Identify the stylistic devices

1. It was a mistake... a blunder... lunacy.

2. Martin likened her to a pale gold flower upon a slender stem.

3. They were absolutely quiet, eating no apples, cutting no names, inflicting no pinches and making no grimaces - for full two minutes.

4. It was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.

5. Mr. Pickwick with his usual foresight and sagacity had chosen a peculiarly desirable moment for his visit to the borough.

6. I’ll smash you. I’ll crumble you. I’ll powder you.

7. Soapy walked eastward through a street damaged by improvements... He seemed doomed to liberty.

8. She was the one ray of sunshine in all his trouble.

9. "Well", he said vaguely, "that is that" and relapsed into a thoughtful silence.

10. He ordered a bottle of the worst possible port wine for the highest possible price.

 

 

Lecture 5

STYLISTIC SYNTAX

 

Investigates stylistic value (stylistic functions) of syntactic phenomena as well as their appurtenance to different sublanguages and styles.

 

Paradigmatic syntax

 

It deals with syntactic units treated in abstraction from their environment.

Syntactic units (the main unit of syntax is the sentence), as lg units of other levels, may be stylistically neutral and stylistically marked(coloured).

STYLISTICALLY NEUTRAL units are ordinary, customary, common place - direct word order, full sentences etc.

STYLISTICALLY COLOURED are any “deviations” from the "normal" structure of the sentence - inversion, absence of certain elements (ellipsis) etc. E.g.:

"He goes up" (neut.);

"Goes up?" (ellipt. - coll.);

"Up he goes!" (emphatic inv.).

 

Y.M. Skrebnev suggested the following classification of the expressive means of syntax:

 

1. From the point of view of quantitative characteristics:

synt. stylistic means based on the ABSENCE OF ELEMENTS obligatory in a neutral constructionand those based on EXCESS OF NON-ESSENTIAL ELEMENTS.

 

2. From the point of view of the distribution of elements we distinguish various types of INVERSION.

 

3. From the point of view of syntactic meanings (communicative aims) of sentences we discuss various transpositions (SHIFTS OF SYNTACTIC MEANING).

 

To the first group (absence of elements) we refer:

ellipsis;

aposiopesis;

nominative sentences;

asyndeton;

absence of auxiliary elements.

 

 

ELLIPTICAL SENTENCES

 

THOSE IN WHICH ONE OR BOTH PRINCIPAL MEMBERS ARE MISSING BUT COUL BE EASILY RESTORED FROM THE CONTEXT.

Typical of oral communication, especially of colloquial speech. Their brevity and abruptness of their intonation impart a certain tinge of familiarity to them.

"What are you doing?"

"Nothing".

 

"Going to the institute?"

"No,pictures".

 

Being used in colloquial speech of which it is characteristic ELLIPSIS is not a stylistic device but a natural outcome of extra-lingual conditions. But in other varieties of speech (spheres of communication) it is used on purpose with a certain stylistic aim in view:

- in books of fiction

a) the authors discourse - to impart a kind of emotional tension to the narration or to contribute to the acceleration of the tempo of speech. E.g.: "He became one of the prominent men of the house. Spoke clearly, sensibly and modestly and was never too long. Held the house where men of higher abilities bored it";

b) the personages discourse - to make the speech "sound" more natural, to render the informal character of the situatuon.

 

- in papers or handbooks on technology and natural sciences - for the sake of business-like brevity;

 

- in dictionaries and reference books: "The 7th of May. Visited the Browns. Got an invitation from Mrs. Pirson" etc.

 

- in telegrams (every word costs money). A joke (quoted from the handbook of V.A. Maltsev):

"A lazy correspondent received a cable: WHY UNNEWS QUERY. He cabled back: UNNEWS GOOD NEWS. And his office replied: UNNEWS UNJOB.

 

NOMINATIVE SENTENCES

 

One-member sentences. With one principle part and no finite verb. Their function - to state the existence of the thing named:

 

"London. Fog everywhere. Implacable November weather."

 

"Fate! Destruction! Death!" (Drizer)

 

"Fire! How terrible!"

 

Should not be mixed (confused) with elliptical sentences.

 

Nominative sentences are used for descriptive purposes (example 1) or to impart the dynamic force to the narration (examples 2,3). Their emphatic force is due to the fact that the syntactic center (the principle member) and the communicative center (the rheme) coincide.

 

Also widely used in stage remarks.

