Prvá prednáška

Stylistics, its object and tasks

- Traditional branches of linguistics are clearly defined: phonetics – deals with speech

sounds and intonation, lexicology – treats words, their meaning and vocabulary

structure, syntax – analyses forms of words and their function in a sentence

- Stylistics – it is a comparatively new branch of linguistics, the term stylistics came into

existence not too long ago (the object of stylistic study go as far back as ancient

schools or rhetoric and poetics – rhetoric and dialectics = stylistics. Poetics – literary

criticism

- Stylistics – has not been definitely defined because of the following reasons: the

object and the material it studies. Stylistic value of a text is not the level-biased

approach (system of sounds, words and clauses) – there is a various stylistic meaning

of linguistic units and also the interaction of these elements – v štylistike je všetko

poprepájané. Stylistics deals with style, which is also defined differently by scholars

and it is hardly possible to regard it as a term

- Stylistics – is that branch of linguistics, which studies the principles and effect of

choice and usage of different language elements in rendering thought and

emotion under different conditions of communication

Stylistics is concerned with the following issues:

- a. The aesthetic function of language – is an immanent part of works of art – poetry

and imaginative prose but it leaves out works of science, diplomatic or commercial

correspondence, technical instructions and many other types of texts.

- b. Expressive means in language – výrazové prostriedky – napríklad vo fonetike –

intonácie.. - are mostly employed in types of speech that aims to affect the reader or

listener: poetry, fiction, oratory, and informal intercourse but rarely in technical texts

or business language.

- c. Synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea – it is the possibility of

choice, with the change or wording and change in meaning.

- d. Emotional colouring in language – it creates a certain stylistic effect and makes a

text either a highly lyrical piece of description or a satirical derision with a different

stylistic value.

- e. A system of special device called stylistic devices – štylistické prostriedky =

štylém = štylistické figúry – everything is formed by the combination of features

peculiar to it. Whatever we say or write, hear or read is not style by itself but has style,

it demonstrates stylistic features.

- F. The splitting of the literary language into separate systems called style – any

national language contains a number of sublanguages or micro languages or varieties

of language with their own specific features, their own style. Besides these functional

styles that are rooted in the norm of the language there exist so called substandard

types of speech such as slang, barbarism, vulgarisms, taboo and so on..

- G. The interrelation between language and though – when the form is changed a

change in content takes place – keď zmením slovosled, môžem tomu dať iný význam.

- H. The individual manner of an author in making use of the language – the

individual manner can only appear out of a number of elements provided by the

common background and employed and combined in a specific manner.

Stylistics of language and speech

- We need to distinguish between language (langue) and speech (parole) introduced by

F. Saussure; Language is a system of elementary and complex signs – phonemes,

morphemes, words, word combinations, utterances and combination of utterances.

Language exists only in human minds and linguistic forms of units can be

systematised into paradigms. Language is mentally organised system of linguistic

units, and individual speaker never uses it, when we use these units we mix them in

acts of speech.

- Normal paradigm – I stood calmly, I stood quiet..

- Abnormal paradigm – i stood frozen

- Speech – is not a purely mental phenomenon, not a system but a process of combining

these linguistic elements into linear linguistic units that are called syntagmatic. The

result is the linear or syntagmatic combination of vowels and consonants into words,

sentences and texts. Otec je dobry – syntagma – ocovi, otec .. keď skloňujem je to

paradigm..

- Syntagmatic – is a purely linguistic term meaning a coherent sequence of words.

Peter is.. ale potom už poviem len He.. spája nám to vetu a ja jej chápem

- Stylistics – is a branch of linguistics that deals with texts, not with the system of signs

or process or speech production as such. The elements stylistically relevant are studied

both syntagmatically and paradigmatically (paradigmatically – classifying all stylistic

means into tropes and syntagmatically into figures of speech)

- Stylistics of language – analyses permanent or inherent – zdedené – niečo, za čo to

slovo nemôže stylistic properties of language elements.

- Stylistics of speech – studies stylistic properties, which appear in a context – they are

called adherent.

- English words prevaricate (vykrúcať sa), comprehend, lass, are bookish or archaic and

these are their inherent properties – the unexpected use of any of these words in a

modern context will be adherent stylistic property. – stylistics of language describes

and classifies the inherent stylistic colouring of language units. Stylistics of speech

studies the composition of the utterance – the arrangement, selection and distribution

of different words, and their adherent qualities. Ak ich použíjeme v modernom texte,

dame mu inú hodnotu-

- Stylistics of language – describes and classifies the inherent stylistic colouring of

language units

- Stylistics of speech – studies the composition of the utterance – the arrangement,

selection and distribution of different words, and their adherent qualities.

Literary and linguistic stylistics

- We distinguish between literary and linguistic stylistics according to the type of

stylistic research. They have some meeting points or links in that they have the

common objects of research – both study:

- 1. The literary language from the point of view of its variability

- 2. The idiolect (individual speech) of a writer

- 3. Poetic speech that has its own specific laws

Linguistic stylistics studies:

- Functional styles – in their development and current state

- The linguistic nature of the expressive means of the language, their systematic

character and their functions

Literary stylistics studies:

- The composition of a work of art

- Various literary genres

- The writer´s outlook

Stylistic subdisciplines:

Functional stylistics – is a branch of linguistic stylistics, investigates functional styles.

Stylistic lexicology – studies the semantic structure of the word and the interrelation –

interplay – of the connotative and denotative meanings of the word and the interrelation of the

stylistic connotations of the word and the context.

Stylistic phonetics – phonostylistics – studies style-forming phonetic features of the text, it

describes prosodic features of prose and poetry and variants of pronunciation in different

types of speech – colloquial or oratory.

Stylistic morphology – is interested in the specific grammatical forms and categories, such as

the number of the noun, or the peculiar use of tense forms of the verb.

Stylistic syntax – is one of the oldest branches of stylistic studies, it studies the expressive

order of words, types of syntactic links (asyndeton, polysyndeton, figures) of speech

(antithesis, chiasmus). It also deals with bigger units from paragraph onwards.

Stylistic neutrality and stylistic colouring

Style is difficult to define, but one of the definitions is the deviation from a linguistic norm

– what is stylistically conspicuous – nápadny, stylistically relevant or stylistically coloured is

a departure – odchýlka – from the norm of a given national language

- The majority of the words are neutral

- Stylistically coloured words – bookish, solemn – slývnostný, peotic, official,

colloquial, rustic..

- Stylistically coloured words – formal and informal vocabulary

- Stylistically coloured words – are are limited to specific conditions of communication

- Bukish words – decease, attire, decline (a proposal)

- Neutral words – die, clothes, refuse

- Colloquial – informal – words – snuff it, rags, turn down..

Stylistic connotations may be inherent or adherent. Stylistically coloured words possess

inherent stylistic connotations. Stylistically neutral words will have only adherent stylistic

connotations in a certain context.

Example:

A luxury hotel for dogs is to be opened at Lima, Peru a city of 30.000 dogs. The furry guests

will have separate hygienic kennel, top medical care and high standard suisine, including the

best bones.

Suisine – inherently formal – bookish, high-flown

- Adherent connotation in the context – lowered, humorous

Bones – stylistically neutral

- Adherent connotation in the context – elevated, humorous

Stylistic function

- Stylistics deals with the lexical, grammatical, phontetic and phraseological data of

language, but it does not study separate linguistic units like phonemes or words or

clauses, but their stylistic function – their expressive potential and their interaction in a

text. Stylistics interprets the opposition or clash between the contextual meaning of a

word and its denotative meaning. Stylistics is engaged in the study of connotative

meaning.

- Denotative meaning of word – is linked to the logical or nominative meaning

- Connotative meaning of a word – connected only with extra-linguistic circumstances –

situation of communication and the participants of communication. Connotative

meaning consists of:

1. Emotive component – expresses various feelings or emotions. Emotions differ from

feelings. Emotions: joy, pleasure, anger, worry, surprise – are short-lived. Feelings –

love, hatred, respect, pride, dignity – more stable.

2. Evaluative component – charges the word with negative, positive, or ironic or other

types of connotation – it conveys the speaker´s attitude on relation to the object of

speech.

3. Expressive component – increases or decreases the expressiveness of the message.

The group of words that help create this expressive effect are the so-called –

intensifiers – absolutely, frightfully, really..

4. Stylistic component – a word possesses stylistic connotation if it belongs to a certain

functional style or a specific layer of vocabulary (archaisms, barbarism, slang,

jargon,ets..) for example: index, negotiate assets – indicative of business language.

2. prednáška

Style

- Style refers to the way in which language is used ina given context, by a given person,

for a given purpose

- Certain English expressions belong to the official style of weather forecasting

(scattered showers, bright intervals), while other expressions belong to the style of

everyday conversational remarks about the weather (lovely day, a bit chilly)

- To what or whom do we attribute style? – in the broadest sense, style can be applied

to both spoken and written, literary and every-day varieties of language.

