lecture 5

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Lecture 5

STYLISTIC SEMASIOLOGY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE.

Figures of replacement

1. Stylistic semasiology.

2. Figures of replacement

. Figures of quantity: hyperbole, meiosis, litotes.

2.2.

1

2

2.1

OUTLINE

Figures of quality: metonymical group, metaphorical group, epithet, irony.

• 1. Стилистика английского языка / А.Н.Мороховский, О.П.Воробйова, Н.И.Лихошерст, З.В.Тимошенко, К.:Вища школа, 1991. – С.163-186.

• 2. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. – Л.: Просвещение, 1981. – С.82-93.

• 3. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. – M.: Higher School, 1977. – P.136-177.

• 4. Скребнев Ю.М. Основы стилистики английского языка. – М.: ООО «Издательство Астрель»: ООО «Издательство АСТ», 2003. – С.97-120, 143-165.

• 5. Жуковська В.В. Основи теорії та практики стилістики англійської мови. - Житомир, 2010. – С. 91-104.

Recommended literature:

SUPPLEMENTARY LITERATURE:

• Ахманова О. С. Словарь лингвистических терминов. – М., 1969. – 605 c.

• Брандес М.П. Стилистика немецкого языка. – М.: Высшая школа, 1990. – С. 288-299.

• Методичні вказівки до семінарських та практичних занять з стилістики англійської мови для студентів IV курсу. (Видання 2) / Уклад. Воробйова О.П., Бойцан Л.Ф., Ганецька Л.В. та інш. – К.: Вид.центр КНЛУ, 2001. – 64 с.

• Москвин В.П. Русская метафора: Очерки семиотической теории (изд. 2-е, перераб. и доп.). – М.: ЛЕНАНД, 2006. – 184 с.

SemasiologySemasiology

Lexical semasiology Lexical semasiology

analyses the meaning of words and word combinations, relations between these meanings and the changes these meanings undergo.

a branch of linguistics which studies the meaning of linguistic units of different language levels.

According to prof. Kukharenko

Stylistic semasiology is concerned only with those semantic relations and changes which form the basis of expressive means and stylistic devices.

A trope is a linguistic unit in which two meanings (primary dictionary and contextual) interact simultaneously, both these meanings are perceived by language users.

• In terms of prof. Kukharenko and prof. Morochovsky tropes are called figures of replacement (or figures of substitution)

Figures of quantity

Figures of quality

hyperbole

metonymy

meiosismetaphor

epithet

Figures of replacement/substitution

(tropes)

litotes

irony

FIGURES OF QUANTITY

• are based on the comparison of two different objects or phenomena which possess a common feature expressed with a certain degree of intensity.

• Hyperbole

is a purposeful overstatement or exaggeration of the truth to achieve intensity, or for dramatic or comic effect.

The car which picked me up on that particular guilty evening was a Cadillac limousine about seventy-three blocks long (Baldwin)

size

quantity

age

Four loudspeakers attached to the flagpole emitted a shattering roar of what Benjamin could hardly call music, as if it were played by a collection of brass bands, a few hundred engines, a thousand blacksmiths’ hammers and the amplified reproduction of a force-twelve wind (Saxton).

Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old (F.Sc.Fitzgerald).

Functions of hyperbole1) to intensify physical qualities of objects

• 2) to show the overflow of emotions:

I loved Ophelia; forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love, make up my sum (W. Shakespeare).

• 3) (in oral speech) to intensify a statement:

• Imagination can figure nothing so grand, so surprising, and so astonishing. It looked as if ten thousand flashes of lightning were darting at the same time from every quarter of the sky (J. Swift).

• 4) to create a humorous effect:Well, that boy used to get ill about twice a week, so that

he couldn’t go to school. There was such a boy to get ill as that Sandford and Merton. If there was any known disease going within ten miles of him, he had it, and had it badly. He would take bronchitis in the dog-days, and have hay-fever at Christmas. After a six weeks’ period of drought, he would be stricken down with rheumaticfever; and he go out in a November fog and come home with a sunstroke (J. Jerome).

There was an Old Man of Coblenz, The length of whose legs was immense; He went with one prance, From Turkey to France, That surprising Old Man of Coblenz (Edward Lear)

• trite hyperbole: I haven’t seen you for ages, scared to death, I beg thousand pardons, etc.

• They waited a good while under the orange trees, till Madame Antoine came back, panting, waddling, with a thousand apologies to explain her absence (K. Chopin).

• Grotesque is necessarily negatively charged. Its object is a certain negative feature inherent in the object.

• Hyperbole is used to exaggerate both - positive and negative features, but with no criticism, to provoke laughter.

• Meiosis or understatement is a deliberate understatement, or underestimation for emphasis.

