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READ, TRANSLATE AND ANALYZE THE FOLLOWING EXAMPLES OF IRONY AND SARCASM POITING TO THEIR SPECIFIC STYLISTIC FUNCTION

1.She had so painfully reared three sons to be Christian gentlemen that one of them had become an Omaha bartender, one a professor of Greek, and one, Cyrus N. Hogart, a boy of fourteen who was still at home, the most brazen member of the toughest gang in Boytown. (S.Lewis)

2. I hope you will be able to send your mother something from time to time, as we can give her a roof over her head, a place to sleep and eat but nothing else. (J. O'Henry)

3. Even at this affair, which brought out the young smart set, the hunting squire set, the respectable intellectual set, they sat up with gaiety as with a corpse. (S.Lewis)

4. But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world. As the great champion of freedom and national independence he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it Colonization. (B. Shaw)

5. Poetry deals with primal and conventional things - the hunger for bread, the love of woman, the love of children, the desire for immortal life. If men really had new sentiments, poetry could not deal with them. If, let us say, a man did not feel a bitter craving to eat bread; but did, by way of substitute, feel a fresh, original craving to eat fenders or mahogany tables, poetry could not express him. If a man, instead of falling in love with a woman, fell in love with a fossil or a sea anemone poetry could not express him. Poetry can only express what is original in one sense - the sense in which we speak of original sin. It is original not in the paltry sense of being new, but in the deeper sense of being old; it is original in the sense that it deals with origins. (G. K. Chesterton)

6. All this blood and fire business tonight was probably part of the graft to get the Socialists chucked out and leave honest business men safe to make their fortunes cut of murder. (L. Charteris)

7. ….the old lady…ventured to approach Mr. Benjamin Alien with a few comforting reflections of which the chief were, that after all, it was well it was no worse; the least said the soonest mended, and upon her word she did not know that it was so very bad after all; that what was over couldn't be begun and what couldn't be cured must be endured, with various other assurances of the like novel and strengthening description. (Ch. Dickens)

8. Blodgett College is on the edge of Minneapolis. It is a bulwark of sound religion. It is still combating the recent heresies of Voltaire, Darwin and Robert Ingersoll. Pious families in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, the Dakotas send their children thither, and Blodgett protects them from the wickedness of the universities. (S. Lewis)

9. He could walk and run, was full of exact knowledge about God, and entertained no doubt concerning the special partiality of a minor deity called Jesus towards himself. (A.Bennet)

10. Try this one, “The Eye of Osiris.” Great stuff. All about a mummy. Or Kennedy’s “Corpse on the Mat” - that's nice and light and cheerful, like its title. (D.Cusack)

 



 



Stylistic devices based on the interaction between the logical and emotive meanings of a word

