стилистика / EMs and SDs

EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES

In Linguistics there are different terms to denote the particular means by which writers obtain the desired effect of the utterance. EMs and SDs and other terms are sometimes used by authors indiscriminately, (без различения, без разбору) For our purposes it is necessary to make a distinction between EMs and SDs.

The EMs of the language are those phonetic, graphical, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms that function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance. These peculiarities have been fixed in Grammars and dictionaries; in most cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous forms.

1) Among the most powerful means of any language are phonetic means;

pitch, melody, stress, etc. They intensify the

utterance emotionally or logically. Such phonetic EMs as alliteration and sound imitation deal with sound instrumenting of the utterance and are mostly found in poetry.

2) Among the morphological EM the use of the Present Indefinite (the so- called historic present) instead of the Past Indefinite in a past narration should be mentioned.

e.g. It was very quiet. Everybody was engaged in work. The teacher was

writing something on the blackboard. Then the door opens and in runs a small

boy...

This EM helps the author to achieve a more vivid description of what is going

on.

Another morphological EM is the use of 'shall' in the 2^a and 3d person in the meaning of threat, or urgent necessity. e.g. You shall get for it.

3) Graphical EM serve to convey in the written form various emotions which in oral communication are expressed by intonation and stress. Here belong: deliberate change of spelling, punctuation (dashes, exclamatory marks, dots, etc.) multiplication, hyphenation, changed type (italics, bold type).

La- a- arge They indicate an additional stress on the emphasized word or part of it.

4) Among word-building means we find a great many forms which add to the freshness and expressiveness of the utterance. They are usually formed by means of composition, conversion and blending.

e.g. hypermarket- гигантский универсальный магазин,

puppeteer – кукольник

moneymoon- (blending: медовый месяц+ много денег)

kitchenette - маленькая кухонька

doctee – пациент

teachee - обучаемый

examinee – экзаменуемый

5) At the lexical level there are a great many words which constitute a special layer due to their inner expressiveness. They are words with emotive meaning, interjections, words which keep both the denotational and the connotational meaning, words belonging to special groups of literary English and non-standard English (poetic words, Archaic words, slang, vulgar words, jargon, etc.) The expressive power of these words is undoubtful, especially if we compare them lo the neutral vocabulary.

e.g. poetic neutral colloquial

maiden girl flapper

infant child kid

The same can be said of set-expressions of the language. Phraseological units, esp. unities and fusions, proverbs, sayings, catch-words serve to make speech more emphatic.

6) at the syntactical level there are certain constructions which reveal a definite degree of logical and emotional emphasis.

e.g. It was the Russian team that won. Fool that I was. Isn't she a beauty! She is a nice singer, is Tina Turner. EMs of the language are widely used for stylistic purposes.

SDs are a special type of EMs. Unlike EMs proper they are more abstract in nature, they are patterns according to which the potentialities of the language can be materialized. AnSd is a deliberately typified language use, a conscious transformation of a language fact into a special stylistic means.

SDs exist as a system of literary devices within the literary form of a language. This system is based on the peculiarities of both written and oral varieties of the language. The same devices can be found in different languages but the system remains typical of a national grammar in its fundamental features. The system of SDs of a Grammar differs from that of another language not merely in the existence of certain media but in the role they play and the place they occupy in the system.

The main constituting feature of a Stylistic device is the binary opposition of 2 meanings of a language unit one of which is the norm of the language and does not depend on the context while the other one originates only within a certain context and therefore is contextual. SDs can be classified as follows:

1) Lexical SDs based on the binary opposition of lexical meanings regardless of the syntactical organization of the utterance.

e.g. He looked at the flower of his life.(metaphor) Soames

2. Syntactical SDs based on the binary opposition of syntactical meanings regardless of their semantics.

3. Lexico-syntactical SDs based on the binary opposition of lexical meanings accompanied by a fixed syntactical organization of lexical units.

e.g. simile - as busy as a bee

4) graphical & phonetic SDs based on the opposition of meanings of phonological and/or graphical elements of the language.