E. g. What else do 1 remember? Let me see.
There comes out of the cloud our house... (Dickens)
Another category that helps create stylistic colouring is that of gender. The result of its deviant use is personification and depersonification. As Skrebnev points out although the morphological category of gender is practically non-existent in modern English special rules concern whole classes of nouns that are traditionally associated with feminine or masculine gender. Thus countries are generally classed as feminine (France sent her representative to the conference.) Abstract notions associated with strength and fierceness are personified as masculine while feminine is associated with beauty or gentleness (death, fear, war, anger—Zie, spring, peace, kindness—she). Names of vessels and other vehicles (ship, boat, carriage, coach, car) are treated as feminine.
Another deviant use of this category according to Skrebnev is the use of animate nouns as inanimate ones that he terms «depersonification» illustrated by the following passage:
«Where did you find it?» asked Mord Em'ly of Miss Giiliken with a satirical accent.
«Who are you calling "it"?» demanded Mr. Barden aggressively. «P'raps you'll kindly call me "im and not it». (Partridge)
Similar cases of deviation on the morphological level are given by the author for the categories of person, number, mood and some others.
Paradigmatic lexicology subdivides English vocabulary into stylistic layers. In most works on this problem (cf. books by Galperin, Arnold, Vmogradov) all words of the national language are usually described in terms of neutral, literary and colloquial with further subdivision into poetic, archaic, foreign, jargonisms, slang, etc.
Skrebnev uses different terms for practically the same purposes. His terminology includes correspondingly neutral, positive (elevated) and negative (degraded) layers.
Subdivision inside these categories is much the same with the exclusion of such groups as bookish and archaic words and special terms that Galperin, for example, includes into the special literary vocabulary (described as positive in Skrebnev's system) while Skrebnev claims that they may have both a positive and negative stylistic function depending on the purpose of the utterance and the context.
The same consideration concerns the so-called barbarisms or foreign is whose stylistic value (elevated or degraded) depends on the I of text in which they are used. To illustrate his point Skrebnev s two examples of barbarisms used by people of different social ,s and age. Used by an upper-class character from John Galswor-the word chic has a tinge of elegance showing the character's iwledge of French, He maintains that Italian words ciao and nbina current among Russian youngsters at one time were also nsidered stylistically 'higher' than their Russian equivalents. At the пе time it's hard to say whether they should all be classified as isitive just because they are of foreign origin. Each instance of use ould be considered individually.
Stylistic differentiation suggested by Skrebnev includes the following ratification:
positive/elevated
Poetic;
Official;
Professional.
Bookish and archaic words occupy a peculiar place among the other positive words due to the fact that they can be found in any other group (poetic, official or professional).
Neutral
Negative/degraded
colloquial; neologisms;
jargon; slang; nonce-words;
vulgar words .
Special mention is made of terms. The author maintains that the stylistic function of terms varies in different types of speech.
In non-professional spheres, such as literary prose, newspaper texts, everyday speech special terms are associated with socially prestigious occupations and therefore are marked as elevated. On the other hand the use of non-popular terms, unknown to the average speaker, shows a pretentious manner of speech, lack of taste or tact.
Paradigmatic syntax has to do with the sentence paradigm: completeness of sentence structure, communicative types of sentences, word order, and type of syntactical connection.
Paradigmatic syntactical means of expression arranged according to these four types include
Completeness of sentence structure
ellipsis;
aposiopesis;
one-member nominative sentences.
Redundancy, repetition of sentence parts, syntactic tautology (prolepsis), polysyndeton.
Word order
Inversion of sentence members.
Communicative types of sentences
Quasi-affirmative sentences: Isn't that too bad? = That is too bad.
Quasi-interrogative sentences: Here you are to write down your age and
birthplace = How old are you? Where were you born?
Quasi-negative sentences: Did I say a word about the money (Shaw) = / did not say...
Quasi-imperative sentences: Here! Quick! = Come here! Be quick!
In these types of sentences the syntactical formal meaning of the structure contradicts the actual meaning implied so that negative sentences read affirmative, questions do not require answers but are in fact declarative sentences (rhetorical questions), etc. One communicative meaning appears in disguise of another. Skrebnev holds that «the task of stylistic analysis is to find out to what type of speech (and its sublanguage) the given construction belongs.» (47, p. 100).
Type of syntactic connection
detachment;
parenthetic elements;
asyndetic subordination and coordination.
Paradigmatic semasiology deals with transfer of names or what are traditionally known as tropes. In Skrebnev's classification these expressive means received the term based on their ability to rename: figures of replacement.
All figures of replacement are subdivided into 2 groups: figures of quantity and figures of quality.
Figures of quantity. In figures of quantity renaming is based on inexactitude of measurements, in other words it's either saying too much (overestimating, intensifying the properties) or too little (underestimating the size, value, importance, etc.) about the object or phenomenon. Accordingly there are two figures of this type.
Hyperbole
E. g. You couldn't hear yourself think for the noise.
Meosis {understatement, litotes).
E. g. It's not unusual for him to come home at this hour.
According to Skrebnev this is the most primitive type of renaming.
Figures of quality comprise 3 types of renaming:
• transfer based on a real connection between the object of nomination and the object whose name it's given.
This is called metonymy in its two forms: synecdoche and periphrasis.
E. g. I'm all ears; Hands wanted.
Periphrasis and its varieties euphemism and anti-euphemism.
E.g. Ladies and the worser halves; I never call a spade a spade, I call t a bloody shovel.
• transfer based on affinity (similarity, not real connection): metaphor.
Ikrebnev describes metaphor as an expressive renaming on the basis of similarity of two objects. The speaker searches for associations in his mind's eye, the ground for comparison is not so open to view is with metonymy. It's more complicated in nature. Metaphor has no formal limitations Skrebnev maintains, and that is why this is not a purely lexical stylistic device as many authors describe it (see jalperin's classification).
This is a device that can involve a word, a part of a sentence or in whole sentence. We may add that whole works of art can be viewed is metaphoric and an example of it is the novel by John Updike «The Centaur».
As for the varieties there are not just simple metaphors like She is a flower, but sustained metaphors, also called extended, when one netaphorical statement creating an image is followed by another inked to the previous one: This is a day of your golden opportunity, Sarge . Don't let it turn to brass. (Pendelton)
Often a sustained metaphor gives rise to a device called catachresis or mixed metaphor)—-which consists in the incongruity of the parts of a sustained metaphor. This happens when objects of the two or more parts of a sustained metaphor belong to different semantic spheres and the logical chain seems disconnected. The effect is usually comical.
E. g. «For somewhere», said Poirot to himself indulging an absolute riot of mixed metaphors «there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrow into the air, one will come down and hit a glass-house!» (Christie)
A Belgian speaking English confused a number of popular proverbs and quotations that in reality look like the following: to look for a needle in a haystack', to let sleeping dogs lie', to put one's foot down; I shot an arrow into the air (Longfellow); people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.
Other varieties of metaphor according to Skrebnev also include
Allusion defined as reference to a famous historical, literary, mythological or biblical character or event, commonly known.
E. g. It's his Achilles heel (myth of vulnerability). Personification—attributing human properties to lifeless objects.
E.g. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year! (Milton)
Antonomasia defined as a variety of allusion, because in Skrebnev's view it's the use of the name of a historical, literary, mythological or biblical personage applied to a person described. Some of the most famous ones are Brutus (traitor), Don Juan (lady's man).
It should be noted that this definition is only limited to the allusive nature of this device. There is another approach (cf. Galperin and others) in which antonomasia also covers instances of transference of common nouns in place of proper names, such as Mr. Noble Knight, Duke the Iron Heart.
Allegory expresses abstract ideas through concrete pictures.
E. g. The scales of justice; It's time to beat your swords into ploughshares.
It should be noted that allegory is not just a stylistic term, but also a term of art in general and can be found in other artistic forms: in painting, sculpture, dance, and architecture.
• transfer by contrast when the two objects are opposed implies irony.
Irony (meaning «concealed mockery», in Greek eironeia) is a device based on the opposition of meaning to the sense (dictionary and contextual). Here we observe the greatest semantic shift between the notion named and the notion meant.
Skrebnev distinguishes 2 kinds of ironic utterances:
— obviously explicit ironical, which no one would take at their face value due to the situation, tune and structure.
E. g. A fine friend you are! That's a pretty kettle offish!
— and implicit, when the ironical message is communicated against a wider context like in Oscar Wilde's tale «The Devoted Friend» where the real meaning of the title only becomes obvious after you read the story. On the whole irony is used with the aim of critical evaluation and the general scheme is praise stands for blame and extremely rarely in the reverse order. However when it does happen the term in the latter case is astheism.
E. g. Clever bastard! Lucky devil!
One of the powerful techniques of achieving ironic effect is the mixture of registers of speech (social styles appropriate for the occasion): high-flown style on socially low topics or vice versa.
Syntagmatic stylistics
Syntagmatic stylistics (stylistics of sequences) deals with the stylistic functions of linguistic units used in syntagmatic chains, in linear combinations, not separately but in connection with other units. Syntagmatic stylistics falls into the same level determined branches.
Syntagmatic phonetics deals with the interaction of speech sounds and intonation, sentence stress, tempo. All these features that characterise suprasegmental speech phonetically are sometimes also called prosodic.
So stylistic phonetics studies such stylistic devices and expressive means as alliteration (recurrence of the initial consonant in two or more words in close succession). It's a typically English feature because ancient English poetry was based more on alliteration than on rhyme. We find a vestige of this once all-embracing literary device in proverbs and sayings that came down to us,
E. g. Now or never, Last but not least; As good as gold.
With time its function broadened into prose and other types of texts.
It became very popular in titles, headlines and slogans.
E. g. Pride and Prejudice. (Austin)
Posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club. (Dickens)
work or wages!; Workers of the world, unite !
Speaking of the change of this device's role chronologically we ould make special note of its prominence in certain professional eas of modern English that has not been mentioned by Skrebnev. Today alliteration is one of the favourite devices of commercials and advertising language.
E.g. New whipped cream: No mixing or measuring. No beating or the ring..
Colgate toothpaste: The Flavor's Fresher than ever—It's New. Improved, Fortified.
Assonance (the recurrence of stressed vowels).
E.g. ...Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden; shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore. (Рое)
Paronomasia (using words similar in sound but different in meaning th euphonic effect).
The popular example to illustrate this device is drawn from E. A. Poe's Raven .
E.g.And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting Rhythm and meter.
The pattern of interchange of strong and weak segments is called rhythm. It's a regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables that make a poetic text. Various combinations of stressed and un-tressed syllables determine the metre (iambus, dactyl, trochee, etc.).
Rhyme is another feature that distinguishes verse from prose and consists in the acoustic coincidence of stressed syllables at the end of verse lines.
Here's an example to illustrate dactylic meter and rhyme given in Skrebnev's book
Take her up tenderly,
Lift her with care,
Fashion'd so slenderly
Young and so fair.(Hood)
Syntagmatic morphology deals with the importance of grammar forms used in a paragraph or text that help in creating a certain stylistic effect.
We find much in common between Skrebnev's description of this area and Leech's definition of syntagmatic deviant figures. Skrebnev writes: «Varying the morphological means of expressing grammatical hotions is based... upon the general rule: monotonous repetition of morphemes or frequent recurrence of morphological meanings expressed differently...» (47, p. 146).
He also indicates that while it is normally considered a stylistic fault it acquires special meaning when used on purpose. He describes the effect achieved by the use of morphological synonyms of the genetive with Shakespeare—the possessive case (Shakespeare's plays), prepositional o/-phrase (the plays of Shakespeare) and an attributive noun (Shakespeare plays) as «elegant variation» of style.
Syntagmatic lexicology studies the «word-and-context» juxtaposition that presents a number of stylistic problems—especially those connected with co-occurrence of words of various stylistic colourings.
Each of these cases must be considered individually because each literary text is unique in its choice and combination of words. Such phenomena as various instances of intentional and unintentional lexical mixtures as well as varieties of lexical recurrence fall in with this approach.
Some new more modem stylistic terms appear in this connection-stylistic irradiation, heterostylistic texts, etc. We can observe this sort of stylistic mixture in a passage from O'Henry provided by Skrebnev:
Jeff, says Andy after a long time, quite umeidom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business.,.
Syntagmatic syntax deals with more familiar phenomena since it has to do with the use of sentences in a text. Skrebnev distinguishes purely syntactical repetition to which he refersparallelism as structural repetition of sentences though often accompanied by the lexical repetition
E. g. The cock is crowing, The stream is flowing... ( Wordsworth)
and lexico-syntactical devices such as
anaphora (identity of beginnings, initial elements).
E. g. If only little Edward were twenty, old enough to marry well and fend for himself instead often. If only it were not necessary to provide a dowaryforhis daughter. If only his own debts were less. (Rutherfurd)
Epiphora (opposite of the anaphora, identical elements at the end of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, stanzas).
E. g. For all averred, I had killed the bird. That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! Said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow!
(Coleridge)
Framing (repetition of some element at the beginning and at the end of a sentence, paragraph or stanza).