Wee modest crimson tipped flow'r

24. Wee modest crimson tipped flow'r,

Thou's met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crash amang the stoure

Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my pow'r

Thou bonnie gem.

(R. B.)

25. "That's so, my lord. I remember having tae du much the same thing, mony years since, in an inquest upon a sailing vessel that ran aground in the estuary and got broken up by bumping herself to bits in a gale. The insurance folk thocht that the accident wasna a'tegither straightforward. We tuk it upon oorsels tae demonstrate that wi' the wind and tide setti' as they did, the boat should ha' been wellaway fra' the shore if they started at the hour they claimed tae ha' done. We lost the case, but I've never altered my opeenion." (D.S.)

 

III. Compare the neutral and the colloquial (or literary) modes of expression:

1. "Also it will cost him a hundred bucks as a retainer."

"Huh?" Suspicious again. Stick to basic English.

"Hundred dollars," I said. "Iron men. Fish. Bucks to the number of one hundred. Me no money, me no come. Savvy?" I began to count a hundred with both hands. (R.Ch.)

2. "...some thief in the night boosted my clothes whilst I slept. I sleep awful sound on the mattresses you have here." "Somebody boosted...?" "Pinched. Jobbed. Swiped. Stole," he says happily. (K.K.)

3. "Now take fried, crocked, squiffed, loaded, plastered, blotto, tiddled, soaked, boiled, stinko, viled, polluted."

"Yes," I said.

"That's the next set of words I am decreasing my vocabulary by", said Atherton. "Tossing them all out in favor of-"

"Intoxicated?" I supplied.

"I favor fried," said Atherton. "It's shorter and monosyllabic, even though it may sound a little harsher to the squeamish-minded."

"But there are degrees of difference," I objected. "Just being tiddled isn't the same as being blotto, or-"

"When you get into the vocabulary-decreasing business," he interrupted, "you don't bother with technicalities. You throw out the whole kit and caboodle - I mean the whole bunch," he hastily corrected himself. (P.G.W.)

4. "Do you talk?" asked Bundle. "Or are you just strong and silent?" "Talk?" said Anthony. "I, burble. I murmur. I gurgle - like a running brook, you know. Sometimes I even ask questions." (Ch.)

5. "So you'll both come to dinner? Eight fifteen. Dinny, we must be back to lunch. Swallows," added Lady Mont round the brim of her hat and passed out through the porch.

"There's a house-party," said Dinny to the young man's elevated eyebrows. "She means tails and a white tie."

"Oh! Ah! Best bib and tucker, Jean." (G.)

6. "What do you really contemplate doing?" "No Plaza? Not even when I'm in the ohips?" "Why are you so rich?" (J.O'H.)

7. "Obviously an emissary of Mr. Bunyan had obtained clandestine access to her apartment in her absence and purloined the communication in question." It took Lord Uffenham some moments to work this out, but eventually he unravelled it and was able to translate it from his butler's language. What the man was trying to say was that some low blister, bought with Bunyan's gold, had sneaked into the girl's flat and pinched the bally things. (P.G.W.)

8. ''I say, old boy, where do you hang out?" Mr. Pickwick responded that he was at present suspended at the George and Vulture. (D.)

9. "The only thing that counts in his eyes is solid achievement. Sometimes I have been prostrate with fatigue. He calls it idleness. I need the stimulation of good company. He terms this riff-raff. The plain fact is, I am misunderstood." (D. du M.)

10. "The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial outlay."

"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has a pippin of an idea but it's going to cost a bit." (P.G.W.)

11. Mrs. Sunbury never went to bed - she retired, but Mr. Sunbury who was not quite so refined as his wife always said: "Me for Bedford." (S.M.)

12. "He tried those engineers. But no soap. No answer." (J.O'H.)

13. "You want to know what I think? I think you're nuts. Pure plain crazy. Goofy as a loon. That's what I think." (J.)

14. The famous Alderman objected to the phrase in Canning's inscription for a Pitt Memorial "He died poor" and wished to substitute "He expired in indigent circumstances." (Luc.)

15. "I am Alpha and Omega - the first and the last," the solemn voice would announce. (D. du M.)

16. The tall man ahead of him half-turned saying "Gre't God! I never, I never in all my days seen so many folks." Mr. Munn thought that he, too, had never seen so many people, never before. (R.W.)

17. It may sound to some like cold-blooded murder of the English tongue, but American kids have been speaking a language of their own since they annoyed their Pilgrim parents at Plymouth Rock.

