I couldn’t quite remember how to throw a boomerang, but eventually it came back to me.

Some people’s noses and feet are built backwards: their feet smell and their noses run. – полисемия

Wife: I bought this hat for thirty dollars. Isn’t it a good buy?

Husband: Yes, good-bye to thirty dollars.

Those who jump off a Paris bridge are in Seine (графическая).

Zeugma – consists in using one word usually a verb, sometimes a preposition, simultaneously in reference to two or more nouns which are call for to different meanings of a word. (Шел дождь и два студента, Гости нанесли визит и грязи, She stood on her opinion and feet).

Мы - замкнувшиеся на себе, познавшие Эрмитаж и Бутырки,

Сдающие карты или экзамены, вахты или пустые бутылки,

Задыхающиеся от смога, от счастья и от обид,

Делающие открытия, подлости, важный вид.

Аntonomasia – human names, it consists either in using a descriptive phrase instead of a person’s name, for instance, маленький капрал (Наполеон), железная лэди (Тэтчер). The opposite – using the character’s name in reference to quite a different person, as a kind of epithet to emphasize a certain characteristic feature. Her husband is a terrible Othello. (The Corsican, prophetic and renowned), (He is the Napoleon of crime – evil genius).

Within A you find telling names, when a name of a character betrays his or her origin (Простакова, Скалозуб, Молчалин, Mr. Snake, Mrs. Snearwell).

Stylistic use of set expressions,

We find clichés, proverbs and sayings, well-known maxims (афоризмы), quotations, allusions, set expressions, which for stylistic purposes undergo various transformations (decomposed set expressions).

Allusion – is an indirect reference to a mislogical event, a political event, a literary work, a well-known song or nursery-rhyme, a certain realia of a country. An A can also be a brief quotation which can not be understood unless we know its complete form. Usually in the titles (Pygmalion (Shaw), War and Peace (Saroyan), “A friend in need” (Maugham), “And there no none” (Christy)).

Decomposed set expressions – разрушенные фразеологизмы – always become foregrounded.

Insertion – to put all one’s eggs into one basket (не ставь все на карту) – Soames for ever put his emotional eggs into one basket: first Irene, then Fleur (Galsworthy) (привязывался)

Addition (as old as hills) – The family of Deadlocks is as old as hills and infinitely more respectable.

Substitution – One man’s meat is another man’s poison (Что русскому человеку хорошо, то немцу плохо) – One man’s fish is another man’s poisson (рыба по-французски). Man shall not live by caviar alone.

“Telescoping” (blending) – Куй железо, не отходя от кассы.

The chief functions:

humorous

ironic

a new awareness of a familiar phenomenon

estrangement, a different culture-bound world picture

Lecture 5 12.10.10

Syntactical Stylistic Devices

Among grammar devices, morphology plays a far less significant role than syntax, at least, in the E language, as it doesn’t possess a lot of form-building suffixes. Still, M can participate in creating additional connotations. For instance, violation of standard morphological forms can testify to the characters’ lack of education and the effect is especially striking, when illiterate grammar goes hand-in-hand with high-flown vocabulary (O’Henry).

My most bestest friend

Morphology can participate in creating an elevated tone due to obsolete grammar forms (thee, thou, thy, thine). The role of M is small. Therefore S has much more share in SD.

SSD fall into several main groups:

inversion

transposition

accumulation (reduplication)

compression

There are some devices which do not fit into any of the 4 groups.

Inversion – changes in the word order. They are more typical of English in the sense of their stylistic effect, because in Russian where the word order is far more flexible, inversion is not perceived as a special effect. That is why when translating into Russian we sometimes have to resort to lexical meanings to preserve the desired effect. The effect can either be poetic due to emotive connotations, ironic or the author can aim at a purely logical emphasis.

Chief patterns:

Adverb of frequency+auxiliary+noun+notional verb:

Never have I seen a lady so exquisite.

Adjective+noun (both forming the predicative) + pronoun+link verb:

Fine newspapers they were!

Adjective+noun\pronoun+link verb (emotional emphasis)

Shy she was, and I thought her cold;

Thought her cold and went over the sea.

Depending on the stress, the same pattern can produce totally different impression.

4. The same pattern may serve for logical emphasis.

Beautiful she was.

Graceful she was.

Intelligent she was not.

Object in the initial position (Logical emphasis)

Talent Mr. Micawber has.

Capital Mr. Micawber has not.

Adjective+link verb+noun or pronoun:

Great and powerful was Memphis!

Noun+adj. – effect is poetic, but depending on the context, it might be truly poetic or it might be ironic.

Song of birds innumerable. (Форсайты)

I could see his muscular calves encased in gaiters Episcopal. (Луна и грош)

Transposition – all in all, there are only 4 types of one-sentence utterance (grammatically). These are statements, imperative structures, interrogative ones and exclamations. Each of these can be used in the affirmative and negative variants. We are dealing with T, when one formal type of utterance is used in the function of another.

Statement – question

It usually signals informal or casual nature of discourse (friendly dialogue).

Any you wouldn’t leave them any?

Question – statement

“What business is that of yours” – rhetorical questions.

RQ are equally frequent in high-flown discourse and colloquial one.

“Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?”

negative-affirmative

If it isn’t Barney Woods!

negative structure used as a request:

He supposed she didn’t have such a thing as a biscuit and a glass of clatter: he had had no breakfast.

expression of negation without grammatical negation

As if I ever stopped thinking about the girl!

imperative use as negation

Catch him doing it! Держи карман шире!

statement used as negative imperative:

“I’ll go to Uncle Harvey and – Oh yes, I would. Of course I would. – Well, why wouldn’t you?”

Reduplication – manifests itself in several ways, but the most important of these is repetition. R can be immediate or distant (контактный и дистантный). IR may occur within one sentence or neighboring ones, but in any case in close range to me immediately observable. DR is a textual device and it can be perceived either in its true dimensions as we go on reading, or may at first pass unnoticed or not given its true significance to the reader.

Shakespeare, July Caesar, Mark Antonius: And Brutus is an honorable man.

Levels of repetition:

- The smallest unit is the sound.

- The next is morpheme – The papyri…were sleeping, unknown and unintelligible, in dark and silent tombs.

- functional word – neither wind, nor centuries, nor sand could ever entirely silence the voices of the pyramids.

- notional words – Will you please please please stop talking?

- parallel constructions – long and loud were the cheers, and mighty was the rustling of the flags.

- sentences

Patterns of repetition:

Ordinary repetition – beat, beat, beat, on thy cold gray stones, o sea! (S. Coleridge)

Framing – a syntactical arrangement when the repeated element is placed at the beginning of the sequence and at the end. (А.Такровский – Как 40 лет тому назад). Limerick – 5 lines poem –

There was once a young man of South Bay

Making fireworks on summer day.

He dropped his cigar