Seminar 4 Stylistic Phraseology Questions and tasks

Task 1

Define the basic stylistic effect achieved by the violation of the following set phrases and idioms in the sentences below:

1. “Can Mr. Herring swim? – Like several fishes! (To swim like a fish).” (Woodehouse)

2. “He who laughs last, takes too long to get the joke” (O.Wilde)

3. “Time is the waste of money” (H.)

4. Dorothy, at my statement, had clapped her hand over mouth to hold down laughter and chewing gum. (Jn.B.)

5. “Some fly East, some fly West, some fly over the cuckoo’s nest”. (L.Keisy:The Fly Over the Cuckoo’s Nest)

Task 2

Analyze the story and indicate what meanings of a word participate in violation of Ph. U. and restoration of their direct, dictionary meaning:

Red herring

Once upon a time there lived an old herring, who happened to be in love with a white elephant. When the yellow press, always nosing around, learned of the affair, they screamed blue murder because everyone thought it was a disgrace for the white elephant, who was rumored to be of the blue blood, to have a romantic involvement with the plebian red herring. Some guessed, however, that the red herring was just a red herring and the white elephant was in fact carrying on with a black sheep who was of an aristocratic origin. The white elephant’s father turned grey overnight, saw red in the morning, was about to beat his son black and blue but showed white feather, went and painted the town red instead.

If only the interested parties had used their grey matter, they could have easily seen that there was a strong attachment between the white elephant and the pretty white crow with delicate green fingers.

Soon another sensation came as a bolt from the blue and in a week no one remembered the poor red herring who was always in a blue mood, always dressed in black and severely tortured by the green-eyed monster.

[op. cit. Г.Г.Молчанова. Pp. 327-328]

Recommended lirerature:

1. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. Стр. 150 – 165.

2. Кухаренко В. А. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. Pp. 29-33.

3. Кухаренко В. А. Seminars in Style. Pp. 6-22.

4. Молчанова Г.Г. Английский как неродной: текст, стиль, культура, коммуникация. М., Медиа Групп, 2007 – 384 с.

5. Freeborn D. Style Text Analysis and Linguistic Criticism. London, 1996.

6. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. Pp. 57 - 119

7. Gurevitch V.V. English Stylistics. Moscow, 2005.

8. Widdowson H.G. Stylistics and the Teaching of Literature. Longman, 1975.

Units 5-7 Stylistic semasiology An Outline

1. Tropes and figures of speech.

1. The metaphorical group;

2. The metonymical group;

3. Irony.

2. Expressive means (EM) and stylistic devices (SD), their different classifications.

a) Lexical Stylistic Devices (LSD).

b) Syntactical Stylistic Devices (SSD).

3. Lexico - syntactical Stylistic Devices (LSSD).

Stylistic semasiology studies the expressive resources of the language, which are represented by the oldest categories of rhetoric, i.e. tropes and figures of speech (I.V.Arnold, U.Screbnev), expressive means and stylistic devices (I.R.Galperin, V.A.Kucharenko). Tropes and figures of speech are based on imagery which is realized through the interrelation of different components of denotational and connotational meaning of words and word combinations.

In philosophy "image" denotes the result of reflection of the object of reality in man's consciousness. On the sensible level our senses, ideas might be regarded as images. On a higher level of thinking images take the form of concepts, judgments, and conclusions. Depending on the level of reflecting the objective reality (sensual and conceptual) there are 2 types of images:

1. Art images – reflect the objective reality in human life. While informing us of a phenomenon of life they simultaneously express our attitude towards it.

