12. Basic notions of stylistics: context, image, eMs, sDs

Context is a linguistic encirclement of a language unit. It also comprises conditions and peculiarities of functioning of a language unit in speech. Such types of context as situational context, social and historical context, linguistic context, stylistic context: are distinguished.

Stylistic context is a stretch of a text interrupted by an unexpected element that results in a stylistic device. Stylistic context is divided into: a)microcontext, realized within one sentence; b)macrocontext, realized within a superphrasal unit or paragraph; c)megacontext, comprising the whole literary work.

Imagery – descriptive language used in literature to evoke mental pictures or sensory experiences. Many images (but not all) are conveyed by figurative language, as in metaphor, simile, synecdoche, onomatopoeia and metonymy

I.R. Galperin divides all stylistics means of a language into EMs and SDs. EMs and SDs have a lot in common but they are not synonymous. All SDs belong to EMs but not all EMs are SDs.

EMs – are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in the language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance. (Phonetic EMs: pitch, melody, stress; Morphological: gr.means – tenses; word-building means – diminutive suffixes; Lexical: set expressions, idioms; Syntactical: constructions containing emphatic elements)

SDs - conscious and intentional intensification of some typical structural and /or semantic property of a language unit (neutral or expressive) promoted to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model.

13. Classification of eMs

EMs – are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in the language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance.

Galperin I.R.

1. Phonetic EMs (onomatopoeia, alliteration, rhyme, rhythm).

2. Lexical EMs (metaphor, irony, zeugma, pun, epithets, oxymoron, simile).

3. Syntactical EMs (inversion, parallel constructions, repetition, enumeration,).

Skrebnev's approach

demonstrates a combination of principles observed in Leech's system of paradigmatic and syntagmatic subdivision and the level-oriented approach on which Galperin's classification is founded.

At the same time it differs from both since Skrebnev managed to avoid mechanical superposition of one system onto another and created a new consistent method of the hierarchical arrangement of this material.

Skrebnev first subdivides stylistics into

1) paradigmatic stylistics (or stylistics of units) <- 1. Phonetics <- 2. Morphology <- 3. Lexicology <- 4. Syntax <- 5. Semasiology / he explores the levels of the language and regards all stylistically relevant phenomena according to this level principle in both paradigmatic and syntagmatic stylistics./

2) syntagmatic stylistics (or stylistics of sequences). - deals with the stylistic functions of linguistic units used in syntagmatic chains, in linear combinations, not separately but in connection with other units /assonance, rhyme/

Morochovsky A.N.

Thinks that stylistic device occurs at the morphological level or as a result of changes in the syntagmatic sequence of morphemes in the context of the word, or as a result of changes in the syntagmatic sequence of word forms in the context of the sentence.