ONOMATOPOEIA
Direct: Buzz, bang, mew.
Indirect: white horses and black horses and brown horses trotted tap-tap-tap-tap-tappety-tap
Paronomasia
A young man married is a man that's marred (Shakespeare);
Gentlemen wanted their bankers prudent but not prudish.
Spoonerism
You've hissed my mystery lessons, you've tasted the worm and you'll have to leave by the town drain. (interchange)
ALLITERATION
A university should be a place of light, of liberty, and of learning. (Disraeli)
Assonance
How sad and bad and mad it was (R. Browning); 2) ... the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore -/Nameless here for evermore (E.A. Poe).
RHYME
might-right; needless-heedless (full rhyme)
incomplete rhymes
flesh-fresh-press (vowel rhyme)
tale-tool; treble-trouble (consonant rhyme)
(repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combinations of words)
METAPHOR
Art is a jealous mistress (Emerson). (implied comparison)
Application of a name or a descriptive term to an object to which it is not literally applicable.
antonomasia(a variant of METAPHOR)
Every Caesar has his Brutus (O'Henry).
Use of a proper name to denote a different person who possesses some qualities.
Metonymy
“from the cradle to the gravies”
a SD based on association, the name of one thing is used in place of the name of another, closely related to it.
SYNECDOCHE(a variant ofMETONYMY)
Two heads are better than one; 2) The hat went away.
Irony
You’re in complimentary mood today, aren’t you? First you called my explanation rubbish and now you call me a liar;
I’m very glad you think so, Lady Sneerwell;
Jack: If you want to know, Cecily happens to be my aunt.- Algernon: Your aunt;
( Ironic use of words is accompanied by specific suprasyntactic prosody.)
Zeugma (a variant of SYLLEPSIS )
1) to kill the boys and / destroy / the luggage;
2) with weeping eyes and / grieving / hearts;
3) Michael ... suggested to the camera that it would miss the train. It at once took a final photograph of Michael in front of the hut, two cups of tea at the manor, and its departure (J. Galsworthy).
Pun (or PLAY UPON WORDS)
“Have you been seeing any spirits?” – inquired the old gentleman. “Or taking any?” – added Ben Allen.
Interjections and exclamatory words
Heaven, good gracious!, dear me!, God!, Come on! Look here!, dear, by the Lord!, God knows!, Bless me!, Humbug! (conventional symbols of human emotions)..
Epithet
– fixed (logical/usual/objective) epithets sweet smile; blue sky;
– affective (emotive) -gorgeous, nasty, magnificent;
– figurative (transferred/metaphoric) epithets the smiling sun.
– simple epithets (built like simple adjectives): true love; wide sea;
– compound epithet (built like compound adjectives): heart-burning sigh;
– phrase/sentence epithets –a move-if-you-dare expression (“a move-if-you-dare” expression); She looked at me with that please-don’t-touch-me look of hers. (She looked at me with that “ please don’t touch me” look of hers);
– reversed (inverted) epithet- this devil of a woman; the prodigy of a child;
– chain of epithets –her large blue crying crasy eyes.
Attributive characterization of a person, thing or phenomenon.
Oxymoron
1) To live a life half-dead, a living death (Milton);
2) Thou art to me a delicious torment (Emerson);
3) And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true (A. Tennyson).
4) Contradictory words (notions) are combined.
LEXICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS
AND STYLISTIC DEVICES
PECULIAR USE OF SET EXPRESSIONS
STYLISTIC FUNCTIONING
OF MORPHOLOGIVAL FORMS
Simile (or LITERARY COMPARISON)
1) Bees flew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers (Laurie Lee);
2) Marjorie… appeared quite unconscious of the rarity of herself ... wearing her beauty like a kind of sleep (Laurie Lee).
4) “cute as a kitten,” comparing the way someone looks to the way a kitten looks
5)“as busy as a bee” comparing someone’s level of energy to a fast-flying bee
6)"as snug as a bug in a rug" comparing someone who is very cozy to how comfortable a bug can be in a rug
Periphrasis
1)I dearly love but one day –
And that's the day that comes between
A Saturday and Monday;
I understand you are poor and wish to earn money by nursing the little boy, my son, who has been so prematurely deprived of what can never be replaced (Dickens).
figurative (metonymic and metaphoric): The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of the fighting in Africa (I.Sh.);
logical -Mr. Du Pont was dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires (M.St.).( synonymic phrases)
Euphemism
1)With my various friends we had visited most of these tiny, dark, smoky bars, and drunk drinks of minute size and colossal price and watched the female ‘hostesses’ at their age-old work (G. Durrell).
2)They think we have come by this horse in some dishonest manner (Dickens).
3) Passed away instead of died
Correctional facility instead of jail
Departed instead of died
Differently-abled instead of handicapped or disabled
Fell off the back of a truck instead of stolen
Ethnic cleansing instead of genocide
Turn a trick instead of engage in prostitution
Hyperbole
1)The function is to intensify the feature: Her family is one aunt about a thousand years old (Sc. Fitzgerald).
2) I am so hungry I could eat a horse.
I have a million things to do.
I had to walk 15 miles to school in the snow, uphill.
I had a ton of homework.
If I can’t buy that new game, I will die.