Hyperbole

Hyperbole, from ancient Greek ‘exaggeration, over-thrown or excessive’, is a deliberate exaggeration of some quality, quantity, size, etc., big enough it might be even without exaggeration. It may be used to evoke strong feelings or to create a strong impression, but is not meant to be taken literally. In "I have seen this river so wide it had only one bank"(M.Twain) exaggeration underlines the fact that the narrator knows the Mississippi river much better than other interlocutors because he’d seen it that wide while others should’ve failed to do it. The geographical improbability of the fact doesn’t matter; it only serves to emphasize this speaker’s proficiency. Hyperbole creates emphasis. It is a literary device often used in poetry, and is frequently encountered in casual speech. On occasion, Newspapers also use Hyperbole when talking of an accident to increase the impact of the article. This is more often found in Tabloid newspapers, who often exaggerate accounts of events to appeal to a wider audience. By definition, a hyperbole is nothing but a trope composed of exaggerated words or ideals used for emphasis. Hyperbole is a figure of speech in which statements are exaggerated to create an impact and are not supposed to be interpreted literally. However, although valued in creative writing, hyperboles are avoided in formal writing or business writing. Some hyperboles are trite and often used in everyday speech, and are not accepted as some original device. For example: · These books weigh a ton. (These books are heavy.) · The path went on forever. (The path was very long.) · I'm doing a million things right now. (I'm busy.) · I waited centuries for you. (I waited a long time for you.) · I haven’t seen you for ages. (It’s a long time since we’ve met.) · She ran quicker than a bullet. (She ran fast.) Original hyperboles make a strong accent on the exaggerated item and force the reader to look differently at the point discussed. Besides, emotional colouring and emphasis grow due to such hyperbole.For example: Ladies and gentlemen, I've been to Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan, and I can say without hyperbole that this is a million times worse than all of them put together. (The Simpsons) In this statement the possibility of exaggeration is denied by the speaker because he thinks that the item in question is so dreadful, unthinkable, and inconceivable than anything he has witnessed that there’s no place for hyperbole. Thus the stylistic function of hyperbole is to underline the importance to the discussed item, to draw attention to its oneness, or exceptional nature, to lay emphasis on the narrator’s emotional attitude. LITOTES (UNDERSTATEMENT) From Ancient Greek λιτός, litos, simple”. Litotes or understatementis a figure of speech in which a certain statement is expressed by denying its opposite. It’s a diminution or softening of statement for the sake of avoiding censure or increasing the effect by contrast with the moderation shown in the form of expression. For example, rather than merely saying that a person is attractive (or even very attractive), one might say they are "not unattractive". Litotes is a form of understatement, always deliberate and with the intention of emphasis. However, the interpretation of litotes can depend on context, including cultural context. The use of litotes appeals specifically to certain cultures including the northern Europeans and is popular in English, Russian and French. It is a feature of Old English poetry and of the Icelandic sagas and is a means of much stoical restraint. George Orwell complained about overuse of the 'not un...' construction in his essay 'Politics and the English Language'. Basically litotes works on the same principles with exaggeration but in the opposite direction. For example: Don’t move the tiniest part of an inch! She was of pocket size. For a fraction of a fraction of a second she hesitated. The food was not undelicious. Stylistically hyperbole and litotes function in the similar way – to make a greater impact on the reader. It is not the actual diminishing or growing of the object that is conveyed by a hyperbole or understatement. It is a transient subjective impression that finds its realization in these SDs. They differ only in the direction of the flow of roused emotions. English is well known for its preference for understatement in everyday speech - "I am rather annoyed" instead of "I'm infuriated", "The wind is rather strong" instead of "There's a gale blowing outside" are typical of British polite speech, but are less characteristic of American English. Some hyperboles and understatements (both used individually and as the final effect of some other SD) have become fixed, as we have in "Snow White", or "Liliput", or "Gargantua". Trite hyperboles and understatements, reflecting their use in everyday speech, in creative writing are observed mainly in dialogue, while the author's speech provides us with examples of original SDs, often rather extended or demanding a considerable fragment of the text to be fully understood. Analyse the following examples of hyperbole and understatement. State the nature of the exaggerated or understated phenomenon. Give the adequate Russian translation. 1. John Bidlake feels an oppression in the stomach after supper. “It must have been that caviar,” he was thinking. “That beastly caviar.” He violently hated caviar. Every sturgeon in the Black Sea was his personal enemy. (A.Huxley) 2. You know how it is: you’re 21 or 22 and you make some decisions: then wishes: you’re seventy: you’ve been a lawyer for fifty years, and that white-haired lady at your side has eaten over fifty thousand meals with you. (Th. Wilder) 3. I hope, Cecily, I shall not offend you if I state quite frankly and openly that you seem to me to be in every way the visible personification of absolute perfection. (O.Wilde) 4. This boy, headstrong, wilful, and disorderly as he is, should not have one penny of my money, or one crust of my bread, or one grasp of my hand, to save him from the loftiest gallows in all Europe. (Ch.Dickens) 5. That was Lutamae and Fred. Well, you never saw a more pitiful something. Ribs sticking out everywhere, legs so puny they can’t hardly stand, teeth wobbling so bad they can’t chew much. (T.Capote) 6. George, the Sixth Viscount Uffenham, was a man built on generous lines. In was as though Nature had originally intended to make two Viscounts but had decided halfway through to use all the material at one go, and get the thing over with. In shape he resembled a pear, being reasonably narrow ay the top but getting wider all the way down and culminating in a pair of boots of the outsize or violin-case type. Above his great spreading steppes of body there was posed a large and egglike head, the bald dome of which rose like some prod mountain peak from a foothill fringe of straggling hair. His upper lip was long and straight, his chin pointed. (P.G.Wodehouse) 7. After all, it is impossible for a camel to go through the eye of needle, and that was precisely Jesus’ point. It is impossible for one who trusts in riches to enter the kingdom. It takes a miracle for a rich person to get saved, which is quite the point of what follows: "All things are possible with God."