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Interaction of Logical and Emotive Meanings
Problems for discussion:
1.Interjections
2.The Epithet
3.Oxymoron
4.Antonamasia.
The emotive meaning or emotional colouring of a word plays considerable role in stylistics. The emotive meaning of a word can be clearly understood when we compare it with its neutral meaning. Stylistic significance of emotional words and constructions are easily sensed when they are set against the non-emotional words and constructions.
Interjections are words we use when we express ,our feelings strongly and which may be said to exist in the language as symbols of human emotions. They express such feelings as regret, despair, sorrow, woe, surprise, astonishment etc. They are defined as expressive means of the language. Emotionally coloured features of interjections become of stylistic device. They exist in language as conventional symbols of human emotions.
Interjection is not a sentence; it is a word with strong emotive meaning.
In traditional grammars the interjection is regarded as a part of speech as the noun, adjective, verb, etc. Interjection will always manifest a definite attitude of the speaker towards the problem and therefore have intonation. The intonation with which interjections are pronounced depends on the sense of the preceding or following sentence. E.g.:
"0h, where are you going, all you Big Steamers?" (Kipping)
Interjection "Oh" here precedes a sentence and must be regarded as a part of it.
Interjections can be divided .into primary and derivative. Primary interjections are generally devoid of any logical meaning. Derivative interjections may somewhat retain their logical meaning, though these meanings are always suppressed be emotive ones. Oh!, Ah!, Bah!, Pooh!, Gosh!, Hush!, Alas! are primary interjections, though some of them once had logical meaning.
Derivative interjections are Heavens!, Good gracious!, Dear me!, God!, Come on!, Look here!, By the Lord!, God knows!, Bless me! and others.
Epithet is a stylistic device based on the interplay of emotive and logical meanings in a word, phrase or even sentence. It shows the individual emotional attitude of the writer or the speaker towards the object mentioned. E.g.:
"She had a wide, cool, go-to-hell mouth."
Here a group of epithets helps the writer in a concise form to express the emotional attitude of a personage towards an object or phenomenon.
From the point of view compositional structure epithets may be divided into simple, compound and phrase-epithets.
Simple (one-word) epithets are ordinary adjectives: iron hate, silver hair.
Compound epithets are built like compound adjectives: heart-burning smile, cat-like eyes, fairy-like work.
Phrase-epithets are extremely characteristic of English language. Unlike simple and compound epithets, which may have pre- or post-position, phrase epithets are always placed before the nouns they refer to. They help not only to reveal the individual view of the author and his characters but at the same time to do it in a rather economical manner: a life-and-death struggle; all's-well-in-the-end adventures.
Very often such constructions serve to produce a humorous effect.
Another structural variety of the epithet is the one which we call reversed epithets. The reversed epithet is composed of two nouns linked in an of-phrase:
The shadow of a smile; a devil of a job. Rather often epithets are used in pairs:
"...they all stood safe and sound, hale and hearty upon the steps."
Sometimes three, four, five, and even more epithets are joined in chains. They are called string epithets. The structural type of string epithets is like enumeration. These attributes describe the object from different points of view:
It was an old, musty, fusty, narrow-minded, clean and bitter room.
Another distributional model is the transferred epithet. Transferred epithets are ordinary logical attributes generally describing the state of human being by referring to an animated objects. E.g.: sick chamber, sleepless pillow, merry hours.
The function of epithets of this kind remains basically the same: to show the evaluating, subjective attitude of the writer towards the thing described. But for this purpose the author does not create his own, new, unexpected epithets; he uses ones that have become traditional, and may be termed language epithets as they belong to the language-as-a-system. Thus epithets may be divided into language epithets and speech epithets. Examples of speech epithets are: slavish knees, sleepless bay.
The process of strengthening the connection between the epithet and the noun may sometimes go so far as to build a specific unit, which does not lose its poetic flavour. Such epithets are called fixed and are mostly used in ballads and folk songs. Here are some examples of fixed epithets: true love, dark forest, sweet Sir, green wood, good ship, brave cavaliers.
Structurally, epithets can be viewed from the angle of a) composition and b)distribution.
From the point of view of their compositional structure epithets may be divided into simple, compound, phrase and sentence epithets. Simple epithets are ordinary adjectives. Examples have been given above. Compound epithets are built like compound adjectives. Examples are:
‘heart-burning sigh, sylph-like figures, cloud-shapen giant,
curly-headed good-for-nothing,
And mischief-making monkey from his birth. (Byron)
The problem of the epithet is too large and too significant to be fully dealt with in a short chapter. Indeed, it may be regarded as the crucial problem in emotive language and epithets, correspondingly, among the stylistic devices of the language.
It remains only to say that the epithet is a direct and straightforward way of showing the authors attitude towards the things described, where as other stylistic devices, even image-bearing ones, will reveal the authors evaluation of the object only indirectly. That is probably why those authors who wish to show a seeming impartiality and objectivity in depicting their heroes and describing events use few epithets. Realistic authors use epithets much more sparingly, as statistical data have shown.
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