Lee Emmett. SOFTLY SWISHING, SEA SWELLS

STYLISTIC DEVICES

INTRODUCTION

Stylistic devices (SD) are special linguistic means which turn the literal language into the figurative one. The latter, mainly found in fiction, aims at creative imaginary depicting of otherwise common and banal events thus realizing the narrator’s attitude to the situation described. For example, one and the same notion or extra linguistic situation may be figuratively depicted in various ways:

Love is a disease. Love is a never coming dream. Love is a useless waste of time and energy. Love is blind. Love is a life stimulus.

In every case the image of love is rather individual, now common, now original, depending on the association it evokes in the creator’s mind. SD helps (metaphor, in this case) realizing it.

Stylistic devices embrace figures of speech and tropes. Scholars of classical Western rhetoric have divided figures of speech into two main categories: schemes and tropes. Schemes (from the Greek schēma, form or shape) are figures of speech that change the ordinary or expected pattern of words. For example, the phrase, "John, my best friend" uses the scheme known as apposition. Tropes (the term trope derives from the Greek "to turn, to direct, to alter, to change") change the general meaning of words. An example of a trope is irony, which is the use of words to convey the opposite of their usual meaning: "For Brutus is an honorable man; So are they all, all honorable men"; “a sweet smile of a crocodile”. In other words, schemes are mainly connected with the syntactical organization of the text, tropes are based on the transferred meaning of the linguistic item, i.e. lexical meaning.

A literary trope is a common pattern, theme, motif in literature, or a figure of speech in which words are used in a sense different from their literal meaning. For example, in “Time was bleeding away” (A.Huxley) the verb to bleed doesn’t realize its direct lexical meaning “to lose or emit blood”, but has the figurative transferred meaning – to pass time painfully and longer in a tense expectation. Thus the attention is transferred on to the urgency of the highly expected event.

Rhetoricians have closely analyzed the bewildering array of "turns and twists" of the lexical meaning used in poetry and literature and have provided an extensive list of very precise labels for the poetic devices. Some examples include

metaphor, metonymy, epithet, hyperbole, litotes, and irony.

Stylistic devices combine both – figures of speech which are based on the transference of lexical meaning and a very special syntactical organization of words in the particular text or both, i.e. the device includes lexical modification of the meaning of the word and its special arrangement or form. For example: an epithet may be based on the transferred meaning and be differently arranged syntactically –the hell of a boy (an of-phrase) or a sunny creature (an attributive combination).

"Break a leg" is a saying from theater jargon meaning "Good luck" is a verbal expression. "You want a piece of me?" (Do you want a fight?) has the form of a question.

In each of these examples of figures of speech, there is a literal meaning of the words, which a listener would normally reject as absurd or inappropriate. The listener would select the figurative meaning of the utterance, assisted by the context.

Absence of the proper context may defeat the figurative meaning. If someone not in a theater troupe tells someone else to break a leg, the listener must decide whether the speaker intends to adapt the figure of speech from theater to the present context; if not, the literal meaning would be provocative. If there is no cause for nervousness, complaining about butterflies in one's stomach might make a listener consider briefly whether to interpret the words literally.

Stylistic devices are usually divided into several groups – lexical, lexico-syntactical, syntactical, graphical and phonetical. The leading feature of lexical SDs is the binary opposition of two meanings of the unit (a word, a phrase, a sentence, etc), one of which is linguistically fixed (in the dictionary) and independent on the context, while the other one is ‘born’ by the context, i.e. contextual. Besides lexical stylistic devices (LSD) are based on the interaction between the logical and nominative meanings of a word, the logical and emotive meaning of a word, between two logical meanings of a word, the free and phraseological meanings of a word, etc. For example:

God! I cried buckets. I saw it ten times.

In this sentence the deliberate exaggeration is expressively realized through the interaction between the logical meaning of the verb “to cry’’ and emotive “to cry buckets”, and “to see’ and “to see ten times. In “Money burns a hole in my pocket” metaphorical image is expressed through the interaction between two logical meanings of one and the same word to burn - to be or set on fire and to damage, injure, i.e. if something is on fire (burning) it may hurt or bring harm. In both cases one is eager to get rid of it as soon as possible. The figurative meaning thus is based on both of them and the speaker points to the fact that the person in question wastes money so quickly and recklessly as if they’re set on fire in his own pocket. It looks as if the money injures him or her.