(R.Bradshaw. The Bible) 8. Josephine had replied to them all, and twenty-three times when she came to "We miss our dear father so much" she had broken down and had to use her handkerchief, and on some of them even to soak up a very light-blue tear with an edge of blotting-paper. Strange! She couldn't have put it on–but twenty-three times. Even now, though, when she said over to herself sadly "We miss our dear father so much," she could have cried if she'd wanted to. (K.Mansfield) 9. An Englishman boasting of the superiority of the horses in his country mentioned that the celebrated Eclipse had run a mile a minute. "My good fellow," exclaimed a Yankee present, "that is rather less than the average rate of our common roadsters. I live in my country-seat near Boston, and when hurrying to town of a morning my own shadow can't keep up with me, but generally comes into the office to find me from a minute to a minute and a half after my arrival. One morning the beast was restless, and I rode him as fast as I possibly could several times round a large factory,--just to take the Old Harry out of him. Well, sir, he went so fast that the whole time I saw my back directly before me, and was twice in danger of riding over myself." This story has a kinship with the familiar yarn of the man who was so tall that he had to go up a ladder to take off his hat, of the man equally small who went down-cellar to untie his shoes, of the man who could find no boot-jack that would fit him and was fain to content himself with the fork in the road. (W.S.Walsh) 10. I have never met a woman, no matter how attractive, who wasn't convinced, deep down inside, that she was a real woofer. Men tend to be just the opposite. A man can have a belly you could house commercial aircraft in and a grand total of eight greasy strands of hair, which he grows real long and combs across the top of his head so that he looks, when viewed from above, like an egg in the grasp of a giant spider, plus this man can have B.O. to the point where he interferes with radio transmissions, and he will still be convinced that, in terms of attractiveness, he is borderline Don Johnson. But not women. Women who look perfectly fine to other people are always seeing horrific physical flaws in themselves. I have this friend, Janice, who looks very nice and is a highly competent professional with a good job and a fine family, yet every now and then she will get very depressed, and do you want to know why? Because she thinks she has puffy ankles. This worries her much more often than, for example, the arms race. Her image of herself is that when she walks down the street, people whisper: "There she goes! The woman with the puffy ankles!" . . What women think they should look like, of course, is the models in fashion advertisements. This is pretty comical, because when we talk about fashion models, we are talking about mutated women, the results of cruel genetic experiments performed by fashion designers so lacking in any sense of human decency that they think nothing of putting their initials on your eyeglass lenses. These experiments have resulted in a breed of fashion models who are 8 and sometimes 10 feet tall, yet who weigh no more than an abridged dictionary due to the fact that they have virtually none of the bodily features we normally associate with females such as hips and (let's come right out and say it) bosoms. The leading cause of death among fashion models is falling through street grates. If a normal human woman puts on clothing designed for these unfortunate people, she is quite naturally going to look like Revenge of the Pork Person. (Revenge of the Pork Person. Dave Barry) 11. She was a giant of a woman. Her bulging figure was encased in a green crepe dress and her feet overflowed in red shoes. She carried a mammoth red pocketbook that bulged throughout as if it were stuffed with rocks. (Fl. O'Connor) 12. Four loudspeakers attached to the flagpole emitted a shattering roar of what Benjamin could hardly call music, as if it were played by a collection of brass bands, a few hundred fire engines, a thousand blacksmiths' hammers and the amplified reproduction of a force-twelve wind. (A.Sillitoe) 13. Babbitt's preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general European War. (S.Maugham) 14. It’s not a joke, darling. I want you to call him up and tell him what a genius Fred is. He’s written barrels of the most marvelous stories. (T.Capote) 15. Culpurnia was all angles and bones; her hand was as wide as a bed slat and twice as hard. (H.Lee) 16. He was almost the same height standing up as sitting down (a not all that rare type of physique in Wales). (K.Amis)   EPITHET An epithet (from Greek epitheton, neut. of epithetos, "attributed, added) is the most subjective SD as it generally expresses personal attitude to the item described: handsome dollars; a pretty face; a tobacco-stained smile; dirty pig of an untrue friend; a lipsticky smile. The characteristics ascribed to the objects mentioned above, may be absolutely the opposite – awful dollars, an ugly face, a beautiful smile, etc. That’s why the epithet is very subjective and usually is a signal of the narrator’s or author’s real attitude to the item in question. Ch.Dickens is a master of epithet which is abundant in his novels. Ch.Dickens is never indifferent to the narration and its heroes: implacable November weather; the false print; foggy glory; spirit-stirring denunciations; spinster-like envy and etc. Epithets are represented by different parts of speech, adjectives included. That’s why it’s necessary to differentiate between attributes proper and epithets: in ‘’a round table” round is an ajective in the function of the attribute but not an epithet because it reflects the real actual state (shape) of things. In “a dirty table” dirty is an epithet, though not original or expressive, because this quality is a personal opinion, another speaker would call the same object “clean”. Epithets are not often considered “tropes” as they are not based only on the lexical meaning of the word. They are structurally various and can fall into: a. word-epithets, expressed by any notional part of speech in the adverbial and attributive function: The girl gave him a lipsticky smile; b. two-step epithets, which are supplied by the intensifiers: Hers was a marvellously radiant smile; c. syntactical epithets (of-epithets): Dirty pig of an untrue friend; d. phrase