The little woman, for she was of pocket size, crossed her hands solemnly on her middle size

quantity

age

Four loudspeakers attached to the flagpole emitted a shattering roar of what Benjamin could hardly call music, as if it were played by a collection of brass bands, a few hundred engines, a thousand blacksmiths’ hammers and the amplified reproduction of a force-twelve wind (Saxton).

Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old (F.Sc.Fitzgerald).

Functions of meiosis

• to lessen, weaken, reduce the real characteristics of the object emphasize its insignificance:

She wore a pink hat, the size of a button (J. Reed).

Litotes (Gk from litos ‘single, simple, meagre’) is a specific form of meiosis, not an independent trope.

“Not”/ “no”/

“never” etc.+

Text inShe could not have told why she was crying. Such experiences as the foregoing were not uncommon in her married life (K. Chopin).

Text in here

N./ Adj./ Adv. (negative in form or in meaning)

• "To be a good actress, she must always work for the truth in what she's playing," the man said in a voice not empty of selflove. (Mailer)

• I was quiet, but not uncommunicative;

reserved, but not reclusive; energetic at times, but seldom enthusiastic. (Bunyan)

• Kirsten said not without dignity: "Too much talking is unwise." (Christie)

Functions of litotes• 1) to weaken positive characteristics of a thing

or person

• 2) to convey the speaker’s doubts as to the exact value or significance of the object of speech

She liked money as well as most women, and accepted it with no little satisfaction (K. Chopin).

• 3) (in scientific prose) to underline carefulness of judgment or stress the writer’s uncertainty:

• Thus, even though important changes began to take place in the communication paradigm in the middle of the twentieth century, it is still not uncommon to hear the process described in terms that reflect the older view … (Encyclopedia of Communication and Information)

FIGURES OF QUALITYTypes of transference

• a) transference by contiguity (metonymy); • b) transference by similarity (metaphor); • c) transference by contrast (irony).

Figures of quality

metonymy

synecdoche

periphrasis

euphemism

Metonymical group

Metaphorical group

Irony

allegory

allusion

personification

antonomasia

metaphor

Metonymical group

• Metonymy (Gk ‘name change’) is a stylistic figure which reveals a quite unexpected substitution of one word for another, or one concept for another on the ground of some kind of association

• the White House = the President or the whole executive branch

• the pen is mightier than the sword = written words are more powerful than military force

The types of relation which metonymy is based on

• 1) characteristic features of the object instead the object itself

• That night the Board of Aldermen met – three greybeards and one younger man, a member of the rising generation (W. Faulkner);

2) the relation of proximity

The round game table was boisterous and happy. (Dickens)

• 3) the material instead of the thing made of it

“Evelyn Clasgow, get up out of that chair this minute. /…/ Your satin. The skirt’ll be a mess of wrinkles in the back.” (Ferber)

4) a concrete thing used instead of an abstract notion, becoming its symbol

I crossed a high tall bridge and negotiated a no man’s land and came to the place where the Stars and Stripes stood shoulder to shoulder with the Union Jack. (Steinbeck)

5) names of tools instead of actions

As the sword is the worst argument that can be used, so should it be the last. (Byron)

• 6) an article of clothing and the person wearing it

Black shirt said, “Does Mr Gran than live in that house?” (J. Chase)

• 8) an instrument and the action it performs

[...] my early determination [...], to make the pen my instrument, and not my idol (B.Shaw).

• Synecdoche (Gk ‘taking up together’) is a variety of metonymy in which the part stands for the whole, or the genus – the species, and vice versa.

Trite synecdoche• I had fifty hands on board; and orders were,

that I should trade with the Indians in the South-sea, and make what discoveries I could (J. Swift).

• The town is capable of holding five hundred thousand souls. (J. Swift)

• This body {army} consisted of three thousand foot and a thousand horse (J. Swift).

Genuine synecdoche• ‘She saw around her, clustered about the white

tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self-possessing arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms.’ (Bennett)

• I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. (Churchill)

• Give every man thine ear and few thy voice. (Слухай кожного, а говори з небагатьма). (Shakespeare)

• Periphrasis (Gk ‘peri – around; phraseo – speak’) is a roundabout way of speaking or writing; known also as circumlocution

• root of evil = money; • to tie the knot = to marry; • her olfactory system was suffering from

temporary inconvenience = her nose was blocked.

• A young blood from Cambridge chanced to enter the inn at Chipping Norton, while Sterne was seated there (R.Stevenson).

• And thus he continued on, while my colour came and went several times, with indignation, to hear our noble country, the mistress of arts and arms, the scourge of France, the arbitress of Europe, the seat of virtue, piety, honour and truth, the pride and envy of the world, so contemptuously treated (J.Swift).