 

 

APOSIOPEISIS (unfinished sentences)

 

The term is of Greek origin and means "silence".

 

It is an intentional BREAK OFF IN THE BEGINNING OR ON THE MIDDLE OF THE SENTENCE.

Russian: Ну знаешь...

 

English: "Well, I never!";

"Get out, or else...".

 

It is used to create the effect of unwillingness on the part of the speaker (writer) to say what is on his mind. It is a direct appeal to the readers imagination.

Soames to Anette: "Well, may be some day..." (G.)

 

O'Henry. "An Unfinished story".

"This story really doesn't get us anywhere at all. the rest of it comes later - sometimes when Piggy asks Dulcie again to dine with him, and she is feeling lonelier than usual, and General Kitchener happens to be looking the other way; and then..."

 

 

ASYNDETON

 

Gr. "disconnected". The absence of conjunctions where they are normally expected.

 

Show:

BROADBENT: (as) You have some distance to go, Mr. Haffigan. Will you allow me to drive you home?

MATTHEW: Oh! I'll be troubling your honour.

B. I insist (for) it will give me the greatest pleasure.

 

In colloquial speech it is used for the sake of "economy", brevity: "You want anything, you pay for it" (Osborn). Mostly found in conditional and temporal adverbial clauses.

In the authors discourse it imparts dynamic force to the text, creates a certain inner rhythm etc.

 

 

ABSENCE OF AUXILIARY ELEMENTS.

 

Characteristic of informal communication. In books of fiction is employed to render colloquial character of speech, to reproduce careless, familiar speech. E.g.:

"I (have) been waiting here all morning" (Robbins);

"(Is the chair) comfortable?"

 

"What time did you get in?"

"(at) Four".

 

Auxiliary verbs, articles, prepositions etc. mae be omitted.

 

To stylistic diveces based on EXCESS of elements we refer:

repetition;

polysyndeton;

syntactic tautology (prolepsis, tautology in appended statements, emphasizing the rheme of the utterance).

 

REPETITION. Expressive stylistic means widely used in all varieties of speech (poetry, rhetoric, everyday conversation, familiar colloquial speech) usually emotionally coloured. Repetition proper (recurrence of a word or a phrase) is the simplest variety of repetition:

"Scrooge went to bed again and thought and thought and thought it over and over and over. (D).

 

Other varieties of repetition (modeled, patterned repetition) will be dealt with in syntagmatic syntax. Stylistic aim of any type of repetition is EMPHASIS.

"GOLD, GOLD, GOLD, GOLD,

Bright and yellow, hard and cold" (Th. Hood)

 

Syntactic repetition - repetition of a sentence member:

Cf. "People ran along the alley" and "Men, women and children ran along the alley".

 

POLYSYNDETON - the intentional repetition of conjunctions (esp. "and").

"And he had long to wait, and at each veset he proposed to her, and when that visit was at an end, took her refusal away with him" (Gals.)

 

Stylistic purposes of polysyndeton:

 

- to create the inner rhythm of the narration:

"Advancing and prancing and glancing and dancing,

Recoiling, turmoiling, and toiling, and boiling..."

(Robert Southey)

 

- to create connotations of solemnity (as it is associated with the style of the Bible):

"And the rain descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew and beat upon the house..." (Matthew YII)

 

- to render the atmosphere of monotony ("She read and cried and yawned and slept".)

 

 

PROLERSIS. The repetition of the noun subject in the form of the corresponding personal pronoun, thus making it more prominent.

The use of P. is a typical feature of popular speech (___________).

E.g.: "Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days and nights without waking up" (O'Henry).

 

Often met in nursery rhymes:

"Jack Sprat's pig,

He was not very little and not very big".

 

TAUTOLOGY IN APPENDED STATEMENT. Repetition of the sentence in a very general manner (usually in the form of two-elements structure: the pronominal subject and auxiliary or modal verb representing the predicate):

"I know you were there, I do!"

 

Such sentences are signals of unrestrained emotion, they are used in affected colloquial speech. Aim - emphasis.

"But you must do it, you must!".

 

EMPHASIZING THE RHEME OF THE UTTERANCE. Turning a simple sentence into a complex one with "introductory it" as a formal subject and the part which is emphasized becomes the predicative (the rheme) of the principal clause:

"It was on Friday that we met him".

"It was she who made you cry".

