List of authors whose texts were used in exercises

CONTENTS

FOREWORD...............................................................................…………………………………………... 2

PRELIMINARY REMARKS.....................................................………………………………………….. 3

CHAPTER I. PHONO-GRAPHICAL LEVEL. MORPHOLOGICAL LEVEL…............................... 13

Sound Instrumenting. Graphon. Graphical Means…………………………………………………………...6

Morphemic Repetition. Extension of Morphemic Valency………………………………………………….11

CHAPTER II. LEXICAL LEVEL..............................................……………………………………….…14

Word and its Semantic Structure…………………………………………………………………………….14

Connotational Meanings of a Word ………………………………………………………………………….14

The Role of the Context in the Actualization of Meaning… ………………………………………………….14

Stylistic Differentiation of the Vocabulary…………………………………………………………………..16

Literary Stratum of Words. Colloquial Words….. …………………………………………………………..16

Lexical Stylistic Devices…………………………………………………………………………………….23

Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Play on Words. Irony. Epithet …………………………………………23

Hyperbole. Understatement. Oxymoron. ……………………………………………………………………23

CHAPTER III. SYNTACTICAL LEVEL..................................…………………………………………38

Main Characteristics of the Sentence. Syntactical SDs. Sentence Length…………………………………..38

One-Word Sentences. Sentence Structure. Punctuation. Arrangement of Sentence Members. Rhetorical Question. Types of Repetition. Parallel Constructions. Chiasmus. Inversion. Suspense, Detachment. Completeness of Sentence Structure. Ellipsis. One-Member Sentences. Apokoinu Constructions. Break.

Types of Connection.

Polysyndeton. Asyndeton. Attachment

Lexico-Syntactical Stylistic Devices.

Antithesis. Climax. Anticlimax. Simile. Litotes. Periphrasis.

CHAPTER IV. TYPES OF NARRATION………………………………………………………………57

Author’s Narrative. Dialogue. Interior Speech. Represented ………………………………………………57

Speech. Compositional Forms. ……………………………………………….……………………………57

CHAPTER V. FUNCTIONAL STYLES ………………………………………………………………..61

Colloquial vs. Literary Type of Communication. Oral vs …………………….…….………………………61

Written Form of Communication. …………………………………………….……………………………61

SUPPLEMENT 1………………………………………………………………………………………….69

Samples of Stylistic Analysis.

SUPPLEMENT 2………………………………………………………………………………………….71

Extracts for Comprehensive Stylistic Analysis

LIST OF AUTHORS WHOSE TEXTS WERE USED IN EXERCISES

FOREWORD

Seminars in Style is a book of practice which can be used alongside or after the theoretical course of English Stylistics. Its aim is to help students acquire and use the knowledge and techniques necessary for the stylistic analysis of a text, i.e. find and interpret language phenomena of different levels of the language structure, which carry some additional information of the emotive, logical or evaluative types, all serving to enrich, deepen and clarify the text.

The book is divided into five chapters, each one containing a brief theoretical survey, questions checking the students’ comprehension, and exercises. The latter are excerpts of varying length taken from the prose of XIX–XX cc. written in English. The length and complexity of the fragments for analysis grow by the end of each chapter. A sample of analysis is offered at the end of the book.

There are also texts for comprehensive stylistic analysis presupposing understanding of and free orientation in the material of the previous chapters.

The book ends with a list of the authors, whose works have been used for illustration.

PRELIMINARY REMARKS

Main Trends in Style Study. Functional Stylistics and Functional Styles. Forms and Types of the Language. Stylistics of Artistic Speech. Individual Style Study. Decoding Stylistics. Practical Stylistics. Levels of Linguistic Analysis. Foregrounding. Aims of Stylistic Analysis.

The term “stylistics” originated from the Greek “stylos”, which means, “a pen”.-In the course of time it developed several meanings, each one applied to a specific study of language elements and their use in speech.

It is no news that any propositional content — any “idea” — can be verbalized in several different ways. So, “May I offer you a chair?”, “Take a seat, please”, “Sit down” — have the same proposition (subject matter) but differ in the manner of expression, which, in its turn, depends upon the situational conditions of the communication act.

70 per cent of our lifetime is spent in various forms of communication activities — oral (speaking, listening) or written (reading, writing), so it is self-evident how important it is for a philologist to know the mechanics of relations between the non-verbal, extralinguistic, cognitive essence of the communicative act and its verbal, linguistic presentation. It is no surprise, then, that many linguists follow their famous French colleague Charles Bally, claiming that Stylistics is primarily the study of synonymic language resources.

Representatives of the not less well-known Prague school — V. Mathesius, T. Vachek, J. Havranek and others focused their attention on the priority of the situational appropriateness in the choice of language varieties for their adequate functioning. Thus, functional stylistics, which became and remains an international, very important trend in style study, deals with sets, “paradigms” of language units of all levels of language hierarchy serving to accommodate the needs of certain typified communicative situations. These paradigms are known as functional styles of the language. Proceeding from the famous definition of the style of a language offered by V. V. Vinogradov more than half a century ago, we shall follow the understanding of a functional style formulated by I. R. Galperin as “a system of coordinated, interrelated and interconditioned language means intended to fulfil a specific function of communication and aiming at a definite effect.”

All scholars agree that a well developed language, such as English, is streamed into several functional styles. Their classifications, though, coincide only partially: most style theoreticians do not argue about the number of functional styles being five, but disagree about their nomenclature. This manual offers one of the rather widely accepted classifications which singles out the following functional styles:

1.  official style, represented in all kinds of official documents and papers;

2.  scientific style, found in articles, brochures, monographs and other scientific and academic publications;

3.  publicist style, covering such genres as essay, feature article, most writings of “new journalism”, public speeches, etc.;

4.  newspaper style, observed in the majority of information materials printed in newspapers;

5.  belles-lettres style, embracing numerous and versatile genres of imaginative writing.

