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Lecture 5: Stylistic Semasiology

5.1.Stylistic semasiology of the English language. The notions of a "trope".

5.2.Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices.

5.3.Classification of Stylistic Devices and Expressive Means by I. Galperin.

5.1. Stylistic semasiology of the English language. The notions of a "trope"

Semasiology is a branch of linguistics, which studies the meaning of the language units.

As distinct from stylistic lexicology or stylistic syntax which deal with words and sentences, stylistic semasiology makes meaning the object of its investigation, particularly the rules and laws of shifts of meanings; the patterns according to which meanings are shifted or either various combinations thus producing a certain stylistic effect, create an additional/ connotative meaning. Stylistic semasiology also studies stylistic functions of shifts of meanings and of certain combinations of meanings.

In linguistics there are different terms to denote particular means by which utterances are foregrounded, i.e. made more conspicuous, more effective and therefore imparting some additional information. They are called expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic markers, stylistic devices, tropes, figures of speech and other names. All these terms are used indiscriminately and are set against those means which we shall conventionally call n e u - t r a l .

The additional meanings of language units may be created in two ways:

·the unusual denotative reference of words, word combination, utterances, etc.;

·the unusual distribution of meanings of these units.

The unusual denotative reference of words, word combinations, etc. means different ways of secondary nomination. Secondary nomination is based on the usage of existing words or word combinations to give a new name to the already known objects.

Every trope demonstrates a combination, a coincidence of two semantic planes (actually two different meanings) in one unit of form (one word, one phrase, one sentence). A trope, then is a linguistic unit (word, phrase, sentence, paragraph, text) with two senses, both felt by language users.

Hence, the psychological essence of a trope is just the prominence given to two units of sense in one unit of form. Only the double meaning creates what is called the image: we observe a trope only if we see both meanings.

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The use of tropes is, properly speaking, a false, erroneous qualification of an object. It is a device inconsistent with the primary reason for being of language, whose purpose and motto is “calling a spade a spade”.

Tropes serve to create images that combine notions and as a result express something different from them both. An image, as a psychic phenomenon, arises before and outside its verbalisation: imaginative perception of analogies, connections, contrasts of reality, overestimation or undervaluation of its properties – all these acts of cognition can take place without language. Thus tropes are not only language properties.

5.2. Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

The category of expressiveness has long been the subject of discussion among linguists. In its etymological sense expressiveness may be understood as a kind of intensification of an utterance or a part of it depending on the position in the utterance of the means that manifest this category and what these means do.

But lately the notion of expressiveness has been confused with another notion – emotiveness. Emotiveness, and correspondingly the emotive elements of language, are what reveal the emotions of writer or speaker. Expressiveness is a broader notion than emotiveness. Emotiveness is an integral part of expressiveness and occupies a predominant position in the category of expressiveness. But there are media in language, which aim simply at logical emphasis of a certain part of utterance. They do not evoke any intellectual representation of feeling but serve the purpose of verbal actualization of the utterance. It is not always possible to draw a distinction between logical and emotional emphasis.

Thus, for example, when we say "It was in July 1975 that they met" we make the utterance logically emphatic by an inversion but it's only expressiveness that can be traced. Compare: "This goddam window won't open!" (emotiveness is observed)

The Expressive Means of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms are singled out in different grammar, phonetic courses and dictionaries. All these forms have neutral synonyms. e.g. Isn’t she cute? = She is nice, isn’t she?

· The most powerful expressive means of any language are Phonetic Expressive Means. They are: pitch, melody, stress, whispering, sing-song manner of speaking, pauses, etc. Seymour Chatman introduced such a term as “phonostylistics”, which studies the ways in which an author elects to con-

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strain the phonology of the language beyond the normal requirements of the phonetic system.

·Morphological Expressive Means. Sometimes an ordinary grammatical function displays a kind of emphasis and thereby is promoted to expressive means. For instance, the use of “shall” in the second and the 3rd person e.g. He shall do it. = I shall make him do it.

·Word-building Expressive Means: many forms serve to make the utterance more expressive by intensifying some of semantic or grammatical properties. For instance, the use of diminutive suffixes: -ie, -y, -let: e.g. sonny, piglet, auntie; or forming of neologism and nonce-words with nonproductive suffixes e.g. He glasnosted his love affaire with this movie star (People)

·Lexical Expressive Means: There are many words, which due to their inner expressiveness constitute a special layer. There are words with emotive meaning only (interjections: Oh, Ah, Oops; intensifiers – awfully, terribly, etc.), words which have both referential and emotive meaning (epithets), words which still retain a twofold meaning: denotative and connotative (love, hate), slang, vulgar, poetic and archaic words. All kinds of setphrases and phraseological units generally possess the property of expressiveness.