and sentence epithets: The man-I-saw-yesterday’s son. Or “Fool!” e. string epithets – when the epithets are distributed one after another thus intensifying the emotional and expressive functions: It was an old, musty, fusty, narrow-minded, clean and bitter room. Stylisticallyepithet can carry out two basic functions - to concretize the description, adding to the created picture new details and to strengthen the emotional effect created by the text. These functions are not mutually exclusive: the same epithet is capable to solve both problems; moreover, the epithet without second function, in the art text is excessive. For example: A spasm of high-voltage nervousness ran through him. This very short sentence contains nice examples of SD – an epithet (high-voltage) and trite metaphor (ran through). The state of the character is obviously far from common if one can actually physically imagine what a person feels under the electric voltage this high – it’s evidently the state between the death and life. This epithet realizes those two mentioned above basic functions – adds new fresh details to the state of psychological tension, and strengthens the emotional perception of the described situation. Epithets are often classified semantically, i.e. from the point of view of the transference of the quality of one object onto another, thus creating palpable visual and tangible pictures. Metaphorical epithets are among the most widely recognized. Hidden comparison adds necessary expressive and emotional colouring let alone the detalization of the image. Transferred epithets are formed of metaphors, metonymies and similes expressed by adjectives. E.g. "the smiling sun", "the frowning cloud", "the sleepless pillow", ''the tobacco-stained smile", "a ghost-like face", "a dreamlike experience". Like metaphor, metonymy and simile, corresponding epithets are also based on similarity of characteristics of - two objects in the first case, on nearness of the qualified objects in the second one, and on their comparison in the third. For example: There was an adenoidal giggle from Audrey. (St.Barstow). One can easily imagine a young creature with a specific nasal laugh which sounds childish, sheepish and, perhaps, malapropos. The only word “adenoidal” visualizes the image and makes it audible. A different linguistic mechanism is responsible for the emergence of one more structural type of epithets, namely, inverted epithets They are based on the contradiction between the logical and the syntactical meaning: logically defining becomes syntactically defined and vice versa. E.g. instead of "this devilish woman", where "devilish" is both logically and syntactically defining, and "woman" also both logically and syntactically defined, W. Thackeray says "this devil of a woman". Here "of a woman" is syntactically an attribute, i.e. the defining, and "devil" the defined, while the logical relations between the two remain the same as in the previous example - "a woman" is defined by "the devil". All inverted epithets are easily transformed into epithets of a more habitual structure where there is no logico-syntactical contradiction. Cf.: "the giant of a man" - a gigantic man; "the prude of a woman" - a prudish woman, etc. When meeting an inverted epithet do not mix it up with an ordinary of-phrase. Here the article with the second noun will help you in doubtful cases: "the toy of the girl" -the toy belonging to the girl; "the toy of a girl" - a small, toylike girl, or "the kitten of the woman" - the cat belonging to the woman; "the kitten of a woman" - a kittenlike woman Thus one of the most important stylistics functions of the epithet is its expressiveness and individuality, distinctness and personal attitude to the character or object or phenomena on question.   Read, translate, analyse the following examples paying attention to the structure of epithets and their stylistic function.   1. He has that unmistakable tall lanky "rangy" loose-jointed graceful close-cropped formidably clean American look. (I. Murdoch) 2. Across the ditch Doll was having an entirely different reaction. With all his heart and soul, furiously, jealously, vindictively, he was hoping Queen would not win. (J.Jones) 3. During the past few weeks she had become most sharply conscious of the smiling interest of Hauptwanger. His straight lithe body - his quick, aggressive manner - his assertive, seeking eyes. (Th.Drieser) 4. The Fascisti, or extreme Nationalists, which means black-shirted, knife-carrying, club-swinging, quick-stepping, nineteen-year-old-pot-shot patriots, have worn out their welcome in Italy. (E.Hemingway) 5. Where the devil was heaven? Was it up? Down? There was no up or down in a finite but expanding universe in which even the vast, burning, dazzling, majestic sun was in a state of progressive decay that would eventually destroy the earth too. (J.Hersey) 6. She has taken to wearing heavy blue bulky shapeless quilted People's Volunteers trousers rather than the tight tremendous how-the-West-was-won trousers she formerly wore. (D.Bolingbroke) 7. Harrison - a fine, muscular, sun-bronzed, gentle-eyed, patrician-nosed, steak-fed, Oilman-Schooled, soft-spoken, well-tailored aristocrat was an out-and-out leaflet-writing revolutionary at the time. (J.Baldwin) 8. In the cold, gray, street-washing, milk-delivering, shutters-coming-off-the-shops early morning, the midnight train from Paris arrived in Strasbourg. (E.Hemingway) 9. And she still has that look, that don't-you-touch-me look that women who-were beautiful carry with them to the grave. (J.Braine) 10. The absence of the usually unfailing sun-wind made the next Saturday oppressively hot. The cicadas had begun. They racketed in a ragged chorus, never quite finding the common beat, rasping one’s nerves, but finally so familiar that day they stopped in a rare shower of rain, the silence was like am explosion. They completely changed the character of the pine forest. Now it was live and multitudinous, an audible, invisible hive of energy, with all its pure solitude gone. (J.Fowels) 11. That fellow is, and his father was, and his grandfather was, the most stiff-necked, arrogant, imbecile, pig-headed idiot ever …born! (Ch.Dickens) 12. Dinny was slight and rather tall, she had hair the colour of chestnuts, an imperfect nose, a Botticellian mouth, eye cornflower blue and widely set and a look rather of a flower on a long stalk. (J.Galsworthy) 13. Lady tall, slender, Spanish eyes, brown skin, thin nose. Greco hands. Collector’s piece. (J.Carry) 14. Wilcher was a rich lawyer, with a face like a bad orange. Yellow and blue. A little grasshopper of a man. Five feet of shiny broadcloth and three inches of collar. Always on the jump. Inside and out. In his fifties. The hopping fifties. And fierce as a mad mouse. His little hornet’s eyes were shooting fiery murder. (J.Carry)