It is only the first three that are invariably recognized in all stylistic treatises. As to the newspaper style, it is often regarded as part of the publicist domain and is not always treated individually. But the biggest controversy is flaming around the belles-lettres style. The unlimited possibilities of creative writing, which covers the whole of the universe and makes use of all language resources, led some scholars to the conviction that because of the liability of its contours, it can be hardly qualified as a functional style. Still others claim that, regardless of its versatility, the belles-lettres style, in each of its concrete representations, fulfils the aesthetic function, which fact singles this style out of others and gives grounds to recognize its systematic uniqueness, i.e. charges it with the status if an autonomous functional style. To compare different views on the number of functional styles and their classification see corresponding chapters in stylistic monographs, reference- and textbooks.

Each of the enumerated styles is exercized in two forms —  written and oral: an article and a lecture are examples of the two forms of the scientific style; news broadcast on the radio and TV or newspaper information materials — of the newspaper style; an essay and a public speech — of the publicist style, etc.

The number of functional styles and the principles of their differentiation change with time and reflect the state of the functioning language at a given period. So, only recently, most style classifications had also included the so-called poetic style which dealt with verbal forms specific for poetry. But poetry, within the last decades, lost its isolated linguistic position; it makes use of all the vocabulary and grammar offered by the language at large and there is hardly sense in singling out a special poetic style for the contemporary linguistic situation, though its relevance for the language of the seventeenth, eighteenth and even the biggest part of the nineteenth centuries cannot be argued.

Something similar can be said about the oratoric style, which in ancient Greece was instrumental in the creation of “Rhetoric”, where Aristotle, its author, elaborated the basics of style study, still relevant today. The oratoric skill, though, has lost its position in social and political life. Nowadays speeches are mostly written first, and so contain all the characteristic features of publicist writing, which made it unnecessary to specify oratoric style within the contemporary functional stratification of the language.

All the above-mentioned styles are singled out within the literary type of the language. Their functioning is characterized by the intentional approach of the speaker towards the choice of language means suitable for a particular communicative situation and the official, formal, preplanned nature of the latter.

The colloquial type of the language, on the contrary, is characterized by the unofficiality, spontaneity, informality of the communicative situation. Sometimes the colloquial type of speech is labelled “the colloquial style” and entered into the classification of functional styles of the language, regardless of the situational and linguistic differences between the literary and colloquial communication, and despite the fact that a style of speech manifests a conscious, mindful effort in choosing and preferring certain means of expression for the given communicative circumstances, while colloquial speech is shaped by the immediacy, spontaneity, unpremeditativeness of the communicative situation. Alongside this consideration there exists a strong tendency to treat colloquial speech as an individual language system with its independent set of language units and rules of their connection.

Functional stylistics, dealing in fact with all the subdivisions of the language and all its possible usages, is the most all-embracing, “global”, trend in style study, and such specified stylistics as the scientific prose study, or newspaper style study, or the like, may be considered elaborations of certain fields of functional stylistics.

A special place here is occupied by the study of creative writing - the belles-lettres style, because in it, above all, we deal with stylistic use of language resources, i.e. with such a handling of language elements that enables them to carry not only the basic, logical, but also additional information of various types. So the stylistics of artistic speech, or belles-lettres style study, was shaped.

Functional stylistics at large and its specified directions proceed from the situationally stipulated language “paradigms” and concentrate primarily on the analysis of the latter. It is possible to say that the attention of functional stylistics is focused on the message in its correlation with the communicative situation.

The message is common ground for communicants in an act of communication, an indispensable element in the exchange of information between two participants of the communicative act — the addresser (the supplier of information, the speaker, the writer) and the addressee (the receiver of the information, the listener, the reader).

Problems, concerning the choice of the most appropriate language means and their organization into a message, from the viewpoint of the addresser, are the centre of attention of the individual style study, which puts particular emphasis on the study of an individual author’s style, looking for correlations between the creative concepts of the author and the language of his works.

In terms of information theory the author’s stylistics may be named the stylistics of the encoder: the language being viewed as the code to shape the information into the message, and the supplier of the information, respectively, as the encoder. The addressee in this case plays the part of the decoder of the information contained in the message; and the problems connected with adequate reception of the message without any informational losses or deformations, i.e., with adequate decoding, are the concern of decoding stylistics.

And, finally, the stylistics, proceeding from the norms of language usage at a given period and teaching these norms to language speakers, especially the ones, dealing with the language professionally (editors, publishers, writers, journalists, teachers, etc.) is called practical stylistics.

Thus, depending on the approach and the final aim there can be observed several trends in style study. Common to all of them is the necessity to learn what the language can offer to serve the innumerable communicative tasks and purposes of language users; how various elements of the language participate in storing and transferring information; which of them carries which type of information, etc.

The best way to find answers to most of these and similar questions is to investigate informational values and possibilities of language units, following the structural hierarchy of language levels, suggested by a well-known Belgian linguist E. Benvemste about four decades ago — at the IX International Congress of Linguists in 1962, and accepted by most scholars today if not in its entirety, then at least as the basis for further elaboration and development.

E. Benveniste’s scheme of analysis proceeds from the level of the phoneme — through the levels of the morpheme and the word to that of the sentence.

This book of practice is structured accordingly. The resources of each language level become evident in action, i.e. in speech, so the attention of the learners is drawn to the behaviour of each language element in functioning, to its aptitude to convey various kinds of information.

The ability of a verbal element to obtain extra significance, to say more in a definite context was called by Prague linguists foregrounding: indeed, when a word (affix, sentence), automatized by the long use in speech, through context developments, obtains some new, additional features, the act resembles a background phenomenon moving into the front line — foregrounding.

A contextually foregrounded element carries more information than when taken in isolation, so it is possible to say that in context it is loaded with basic information inherently belonging to it, plus the acquired, adherent, additional information. It is this latter that is mainly responsible for the well-known fact that a sentence always means more than the sum total of the meanings of its component-words, or a text means more than the sum of its sentences. So, stylistic analysis involves rather subtle procedures of finding the foregrounded element and indicating the chemistry of its contextual changes, brought about by the intentional, planned operations of the addresser, i.e. effected by the conscious stylistic use of the language.

For foreign language students stylistic analysis holds particular difficulties: linguistic intuition of a native speaker, which is very helpful in all philological activities, does not work in the case of foreign learners. Besides, difficulties may arise because of the inadequate language command and the ensuing gaps in grasping the basic, denotational information. Starting stylistic analysis, thus, one should bear in mind that the understanding of each separate component of the message is an indispensable condition of satisfactory work with the message as a whole, of getting down to the core and essence of its meaning.

