Lecture #5

SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS

AND STYLISTIC DEVICES

Syntax is the main conductor of emotions in a written piece of language. It substitutes gestures, intonation and meanings. Any change of form of a sentence causes a slight modification of its meaning. Syntactical devices are based on:

1)rearrangement of a syntactical structure;

2)peculiar use of lexical meanings of syntactical structures.

1.INVERSION

English is characterized by a fixed word order:

English word order

Subject — Predicate — Object

This doesn’t mean that changes of word order are impossible, but that any relocation of sentence parts in English has a more significant stylistic value than in Russian.

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The purpose of an unusual arrangement of words is making some of them more important, emphasizing the expressed idea.

This rearranging is called inversion.

Inversion

A few steps away were the sun-scratched deserts. Into this society came she when she was 18.

On went her old brown jacket, on went her old brown hat.

Inversion can be often found in the works of older classical poets, however, modern poets also use inversion for the sake of emphasis.

Inversion in poetry

CHARTLESS

I never saw a moor,

I never saw the sea;

Yet now I know how the heather looks,

And what a wave must be.

2. DETACHMENT

Detachment is a stylistic device based on singling out a secondary member of the sentence with the help of punctuation. A specific arrangement of sentence members is observed in a detachment. The wordorder is not violated, but secondary members obtain their own stress and intonation because they are detached from the rest of the sentence by commas, dashes or even a full stop as in the following cases:

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Detachment

Very small and child-like, he never looked more than fourteen. Elegant, weary, infinitely fragile, Mrs. Glamber lay back in her armchair listening.

Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and rather unsteady in his gait.

He had been nearly killed, ingloriously, in a jeep accident.

3. PARENTHESIS

Parenthesis is a variety of detachment. These are explanatory or qualifying words, clauses, or sentences inserted into a passage with which it doesn't necessarily have any grammatical connection, and from which it is usually marked off by round or square brackets, dashes, or commas.

Some phrases are very often used in the parenthesis, like I guess, I suppose, maybe, perhaps, probably, and etc.

Parenthesis

John will come tomorrow, I’m sure.

They didn’t see – none could see – her distress, not even her grandfather.

4. ELLIPSIS

Ellipsis is an omission of one or more words in the sentence which the hearer or reader can recover or guess from the context. It is typical of spoken colloquial English.

Ellipsis

–Were they interesting books?

–Don’t know. Haven’t read them. Looked pretty hopeless. Early evening. April.

Perhaps, perhaps not.

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5. BREAK-IN-THE-NARRATIVE (APOSIOPESIS)

Break-in-the-narrative, or aposiopesis, is a sudden break in speech as if the speaker was unwilling or unable to express what is on his mind. This stop-short often occurs in oral speech. In printing it refers to a mark or series of marks that usually indicate an intentional omission of a word or a phrase from the original text. It can also be used to indicate a pause in speech, an unfinished thought or, at the end of a sentence, a trailing off into silence.

Break-in-the-narrative

I apologize, madam, I feel so …

I wouldn’t have troubled to…

6. PARALLELISM

Parallelism means to give two or more parts of the sentences a similar form in order to give the whole a definite pattern. It is structural similarity of successive phrases, clauses and sentences. It is observed in paragraphs.

Parallelism

"The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of blessing; the inherent virtue of socialism is the equal sharing of miseries."

(Churchill)

Parallelism can be of 2 types: complete and partial. We speak of complete parallelism when successive sentences fully coincide in their structure. In case of partial parallelism successive sentences are similar only to some extent.

Complete parallelism:

The warm sun is failing, the bleak wind is wailing. The bare bows are sighing, the pale flowers are dying.

Partial parallelism:

The wind blew faster, it dragged now at his coat, it blew its space about him, it echoed silently a lonely spaciousness.

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