Lexico-semantic and lexico-syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices

Lecture No 5. Stylistic Semasiology.

Stylistic semasiology deals with the additional meanings of a language unit that occur as a result of the substitution of its existing meaning (approved by long usage and fixed in dictionaries) by a new, occasional, individual one, prompted by the speaker’s subjective, original view and evaluation of things. This act of name-exchange or substitution is referred to as transference of meaning – for indeed the name of one object is transferred onto another proceeding from their similarity or closeness. Thus when we name the sun “volcano” or “pancake’ or “mandarin” all names – direct and transferred have at least one common semantic component:

Sun – volcano – pancake – all are hot

Sun – pancake – mandarin – all are round

Sun – mandarin – all are of bright colour

So it is natural that the similarity between real objects finds its reflection in the semantic structure of the words denoting them. The human ability to find associative connection between different things and phenomena is practically unrestricted:

(1) Their thick lips were walls (Sh. Anderson).

(2) His lips were bloodless. The iron teeth of confinement and privation had been slowly filling them down for twenty years (Ch. Dickens).

(3) The rosebuds of her lips (Th. Hardy).

(4) Які пишногубі троянди (Л. Костенко).

(5) Марю гріхом, очима, устами спілими... (А. Криштальський)

All the above-cited lines contain a number of diverse and original images all based on the common concept of human lips and multifold associations this concept evokes in the imagination of different authors.

Each type of intended substitution results in a stylistic device called also a trope. The term trope denotes words and word combinations that are used in figurative meaning and perform expressive function. Among the most frequent tropes are metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, play on words, irony, epithet, hyperbole, oxymoron, antonomasia, personification, simile, periphrasis, euphemism, allegory, etc.

Modern linguistics tends to regard tropes as a special system of stylistic devices based on the complex mechanisms of semantic “shifts”, combinations and transformations that generate new senses or new aspects of old meanings. Tropes are garments of verbal poetic images and mirror the peculiarities of human cognition and perception of the world. Tropes are mechanism to express practically unrestricted multitude of concepts by restricted number of language means. And each time a new expression is found it reflects the flexibility and variety of ways to create the image, to increase its communicative power and to impact the reader. For example, the metaphor “Life is a part of speech” (Y. Brodsky) embodies the concept of life as logos, wisdom, basis of human existence by the analogy with the part of speech which is the basis and order of language existence.

Verbal poetic images represent a perculiar author’s worldview and are predetermined by dominating social and cultural paradigms of the epoch. For example, names of different plants which were traditionally used in modern Ukrainian and American poetic discourse as national symbols are characterized by new semantic transformations that actualize different connotations in their semantic structure:

Oak – a symbol of eternity, strength and youth in Ukrainian folklore and in Ukrainian literature up to the end of XIXth century – since the middle of XXth century has aсquired additional connotation “past”, “outlast” and embodied the image of suppressed, suffering nation:

(1) ... ніде немає літа від холоду, в ногах посиніли дуби (Л. Костенко).

(2) Лише дуб почорнілий погрубілі руки простер (В. Стус).

(3) Навіть горді дуби упокорено сплять (М. Руденко).

Sunflower and corn has become the images of rural landscapes; cherry-tree and olive – the images of life and freshness against the urbanistic background in XXth century American poetry.

From semasiological point of view tropes are stylistically marked secondary nominations with the complex semantic structure: expressive elements that occurred as a result of operations of association, similarity, comparison, contiguity, contrast are imposed on the denotative meaning. That is why since the time of ancient rhetorics tropes have been the object of heated discussion; their types, number and classification are still a rather controversial issue among the modern scholars. One of the most efficient and comprehensive classifications of them is the division of tropes into the figures of substitution and figures of combination.