Stylistic analysis not only broadens the theoretical horizons of a language learner but it also teaches the latter the skill of competent reading, on one hand, and proprieties of situational language usage, on the other.

ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL

 

 1. What are the main trends in style study?

 2. What forms and types of speech do you know?

 3. What is a functional style and what functional styles do you know?

 4. What do you know of the studies in the domain of the style of artistic speech?

 5. What do you know about individual style study? What authors most often attract the attention of style theoreticians?

 6. What is foregrounding and how does it operate in the text?

 7. What levels of linguistic analysis do you know and which of them are relevant for stylistic analysis?

 8. What is decoding stylistics?

 9. What is the main concern of practical stylistics?

10. What is the ultimate goal of stylistic analysis of a speech product?

CHAPTER I. PHONO-GRAPHICAL LEVEL. MORPHOLOGICAL LEVEL

EXERCISES

I. Indicate the causes and effects of the following cases of alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia:

 1. Streaked by a quarter moon, the Mediterranean shushed gently into the beach. (I.Sh.)

 2. He swallowed the hint with a gulp and a gasp and a grin. (R. K.)

 3. His wife was shrill, languid, handsome and horrible. (Sc.F.)

 4. The fair breeze blew, the white foam flew, the furrow followed free. (S. C.)

 5. The Italian trio tut-tutted their tongues at me. (T.C.)

 6. “You, lean, long, lanky lath of a lousy bastard!” (O’C.)

 7. To sit in solemn silence in a dull dark dock, In a pestilential prison, with a life-long lock, Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock From a cheap and chippy chopper On a big black block. (W.C.)

 8. They all lounged, and loitered, and slunk about, with as little spirit or purpose as the beasts in a menagerie. (D.)

 9. “Luscious, languid and lustful, isn’t she?” “Those are not the correct epithets. She is — or rather was — surly, lustrous and sadistic.” (E.W.)

10. Then, with an enormous, shattering rumble, sludge-puff, sludge-puff, the train came into the station. (A.S.)

11. “Sh-sh.”

“But I am whispering.” This continual shushing annoyed him. (A.H.)

12. Twinkle, twinkle, little star, How I wonder what you are. Up above the world so high, Like a diamond in the sky. (Ch. R.)

13. Dreadful young creatures — squealing and squawking. (C.)

14. The quick crackling of dry wood aflame cut through the night. (Sl.H.)

15. Here the rain did not fall. It was stopped high above by that roof of green shingles. From there it dripped down slowly, leaf to leaf, or ran down the stems and branches. Despite the heaviness of the downpour which now purred loudly in their ears from just outside, here there was only a low rustle of slow occasional dripping. (J.)

II. Indicate the kind of additional information about the speaker supplied by graphon:

 1. “Hey,” he said, entering the library. “Where’s the heart section?” “The what?”

He had the thickest sort of southern Negro dialect and the only word that came clear to me was the one that sounded like heart. “How do you spell it,” I said.

“Heart, Man, pictures. Drawing books. Where you got them?” “You mean art books? Reproductions?” He took my polysyllabic word for it. “Yea, they’s them.” (Ph. R.)

 2. “It don’t take no nerve to do somepin when there ain’t nothing else you can do. We ain’t gonna die out. People is goin’ on — changin’ a little may be — but goin’ right on.” (J. St.)

 3. “And remember, Mon-sewer O’Hayer says you got to straighten up this mess sometime today.” (J.)

 4. “I even heard they demanded sexual liberty. Yes, sir, Sex-You-All liberty.” (J. K.)

 5. “Ye’ve a duty to the public don’tcher know that, a duty to the great English public?” said George reproachfully. “Here, lemme handle this, kiddar,” said Tiger. “Gorra maintain strength, you,” said George. “Ah’m fightin’ fit,” said Tiger. (S. Ch.)

 6. “Oh, that’s it, is it?” said Sam. “I was afeerd, from his manner, that he might ha’ forgotten to take pepper with that ’ere last cowcumber, he et. Set down, sir, ve make no extra charge for the settin’ down, as the king remarked when he blowed up his ministers.” (D.)

 7. “Well, I dunno. I’ll show you summat.” (St.B.)

 8. “De old Foolosopher, like Hickey calls yuh, ain’t yuh?” (O’N.)

 9. “I had a coach with a little seat in fwont with an iwon wail for the dwiver.” (D.)

10. “The Count,” explained the German officer, “expegs you, chentlemen, at eight-dirty.” (С. Н.)

11. Said Kipps one day, “As’e — I should say, ah, has’e... Ye know, I got a lot of difficulty with them two words, which is which.” “Well, “as” is a conjunction, and “has” is a verb.” “I know,” said Kipps, “but when is “has” a conjunction, and when is “as” a verb?” (H. W.)

12. Wilson was a little hurt. “Listen, boy,” he told him. “Ah may not be able to read eve’thin’ so good, but they ain’t a thing Ah can’t do if Ah set mah mind to it.” (N.M.)

III. Think of the causes originating graphon (young age, a physical defect of speech, lack of education, the influence of dialectal norms, affectation, intoxication, carelessness in speech, etc.):

1. He began to render the famous tune “1 lost my heart in an English garden, Just where the roses of Kngland grow” with much feeling:

“Ah-ee last mah-ee hawrt een ahn Angleesh gawrden, Jost whahr thah rawzaz ahv Angland graw.” (H.C.)

2. The stuttering film producer S.S. Sisodia was known as ’Whiwhisky because I’m papa partial to a titi tipple; mamadam, my caca card.’ (S.R.)

3. She mimicked a lisp: “I don’t weally know wevver I’m a good girl. The last thing he’ll do would be to be mixed with a hovvid woman.” (J.Br.)

4. “All the village dogs are no-’count mongrels, Papa says. Fish-gut eaters and no class a-tall; this here dog, he got insteek.” (K.K.)

5. “My daddy’s coming tomorrow on a nairplane.” (S.)

6. After a hum a beautiful Negress sings “Without a song, the dahaywould nehever end.” (U.)

7. “Oh, well, then, you just trot over to the table and make your little mommy a gweat big dwink.” (E.A.)

