28. Compositional patterns of syntactical arrangement (Antithesis, Enumeration,Climax)

Stylistic opposition, which is given a special name, the term a n-t i t h e s i s, is of a different linguistic nature: it is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs, as in:

"Youth is lovely, age is lonely,

Youth is fiery, age is frosty;" (Longfellow)

Here the objectively contrasted pair is 'youth' and 'age'. 'Lovely' and 'lonely' cannot be regarded as objectively opposite concepts, but being drawn into the scheme contrasting 'youth' and 'age', they display certain features which may be counted as antonymical. This is strength­ened also by the next line where not only 'youth' and 'age' but also 'fiery' and 'frosty' are objective antonyms.

It is not only the semantic aspect which explains the linguistic nature of antithesis, the structural pattern also plays an important role. Antith­esis is generally moulded in parallel construction. The antagonistic features of the two objects or phenomena are more easily perceived when they stand out in similar structures. This is particularly advantageous when the antagonistic features are not inherent in the objects in question but imposed on them. When but is used as a signal of antithesis, the other structural sig­nal, the parallel arrangement, may not be evident. It may be unneces­sary. Antithesis has the following basic functions: rhythm-forming (be­cause of the parallel arrangement on which it is founded); copulative; dissevering; comparative. These functions often go together and inter­mingle in their own peculiar manner. But as a rule antithesis displays one of the functions more clearly than the others. This particular func­tion will then be the leading one in the given utterance.

Enumeration is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, properties, actions are named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which, being syntactically in the same position (homogeneous parts of speech), are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity, remote though it may seem.

Most of our notions are associated with other notions due to some kind of relation between them: dependence, cause and result, likeness, dissimilarity, sequence, experience (personal and/or social), proximity, etc. Let us examine the following cases of enumeration:

"There Harold gazes on a work divine,

A blending of all beauties; streams and dells,

Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine

And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells

From grey but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells." (Byron)

Climax is an arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance. Gradual increase in emotional evaluation in the first illustration and in significance in the second is realized by the distribution of the corresponding lexical items. Each successive unit is perceived as stronger than the preceding one. Of course, there are no objective linguistic criteria to estimate the degree of importance or significance of each constituent. A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative. Logical is based on the relative importance of the component parts looked at from the point of view of the concepts em­bodied in them. This relative importance may be evaluated both objec­tively and subjectively, the author's attitude towards the objects or phenomena in question being disclosed. Emotional is based on the relative emotional ten­sion produced by words with emotive meaning. Of course, emotional climax based on synonymous strings of words with emotive meaning will inevitably cause certain semantic differences in these words — such is the linguistic nature of stylistic synonyms—, but emotive meaning will be the prevailing one. Finally, we come to quantitative climax. This is an evi­dent increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts, as in:

"They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens." (Maugham)

Here the climax is achieved by simple numerical increase.