- The term style is applied to the linguistic habits of a particular writer (the style of

Dickens, ets.. )

- It is applied to the way language is used in a particular genre, period of school of

writing or some combination of these: early eighteenth-century style, the style of

Victorian novels, etc.

- Style is a relational term? We talk about “the style of x”, referring through “style” to

characteristics of language use, and correlating these with some extralinguistic x,

which we may call the stylistic domain. The x (writer, period, etc.) defines some

corpus of writings in which he characteristics of language use are to be found

- Each writer has a linguistic “thumbprint” – otlačok - an individual combination of

linguistic habits which somehow betrays him in all that he writes

- The word style is derived from the Latin word – “stilus” – a short stick sharp at one

end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets.

- The term style is ambiguous – it has a number of senses: it is applied to the teaching

how to write a composition, it is used to reveal the correspondence between thought

and expressions, or abstract notions as: style is deviation, style is choice. Etc.

- The most frequent definition of style (S. Chatman In: Galpering, 1997): “style is a

product of individual choices and patterns of choices (emphasis added) among

linguistic possibilities”

- There are too many other definitions of style, but they all have something in common

– style is a set of characteristics by which we distinguish one author from another or

members of one subclass from members of other subclasses, all of which are members

of the same general class. What are these sets of characteristics typical of writer or of

subclass of the literary language will be seen in the analysis of the language means of

a given writer and of the subclasses of the general literary standard.

- Individual style – should be applied to that sphere of linguistic and literary science

which deals with peculiarities of a writer´s individual manner of using language means

to achieve the effect he desires.

- Idiolect – the speech of an individual which is characterized by peculiarities typical of

that particular individual .

- The idiolect – should be distinguished from individual style as the word “style”

presupposes a deliberate choice. But idiolect – those qualities of speech which are

inherent and reveal man´s breeding, education, social status, etc. These factors will

always affect his turn of mind and will naturally be revealed in his speech and writing.

Individual style – is marked by its uniqueness – it can be recognized by the specific

and peculiar combination of language media and stylistic devices which in their

interaction present a certain system. Naturally, the individual style of a writer will

never be interily – celkom - independent of that literary norm and canons of the given

period.

- The style of a writer – can be ascertained only by analysis of the form, i. e. language

media – the individuality can be seen in the analysis of:

- 1. Composition of larger-than-sentence units

- 2. Rhytm and melody utterances

- 3. System of imagery

- 4. Preferences for definite stylistic devices and their co-relation with neutral

language media.

- 5. Interdependence – vzájomná závislosť – of the language media employed by the

author and the media characteristic of the personages.

- The idea of individual style – brings up the problem of the correspondence – či

oddeliť formu od obsahu – between thought and expression. The stylicist cannot

neglect this interrelation when analyzing the individual style of an author

- There is a strong tradition of thought – which restricts style to those choiceswhich

are choices of MANNER rather than MATTER, of EXPRESSION rather than

CONTENT – the common definition of style is in this case a way of writin of a mode

spôsob of expresision – this approach is called DUALIST – it rests on assumed

dualism, in language, between form and meaning

- Monist view – the opposite: form and content is the sam

- The language of some ultra-modern writers to some extent reflects the rapidly

increasing tempo of the present industrial and technical revolution. The authors

experiment with language means as to mirror the vibration of extralinguistic reality.

- Individual style can be characterized as: a unique combination of language units,

expressive means and stylistic devices peculiar to a given writer which makes that

writer´s work or even utterances easily recognizable.

- Deviation – everything that is not according to the norm

- Foregrounding – the effect/result of deviation. Is realized by deviation – and it has a

psychological effect on reader – he realizes it.

Information Theory in Stylistics

- Language is one of the means of communication, the most important one

- Stylistics must take into consideration the output of the act of communication

- Nowadays, such sciences as cybernetisc, logic, information theory, cognitive science

are adopted in linguistics. Application of come concepts of information theory in

stylistics proved to be especially useful. Information theory may be regarded as a

branch of cybernetic theory of communication by signal. Communication of exchange

of information plays an important role in all phenomena of life. Human society would

be impossible without a continuous exchange of information.

- People communicate with one another in various ways. The most obvious means of

communication are speech and writing. Human language (natural language) is the

most powerful means of communication: gestures, facial expressions, words, smiles,

the ringing of the bells, the sounding of horns – it is all communication

- Communication – Is an activity in which some information is transferred from one

system to another by means of some physical embodiment – stelesnenie

- Every act of communication has 6 parts:

- 1. Encoding of the message

- 2. Its transmission

- 3. The realization

- 4. Channel of receiving and transmission

- 5. Its reception

- 6. Its decoding.

- The message is what the speaker wants to tell the listener. In order to be able to utter

the message the speaker has to select from a number of words of the language, those

which will convey the message and not any other

- In terms of information theory language can be regarded as a code- The code consists

in making signs. A sign of the language may be small as a phoneme and as large as an

epic. Where there is a code there is a choice. E.g. we can present number 5 in quite a

number of ways: 6 – 1 = 5. 10 : 2 = 5.. Or a word “cup” can be written or drawn. In

semantics we distinguish the following information:

- 1. DENOTATIVE – the main information – it is the subject of information itself. It

names the notion of the reality as it is

- 2.CONNOTATIVE – additional information – depends on the act of communication,

it is conditioned by the attitude of the speaker to the subject of speech or to the

addressee

- The author-reader system is the information conveying system. Reading is author´s

conveying thought to the reader. The author encodes the information and sends to the

reader. The information is transformed by system of images, characters, plot which is

encoded by language means and stylistic devices.

- The reader may be of quite different social, political, educational background. The

reader may have or have not life experience that is why the reader decodes the text

form his/her point of view. The reader decodes not only the factual material but its

emotional and aesthetic content. The reader cannot be passive while reading, he/she

can explain information received, compare it with the information received earlier and

form his/her own attitude towards the next – evaluates it.

3. Prednáška

Form, context, expressive means, stylistic devices

- We observe an opposition of stylistically coloured specific elements to stylistically

neutral non-specific elements

- The essence of stylistic perception consists in mental confrontation of what one hears

or reads with one´s previous linguistic experience: to understand a verbal message

means not only to decipher the sense of each linguistic unit, but at the same time to

evaluate the units and the total from the viewpoint of their appurtenance – dodatok –

to either the neutral sphere of language or to the stylistically coloured sphere

- Stylistically coloured units – bookish, solemn, poetic, official, colloquial, dialectial,

vulgar, etc. – have each something like a label on them – some inscription – a kind of

trade-mark showing where the unit was manufactured, where it generally belongs,

andin what collocatios it is proper or improper – stylistically coloured units are

definitely characterized

- Neutral words – style is a specifity of a sublanguage. Units belonging to all the

sublanguages are stylistically neutral.

- Norm – norm may be defined as a set of language rules, which are considered to be

most standard and correct in a certain epoch and in a certain society. It is impossible to

work out universal language norm because functional style has its own regularities.

The sentence: I ain´t got no news from nobody – should be treated a ????

- Form – it is a term which refers to the recognizable shape of a text or a speech act.

This shape can be either physical or abstract. Physical is in writing and abstract in

spoken communication. Written forms are novels, stories, articles, poems, letters,

posters, menus, etc. Spoken forms are conversations, tv, radio commentaries,

announcements, sermons, jokes, etc. The term form is used in linguistics and in

literary criticism as a technical term. It is used when considering the shape, the

construction, or type of speech or writing.

- Text – it literally means – a piece of writing – Charles Dickens Bleak House – is a text.

A letter form a friend is a text. A caption – popisok to a picture is a text. A painting by

Picasso can also be a text. Te term text is most used in linguistics and literary studies,

where it was originally used as a synonym for book, but it can be a poem, a letter, a

diary, etc. This term is now in general use in other branches of the humanities such as

cultural studies and film studies – its meaning is the thing being studied. The text is

then a video film, an advertisement, a painting, etc. Also a bus ticket canbe called a

text. – the term text is used to concentrate attention on the object being studied, rather

than its author.

- Context. A linguistic context – is the encirclement of a language unit by other

language units in speech. Such encirclement makes the meaning of the unit clear and

unambiguous. It is important especially with poly-semantic words

- Micro-context – is the context of a single utterance (sentence)

- Macro-context – it the context of a paragraph in a text.

- Mega-context – is the context of a book, chapter, a story of the whole book.

- An extralingual – situational – context – is formed by extralingual conditions in

which communication takes place. Extralingual context can be physical or abstract and

can significantly affect the communication. Physical extralingual context – e.g. a

conversation between lovers can be affected by surroundings interms of music,

location, and the presence of others. Abstract extralingual context – e.g. dialogue

between colleagues is affected by the nature of their relationship – one may be of

higher status than the other. Temporal or chronological context – historical accounts

are more easily understood when evoked in the context of their own time.

Psychological context is the mood and feelings each person brings to the conversation.

In poetry we find that context is crucial to meaning and its effect.

- You hope because you are old and obese

to find in the furry civic robe ease.