Syntactical SDs are responsible for rhythmic structure of the text through its sentences and the type of connection between its items – syndetic or asyndetic, which would make the rhythm monotonous or energetic, businesslike or terse. The inverted word order, on the other hand, deals with the displacement of some member of the sentence, thus attracting the reader’s attention to the item inverted:

Up came the file and down sat the editor, with Mr. Pickwick at his side (Ch.Dickens). In this example prepositions are in the place of the subjects of the sentence attracting immediate attention by the fact of their presence there – unusual, uncommon, and even grammatically wrong. But stylistically it brings a funny and slightly mocking effect of an unjustified fuss over nothing though the heroes preserve a very serious attitude to the situation. Besides inversion here creates a businesslike rhythm – one, two (Ready, steady, go).

Syntactical organization of the text is usually relevant to its atmosphere and the choice of words or, on the opposite, aims at the contrast to it. First of all, the syntax of the text by its rhythm adds the necessary and bright touch to the idea and special flavour to the atmosphere. Secondly, it can enhance and deepen the effect already created by the lexical devices. Thirdly, syntactical rhythm can poeticize the prosaic narration. Finally, the rhythm can contradict to the previously built up mood and atmosphere which should make the reader grasp the change in the flow of the narration.

Graphical peculiarities, though not very widely spread, may have several stylistic reasons – humorous, visual, or scanning, i.e. the graphic means of utterance representation: Capitalization in the following example “I’ll NEVER see him again.” underlines the resolute intention of the speaker leaving no place for any doubts. The hyphenated spelling in “Im-po-sible!” expresses almost the same adding the emotional touch. Very often the representatives of poetic schools surprise the readers by the unusual arrangement of the poem. The uncommon form serves to reflect the tendency to changes in something too stable and stale, in their opinion. For example, the poem of the representative of a New American Poetry, W.Williams, chose a somewhat strange arrangement for otherwise very banal sentence. Perhaps this graphical organization hints at some wisdom the reader should look for in this poem (like in Japanese “hokku”):

W.Williams. A Red Wheel:

So much depends

upon

a red wheel

borrow

glazed with rain

water

beside the white

chickens.

Compare: So much depends upon a red wheel borrow glazed with rain water beside the white chickens. Common arrangement made the text banal and matter-of-fact. It doesn’t reflect the pensive, broody and philosophpical mood of the poet.

Phonetic SDsare based on a very special employment of sounds which may recreate the living sounds or produce sonorous melodious or rough and unpleasant effect:

The stylistic approach to the utterance is not confined to its structure and sense. There is another thing to be taken into account which in a certain type of communication plays an important role. This is the way a word, a phrase or a sentence sounds. The sound of most words taken separately will have little or no aesthetic value. It is in combination with other words that a word may acquire a desired phonetic effect. The way a separate word sounds may produce a certain euphonic effect, but this is a matter of individual perception and feeling and therefore subjective.

The theory of sense - independence of separate sounds is based on a subjective interpretation of sound associations and has nothing to do with objective scientific data. However, the sound of a word, or more exactly the way words sound in combination, cannot fail to contribute something to the general effect of the message, particularly when the sound effect has been deliberately worked out. This can easily be recognized when analyzing alliterative word combinations or the rhymes in certain stanzas or from more elaborate analysis of sound arrangement. One of the most known phonetic devices is alliteration - a deliberate use of similar sounds in close succession achieving a definite stylistic effect. It adds emotional colouring to the utterance suggesting the attitude of the writer to what he is describing. It is a peculiar musical accompaniment of the main idea of the utterance. For example, in the following poem the repetition of “s, sw, w, sh, sqw, sk, etc’’ bring out the unmistakable sound of the sea waves.

Lee Emmett. SOFTLY SWISHING, SEA SWELLS

Softly swishing, sea swells

Wind whips, wave washes

Flip, flop fish flails

Squid squelches squashes

Seagulls skimming surface

Albatross arches arms

Grasses growing, gorgeous

Beach bronzes, balms.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 898