Periphrasis brings out a particular feature of the object and is understood only in the given context.

• The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products {the wounded} of the fighting in Africa (I. Shaw).

Traditional/dictionary/languageperiphrasis

• gentlemen of the long robe (lawyers), • the better (fair, gentle) sex, • my better half (a wife), • the minions of the law (police), • prince of the Church (a cardinal), • the man in the street (ordinary person).

Stylistic functions of periphrasis

1) indicates a feature which the speaker or writer

wants to stress and often conveys an individual

perception of the object or phenomenon

named

2) is a more elegant and lofty manner of

expression

• Euphemism (Gk ‘eupheme – speaking well’) is a variety of periphrasis which is used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a conventionally more acceptable one.

• Euphemisms may be divided into several groups according to the spheres of usage:

religious euphemisms:

God may be replaced by Goodness, Lord,

godalmighty, etc.;

euphemisms connectet with death: to join the

majority, to pass away, to go the way of all

flesh, to go west, to breathe one's last, to

expire, to depart etc;

political euphemisms, widely used in mass

media: undernourishment for starvation, less

fortunate elements for the poor, economic

tunnel for the crisis etc.

• euphemisms connected with bodily functions, sex and body parts:

in America the toilet is referred to as the ‘restroom’, in Victorian England the word ‘leg’ was usually replaced by more generic ‘limb’.

• euphemism connected with gender

fireman = fire fighter,

spokesman = spokesperson,

serviceman = soldier, sailor.

• euphemisms connected with professions (the so-called “name-lifting”):

secretary = team assistant,

cleaning lady = interior care provider,

rat catcher = exterminating engineer etc.• euphemisms connected with things and events

which are unpleasant:

to hit the bottle = to drink heavily,

to tell the stories = to lie etc.

Metaphorical group

Personification

Antonomasia

Metaphor

Allegory Allusion

Metaphorical group

• Metaphor (Gk ‘carrying from one place to another’) denotes expressive renaming based on likeness, similarity or affinity (real or imaginary) of some features of two different objects.

All the world's a stage,

And all the men and women merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts.

The structure of metaphor

• R. Richards (The Philosophy of Rhetoric (1936))

Tenor and vehicle

The tenor is the subject to which attributes are ascribed.

The vehicle is the subject from which the attributes are borrowed.

Tenor Ground Vehicle

world

WORLD

playingpretendingperforming different rolesunrealimaginary

is

stage

STAGE

men and women

players

Types of metaphorical transfer

• 1. the transfer of the name of one object to another:

• Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player… (Shakespeare)

• 2. the transfer of the mode of action:

• We talked and talked and talked, easily, sympathetically, wedding her experience with my articulation. (John Barth)

• Leaving Daniel to his fate, she was conscious of joy springing in her heart. (Bennett)

• 3. the transfer of the typical characteristics:

• The fog comes on little cat feet. (Sandburg)

According to its structure, metaphor may be:

• simple or elementary, which is based on the actualization of one or several features common for two objects ;

• b) prolonged or sustained, which is extended over several lines in a passage or throughout an entire passage.

All the world’s a stage,

And all men and women are merely players:

They have their exits and their entrances;

And one man in his time plays many parts

His acts being seven ages… (Shakespeare)

• The main function of metaphor is aesthetic. It appeals to the reader’s imagination.

• Antonomasia (Gk ‘antonomasia – renaming’) is

• the use of a proper name for a common noun (Othello, Romeo, Hamlet);

• the use of common nouns or their parts as proper names (Mr. Snake, Mr. Backbite etc.), e.g. “I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogether as Miss Murdstone was (Ch. Dickens).

• The main stylistic function of antonomasia is to characterize a person simultaneously with naming him/her.

• Personification (L ‘persona – person, facere – do’) based on ascribing some features and characteristics of a person to lifeless objects – mostly to abstract notions, such as thoughts, actions, intentions, emotions, seasons, of the year

Autumn comes // And trees are shedding their leaves // And Mother Nature blushes // Before disrobing (N. West).

In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumonia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and one there with icy fingers. (O. Henry)

Formal signals of personification

• the use of the pronouns he and she, herself etc. with reference to lifeless things:

The Night, like some great loving mother, gently lays her hand on our fevered head, and turns our little tear-stained face up to hers, and smiles, and, though she does not speak, we know what she would say and lay our hot, flushed cheek against her bosom and the pain is gone. (Jerome K. Jerome)

• 2) the use of direct address:

O stretch thy reign, fair Peace! From shore to shore

Till conquest cease, and slavery be no more (A. Pope);

• 3) capitalization of the word which expresses a personified notion.

