Lecture #1 General notes on style and stylistics: Style and stylistics. Stylistics and its tasks

Logical meaning is the precise naming of a feature of the idea, phenomenon or object, the name by which we recognize the whole of the concept. This meaning is also synonymously called referential meaning or direct meaning. We shall use the terms logical and referen­tial as being most adequate for our purpose.
Referential meanings are liable to change. As a result the referen­tial meanings of one word may denote different concepts. It is there­fore necessary to distinguish between primary and secondary referen­tial, or logical, meaning.
Thus the adverb inwardly has the primary logical meaning of in­ternally or within. Its secondary logical meanings are: towards the centre, mentally, secretly, which are to some extent derived from the primary meaning. ? Some dictionaries give a very extended list of primагу and secondary logical meanings and it is essential for stylistic purposes to distinguish them, as some stylistic devices are built on the interplay of primary and secondary logical meanings.
All the meanings fixed by authoritative English and American, dictionaries comprise what is called the semantic struc­ture of the w о г d. The meanings that are to be found in speech or writing and which are accidental should not be regarded as compon­ents of the semantic structure of the word. They may be transitory, inasmuch as they depend on the context. They are generally called con­textual meanings.
Let us compare the meanings of the word presence in the following two sentences.
"The governor said that he would not allow the presence of federal troops on the soil of his State."
"...the General has been faced with a problem as old as France's presence, in Algeria, the stubborn resistance of offi­cers and officials..."
In the first sentence the word 'presence merely means '...the state of being present', whereas in the second sentence the meaning of the word expands into '...occupation', i. e. the seizure and control of an area, especially foreign territory, by military forces.
The first meaning is the dictionary meaning of the word. The sec­ond meaning is a contextual one. It lives only in the given text and disappears if the context is altered. However there are definite reasons to assume that a number of derivative meanings are given place in dictionaries on the basis of contextual meanings. When the two mean­ings clearly co-exist in the utterance, we say there is an interaction of dictionary and contextual meanings. When only one meaning is perceived by the reader, we are sure to find this meaning in dictionaries as a derivative one.
Sometimes it is difficult to decide whether there is a simultaneous materialization of two dictionary logical meanings or an interplay of a dictionary and a contextual meaning. The difficulty is caused, on the one hand, by insufficient objective criteria of what should be fixed in dictionaries as already established language facts, and on the other hand, by deliberate political, aesthetic, moral and other considera­tions on the part of the compilers of the dictionaries.
Thus in Byron's use of the word 'arise' in the line "Awake ye sons of Spain, awake, arise" the word 'arise has the long-established mean­ing of 'revolt'. It is not contextual any longer. But no. English or American dictionary fixes this particular meaning in the semantic structure of the word 'arise' and it is left to the ability of the atten­tive reader to supply the obvious meaning to the word.
The same can be said about the word 'appeasement'. There is an implicit difference in the treatment of the semantic structure of this word in British and American dictionaries. In no British dictionary will you find the new derivative meaning, viz. 'a sacrifice of moral principle in order to avert aggression'. Some modern American dic­tionaries include this meaning in the semantic structure of the word 'appeasement'. The reason for the difference is apparent —the British prime minister Chamberlain in 1938 played an ignoble role in Munich, sacrificing Czechoslovakia to Hitler's greed. The new meaning that was attached to the word (in connection with this historical event) cannot now be removed from its semantic structure.
A dictionary meaning is materialized in the context; a contextual meaning is born in the context. However, dictionaries, though the only reliable sources of information regarding the meanings of a given word, apply very diverse and even contradictory principles in ascertaining the general acceptability and recognition of some of the shades of mean­ing which are in process of being shaped as independent meanings. Thus, to excuse oneself in the meaning of 'to leave', as in 'Soames ex­cused himself directly after dinner' (Galsworthy); or the meaning of a thought = 'a little' as in 'A thought more fashionably than usual' (Galsworthy) are fixed as separate meanings in some modern British and American dictionaries, but are neglected in others.
