Useful Phrases and Clichés

• The author makes use of variegated metaphors with the idea of creating images/ achieving aesthetic and expressive functions/ foregrounding expressive, evaluating, subjective connotations, prompted by….

• The metaphor is based on the associated likeness between…

• Due to the dead/ original/ trite/ genuine/ simple/ prolonged/ sustained metaphors we may perceive the optimistic/ involved/ critical/ contemptuous/ ironical/ cynical attitude of the narrator/ interlocutor.

• Semantically the associated objects form personification/ zoosemy/ anthroposemy/ synesthesia.

• an unexpected comparison

• to express smth implicitly/ indirectly

• to imply, to suggest/ to hint at

• to enforce the impression

• to foreground/ to make smth prominent

• to produce/ achieve/ create an effect of…

Ex. 3 Stylistic Syntax.

Specify the following syntactic-stylistic media according to focusing, expansion or compression of information and define their stylistic functions in the text under analysis:

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

2. “How did you get on ?” I asked.

“So-so,” he replied.

3. If the candidate loses his nerve in front of this terrible displeasure he is finished: confusion breeds confusion and he will come to the end of his interrogation struggling like a cow in a bog.

4. Her suit was neat but not smart; her hair tidy but not striking; she wore enough make-up to look attractive, and she was obviously practising, with some effort, a look of admiring submission to the male sex.

5. Women students – the attractive ones, not those who are feminine only through inescapable anatomic arrangements – are under disadvantage in oral examinations.

6. “All right, all right,” he said impatiently, “you seem to know that…”

7. “Number one hundred and sixty-one,” he began. “Number three hundred and two. Number three hundred and six”.

8. My pulse shot in my ears. My face was burning hot and I felt my stomach had been suddenly plucked from my body.

9. The world stood still. The traffic stopped, the plants ceased growing, men were paralysed, the clouds hung in the air, the winds dropped, the tides disappeared, the sun halted in the sky.

10. “Number three oh six?” the Secretary whispered, without looking up from the book. “R. Gordon?” “Yes”, I croaked. “Pass”, he muttered.

11. “You go to table four,” the porter told me.

12. “One doesn’t fail exams,” said Grimsdyke firmly. “One comes down, one muffs, one is ploughed, plucked, or piped…”

Note:

In communication the information about reality obeys the general principle of expressing maximum through minimum. It can be either focused, or expanded, or compressed. Focusing, expansion and compression are the basic “filters” through which it is let off to produce the stylistic effects required.

Focusing is achieved either by making the elements of an utterance significant through pauses (pausation), or by recasting the elements in their relative positions (position).

Means Based on Focusing

1. By pausation:

Detachment – a SD based on singling out a secondary member of the sentence with the help of punctuation (commas, dashes or even a full stop: There was a nice girl there, I liked her name, Linda.

Parcellation – intentional splitting of sentences into smaller parts separated by full stops: Sally found Dick. Yesterday. In the pub.

Functions: reflecting the atmosphere of unofficial communication and spontaneity of speech; reflecting the speaker’s inner state of mind and emotions; logical emphasis of the components of sentence structure.

2. By position:

Stylistic Inversion – intentional changing word order of the initial sentence model which gives logical stress or emotional colouring to the units in an unusual position.

Partial: the object precedes the subject-predicate pair: Little chances Betty had.

Complete: the predicate precedes the subject: In came Jack.

Means Based on Expansion

Repetitions:

Anaphora – the beginning of some successive sentences (clauses) is repeated.

Epiphora – the end of successive sentences (clauses) is repeated.

Parallel constructions – producing two or more syntactic structures according to the same structural pattern.

Enumeration – a chain of homogeneous parts of the sentence, making information more concrete and more detailed.

Parenthesis – grammatically independent element of the sentence creating a second plane in a narration to show the author’s attitude to what is described, specifying the message’s details, very often it is detached from the rest of the sentence and separated from it by commas, dashes or brackets: Sarah, my dear, comparatively speaking, you’re safe.

Suspense – a deliberate postponement of the main idea (the rheme), creating the tension of expectation.

Means Based on Compression

Ellipsis – deliberate omission of at least one main member of the sentence which imitates the common features of oral colloquial speech.

Asyndeton - deliberate omission of structurally significant conjunctions and connectives which makes the narration dynamic and expressive.

Paradigmatic compression: transposition of syntactic structures in indirect speech acts (questions in the narrative, negations through affirmation, requests through statements and questions etc.)

Read more:

1. Єфімов – с.73-58

2. Kukharenko – pp.66-99