Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices
Structural syntactical stylistic devicesare in special relations with the intonation involved.
Only after dinner did I make up my mind to go there.
I made up my mind to go there only after dinner.
It was in 1958 that the first Tchaikovsky contest was held in Moscow.
The first Tchaikovsky contest was held in1958 in Moscow.
The English affirmative sentence is regarded as neutral if it maintains the regular word order, i.e., Subject – Verb (Predicate) – Object. Any other order of the parts of the sentence may also carry the necessary information, but the impact on the reader will be different.
Stylistic inversionmakes prominent this or that member of the sentence and through it renders some emotional colouring to the whole sentence. Stylistic inversion should not be regarded as a violation of the language, but it realizes the potentialities of the language.
The following patterns of stylistic inversion are most frequently met in both English prose and English poetry. Specific intonation pattern is the inevitable satellite of inversion.
1. The object is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
“Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not.” (Ch.Dickens)
2. Postposition of the attribute.
“With fingers weary and worn…” (Thomas Hood)
“Once upon the midnight dreary…” (E.A.Poe)
3. a) The predicative is placed before the subject.
“A good generous prayer it was.” (Mark Twain)
b)The predicative stands before the link verb and both are placed before the subject .
“Rude am I in my speech…” (W.Shakespeare)
4. The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
“Eagerly I wished the morrow.” (E.A.Poe)
“My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall.” (Dryden)
5. Both modifier and predicate stand before the subject.
“In went Mr. Pickwick.” (Ch.Dickens)
“Down dropped the breeze…” (Coleridge)
Detached constructionis one of the secondary parts of the sentence placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to. The detached part, being torn away from its referent, assumes a greater degree of significance and is given prominence by intonation.
(Attribute) “She stood there, white with horror.”
“Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and unsteady in his gait.” (Thackerey)
(Adverbial modifier) “He entered the room, his hands in his pockets.
“How do you like the Army?” Mrs. Silburn asked. Abruptly , conversationally. (J.D.Salinger)
(Prepositional object) “It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an old house.” (J.Galsworthy)
(Apposition) “They put him under laughing gas, poor lad.”
A variant of detached construction is parenthesis.Parenthesis is a qualifying or explanatory word, phrase, clause, sentence, or other sequence which interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it, having often characteristic intonation and indicated in writing by commas, brackets or dashes.
“The main entrance (he had never ventured beyond) was a combination of glass and iron.”
“Bossiney’s aunt (Louisa was her name) was in her kitchen when June was announced.” (J.Galsworthy)
“That bit of gold meant food, life and power to go on writing and – who was to say? – may be to write something that would bring him many pieces of gold.”
Parallelism (Parallel construction) is based upon a recurrence of syntactically identical sequences which lexically are completely or partially different.
Partial parallelism
“It is the mob that labour in your fields and serve in your houses – that man your navy and recruit your army, - that have enabled you to defy all the world, and can also defy you when neglect and calamity have driven them to despair.” (Byron)
Complete parallelism (Balance)
“The seed ye sow – another reaps,
The robes ye weave – another wears,
The arms ye forge – another bears.” (P.B.Shelley)
Chiasmusis based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern, but it has a cross order of words and phrases. It is a combination of inversion and balance.
“He rose and down sat she.”
“Down dropped the breeze,
The sails dropped down.” (Coleridge)
Chiasmus may also be achieved by change from active into passive voice or vice versa.
“The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker and chief mourner. Scrooge signed it. (Ch.Dickens)
Repetition is based upon a repeated occurrence of one and the same word or word-group. Its main stylistic function is to point out certain parts of the utterance and to pay attention of the reader or listener to the key words of the utterance.
“I would not mind him if he wasn’t so conceited and didn’t bore me, bore me, and bore me.” (E.Hemingway)
Repetition is classified according to compositional design.
Anaphora – repetition of the first word or word-group in several successive sentences, clauses or phrases.
“I love your hills, and I love your dales. And I love your flocks a-bleating.” (J.Keats)
“Supposing his head had been held under water for a while. Supposing the first blow had been truer. Supposing he had been shot. Supposing he had been strangled.
Supposing this way, that way. Supposing anything but getting unchained from the one idea for that was inexorably impossible.” (Ch.Dickens)
Epiphora–a repetition of the final word or word-group.
“He ate meat with them, drank wine with them; automobiled with them, and studied them.”
“I wake up and I’m alone, and I walk round Warley and I’m alone, and I talk with people and I’m alone…” (J.Brain)
Framing (Ring repetition) – repetition of the same unit at the beginning and at the end of the same sentence or paragraph.
“He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn’t want to kill or be killed, so he ran away from the battle.” (E.Hemingway)
Anadiplosis (Catch repetition, linking) – the last word or phrase of one part of an utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together.
“Three fishers went sailing out into the west,
Out into the west as sun went down.”
“…all was old and yellow with decay. And decay was the smell and being of that room.” (B.Davidson)
Chain repetition – the linking device is used several times in one utterance.
“A smile would come into Mr. Pickwick’s face: the smile extended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and thy roar became general.” (Ch.Dickens)
“Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages to the smells and stagnation of B.Inn Alley.” (D.du Maurier)
Synonym repetition – repetition of the same idea by using synonymous words and phrases which by adding a slightly different nuance of meaning intensify the impact of the utterance.
“lord and master”; “act and deed”; “pure and simple.”
“The treaty was pronounced null and void.”
“To fulfill and execute alliances and treaty obligations.”
Contextual synonyms
“…are there not capital punishments sufficient in your statutes?
Is there not blood enough upon your penal code?” (Byron)
“The poetry of earth is never dead…
The poetry of earth is ceasing never…” (Keats)
Tautology – the repetition of the same word in different grammar forms, the repetition of the same word or phrase or of the same idea or statement in other words.
“And all the night long he dreamed a pleasant dream of how he’ll marry a princess.”
“audible to the ear”; “visible to the eye”; “all unanimously agreed”.
Pleonasm – the use of more words than necessary to express the meaning; redundancy of expression.
“It was a clear starry night and not a cloud was to be seen.”
He was the only survivor, no one else was saved but him.”
Both pleonasm and tautology may be acceptable in oratory inasmuch they help the audience to grasp the meaning of the utterance.
“I’ll tell you, Governor, if you only let me get a word in. I’m willing to tell you, I’m wanting to tell you, I’m waiting to tell you.” (B.Shaw)
Polysyndeton is an insistent repetition of a connective between words, phrases or clauses in an utterance. It produces a certain rhythmical effect; it makes each word or sentence separated by the connective more isolated and independent, more prominent.
“The heaviest rain, and snow, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect.” (Ch.Dickens)
“They were all three from Milan and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished with the machines, sometimes we walked back together to the Café Cova.” (E.Hemingway)
Asyndeton, on the contrary is a deliberate avoidance of the connective where it is expected to be according to the norms of the literary language. It makes the narration laconic and energetic.
“He never tired of their (pictures) presence; they represented a substantial saving in death-duties.” (G.Green) /for, because/
“Soams turned away; he had an utter disinclination for talk, like one standing before an open grave, watching a coffin slowly lowered.” (J.Galsworthy) /for/ (Semicolon, being an indication of a longish pause, breaks the utterance into two parts.)
“Bicket did not answer his throat felt too dry.” (Galsworthy) (The absence of the conjunction and a punctuation mark may be regarded as a deliberate introduction of the norms of colloquial speech into the literary language. It makes the utterance sound like one syntactical unit to be pronounced in one breath group.)
Not all cases of asyndeton are used as expressive means of the language. Thus the omission of the conjunction “that” introducing the objective and the attributive clauses is widely used and has lost its stylistic colouring.
“He said he had seen it before.”
“The man we met yesterday rang her up”
Enumeration is a stylistic device by means of which homogeneous parts of an utterance are made heterogeneous from the semantic point of view.
“Famine, despair, cold, thirst and heat had done
Their work on them by turns, and thinn’d them too…” (G.G.Byron) (There is nothing specially to arrest the reader’s attention; each word is closely associated semantically with the following and preceding words in the enumeration.)
“Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and his sole mourner.”(Ch.Dickens) (The enumeration here is heterogeneous; the legal terms placed in a string with such words as ‘friend’ and ’mourner’ result in a kind of clash.) “…he could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages, water-sellers, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming gray-brown mountains of a fascinating land.” (Galsworthy) (Heterogeneous enumeration is used to depict scenery through a tourist’s eyes.)
Suspense (retardation) is a deliberate delay in the completion of the expressed thought. What has been delayed is the loading task of the utterance. Suspense is achieved by a repeated occurrence of phrases or clauses expressing condition, supposition, time, and the like, all of which hold back the conclusion of the utterance. Suspense always requires long stretches of speech or writing. Due to its partly psychological nature (it arouses a feeling of expectation), suspense is framed in one sentence, for there must not be any break in the intonation pattern. The device is favoured by the orators.
“Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. was obliging enough to read and explain me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw.” (Ch.Lamb)
“If you can keep your head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
And make allowance for their doubting too,
……………………………………………
If you can dream and not make dreams your master,
If you can think and not make thoughts your aim, …………………………………………………..
Your’s is the earth and everything that’s in it,…
And which is more, you’ll be a Man, my son.” (R.Kipling “If”)
Climax (Gradation)isan arrangement of sentences (or of the homogeneous parts of one sentence) which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance.
Emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning.
“It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a veritable gem of a city.”
“I was well inclined to him before I saw him. I liked him. I liked him when I did see him; I admire him now.” (Ch.Bronte)
“I’m a bad man, a wicked man, but she is worse. She is really bad. She is bad, she is badness. She is Evil. She not only is evil, but she is Evil.” (J.O’Hara)
Logical climax is based on the relative importance of the component parts looked at from the point of view of the concepts embodied in them.
“A storm is coming up. A hurricane. A deluge.” (Th.Wilder)
Quantitative climax is an increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts.
“They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens.”(S.Maugham)
“Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed question.” (Ch.Dickens)
Sometimes lexical units cannot be considered as more emotional or less emotional, more important, or less important, but as soon as they are arranged in a certain sequence they acquire a graded quality. A lexical unit may seem to be emotionally stronger by the mere fact that it is placed last in the sequence of syntactically identical units.
“He lived – he breathed – he moved – he felt.” (G.G.Byron)
Anticlimax {Bathos) is the reverse of climax. It is a device (not linguistic but literary) in which emotion or logical importance accumulates only to be unexpectedly broken and brought down. The sudden reversal usually brings forth a humorous or ironic effect due to the sudden drop from the serious to the ridiculous.
“Women have wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything – except theobvious.” (O.Wilde)
“…they …were absolutely quiet; eating no apples, cutting no names, inflicting no pinches, and making no grimaces, for full two minutes afterwards.” (Ch.Dickens)
Antithesisis a phrase, a sentence or a group of such in which a thing (or a concept) is contrasted to its opposite.
Logical opposition is based on contrasting pairs of words, antonyms.
“A saint abroad, and a devil at home.”(Bunyan)
“Better to reign in hell than serve in heaven.” (Milton)
Stylistic opposition is based on relative opposition which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs.
Antithesis is generally moulded in parallel construction. /Asyndeton; conjunctions “and”, “but”/
“Youth is lovely, age is lonely,
Youth is fiery, age is frosty;” (Longfellow)
(1) Antithesis is used to characterize one object, to show its complicated and controversial nature.
“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we are all going direct the other way…” (Ch.Dickens)
(2) It is also used to give different characteristics to two different objects to show their dissimilarity.
“His fees were high, his lessons were light.” (O.Henry)
Ellipsis is an intentional omission from an utterance of one or both main members of the sentence (subject or predicate). An elliptical sentence in direct intercourse is not a stylistic device. It is simply a norm of the spoken language. Ellipsis makes the narration more careless, or laconic, or energetic. In the speech of literary characters ellipsis makes the dialogue more natural.
“Very windy, isn’t it?” said Strachan, when the silence had lasted some time.
“Very,” said Wimsey.
“But it’s not raining,” pursued Strachan.
“Not yet,” said Wimsey.
“Better than yesterday,” said Strachan.
“Tons better…” (D.Sayers)
Due to ellipsis author’s narration is made more concise and emotional. It changes its tempo.
“Fast asleep – no passion in the face, no avarice, no anxiety, no wild desire; all gentle, tranquil, and at peace.” (Ch.Dickens)
Aposiopesis, a sudden intentional break in the narration or dialogue, is a figure of speech based upon aesthetic principle of incomplete representation. What is not finished is implied: the sense of the unexpressed is driven inside and the reader is expected to find it for himself, the context being his guide. As a stylistic device it is used to indicate strong emotions paralyzing the character’s speech or his deliberate stop in the utterance to conceal its meaning. Aposiopesis is often used in complex sentences, in particular, in conditional sentences, the if-clauses being given in full and the second part only implied. It has a strong degree of predictability. The graphic indication of an aposiopesis is, as a rule, a dash or dots. The context and adequate intonation make the communicative significance of the utterance clear.
“‘I hope – ‘ began the stewardess. Then she turned round and looked a long mournful look at Grandma’s blackness and at Fenella’s black coat and skirt, black blouse, and hat with a crape rose.” (K.Mansfield)
“My God! If the police comes…”
“If you go on to live like that, in six months’ time …”
“Good intentions but…”
Represented speechis that form of utterance which conveys the actual words of the speaker through the mouth of the writer but retains the peculiarities of the speaker’s mode of expression. Represented speech exists in two varieties.
Utteredrepresented speech demands that the tense should be switched from present to past and that the personal pronouns should be changed from 1st and 2nd person to 3rd person as in indirect speech, but the syntactical structure of the utterance does not change.
“A maid came in now with a blue gown very thick and soft. Could she do anything for Miss Freelan? No, thanks, she could not; only, did she know where Mr.Freelan’s room was?”
Unuttered (Inner) represented speech expresses feelings and thoughts of the character which were not materialized in spoken or written language. It abounds in exclamatory words and phrases, elliptical constrictions, breaks and other means of conveying the feelings and psychological state of the character. Unuttered represented speech follows the same morphological pattern as uttered represented speech, but the syntactical pattern shows variations. The tense forms are shifted to the past; the 3rd person personal pronouns replace the first and second. The interrogative word order is maintained as in direct speech. The fragmentary character of the utterance manifests itself in unfinished sentences, exclamations and one-member sentences. It is usually introduced by verbs of mental perception (think, understand, feel, occur, wonder, ask, tell oneself, understand, etc.) Very frequently inner represented speech thrusts itself into narrative of the author without any introductory words and the shift from the author’s speech to inner represented speech is more or less imperseptrible.
“Over and over he was asking himself: would she receive him? would she recognize him? what should he say to her?”
“Then, too, in old Jolyon’s mind was always the secret ache that the son of James - of James, whom he had always thought such a poor thing, should be pursuing the paths of success, while his own son - !” (J.Galsworthy)
The essence ofrhetorical questionconsists in reshaping the grammatical meaning of the interrogative sentence. The question is no longer a question but a statement expressed in the form of interrogative sentence. There is an interplay of two structural meanings: 1) that of the question and 2) that of the statement. Rhetorical questions may be looked upon as a transference of grammatical meaning. There is always an additional shade of emotive meaning and modality implied in negative-interrogative sentences (doubt, assertion, suggestion). Rhetorical question presupposes the possible (though not demanded) answer: the positive form of the rhetorical question predicts the negative answer, the negative form – the positive answer.
“Gentleness in passion! What could have been more seductive to the scared, starved heart of that girl?” (J.Conrad)
“What courage can withstand the ever during and all besetting terrors of a woman’s tongue?” (W.Irwing)
“Is there not blood enough upon your penal code, that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you?” (G.G.Byron)
Litotes, a specific form of understatement, consists in the use of a negative for the contrary. The negation plus noun or adjective serves to establish a positive feature in a person or thing. Litotes presupposes double negation; one - through the negative particle no or not; the other – through a) word with a negative affix (‘not hopeless’); b) a word with a negative or derogative meaning (‘not a coward’); c) a negative construction (‘not without love’); d) an adjective or adverb preceded by too (‘not too awful’). The stylistic function of all these types is to convey the doubts of the speaker concerning the exact characteristic of the object in question.
“He had not been unhappy all day.” (E.Hemingway)
“Mr.Badrell was a man of honour – Mr. Badrell was a man of his word – Mr. Badrell was no deceiver…” (Ch.Dickens)
Graphic expressive means
Graphic expressive means serve to convey in writing the emotions that are expressed in oral speech by intonation and stress.
Punctuation
The use of punctuation marks (colon, semicolon, comma, dash, suspension marks /dots/, exclamation mark, question mark, brackets, inverted commas) gives the text additional emotional colouring.
Question mark and exclamation mark have very special meaning. They denote ironic attitude of the speaker to the idea expressed or to show his irritation and indignation.
“Father! Please – not that!”
“Well! And you think it doesn’t matter?”
Emotional pauses are marked by a dash or suspension marks. They show the uncertainty, embarrassment, nervousness of the character. They may also be used together with a time-filler (er, ugh, well, so).
“Who is he? – Oh, he’s a…kind of acquaintance, that is to say, you understand…”
“You come here after dark, and you go after dark. It’s so – so ignoble.” (G.Green)
The inverted commas usually indicate the direct speech or the quotation. They may also indicate the represented speech. Sometimes they are used when a word is used in an unusual meaning.