8. “I allus remember me man sayin’ to me when I passed me scholarship — “You break one o’my winders an’ I’ll skin ye alive.” (St.B.)

9. He spoke with the flat ugly “a” and withered “r” of Boston Irish, and Levi looked up at him and mimicked “All right, I’ll give the caaads a break and staaat playing.” (N.M.)

10. “Whereja get all these pictures?” he said. “Meetcha at the corner. Wuddaya think she’s doing out there?” (S.)

11. “Look at him go. D’javer see him walk home from school? You’re French Canadian, aintcha?” (J.K.)

12. Usually she was implacable in defence of her beloved fragment of the coast and if the summer weekenders grew brazen, -getoutofitsillyoldmoo, itsthesoddingbeach, — she would turn the garden hose remorselessly upon them. (S.R.)

13. The demons of jealousy were sitting on his shoulders and he was screaming out the same old song, wheethehell whothe don’t think you canpull the wool how dare you bitch bitch bitch. (S.R.)

IV. State the function of graphon in captions, posters, advertisements, etc. repeatedly used in American press, TV, roadside advertising:

1. Weather forecast for today: Hi 59, Lo 32, Wind lite.

2. We recommend a Sixty seconds meal: Steak-Umm.

3. Choose the plane with “Finah Than Dinah” on its side.

4. Best jeans for this Jeaneration.

5. Follow our advice: Drinka Pinta Milka Day.

6. Terry’s Floor Fashions: We make ’em — you walk on ’em

7. Our offer is $ 15.00 per WK.

8. Thanx for the purchase.

9. Everybody uses our wunnerful Rackfeed Drills.

V. Analyse the following extract from Artemus Ward:

“Sit down, my fren,” sed the man in black close; “yu miskomprehend me. I meen that the perlitercal ellermunts are orecast with black klouds, 4 boden a friteful storm.”

“Wall,” replide I, “in regard to perlittercal ellerfunts і don’t know as how but what they is as good as enny other kind of ellerfunts. But і maik bold to say thay is all a ornery set and unpleasant to hav round. They air powerful hevy eaters and take up a right smart chans of room.”

The man in black close rusht up to me and sed, “How dair yu insult my neece, yu horey heded vagabone? Yu base exhibbiter of low wax figgers — you woolf in sheep’s close,” and sow 4th.

VI. State the functions and the type of the following graphical expressive means:

 1. Piglet, sitting in the running Kanga’s pocket, substituting the kidnapped Roo, thinks:

this shall take

“If is I never to

flying really it.” (M.)

 2. Kiddies and grown-ups too-oo-oo We haven’t enough to do-oo-oo. (R. K.)

 3. “Hey,” he said “is it a goddamn cardroom? or a latrine? Attensh — HUT! Da-ress right! DHRESS! (J.)

 4. “When Will’s ma was down here keeping house for him —  she used to run in to see me, real often.” (S.L.)

 5. He missed our father very much. He was s-l-a-i-n in North Africa. (S.)

 6. “We’ll teach the children to look at things. Don’t let the world pass you by, I shall tell them. For the sun, I shall say, open your eyes for that laaaarge sun.....” (A. W.)

 7. “Now listen, Ed, stop that, now. I’m desperate. I am desperate, Ed, do you hear?” (Dr.)

 8. “Adieu you, old man, grey. I pity you, and I de-spise you.” (D.)

 9. “ALL our troubles are over, old girl,” he said fondly. “We can put a bit by now for a rainy day.” (S.M.)

10. His voice began on a medium key, and climbed steadily up till it reached a certain point, where it bore with strong emphasis upon the topmost word, and then plunged down as if from a spring board:

 

EXERCISES

I. State the function of the following cases of morphemic repetition:

 1. She unchained, unbolted and unlocked the door. (A.B.)

 2. It was there again, more clearly than before: the terrible expression of pain in her eyes; unblinking, unaccepting, unbelieving pain. (D.U.)

 3. We were sitting in the cheapest of all the cheap restaurants that cheapen that very cheap and noisy street, the Rue des Petites Champs in Paris. (H.)

 4. Young Blight made a great show of fetching from his desk a long thin manuscript volume with a brown paper cover, and running his finger down the day’s appointments, murmuring: “Mr. Aggs, Mr. Baggs, Mr. Caggs, Mr. Daggs, Mr. Faggs, Mr. Gaggs, Mr. Boffin. Yes, sir, quite right. You are a little before your time, sir.” (D.)

 5. Young Blight made another great show of changing the volume, taking up a pen, sucking it, dipping it, and running over previous entries before he wrote. As, “Mr. Alley, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Galley, Mr. Dalley, Mr. Falley, Mr. Galley, Mr. Halley, Mr. Lalley, ’Mr. Malley. And Mr. Boffin.” (D.)

 6. New scum, of course, has risen to take the place of the old, but the oldest scum, the thickest scum, and the scummiest scum has come from across the ocean. (H.)

 7. At the time light rain or storm darked the fortress I watched the coming of dark from the high tower. The fortress with its rocky view showed its temporary darkling life of lanterns. (Jn. H.)

 8. Laughing, crying, cheering, chaffing, singing, David Rossi’s people brought him home in triumph. (H.C.)

 9. In a sudden burst of slipping, climbing, jingling, clinking and talking, they arrived at the convent door. (D.)

10. The procession then re-formed; the chairmen resumed their stations, and the march was re-commenced. (D.)

11. The precious twins — untried, unnoticed, undirected — and I say it quiet with my hands down — undiscovered. (S.)

12. We are overbrave and overfearful, overfriendly and at the same time frightened of strangers, we’re oversentimental and realistic. (P.St.)

13. There was then a calling over of names, and great work of singeing, sealing, stamping, inking, and sanding, with exceedingly blurred, gritty and undecipherable results. (D.)

14. The Major and the two Sportsmen form a silent group as Henderson, on the floor, goes through a protracted death agony, moaning and gasping, shrieking, muttering, shivering, babbling, reaching upward toward nothing once or twice for help, turning, writhing, struggling, giving up at last, sinking flat, and finally, after a waning gasp lying absolutely still. (Js.H.)