·Syntactical Expressive Means: There are many constructions, which set against synonymous neutrality. They reveal a certain degree of logical and emotional emphasis. e.g. I do know you. I'm really angry with that dog of yours! If only I could help you.

To distinguish between expressive means and stylistic devices, it is necessary to understand that expressive means are particular facts of language. Stylistics studies them taking into account the modifications of meanings which various expressive means undergo when they are used in different functional styles. Expressive means color the whole of the utterance no matter whether they are logical or emotional.

Stylistic Device is a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical structure and/or semantic property of a language unit (neutral or expressive) promoted to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model. Stylistic devices function in texts as marked units. They always carry some kind of additional information. The motivated use of stylistic devices in a work of emotive literature is not easily discernible. Most stylistic devices display an application of 2 meanings: the ordinary one, which has already been established in the language-as-a-system, and a special meaning which is superimposed on the unit by text, i.e. a meaning which ap-

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pears in the language-in-action.

Thus in "The night has swallowed him up" the word 'swallow' has two meanings:

A referential (to pass food, drink, etc. through the mouth to the stomach) and B contextual (to make disappear, to make vanish). The meaning B takes precedence over the referential A.

The birth of stylistic devices is a natural process in the development of language media. The difference between the expressive means and stylistic devices is that expressive means have a greater degree of predictability than stylistic devices. Stylistic devices carry a greater amount of information and require a certain effort to decode their meaning. The system of stylistic devices has not been fully recognized as a legitimate member of the general system of language.

5.3. Classification of Stylistic Devices and Expressive Means by I. Galperin

Stylistic semasiology analyses and classifies tropes from the point of view of the mechanism of different semantic changes and their stylistic functions.

Prof. Galperin suggested a very detailed classification which includes the following subdivision of expressive means and stylistic devices based on the level-oriented approach:

·Phonetic expressive means and stylistic devices.

·Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices.

·Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices.

·Phonetic EM and SD:

Øonomatopoeia (direct and indirect): ding-dong; silver bells... tinkle, tinkle;

Øalliteration (initial rhyme): to rob Peter to pay Paul;

Ørhyme (full, incomplete, compound or broken, eye rhyme, internal rhyme. Also, stanza rhymes: couplets, triple, cross, framing/ring);

Ørhythm.

·Lexical EM and SD:

There are three big subdivisions in this class of devices and they all deal with the semantic nature of a word or phrase. However the criteria of selection of means for each subdivision are different and manifest different semantic processes.

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Øthe interaction of different types of a word's meanings

§the interplay of dictionary and contextual meanings of a word (metaphor, metonymy, irony);

§the interplay of logical and emotive meanings of a word (interjections and exclamatory words, epithet, oxymoron);

§the interplay of primary and derivative meanings of a word (polysemy, zeugma and pun);

§the interplay of logical and nominal meanings of a word (antonomasia)

Øthe interaction between two lexical meanings simultaneously materialised in the context; this kind of interaction helps to call special attention to a certain feature of the object described: simile, periphrasis, euphemism, hyperbole.

Øthe interaction of stable word combinations with the context: clichés, proverbs and sayings, epigrams, quotations, allusions, decomposition of set phrases.

·Syntactical EM and SD

Syntactical EM and SD are not paradigmatic but syntagmatic or struc-

tural means. In defining syntactical devices Galperin proceeds from the following thesis: the structural elements have their own independent meaning and this meaning may affect the lexical meaning. In doing so it may impart a special contextual meaning to some of the lexical units.

The principal criteria for classifying syntactical stylistic devices are:

Øthe juxtaposition of the parts of an utterance (inversion, detached constructions, parallel constructions, chiasmus, repetition, enumeration, suspense, climax, antithesis);

Øthe type of connection of the parts (asyndeton, polysyndeton, gap-sentence link);

Øthe peculiar use of colloquial constructions (ellipsis, aposiopesis, question in the narrative, represented speech);

Øthe transference of structural meaning (rhetorical questions, litotes).

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Lecture 6: Phonetic and Graphical Expressive Means

and Stylistic Devices

6.1.Phonetic Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices.

6.2.Graphical Means.

6.1. Phonetic Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

Still, devoid of denotational or connotational meaning, a phoneme, according to recent studies, has a strong associative and sound-instrumenting power.