Ask a teen-ager today what he thought of last night's rock show. If he liked it, it was "wicked" or "totally awesome". But if he didn't, it was "groady" or "harsh".

Young people punctuate their sentences with slang. They drop phrases that would make Professor Henry Higgins turn over in his grave. Twice.

"It's just like a dictionary that only teen-agers understand," said Michael Harris, 17, a high school student in Richmond, Va. "You go home and you have to spell it for your parents. They don't even know what you're talking about."

But this has been going on for years. Slang is as old as English itself, says Stuart Berg Flexner, editor-in-chief of the Random House Dictionary, author of the Dictionary of American Slang.

It offended puritan parents that their Pilgrim children took their traditional farewell - God be with you - and turned it into "good-bye", Flexner says.

Today's words are obsolete tomorrow.

"I may call somebody a jerk, but today they would call him a nerd," says Flexner, 54. "Each generation seems to want to have some of its own words."

"It's not so much to shut out adults - although that's a part of it. It gives them identity with their own age group. They sort of belong to their own club," he says.

There is valleytalk and preppyspeak, jocktalk and street language.

Take Moon Unit Zappa's Valley Talk. The daughter of famed rocker Frank Zappa was 14 years old when her dad sat her before a microphone and documented her language in a pop song.

"Gag me with a spoon," she says to show disgust. "Groady to themax."

Legions of youngsters across America picked it up. The song, and language, was a coast-to-coast hit. But that killed it.

"Valley Speak is out," reports Jane Segal, 16, a reformed Valley Girl at Santa Monica High School. "It went out after the song was played to death. It was really popular, and then everyone got so sick of the stupid song they quit saying that stuff."

"No one ever says 'Gag me' anymore," she says. "'Totally' is still hanging on, and everyone uses' "like". They say it everywhere, just sprinkle it in. I do it subconsciously, I use it like "um."

Flexner considers slang.a reflection of American pop culture. Words come and go like No. 1 hit songs. Once a word is widely known it may be dropped, relegated to the used-slang bin alongside "swell" from the '50s and "groovy" from the '60s.

Others stick around like golden oldies.

"There are classics. Once" a good phrase comes along it's pretty hard to replace it," says Scott Wenger, 19, a New York University student. "Flipped" out still means crazy and "pulling an allnighter" still means to study.hard until all hours of the morning for exams."

Teen-agers may dream up slang, but adults use it too. Julia Shields, 42, a high school English teacher in Charlottesville, Va., is an avowed user.

"I love slang, think it's colorful, wonderful, metaphoric. Some of it is quite clever," she says. "I hate it, but I call everything "neat". It's such a horrible, vague, meaningless word. But I use it in every sentence."

Slang is not the talk of board rooms and diplomatic sessions. Because young people spend more time informally than adults, and slang is a product of relaxing the rules, high schools and college campuses are breeding grounds for it. (C. R.)

 

IV. Speak about the difference between the contextual and the dictionary meanings of italicized words:

1. Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was the citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. (J.J.)

2. He does all our insurance examining and they say he's some doctor. (S.L.)

3. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic. (S.L.)

4. "What do you think?" The question pops their heads up. (K.K.)

5. We tooled the car into the street and eased it into the ruck of folks. (R.W.)

6. He inched the car forward. (A.H.)

7. "Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And - and - we drifted into a sort of understanding - I suppose I should call it an engagement -"

"You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it." (B.Sh.)

8. He sat with the strike committee for many hours in a smoky room and agonized over ways and means. (M.G.)

9. Betty loosed fresh tears. (Jn.B.)

10. When the food came, they wolfed it down rapidly. (A.M.)

11. He had seen many places and been many things railroad foreman, plantation overseer, boss mechanic, cow-puncher, and Texas deputy-sheriff. (J.R.)

12 Station platforms were such long, impersonal, dirty, ugly things, with too many goodbyes, lost hearts, and tears stamped into the concrete paving. (A. S.)

13. "Let me say, Virginia, that I consider your conduct most unbecoming. Nor at all that of a pure young widow."

"Don't be an idiot. Bill. Things are happening."

"What kind of things?"

"Queer things." (Ch.)

14. I need young critical things like you to punch me up. (S.L.)

15. Oh! the way the women wear their prettiest every thing' (T.C.)

Lexical Stylistic Devices

 

Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Play on Words. Irony. Epithet.