No sleep till morn, when Youth and Pleasure meet // To chase the glowing Hours with flying feet. (Byron)

• Allegory (Gk ‘allegoria – speaking otherwise’) means expressing abstract ideas through concrete pictures.

• Allegory is mainly used in fiction and appears only in a text, no matter how short it may be (e.g. proverbs, fables or fairy tales).

"The Appointment in Samarra» Death speaks:

There was a merchant in Baghdad who sent his servant to market to buy provisions and in a little while the servant came back, white and trembling, and said, “Master, just now when I was in the market-place I was jostled by a woman in the crowd and when I turned I saw it was Death that jostled me. She looked at me and made a threatening gesture; now, lend me your horse, and I will ride away from this city and avoid my fate. I will go to Samarra and there death will not find me.” The merchant lent him his horse, and the servant mounted it, and he dug his spurs in its flanks and as fast as the horse could gallop he went. Then the merchant went down to the marketplace and he saw me standing in the crowd and he came to me and said, “Why did you make a threatening gesture to my servant when you saw him this morning?” “That was not a threatening gesture,” I said, “it was only a start of surprise. I was astonished to see him in Baghdad, for I had an appointment with him tonight in Samarra.”

•

• Allusion (L ‘allusio – a play on words or game; and a derivative of the Latin word alludere – to play around or to refer to mockingly’) is an implied or indirect reference to a person, event, or thing or to a part of another text (the so-called allusive quotations).

Allusions can be :• obvious

‘That as Sherlock Holmes would say, is what you may expect to see when there is nothing there’, said Wimsey kindly” (D. Sayers. Strong Position. / A.Conan Doyle. Stories);

• non-obvious

“…lines of remembered verse were floating through his head:

Why didst thou promise such a beauteous day and make me travel forth without my cloak …” (M.Innes. Old Hall, New Hall. / Shakespeare. Sonnet 34).

• Allusions can add to solemn, elevated and high–flown tonality of a text, but at the same time they may show ironic or humorous attitude of the author to the events or people depicted.

• Epithet characterizes the object, phenomenon, event or action pointing out some of its peculiar properties or features. It is subjective, emotive and evaluative.

• adjectives and adverbs: his triumphant look, he

looked triumphantly;

• b) Participle I and Participle II: the frightened

moment, a waiting silence ,

• nouns: a lemon moon, a sausage finger

• exclamatory sentences (“You, ostrich!”)

• postpositive attributes (“Richard of the Lion Heart).

• Logical attribute is purely objective, not coloured emotionally and non-evaluative.

• It emphasises an inherent, objective feature of the object in question ‘green leaves’, ‘blue eyes’, ‘dark hair’.

V.A. Kukharenko differentiates between :

affective (or emotive proper) epithets, used to convey the emotional evaluation of the object by the speaker;

and figurative (or transferred) epithets, formed on metaphors, metonymies and similes expressed by adjectives: the smiling sun, the tobacco-stained smile, a ghost-like face .

I.R. Galperin distinguishes

associated epithets, employed to point to a feature which is to a certain extent inherent in the concept of the object: dark forest, dreary midnight, fantastic terrors;

unassociated epithets, used to characterize the object by adding a new striking feature: heartburning smile, bootless cries, sullen earth.

• Structurally epithets are subdivided according to their compositional and distributional peculiarities

Simple : cruel thunder, raven hair, clamouring atmosphere, yelling face;

Compound: gentle-eyed man, wonder-happy little boy, care-free eyes, handkerchief-big space;

phrase: going-to-bed sounds, go-it-alone attitude;sentence: “You are right”, said Val suddenly; “but

things aren’t what they were when I was your age. There’s a ‘To-morrow we die’ feeling. That’s what old George meant about my uncle Soames (J. Galsworthy); never-know-where-you-will-be-tomorrow world;

inverted (reversed) (of-phrase): She was a faded white rabbit of a woman (A. Christi).

From the point of view of distribution of epithets in the sentence there distinguish:

• single epithets: accusing finger, sorrowful bush, smiling admiration;

• string of epithets: I grant him bloody, luxurious, avaricious, false, deceitful, sudden, malicious, smacking of all sin that has name; but there’s no bottom, none, in my voluptuousness. Your wives, your matrons, your maids, could fill the cistern of my lust … Better Macbeht than such as one to reign (W.Shakesperare).

IronyIn a narrow sense, irony is the use of a word

having a positive meaning to express a negative one.

In a wider sense, irony is an utterance which formally shows a positive or neutral attitude of the speaker to the object of conversation but in fact expresses a negative evaluation of it.

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lecture 5

Documents

figures of replacementlogowww

figures of replacement

comstylistic semasiology

english language

language users

stylistic devices

meanings primary dictionary

different objects