Useful Phrases and Clichés

• to abound in (with) epithets

• to deserve special notice

• Thanks to the picturesque epithets…we may get the feel of…

• The device serves to stress

• To render (make) the text

• to convey the author’s personal appraisal

• The epithets can be differentiated into… affective/ figurative epithets

• to convey emotional evaluation

• to ascribe some quality to smth/ smb

• to intensify the expressivity

• to attach emotive and subjective characteristics to the object

• This is implied/ foregrounded by…

B. Discuss the following cases of simile. Pay attention to the semantics of the tenor and the vehicle, to the brief or sustained manner of their presentation. Indicate the foundation of the simile, both explicit and implicit. Do not miss the link words joining the two parts of the structure. Explain the stylistic function of each simile.

1. To a medical student the final examinations are something like death: an unpleasant inevitability to be faced sooner or later…

2. …and he [student] goes at them like a prize-fighter.

3. …we attended all his ward rounds, standing at the front and gazing at him like impressionable music enthusiasts at the solo violinist.

4. He was helped by two or three uniformed porters who stood by the door and looked dispassionately down at the poor victims like the policemen that flank the dock at the Old Bailey.

5. …confusion breeds confusion and he will come to the end of his interrogation struggling like a cow in a bog.

6. I was shown to a tiny waiting-room furnished with hard chairs, a wooden table, and windows that wouldn’t open, like the condemned cell.

7. One was a burly, elderly man like a retired prize-fighter; the other was invisible…

8. It was like having a severe accident.

9. …they were a subdued, muttering crowd, like the supporters of a home team who had just been beaten in a cup tie.

10. The room had suddenly come to a frightening, unexpected silence and stillness like an unexploded bomb.

11. My palms were as wet as sponges.

12. Blindly, like a man just hit by black-jack, I stumbled upstairs.

Note:

Simile is an imaginative comparison of two unlike objects belonging to two different lexico-semantic classes. It should not be confused with simple (logical, ordinary) comparison where compared objects belong to one and the same class.

Structure: the following elements of the image structure are singled out in simile:

1. Tenor (the object which is compared)

2. Vehicle (the object with which the tenor is compared)

3. Basis/ foundation one common characteristic possessed by 1 and 2)

4. Connectives/ link-words (like, as, look like, seem, resemble, remind, appear, etc.) as in:

The sea was as smooth as glass

1 4 3 4 2

Functions: expressive evaluation, emotive explanation, highly individual description.

Read more:

1. Єфімов – с.63-65

2. Kukharenko – pp.89-90