2. Interaction of Primary and Derivative Logical Meanings

There are special SDs which make a word materialize distinct dictionary meanings. They are zeugma and pun. Zeugma is the use of a word in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to two adjacent words in the context, the semantic relations being, on the one hand, literal, and, on the other, transferred: The boys took their places and their books (Ch. Dickens); She lost her heart and her necklace at the ball.

Zeugma is a strong and effective device to maintain the purity of the primary meaning when two meanings clash. Pun is another SD based on the interaction of two well-known meanings of a word or a phrase. Pun (play on words) is a SD, emerging as an effect created by words similar or identical in sounding but contrastive or incompatible in meaning. Contextual conditions leading to the simultaneous realisation of two meanings and to the formation of pun may vary: it can be misinterpretation of one speaker’s utterance by the other, which results in his remark dealing with a different meaning of the misinterpreted word or its homonym.

3. Interaction of Logical and Emotive Meanings

Epithet is based on the interplay of emotive and logical meanings in an attributive word, phrase or even sentence, used to characterize an object and pointing out to the reader some of the properties or features of the object with the aim of giving an individual perception and evaluation of these features or properties.

Classification of Epithets

The structure and semantics of epithets are extremely variable which is explained by their long and wide use. Semantically, there should be differentiated two main groups, the biggest of them being affective (or emotive proper). These epithets serve to convey the emotional evaluation of the object by the speaker. Most of the qualifying words found in the dictionary can be and are used as affective epithets (“gorgeous”, “nasty”, “magnificent”, “atrocious”).

The second group – figurative, or transferred, epithets – is formed of metaphors, metonymies and similes (which will be discussed later) expressed by adjectives: (1) “the smiling sun”, “the frowning cloud”; (2) “the sleepless pillow”, “the tobacco-stained smile”; (3) “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.

Structurally, epithets may be divided into:

1) Single epithets: “He looked at them in animal panic”; “Her painful shoes slipped off”;

2) Pairs, which are represented by two epithets joined by a conjunction or asyndetically as in “wonderful and incomparable beauty” (O. Wilde) or “a tired old town” (H. Lee). “A branch cracking under his weight sent through the tree a sad cruel thunder”.

3) Chains (also called strings) of epithets, which present a group of homogeneous attributes varying in number from three up to sometimes twenty and even more. For example: “You’re a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature” (Ch. Dickens). He has that unmistakable tall lanky “rangy” loose-jointed graceful closecropped formidably clean American look.

4) Two-step epithets, which are called so because the process of qualifying seemingly passes two stages: the qualification of the object and the qualification of the qualification itself, as in “an unnaturally mild day” (A. Hutchinson), or “a pompously majestic female” (Ch. Dickens). “The children were very brown and filthily dirty”.

(5) Phrase-epithets, which always produce an original impression: “the sunshine-in-the-breakfast-room smell” (J. Baldwin); “a move-if-you-dare expression” (J. Greenwood) “He acknowledged an early-afternoon customer with a be-with-you-in-a-minute nod”.

(6) Inverted epithets, which are based on the contradiction between the logical and the syntactical: logically defining becomes syntactically defined and vice versa. For example, 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”.

“She was a faded white rabbit of a woman”.

Oxymoron is a combination of two words in which the meaning is opposite in sense: a speaking silence, a cold fire, a living death, “Sara was a menace and a tonic, my best enemy; Rozzie was a disease, my worst friend”.

Close to oxymoron is paradox – a statement that is absurd on the surface: War is peace. The worse – the better.

If the primary meaning of qualifying word changes the stylistic effect of oxymoron is lost and it becomes trite: awfully beautiful. In oxymoron the logical meaning holds fast because there is no true word combination.