Speech – speech and writing are two different systems – they are closelc related but not the

same

- Speech is normally a continuous stream of sound. It is not broken up into separate

parts like writing. People do not speak in sentences or paragraphs, they are making the

content of what they are saying quite spontaneously without any planning or long

deliberation

- Meaning in speech is commonly conveyed by tone and other non-verbal means as

irony and physical gestures, facial expressions, bodily posture,

- Speech quite commonly includes false starts, repetition, hesitation, fillers – ahm, hm..,

with no lexical or grammatical meaning or nonsense words.

- Speech cannot be revised or edited in the same way as writing.

- People employ a wide range of speech varieties of functional styles in their everyday

conversation

- Language changes take place far more rapidly in speech than in writing

- Writing – is the use of visual symbols which act as a code for communication between

individuals or groups

- Writing is a language variety and should be regarded as entirely separate from speech

- Writing cannot include any non-verbal gestures or the communication features which

accompany spoken language such as facial expressions, physical gestures, or tone of

voice

- The written word has to rely on choice of vocabulary, punctuation and printed

emphasis (italics, capital letters) to produce such effects.

- Image – is a certain picture of the objective world, a verbal subjective description of

this or another person, event or occurrence, sight made by the speaker with help of the

whole set of expressive means and stylistic devices.

- Images are created to produce an immediate impression to human sight, hearing, sense

of touch or taste

- Image is the matter of stylistic analysis

- Expressive means – are those phonetic, lexical, morphological and syntactic units and

forms which make speech emphatic. EM introduce connotational – stylistic, non

denotative – meanings into utterances

- EM exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional

intensification of the utterance

- Phonetic expressive means – include pitch, melody, stresses, pauses, whispering,

singing, and other way of human voice

- Morphological expressive means – are emotionally coloured suffixes of diminutive

nature – y (-ie), -let (sonny, auntie, girlie, streamlet – potôčik) – the range of emotional

suffixes is much wider in synthetic languages than in English

- Lexical expressive means – possessing connotations, such as epithets, poetic and

archaic words, slangy words, vulgarisms and interjections

- A chain of expressive synonymic words always contains at least one neutral synonym,

for example: the neutral word – money – has the following stylistically coloured

equivalents – ackers (slang), cly (jargon), cole (jargon), pelf (bookisch), rhino

(conversational), ..

- Syntactic expressive means – are emphatic syntactic constructions. Such

constructions stand in opposition to their neutral equivalents

- The neutral sentence: John went away – may be replaced by the following expressive

variants: Away wend john – stylistic inversion – John went away, he did – emphatic

confirmation pattern)

- Stylistic devices – tropes, figures of speech – unlike expressive means are not

language phenomena

- They are formed in speech and most of them do not exist out of context

- According to principles of formation, stylistic devices are grouped into phonetic,

lexico-semantic and syntactic types.

- Figure of speech are often used to express abstract emotional of philosophical

concepts

- Figures of speech are also known as images – they re regarded as a code which should

be decoded.

Expressive means Stylistic devices

1. Are language units of different

levels which are stylistically

marked within the limits of the

given language level

1. Are the way of combination of

speech unit of a lower level in the

limits the units of a higher level

2. The given EM always has its

stylistic meaning

3. meaning of a SD appears in the

context of some speech unit

4. The given EM is conditioned by

paradigmatics of one level

2. Stylistic meaning is connected by

syntagmatic between the unit of

one or different level

Stylistic analysis – is a normal part of literary studies, it is practiced as a part of

understanding the possible meaning in a text

Now is the winter of our discontent

Made glorious summer by this sun of York

Stylistic analysis might reveal the following points:

- The play is written in a poetic blank verse

- It is unrhymed, iambic pentameters – Unstressed – stressed – U - 5x.

- The first line is built on a metaphor

- The condition of England is described in terms of the season – winter

- The seasonal metaphor is extended into the second line – where better conditions

become – summer

- The metaphor is extended even further by the term – sun

- But sun is here also a pun – on the term – son – which refers to the son of the King –

pun – is a form of word play that suggest two or more meanings, by exploiting

multiple meanings of word, or of similar sounding words, for an intended humorous or

rhetorical effect

- York is a metonymic reference to the Duke of York

- In SA the numerical recurrence of certain stylistic feature is used to make judgement

about the nature and the quality of the writing

- SA: 10 steps

1. Generally – what it is – poem, prose, menu, drama, bus ticket.. identification of

the text

2. To write down the content – short – in 2 or 3 sentences

3. Intention and the purpose – why it was written – to inform, entertain..

4. Audience – written for children, middle aged,..women, men..

5. Form – what we can find on first sight – some specific letters – italics, headlines,

paragraphs, length of paragraphs

6. Structure – whether the content is logically organized, or chronological order

7. Style – formal, informal, colloquial, what words are used – vulgar, archaism..

8. Cohesive and coherent – kohezia – to co drzi text po hromade, koherencia –

logicka suvislost

9. Identification of the figures – stylistic devices..

10. To make assessment – evaluation – the aim why we are doing the analysis

Lecture 7.11.2013

Phonetic Expressive Means and Stylistic devices

The sound of most words taken separately has little or no aesthetic value,

A desired phonetic effect is acquired by the combination with other words,

The way a separate word sounds may produce a certain euphonic impression-it is a

matter of individual perception and feeling-it is subjective

separate sounds due to their articulatory and acoustic properties may awake certain

ideas, perceptions, feeling, and images.

Alliteration

it is a phonetic SD based on repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant

sound, in close succession, particularly at the beginning of successive words;

1. Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering,

Fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before

the repetition of the sound “ d “ from Poe`s poem the Raven prompts the feeling of

anxiety, fear , horror…

alliteration is generally regarded as a musical accompaniment of the author`s idea,

supporting it with some vague emotional atmosphere which reader interprets for

himself

alliteration primarily involves the repetition of the same or similar consonants

-Here , the m alliteration in the first half of the second line binds together the concepts of

mistiness and mildness and brings out the contrast with the second half of the line, which in

turn exhibits alliteration, binding the words cold and clear. The next example shows that

alliteration primarily involves sound and not spelling:

2. These fruitful fields, these numerous flocks I see,

Are others` gains, but killing cares to me?

Štvrtá prednáška

Killing and cares alliterate, and bind the same meanings of words together in spite of the fact

that their initial sounds are represented by different letters. Alliteration can occur when there

is no spelling alliteration.

- Full alliteration – mild, must.. Loose alliteration – killing, cares..

- The difference is because g is voiced and K is not voiced. = they are somehow alike

3, Here File of Pins extend their shining Rows

Puffs, Powders, Pathes, Bibles, Bilet –doux

The list of items on the Lady Belinda`s boudoir table in the second line of this example are

linked together grammatically because they are all plural nouns in a list construction. They are

also linked phonetically by the loose alliteration which extends along the whole line. But the

line also subdivides into two sections of full alliterations: - “p” – alliteration part and “b”-

alliteration. Both the loose and full kinds of alliteration

Assonance

- Is the tem traditionally reserved for patterns of repetition between vowel sounds.

Assonance, like alliteration, connects important words together and helps the reader

notice the meaning – connection between them – and you can stuff your YURD,

GURD, TURD, or whatever it is up your bum!

Rhyme

- It is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combinations 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

We distinguish

a) Full rhyme : ( identity of the vowel sound and the following consonant sounds in a

stressed syllable , might-right

b) Incomplete rhymes; vowel rhyme- the vowels of the syllable in corresponding words

are identical, but the consonants may be different. Flesh- fresh- press.

c) Consonant rhyme – concordance in consonants and disparity in vowels : tale –tool

d) Compound rhyme : the letters and not the sound are identical : love-prove, have-

grave – compound rhyme is perceived in reading aloud

e) Eye rhyme – the letters and not the sound are identical , but it can be only perceived

in the written texts

-critics do sometimes point out eye rhyme bough/cough, that is group of words where there is

no phonetic rhyme but where there is graphological parallelism involving more than one letter

in each sequence.

According to the way rhymes are arranged within the stanza, certain models exist:

- Couplets – the last words of two successive lines are rhymed – aa

- Triple rhymes – aaa

- Cross rhymes – abab

- Framing/ring rhymes – abba

- Internal rhyme – the rhyming words are placed not at the end of the lines but withing

the line: I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers.

-

According to the way the rhymes are arranged within the stanza , certain models exist:

a) Couplets – the last words of 2 successive lines are rhymed – ( aa)

b) Triple rhymes – (aaa)

c) Cross rhymes –(abab)

d) Framing /ring rhymes –(abba)

e) Internal rhyme – the rhyming words are placed not at the ends of the lines but within

the line.

Rhythm

- Rhythm is the alternation of stressed and unstressed syllables, more or les regular

- It is primarily and periodicity

- As a SD rhythm is a combination of the ideal metrical scheme and its variations

governed by the standard

- It exists in all spheres of human activity.

- In prose – rhythm is closely connected with the metre, i.e. – different metrical patterns.

The rhythm of prose is based on the succession of images, themes and other big

elements of the text: repetition, parallel constructions, chiasmus, similar syntactical

patterns. The unit of measure here is not a syllable but a structure, a word-

combination, a sequence of phrases, sentences and supra-phrasal units.

- Yes or no, yes or no, so well, could be worse, I suppose…

Onomatopoeia

- Is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating sound produced in nature

(wind, sea, thunder, etc.) by things (machines or tools, etc.) by people (sighing,

laughter, patter of feet, etc) and by animals

- It sounds that are associated with whatever producing the natural sound

- Two varieties of onomatopoeia:

Direct onomatopoeia – words that imitate natural sounds – ding-dong, cuckoo, mew,

ping-pong…

Indirect onomatopoeia – a combination of sounds that aim of which is to make sound

of the utterance an echo of its sense: and silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purpe

curtain.. – the repetition of sound s actually produces the sound of the rustling –

šušťanie – of the curtain

The onomatopoetic effect can be achieved by the repetition of unonomatopeotic

words, for example: mostly he moved in urgent, precise, clipped movements - go,

Neviem ktorá prednáška

.11.2013 5th Lecture

Morphological Stylistics (MS)

MS deals with morphological EM and SD. Words being placed in an unusual syntagmatic

environment which changes their canonized grammatical characteristics and combination

acquire stylistic significance.

TRANSPOSITION = a divergence between the traditional usage of a neutral word and its

situational usage

Morphology implies the study of grammatical changes of isolated words by means of

affrication.

English have very few inflexions – grammatical meanings are expressed mostly analytically

(by auxiliaries, word order).

In morphological stylistics significant is: synonymy and variability of use of morphological

categorical forms

Synonymy - is not very well developed (or nearly lost due to the loss of inflexions): brother -

s / breth-r-en (neutral/archaic). The latter one is used in clerical literature or poetry and

oratory of past centuries. (he has/he hath; you have/thou hast; you do /thou doest)

The localization of forms of the past participle of the verb - to get. In Britain - got, in the

USA gotten.

Inflexions proper - formal English - whom , informal colloquial speech – requires using the

form without inflexion – who.

A strong tendency in modern colloquial English (British and American) to abolish the

morphological differentiation between subjective - If I was… instead of I were.

Subjective mood forms: It is time for me to go. /It is time that I went. The first sentence is

stylistically neutral, the second one is bookish.

Passive verbal forms: in many contexts are more expressive than active counterparts: A

round table occupied the centre of the room. /The centre of the room was occupied by a round

table.

Ungrammatical and showing the “low” social status of the speaker are the forms: we, you,

they was, he don´t, says I…

Regularizing irregular verbs by analogy: he come, he seed (he came, he saw)

Variability of categorical forms - it means neutralization of grammatical meanings:

historical present - the present tense forms are often used with reference to past or future

action:

What else do I remember? Let me see.

There comes out of the cloud our house, our house not new to me, but quite familiar, in its

earliest remembrance. On the ground floor is Pegotty´s kitchen, opening into a back yard.

(Dickens)

The extract is the author´s narrative. Dickens depicts past events as if they were in the present.

The present continuous tense denotes an action which takes place at the moment of

speaking, but it may also denote a habitual action (John is constantly cheating) – the

negative connotations of irritations, regret, sadness…

The verbs of sense perception and mental activity are not used in the continuous tense forms -

when the rule is broken, it conveys additional stylistic meanings of subjective modality (I am

seeing you = I am not blind)

Adjectives: qualitative adjective are always estimative - they are used in epithets: crazy,

bicycle, picturesque view, relative adjective do not form degrees of comparison - they are

logical attributes, but can be occasionally transposed into qualitative: This is the reddest

colour I´ve ever seen in my life. Garry was the deadest man ever present in that ambitious

society.

The category of determination expressed by the articles: the absence of articles is typical of

headlines to newspaper columns, sometimes they are omitted in careless colloquial speech.

The category of gender: is practically non-existent in modern EN, inanimate objects - it.

When talking about personification - the name of vessels - feminine; sometines other vehicles

(carriage, coach, car) = feminine, earth, moon = feminine, sun = masculine, countries =

feminine.

France sent her representative to the conference.

Abstract notions suggesting such ideas as strength or fierceness are personified as nouns of

masculine gender (anger, death, fear, war); the feminine is associated with gentleness or

beauty (spring, peace, kindness, dawn).

depersonification - is opposite to personification = treating a person as a thing, an inanimate

object

grammatical category of person: expressing the idea of indefinite person is the pronouns

one. One can be replaced by definite personal pronoun we, you (expressing the same idea of

indefinite reference): we never know, you never know.

The plural of majesty: (mostly in royal rescripts: By the grace of Our Lord, We, Charles the

Second…)

The plural of modesty: (In scholarly texts, implying the author and his imaginary reader:

Now, we come to the conclusion that…)

The plural of humility: (in the speech of uneducated people, e.g. in Pygmalion: Oh we are

proud…)

Archaic pronouns : thou (2 person singular) its objective form thee, the possessive pronoun

thy, its absolute form thine, the reflexive pronoun thyself - these obsolete pronouns create the

atmosphere of solemnity (vážnosť, slávnosť) and elevation, or bring us back to ancient times.

Lexical EM and SD

1. INTERACTION OF PRIMARY DICTIONARY AND CONTEXTUALLY IMPOSED

(spôsobený) MEANINGS.

a) The author identifies 2 objects which have nothing in common, but in which he

subjectively sees a function, or a property, or feature, or a quality that may make the reader

perceive these 2 objects as identical = metaphor.

METAPHOR

- means transference of some quality from one object to another

- it denotes the transference of meaning from one word to another, a word acquires a

derivative meaning

- it is due to the metaphor that each thing seems to have its name in language

- language as a whole has been figuratively defined as a dictionary of faded metaphors.

- a metaphor become a SD when 2 different phenomena (thing, events, ideas, actions)

are simultaneously brought to mind by the imposition (uloženie) of some or all of the

inherent properties of one object on the other which by nature is deprived (zbavený) of

these properties.

- metaphor is the power of realizing 2 lexical meanings simultaneously

- metaphor is one of the most potent means of creating images

- the identification of metaphor is most clearly observed when the metaphor is

embodied either in an attributive word: pearly teeth or in a predicative word-

combination: Dear Nature is the kindness Mother still. (Byron)

In the slanting beams (lúče) that streamed (prúdiť) through the open window the dust danced

and wa s golden. (O. Wilde)

The movement of dust particles seem to the eye of the writer to be regular and orderly like the

movements in dancing. What happens practically is that our mind runs in 2 parallel lines: the

abstract and the concrete, i.e. movement (of any kind) and dancing (a definite kind).

Metaphor can be classified according to their degree of unexpectedness:

Genuine metaphors - metaphor that are absolutely unexpected, unpredictable.

Trite/dead metaphors - metaphor commonly used in speech and sometimes even fixed in

dictionaries as EM of language, their predictability is apparent

Example of trite metaphors: a ray of hole, floods of tears

Genuine M: mostly in poetry, and emotive prose

Trite M: in newspaper articles, in oratorical style and in scientific language

b) The author finds it possible to substitute one object for another on the grounds that there is

some kind of interdependence (vzájomná previazanosť) or interrelation between the 2

corresponding objects.

METONYMY

- the word crown may stand for king or queen, cup or glass for the drink it contains, a

hand stand for a worker

“Then they came in. Two of them, a man with long fair moustaches and silent dark man…

Definitely, the moustache and I had nothing in common.”

This is a feature of a man which catches the example, in this case his facial appearance: the

moustache stand for the man himself. The function of metonymy here is to indicate that the

speaker knows nothing of the man in question, moreover, there is a definite implication that

this is the 1st time the speaker has seen him.

Metonyms and Metaphors differ also in the way they are deciphered. In metaphor one images

excludes the other, the metaphor lamp in the “the sky lamp of the nigh” when deciphered,

means the moon and here we perceive only one object, the moon.

This is not the case witch metonymy - while presenting one object out our mind, it does not

exclude the other .

Metonymy as a means of building up imagery, generally concerns concrete objects, which are

generalized.

The process of generalization is easily carried out which the help of the definite article.

c)A certain property or quality of an object is used in a opposite or contradictor sense

IRONY

- is a SD also based on the simultaneous realization of 2 logical meanings - dictionary

and contextual, but the 2 meanings stand in opposition to each other.

It must be delightful to find oneself in a foreign country without a penny in one´s pocket.

The underlined word here means quite the opposite to its primary dictionary meaning, that is

unpleasant, not delightful. The word contains in the irony is strongly marked by intonation.

Irony must not be confuse with humour, although they have very much in common, humour

always cause laughter.

What is funny must come as a sudden clash of the positive and the negative - in this respect

irony can be likened to humour, but the function of irony is not to produce a humours effect. It

rather expresses a feeling of irritation, displeasure, pity or regret.

The effect of irony lied in the striking disparity roiled between what is said and what is meant.

Irony is generally used to convey a negative meaning.

Only positive concepts may be used in their logical dictionary meanings.