 

 

15. The day was windless, unnaturally mild; since morning the sun had tried to penetrate the cloud, and now above the Mall, the sky was still faintly luminous, colored like water over sand. (Hutchinson)

16. An ugly gingerbread brute of a boy with a revolting grin and as far as I was able to ascertain, no redeeming qualities of any sort. (P. G. Wodehouse.)

17. A breeze blew curtains in and out like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling. (Sc. Fitzgerald.)

18. "Now my soul, my gentle, captivating, bewitching, and most damnably enslaving chick-a-biddy, be calm, said Mr. Mantalini. (Ch.Dickens)

19. And he watched her eagerly, sadly, bitterly, ecstatically, as she walked lightly from him. (Th. Dreiser.)

20. There was no intellectual pose in the laugh that flowed, ribald, riotous, cockney, straight from the belly. (D. du Maurier.)

21. Mrs. Bogart was not the acid type of Good Influence. She was the soft, damp, fat, sighing, indigestive, clinging, melancholy, depressingly hopeful kind. (S. Lewis.)

22. They thought themselves superior. And so did Eugene — the wretched creature! The cheap, mean, nasty, selfish upstarts! Why, the majority of them had nothing. (Th.Dreiser)

23. Liza Hamilton was a very different kettle of Irish. Her head was small and round and it held small and round convictions. (J. Steinbeck.)

24. He would sit on the railless porch with the men when the long, tired, dirty-faced evening rolled down the narrow valley, thankfully blotting out the streets of shacks, and listen to the talk. (J.Joyce)

 




Date: 2015-12-24; view: 5027


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Metonymy and synecdoche | Read, translate, analyse the following examples paying attention to oxymorons and their stylistic function.
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