Hyperbole. Understatement. Oxymoron

You know by now that among multiple functions of the word the main one is to denote, denotational meaning thus being the major semantic characteristic of the word. In this paragraph we shall deal with the foregrounding of this particular function, i.e. with such types of denoting phenomena that create additional expressive, evaluative, subjective connotations. We shall deal in fact with the substitution of the existing names approved by long usage and fixed in dictionaries by new, occasional, individual ones, prompted by the speaker's subjective original view and evaluation of things. This act of name-exchange, of substitution is traditionally referred to as transference, for, indeed, the name of one object is transferred onto another, proceeding from their similarity (of shape, colour, function, etc.), or closeness (of material existence, cause/ effect, instrument/result, part/whole relations, etc.).

Each type of intended substitution results in a stylistic device (SD) called also a trope. The most frequently used, well known and elaborated among them is a metaphor - transference of names based on the associated likeness between two objects, as in the "pancake", or "ball", or "volcano" for the "sun"; "silver dust", "sequins" for "stars"; "vault", "blanket", "veil" for the "sky".

From previous study you know that nomination - the process of naming reality by means of the language - proceeds from choosing one of the features characteristic of the object which is being named, for the representative of the object. The connection between the chosen feature, representing the object, and the word is especially vivid in cases of transparent "inner form" when the name of the object can be easily traced to the name of one of its characteristics. Cf.: "railway", "chairman", "waxen". Thus the semantic structure of a word reflects, to a certain extent, characteristic features of the piece of reality which it denotes (names). So it is only natural that similarity between real objects or phenomena finds its reflection in the semantic structures of words denoting them: both words possess at least one common semantic component. In the above examples with the "sun" this common semantic component is "hot" (hence - "volcano", "pancake" which are also "hot"), or "round" ("ball", "pancake" which are also of round shape).

The expressiveness of the metaphor is promoted by the implicit simultaneous presence of images of both objects - the one which is actually named and the one which supplies its own "legal" name. So that formally we deal with the name transference based on the similarity of one feature common to two different entities, while in fact each one enters a phrase in the complexity of its other characteristics. The wider is the gap between the associated objects the more striking and unexpected - the more expressive - is the metaphor.

If a metaphor involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects, we deal with personification, as in "the face of London", or "the pain of the ocean".

Metaphor, as all other SDs, is fresh, orginal, genuine, when first used, and trite, hackneyed, stale when often repeated. In the latter case it gradually loses its expressiveness becoming just another entry in the dictionary, as in the "leg of a table" or the "sunrise", thus serving a very important source of enriching the vocabulary of the language.

Metaphor can be expressed by all notional parts of speech, and functions in the sentence as any of its members.

When the speaker (writer) in his desire to present an elaborated image does not limit its creation to a single metaphor but offers a group of them, each supplying another feature of the described phenomenon, this cluster creates a sustained (prolonged) metaphor.

 

Exercise I. Analyse the given cases of metaphor from all sides mentioned above - semantics, originality, expressiveness, syntactic function, vividness and elaboration of the created image. Pay attention to the manner in which two objects (actions) are identified: with both named or only one - the metaphorized one – presented explicitly:

1. She looked down on Gopher Prairie. The snow stretching without break from street to devouring prairie beyond, wiped out the town's pretence of being a shelter. The houses were black specks on a white sheet. (S.L.)

2. And the skirts! What a sight were those skirts! They were nothing but vast decorated pyramids; on the summit of each was stuck the upper half of a princess. (A.B.)

3. I was staring directly in front of me, at the back of the driver's neck, which was a relief map of boil scars. (S.)

4. She was handsome in a rather leonine way. Where this girl was a lioness, the other was a panther - lithe and quick. (Ch.)

5. His voice was a dagger of corroded brass. (S.L.)

6. Wisdom has reference only to the past. T-he future remains for ever an infinite field for mistakes. You can't know beforehand. (D.H.L.)

7. He felt the first watery eggs of sweat moistening the palms of his hands. (W. S.)

8. At the last moment before the windy collapse of the day, I myself took the road down. (Jn. H.)

9. The man stood there in the middle of the street with the deserted dawnlit boulevard telescoping out behind him. (Т.Н.)

10. Leaving Daniel to his fate, she was conscious of joy springing in her heart. (A.B.)

11. He smelled the ever-beautiful smell of coffee imprisoned in the can. (J. St.)

12. We talked and talked and talked, easily, sympathetically, wedding her experience with my articulation. (Jn.B.)

13. "We need you so much here. It's a dear old town, but it's a rough diamond, and we need you for the polishing, and we're ever so humble...". (S.L.)

