The phonetic level of stylistic analysis

LECTURE 2

THE PHONETIC LEVEL OF STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

Outline:

Part I. Paradigmatic phonetics.

General notes

Graphons.

Aesthetic evaluation of sounds.

Onomatopoeia.

Mental verbalization of extra-lingual sounds.

 

1. 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. The phonemic structure of the word proves to be important for the creation of expressive and emotive connotations. The acoustic form of the word foregrounds the sounds of nature, man and inanimate objects, emphasizing their meaning as well.

We must say (after Galperin, V. A. Kukharenko) that it`s only oral speech that can be heard, tape-recorded, and the results of multiple hearing analyzed and summarized. The graphic picture of actual speech – written or printed text – gives us limited opportunities for judging its phonetic and prosodic aspects.

The essential problem of stylistic possibilities of the choice between options is presented by co-existence in everyday usage of varying forms of the same word and by variability of stress within the limits of the “Standard”, or “Received Pronunciation”. The words “ missile ”, “ direct ” and a number of others are pronounced either with a diphthong or a monophthong. The word “ negotiation” has either [ʃ] or [s] for the first “t”. The word “ laboratory ” was pronounced a few decades ago with varying stress (nowadays the stress upon the second syllable seems preferable in Great Britain; Americans usually stress the first syllable).

 

2. Texts are written or printed representation of oral speech. On the one hand, writing has made audible speech fixed and visible and helps us to discover in it its certain properties which have not been noticed in oral discourse. On the other hand, writing has limited our capacity to evaluate phonetic properties of text. Orthography does not reflect phonetic peculiarities of speech, except in cases when author resorts to graphons (unusual, non-standard spelling of words, intentional violation of graphic shape).

Graphons are style-forming since they show deviation from neutral, usual way of pronouncing speech sounds as well as prosodic features of speech (supra-segmental characteristics: stress, tones, pitch-scale, tempo, intonation in general).

Graphon shows features of territorial or social dialect of a speaker, deviations from standard English. Highly typical in this respect is reproduction of Cockney (the vernacular of the lower classes of London population). One Cockney feature is dropping of “h”, another is substitution of diphthong [ai] for diphthong [ei]. For example, “ I want some more ‘am (=ham)” and “If that’s ‘er fyce (=her face) there, then that’s ‘er body”.

It is not only dialect features, territorial and social which are of stylistic importance. The more prominent, the more foregrounding parts of utterances impart expressive force to what is said. A speaker may emphasize a word intensifying its initial consonant, which is shown by doubling the letter (e.g. “ N-n o!”).

Another way of intensifying a word or a phrase is scanning (uttering each syllable or a part of a word as phonetically independent in retarded tempo) (e.g. “Im-pos-sible”).

Italics are used to single out epigraphs, citations, foreign words, allusions serving the purpose of emphasis. Italics add logical or emotive significance to the words. E.g. “Now listen, Ed, stop that now. I’m desperate. I am desperate, Ed, do you hear?” (Dr.)

Capitalization is used in cases of personification making the text sound solemn and elevated or ironical in case of parody. E.g. O Music! Sphere – descended maid, // Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom’s aid! (W.Collins)

E.g. If way to the Better there be, it exacts a full look at the Worst. (Th.Hardy)

Capitalized words are italicized and pronounced with great emphasis.

E.g. I didn’t kill Henry. No, No! (D.Lawrence – The Lovely Lady)

E.g. “WILL YOU BE QUIET!” he bawled (A.Sillitoe – The key to the door) “Help, Help, HELP” (Huxley’s desperate appeal).

Intensity of speech is transmitted through the multiplication: “Allll aboarrrd! ”- Babbit Shrieked.

Hyphenation of a word suggests the rhymed or clipped manner in which it is uttered:” e.g. “grinning like a chim-pan-zee” (O’Connor)

Hyphenation and multiplication:

Kiddies and grown-ups

Too-oo-oo,

Graphons (multiplication) are used to indicate some defects of speech and different accents:

Ex.: “ The b-b-b-ast-ud seen me c-c-coming ” (stumbling).

“ You don’t mean to thay that thith ith your firth time” (lisping).

“ Ah like ma droap o’Scatch, d’ye ken” (Scotch accent). – I like my drop of Scotch.

Ex.: “Hish mishish, it ish hish mishish. Yesh”. (J.B.Priestley)
E.g. I had a coach with a little seat in fwont with an iwon wail for the dwiver. (Dickens) – (с гашеткой впегеди для кучега).

 

3. A phoneme can have a strong associative power. The sounds themselves, though they have no extra lingual meaning, possess a kind of expressive meaning and hence stylistic value. The essence of stylistic value of the sound for a native speaker consists in its paradigmatic correlation with phonetically analogous units which have expressly positive or expressly negative meaning. We are always in the grip of phonetic associations created through analogy.

· A very curious experiment is described in “The Theory of Literature” by L. Timofeyev, a Russian scholar. Pyotr Vyazemsky, a prominent Russian poet (1792-1878) once asked an Italian, who didn`t know a word of Russian, to guess the meanings of several Russian words by their sound impression. The words «любовь» (“love”), «друг» (“friend”), «дружба» (“friendship”) were characterized by the Italian as “smth. rough, inimical, perhaps abusive”. The word «телятина» (“veal”), however, produced an opposite effect: “smth. tender, caressing, eppeal to a woman”.

 

· The essence of the stylistic value of a sound for a native speaker consists in its paradigmatic correlation with phonetically analogous lexical meaning. In other words, we are always in the grip of phonetic associations created through analogy. A well-known example is: the initial sound complex – bl- is constantly associated with the expression of disgust, because the word “bloody” was avoided in print before 1914; as a result of it other adjectives with the same initial sound-complex came to be used for euphemistic reasons: “blasted”, “blamed”, “blessed”, “blowed”, “blooming”. Each of the “bl ”-words enumerated stands for “blody ”, and since this is known to everybody, very soon all such euphemistic substitutes become as objectionable as the original word itself. And, naturally, the negative tinge of the sound-combination remains unchanged.

 

· According to McKnight`s testimony, other sounds in certain positions also have a more or less definite stylistic value. A native-English-speaker can hardly fail to feel a certain quality common to words ending in –sh: “crush”, “bosh”, “squash”, “hush”, “mush”, “flush”, “blush”. A little different in: “crash”, “splash”, “rash”, “smash”, “trash”, “clash”, “dash”. The scholar does not expressly name that quality, but he probably means smth. negative and unpleasant in the first group. The second is presumably associated with deforming strength and quickness.

A similar stylistic phenomenon McKnight thinks is observable in the vowel [ ] at the end of words. This vowel is a diminutive suffix: Willie, Johnnie, “birdie”, “kittie”. He also mentions “whisky” and ”brandy” which, as he claims, contribute a certain popular quality to the ending; this is also seen in the words “movie”, “bookie”, “newie (= newsboy)” and even “taxi”.

 

4. As distinct from what has been discussed, the unconditionally expressive and picture-making function of speech sounds is met with only in onomatopoeia, that is, in sound imitation – in demonstrating, by phonetic means, the acoustic picture of reality.

1. First of all, the cries of beasts and birds (“mew”, “cock-a-doodle-doo”) and even the names of certain birds are onomatopoeic: “cuckoo”. Noise-imitating interjections “bang”, “crack” are onomatopoeia. Moreover, certain verbs and nouns reflect the acoustic nature of the processes: “hiss”, “rustle”, “whistle”, “whisper”.

2. Onomatopoeia, or elements of it, can sometimes be found in poetry.

3. Sound imitation may be used for comical representation of foreign speech. For example: one of heroes in Mayakovsky`s “The Bathhouse”, Pont Kitch demonstrates senseless utterance entering the stage, thus it sounds English-like: « Ай Иван шел в рай, а звери обедали». You should know Mayakovsky didn`t speak English, and it was the following phrase: “I once shall rise very badly”.

There are two varieties of onomatopoeia: direct and indirect.

Direct onomatopoeia is contained in words that imitate natural sounds, as ding-dong, burr, bang, and cuckoo. These words have different degrees of imitative quality. Some of them immediately bring to mind whatever it is that produces the sound. Others require the exercise of a certain amount of imagination to decipher it. Onomatopoetic words can be used in a transferred meaning, as for instance, ding - dong, which represents the sound of bells rung continuously, may mean 1) noisy, 2) strenuously contested.

(Direct) onomatopoeia - the use of words whose sounds imitate those of the signified object of action (V.A.K.)

(Direct) onomatopoeia is a combination of speech-sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature (wind, sea, thunder, etc.), by things (machines or tools, etc.) by people (sighing, laughter, patter of feet, etc.) and by animals (I.R.G.) e.g. babble, chatter, giggle, grumble, murmur, mutter, titter, whisper; buzz, cackle, croak, crow, hiss, howl, moo, mew, roar; bubble, splash; clink, tinkle; clash, crash, whack, whip, whisk

e.g. hiss, powwow, murmur, bump, grumble, sizzle, ding-dong, buzz, bang, cuckoo, tintinnabulation, mew, ping-pong, roar

Alliteration

Assonance

Paronomasia

Rhythm and meter

 

1. Stylistics of sequence treats the function of co-occurrence of identical, different or contrastive units.

What exactly is understood by co-occurrence? What is felt as co-occurrence and what cases produce no stylistic effect? The answer depends on what level we are talking about.

The novel “An American Tragedy ” by Theodore Dreiser begins with a sentence: “ Dusk of a summer night ”. The same sentence recurs at the end of the second volume and at the beginning of the epilogue. An attentive reader will inevitably recall the beginning of the book as soon as he comes to the conclusion.

In opposition to recurring utterances phonetic units are felt as co-occurring only within more or less short sequences. If the distance is too great our memory doesn’t retain the impression of the first element and the effect of phonetic similarity doesn’t occur.

 

2. Alliteration is the recurrence of an initial consonant in two or more words which either follow each other or appear close enough to be noticeable.

Alliteration is the first case of phonetic co-occurrence.

Alliteration is widely used in English, more than in other languages. It is a typically English feature because ancient English poetry was based more on alliteration than on rhyme. We find a vestige if this once all embracing literary device in the titles of books, in slogans and set-phrases.

For example, titles “ Pride and Prejudice”, “Sense and Sensibility ” (by Jane Austin);

set-phrases: now and never, forgive and forget, last but not the least;

slogan: “ Work or wages!”

3. The term is employed to signify the recurrence of stressed vowels (i.e. repetition of stressed vowels within a word).

e.g. Tell this soul, with sorrow l a den, if within the distant Ai den,

I shall clasp a s ai nted m ai den, whom the a ngels name Lenore –

Clasp a rare and r a diant m ai den, whom the a ngels name Lenore?

Both alliteration and assonance may produce the effect of euphony or cacophony.

Euphony is a harmony of form and contents, an arrangement of sound combinations, producing a pleasant effect. Euphony – (эвфония) is a sense of ease and comfort in pronouncing or hearing: “ The moan of doves in immemorial elms, and murmuring of innumerable bees” (Tennyson).

Cacophony is a disharmony of form and contents, an arrangement of sounds, producing an unpleasant effect. (I.V.A.) Cacophony is a sense of strain and discomfort in pronouncing or hearing. (V.A.K.)

E.g. Nor soul helps flesh now // more than flesh helps soul. (R.Browning)

Alliteration and assonance are sometimes called sound-instrumenting.

4. Paronyms are words similar but not identical in sound and different in meaning.

Co-occurrence of paronyms is called paronomasia. The function of paronomasia is to find semantic connection between paronyms.

Phonetically paronomasia produces stylistic effect analogous to those of alliteration and assonance. In addition phonetic similarity and positional nearness makes the listener search for the semantic connection of the paronyms (e.g. “ не глуп, а глух ”)

e.g. And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting.

 

5. Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combination of words. Rhyming words are generally placed at a regular distance from each other. In verses they are usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines.

Identity and similarity of sound combinations may be relative. For instance, we distinguish between full rhymes and incomplete rhymes. The full rhyme presupposes identity of the vowel sound and the following consonant sounds in a stressed syllable, including the initial consonant of the second syllable (in polysyllabic words), we have exact or identical rhymes.

Incomplete rhymes present a greater variety. They can be divided into two main groups: vowel rhymes and consonant rhymes. In vowel-rhymes the vowels of the syllables in corresponding words are identical, but the consonants may be different as in flesh - fresh -press. Consonant rhymes, on the contrary, show concordance in consonants and disparity in vowels, as in worth - forth, tale - tool -treble - trouble; flung - long.

Modifications in rhyming sometimes go so far as to make one word rhyme with a combination of words; or two or even three words rhyme with a corresponding two or three words, as in “ upon her honour - won her”, “ bottom –forgot them- shot him”. Such rhymes are called compound or broken. The peculiarity of rhymes of this type is that the combination of words is made to sound like one word - a device which inevitably gives a colloquial and sometimes a humorous touch to the utterance. Compound rhyme may be set against what is called eye - rhyme, where the letters and not the sounds are identical, as in love - prove, flood - brood, have - grave. It follows that compound rhyme is perceived in reading aloud, eye - rhyme can only be perceived in the written verse.

Full rhymes: Might - Right

Incomplete rhymes: worth - forth

Eye - rhyme: love - prove

Types of rhymes:

1) Couplet: aa: The seed ye sow, another reaps; (a)

The wealth ye find, another keeps; (a)

2) Triplet: aaa: And on the leaf a browner hue, (a)

And in the heaven that clear obscure, (a)

So softly dark, and darkly pure, (a)

3) Cross rhymes: abab:

It is the hour when from the boughs (a)

The nightingales’ high note is heard;(b)

It is the hour when lovers’ vows (a)

Seem sweet in every whispered word, (b)

4) Frame (ring): abba:

He is not here; but far away (a)

The noise of life begins again, (b)

And ghastly thro ’the drizzling rain (b)

On the bald streets breaks the blank day (a)

5) Internal rhyme

“ I dwelt alone (a) in a world of moan, (a)

And my soul was a stagnant tide.”

Rhythm exists in all spheres of human activity and assumes multifarious forms. It is a mighty weapon in stirring up emotions whatever its nature or origin, whether it is musical, mechanical or symmetrical as in architecture. The most general definition of rhythm may be expressed as follows: “rhythm is a flow, movement, procedure, etc. characterized by basically regular recurrence of elements or features, as beat, or accent, in alternation with opposite or different elements of features” (Webster's New World Dictionary).

Rhythm can be perceived only provided that there is some kind of experience in catching the opposite elements or features in their correlation, and, what is of paramount importance, experience in catching regularity of alternating patterns. Rhythm is a periodicity, which requires specification as to the type of periodicity. In verse rhythm is regular succession of weak and strong stress. A rhythm in language necessarily demands oppositions that alternate: long, short; stressed, unstressed; high, low and other contrasting segments of speech.

Academician V.M.Zhirmunsky suggests that the concept of rhythm should be distinguished from that of a metre. Metre is any form of periodicity in verse, its kind being determined by the character and number of syllables of which it consists. The metre is a strict regularity, consistency and exchangeability. Rhythm is flexible and sometimes an effort is required to perceive it. In classical verse it is perceived at the background of the metre. In accented verse - by the number of stresses in a line. In prose - by the alternation of similar syntactical patterns. Rhythm in verse as a S. D. is defined as a combination of the ideal metrical scheme and the variations of it, variations which are governed by the standard.

Rhythm is not a mere addition to verse or emotive prose, which also has its rhythm. Rhythm intensifies the emotions. It contributes to the general sense. Much has been said and writhen about rhythm in prose. Some investigators, in attempting to find rhythmical patterns of prose, superimpose metrical measures on prose. But the parameters of the rhythm in verse and in prose are entirely different. Rhythm is a combination of the ideal metrical scheme and its variations, which are governed by the standard.

English metrical patterns:

1) iambic metre: -/-/-/:

Those evening bells,

Those evening bells

2) trochaic metre: /-/- :Welling waters, winsome words (Swinborne)

3) dactylic metre: /- - / - -: Why do you cry Willie?

Why do you cry?

4) amphibrachic metre: -/-: A diller, a dollar, a ten o’clock scholar …

5) anapaestic metre: - -/- - /: Said the flee, ‘Let us fly’,

Said the fly, ‘Let us flee’,

So they flew through a flaw in the flue

 

 

Types of graphons

N	Name	Example
	territorial or social dialect of a speaker	“ I want some more ‘am (=ham)”
	doubling the letter	“ N-n o!”
	scanning	“Im-pos-sible”
	italics	“I’m desperate. I am desperate, Ed, do you hear?”
	capitalization	. O Music! Sphere – descended maid, // Friend of Pleasure, Wisdom’s aid! (W.Collins) “Help, Help, HELP”
	multiplication	“Allll aboarrrd! ”- Babbit Shrieked.
	hyphenation	“grinning like a chim-pan-zee”

 

 

LECTURE 2

THE PHONETIC LEVEL OF STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

Outline: