Lexico-syntatical stylistic devices

1. Antithesis. Lexical stylistic devices are based on the foregrounding of the logical or emotive meaning of a lexical unit. Syntactical devices enrich the utterance with logical, emotive and expressive information which disregards the lexical meanings of sentence components. But there are a few stylistic devices whose emphasis depends not only on the arrangement of sentence members but also on their construction and on their lexical aspect. Let us consider them in detail.

This stylistic device is based on finding some points of sharp contrast between two things or phenomena. From the syntactic point of view it is a variety of parallel construction. But whereas parallelism is indifferent to the semantics of its components, the two parts of an antithesis must be semantically opposite to each other. E.g. Some people have much to live on, but little to live for. (O.W.) Here muck and Utile present an antonymous pair, supported by the contextual opposition of postpositives "on" and "for".

The syntactic structures in which antithesis is realized are diverse, from a simple extended sentence to a complex syntactic unity, the paragraph. Most frequently it is met in asyndetic complex sentences and in compound sentences with the conjunction but Antithesis is built up on parallel constructions whose components are expressed by the same members of the sentence and which are arranged in the same order, e.g. Jack (pulling off his gloves): When one is in town, one amuses oneself. When one is in the country, one amuses other people. (O.W.)

Antithesis rests on the borderline between stylistics and logic. The extreme cases are easily recognizable, but most of the cases are intermediate. However, we should distinguish between antithesis and contrast. The latter is a literary device based on logical opposition between the phenomena set one against another.

Antithesis is widely used in all types of speech: in the belles-lettres style, publicistic, scientific and everyday colloquial. Its stylistic functions include both the contrastive comparison of things and the rhythmical arrangement of the utterance. Owing to the rhythmical organization antithesis is often met in poetry in combination with anaphora, epiphora, alliteration, etc. Whole poems may be built up on this device, as "A Madrigal" by Shakespeare or "To a False Friend" by Thomas Hood.

2. Climax (gradation). This is another case of semantically complicated parallelism. Climax is an arrangement of words, clauses, sentences, in which the next unit is more important than the previous one. This increase in significance may be realized in three ways, depending on which three types of climax are distinguished.

1. In logical climax the gradation is based on the relative importance of the component parts considered from the point of view of the concept embodied in them, e.g. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside. (D.)

2. Emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning, e.g. It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city. As we can see, the gradation here is based on synonymous strings of words with emotive meaning, having slight semantic differences. Since emotional tension cannot last long, we find this type of climax mostly in sentences, and not in longer syntactical units.

3. An evident increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts is shown by quantitative climax. In the story "The Escape" S.Maugham thus depicts the search of a suitable residence by the two main characters: They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens. In the following example climax is
materialized by setting side by side concepts of time: / let a day slip by
without seeing her, then three, a whole week once. (T-C)

As can be seen from the above examples, the main features of climax are the following: the closeness of the elements arranged in the increasing order: the underlying parallel arrangement; the explanatory context which helps the reader to grasp the gradation.

When the relative synonyms in the climax are descending in order, we deal with the negative form of climax, e.g. Fledgeby hasn't heard of anything. "No, there's not a word of news, " says Lammie. "Not a particle, "adds Boot. "Not an atom, "chimes in Brewer. (D.) Here every next word is smaller in importance than the previous one.

This stylistic device is widely used in the belles-lettres and publicistic styles. In author's narration climax is used for creating an emotional and vivid characteristic of the personages, events, actions, in the direct speech of characters it is used for subjective evaluation of things or phenomena, in publicistic style it is one of the main means of emotionally influencing the reader.

3. Anticlimax. Climax can suddenly be interrupted by an unexpected turn of thought which defeats the expectations of the reader and results in complete semantic reversal of the emphasized notion. There is a sudden drop from the lofty or serious to the ridiculous. This device is known as anticlimax, e.g. Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy and wealthy and dead. (J.Th.) Anticlimax results in the destruction of the rhetorical effect created by climax by means of a sudden decrease in the tension of the utterance. It is often used by writers for the creation of irony and paradoxes. This illogical sequence of the arrangement of the semantic components in the utterance may create a humorous effect. It is frequently used by humorists like Mark Twain and Jerome K. Jerome. In his Three Men in a Boat the author expands on the beauties of the sunset on the river
and concludes in a very prosaic way: But we didn't sail into the world of golden sunset: we went slap into that old punt where the gentlemen were fishing.

4. Simile. This is a stylistic device consisting in partial imaginative comparison of two objects belonging to different classes. It consists of two components, the one which is compared is called the tenor, the one with which it is compared is called the vehicle. The two parts of simile are linked by such words as like, as...as, as though, such, etc. E.g. His flesh was like a blister you could prickle with a needle. (Gr.Gr.) Simile should not be confused with a logical comparison. The latter uses the notions belonging to the same class, in simile objects belonging to different classes are compared. Here the unimportant properties of the compared objects are not taken into account, only the quality which is essential for the speaker is taken. This feature is called the foundation of a simile. It may be mentioned explicitly, e.g. His muscles are hard as rock. (T.C.) In other cases it is not named directly, and it enriches the simile, because it involves the reader's imagination. When the foundation of the simile is not quite clear from the context, the author may give a key in which he explains what similarities led him to liken two different entities, e.g. The singing woman shut down — like a wireless set, the last sound was a wail and a vibration. (Gr.Gr.)

As time goes on, many similes lose their originality and become trite. This is observed in some traditional similes based on comparing various features of people's character or activities with the animals to which the given quality is attributed, e.g. sly as a fox, faithful as a dog, to swim like a duck, to work like a horse. When translating such similes into Ukrainian we should look for a suitable equivalent in our language. It may be based on a different image, e.g. as old as the hills - CTapnw hk CBrr; as quick as a monkey - ujbhjik™ ak 6jniCKaBKa.

In some cases the link between the tenor and the vehicle is expressed by notional verbs such as to resemble, to remind, to appear, etc. Here we deal with a disguised simile, because the likeness between the objects seems less evident, and needs some effort to understand it, e.g. The ball appeared to the batter to be a slow spinning planet looming toward the earth. (B.M.)

Simile differs from metaphor: metaphor aims at identifying two unlike objects on the grounds of possessing one common characteristic, in simile two objects are compared on the grounds of similarity of some quality, while the objects are kept apart. E.g. She is a beautiful rose (metaphor) - she is like a beautiful rose (simile).

5. Litotes. This device makes use of negative constructions. Though one negation plus a noun or an adjective serves to establish a positive feature in a person or thing, this positive feature is a little diminished in quality as compared with a synonymous expression. Compare: He is no coward. — He is a brave man. These two phrases are not exactly the same, the construction with litotes is weaker in meaning. At the same time they possess additional connotation and admit of special interpretation.

A variant of litotes is a construction with two negations. In this case litotes is presented as a two-component structure in which these two negations are joined together to give evaluation, e.g. He is not unkind. Such constructions are more definitive in meaning than the previous ones. But though they make the assertion more logically apparent, they lack precision. They may be regarded as deliberate understatements, whereas the structures that have only one negative are more categorical in stating the positive quality of a person or thing.

In stylistics litotes is mainly used to weaken the positive characteristic of the object, e.g. Julia was not dissatisfied with herself. (S.M.) In personages' speech it is used for conveying a reserved statement or ironical attitude to the object, e.g. "Suppose, "he said, "someone had got a line on him, forced him into this racket, as you forced Harbin to douhlecross... ". - "It'spossible". - "And they murdered him in case he talked when he was arrested". - "It's not impossible" (S.M.).

In scientific prose style it is used to convey carefulness in the expression of thought, e.g. // is not uncommon for grammarians to distinguish between these phenomena. ("Language") In poetry it is sometimes used to suggest that language fails to convey the poet's feelings and so he uses negations to express the inexpressible, as in the well-known Sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare.

6. Periphrasis. This is a stylistic device consisting in replacing an object or phenomenon by the description of its most essential features. Periphrasis reinforces the expressiveness of speech, because it not only names the object, but also describes it in a round-about way. It is common knowledge that one and the same object may be identified in different ways and so have different appellations. A certain person may be denoted in different situations as "his benefactor", "this bore", "the miserable wreck", etc. These names will become clear only in a definite context, e.g. / understand you are poor, and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced. (D.) Here the underlined expression is a periphrasis for the word "mother". This is easily understood by the reader with the help of the given context.

Original periphrases created by writers can be divided into logical and figurative. Logical periphrasis is based on the logical connection of the round-about phrase with a specific feature of an object. In this case either a characteristic feature of an object is used instead of the name of the whole object (strong sex) or a wider notion is used for naming the concrete object or person (instrument of destruction - pistol, the most pardonable of human weaknesses - love). Figurative periphrasis is based on the sustained metaphor or metonymy, e.g. the root of all evil - money; to tie the knot - to marry.

Both logical and figurative periphrases may be original, genuine and hackneyed, trite. In the latter case they become periphrastic synonyms to the words denoting the same object, e.g. the fair sex (women), my better half (wife). Periphrasis as a stylistic device is a new, genuine nomination of an object, it is an individual feature of the author's style. This is the process which realizes the power of language to coin new names for objects by disclosing some quality of the object, even though it may be passing, and making it alone to represent the object, e.g. / kept still and close to the tree, like a hunted piece of nature willing myself to be the colour of bark and leaves and rain. (M.Sp.) Here the author vividly describes any wild animal in the forest by an image-bearing periphrasis, which conveys a purely individual perception of the described object.

Literature:

1. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка. – М., 1990.
2. Єфімов Л.П., Ясінецька О.А. Стилістика англійської мови і дискурсивний аналіз. Учбово-методичний посібник. – Вінниця, 2004.
3. Мороховский А.Н., Воробьев О.П. и др. Стилистика английского языка. – К., 1991.
4. Трибуханчик А.М. Курс стилістики англійської мови (для денного відділення). – Ніжин,2006.
5. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. – М, 1981.
6. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics: A manual. – Vinnytsia, 2003.

Questions for Control:

1. What is the difference between antithesis and logical contrast?
2. Comment on the differences logical, emotional and quantitative climax.
3. In what cases is the foundation of the simile expressed explicitly?
4. How should trite similes be translated into Ukrainian?
5. Is there any difference between the phrases "he is kind" and "he is not unkind"?
6. Why do some writers resort to periphrasis? What additional information does it convey?