I. Theoretical issues. 1. Epithet. Classification of epithets.

Epithet is a stylistic device based on the interplay of emotive and logical meaning in an attributive word, phrase or even sentence used to characterize an object and which is pointing out to the reader, and frequently imposing on him, some of the properties or features of the object with the aim of giving an individual perception and evaluation of these features or properties. Therefore, epithet is markedly subjective and evaluative, whereas a logical attribute is purely objective and non-evaluating³. Though it is sometimes difficult to draw a clear line of demarcation between an epithet and a logical attribute.

The epithet makes a strong impact on the reader, so that he unwittingly starts seeing and evaluating things as the writer wants him to, as it is a direct and a straightforward way of showing the author's attitude towards the problem described in the text.

Epithet is a significantly often used linguistic means. The term belongs to a number of most ancient philological terms meant for a description of expressive means. Its ties with the noun are generally contextual.

Differentiation of an epithet and of an attribute can be come across in works by Zhirmunsky V.M. Therefore, Mr. Zhyrmunsky claims that the main difference between an epithet and a usual logical attribute, expressed by a simple adjective and the function of which is designed to single out the object among many others, is expressed in its multifunctionality. Thanks to its main function — to create an imagery of an object, epithet either highlights one of the object's main attributes or, being used metaphorically, applies other object's attibutes to it.⁴

Gramatically an epithet can be more commonly come across as an adjective, though a noun, an adjective, an adverb and even a verb can perform functions of an epithet. According to professor Timofeev L.I., any epithet can be regarded as a trope, because anywhere «we deal with application of figurative meaning which leads to a new semantic meaning, i.e. to an attribute of a trope. ⁵

According to O.N. Sorokina, an epithet is a figurative characteristic of a person, event or an object represented by means of expressive metaphorical adjective. There is no doubt that during the process of shaping a unified image as an informational model not only epithets are used, but discriptive adjectives play a significant role as well. Though descriptive attributes, which are expressed by adjectives which preserve in the text their direct meaning, cannot be regarded as tropes, nevertheless it does not mean that they cannot perform an aesthetic function, be a significant figure of speech. Epithet as a part of speech is mostly an adjective, but not a descriptive but a figurative one. In speech an epithet appears as a result of features' generalisation, it's always a metaphorical adjective which contains a striking feature of comparison⁶.

There is a number of different approaches considering the classification of epithets. First,stylistic approach will be presented, according to which all epithets may be divided into affectively evaluative and metaphorical⁷. According to another approach, expressed by I.I.Galperin, all epithets may be classified semantically and structurally.

1. Stylistic approach. Affectively evaluative epithets.

The stylistic approach, when all epithets are divided into affectively evaluative and metaphorical, distinguishes an epithet from a logical attribute, which contains neither emotionality, nor evaluation, nor imagery⁸.

The linguistic analysis of American newspaper articles concerning Libya has shown that affectively-evaluative epithets determine the characteristic features of the Libya's image that is being shaped, and they influence the evaluating activity of the recipient's perception. A synonymic line of epithets brutal, repressive, violent, merciless, atrocious, paranoid, terrifying reflects the same idea concerning the characteristic sketch of the Libyan government, all of them “participate” in shaping its established image.

«Within days, whole parts of the country declared their independence from a brutal regime.»(The Wall Street Journal, 18/03/11)

«Libyan Islamists work shoulder to shoulder with defectors from the regime, all of them united by hatred of Col. Gadhafi — and by fear of merciless reprisals should he succeed in reconquering eastern Libya.» (The Wall Street Journal, 21/03/11)

«In the wake of the resignation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, online activists are threatening to test one of the Arab world's most repressive regimes: Col. Moammar Gadhafi's Libya.» (The Wall Street Journal, 14/02/11)

«Multinational commission is to mediate the violent conflict between Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi and rebel groups.» (The Wall Street Journal, 05/03/11)

«Gadhafi in his bunker with control over missiles, chemical weapons and a rudimentary nuclear program is a terrifying thought.» (The Wall Street Journal, 25/02/11)

«The killings have unsettled an already paranoid city, where rebel authorities have spent weeks trying to round up people suspected of being Qaddafi loyalists.» (The New York Times, 11/05/11)

«The United States of America will not stand idly by in the face of actions that undermine global peace and security, therefore its our responsibility to curb the atrocious violence against Libyan civilians by their own government.» (The Wall Street Journal, 18/03/11)

The chosen lexical units refer to the same semantic field, and that influences the process of shaping stable features which as a whole create a stable mental imagery by means of a subconscious process of the world's evaluation.