15. She was a lone spectator, but never a lonely one, because the warmth of company was unnecessary to her. (P. Ch.)

16. “Gentlemen, I put it to you”that this band is a swindle. This band is an abandoned band. It cannot play a good godly tune, gentlemen.” (W.D.)

17. He wished she would not look at him in this new way. For things were changing, something was changing now, this minute, just when he thought they would never change again, just when he found a way to live in that changelessness. (R.W.)

18. Three million years ago something had passed this way, had left this unknown and perhaps unknowable symbol of its purpose, and had returned to the planets — or to the stars. (A. C.)

19. “Sit down, you dancing, prancing, shambling, scrambling fool parrot! Sit down!” (D.)

II. Analyze the morphemic structure and the purpose of creating the occasional words in the following examples:

 1. The girls could not take off their panama hats because this was not far from the school gates and hatlessness was an offence. (M. Sp.)

 2. David, in his new grown-upness, had already a sort of authority.(І.М.)

 3. That fact had all the unbelievableness of the sudden wound. (R.W.)

 4. Suddenly he felt a horror of her otherness. (J.B.)

 5. Lucy wasn’t Willie’s luck. Or his unluck either. (R.W.)

 6. She was waiting for something to happen or for everything to un-happen. (Т. Н.)

 7. He didn’t seem to think that that was very funny. But he didn’t seem to think it was especially unfunny. (R.W.)

 8. “You asked him.”

“I’m un-asking him,” the Boss replied. (R.W.)

 9. He looked pretty good for a fifty-four-year-old former college athlete who for years had overindulged and underexercized. (D.U.)

10. She was a young and unbeautiful woman. (I.Sh.)

11. The descriptions were of two unextraordinary boys: three and a half and six years old. (D.U.)

12. The girl began to intuit what was required of her. (Jn. H.)

13. “Mr. Hamilton, you haven’t any children, have you?”

“Well, no. And I’m sorry about that, I guess. I am sorriest about that.” (J. St.)

14. “To think that I should have lived to be good-morninged by Belladonna look’s son!”(A.T.)

15. There were ladies too, en cheveux, in caps and bonnets, some of whom knew Trilby, and thee’d and thou’d with familiar and friendly affection, while others mademoiselle’d her with distant politeness and were mademoiselle’s and madame’d back again. (D. du M.)

16. Parritt turns startledly. (O’N.)

17. The chairs are very close together — so close that the advisee almost touches knees with the adviser. (Jn.B.)

III. Discuss the following cases of morphemic foregrounding:

 1. The District Attorney’s office was not only panelled, draped and carpeted, it was also chandeliered with a huge brass affair hanging from the center of the ceiling. (D.U.)

 2. He’s no public offender, bless you, now! He’s medalled and ribboned, and starred, and crossed, and I don’t know what all’d, like a born nobleman. (D.)

 3. I gave myself the once-over in the bathroom mirror: freshly shaved, clean-shirted, dark-suited and neck-tied. (D.U.)

 4. Well, a kept woman is somebody who is perfumed, and clothed, and wined, and dined, and sometimes romanced heavily. (Jn. C.)

 5. It’s the knowledge of the unendingness and of the repetitious uselessness that makes Fatigue fatigue. (J.)

 6. The loneliness would suddenly overcome you like lostness and too-lateness, and a grief you had no name for. (R.W.)

 7. I came here determined not to be angry, or weepy, or preachy. (U.)

 8. Militant feminists grumble that history is exactly what it says -His-story — and not Her story at all. (D.B.)

 9. This dree to-ing and fro-ing persisted throughout the night and the next day. (D. B.)

10. “I love you mucher.”

“Plently mucher? Me tooer.” (J.Br.)

11. “I’m going to build me the God-damnedest, biggest, chromium-platedest, formaldehyde-stinkingest free hospital and health center.” (R.W.)

12. So: I’m not just talented. I’m geniused. (Sh. D.)

13. Chickens — the tiny balls of fluff passed on into semi-naked pullethood and from that into dead henhood. (Sh. A.)

14. I’ll disown you, I’ll disinherit you, I’ll unget you. (R. Sh.)

15. “Ready?” said the old gentleman, inquiringly, when his guests had been washed, mended, brushed, and brandied. (D.)

16. But it is impossible that I should give myself. My being, my me-ness, is unique and indivisible. (An.C.)

CHAPTER II. LEXICAL LEVEL

Word and its Semantic Structure.

Connotational Meanings of a Word.

The Role of the Context in the Actualization of Meaning.

 

The idea of previous chapters was to illustrate potential possibilities of linguistic units more primitive than the word, found at lower levels of language structure and yet capable of conveying additional information when foregrounded in a specially organized context.

The forthcoming chapter is going to be one of the longest and most important in this book, for it is devoted to a linguistic unit of major significance — the word, which’names, qualifies and evaluates the micro-and marcrocosm of the surrounding world. The most essential feature of a word is that it expresses the concept of a thing, process, phenomenon, naming (denoting) them. Concept is a logical category, its linguistic counterpart is meaning. Meaning, as the outstanding scholar L. Vygotsky put it, is the unity of generalization, communication and thinking. An entity of extreme complexity, the meaning of a word is liable to historical changes, of which you know from the course of lexicology and which are responsible for the formation of an expanded semantic structure of a word. This structure is constituted of various types of lexical meanings, the major one being denotational, which informs of the subject of communication; and also including connotational, which informs about the participants and conditions of communication.

The list and specifications of connotational meanings vary with different linguistic schools and individual scholars and include such entries as pragmatic (directed at the perlocutionary effect of utterance), associative (connected, through individual psychological or linguistic associations, with related and nonrelated notions), ideological, or conceptual (revealing political, social, ideological preferences of the user), evaluative (stating the value of the indicated notion), emotive (revealing the emotional layer of cognition and perception), expressive (aiming at creating the image of the object in question), stylistic (indicating “the register”, or the situation of the communication).

The above-mentioned meanings are classified as connotational not only because they supply additional (and not the logical/denotational) information, but also because, for the most part, they are observed not all at once and not in all words either. Some of them are more important for the act of communication than the others. Very often they qverlap.

So, all words possessing an emotive meaning are also evaluative (e.g. “rascal”, “ducky”), though this rule is not reversed, as we can find non-emotive, intellectual evaiuation (e.g. “good”, “bad”). Again, all emotive words (or practically all, for that matter) are also expressive, while there are hundreds of expressive words which cannot be treated as emotive (take, for example the so-called expressive verbs, which not only denote some action or process but also create their image, as in “to gulp” = to swallow in big lumps, in a hurry; or “to sprint” = to run fast).

The number, importance and the overlapping character of connotational meanings incorporated into the semantic structure of a word, are brought forth by the context, i.e. a concrete speech act that identifies and actualizes each one. More than that: each context does not only specify the existing semantic (both denotational and connotational) possibilities of a word, but also is capable of adding new ones, or deviating rather considerably from what is registered in the dictionary. Because of that all contextual meanings of a word can never be exhausted or comprehensively enumerated. Compare the following cases of contextual use of the verb “to pop” in Stan Barstow’s novel “Ask Me Tomorrow”:

1. His face is red at first and then it goes white and his eyes stare as if they’ll pop out of his head.

2. “Just pop into the scullery and get me something to stand this on.”

3. “There is a fish and chip shop up on the main road. I thought you might show your gratitude by popping up for some.”

4. “I’ve no need to change or anything then.” “No, just pop your coat on and you’re fine.”

5. “Actually Mrs. Swallow is out. But she won’t be long. She’s popped up the road to the shops.”

6. “Would you like me to pop downstairs and make you a cup of cocoa?”

In the semantic actualization of a word the context plays a dual role: on one hand, it cuts off all meanings irrelevant for the given communicative situation. On the other, it foregrounds one of the meaningful options of a word, focusing the communicators’ attention on one of the denotational or connonational components of its semantic structure.

The significance of the context is comparatively small in the field of stylistic connotations, because the word is labelled stylistically before it enters some context, i.e. in the dictionary: recollect the well-known contractions -vulg., arch., si., etc., which make an indispensable part of a dictionary entry. So there is sense to start the survey of connotational meanings with the stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary.

Stylistic Differentiation of the Vocabulary:

EXERCISES

I. State the type and function of literary words in the following examples:

 1. “I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings.” (D.)

 

 2. “I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment’s notice. As a man sows so let him reap.” (O.W.)

 

 3. Isolde the Slender had suitors in plenty to do her lightest hest. Feats of arms were done daily for her sake. To win her love suitors were willing to vow themselves to perdition. But Isolde the Slender was heedless of the court thus paid to her. (L.)

 

 4. “He of the iron garment,” said Daigety, entering, “is bounden unto you, MacEagh, and this noble lord shall be bounden also.” (W.Sc.)

 

 5. If manners maketh man, then manner and grooming maketh poodle. (J. St.)

 

 6. “Thou art the Man,” cried Jabes, after a solemn pause, leaning over his cushion. “Seventy times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage — seventy times seven did I take council with my soul — Lo! this is human weakness: this also may be absolved. The first of the seventy first is come. Brethren — execute upon him the judgement written. Such honour have all His saints.” (E. Br.)

 

 7. At noon the hooter and everything died. First, the pulley driving the punch and shears and emery wheels stopped its lick and slap. Simultaneously the compressor providing the blast for a dozen smith-fires went dead. (S. Ch.)

 

 8. “They’re real!” he murmured. “My God, they are absolutely real!” Erik turned. “Didn’t you believe that the neutron existed?” “Oh, I believed,” Fabermacher shrugged away the praise. “To me neutrons were symbols л with a mass of M_n = 1.008. But until now I never saw them.” (M.W.)

 

 9. Riding back I saw the Greeks lined up in column of march. They were all still there. Also, all armed. On long marches when no action threatened, they had always piled their armour, helmets and weapons in their carts, keeping only their swords; wearing their short tunics (made from all kinds of stuff, they had been so long from home) and the wide straw hats Greeks travel in, their skins being tender to sun. Now they had on corselets or cuirasses, helmets, even grades if they owned them, and their round shields hung at their backs. (M.R.)

 

10. There wasn’t a man-boy on this ground tonight did not have a shield he cast, riveted or carved himself on his way to his first attack, compounded of remote but nonetheless firm and fiery family devotion, flag-blown patriotism and cocksure immortality strengthened by the touchstone of very real gunpowder, ramrod minnie-ball and flint. (R.Br.)

 

11.  Into the organpipes and steeples

Of the luminous cathedrals,

Into the weathercocks’ molten mouths

Rippling in twelve-winded circles,

Into the dead clock burning the hour

Over the urn of sabbaths...

Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever

Glory glory glory

The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis’ thunder.

(D. Th.)

 

12. If any dispassionate spectator could have beheld the countenance of the illustrious man, whose name forms the leading feature of the title of this work, during the latter part of this conversation, he would have been almost induced to wonder that the indignant fire that flashed from his eyes, did not melt the glasses of his spectacles — so majestic was his wrath. His nostrils dilated, and his fists clenched involuntarily, as he heard himself addressed by the villain. But he restrained himself again -he did not pulverize him.

“Here,” continued the hardened traitor tossing the licence at Mr. Pickwick’s feet; “get the name altered — take home the lady — do for Tuppy.” (D.)

II. Think of the type of additional information about the speaker or communicative situation conveyed by the following general and special colloquial words:

 1. “She’s engaged. Nice guy, too. Though there’s a slight difference in height. I’d say a foot, her favor.” (T.C.)

 2. “You know Brooklyn?”

“No. I was never there. But I had a buddy at Myer was from Brooklyn.” (J.)

 3. I didn’t really do anything this time. Just pulled the dago out of the river. Like all dagos, he couldn’t swim. Well, the fellow was sort of grateful about it. Hung around like a dog. About six months later he died of fever. I was with him. Last thing, just as he was pegging out, he beckoned me and whispered some excited jargon about a secret (Ch.)

 4. “Here we are now,” she cried, returning with the tray. “And don’t look so miz.” (P.)

 5. “What’s the dif,” he wanted to know. (Th.S.)

 6. Going down the stairs he overheard one beanied freshman he knew talking to another. “Did you see that black cat with the black whiskers who had those binocks in front of us? That’s my comp рrоf.” (В. М.)

 7. “Don’t you intend to get married?” asked Eugene curiously. “I don’t know,” she replied, “I’d want to think about that. A woman-artist is in a d — of a position anyway,” using the letter d only to indicate the word “devil”. (Dr.)

 8. “There we were... in the hell of a country — pardon me — a country of raw metal.

…It’s like a man of sixty looking down his nose at a youth of thirty and there’s no such God-darned — pardon me — mistake as that. (G.)

 9. “All those medical bastards should go through the ops they put other people through. Then they wouldn’t talk so much bloody nonsense or be so damnably unutterably smug.” (D. C.)

10. “I thought of going to the flicks,” she said. “Or we could go for a walk if it keeps fine.” (J.Br.)

11. “Let me warn you that the doc is a frisky bacheldore, Carol. Come on, now, folks, shake a leg. Let’s have some stunts or a dance or something.” (S.L.)

12. “Goddamn sonofabitching stool,” Fishbelly screamed, raining blows on Bert’s head. “Lawd Gawd in heaven, I’ll kill, kill every chink-chink goddamn chinaman white man on this sonofabitching bastard earth.” (Wr.)

13. There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of unwashed crocks in the kitchen. (A. T.)

14. “Of course I’ve spent nine years around the Twin Cities — took my B.A. and M.D. over at the U, and had my internship in a hospital in Minneapolis.” (S.L.)

15. “How long did they cook you?” Dongeris stopped short and looked at him. “How long did they cook you?” “Since eight this morning. Over twelve hours.” “You didn’t unbutton then? After twelve hours of it?”

“Me? They got a lot of dancing to do before they’ll get anything out of me.” (Т. Н.)

16. “Nix on that,” said Roy. “I don’t need a shyster quack to shoot me full of confidence juice. I want to go through on my own steam.” (B. M.)

17. “Go in there, you slob. I hope you get a hell of a lot of fun out of it. He looks too damned sick.” (H.)

18. Just then Taylor comes down. “Shut up and eat,” my mother says to him before he can open his mouth. In less than five minutes my father is back. “Keep the kids home,” he says.

“My God,” my mother says wearily, “them under foot all day.” (Sh. Gr.)

19. “Don’t wanna sleep, Don’t wanna die, just wanna go a-travelin’ through the pastures of the sky.” (T.C.)

20. “Never heard anything so bloody daft in all my life.” (J.Br.)

21. “You know. The mummies — them dead guys that get buried in them toons and all.” (S.)

22. His expenses didn’t go down... washing cost a packet, and you’d be surprised the amount of linen he needed. (S.M.)

23. “We’ll show Levenford what my clever lass can do. I’m looking ahead, and I can see it. When we’ve made ye the head scholar of the Academy, then you’ll see what your father means to do wi’ you. But ye must stick in to your lessons, stick in hard.” (A. C.)

24. Wee modest crimson tipped flow’r,

Thou’s met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crash amang the stoure

Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my pow’r

Thou bonnie gem.

(R. B.)

25. “That’s so, my lord. I remember having tae du much the same thing, mony years since, in an inquest upon a sailing vessel that ran aground in the estuary and got broken up by bumping herself to bits in a gale. The insurance folk thocht that the accident wasna a’tegither straightforward. We tuk it upon oorsels tae demonstrate that wi’ the wind and tide setti’ as they did, the boat should ha’ been wellaway fra’ the shore if they started at the hour they claimed tae ha’ done. We lost the case, but I’ve never altered my opeenion.” (D.S.)

III. Compare the neutral and the colloquial (or literary) modes of expression:

 1. “Also it will cost him a hundred bucks as a retainer.”

“Huh?” Suspicious again. Stick to basic English.

“Hundred dollars,” I said. “Iron men. Fish. Bucks to the number of one hundred. Me no money, me no come. Savvy?” I began to count a hundred with both hands. (R.Ch.)

 2. “...some thief in the night boosted my clothes whilst I slept. I sleep awful sound on the mattresses you have here.” “Somebody boosted...?” “Pinched. Jobbed. Swiped. Stole,” he says happily. (K.K.)

 3. “Now take fried, crocked, squiffed, loaded, plastered, blotto, tiddled, soaked, boiled, stinko, viled, polluted.”

“Yes,” I said.

“That’s the next set of words I am decreasing my vocabulary by”, said Atherton. “Tossing them all out in favor of-”

“Intoxicated?” I supplied.

“I favor fried,” said Atherton. “It’s shorter and monosyllabic, even though it may sound a little harsher to the squeamish-minded.”

“But there are degrees of difference,” I objected. “Just being tiddled isn’t the same as being blotto, or-”

“When you get into the vocabulary-decreasing business,” he interrupted, “you don’t bother with technicalities. You throw out the whole kit and caboodle — I mean the whole bunch,” he hastily corrected himself. (P.G.W.)

 4. “Do you talk?” asked Bundle. “Or are you just strong and silent?” “Talk?” said Anthony. “I, burble. I murmur. I gurgle — like a running brook, you know. Sometimes I even ask questions.” (Ch.)

 5. “So you’ll both come to dinner? Eight fifteen. Dinny, we must be back to lunch. Swallows,” added Lady Mont round the brim of her hat and passed out through the porch.

“There’s a house-party,” said Dinny to the young man’s elevated eyebrows. “She means tails and a white tie.”

“Oh! Ah! Best bib and tucker, Jean.” (G.)

 6. “What do you really contemplate doing?” “No Plaza? Not even when I’m in the ohips?” “Why are you so rich?” (J.O’H.)

 7. “Obviously an emissary of Mr. Bunyan had obtained clandestine access to her apartment in her absence and purloined the communication in question.” It took Lord Uffenham some moments to work this out, but eventually he unravelled it and was able to translate it from his butler’s language. What the man was trying to say was that some low blister, bought with Bunyan’s gold, had sneaked into the girl’s flat and pinched the bally things. (P.G.W.)

 8. ’’I say, old boy, where do you hang out?” Mr. Pickwick responded that he was at present suspended at the George and Vulture. (D.)

 9. “The only thing that counts in his eyes is solid achievement. Sometimes I have been prostrate with fatigue. He calls it idleness. I need the stimulation of good company. He terms this riff-raff. The plain fact is, I am misunderstood.” (D. du M.)