The contextual meaning always conveys the negation of the positive concepts embodied in the

dictionary meaning: How clever of you! The intonation in the word clever = irony

11.2013 6th Lecture

LEXICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES

2. INTERACTION OF PRIMARY DERIVATIVE LOGICAL MEANINGS

- the words is, of all language units, the most sensitive to change, its meaning gradually

develops and as a result of this development new meanings appear alongside the primary one.

POLYSEMANTIC EFFECT

- polysemy is a category of lexicology and belongs to language-as-a-system

- when a word begins to manifest and interplay between the primary and one of the derivative

meanings words are confronted with an SD

Then hate me if thou wilt, if ever now.

Now while the world is bent my deeds to cross. (Shakespeare 90)

The word hate materializes several meaning in this context. The primary meaning is to hold in

very strong dislike. The word has acquired several derivative meaning, which, though having

much in common, still show some nuances, which enrich the semantic structure of the word.

They are:

1.to detest (protivit sa, hnusiť nenvidieť) 2. to bear malice to (mať zlý umysel) 3. the opposite

to love 4. to feel a repulsive attitude (cítít odpudivý postoj) 5. to feel aversion for

- this SD can be detached only when a rather large span of utterance is subjected to a minute

analysis

- the polysemantic effect is a very subtle (sotva postrehnutelný) and sometimes hardly

perceptible stylistic device.

ZEUGMA

- is the use of a word in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to 2 adjacent

words in the context, the semantic relations being, on the one hand, literal and on the other

transferred.

Dora, plunging at once into privileged intimacy and into the middle of the room.

To plunge materializes the meaning to rush into or enter impetuously (impulizivne) - here the

word to plunge is used in its primary meaning,. To plunge into privileged intimacy the word

is used in its derivative meaning.

- this SD is particularly favoured in En emotive prose and in poetry

…And May´s mother always stood on her gentility: and Dot´s mother never stood on anything

but her active little feet. (Dickens)

The 2 meaning of the word stand are simultaneously expressed, one primary and one

derivative.

THE PUN

- SD based on the interaction of 2 well-known meaning of a word or phrase

- the distinguishing feature between zeugma and the pun is a structural one: zeugma is the

realization of 2 meetings with the help of a verb which is made to refer to different subjects or

objects (direct or indirect ), the pun is more independent, these need not to be a word in the

sentence to which the pun-word refers. The pun depend on a context, but context may be of a

more expanded character, sometimes even as large as a whole work of emotive prose:

Bow to the board, said Bumble. Oliver brushed away two or three tears that were lingering in

his eyes, and seeing no board but the table, fortunately bowed to that. (Dickens)

The humorous effect is caused by the interplay not of 2 meaning of one word, but of 2 words.

Board as a group of officials with functions of administration and management and board as a

piece of furniture (a table) = two distinct words

- puns are often used in riddles and jokes.

3. INTERACTION OF LOGICAL AND EMOTIVE MEANINGS

- the emotional elements of the language have a tendency to wear out (opotrebovat sa) and

are constantly replaced by new ones. Almost any word may required a greater or a lesser

degree of emotiveness

- there are words the function of which is to arouse (vyburcovať) emotion in the reader or

listener. In such words emotiveness prevails over intellectuality

- we shall distinguish between the elements of language which have emotive meaning in their

semantic structure and those which acquired this meaning in the context under the influence

of a stylistic device or some other more expressive means in the utterance

- the most highly emotive words are words changed with emotive meaning to the extent that

the logical meaning can hardly be registered = interjections and all kinds of exclamations

Interaction of logical and emotive meanings

- The emotional elements of the language have a tendency to wear out (opotrebovať sa)

and are constantly replaced by new ones. Almost any word may acquire a greater or a

lesser degree of emotiveness

- There are words the function of which is to arouse (vyburcovať) emotion in the reader

or listener. In such words emotiveness prevails

- We shall distinguish between the elements of language which have emotive meaning

in their semantic structure

Interjections and exclamatory words

- Interjections are words we use when we express our feelings strongly and which may

be said to exist in language as conventional symbols of human emotions

- Interjections is a word with strong emotive meaning

- Oh, where are you going to, all you Big Steamers?

- The interjection oh by itself may express various feelings, such as regret, despair,

disappointment, sorrow, surprise, astonishment, lamentatnion, and many others..

- Can be divided in to primary and derivative

- Primary interj. – are devoid (zbavený) of any logical meaning: oh!ah, pooh, hus..

- Derivative interjections – contain logical meaning:Heavens!god!come on!

- They are not interjections as such. A better name for them would be exclamatory

words and word-combinations generally used as interjections.

- Adjectives and adverbs and nouns can also take on the function of interjections –

terrible!awful!fine!

- They always attach a definite modal nuance to the utterance. But it is impossible to

define exactly the shade of meaning contained in a given interjection, though the

context may suggest one: joy, delight, admiration, approval, regret..

The Epithet

- The epithet is delicate in character and it is not so direct as the interjection

- The epithet is a stylistic device based on the interplay of emotive and logical meaning

in an attributive word (privlastok), phrase or even sentence used to characterize an

object and pointing out the the reader, and frequently imposing on him, some of the

properties or features, of the object with the aim of giving an individual perception and

evaluation ofthese features of the object with the aim of giving an individual

perception and evaluation of these features or properties.

- Is markedly subjective and evaluative

- The logical attribute is purely objective, non-evaluating, descriptive and indicates an

inherent or prominent feature of the thing or phenomenon: green meadows, white

snow..

- The epithets – wild wind, loud ocean --- subjectively evaluative

Oxymoron

- Combination of two words (mostly an adjective and noun, or an adverb with an

adjective) in which the meaning of two clash, being opposite in sense: low scyscraper,

sweet sorrow, pleasantly ugly face, horribly beautiful.

- If the primary meaning of the qualifying word changes or weakens, the stylistic effect

of oxymoron is lost, for example – awfully nice, terribly sorry… o

- The forcible combination of non-combinative words, in contrast to ordinary word-

combination.

- The tendency to use oxymoron is the mark of certain literary trends and tastes. There

are poets in search of new shades of meaning.

Interaction of Logical and Nominal meanings

4. INTERACTION OF LOGICAL AND NOMINAL MEANINGS

ANTONOMASIA

Antonomasia

- The interplay between the logical and nominal meanings of a word is called

antonomasia

- The two kinds of meanings must be realized in the word simultaneously

- This device is mainly realized in the written language, because generally capital letters

are the only signals to denote the presence of the stylistic device:

Society is now one polished horde

From´d of two mghty tribes, the Bores and Bored.

- Most proper names are built on some law of analogy, many of them end in –son, or er

(Fletcher, Johnson)

- Token – symbolický – or telling names – give information to the reader about the

bearer or the name – Miss Blue-Eyes, Scrooge – Skupáň

- Is intendedto pint out the leading, most characteristic feature of a person or event, at

the same time pinning this leading trait as a proper name to the person or event

concerned.

- Antonomasia can be likened to the epithet in essence (zaklad) if not in form. It

categorizes the person and thus simultaneously indicates both the general and the

particular

- The use of antonomasia is now not confined (obmedzovany) to belles-lettres style, it is

often found in publicistic style, in magazine and newspaper articles, in essays and also

military style: I say this to …

Intensification of a certainfeature of a thing or phenomenon

Simile

- Ordinary comparison and simile must not be confused – the represent two

diverseprocesses

- Comparison – means weighing two objects belonging to one class of things with the

purpose of establishing the degree of their sameness or diference. Comparison takes

into consideration all the properties of the all the properties of the two object, stressing

one that is compared. – the boy seems to be as clever as his mother

- Simile – one object is characterized by bringing it into contact with another object,

belonging to an entirely different class of things, simile excludes all the properties of

the two objects except one which is made common to them: maidens, like moths, are

ever caught by glare lesk.

Maidens devy and moths mole belong to heterogeneous classes of objects and the

author has found the concept month to indicate one of the secondary features of the

concept maiden, i.e. being easily lured (zvedený)

Simile forcibly (násilne) sets one object against another regardless of the fact that they

may be completely alien to each other. The simile gives rise to a new understanding of

the object characterizing as well as the object characterized.

- Similes have formal elements in their structure, connective words such as like, as,

such, as if, ets..

Periphrasis

- Is a device which denotes the use of a longer phrasing in place of a possible shorter

and plainer form of expression

- It is also called circumlocution (rozvláčňovať) due to the round-about or indirect way

used to name a familiar object or phenomenon.

- Periphrasis represents the renaming of an object, one and the same object may be

identified in different ways.

Euphemism

- Is a variety of periphrasis, it is a word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or

wxpression by a conventionally more acceptable one: to die – to pass away, to expire,

to be no more, to depart, to join the majority, to kick the bucket, to go west, to give up

the ghost..

- Euphemisms are synonyms, which aim at producing a deliberately umýselne mild

effect

- Euphemism – from greek – eu-well plus pheme – speaking

- The life of euphemisms is very short, they very soon become closely associated with

the referent (the object named) and give name to a newly coined words: idiots,

imbecils, and the feeble-minded became patients of severly subnormal personality

Hyperbole

- The function of hyperbole is to intensify one certain property of the object

- Is a deliberate overstatement or exaggeration of a feature essential to the object or

phenomenon

- In its extreme form this exaggeration is carried to an illogical degree sometimes ad

absurdum

He was so tall that I was not sure he had a face

- Like many stylistic devices, hyperbole may lose its quality as a stylistic device trhough

frequent repetition and become a unit of the language-as-a-system, for example, a

thousand pardons, scared to death, I d give the world to see him, I have told You fifty

times

Stylistics 7th

Lecture 5.12.2013

Peculiar use of set expressions

The Cliché

It is generally defined as an expression that has become hackneyed( osuchany,

obohrany ) and trite

A cliché has lost its originality , ingenuity, domyselnost , and impact by long over-use

A cliché strives( usilovat) after originality, whereas it has lost the aesthetic generating

power it once had. Rosy dreams of youth (ruzove mladi)

Is a derogative term ,but most of the widely recognized word combination are unjustly

classified as clichés

Proverbs and saying

They are facts of language , they are collected in dictionaries

They have some typical features: rhythm, sometimes rhyme and or / alliteration

The most characteristic feature lies not in its formal linguistic expression, but in the

content –form of the utterance

Proverbs and saying have certain purely linguistic features which must always be

taken into account in order to distinguish them from ordinary sentences

A proverb or a saying is a peculiar mode of utterance which is mainly characterized by

its brevity

Proverbs are brief statements showing in the condensed from the accumulated life

experience of the community and serving as conventional practical symbols for

abstract ideas- they are usually didactic and image bearing

Many of them through frequency of repetition have become polished and wrought into

verse-like shape: First come, first served, out of sight –out of mind.

The main feature distinguishing proverbs and saying from ordinary utterances

remains their semantic aspect

Their literal meaning is supressed by what may be termed their transferred meaning, in

other words : one meaning( literal) is the form for another meaning( transferred)which

contains ideas

Proverbs and saying , if used appropriately , will never lose their freshness

They may be handled not in their fixed from (the traditional model) but with

modifications

This device is used not only in the belles-lettres style, but also in the newspaper,

magazines, advertisements:

Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. No use –unless you

advertise

Epigrams

It is stylistic device akin( podobny) to a proverb , the only difference being that

epigrams are coined by individuals whose names we know, while proverbs are the

coinage of the people

Epigrams are terse( strohy), witty, pointed statement, showing ingenious (sikovny)

turn of mind of the originator

Epigrams possess a great degree of independence and therefore , if taken out of

context, will retain the wholeness of the idea they express

They have a generalizing function and are self-sufficient

The most characteristic feature is that the sentence gets accepted as a word

combination and often becomes part of the language as a whole

Brevity is the essential quality of epigram

A thing of beauty is a joy forever

Failure is the foundation of success and success is the lurking (skryty) place of failure

Mighty (mocny) is who conquers himself

Quotations

It is a repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech and the like used by the

way of authority , illustration, proof or as basis for further speculation on the matter

What is quoted must be worth quoting, since a quotation will inevitably acquire some

degree of generalization

If repeated frequently , it may be recognized as an epigram, if , of course , it has at

least some of the linguistic properties of it

Quotations are usually marked off in the text by inverted commas ,dashed, italics or

graphical means

They are mostly used accompanied by a reference to the author of the quotation ,

unless he is well known to the reader or audience

The reference is made either in the text or in a foot-note

A quotation is the exact reproduction of an actual utterance made by a certain author

The work containing the utterance quoted must have been published or at least spoken

in public; quotations are echoes of somebody else`s words.

A quotations is always set against the other sentences in the text by its greater volume

of sense and significance

The use of quotations presupposes a good knowledge of the past experience of the

nation , its literature and culture

The stylistic value of quotation lies mainly in the fact that it comprises 2 meanings: the

primary meaning, the one which it has in its original surroundings, and the

applicative meaning- the one which it acquires in the new context

Quotations, unlike epigrams , need not necessarily be short : a whole paragraph or a

long passage may be quoted if it suits the purpose

“Ecclesiastes said, “ that all is vanity “( marnivost )

Most modern preachers say the same , or show it

By their examples of the Christianity …” (Byron)

Quotations are used as a SD with the aim of expanding the meaning of the sentence

quoted and setting 2 meanings one against the other- in this quality they are used

mostly in belles-lettres style; in other styles they do not allow any modification of

meanings

Allusion

Is an indirect reference, by word or phrase , to a historical , literary, mythological,

biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing

The use of allusion presupposes knowledge of the fact , thing or person alluded to on

the part of the reader or listener

No indication of the source is given – this is one of the notable differences between

quotation and allusion

Another difference between quotation and allusion : a quotation must repeat the exact

wording of the original even through the meaning may be modified by the new

context; an allusion is only a mention of a word or a phrase which may be regarded as

the key –word of the utterance

Allusions are based on the accumulated experience and the knowledge of the writer

who presupposes a similar experience and knowledge in the reader

Allusion and quotations may be termed nonce-text –expressions because they are

used only for the occasion

Are made to facts with which the general reader should be familiar

They are sometimes made to things and facts which need commentary before they are

understood

Are used in different styles , but their function is everywhere the same, deciphering

allusion is not always easy

The newspaper headlines they may be decoded at first glance:

(Pie in the sky for Railmen)

Most people in the USA and Britain know the refrain of the worker`s song: You will

get a pie in the sky when you die.” The use of the sentence-refrain implies that the

railmen had been given promises but nothing at the present moment. Linguistically the

allusion “pie in the sky” assumes a new meaning, viz. nothing but promises.

Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices

The branch of language science which studies the types of relations between the units

enumerated is called syntax

Stylistics takes as the object if its analysis the expressive means and SD of the

language which are based on some significant structural point in the utterance ,

whether it consist of one sentence or a string of sentences

Compositional patterns of syntactical arrangement

The structural syntactical aspect is sometimes regarded as the crucial issue in stylistic

analysis

The English affirmative sentence is regarded as neutral if it maintains the regular

word- order, i. e.g. Subject –predicate- object ( or the other secondary members of

the sentence)

Any other order may also carry the necessary information , but the impact on the

reader will be different

when viewing the stylist functions of different syntactical designs we must first of all

take into consideration these aspects

1.The juxtaposition of different parts of the utterance

2.The way the parts are connected with each other

3.Those based on the peculiar use of colloquial construction

4. Those based on the stylistic use of structural meaning.

5. Juxtaposition of different parts of the utterance

Stylistic inversion

English has tolerably fixed word order : S-V(predicate)-O

The most conspicuous (zretelny) places in the sentence are considered to be the first

and the last; the first place because the full force of the stress can be felt at the

beginning of an utterance and the last place because there is a pause after it – this

traditional word order has developed a definite intonation system

Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not.

Stylistic inversion aim at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to

the surface meaning of the utterance – a specific intonation pattern is inevitable

The most frequent pattern of stylistic inversion in English poetry and prose

A. the object is placed at the beginning of the sentence

Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not.

B, the attribute is placed after the world it modifies ( postposition of the attribute)

Once upon a midnight dreary … (pochmurny)

C; The predicative is placed before the subject

A good generous prayer it was

D; The predicative stands before the link- verb and both are placed before the

subject

Rude am I in my speech…

E; The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence

My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall

F: Both modifier and predicative stand before the subject

Down dropped the breeze

-inverted word order , or inversion , is one of the forms of what are known as

emphatic constructions

Detached constructions

One of a secondary parts of a sentence by some specific consideration of the writer is

placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to

They seem to dangle( volne visiet) in the sentence as isolated parts

The detached part assumes a greater degree of significance and is given prominence by

intonation

Steyne rose up, grinding his teeth, pale, and with fury in his eyes.

Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed , and rather unsteady in his gait. Krok

Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars. topol

Detached constructions make the written variety of language akin( podobny) to the

spoken variety where the relation between the component part s is effectively

materialized by means of intonation.

It is peculiar device bridging the norms of written and spoken language

Detached constructions in English are used in the belles –lettres prose style and mainly

with words that have some explanatory function

Parenthesis

Is a variant of detached construction

It is a qualifying, explanatory or appositive word, phrase, clause, sentence or other

sequence which interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it

It has a characteristic intonation indicated in writing by commas, brackets or dashes

It sometimes embodies a considerable volume of predicativeness, thus giving the utterance an

additional nuance of meaning or a tinge (nadych) of emotional colouring

Analysis

The great gatsby

- Authorial style – we see his style at first sight (lodge – pastiches.. one of his typical

feautues he uses a lot)

- style can be perceived in any consistent writin, literary or otherwise, or, indeed, in any

consistent behaviour.. individual novelists can be said to have styles, but so can

weather forecasters, singers or runers – a running style is just running style, which will

help you to recognise a particular runner ina race – an equivalent of this in terms or

writing style is what is called “fingerprinting”

- in fingerprinting studies scholars examine linguistic features such as average sentence-

length, the average number of morpehemes or syllables per word, or the average

instance of grammatical words like “of” per thousand words.