2. Literature images - deal with a specific type of artistic images, verbal images are pen - pictures of a thing, person or idea expressed in a figurative way in their contextual meaning and in music by sounds. The overwhelming majority of linguists agree that a word is the smallest unit being able to create images because it conveys the artistic reality and image. On this level the creation of images is the result of the interaction of two meanings: direct (denotation) and indirect (figurative). Lexical expressive meanings in which a word or word combination is used figuratively are called tropes. Their verbal meaning has the following structure:

1. Tenor (direct thought) objective; (T)

2. Vehicle (figurative thought) subjective; (V)

3. Ground of comparison is the common feature of T and V; (G)

4. The relation between T and V;

5. The technique of identification (The type of trope);

Prof. Screbnev’s classification of TROPES:

Figures of QUANTITY:

Hyperbole; Meiosis: Understatement and Litotes.

Figures of QUALITY:

METAPHOR: Periphrasis, Allusion, Personification, Allegory.

METONYMY: Synecdoche.

Antonomasia. Irony. Epithet.

Table 8

Prof. Arnold’s classification of TROPES:

Hyperbole

Meiosis (Litotes)

(Figures of Quantity)

Tropes

(Figures of Quality)

Metaphor

(Personification)

Epithet

Irony

Metonymy

(Synecdoche)

Antonomasia

Allegory Allusion

Tropes are EM based on the transfer of meaning or figurative use of the words and expressions within one and the same paradigm. (I.V.A.) e.g. She is the heart of society (trope).

Tropes:

a) deal with concrete thing or idea e.g. Thirsty wind.

b) embrace the whole book e.g. War and Peace.

c) create visual images: e.g. the cloudy life age of the sky

d) create aural images by sound imitations: “The moan of doves in immemorial elms, and murmuring of innumerable bees” (Tennyson).

Figures of speech refer to specific combinations of words and specific syntactical structures imaginatively used. They are correlated in time (syntagmatically). Ex.: She is as beautiful as a rose (figure of speech).

The metaphorical group (metaphor, personification, allegory).

Metaphor is a trope in which words denoting one object are transferred (or associated with) to others to indicate a resemblance between them.

Metaphor indicates resemblance or similarity of:

1. Shape: Her eyes were two profound and menacing gun barrels.

2. Function: He is a fox.

3. Position: It was the iron skeleton of the mill.

Verbs: Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, some few to be chewed and digested. (F.Bacon)

Nouns: “They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate”. (W.G.) Hamlet knew that, potentially at least, he was a whole symphonyorchestra.

Adjectives: Sleepless nights; dying flowers; blue dream.

Structurally metaphors are simple or sustained (prolonged, extended):

“I had a stable of promises and I believed those promises. I rode those promises, hard, once to a bad fall (Stephens).

The components of a metaphor;

1. tenor;

2. vehicle;

3. Tertium comparationis.

He bent his head and with a single hasty glance (tenor) seemed to dive into my eyes (vehicle).

Personification is based on transference from the qualities of animate objects to inanimate ones: “The bare old elm trees wrung their many hands in the bleak wintry air…”

The metonymical group (metonymy, synecdoche) is based on contiguity (really existing relations) between 2 objects.

The relations are: causal, symbolic, spatial, instrumental, and functional:

1. The relations of the container and … contained: “…село – все с ясносиними глазами.”; “Tom and Roger came back to eat an enormous tea and then played tennis till light failed.” (S.M.)

2. The relations of the instrument and the action: “Give every man thy ear, and few thy voice.” (Shakespeare).

3. Symbol and notions: Throne, Crown, Laurel.

4. Cause and effect: “He takes the death.”

5. General and its part: “A student is expected to know…”

6. Subject and its property: “He made his way through the perfume and conversation.” (I.Sh.)

7. Abstract notions denoting emotional state instead of people who experience these emotions: “Стоногий стон бредет за колесницей” (М.Петровых); “Many of the hearts that throbbed so gaily then, have ceased to beat; many of the looks that shone so brightly then, have ceased to glow.” (D.)

8) Synecdoche: using the name of a part instead of the whole or vice versa: “To be a comrade with a wolf and owl.”

Fresh and trite (dead) metonymy: brass (money), china (porcelain) but “ She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold hard eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms. (A.B.)

Stylistic functions of tropes: