14. Euphemism

Euphemism is a variety of a periphrasis. It is also based on the use of a descriptive expression instead of the word denoting the notion. But it has a special character. Euphemism is a word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a conventionally more acceptable one.

E.g. To die - to pass away, to be no more, to depart, to be gone, to join the silent majority, to breathe one’s last, to meet our maker, to give up the ghost, to go west, to kick the bucket.

Euphemisms are synonyms of those unpleasant words which aim at the producing deliberately mild effect

15. Hyperbole:

It is the stylistic device which also has the function of intensifying one certain property of the object described. Deliberate overstatement or exaggeration of feature is essential for object.

The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in and the sun and the moon were made to give them light. (Dickens)

16. Clichés: clockwork precision, crushing defeat, the whip and carrot policy.

17. Proverbs and sayings: A proverb is a witty phrase of generalising nature characterized by the completeness of thoughts. A saying is not so completely expressed as a proverb. It is often elliptical in structure. E.g. Come! he said, milk's spilt. (Galsworthy);

18. Epigrams: It is a terse witty pointed statement often satirical, ingeniously expressed to as a rule created. A thing of beauty is a joy for ever. (Keats)

19. Quotations: Ecclesiastes said, 'that all is vanity'. (Byron)

20. Allusion is a reference to specific places, persons, literary characters, historical events, that by some associations one have come to stand for a certain thing of the idea the frequently resorted to sources, are mythology and the Bible. E.g. Shakespeare talks of the herald Mercury. (Byron)

21. Decomposition of set phrases: You know which side the law's buttered. (Galsworthy)

22. Paradox is based on contrast. It is a statement contradictory to something that is accepted as a self-evident or provable truth: e.g. I think that life is a far too important thing even to think seriously of it.

Syntactical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

1.Inversion

Rude am I in my speech

In went Mr Pickwick’

2.Detached construction

Detachment is a kind of inversion. Its essence lies in the separation of a secondary part of the sentence with the aim of emphasizing it. The separation is accompanied by violation of customary syntactical connections and leads to a certain logical break between the member detached and the main parts of the sentence. The aim of Detachment is the same as of Inversion - to make some words or phrases more prominent. In the text Detachment is usually marked by commas, dashes, brackets.

In fact any secondary member of the sentence may be detached: He saved my life, brave boy

She was crazy about her. In the beginning.

3.Parenthesis is a variant of detachment. It is a qualifying or appositive word or word-combination which interrupts a syntactical construction and introduces some additional information. Its function is to emphasize something or explain and specify an utterance. It may create the background to the events, reveal the inner state of the personage, show the author’s attitude to the events described, strengthen some facts and bare evaluative meaning.

‘The main entrance (she never ventured to look beyond that) was a combination of glass and iron’

4.Parallel construction is a device in which the necessary condition is identical, or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession. Parallelism is usually observed in macro-images (paragraphs).

‘The warm sun is failing

The bleak wind is wailing

The bare bushes are sighing

The pale flowers are dying’

5.Chiasmus is based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but it has a cross order of words and phrases. The structure of two successive sentences or parts of a sentence may be described as reversed parallel construction, e.g. in the 1st sentence we have a+b and in the 2nd - b+a.

‘Pleasure is a sin. And sometimes sin a pleasure

6.Repetition (reiteration) is the use of the same word or word-combination for two or more times. According to the place which the repeated unit occupies in a sentence repetition is classified into several types: