Topic 6 Graphic Expressive Means

1. Punctuation marks.

2. Capital letters.

3. Peculiarities of print.

4. Graphic imagery.

The usual way to come to know a literary work (text) is reading, so its graphic form acquires great importance. In prose in this respect correlations of prints/types division of the text into paragraphs, placing of the lines, capital letters and punctuation are very important.

In poetry the combination of graphic and sound forms of a verse create a general impression. The graphic form of a verse reflects its structure and even rhythmic and emotional character.

The most important role belongs to punctuation as it not only divides the text into sentences and their syntactic elements and defines a general characteristic of a sentence (question, statement, exclamation) but points to the element important from the point of view of emotional expressiveness: pauses, irony, the author’s attitude to what is being said, connotation and rhythmical structure of speech.

Stylistic loading of punctuation marks is different. Numerous question and exclamation marks are the signs of the emotional character of the text. A special stylistic colouring is expressed by an exclamation mark when it is used after sentences which are not exclamatory by nature. The exclamation mark is used in such cases to express ironic attitude to what is being said and sometimes indignation:

A truth, a faith, a generation of men goes – and is forgotten, and it doesn’t matter! (J.Conrad)

Dash/hyphen is important to express emotional pauses and different states of speakers:

Please – not that!

With my hand on my heart – farewell. (J. Webster)

And then – and then – I saw it was you! (J. Webster)

Often they are expressed by suspension marks:

Oh, he’s a… he’s a kind of acquaintance.

There …. We don’t know him very well… but all the same (S.Becket)

A hyphen or suspension marks may point to prolonged pause before an important word to attract attention to it. Besides they may combine with some time fillers as er, ugh, well, so:

You come here after dark, and you go after dark. It is so – so ignoble.(Gr. Green).

A stylistic function of a full stop may be different. To describe a quick succession of actions a full stop divides the text into short sentences and the same time creates a dynamic picture of the whole.

Triumphal march

Stone, bronze, stone, steel, stone, oak leaves, horses’ heels over the paving.

And the flags. And the trumpets. And so many eagles.

How many? Count them. And such a press of people. (T.Eliot)

Inverted coma serves to struggle out a personal speech. Sometimes they are used to struggle out expressions or words belonging to somebody else, not to the speaker. At the same time they may convey ironic attitude of the speaker to those words or an unusual meaning in which these words are used in the given context.

“Dead, dead, dead” The telegram from the War Office – “regret to inform… killed in action… Their Majesties’ sympathy…” – went to the home address in the country, and was opened by Mrs. Winterbourne.

It was addressed to Mr. Winterbourne, but she opened it: she had an idea that “one of those women” was “after” her husband, who however, was regrettably chaste, from cowardice.

Italics point to the emphatic character of words to their possible polysemy.

“They have killed him, those vile, filthy foreigners. My baby “A clean sporting death, an Englishman’s death”

(here: to express patriotism)

The absence of punctuation marks may be used for different stylistic purposes by different authors: James Joyce – to express the flow of consciousness, T.S.Eliot – a poem in prose “Defence of Islands” – to make it look as a document, gives it a special importance and solemnity, unites multitudes at events, lives, centuries when people of England fulfilled their duty.