14. They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate. (W.G.)

15. Geneva, mother of the Red Cross, hostess of humanitarian congresses for the civilizing of warfare! (J.R.)

16. She and the kids have filled his sister's house and their welcome is wearing thinner and thinner. (U.)

17. Notre'Dame squats in the dusk. (H.)

18. I am the new year. I am an unspoiled page in your book of time. I am your next chance at the art of living.

I am your opportunity to practice what you have learned during the last twelve months about life.

All that you sought the past year and failed to find is hidden in me; I am waiting for you to search it out again and with more determination.

All the good that you tried to do for others and didn't achieve last year is mine to grant - providing you have fewer selfish and conflicting desires.

In me lies the potential of all that you dreamed but didn't dare to do, all that you hoped but did not perform, all you prayed for but did not yet experience. These dreams slumber lightly, waiting to be awakened by the touch of an enduring purpose. I am your opportunity. (Т. Н.) •

19. Autumn comes And trees are shedding their leaves, And Mother Nature blushes Before disrobing. (N. W.)

20. He had hoped that Sally would laugh at this, and she did, and in a sudden mutual gush they cashed into the silver of laughter all the sad" secrets they could find in their pockets. (U.)

21. All across the Union audiences clamour for her arrival, which will coincide with that of the new century. For we are at the fag-end, the smouldering cigar-butt, of a nineteenth century which is just about to be ground out in the ashtray of history. (An.C.)

Metonymy, another lexical SD, - like metaphor - on losing its originality also becomes instrumental in enriching the vocabulary of the language, though metonymy is created by a different semantic process and is based on contiguity (nearness) of objects or phenomena. Transference of names in metonymy does not involve a necessity for two different words to have a common component in their semantic structures, as is the case of metaphor, but proceeds from the fact that two objects (phenomena) have common grounds of existence in reality. Such words as "cup" and "tea" have no linguistic semantic nearness, but the first one may serve the container of the second, hence - the conversational cliche "Will you have another cup?", which is a case of metonymy, once original, but due to long use, no more accepted as a fresh SD.

"My brass will call your brass," says one of the characters of A. Hailey's Airport to another, meaning "My boss will call your boss." The transference of names is caused by both bosses being officers, wearing uniform caps with brass cockades.

The scope of transference in metonymy is much more limited than that of metaphor, which is quite understandable: the scope of human imagination identifying two objects (phenomena, actions) on the grounds of commonness of one of their innumerable characteristics is boundless while actual relations between objects are more limited. This is why metonymy, on the whole,- is a less frequently observed SD, than metaphor.

Similar to singling out one particular type of metaphor into the self-contained SD of personification, one type of metonymy - namely, the one, which is based on the relations between a part and the whole - is often viewed independently as synecdoche.

As a rule, metonymy is expressed by nouns (less frequently - by substantivized numerals) and is used in syntactical functions characteristic of nouns (subject, object, predicative).

Exercise II. Indicate metonymies, state the type of relations between the object named and the object implied, which they represent, lso pay attention to the degree of their originality, and to their syntactical function:

1. He went about her room, after his introduction, looking at her pictures, her bronzes and clays, asking after the creator of this, the painter of that, where a third thing came from. (Dr.)

2. She wanted to have a lot of children, and she was glad that things were that way, that the Church approved. Then the little girl died. Nancy broke with Rome the day her baby died. It was a secret break, but no Catholic breaks with Rome casually. (J.O'H.)

3. "Evelyn Glasgow, get up out of that chair this minute." The girl looked up from her book. "What's the matter?"

"Your satin. The skirt'll be a mass of wrinkles in the back." (E. F.)

4. Except for a lack of youth, the guests had no common theme, they seemed strangers among strangers; indeed, each face, on entering, had straggled to conceal dismay at seeing others there. (T.C.)

5. She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms. (A.B.)

6. Dinah, a slim, fresh, pale eighteen, was pliant and yet fragile. (С. Н.)

7. The man looked a rather old forty-five, for he was already going grey. (K. P.)

8. The delicatessen owner was a spry and jolly fifty. (T. R.)

9. "It was easier to assume a character without having to tell too many lies and you brought a fresh eye and mind to the job." (P.)

10. "Some remarkable pictures in this room, gentlemen. A Holbein, two Van Dycks and if I am not mistaken, a Velasquez. I am interested in pictures." (Ch.)

11. You have nobody to blame but yourself. The saddest words of tongue or pen. (I.Sh.)

12. For several days he took an hour after his work to make inquiry taking with him some examples of his pen and inks. (Dr.)

13. There you are at your tricks again. The rest of them do earn their bread; you live on my charity. (E.Br.)

14. I crossed a high toll bridge and negotiated a no man's land and came to the place where the Stars and Stripes stood shoulder to shoulder with the Union Jack. (J. St.)

15. The praise was enthusiastic enough to have delighted any common writer who earns his living by his pen. (S.M.)

16. He made his way through the perfume and conversation. (I.Sh.)

17. His mind was alert and people asked him to dinner not for old times' sake, but because he was worth his salt. (S.M.)

18. Up the Square, from the corner of King Street, passed a woman in a new bonnet with pink strings, and a new blue dress that sloped at the shoulders and grew to a vast circumference at the hem. Through the silent sunlit solitude of the Square this bonnet and this dress floated northwards in search of romance. (A.B.)

19. Two men in uniforms were running heavily to the Administration building. As they ran, Christian saw them throw away their rifles. They were portly men who looked like advertisements for Munich beer, and running came hard to them. The first prisoner stopped and picked up one of the discarded rifles. He did not fire it, but carried it, as he chased the guards. He swung the rifle like a club, and one of the beer advertisements went down (I.Sh.)

As you must have seen from the brief outline and the examples of metaphor and metonymy, the first one operates on the linguistic basis (proceeding from the similarity of semantic components of a word), while the latter one rests solely on the extralinguistic, actually existing relations between the phenomena denoted by the words.

Our next concern is a cluster of SDs, which are united into a small group as they have much in common both in the mechanism of their formation and in their functioning. They are - pun (also referred to as paronomasia), zeugma, violation of phraseological units, semantically false chains, and nonsense of non-sequence. In the stylistic tradition of the English-speaking countries only the first two are widely discussed. The latter two, indeed, may be viewed as slight variations of the first ones for, basically, the foursome perform the same stylistic function in speech, and operate on the same linguistic mechanism: namely, one word-form is deliberately used in two meanings. The effect of these SDs is humorous. Contextual conditions leading to the simultaneous realization of two meanings and to the formation of pun may vary: it can be misinterpretation of one speaker's utterance by the other, which results in his remark dealing with a different meaning of the misinterpreted word or its homonym, as in the famous case from the Pickwick Papers When the fat boy, Mr. Wardle's servant, emerged from the corridor, very pale, he was asked by his master: "Have you been seeing any spirits?" "Or taking any?" - added Bob Alien. The first "spirits" refers to supernatural forces, the second one - to strong drinks.

Punning may be the result of the speaker's intended violation of the listener's expectation, as in the jocular quotation from B. Evans "There comes a period in every man's life, but she is just a semicolon in his." Here we expect the second half of the sentence to unfold the content, proceeding from "period" understood as "an interval of time", while the author has used the word in the meaning of "punctuation mark" which becomes clear from the "semicolon", following it.

Misinterpretation may be caused by the phonetic similarity of two homonyms, such as in the crucial case of O. Wilde's play The Importance of Being Ernest.

In very many cases polysemantic verbs that have a practically unlimited lexical valency and can be combined with nouns of most varying semantic groups, are deliberately used with two or more homogeneous members, which are not connected semantically, as in such examples from Ch. Dickens: "He took his hat and his leave", or "She went home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair". These are cases of classical zeugma, highly characteristic of English prose.

When the number of homogeneous members, semantically disconnected, but attached to the same verb, increases, we deal with semantically false chains, which are thus a variation of zeugma. As a rule, it is the last member of the chain that falls out of the thematic group, defeating our expectancy and producing humorous effect. The following case from S. Leacock may serve an example: "A Governess wanted. Must possess knowledge of Romanian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, German, Music and Mining Engineering."

As you have seen from the examples of classical zeugma, the tiesbetween the verb on one hand and each of the dependent members, onthe other, are of different intensity and stability. In most cases one ofthem, together with the verb, forms a phraseological unit or a cliche, inwhich the verb loses some of its semantic independence and strength(Cf.: "to take one's leave" and "to take one's hat"). Zeugma restores theliteral original meaning of the word, which also occurs in violation ofphraseological units of different syntactical patterns, as in Galsworthy'sremark: "Little Jon was born with a silver spoon in his mouth which wasrather curly and large." The word "mouth", with its content, is completelylost in the phraseological unit which means "to have luck, to be bornlucky". Attaching to the unit the qualification of the mouth, the authorrevives the meaning of the word and offers a very fresh, original andexpressive description.

Sometimes the speaker (writer) interferes into the structure of the word attributing homonymous meanings to individual morphemes as in these jocular definitions from Esar's dictionary: professorship — a ship full of professors; relying - telling the same story again; beheld - to have somebody hold you, etc.