- To isolate style of any kind must involve some statistical work, because style can only

be isolated by examining typical choices and therefore frequencies

- Just as authors can be said to have style, so can texts. Even the positioning of

something as apparently insignificant as a comma can sometimes be very important in

interpretative terms.

PROSE STYLE

Authorial style

- authorial style is a way of writing which recognisably belongs to a particular writer,

say Jane Austen or Ernest Hemingway

- this way of writing distinguishes one author´s writing from that of others, and is felt to

be recognisable across a range of text written by the same writer

- in The British Museum is Falling Down by David Lodge writes various passages in

the style of other novelists, usually for humorous effect, part of the enjoyment in

reading this novel is to spot the pastiches (a pastiche is a work of visual art, literature,

or music that imitates the style or characters of the work of one or more other artists.

Unlike parody, pastiche celebrates, rather than mocks, the work it imitates.)

- style can be perceived in any consistent writing literary or otherwise, or, indeed, in any

consistent behaviours

- individual novelist can be said to have styles, but so can weather forecasters, singers or

runners, a running style is just a running style, which will help you to recognise

a particular runner in a race – an equivalent of this in term of writing style is what is

called „fingerprinting“.

- in fingerprint studied scholars examine linguist feature such as average sentence-

length, the average number o morphemes or syllables per word or the average instance

of grammatical word like „of“ per thousand words

- to isolate style of any kind must involve some statistical work, because style can only

be isolated by examining typical choices and therefore frequencies

- just as authors can be said to have style, so can texts. Even the positioning of

something as apparently insight as a comma can sometimes be very important in

interpretative terms.

Statistics

- It is need to have a properly balanced view of what statistics can and cannot do

- Statistics appear at first sight to be precise and objective, but when we remember that

analysists choose what they will count, which brings in one element of subjectivity

and the interpretation of the statistics can vary from one person to another

General rules of statistics:

- We can not count everything that is countable, but the quantitative analysis does not

lead to automatic conclusions. The conclusions always have to be interpreted, and we

need to take into account as many kinds of evidence as we can have doing stylistic

analysis, both quantitave and non-quantitatve

- Statistical work is esential comparative e.g. we are analysing a prose text then we need

other prose comparators. In prose analysis we can compare figures with equivalent

passages from other works or by other writers, or general statistical norms for prose

writing produced by other researchers.

- It is better to calculate percentages or averages, which can thenbe compared with

percentages, or averages from other texts

- If we are creating averages or percentages, we have to answer the question averages or

percentages in relation to the total number ow words in the texts we are examiing. If

we are comparing adjective frequencies we could do it as a percentage of the total

number of words.

- It is important to examine how much internal variation from the average there is

- Let us assume that we have compared two passages and find that the average sentence-

lengths for them are 28 words and 30 word. Although the second passage´s average is

higher htan the first it is unlikely that we can base any findings on the difference. This

is because of the difference overe these sorts is unlikely to be significant.

What language features should we examine to elucidate vysvetliť text style?

- Foregrounded features, ingcluding figures of speech

- Patterns of viewpoint manipulation, including speech and thought presentation

- Patterns of lexis (vocabulary)

- Patterns of grammatical organisation

- Patterns of textual organisation (how units of textual organisation, trom sentences to

paragraphs are arranged)

The great Gatsby

- Nick Carraway – I narrator – describes the series of large society parties which Gatsty

throws at his mansion in the hope that the young woman he is in love with , but who is

married now to someone else, will come to one of them. Nick in a near neighbor living

ina small house from which he can observe

General remarks

- This passage describes the preparations for an extravagant party which is

representative of a fortnightly series of such events

- Most of the description appears to be from a viewpoint outside the party itself,

apporpiate o Nick´s viewing position from his own house next door. Only external

generalities are described

- The first paragraph describes the food and drink, in the second and third paragraphs

we see..

Some statistics – a helpful way of giving a general characterization of piece ..

The average sentence length for the passage is approximately twice as the Ellegard norm

Paragraph 1 is. .

The overall pattern for the major word classes is close to the Ellegard norm, but the

proportion of adjectives is higher than the norm, because this is a descriptive passage.

Lexis

- There is specialized vocabulary for the musical instruments and food in particular, and

a number of words have foreign, and thus exotic connotations (horsdóveures,

harlequin, castile..)

- There is relatively little lexical repetition, and this suggests that a large number of

different things are being referred to - Fitzgerald gives the feeling of an exciting, ever-

changing scene

- As there is not much repetition, those lexical items which are repeated will stand out.

They relate to vision, drink, musing and social interaction:colour, bar, cordials,

orchestra, chatter, ..

- Most of the vocabulary ar the beginning of the passage refers to concrete things – the

food, the drink, and the instruments of the orchestra, but later therer are more abstract

nouns, mainly describing social interaction

- Many of the words in the passage have visual properties – coloured lights, glistening,

harlequin designs, dark gold, yellow cocktail music

- The party seems to be mainly peopled by women. The party takes place at Gatsby´s

house,but Gatsby does not appear. The orchestra leader is the only male specifically

referred to, and many nouns referring or alluding to people are non-gender-specific

(caterers, swimmers). There are female quests in the sentence 3, women in 6, girls in

9. And the extendend description of the girl who dances out on the canvas platform in

10. Nick the narrator is a young male,and so may be expected to notice the opposite

sex more than his own, and we also know that his purpose organizing the parties is to

attract a particular woman

- Verbs – the vast majority of main verbs are dynmic, helping to give a sense of

continual movement and change to the passage (69.6 of the main verbs are dynamic,

21..7 stative and 8.7 per cent relate to cogniction of perception. If we concentrate on

the dynamic verbs we find that extremely high proportion of the (68.8) are intransitive.

Because transitive verbs take object and intransitive do not, there s a tendency..

Adverbs – are the least represented for the major word classes: the large majority of the

adverbs relate to three major semantic areas: place, time, manner

Grammar: sentence structure

- All of the passage´s sentences are statements

Some basic sentence patterns in English:

- Simple sentence – john loves mary

- Coordination – john loves mary and mary loves john

- Parataxis – john loves, mary, mary loves john.

- Trailing structure – John loves mary because mary loves john

- Anticipatory sentence – because mary loves john, john loves mary

- Paranthetic structure – john, because mary loves him, loves mary

The dominant pattern of clauses would appear to be a series of main clauses coordinated

together, or juxtaposed paratactically, woth the occasional subordinate clause – the passage is

easy to read, the predominant grammatical style is loose

Readers feel that Fitzgerald´s style of writing is rather more demanding that that of Stainback

of Lawrence, because his sentences are typically twice as long, but less difficult than Virgina

Woolf or Henry James. Fitzgerald makes consistent use of trailing structures

This shows interesting things about Fitzgerald´s style

The last summative sentence is the shortest sentence

The penultimate sentence: its first clause consists only of a noun phrase – A momentary hush.

The semi-colon following the phrase indicates that is is intended to be construed as a clause,

but there is no verb – the normal obligatory centre of clause structure. This startling effect is

appropriate for the content expressed – an individual girl..

Grammar: phrase structure

- The main verb phrases are mainly simple

- The first paragraph, describing the preparations for the party, in past tense, but at the

beginning of the secong paragraph, which describes the prelude to the party, as the

quests arrive and get ready, the tense switches to the present perfect

- In the last three paragraphs nearly 15 per cent of the nouns – chatter, laugher, are

derived from verbs, this helps to increase the feeling of continual movement and

change in the description

- The noun phrases occur in a series of long and distinctive “and” to ..

Cohesion and coherence

- There is relatively little lexical repetition to link parts of the text together

- There is little use of pronouns to create patterns of linked reference to one person or

thing

- There is a little use of elegant variation – where alternative expressions are used to

refer to the same individual or thing

- These infrequencies are all connected with the effect of constant change and

movement.

- The paragraph-initial changes – at least once a fortnight-… by seven o´ clock..

suddenly – help to structure the various phrases.. Firstly, secondly, finally, step one,

step two – coherence. – structure

- Poetic features – alliteration and metaphor can be found here – corps of caterers---

Christmas tree of Gatsvy enormous garden garnished with glistening hors dóeuvres..

- Metaphor – the turkeys are bewitched to a dark gold – zakliate, spiced baked hams

crowed agains.

Aspects of irony in the passage

- There is no thought presentation in the scene, ther is some rereference to speech, but

what individual characters asay or wat words they use to say it is never revealed

- The pardy described is large, opulent.. but nick´s description of it is also imbued –

nasýteny with irony throughout.

- Gatsby has everything except the woman he loves.

Parallel construction

- The necessary condition in parallel construction is identical, or similar syntactical

structure in two or more sentence or parts of a sentence in close succession e.g. real

silver spoon to stir the sea with and real china cups to drink it out of

- Parallel construction are often backed you by repetition of words (lexical repetition)

and conjunction and preposition (polysyndeton)

- Pure parallel construction does not depend on any other kind of repetition by the

repetition of the syntactical design of the sentence.

