41. Expressive Means & Stylistic Devices. Tropes. Figures of Speech.

All stylistic means of a language can be divided into expressive means, which are used in some specific way, and special devices called stylistic devices. The expressive means of a language are those phonetic means, morphological forms, means of word-building, and lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms, all of which function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms of the language, wrought by social usage and recognized by their semantic function have been fixed in grammars and dictionaries. The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic. Pitch, melody, stress, pausation, drawling, drawling out certain syllables, whispering, a sing-song manner of speech and other ways of using the voice are more effective than any other means in intensifying the utterance emotionally or logically. Morphological expressive means - the use of the Present Indefinite instead of the Past Indefinite – the author achieves a more vivid picturisation of what was going on; the use of shall in the second and third person (He shall do it); word-building means (dear – dearie, stream – streamlet), neologisms and nonce-words formed with non-productive suffixes or with Greek roots (mistressmanship); certain affixes have gained such a power of expressiveness that they begin functioning as separate words, absorbing all of the generalizing meaning they usually attach to different roots (‘isms, ‘ologies). At the lexical level there are a many words which due to their inner expressiveness, constitute a special layer. There are words with emotive meaning only, like interjections, words which have both referential and emotive meaning or words belonging to special groups of literary English or of non-standard English (poetic, archaic, slang, vulgar, etc); set expressions, proverbs and sayings. Finally at the syntactical level there are many constructions which, being set against synonymous ones, will reveal a certain degree of logical or emotional emphasis. The expressive means of the language are studied respectively in manuals of phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics, however, observes not only the nature of an expressive means, but also its potential capacity of becoming a stylistic device. Stylistic device is a conscious and intentional literary use of some of the facts of the language (including expressive means) in which the most essential features (both structural and semantic) of the language forms are raised to a generalized level and thereby present a generative model. Most stylistic devices may be regarded as aiming at the further intensification of the emotional or logical emphasis contained in the corresponding expressive means. Unlike expressive means, stylistic devices are patterns of the language whereas the expressive means do not form patterns. They are just like words themselves, they are facts of the language, and as such are, or should be, registered in dictionaries. The interrelation between expressive means and stylistic devices can be worded in terms of the theory of information. Expressive means have a greater degree of predictability than stylistic devices. Stylistic devices must be regarded as a special code which has still to be deciphered. For a language fact to become an SD there is one indispensable requirement – it should be so much used in one and the same function that it has become generalized in its functions. Interrelation of word meanings when creating literary images is studied in stylistics under the name of tropes. Tropes are lexical expressive means in which a word or word combination is used in its transferred meaning. The essence of tropes consists in comparing how the concept is traditionally presented and how it changes when stylistically charged. Tropes play an important though a secondary role in text interpretation and stylistic analysis can not be reduced to tropes identification. Tropes are classified in many ways and with many details in stylistics. Tropes may be characterized as paradigmatic expressive means as they are all based on the associations of words chosen by the author with other close to them in meaning and that is why quite possible but not presented in an individual text. Classification according to Galperin. 1. Intentional mixing of the stylistic aspect of words. 2. Interaction of different types of lexical meaning: 1) Interaction of dictionary and contextual logical meanings (metaphor, metonymy, irony), 2) Interaction of primary and derivative logical meanings (polysemy, zeugma and pun), 3) Interaction of logical and emotive meanings (interjections and exclamatory words, epithet, oxymoron), 4) Interaction of logical and nominal meanings. 3. Intensification of a certain feature of a thing or phenomenon (simile, periphrasis, euphemism, hyperbole) 4. Peculiar use of set expressions (clichés, proverbs and sayings, epigrams, quotations, allusions, decomposition of set phrases)

Figures of speech do not create images. They increase the expressiveness of speech, make it emotional with the help of special syntactic constructions (inversion, rhetoric question, parallel construction…) Figures of speech are more syntagmatic, as they are based on the linear distribution and the effect depends on this very distribution. The division of all stylistic means into tropes and figures of speech is just speculative and very tentative: tropes carry out an expressive function while figures of speech may participate in creating imagery.

Tropes are EM based on the transfer of meaning or figurative use of the words and expressions within one and the same paradigm. (I.V.A.) e.g. She is the heart of society (trope). Tropes:a) deal with concrete thing or idea e.g. Thirsty wind. b) embrace the whole book e.g. War and Peace. c) create visual images: e.g. the cloudy life age of the sky

d) create aural images by sound imitations: “The moan of doves in immemorial elms, and murmuring of innumerable bees” (Tennyson).

Figures of speech refer to specific combinations of words and specific syntactical structures imaginatively used. They are correlated in time (syntagmatically). Ex.: She is as beautiful as a rose (figure of speech).