 

- '- '- '- ' - ' -

 

To the third group of syntactic stylistic devices (based on unusual distribution of elements) we refer INVERSION. Any deviation from the usual word-order (S-P-O).

May be GRAMMATICAL (normally used in questions and other constructions - "Have you a family?") and STYLISTIC (employed for emphasis).

THE ELEMENT PLACED IN THE UNUSUAL POSITION IS MADE PROMINENT.

O-S-P

"Talent he has, capital he has not"

 

P-S

"Cold was the day when he met".

 

Adv-P-S

"By the window stood the little girl"

 

 

REVALUATION (SHIFTS) OF SYNTACTIC MEANINS.

 

Syntactical forms (statements, questions, requests) may sometimes perform the function which is not theirs originally. Their grammatical (or to be more precise syntactical) meanings are "shifted" or "transferred".

Cases when affirmative, negative, interrogative and imperative sentences replace one another are stylistically relevant.

 

QUASI-AFFURMATIVE SENTENCES.

Sentences not affirmative formally, but expressing emphatic assertion. Here we refer rhetorical questions with the negative predicate. E.g.

"Don't you see?" (_ __ ___, __ ______?)

"Isn't she clever?" (The implication is: "She is clever").

Also found in clauses of unreal comparison with negative predicate:

"As if you didn't know".

 

 

QUASI-NEGATIVE SENTENCES.

Emphatic negation in the form of general or special question (rhetorical questions with affirmative predicate):

"Did I say a word about money?";

" What's the good of crying?",

or (in colloquial speech) by a clause of unreal comparison:

"As if you ever told me that".

A very effective way of expressing negation is ironical repetition of the previous remark:

"Shall you be back to dinner, sir?"

"Dinner!" muttered Soames and was gone.

 

QUASI-IMPERATIVE SENTENCES. Express order or request in a rounabout way. They do not contain verbs in the imperative mood:

"Tea. For two. Out here."

 

 

QUASI-INTERROGATIVE SENTENCES. Either imperative or declarative in form. Instead of asking: "How old are you?" or "Where were you born?" one may command: "Fill in your age and birthplace", or explain: "Here you are to write dowm your age and birthplace".

 

-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-'-

 

Two more stylistic devices - DETACHMENT and PARENTHESIS are united as both involve changes in the type of syntactic connection.

 

DETACHMENT. Within the sentence we distinguish wto types of relations: subject - predicate (or theme - rheme) relation- it is termed predication and the relation between the head word and the adjunct (adv. - verb pred.; attr. - noun element etc.)

Predicative relation serve the purpose of communication while the second type of relations serve the purpose of naming (not sending new information ro the listener.

 

Detachment may be treated a s an intermediate type. Detached members are secondary parts of the sentence pronounced with a special stress (represented by punctuation) and sometimes occupying an unusual position in a sentence. Being more conspicuous than the other members of the sentence they acquire "rheme-like" status and become semi-communicative, not just nominative.

The general stylistic effect of detachment is strengtheneng, emphasizing the word or phrase in question. E.g.:

"It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house" (G);

 

"Tall and handsome, he appealed to women";

 

"Brave boy, he saved my life and will not regret it" (M.Twain).

 

PARENTHESIS. Parenthetic elements either express modality or imply some additional information

The first group comprises words expressing either certainty or different degrees of probability: "surely", "certainly", "no doubt", "perhaps", "probably", "I guess" etc. They are of less interest to stylistics.

Of greater interest is the second group - parenthetical segments comprising additional information. They may create the second plane or background to the narration, to create the effect of mingling of 'voices" - or polyphony of narration.

E.g. feverish succession of thoughts in Clyde Griffits' mind:

"... he was struck by the thought (what devil's whisper? - what evil hint of an evil spirit?) - supposing that he and Roberta -no, say he and Sondra (no, Sondra could swim so well and so could he) - he and Roberta were in a small boat somewhere and it would capsize at the very time, say, of this dreadful complication which was so harassing him? What an escape!... On the other hand - hold - not so fast - for could a man even think of such a solution..." (D.)

 

In other cases parenthetic form makes the statement more conspicuous, more emphatic:

"The main entrance (he had never ventured to look beyond that) was a splendiferous combination of a glass and iron awning, coupled with a marble corridor lined with palms" (Dreiser)

 

One more example:

"Here is a long passage - what an enormous prospective I make of it! - leading from Peggoty's kitchen to the front door.

Parenthetical construcrions (unlike detachment) are not connected syntactically with the rest part of the sentence.