- Parallel construction is most frequently used in enumeration, antithesis, and in climax

- Parallel construction is used in different styles of writing with different function – e.g.

in the belles-letters style it carries and emotive function – it is mainly used as a

technical means in building up other stylistic devices.

Chiasmus (reversed parallel construction)

- It is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but it has a crossed (srkížený)

order of words and phrases. The structure of two successive sentences or parts of a

sentence may be described as reversed parallel construction, the word-order of one of

the sentences being inverted as compared with that of the other: Down dropped the

breeze. The sails dropped down.

- This device is effective in that it helps to lay stress on the second part of the utterance,

which is opposite in structure. This is due to the sudden change in the structure which

by its very unexpectedness linguistically requires a slight pause before it

- Chiasmus is a syntactical, not a lexical device – it is only the arrangement of the parts

of the utterance which constitutes this stylistic device

- There exists lexical chiasmus – or chiasmatic repetition – both parts of the parallel

construction have the same, the normal word – order: in the day of old men made the

manners. Manners now make men (Byron)

- The first part in chiasmus is somewhat incomplete, it calls for combination, and the

anticipation is rewarded by the second part of the construction, which is the

completion of the idea. stylistic device = acquired quite different function – it does not

aim what making a direct emotional impact, the SD of repetition aims at logical

emphasis necessary to fix the attention of the reader on the heavy word

Repetition

- Repetition is an expressive means of language used when speaker is under the stress of

strong emotion: Stop! – she cried, “do not tell me! I do not want to hear, I do not want

to hear what you have come for, I do not want to hear

- The repetition I do not want to hear is not a stylistic device, it is a means by which the

excited state of mind of the speaker is shown – it is manifested through intonation

Anaphora

- If the repeated word (or phrase) comes at the beginning of two or more consecutive

sentences, clauses or phrases

Epiphora

- If the repeated unit is placed at the end of consecutive sentences, clauses or phrases

Framing – the initial parts of a syntactical unit, in most cases of a paragraph, are repeated at

the end of it:

Poor dool´s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her

up.. Poor little doll´s dressmaker (dickens)

Anadiplosis – the structure of anadiplosis: the last word or phrase of one part of an utterance

is repeated at the befinning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together: Freeman ans

slave.. carried on an uninterrupted,now hiden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended..

Chain repetition – linking device used several times in one utterance: a smile would come

into Mr. Pickwick´s face, the smile extended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and the roar

became general (dickens)

The primary stylistic function of the repetition is to intensify the utterance

Synonymical repetition

- Is a variety of repetition, this is the repetition of the same idea by using synonymous

words and phrases which by adding a slightly different nuance of meaning intensify

the impact of the utterance

- A. – Pleanasm – expresses the negative attitude of the critic. It is the use of more

words in a sentence thatn are necessary to express the meaning- redundancy of

expression

- B.- It is the repetition of the same statement. The repetition of the same word or phrase

or the same idea or statement in other words, usually as a fault of style

Enumeration (vymenúvanie)

- Is a stylistic device by which separate things, objects, phenomena, properties are

named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which, being syntacticall

yin the same pisiton, are are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity,

remote through it may seen – it is frequently used to depict scenery through a tourist´s

eyes: … donkey, priests, patios….

- There are various element of the enumeration ? in semantic fields

- …youth lovely / age lovely ….here the obj. contrast pair is youth and age cannot be

regarded as objectively opposite concept but being drewn into the scheme.

- Antithesis has the feeling basic function: rhythm-forming, dissevering (oddelujuci)

and comparative.

- A display one of the function more clearly

Climax – gradation

- Is an arrangement of sentences which secures a gradual increase in significance,

importance, or emotional tension in the utterance: it was a lovely city, a beautiful city,

a fair city, a veritable gem of a city.. Each successive unit is perceived as stronger than

the preceding one

- Gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways:

- 1. Logical climax – is based on the relative importance of the component parts looked

at from the point of view of the concepts embodied in them

- 2. Emotional climax – is based on the relative emotional tension produces by words

with emotive meaning as lovely, beautiful, fair..

- 3. Quantitative climax – this is an evident increase in the volume of the corresponding

concepts: they looked at hundreds of housed, thousand of stars..

- The concrete stylistic function of this device is to show the relative importance of

things as seen by the author

Antithesis

- In order to characterize a thing or phenomenon from a specific point of view, it may be

necessary to find points of sharp contrast, that is, to set one against the other: a saint

abroad, and a devil..

- Any opposition is based on the contrasting features

- Stylistic opposition – antithesis – is based on relative opposition which arises out of

the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pair.

- It has function of: rhythm-forming, dissevering – oddelujuci and comparative

2. The way the parts are connected with each other

Asyndeton – is a connection between parts of a sentence or between sentences without any

formal sign when there is omission of the connective where it is generally expected to be

according to the norms of the literary language: Soames turned away, he had an utter

disinclination for talk, like one standing before an open grave, watching a coffin

slowlylowered.. – there is a deliberate omission of the subordinate conjunction BECAUSE –

or FOR and it makes the sentence “he had an utter” almost entirely independent

Polysyndeton – is the stylistic device of connecting sentences, or phrases, or syntagms, or

words by using connectives (mostly conjunctions and prepositions) before each component

part_ a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and sawophones and viols and..

- The repetition of conjunctions and other means of connection makes an utterance more

rhythmical . so much so that prose may even seem like verse

- Polysyndeton has a disintegrating function – it generally combines homogenous

elements of thought into one whole resembling enumeration

- Enumeration, however, integrates both homogenous and heterogeneous elements into

one whole – it shows things united – polysyndeton shows them isolated

3.Peculiar use of colloquial constructions

- emotional syntactical structures are typical for the spoken variety of language, however, they

are effectively used by men-of-letters to depict the emotial

When they are used in the dialogue of novels and stories these emotional construction, being

deprived of their typical intonation, assume a greater significance and become stylistically

marked

Ellipsis – it is a typical phenomenon in conversation, arising out of the situation

It is a typical feature of the spoken language but it assumes a new quality when used in the

written language – so justice oberwaltzer – solemnly anddidactically from his high seat the

jury..

There is the absence of the predicate in this.

Aposiopesis – break-in-the-narrative

- Is a device which dictionaries define as a stopping shor for rhetorical effect

- In the spoken variety of the language, a break-in-the-narrative is usually caused by

unwillingness to preceed, or by uncertainty as to what should be said

- In writin it is the context, which suggests the adequate information, that is the only key

to decode the aposiopesis: you just come or or I´ll . implication here is a threat.

However, without the context the implication can be vague. But when one knows …

- It is stylistic syntactical device to convey to the reader a very strong upsurge vzostup

of emotions

Question-in-the-narrative

- Is asked and answered by one and the same person,usually the author

- For what is lef the poet here? For Greeks a blush – for Greece a tear

- Sometimes it gives the impression of an intimate talk between the writer and the

reader: Scrooge knoew he was dead? Of course..

- Is used in oratory often,. Here they chain the attention of the listeners to the matter the

orator is dealing.. with, they also gives the listeners time to absorb what has been said

and prepared for the next point

- remain unanswered

-

4.Stylistic use of structural meaning

- syntactical structures may also be used in meanings other than their primary ones

- every syntactical structure has its definite function, which sometimes is called its structural

meaning, whe a structure is used in some other function it may be said to assume a new

meaning which is similar to lexical transferred meaning

Rhetorical question

- It is a syntactical stylistic device when the question is no longer a question but a

statement expressed in the form of interrogative sentence.

- There is an interplay of two structural meanins:1 that of the question and 2. That of the

statement – both are materialized simultaneously: are there the remedies – riesenia –

for a starving and desperate populace?

- Another definition of a rhetorical question is that it is equal to a categorical

pronouncement plus an exclamation

- Can be embodied in complex sentences with the subordinate clause containing the

pronouncement: shall the sons of Chimary who never forgive the fault of a friend bid

an enemy live?

- Can be also based on negation, too: did not the Italian Mosico Cazzani sing at my

heart six months at least in vain?

- The intonation of rhetorical questions differs materially from the intonation of

ordinary questions because of irony. Sometimes they have different meaning such as

doubt, challenge, scorn, and so on..

- with, they also gives the listeners time to absorb what has been said and prepared for

the next point

- remain unanswered

Litotes

- Is a stylistic device consisting of a peculiar use of negative construction. The negation

plus noun or adjective establishe a positive feature in a person or thing, however, this

positive feature is diminished in quality as compared with a synonymous expression

making straightforward assertion of the positive feaure: it is not a bad thing = it is a

good thing – negative construction here has a stronger impact on reader than

affirmative one

- Is is not a pure negation, but negation that includes affirmation – potvrdenie

- Wecan speak about transparence of meaning- a device with help of which two

meanings are materialized simultaneously: the direct (negative) and transferred

(affirmative)

- The negative “not” is more emphatically pronounced than in ordinary negative

sentences

- A variant of litotes is a construction with two negation: not unlike, nod

displeased…two negatives make a positive

- Litotes is used in different styles of speech, excluding those which may be called the

matter-of-fact styles, like official style and scientific prose