10. “The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial outlay.”

“He means,” I translated to Corky, “that he has a pippin of an idea but it’s going to cost a bit.” (P.G.W.)

11. Mrs. Sunbury never went to bed — she retired, but Mr. Sunbury who was not quite so refined as his wife always said: “Me for Bedford.” (S.M.)

12. “He tried those engineers. But no soap. No answer.” (J.O’H.)

13. “You want to know what I think? I think you’re nuts. Pure plain crazy. Goofy as a loon. That’s what I think.” (J.)

14. The famous Alderman objected to the phrase in Canning’s inscription for a Pitt Memorial “He died poor” and wished to substitute “He expired in indigent circumstances.” (Luc.)

15. “I am Alpha and Omega — the first and the last,” the solemn voice would announce. (D. du M.)

16. The tall man ahead of him half-turned saying “Gre’t God! I never, I never in all my days seen so many folks.” Mr. Munn thought that he, too, had never seen so many people, never before. (R.W.)

17. It may sound to some like cold-blooded murder of the English tongue, but American kids have been speaking a language of their own since they annoyed their Pilgrim parents at Plymouth Rock.

Ask a teen-ager today what he thought of last night’s rock show. If he liked it, it was “wicked” or “totally awesome”. But if he didn’t, it was “groady” or “harsh”.

Young people punctuate their sentences with slang. They drop phrases that would make Professor Henry Higgins turn over in his grave. Twice.

“It’s just like a dictionary that only teen-agers understand,” said Michael Harris, 17, a high school student in Richmond, Va. “You go home and you have to spell it for your parents. They don’t even know what you’re talking about.”

But this has been going on for years. Slang is as old as English itself, says Stuart Berg Flexner, editor-in-chief of the Random House Dictionary, author of the Dictionary of American Slang.

It offended puritan parents that their Pilgrim children took their traditional farewell — God be with you — and turned it into “good-bye”, Flexner says.

Today’s words are obsolete tomorrow.

“I may call somebody a jerk, but today they would call him a nerd,” says Flexner, 54. “Each generation seems to want to have some of its own words.”

“It’s not so much to shut out adults — although that’s a part of it. It gives them identity with their own age group. They sort of belong to their own club,” he says.

There is valleytalk and preppyspeak, jocktalk and street language.

Take Moon Unit Zappa’s Valley Talk. The daughter of famed rocker Frank Zappa was 14years old when her dad sat her before a microphone and documented her language in a pop song.

“Gag me with a spoon,” she says to show disgust. “Groady to themax.”

Legions of youngsters across America picked it up. The song, and language, was a coast-to-coast hit. But that killed it.

“Valley Speak is out,” reports Jane Segal, 16, a reformed Valley Girl at Santa Monica High School. “It went out after the song was played to death. It was really popular, and then everyone got so sick of the stupid song they quit saying that stuff.”

“No one ever says ’Gag me’ anymore,” she says. “’Totally’ is still hanging on, and everyone uses’ “like”. They say it everywhere, just sprinkle it in. I do it subconsciously, I use it like “um.”

Flexner considers slang.a reflection of American pop culture. Words come and go like No. 1 hit songs. Once a word is widely known it may be dropped, relegated to the used-slang bin alongside “swell” from the ’50s and “groovy” from the ’60s.

Others stick around like golden oldies.

“There are classics. Once” a good phrase comes along it’s pretty hard to replace it,” says Scott Wenger, 19, a New York University student. “Flipped” out still means crazy and “pulling an allnighter” still means to study.hard until all hours of the morning for exams.”

Teen-agers may dream up slang, but adults use it too. Julia Shields, 42, a high school English teacher in Charlottesville, Va., is an avowed user.

“I love slang, think it’s colorful, wonderful, metaphoric. Some of it is quite clever,” she says. “I hate it, but I call everything “neat”. It’s such a horrible, vague, meaningless word. But I use it in every sentence.”

Slang is not the talk of board rooms and diplomatic sessions. Because young people spend more time informally than adults, and slang is a product of relaxing the rules, high schools and college campuses are breeding grounds for it. (C. R.)

IV. Speak about the difference between the contextual and the dictionary meanings of italicized words:

 1. Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was the citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. (J.J.)

 2. He does all our insurance examining and they say he’s some doctor. (S.L.)

 3. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic. (S.L.)

 4. “What do you think?” The question pops their heads up. (K.K.)

 5. We tooled the car into the street and eased it into the ruck of folks. (R.W.)

 6. He inched the car forward. (A.H.)

 7. “Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And — and — we drifted into a sort of understanding — I suppose I should call it an engagement -”

“You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it.” (B.Sh.)

 8. He sat with the strike committee for many hours in a smoky room and agonized over ways and means. (M.G.)

 9. Betty loosed fresh tears. (Jn.B.)

10. When the food came, they wolfed it down rapidly. (A.M.)

11. He had seen many places and been many things railroad foreman, plantation overseer, boss mechanic, cow-puncher, and Texas deputy-sheriff. (J.R.)

12 Station platforms were such long, impersonal, dirty, ugly things, with too many goodbyes, lost hearts, and tears stamped into the concrete paving. (A. S.)

13. “Let me say, Virginia, that I consider your conduct most unbecoming. Nor at all that of a pure young widow.”

“Don’t be an idiot. Bill. Things are happening.”

“What kind of things?”

“Queer things.” (Ch.)

14. I need young critical things like you to punch me up. (S.L.)

15. Oh! the way the women wear their prettiest every thing’ (T.C.)

 

Lexical Stylistic Devices

10.

Liverpool, 17^th July 19...

Messrs. M. Worthington & Co., Ltd., Oil Importers,

c/o Messrs. Williams & C.; Ship Agents,

17 Fenchurch Street,London, Е., С., England

Dear Sirs,

Re: 9500 tons of Edible Oil under B/LNos.:

2732, 3734, 4657 m/t Gorky ar’d 16.07.

 

In connection with your request to start discharging the above cargo first by pumping out bottom layer into barges and then to go on with pumping the rest of the cargo into shore tanks I wish to point out the following.

As per clause of the Bill of Lading “Weight, quantity and qualit