Imagery

Structure

Any image can be analyzed from the point of view of its structure.

This structure was worked out by Ivor Richards.

1. The tenor - the thing we are talking about, what is compared.

2. The vehicle - the thing to which the tenor is compared.

3. The ground - the common feature b/n the tenor and the vehicle.

The tenor of the metaphor may be present or implied, with simile it is practically always present (see the example above - "ruby", "sapphire", "books"). The effect of the image depends on the kind of vehicles the author chooses. In different times different poets and writers had preferences for different vehicles.

E.g. Shakespeare - nature, Byron - volcano, Shelly - water, Bronte - fire. There are extended or sustained images. They are expressed not in one word, they are developed, prolonged in various ways. The writer may ad new details to the vehicle discovering analogies with the tenor in more than 1 point. E.g. Clambering onward, we have slowly made our way out of a maze of isolated peaks into the level plains of science.

The semantics of the image

1. Images show likeness in dissimilar objects. There must be something striking and unexpected in every genuine image, it must produce a surprise effect due to the discovery of some common elements in 2 seemingly disparate phenomena. This effect is called disparity action (эффект несоответствия).

2. Another distinctive feature of the genuine image is multiple meaning. We are simultaneously conscious of double image, as if 2 transparent planes are matched and one is seen through the other. There should be a certain semantic distance b/n the tenor and the vehicle, because if they are too close, the prospective of double image may be ruined.

3. Ambiguity. An image must be capable of rendering more than one interpretation.

The functions of images

1. To extend the language, to say what cannot be expressed in terms of literal meaning, to express the inexpressible. Very often abstract notions are compared to or identified with material objects.

1. To make the description more vivid and definite.

2. To reveal certain feelings and emotional attitude to what's being described.

When images are absorbed into the language, we no longer respond to them as images. We refer to them as "dead" E.g. The use of the language is an instrument for analysis. Dead metaphors form a large group of the familiar phrases we depend on in speaking and writing, we can find them in the dictionaries and we do not see any transference of meaning in them. There is a famous metaphor: "A language is a cemetery of metaphors".

Before an image becomes completely dead it may be trite or hackneyed. These are images we have heard or seen in print so often that they have lost their flavor and originality, but we still realize the transference of meaning and they may have expressive connotation.

E.g. redhot temper, swollen ego, killing glance, shadow of a doubt, a crying shame, green with envy, in his heart of hearts, the depths of her soul.

Trite images are frequently used in publicist style. In literature they considerably weaken writing. Clichés bore the readers and give the impression that the writer is lazy or unimaginative, in speeches clichés may suggest thoughtlessness or insincerity. Clever writers or speakers often use clichés in an original way - revive them.

Genuine image (fresh, striking, unusual) trite cliché

TROPES BASED ON CONSTANT CONNECTIONS

Metonymy is a trope in which the name of some object or idea is substituted for another to which it has some permanent objectively existing relations.

Possible relations:

• A concrete thing for an abstract notion

• The container for the thing contained

• Relations of proximity

• The material for the thing made of it

• The instrument for the action or the doer of the action

• Etc.

There is lexical metonymy (china, Champaign, hands) and stylistic (genuine) metonymy.

Synecdoche is a trope in which the part represents the whole or the other way round.

Due to metonymy and synecdoche the utterance becomes energetic, vivid; a high degree of generalization is achieved.

Metonymy doesn’t presuppose comparison (like metaphor). It always logical, intellectual, while metaphor is mostly emotional.

Epithet is a word or a phrase used to describe a person or a thing rendering the author’s individual perception of them, his/her subjective, emotionally colored attitude. An adjective may be used in its direct meaning and be an epithet. They shouldn’t be mixed with logical attributes: wooden table – wooden face; iron knife – iron will. Epithets are markedly suggestive, imaginative, evaluative.

Classification of epithets can be based on 1)semantic or 2)structural principle.

1) Metaphorical – presuppose comparison,

metonymical – rare but very expressive (the umbrella man – the ex-umbrella man),

transferred – the property indicated in an object is transferred to it from some other object associated with it (sleepless pillow, trembling visit).

2) Word epithets,

sentence epithets (Fool! Pigs!),

phrase epithets (He was look-before-you-leap sort of a man),

reversed epithets (a monster of a dog, a toy of a car, pepper of a man, a peach of a girl).

String epithet.