·Well-known are numerous cases of onomatopoeia - the use of words whose sounds imitate those of the signified object or action, such as

"hiss", "bowwow", "murmur", "bump", "grumble", "sizzle" and many more. Imitating the sounds of nature, man, inanimate objects, the acoustic

form of the word foregrounds the latter, inevitably emphasizing its meaning too. Thus the phonemic structure of the word proves to be important for the creation of expressive and emotive connotations. A message, containing an onomatopoeic word is not limited to transmitting the logical information only, but also supplies the vivid portrayal of the situation described.

There are two varieties of onomatopoeia: direct and indirect.

ØDirect onomatopoeia is contained in words that imitate natural sounds, as ding-dong, burr, bang, cuckoo.

Onomatopoetic words can be used in a transferred meaning, as for instance, ding - dong, which represents the sound of bells rung continuously, may mean: 1) noisy, 2) strenuously contested.

ØIndirect onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds the aim of which is to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense. It is sometimes called "echo writing". An example is:

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" (E. A. Poe), where the repetition of the sound [s] actually produces the sound of the rustling of the curtain.

·Poetry abounds in some specific types of sound-instrumenting, the leading role belonging to alliteration - the repetition of consonants, usually in the beginning of words.

Alliteration is widely used in English folklore, in proverbs sayings and set expressions: e.g. Praise is not pudding. Seldom seen, soon forgotten. Muck and money go together. Safe and sound.

Nowadays alliteration can be also found in book titles: e.g. Man and

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Mice (J.Steinbeck); Silver Spoon, Swan Song (J. Galsworthy).

It is most frequent in modern poetry where it creates a certain melodic and emotional effect while enhancing the expressiveness of the utterance.

·Assonance - the repetition of similar vowels, usually in stressed syllables. e.g. Dreadful young creatures – squealing and squawking. (D. Carter)

They both may produce the effect of euphony (a sense of ease and comfort in pronouncing or hearing) or cacophony (a sense of strain and discomfort in pronouncing or hearing). As an example of the first may serve the famous lines of E.A. Poe:

...silken sad uncertain

rustling of each purple curtain...

An example of the second is provided by the unspeakable combination of sounds found in R. Browning: Nor soul helps flesh now more than flesh helps soul.

·Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combination of words. Rhyming words are generally placed at a regular distance from each other. In verse they are usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines.

Identity and similarity of sound combinations may be relative. For instance, we distinguish between full rhymes and incomplete rhymes.

ØThe full rhyme presupposes identity of the vowel sound and the following consonant sounds in a stressed syllable e.g. rat – bat.

ØIncomplete rhymes present a greater variety. They can be divided into two main groups: vowel rhymes and consonant rhymes.

§In vowel-rhymes the vowels of the syllables in corresponding words are identical, but the consonants may be different as in flesh – fresh – press.

§Consonant rhymes, on the contrary, show concordance (согласие, гармония) in consonants and disparity (несоответствие) in vowels, as in worth – forth, tale – tool, treble – trouble; flung – long.

ØModifications in rhyming sometimes go so far as to make one word rhyme with a combination of words; or two or even three words rhyme with a corresponding two or three words, as in "upon her honour – won her", "bottom – forgot themshot him". Such rhymes are called compound or broken. The peculiarity of rhymes of this type is that the combination of words is made to sound like one word - a

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device which inevitably gives a colloquial and sometimes a humorous touch to the utterance.

ØCompound rhyme may be set against what is called eyerhyme, where the letters and not the sounds are identical, as in love - prove, flood - brood, have - grave. It follows that compound rhyme is perceived in reading aloud, eyerhyme can only be perceived in the written verse.

·Rhythm is the pattern of interchange of strong and weak segments. It's a regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables that make a poetic text. Various combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables determine the metre (iambus, dactyl, trochee, amphibrach, anapaest, etc.).

Rhythm exists in all spheres of human activity and assumes multifarious forms. It is a mighty weapon in stirring up emotions. It contributes to the general sense.

6.2. Graphical Means

To create additional information in a prose discourse soundinstrumenting is seldom used. In contemporary advertising, mass media and, above all, imaginative prose sound is foregrounded mainly through the change of its accepted graphical representation. This intentional violation of the graphical shape of a word (or word combination) used to reflect its authentic pronunciation is called graphon.

Graphons, indicating irregularities or carelessness of pronunciation were occasionally introduced into English novels and journalism as early as the beginning of the eighteenth century and since then have acquired an ever growing frequency of usage, popularity among writers, journalists, advertizers, and a continuously widening scope of functions.