 

 

SYNTAGMATIC SYNTAX

 

Deals mainly with a chain of sentences, the sequence of sentences (or phrases) constituting a text.

Here, acc. to prof. Y.M. Skrebnev, belong such stylistic devices as p a r a l l e l i s m , a n a p h o r a,

e p i p h o r a, s y m p l o c h a, f r a m i n g , a n a d i p l o s i s , c h i a s m u s.

 

PARALLELISM may be called purely syntactical repetition. It is repetition (or identity) of two or more neighboring syntactical units. E.g.:

"The cock is flowing,

The stream is flowing..." (Wordsworth);

 

P. is often combined with repetition of one or several members of each sentence (lexical repetition):

"The seed ye sow, another reaps;

The wealth you find, another keeps;

The robes you weave, another wears;

The arms you forge, another bears." (Shelly)

 

Stylistic purpose - to make recurring parts more conspicuous, more prominent than the others.

 

ANAPHORA. Lexico-syntactical repetition. Identity of beginnings of one or several neighboring structures. Serves the purpose of strengthening the repeated element:

"She brought trouble to your daughter Jane. She brought trouble to everyone" (anaph., parel., climax).

 

Anaphora may also impart a specific rhythm to the text and increase the sound harmony:

"My heart's in the Highlands, my heart is not here,

My heart's in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer..."

 

EPIPHORA. Repetition of the final elements of two or more adjacent syntactical forms.

"He (the Englishman) does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles. He robs you on business principles. He enslaves you on imperial principles." (Show) An., ep., paral., climax.

Epiphora (apart from emphasis) CONTRIBUTES TO RYTHMICAL REGULARITY OF SPEECH, making prose resemble poetry.

 

SYMPLOCA. A COMBINATION OF ANAPHORA AND EPIPHORA in two or more adjacent utterances;

"If he wishes to float into fairyland, he reads a book; if he wishes do dash into the thick of battle, he reads a book; if he wishes to soar into heaven, he reads a book". (Chesterton)

 

FRAMING. The repetition of the initial element of the utterance in the final position.

"Money is what he is after, money!" (Galore)

 

"Never wonder> By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder" (D.)

 

ANADIPLOSIS (Gr. "doubling") - a kind of repetition in which a word or a phrase, concluding one utterance (segment of the text) occurs in the beginning of the following utterance (segment).

"I was happy, happy at least in my own way" (Bronte)

 

"______ ___ - _______, ___ ______,

______ ____ __ _____ ____ _______..."

 

CHIASMUS (Gr. "crossing") . A special variety of parallelism - "reversed parallelism". It is identity of syntactical structure of two adjacent units accompanied with repetition of the initial and final element in reversed position.

"His sermons were jokes and his jokes were sermons (Byron)

 

Apart from the stylistic effect produced by chiasmatic members (due to their meaning and logical opposition), this device may be employed to create inner rhythm and emphasis.

Coleridge: "That he sings, and he things, and for ever things he -

"I love my Love and my Love loves me";

 

Also: "I looked at the gun, and the gun looked at me" (plus personification);

 

Popular puns (witticisms) may be based on ch.:

"A handsome man kisses misses, an ugly man misses kisses".

 

[1] М. Бухолц рассматривает новые типы женственности на примере калифорнийских старшеклассниц, которых объединяет «мужское» увлечение компьютерами [Bucholtz 1996]. Стремясь отстраниться от традиционных интересов сверстниц и патриархальных стереотипов женственности в пользу интеллектуальных занятий, они гордятся своими академическими успехами и независимыми взглядами и конструируют новый тип идентичности – компьютерных фанаток (female geek identity) – важной частью которого является язык. В частности, на фонетическом уровне девушки последовательно избегают произносительных особенностей «крутого калифорнийского» стиля, который используют их «правильные» сверстники, и произносят с придыханием звук [t] в конечной [ju nut^h] и в интервокальной позиции [but^h e], где согласно нормам американского английского произносится звонкое [d]. Придыхательная артикуляция [t], стереотипно ассоциируемая с британским английским, становится важным стилистическим ресурсом – маркером «взрослой» речи. Консервативные престижные черты британского английского используются девушками сознательно – не столько для того, чтобы обозначить свой особый статус в подростковой среде, сколько затем, чтобы вообще отмежеваться от подросткового мира с его тривиальными увлечениями и потребностями.