He is as skinny as a toothpick.
meiosis (deliberate understatement)
sparrow of a woman; a tiny apartment.
2. "The reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated." Mark Twain
3. "You know, Einstein was not a bad physicist."
4. "The pond" as a name for the Atlantic Ocean.
decomposition of a set phrase
1)– I'm eating my heart out.
– It's evidently a diet that agrees with you. You are growing fat on it (Maugham).
2) first you borrow.then you beg.
Allusion
“The town gossips called her Virgin Jekyll and Miss Hyde.”
(N.Mailer)
The allusion here is to R.L. Stevenson’s story “a strange case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.”
“Mr. Hamilton, you haven’t any children, have you?”
“Well, no. And I’m sorry about that I guess. I am sorriest about that”.
MORPHEMIC REPETITION
It was there again, more clearly than before: the terrible expression of pain in her eyes; unblinking, unaccepting, unbelieving pain.
SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS
AND STYLISTIC DEVICES:
COMPOSITIONAL PATTERNS
OF SYNTACTICAL ARRANGEMENT
inversion
1)Dark they were and golden-eyed (Bradbury).
2)They slid down.
Did they slide down? (grammatical inversion).
Down they slid (stylistic inversion).
3) "Half an hour later came another inquiry as to tugs. Later came a message from the Irene, telling of the lifting of the fog."
(The New York Times, April 7, 1911)
4)"There's a lady wants to see you. Miss Peters her name is."
(P.G. Wodehouse, Something Fresh, 1915)
DETACHED CONSTRUCTION (detachment)
"I have to beg you for money! Daily!"
parallel construction (or SYNTACTIC PARALLELISM)
1) When the lamp is shattered
The light in the dust lies dead –
When the cloud is scattered
The rainbow's glory is shed.
When the lute is broken.
Sweet tones are remembered not;
When the lips have spoken,
Loved accents are soon forgot (P.B. Shelley);
2) I was a stranger, and ye took me in: Naked, and ye clothed me: I was sick, and ye visited me: I was in prison and ye came into me (St. Matthew).
Chiasmus (reversed parallel constructions)
1) Let the long contention cease:
Geese are swans, and swans are geese (M. Arnold);
2) Beauty is truth, truth beautyt – that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know (Keats);
3) But many that are first shall be last; and the last shall be first
(St. Matthew).
SUSPENsE (retardation)
1)“Mankind, – says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend was obliging enough to read and explain to me, – for the firsteventy thousand ages ate their meat raw” (Ch.L.).
SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS
AND STYLISTIC DEVICES:
COMPOSITIONAL PATTERNS
OF SYNTACTICAL ARRANGEMENT
repetition
1)And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her (A.B.)
2) A repeated occurrence of one and the same word-group.
3) A horse is a horse, of course, of course,
And no one can talk to a horse of course
That is, of course, unless the horse is the famous Mister Ed."
(Theme song of 1960s TV program Mr. Ed)
Anaphora
1)Sir Walter Raleigh. Good food. Good cheer. Good times."
(slogan of the Sir Walter Raleigh Inn Restaurant, Maryland)
2)"We saw the bruised children of these fathers clump onto our school bus, we saw the abandoned children huddle in the pews at church, we saw the stunned and battered mothers begging for help at our doors."
(Scott Russell Sanders, "Under the Influence," 1989)
3)"Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine."
(Rick Blaine in Casablanca)
epiphora
…a, …a, …a.
Anadiplosis (Catch Repetition)
1)"Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task." - Henry James
2)"All service ranks the same with God, With God, whose puppets, best and worst, Are we' - Robert Browning in 'Pippa Passes'
3)"For Lycidas is dead, dead ere his prime,.........' - John Milton in 'Lycidas'
4)"That my heart has been troubled, that I have not sought this nomination, that Icould not seek it in good conscience, that I would not seek it in honest self-appraisal, is not to say that I value it the less. Rather, it is that I revere the office of the Presidency of the United States."
CHAIN REPETITION
…a, a…b, b…c, c…
Prolepsis (syntactic tautology)
Miss Tilly Webster, she slept forty days and nights without waking up (O’H.).
CLIMAX (gradation)
I don’t attach any value to money, I don’t care about it, I don’t know about it, I don’t want it, I don’t keep it, it goes away from me directly.
The increase in significance may be: logical, emotional or quantitative.
ANTICLIMAX (BATHOS)
1)America is the Paradise for women. That is why, like Eve, they are so extremely anxious to get out of it!
antithesis(a variant of Syntactic Parallelism)
1) Yet each man kills the thing he loves,
By each let this be heard,
Some do it with a bitter look,
Some with a flattering word,
The coward does it with a kiss,
The brave man with a sword! (O. Wilde);
2) God made the country, and man made the town (Cowper).
3) parallel constructions with contrasted words (usually antonyms)
Nonsense of non-sequence
Emperor Nero played the fiddle, so they burnt Rome (E.). Joining two semantically disconnected clauses by cause / effect relations.
Syntactical expressive means and stylistic
devices: PARTICULAR WAYS OF COMBINING PARTS OF
THE UTTERANCE
ASYNDETON
The audience rolled about in their chairs; they held their sides, they groaned in an agony of laughter. (avoidance of connectives
POLYSYNDETON
“They were all three from Milan and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked back together. (H.)
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