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10 Lecture. Interaction of logical and emotive, logical and nominal meanings.(lexical expressive means and stylistic devices)
Plan:
1.Interaction of logical and emotive meanings (interjections, epithet, oxymoron)
Interaction of logical and nominal meanings (antonomasia)
a) Interaction of logical and emotive meanings
The emotive meaning or emotional colouring (contextual emotive meaning) of a word, as has already been pointed out elsewhere, plays considerable role stylistics. This is mainly due to the fact that no utterance can be understood clearly without its being evaluated from the point of view of the author’s attitude towards the things described. In fact the term neutral came to be used in order to distinguish the unemotional communication from the emotional or otherwise distinguishable non-neutral forms of communication. Both words and constructions of an emotional character have a stylistic significance only when they are set against the non-emotional. Thus, for instance, interjections, which are erroneously referred to as parts of speech are, in fact, signals of emotional tension. They must be regarded as expressive means of the language and as such may be effectively used as stylistic devices in the proper context.
Interjections and Exclamatory Words
Interjections are words we use when we express our feelings strongly and which may be said to exist in language as conventional symbols of human emotions. The role of interjections in creating emotive meanings has already been dealt with. It remains only to show how the logical and emotive meanings interact and to ascertain their general functions and spheres of application.
In traditional grammars the interjection is regarded as a part of speech, alongside other parts of speech, as the noun, adjective, verb, etc. But there is another view which regards the interjection not as a part of speech, but as a sentence. There is much to uphold this view. Indeed, a word taken separately is deprived of any intonation which will suggest a complete idea, that is, a pronouncement; whereas an interjection will always manifest a definite attitude on the part of the speaker towards the problem and therefore have intonation. The pauses between words are very brief, sometimes hardly perceptible, whereas the pause between the interjection and the words that follow it is so long, so significant, that it may be equaled to the pauses between sentences.
However a closer investigation into the nature and functions of the interjection proves doubt that the interjection is not a sentence; it is a word with strong emotive meaning. The pauses that frame interjections can be accounted for by the sudden transfer from the emotional to the logical or versa. Further, the definite intonation with which interjections are pronounced depends on the sense of the preceding or following sentence. Interjections have no sentence meaning if taken independently.
Let us take examples of the use of interjections:
Oh, where are you going to, all you Big Steamers? (Kipling)
The interjection ‘oh’, by itself may express various feelings, such as regret, despair, disappointment, sorrow, woe, surprise, astonishment, lamentation, entreaty and many others. Here it precedes a definite sentence and must be regarded as a part of it. It denotes the ardent tone of the question. The ‘Oh’ here may be regarded, to use the terminology of theory of information, as signal indicating emotional tension in the following utterance.
The same may be observed in the use of the interjection ‘oh’ in the following sentence from “A Christmas Carol” by Dickens:
The ‘Oh’ here is a signal indicating the strength of the emotions of the author which are further revealed in a number of devices, mostly syntactical, like elliptical sentences, tautological subjects, etc. The meaning of the interjection ‘Oh’ in the sentence can again be pinned down only from the semantic analysis of the sentence following it and then it become clear that the emotion to be understood is one of disgust or scorn.
So interjections, as it were, radiate the emotional element over the whole of the utterance, provided of course, that they precede it.
It is interesting to note in passing how often interjections are used by Shakespeare in his sonnets. Most of them serve as signals for the sestet which is the semantic or/and emotional counterpart to thee octave,
for example:
“O, carve not with thy hors …” (Sonnet 19)
“O, Let me, true in love, but …” (21)
“O, therefore, love be of thyself…” (22)
“O, let my books be,, then, the…” (23)
“O, then vouchsafe me…” (32)
“O, absence, what a torment…” (39)
“O, no! Thy love, though much…” (61)
“O, fearful meditation…” (65)
“O, if I say, you look…” (71)
“O, lest your true love…” (72)
“O, know, sweet love…” (76)
“Ah, do not, when my heart…” (96)
Interjections can be divided into primary and derivative. Primary interjections are generally devoid of any logical meaning. Derivative interjections may retain a modicum of logical meaning, though this is always suppressed by the volume of emotive meaning. Oh! Ah! Bah! Pooh! Gosh! Hush! Alas! Are primary interjections, though some of them once had logical meaning.‘Heavens!’ ‘good gracious!”, “dear me!’, ‘God!’, ‘Come on!’, ‘Look here!’, ‘dear!’ ‘by the Lord!’, ‘God knows!’, ‘Bless me!’, ‘Humbug!’ and many others of this king are not interjections as such; a better name of them would be exclamatory words generally used as interjections, i.e., their function is that of the interjection.
It must be noted here that some adjectives and adverbs can also take on the function of interjections – for example, such words as terrible!, awful!, great! wonderful! splendid! fine! and the like. With proper intonation and with an adequate pause such as follows an interjection, these interjections. In that case we may say that some adjectives and adverbs have acquired a grammatical meaning, that of the interjection.
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