It is possible to say thus that punning can be realized on most levels of language hierarchy. Indeed, the described violation of word-structure takes place on the morphological level; zeugma and pun - on the lexical level; violation of phraseological units includes both lexical and syntactical levels; semantically false chains and one more SD of this group - nonsense of non-sequence - on the syntactical level.

Nonsense of non-sequence rests on the extension of syntactical valency and results in joining two semantically disconnected clauses into one sentence, as in: "Emperor Nero played the fiddle, so they burnt Rome." (E.) Two disconnected statements are forcibly linked together by cause / effect relations.

 

Exercise III. Analyse various cases of play on words, indicate which type is used, how it is created, what effect it adds to the utterance:

1. After a while and a cake he crept nervously to the door of the parlour. (A. T.)

2 There are two things I look for jn a man. A sympathetic character and full lips. (I.Sh.)

3. Dorothy, at my statement, had clapped her hand over her mouth to hold down laughter and chewing gum. (Jn.B.)

4. I believed all men were brothers; she thought all men were husbands. I gave the whole mess up. (Jn.B.)

5. In December, 1960, Naval Aviation News, a well-known special publication, explained why "a ship" is referred to as "she": Because there's always a bustle around her; because there's usually a gang of men with her; because she has waist and stays; because it takes a good man to handle her right; because she shows her topsides, hides her bottom and when coming into port, always heads for the buyos." (N.)

6. When I am dead, I hope it may be said:

"His sins were scarlet, but his books were read." (H. B.)

7. Most women up London nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners and French novels. (O.W.)

8. I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry. (H )

9. "Bren, I'm not planning anything. I haven't planned a thing in three years... I'm - I'm not a planner. I'm a liver."

"I'm a pancreas," she said. "I'm a —" and she kissed the absurd game away. (Ph. R.)

10. "Someone at the door," he said, blinking.

"Some four, I should say by the sound," said Fili. (A. T.)

11. He may be poor and shabby, but beneath those ragged trousers beats a heart of gold. (E.)

12. Babbitt respected bigness in anything: in mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth or words. (S.L.)

13. Men, pals, red plush seats, white marble tables, waiters in white aprons. Miss Moss walked through them all. (M.)

14. My mother was wearing her best grey dress and gold brooch and a faint pink flush under each cheek bone. (W.G1.)

15. Hooper laughed and said to Brody, "Do you mind if I give Ellen something?"

"What do you mean?" Brody said. He thought to himself, give her what? A kiss? A box of chocolates? A punch in the nose?

"A present. It's nothing, really." (P.B.)

16. "There is only one brand of tobacco allowed here - "Three nuns". None today, none tomorrow, and none the day after." (Br. B.)

17. "Good morning," said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining and the grass was very green. (A.T.)

18. Some writer once said: "How many times you can call yourself a Man depends on how many languages you know." (M.St.)

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1.   What lexical meanings of a word can you name? Which of them, in most cases, is the most important one?

2. What SDs are based on the use of the logical (denotational) meaning of a word?

3. What is a contextual meaning? How is it used in a SD?

4. What is the difference between the original and the hackneyed SDs?

5. What is a metaphor? What are its semantic, morphological, syntactical, structural, functional peculiarities?

6. What is a metonymy? Give a detailed description of the device.

7. What is included into the group of SDs known as "play on words"? Which ones of them are the most frequently used? What levels of language hierarchy are involved into their formation?

8. Describe the difference between pun and zeugma, zeugma and a semantically false chain, semantically false chain and nonsense of non-sequence.

9. What meanings of a word participate in the violation of a phraseological unit?

10. What is the basic effect achieved by the play on words?

11. Find examples of each of the discussed stylistic devices in your home reading.

12. Try and find peculiarities in the individual use of various SDs by different authors known to you from your courses of literature, interpretation of the text, home reading.

In all previously discussed lexical SDs we dealt with various transformations of the logical (denotational) meaning of words, which participated in the creation of metaphors, metonymies, puns, zeugmas, etc. Each of the SDs added expressiveness and originality to the nomination of the object. Evaluation of the named concept was often present too, but it was an optional characteristic, not inherent in any of these SDs. Their subjectivity relies on the new and fresh look at the object mentioned, which shows the latter from a new and unexpected side. In irony, which is our next item of consideration, subjectivity lies in the evaluation of the phenomenon named. The essence of this SD consists in the foregrounding not of the logical but of the evaluative meaning. The context is arranged so that the qualifying word in irony reverses the direction of the evaluation, and the word positively charged is understood as a negative qualification and (much-much rarer) vice versa. Irony thus is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning, So, like all other SDs, irony does not exist outside the context, which varies from the minimal - a word combination, as in J. Steinbeck's "She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator," - to the context of a whole book, as in Ch: Dickens, where one of the remarks of Mr. Micawber, known for his complex, highly bookish and elaborate style of speaking about the most trivial things, is introduced by the author's words "...Mr. Micawber said in his usual plain manner".

