but the repetition strongly enforces this idea and brings in additional shades of meaning.

Another variety of repetition may be called synonym repetition. ” The poetry of earth is never dead...The poetry of earth is ceasing never...”, writes Keats in the sonnet “The Grasshopper and

the Cricket.”

Enumeration

Enumeration is a stylistic device by means of which homogeneous parts of an utterance are made heterogeneous from the semantic point of view. Here is the following case of enumeration:

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“Famine, despair, cold, thirst and heat had done

Their work on them by turns, and thinn’d them too...” (G. Byron)

There is hardly anything in this enumeration that could be regarded as making some extra impact on the reader. Each word is closely associated semantically with the following and preceding words in the enumeration, and the effect is what the reader associates with all kinds of disasters.

The enumeration is often used as a device to depict scenery through a tourists eyes as in Galsworthy’s “To Let”:

“ Fleur’s wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and

tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing

cocks, sombreros, cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages,

watersellers, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming grey-brown mountains of a fascinating land.” The enumeration here is worth analysing. The various elements

of this enumeration can be grouped in different semantic clusters, as:

*donkeys, mules, crowing cocks, goats, singing birds;

*priests, beggars, children, watersellers;

*villages, patios, cactus hedges, churches, tumbling bells, sombreros, pictures;

*sunsets, swimming grey-brown mountains, greening plains, olive-trees, melons.

Galsworthy found it necessary to arrange them not according to logical semantic centres, but in some other order which would suggest the rapidly changing impressions of a tourist. Enumeration here has a stylistic function and may be regarded as a stylistic device.

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Suspense

Suspense is a compositional device which consists in arranging the matter of a communication in such a way that the less important, descriptive, subordinate parts are amassed at the beginning, the main idea being withheld till the end of the sentence. For example:

“Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw.” (Ch. Lamb)

Sentences of this type are called periodic sentences or periods. Their function is to create suspense. Suspense always requires long stretches of speech or writing.

Sometimes the whole of a poem is built on this stylistic device, as is the case with R. Kipling’s poem “If” where all the eight stanzas of if-clauses and only the last two lines constitute the principal clause.

And which is more , you’ll be a Man, my son.”

This device is effective in more than one way, but the main purpose is to prepare the reader for the only logical conclusion of the utterance. It is a psychological effect that is aimed at in particular.

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Antithesis

To characterize a thing or phenomenon from a specific point of view, it may be necessary to find points of sharp contrast, that is, to set one against the other, for example:

“A saint abroad, and devil at home.” (Bunyan) “Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” (Milton)

But a line of demarcation must be drawn between logical opposition and stylistic opposition. Stylistic opposition under the term antithesis is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs, as in:

Youth is lovely, age is lonely,

Youth is fiery, age is frosty; (W. Longfellow)

Here the objectively contrasted pair is ‘youth’ and ‘age’ . ‘lovely’ and ‘lonely’ cannot be regarded as objectively opposite concepts, but being drawn into the scheme contrasting ‘youth’ and ‘age’, they display certain features which may be counted as antonymical. This is strengthened also by the text line where not only ‘youth’ and ‘age’ but also ‘fiery’ and ‘frosty’ are objective antonyms.

Another example is the first paragraph of Ch. Dickens’s “A Tale of Two Cities” which is practically built on opposing pairs.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way.” (Ch. Dickens) The structural pattern of the utterance, the pairs of objective

antonyms makes the whole paragraph stylistically significant, and the general device which makes it so is antithesis.

An interesting example of antithesis where the comparative function is predominant is the madrigal, a lyric of amourous

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character and adopted to musical setting. This piece of poetry is ascribed to William Shakespeare:

A MADRIGAL

“Crabbed age and youth Cannot live together:

Youth is full of pleasance, Age is full of care; Youth like summer morn, Age like winter weather, Youth like summer brave, Age like winter bare: Youth is full of sport, Age’s breath is short, Youth is nimble, Age is lame: Youth is hot and bold,

Age is weak and cold, Youth is wild, and Age is tame: -

Age, I do adhore thee, Youth, I do adore thee;

O my Love, my Love is young! Age, I do defy thee –

O sweet shepherd, hie thee, For methinks thou stay’st too long.

C. PARTICULAR WAYS OF COMBINING PARTS

OF THE UTTERANCE

The analysis of syntactical structures and their stylistic functions cannot be done without investigation of the linguistic features of the means and types of connection between parts of the sentence,

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