Graphon proved to be an extremely concise but effective means of supplying information about the speaker's origin, social and educational background, physical or emotional condition, etc.

It is also the means of

·expressing the author's attitude to the characters:

e.g. the famous Thackeray's character - butler Yellowplush - impresses his listeners with the learned words pronouncing them as "sellybrated" (celebrated), "bennyviolent" (benevolent), "illygitmit" (illegitimate), "jewinile" (juvenile), or the no less famous Mr. Babbitt uses "peerading" (parading), "Eytalians" (Italians), "peepul" (people), so the reader obtains not only the vivid image and the social, cultural, educational characteristics of the personages, but also both Thackeray's and S. Lewis' sarcastic attitude to them.

·showing the physical defects of the speakers:

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e.g. "The b-b-b-b-bas-tud - he seen me c--c-c-c-coming" in R. P. Warren's Sugar Boy's speech or "You don't mean to thay that thith ith your firth time" (B.C.) – the stuttering of one and the lisping of the other.

Graphon, thus individualizing the character's speech, adds to his plausibility, vividness, memorability. At the same time, graphon is very good at conveying the atmosphere of authentic live communication, of the informality of the speech act. Some amalgamated forms, which are the result of strong assimilation, became clichés in contemporary prose dialogue: "gimme" (give me), "lemme" (let me), "gonna" (going to), "gotta" (got to), "coupla" (couple of), "mighta" (might have), "willya" (will you), etc.

Graphical changes may reflect not only the peculiarities of pronunciation, but are also used to convey the intensity of the stress, emphasizing and thus foregrounding the stressed words. To such purely graphical means, not involving the violations, we should refer all changes of the type (italics, capitalization), spacing of graphemes (hyphenation, multiplication) and of lines.

The latter was widely exercised in Russian poetry by V. Mayakovsky, famous for his "steps" in verse lines, or A. Voznesensky. In English the most often referred to "graphical imagist" was E. E. Cummings.

·According to the frequency of usage, variability of functions, the first place among graphical means of foregrounding is occupied by italics. Besides italicizing words, to add to their logical or emotive significance, separate syllables and morphemes may also be emphasized by italics (which is highly characteristic of D. Salinger or T. Capote).

·Intensity of speech (often in commands) is transmitted through the multiplication of a grapheme or capitalization of the word, as in Babbitt's shriek "Alllll aboarrrrrd", or in the desperate appeal in A. Huxley's Brave New World – "Help. Help. HELP."

·Hyphenation of a word suggests the rhymed or clipped manner in which it is uttered as in the humiliating comment from Fl. O'Connor's story - "grinning like a chim-pan-zee".

Summing up the informational options of the graphical arrangement of a word (a line, a discourse), one sees their varied application for recreating the individual and social peculiarities of the speaker, the atmosphere of the communication act – all aimed at revealing and emphasizing the author's viewpoint.

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Lecture 7: Lexical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

7.1.The interaction of different types of a lexical meanings.

7.2.The interaction between two lexical meanings simultaneously materialised in the context.

7.3.The interaction of stable word combinations with the context.

Words in a context may acquire additional lexical meanings not fixed in the dictionaries, what we have called contextual meanings. The latter may sometimes deviate from the dictionary meaning to such a degree that the new meaning even becomes the opposite of the primary meaning. What is known in linguistics as transferred meaning is practically the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual.

The transferred meaning of a word may be fixed in dictionaries as a result of long and frequent use of the word other than in its primary meaning. In this case we register a derivative meaning of the word. Hence the term transferred should be used signifying the development of the semantic structure of the word. In this case we do not perceive two meanings. When we perceive two meanings of the word simultaneously, we are confronted with a stylistic device in which the two meanings interact.

7.1.The Interaction of Different Types of Lexical Meaning

üInteraction of dictionary and contextual logical meaning (metaphor, personification, allusion, allegory; metonymy, synecdoche; irony)

The relation between dictionary and contextual meanings may be main-

tained along different lines: on the principle of affinity, on that of proximity, (or symbol-referent relations), or on opposition. Thus the stylistic device based on the first principle is metaphor, on the second, metonymy and on the third, irony

1. Metaphor is a relation between the dictionary and contextual logical meanings based on the affinity or similarity of certain properties or features of the two corresponding concepts. Metaphor can be embodied in all the meaningful parts of speech, in nouns, adjectives, verbs, adverbs and sometimes even in the auxiliary parts of speech, as in prepositions. Metaphor as any stylistic devices can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness. Thus metaphors which are absolutely unexpected, are quite unpredictable, are called genuine metaphors. The wider the gap between the asso-

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