Read, translate and analyse the texts below paying special attention to the stylistic function of Personification

1. Fear knocked on the door. Faith answered. There was no one there. (Proverb)

2. And like the flowers beside them chill and shiver, Will like the flowers beside them soon be gone. (Robert Frost)

3. Earth felt the wound; and Nature from her seat, sighing, through all her works, gave signs of woe. (John Milton)

4. Snow speaks to the people, its falling above in the glooming sunlight. Its white sparkling voice echoes as it falls through the air. ( Norman Mailer)

5. Velvet remembers how it wrapped around me. Keeping me warm on a snowy day. Velvet remembers how it laid softly on my bed. Velvet tells me not to forget it. (Rachael Sanders)

6. The operation is over. On the table, the knife lies spent, on its side, the bloody meal smear-dried upon its flanks. The knife rests. (Richard Selzer, "The Knife")

7. Only the champion daisy trees were serene. After all, they were part of a rain forest already two thousand years old and scheduled for eternity, so they ignored the men and continued to rock the diamondbacks that slept in their arms. It took the river to persuade them that indeed the world was altered. (Toni Morrison, “Tar Baby”)

8. The road isn't built that can make it breathe hard! (slogan for Chevrolet automobiles)

9. Oreo: Milk’s favorite cookie. (slogan for Oreo cookies)

10. The only monster here is the gambling monster that has enslaved your mother! I call him Gamblor, and it's time to snatch your mother from his neon claws! (Homer Simpson, The Simpsons).

11. Hey Diddle, Diddle, the cat and the fiddle. The cow jumped over the moon; the little dog laughed to see such sport. And the dish ran away with the spoon. - Mother Goose

12. My computer hates me.

13. The camera loves me.

14. Pink
Pink is what red looks like when it kicks off its shoes and lets its hair down. Pink is the boudoir color, the cherubic color, the color of Heaven's gates. . . . Pink is as laid back as beige, but while beige is dull and bland, pink is laid back with attitude.
(Tom Robbins, "The Eight-Story Kiss.")

15. Personification Poem.

Think that I shall never see
A poem lovely as a tree.

A tree whose hungry mouth is pressed
Against the earth's sweet flowing breast;

A tree that looks at God all day,
And lifts her leafy arms to pray;

A tree that may in Summer wear
A nest of robins in her hair;

Upon whose bosom snow has lain;
Who intimately lives with rain.

Poems are made by fools like me,
But only God can make a tree.
(Joyce Kilmer 1886-1918).

METONYMY

Etymology

The words "metonymy" and "metonym" come from the Greek: metonymia, "a change of name", from meta, "after, beyond" and - onymia, a suffix used to name figures of speech, from onyma or onoma, “name.”

Metonymy is a figure of speech used in rhetoric in which a thing or concept is not called by its own name, but by the name of something intimately associated with that thing or concept, e.i. one thing or phenomenon is used instesd of another due to their contiguity. For instance:

The whole school rushed out to look at him. (school instead of pupils)

The kettle boils.(kettle instead of water)

Metonymy is created by a different semantic process. 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 with 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 semantic nearness, but the first one may serve the container of the second, hence – the conversational cliche “Will you have another cup?”.

Metonymy as all other lexical stylistic devices loses its originality due to long use and due to this fact becomes trite.

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 their innumerable characteristics is boundless while actual relations between objects are more limited.

For example:
1. He is a man of the cloth.
2. The pen is mightier than the sword.
3. By the sweat of thy brow thou shalt eat thy bread.
Let's take the first example of metonymy: "He is a man of the cloth." The writer is actually saying that he is a man of religion, such as a minister. "Cloth" stands for "religion" as all clergymen have to wear some special clothes different from the rest and recognizable by the society. In the second example “pen” and “sword’ stand for two possible ways of solving the problems – the first implies “speaking over, discussing or looking for a compromise”, while the second one stands for “radical measures (fighting) giving birth to hostility and hatred”. Both are examples of metonymy when one notion is found instead of another (both are closely related).

Emphatic difference is evident – these metonymical examples are high-flown, pathetic, poetic and very expressive. On the other hand they attract more attention of the reader, attach greater importance to the item discussed.

Metonymy is sometimes confused with metaphor though the difference between them is evident. Both figures involve the substitution of one term for another. In metaphor, this substitution is based on similarity, whereas, in metonymy, the substitution is based on contiguity.

Metonymy works by the nearness between two concepts, whereas metaphor works by the similarity between them. Metonymy doesn’t transfer qualities from one referent to another as metaphor does.

Two examples using the term "fishing" help make the distinction better. The phrase "to fish pearls" uses metonymy, drawing from "fishing" the idea of taking things from the ocean. What is carried across from "fishing fish" to "fishing pearls" is the domain of usage and the associations with the ocean and boats, we know you do not use a fishing rod or net to get pearls and we know that pearls are not, and do not originate from, fish.

In contrast, the metaphorical phrase "fishing for information" transfers the concept of fishing into a new domain. If someone is "fishing" for information, we do not imagine that he or she is anywhere near the ocean; rather, we transfer elements of the action of fishing (waiting, hoping to catch something that cannot be seen, probing) into a new domain (a conversation). Thus, metonymy works by calling up a domain of usage and an array of associations (in the example above, boats, the ocean, gathering life from the sea), whereas metaphor picks a target and finds the ground for its comparison in another domain – the process of fishing is associated with the process of getting information.

Metonymy brings about a more laconic expression to the otherwise banal and common things and makes them sound more emphatic.

Date: 2015-12-24; view: 1439