It's worth mentioning that affectively evaluative epithets are quite often intensified by an extra expressive means – a superlative degree, e.g. fiercest, greatest, largest, most prominent:

“Two craters were visible along roads leading to the city's university, site of Wednesday's fiercest fighting.” (The Wall Street Journal, 04/03/11)

“Mr. Moreno-Ocampo, the ICC prosecutor, said last week that the three for whom he sought arrest warrants appeared to bear the greatest responsibility for alleged crimes against humanity, including "widespread and systematic attacks against the civilian population." (The Wall Street Journal, 04/03/11)

“The city of 300,000 is the largest rebel stronghold in western Libya, an area mostly controlled by Mr. Gadhafi.” (The Wall Street Journal, 04/05/11)

“The fate of Fathi Eljahmi, one of Libya's most prominent dissidents, was symbolic: Bush and Obama administration pressure was insufficient to free him from prison until just before his death in 2009.” (The Wall Street Journal, 25/02/11)

The frequency of using epithets expressed by adjectives in a superlative degree is highly connected with the realization of emotional evaluation. Affective variation of a word is traced according to the following reasons: according to the expressed emotions and according to the feature's intensity, therefore affectively evaluatively expressive variant of adjectives is singled out. It is well known that human's emotions, his emotional attitude are highly connected with evaluating activity⁹, being one of main elements of his cogitative activity's structure.

According to Pr. Solganik, there are several types of evaluation's classification: the first one is stereotyped (appropriate for a stereotyped conception of an object); the second one is a subjective addressant's (author’s?) evaluation (appropriate for stereotyped recipients' expectations); and finally an author's evaluation that is not clished and which is aimed to transform and modify existing stereotypes and to create new ones¹⁰.

The emotive connotation of the Lybya's formed image by means of using lexemes in a superlative degree is significantly strengthened by words which contain an enhanced evaluating component in its lexical meaning and which, therefore, colour the content of the image. The information which is contained in the meaning of lexical units exceedingly, completely, extremely, thoroughly obtains an expressive component and therefore intensifies emotional experience by means of forming the idea of instability and danger that are happening at the present time, and Gadhafi's responsibility for these mischiefs.

“As Col. Gadhafi's forces have tightened their siege of Misrata, they have cut off access to nearly all the farmland that feeds the city. Fresh fruit is nowhere to be found. Fresh vegetables are exceedingly rare.” (The Wall Street Journal, 20/04/11)

“Successful stability operations are long, troop-intensive, costly and extremely difficult to conduct.” (The Wall Street Journal, 12/03/11)

“In the Middle East, those protesting agree completely on removing existing regimes but thoroughly disagree about the future.”(The Wall Street Journal, 19/03/11)

The significance of epithets expressed by adjectives in a comparative degree is sufficiently high as they affect a contextual meaning and shape the necessary information model subconsciously. In case of frequent usage of adjectives in a comparative degree, an image, that is being created, is specified on the one hand, and on the other hand the process of comparison of two images, that are being formed by authors, take place on a subconscious level¹¹.

“Big oil companies and Wall Street banks have stopped trading crude with Libya in response to sanctions against the country, threatening a near-shutdown of exports from the North African country and driving oil prices even higher.” (The Wall Street Journal, 08/03/11)

“Even as the regime pledged to withdraw from Misrata it unleashed a blistering bombardment on the city with artillery and rockets, which appeared fiercer and more sustained than similar bombardments in recent days.” (The Wall Street Journal, 23/04/11)

“The foreign press is barred from the country and the Internet has been shut down, but reports filtering out point to a bloody revolt that will either topple the regime, or result in an even bloodier revenge purge.” (The Wall Street Journal, 23/02/11)

The variety of the used lexical forms stresses the unity of context by means of shaping the generalized character of Libyan government, the government that escalates tensions both with modern community and its own people and therefore is doomed to collapse or to be brought down.

Contrasts which are the leading psychological and linguistic means of mass-media are one of the most important principles of highlighting the most important information for the authors. The influence of such factors is obvious: on a subconscious level the contrasts focus the readers' attention on specific points of the message, stressing their opposition, contradictoriness and incompatibility at the same time¹². Therefore, the usage of these means enables authors to create images of opposing sides on lexical level by using epithets expressed by adjectives in a comparative degree. Complex usage of contrasts enables to represent “polar” images: the US as a stronghold of democracy and a demonic Libyan government.

The conception of a depicted object (Libya) possesses a range of negative attributes which help to introduce negative affixes: un-, in, -less:

«Libyan Islamists work shoulder to shoulder with defectors from the regime, all of them united by hatred of Col. Gadhafi — and by fear of merciless reprisals should he succeed in reconquering eastern Libya.» (The Wall Street Journal, 21/03/11)

“Throughout the region, many young people have a solid education, but closed economies leave them unable to find a job.  Entrepreneurs are brimming with ideas, but corruption leaves them unable to profit from those ideas.” (The Wall Street Journal, 19/05/11)

“The comments by Mr. Rasmussen were welcome by rebel officials in eastern Libya, who appeared intent on improving relations with NATO after harshly criticizing the alliance for inadequate support to drive back forces loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi, and later for causing rebel deaths.” (The Wall Street Journal, 09/04/11)

"If true, then we welcome that move and believe it is absolutely the right thing to happen" since "we consider it completely inappropriate for a country conducting such violent repression against peaceful protestors to be seeking membership of the Human Rights Council." (The Wall Street Journal, 10/05/11)

Pr. (Proff.) Arnold consider this device to be a contracted monomial antithesis, that shows that a connection between the elements is possible though it doesn't exist¹³.

The content and the meaning of such epithets, expressed by adjectives that are formed by adding negative affixes, contribute quite clearly and convincingly to the subconscious process of shaping the image of Libya in the collective consciousness of the readership. The negative affixes have a logically syntactical function, they show that the feature or the fact, used in the base morpheme, does not exist in the described reality¹⁴.

To sum it up, epithets highlight one of the object's features, on the one hand, and, on the other, they “rearrange these features, stressing in conscience a necessary characteristic feature, that (better “which”) could have been dropped out.”¹⁵ Authors of newspaper articles about Libya use these kinds of psycholinguistic means on purpose in order to create an information model of Libya according to the general ideological course of the newspaper, established by the higher echelon.

1.2. Semantic classification of epithets.

Associated and unassociated epithets

Epithets may be divided into associated (with the noun following) and unassociated.

Associated epithets point to a feature which is essential to the objects they describe. Therefore, the idea expressed in the epithet is to a certain extent inherent in the concept of the object. The associated epithet immediately refers the mind to the concept in question due to some actual quality of the object it is attached to¹⁶.

«The United States of America will not stand idly by in the face of actions that undermine global peace and security, therefore its our responsibility to curb the atrocious violence against Libyan civilians by their own government.» (The Wall Street Journal, 18/03/11)

Unassociated epithets are epithets used to characterize the object by adding a feature not inherent in it. They impose a property on them which is fitting only in the given circumstances.

«In the wake of the resignation of Egypt's Hosni Mubarak, online activists are threatening to test one of the Arab world's most repressive regimes: Col. Moammar Gadhafi's Libya.» (The Wall Street Journal, 14/02/11)

In any combination of words it is important to observe to what degree the components of the combination are linked. Therefore we can distinguish 3 types of such combinations:

• set expression is a type of combination when component parts become inseparable;

“The city of 300,000 is the largest rebel stronghold in western Libya, an area mostly controlled by Mr. Gadhafi.” (The Wall Street Journal, 04/05/11)

• stable word-combination is a type of combination when the link between the component parts is comparatively close, i.e. when definite epithets are used with definite nouns;

«Multinational commission is to mediate the violent conflict between Libyan leader Col. Moammar Gadhafi and rebel groups.» (The Wall Street Journal, 05/03/11)

• free combination of words is a type of combination when we can substitute any word of the same grammatical category.

“The comments by Mr. Rasmussen were welcome by rebel officials in eastern Libya, who appeared intent on improving relations with NATO after harshly criticizing the alliance for inadequate support to drive back forces loyal to Col. Moammar Gadhafi, and later for causing rebel deaths.” (The Wall Street Journal, 09/04/11)

3. Structural classification of epithets: composition and distribution.

From the point of view of the compositional structure epithets can be divided into simple, compound, phrase and sentence epithets¹⁷:

• Simple epithets are ordinary adjectives.

«Gadhafi in his bunker with control over missiles, chemical weapons and a rudimentary nuclear program is a terrifying thought.» (The Wall Street Journal, 25/02/11)

• Compound epithets are built like compound adjectives.

• The tendency to cram into one language unit as much information as possible has led to new compositional models – phrase epithets, which:

- are always placed before the nouns they refer to;

- are generally followed by the words “expression”, “air”, “attitude” and others which describe behaviour or facial expression;

- are often followed by a subordinate attributive clause beginning with “that”;

- are always hyphenated, therefore are pointing to the temporary structure of the compound word;

- lose their independence and assume a new quality which is revealed both in the intonation pattern and graphically.

• all previously mentioned features of phrase epithets can be used in order to describe sentence epithets.

Another structural variety of the epithet is a reserved epithet, which is composed of two nouns linked in an of-phrase, and the evaluating element is embodied not in the attribute but in the structurally described noun. Such epithets are metaphorical.

From the point of view of distribution of the epithets in the sentence, following models are to be singled out¹⁸:

• string of epithets – type of enumeration with ascending order of emotive elements, where last epithet is always a culminating point, provides a many-sided depiction of the object;

“The truth is that it’s a dangerous, violent, hope-filled and potentially hugely positive or explosive mess — fraught with moral and political ambiguities.” (The New York Times, 29/03/2011)

• transferred epithet – logical attribute which is describing the state of a human being but made to transfer to an inanimate object. Meaning of the logical attribute acquires a definite emotional colouring.

“As former U.S. secretaries of defence James Baker and Henry Kissinger wrote recently by way of wagging disapproving fingers: "If we articulate a goal of regime change in conjunction with military intervention, we will be expected to employ the means required to effect it. Failure to achieve proclaimed objectives turns into a strategic setback.” (CBC News, 20/04/2011)

Therefore, it can be traced that no matter what kind of epithets authors use, they pursue the same object – attempt to impose implicitly their attitude to the problem on the readership, so that the readers consider this point of view as their own.