The Engine Does That

Little Johnny proudly brought a sheet of paper to his father to show him a drawing on it.

"What's it supposed to be?" asked the puzzled father, Johnny looked hurt. "Why, you can see all right. It's a train," he said.

Father smiled.

"But you haven't drawn the carriages,"

"Of course not," said the boy. "The engine does that."

We Know Them Too

Smart was looking rather puzzled. "Tell me, old fellow," he said to a friend, "have you ever heard of such a thing as cold embers?"

The friend shook his head vigorously.

"Never," he replied. "There can't be such a thing."

Smart smiled slyly.

"Oh, yes, there is," he answered. "Nov-ember and Dec-ember. They are cold enough, aren't they?"

Zeugma

Zeugma is a rhetorical term for the use of a word to modify or govern two or more words although its use may be grammatically or logically correct with only one. In zeugma the single word does not fit grammatically or idiomatically with one member of the pair.

e.g.: "He carried a strobe light and the responsibility for the lives of his men."

"But Ted Lavender, who was scared, carried 34 rounds when he was shot and killed outside Than Khe, and he went down under an exceptional burden, more than 20 pounds of ammunition, plus the flak jacket and helmet and rations and water and toilet paper and tranquilizers and all the rest, plus an unweighed fear."

"She arrived in a taxi and a flaming rage."

"He was alternately cudgelling his brains and his donkey when, passing the workhouse, his eyes encountered the bill on the gate."

"Who sees with equal eye, as God of all,

A hero perish, or a sparrow fall,

Atoms or systems into ruin hurled,

And now a bubble burst, and now a world."

"You held your breath and the door for me."

Epithet

Epithet is a rhetorical term for an adjective (or adjective phrase) used to characterize a person or thing. Our speech ontologically being always emotionally coloured, it is possible to say that in epithet it is the emotive meaning of the word that is foregrounded to suppress the denotational meaning of the latter.

A Homeric epithet (also known as fixed or epic) is a formulaic phrase (often a compound adjective) used habitually to characterize a person or thing (for example, "blood-red sky" and "wine-dark sea").

Trasferred epithet is a figure of speech in which an epithet (or adjective) grammatically qualifies a noun other than the person or thing it is actually describing. Also known as hypallage. A transferred epithet often involves shifting a modifier from the animate to the inanimate, as in the phrases "cheerful money," "sleepless night," and "suicidal sky."

Through long and repeated use epithets become fixed. Many fixed epithets are closely connected with folklore and can be traced back to folk ballads (e.g.: "true love", "merry Christmas", etc.).The structure and semantics of epithets are extremely variable which is explained by their long and wide use. Semantically, there should be differentiated two main groups, the biggest of them being affective (or emotive proper). These epithets serve to convey the emotional evaluation of the object by the speaker. Most of the qualifying words found in the dictionary can be and are used as affective epithets (e.g.: "gorgeous", "nasty", "magnificent", "atrocious", etc.). The second group -figurative epithets is formed of metaphors, metonymies and similes expressed by adjectives. E.g. "the smiling sun", "the frowning cloud", "the sleepless pillow", "the tobacco-stained smile", "a ghost-like face", "a dreamlike experience.

Epithets are used singly, in pairs, in chains, in two-step structures, and in inverted constructions, also as phrase-attributes. Pairs are represented by two epithets joined by a conjunction or asyndetically as in "wonderful and incomparable beauty" or "a tired old town". Two-step epithets are so called because the process of qualifying seemingly passes two stages: the qualification of the object and the qualification of the qualification itself, as in "an unnaturally mild day", or "a pompously majestic female".

Phrase-epithets always produce an original impression. e.g.: "the sunshine-in-the-breakfast-room smell. Their originality proceeds from rare repetitions of the once coined phrase-epithet which, in its turn, is explained by the fact that into a phrase-epithet is turned a semantically self-sufficient word combination or even a whole sentence, which loses some of its independence and self-sufficiency, becoming a member of another sentence, and strives to return to normality.

Inverted epithets are based on the contradiction between the logical and the syntactical: logically defining becomes syntactically defined and vice versa. E.g. instead of "this devilish woman", where "devilish" is both logically and syntactically defining, and "woman", also both logically and syntactically defined, W. Thackeray says "this devil of a woman". Here "of a woman" is syntactically an attribute, i.e. the defining, and "devil"-the defined, while the logical relations between the two remain the same as in the previous example-"a woman" is defined by "the devil". (e.g. a jewel of a man, a hell of a place, a giant of a man, a duck of a boy).

Oxymoron

Oxymoron is a figure of speech by which a locution produces an incongruous, seemingly self-contradictory effect, as in "cruel kindness" or "to make haste slowly."

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is the use of exaggeration as a rhetorical device or figure of speech. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally. Hyperboles are exaggerations to create emphasis or effect. As a literary device, hyperbole is often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. An example of hyperbole is: "The bag weighed a ton." Hyperbole helps to make the point that the bag was very heavy, although it is not probable that it would actually weigh a ton.

Meiosis

Opposites of hyperbole are meiosis / litotes/ understatement.

Meiosis is a euphemistic figure of speech that intentionally understates something or implies that it is lesser in significance or size than it really is.

Euphemism

Euphemism is 1. the substitution of a mild, indirect, or vague expression for one thought to be offensive, harsh, or blunt. 2. the expression so substituted: "To pass away" is a euphemism for "to die."

Categorization

Abstractions and ambiguities (it for excrement, the situation for pregnancy, going to the other side for death, do it or come together in reference to a sexual act, tired and emotional for drunkenness.)

Indirections (behind, unmentionables, privates, live together, go to the bathroom, sleep together)

Mispronunciation (goldarnit, dadgummit, heck, freakin, shoot)

Litotes or reserved understatement (not exactly thin for "fat", not completely truthful for "lied", not unlike cheating for "an instance of cheating")

Changing nouns to modifiers: e.g. ...makes her look slutty for "...is a slut", right-wing element for "Right Wing")

Personal names, such as John Thomas or Willy for "penis", Fanny for "vulva" (British English).

Slang, e.g. pot for "cannabis", laid for "having sexual intercourse" and so on.

There is some disagreement over whether certain terms are or are not euphemisms. For example, sometimes the phrase visually impaired is labeled as a politically correct euphemism for blind. However, visual impairment can be a broader term, including, for example, people who have partial sight in one eye, or even those with uncorrected mild to moderate poor vision, a group that would be excluded by the word blind.

There are three antonyms of euphemism: dysphemism, cacophemism, and power word. The first can be either offensive or merely humorously deprecating with the second one generally used more often in the sense of something deliberately offensive. The last is used mainly in arguments to make a point seem more correct.

Checklist

• How are the extratextual factors reflected in the use of lexis (regional and social dialects, historical language varieties, choice of register, medium-specific lexis, conventional formulas determined by occasion or function, etc.)? Analyze the peculiarities of different types of vocabulary in the aspect of translation.

• Which features of the lexis used in the text indicate the attitude of the sender and his/her “stylistic interest” (e.g. stylistic markers, connotations, rhetorical figures of speech, such as metaphors and similes, individual word coinages, puns)?

• Dwell on different types of lexical devices and the peculiarities of translation. Provide your examples.