Figures of Contrast

They are formed by intentional combination, often by direct juxtaposition of ideas, mutually excluding, and incompatible with one another, or at least assumed to be. They are differentiated by the type of actualization of contrast, as well as by the character of their connection with the referent.

Oxymoron. The etymological meaning of this term combining Greek roots ('sharp-dull', or 'sharply dull') shows the logical structure of the figure it denotes. Oxymoron ascribes some feature to an object incompatible with that feature. It is a logical collision of notional words taken for granted as natural, in spite of the incongruity of their meanings. The most typical oxymoron is an attributive or an adverbial word combination, the members of which are derived from antonymic stems or, according to our common sense experience, are incompatible in other ways, i.e. express mutually exclusive notions. It is considered by some that an oxymoron may be formed not only by attributive and adverbial, but also by predicative combinations, i.e. by sentences. The following example illustrates all the three of syntactical connection — predicative, attributive, and*adverbial in succession:

His honour rooted in dishonour stood

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true. (Tennyson)

Antithesis. This phenomenon is incomparably more frequent than oxymoron. The term 'antithesis' (from Greek anti 'against'; thesis 'statement') has a broad range of meanings. It denotes any active confrontation, emphasized co-occurrence of notions, really or presumably contrastive. The two opposed notions may refer to the same object of thought or to different objects. The former variety is logically related to oxymoron (the same referent gets mutually exclusive characteristics). The purpose of using this device is to demonstrate the contradictory nature of the referent, as in the following illustration:

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness…" (Dickens) Another variety of antithesis concerns two different objects opposed to each other and being given opposite characteristics. The device serves to underline their incompatibility:

"Large houses are still occupied while weavers' cottages stand empty." (Gaskell)

To conclude the chapter on semasiology of sequences, the devices outlined are presented below in a scheme showing their classification.

Distinctive linguistic features of the major functional styles of English

A description of five major functional styles given in this section is based on their most distinctive features on each level of the language structure: pnonetical (where possible), morphological, syntactical, lexical and compositional. A peculiar combination of these features and special emphasis on some of them creates the paradigm of what is called a scientific or publicist text, a legal or other official document, colloquial or formal speech.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 1327