In both examples the words "sweet" and "plain" reverse their positive meaning into the negative one due to the context, micro- in the first, macro- in the second case.

In the stylistic device of irony it is always possible to indicate the exact word whose contextual meaning diametrically opposes its dictionary meaning. This is why this type of irony is called verbal irony. There are very many cases, though, which we regard as irony, intuitively feeling the reversal of the evaluation, but unable to put our finger on the exact word in whose meaning we can trace the contradiction between the said and the implied. The effect of irony in such cases is created by a number of statements, by the whole of the text. This type of irony is called sustained, and it is formed by the contradiction of the speaker's (writer's) considerations and the generally accepted moral and ethical codes. Many examples of sustained irony are supplied by D. Defoe, J. Swift or by such XX-ieth c. writers as S. Lewis, K. Vonnegut, E. Waugh and others.

 

Exercise IV. In the following excerpts you will find mainly examples of verbal irony. Explain what conditions made the realization of the opposite evaluation possible. Pay attention to the part of speech which is used in irony, also its syntactical function:

1. The book was entitled Murder at Milbury Manor and was a whodunit of the more abstruse type, in which everything turns on whether a certain character, by catching the three-forty-three train at Hilbury and changing into the four-sixteen at Milbury, could have reached Silbury by five-twenty-seven, which would have given him just time to disguise himself and be sticking knives into people at Bilbury by six-thirty-eight. (P.G.W.)

2. When the, war broke out she took down the signed photograph of the Kaiser and, with some solemnity, hung it in the men-servants' lavatory; it was her one combative action. (E.W.)

3. "I had a plot, a scheme, a little quiet piece of enjoyment afoot, of which the very cream and essence was that this old man and grandchild should be as poor as frozen rats," and Mr. Brass revealed the whole story, making himself out to be rather a saintlike holy character. (D.)

4. The lift held two people and rose slowly, groaning with diffidence. (I.M.)

5. England has been in a dreadful state for some weeks. Lord Coodle would go out. Sir Thomas Doodle wouldn't come in, and there being nobody in Great Britain (to speak of) except Coodle and Doodle, there has been no Government (D.)

6. From her earliest infancy Gertrude was brought up by her aunt. Her aunt had carefully instructed her to Christian principles. She had also taught her Mohammedanism, to make sure. (L.)

7. She's a charming middle-aged lady with a face like a bucket of mud and if she has washed her hair since Coolidge's second term, I'll eat my spare tire, rim and all. (R.Ch.)

8. With all the expressiveness of a stone Welsh stared at him another twenty seconds apparently hoping to see him gag. (R.Ch.)

9. "Well. It's shaping up into a lovely evening, isn't it?" "Great," he said.

"And if I may say so, you're doing everything to make it harder, you little sweet." (D. P.)

10. Mr. Vholes is a very respectable man. He has not a large business, but he is a very respectable man. He is allowed, by the greater attorneys to be a most respectable man. He never misses a chance in his practice which is a mark of respectability, he never takes any pleasure, which is another mark of respectability, he is reserved and serious which is another mark of respectability. His digestion is impaired which is highly respectable. (D.)

11. Several months ago a magazine named Playboy which concentrates editorially on girls, books, girls, art, girls, music, fashion, girls and girls, published an article about old-time science-fiction. (M.St.)

12. Apart from splits based on politics, racial, religious and ethnic backgrounds and specific personality differences, we're just one cohesive team. (D.U.)

13. A local busybody, unable to contain her curiosity any longer, asked an expectant mother point-blank whether she was going to have a baby. "Oh, goodness, no," the young woman said pleasantly. "I'm just carrying this for a friend." (P.G.W.)

14. Sonny Grosso was a worrier who looked for and frequently managed to find, the dark side of most situations. (P. M.)

15. Bookcases covering one wall boasted a half-shelf of literature. (T.C.)

16. I had been admitted as a partner in the firm of Andrews and Bishop, and throughout 1927 and 19281 enriched myself and the firm at the rate of perhaps forty dollars a month. (Jn.B.)

17. Last time it was a nice, simple, European-style war. (I.Sh.)

18. He could walk and run, was full of exact knowledge about God, and entertained no doubt concerning the special partiality of a minor deity called Jesus towards himself. (A.B.)

19. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. As the great champion of freedom and national'independence he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it Colonization. (B.Sh.)

20. All this blood and fire business tonight was probably part of the graft to get the Socialists chucked out and leave honest businessmen safe to make their fortunes out of murder. (L. Ch)

21. He spent two years in prison, making a number of valuable contacts among other upstanding embezzlers, frauds and confidence men whilst inside. (An.C.)

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

1. What is irony, what lexical meaning is employed in its formation?

2. What types of irony do you know? What is the length of the context needed for the realization of each of them?

3. What are the most frequently observed mechanisms of irony formation? Can you explain the role of the repetition in creating irony?

4. Can you name English or American writers known for their ingenuity and versatility in the use of irony?

5. Find cases of irony in books you read both for work and pleasure.

Antonomasia is a lexical SD in which a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice versa, i.e. a SD, in which the nominal meaning of a proper name is suppressed by its logical meaning or the logical meaning acquires the new - nominal — component. Logical meaning, as you know, serves to denote concepts and thus to classify individual objects into groups (classes). Nominal meaning has no classifying power for it applies to one single individual object with the aim not of classifying it as just another of a number of objects constituting a definite group, but, on the contrary, with the aim of singling it out of the group of similar objects, of individualizing one particular object. Indeed, the word "Mary" does not indicate whether the denoted object refers to the class of women, girls, boats, cats, etc., for it singles out without denotational classification. But in Th. Dreiser we read: "He took little satisfaction in telling each Mary, shortly after she arrived, something...." The attribute "each", used with the name, turns it into a common noun denoting any female. Here we deal with a case of antonomasia of the first type.

Another type of antonomasia we meet when a common noun serves as an individualizing name, as in D. Cusack: "There are three doctors in an illness like yours. I don't mean only myself, my partner and the radiologist who does your X-rays, the three I'm referring to are Dr. Rest, Dr. Diet and Dr. Fresh Air."

Still another type of antonomasia is presented by the so-called "speaking names" - names whose origin from common nouns is still clearly perceived. So, in such popular English surnames as Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown the etymology can be restored but no speaker of English today has it in his mind that the first one used to mean occupation and the second one - color. While such names from Sheridan's School for Scandal as Lady Teazle or Mr. Surface immediately raise associations with certain human qualities due to the denotational meaning of the words "to tease" and "surface". The double role of the speaking names, both to name and to qualify, is sometimes preserved in translation. Cf. the list of names from another of Sheridan's plays, The Rivals: Miss Languish - Мисс Томней; Mr. Backbite - М-р Клевентаун; Mr. Credulous - М-р Доверч; Mr. Snake - М-р Гад, etc. Or from F. Cooper: Lord Chatterino - Лорд Балаболо; John Jaw — Джон Брех; Island Leap-High - Остров Высокопрыгия.

Antonomasia is created mainly by nouns, more seldom by attributive combinations (as in "Dr. Fresh Air") or phrases (as in "Mr. What's-his name"). Common nouns used in the second type of antonomasia are in most cases abstract, though there are instances of concrete ones being used too.

 

Exercise V. Analyse the following cases of antonomasia. State the type of meaning employed and implied; indicate what additional information is created by the use of antonomasia; pay attention to the morphological and semantic characteristics of common nouns used as proper names:

1. "You cheat, you no-good cheat - you tricked our son. Took our son with a scheming trick, Miss Tomboy, Miss Sarcastic, Miss Sncerface." (Ph. R.)

2. A stout middle-aged man, with enormous owl-eyed spectacles, was sitting on the edge of a great table. I turned to him.

"Don't ask me," said Mr. Owl Eyes washing his hands of the whole matter. (Sc.F.)

3. To attend major sports event most parents have arrived. A Colonel Sidebotham was standing next to Prendergast, firmly holding the tape with "FINISH". "Capital," said Mr. Prendergast, and dropping his end of the tape, he sauntered to the Colonel. "I can see you are a fine judge of the race, sir. So was I once. So's Grimes. A capital fellow, Grimes; a bounder, you know, but a capital fellow. Bounders can be capital fellows; don't you agree. Colonel Slidebottom... I wish you'd stop pulling at my arm, Pennyfeather. Colonel Shybottom and I are just having a most interesting conversation." (E.W.)