Every word possesses an enormous potentiality for generating new meanings. This power is often underestimated by scholars who regard a word as a unit complete in itself and acknowledge a new-born mean­ing only when it has firmly asserted itself in language and become accepted by the majority of the language community. But not to see the latent possibilities of a word is not to understand the true nature of this unit of language.
The potentiality of words can also be noted in regard to emotive me a n i n g. Emotive meaning also materializes a concept in the word, but unlike logical meaning, emotive meaning has reference not direct­ly to things or phenomena of objective reality, but to the feelings and emotions of the speaker towards these things or to his emotions as such. Therefore the emotive meaning bears reference to things, phen­omena or ideas through a kind of evaluation of them. For example:
I feel so darned lonely. (Graham Green, "The Quiet Ameri­can".)
He classified him as a man of monstrous selfishness; he did not want to see that knife descend, but he felt it for one great fleeting instant. (London)
The italicized words have no logical meaning, only emotive mean­ing. Their function is to reveal the subjective, evaluating attitude of the writer to the things or events spoken of. Men-of-letters themselves are well aware that words may reveal a subjective evaluation and sometimes use it for definite stylistic effects, thus, calling the attention of the reader to the meaning of such words. Thus, for example, in the following passage from "The Man of Property" by Galsworthy:
"She was not a flirt, not even a coquette — words dear to the heart of his generation, which loved to define things by a good, broad, inadequate word — but she was dangerous."
Here the words 'flirt' and 'coquette' retain some of their logical meaning. They mean a person (particularly a girl) who endeavours to attract the opposite sex, who toys with her admirers. But both words have acquired an additional significance, viz. a derogatory shade of meaning. This shade may grow into an independent meaning and in this case will be fixed in dictionaries as having a special, emotive meaning, as, for example, have the words fabulous, terrifying, stunn­ing, spectacular, swell, top, smart, cute, massive and the like.
Many words acquire an emotive meaning only in a definite context. In that case we say that the word has a contextual emotive meaning.
Stephen Ullmann holds that "Only the context can show whether a word should be taken as a purely objective expression, or whether it is primarily de­signed to convey and arouse emotions. This is obvious in the case of words like liberty, and justice, which are frequently charged with emotional implications. But even colourless everyday terms may, in freak contexts, acquire unexpected emotional overtones, as for instance 'wall' in this passage from a Midsum­mer Night's Dream:
'And thou, О wall, О sweet, О lovely wall, ...Thanks, courteous wall... О wicked wall.
Ullmann's point of view is only partly true. There are, of course, words which as we have pointed out may acquire emotive meaning in a context. Ordinarily though, and particularly when taken as isolated lexical units, they can hardly be said to possess emotive meaning. But Ullmann's opinion that only the context can inject emotional meaning into words, contradicts the facts. In the vocabulary of almost any European language there are words which are undoubtedly bearers of emotive meaning. These are interjections, oaths or swear-words, exclamatory words (variants of interjections) and a great number of qualitative or intensifying adjectives some of which have already been mentioned. The emotive meaning of some of these classes of words is so strong that it suppresses the co-existing logical meaning, as for ex­ample in stunning and smart. It is significant that these words are ex­plained in dictionaries by means of synonymous words charged with strong emotional implications, i. e. words that direct the mind not to objective things, ideas or phenomena but to the feelings. Thus the word smart is explained in "The Penguin English Dictionary" thus: stinging, pungent, keen; vigorous, brisk; clever, intelligent; imperti­nent; shrewd; witty; spruce, neat, gay, fashionable!"¹
Other classes of words with emotive meaning have entirely lost their logical meaning and function in the language as interjections. Such words as alas, oh, ah, pooh, darn, gosh and the like have practi­cally no logical meaning at all; words like the devil, Christ, God, good­ness gracious, etc., are frequently used only in their emotive meaning. The same can be said about the words bloody, damn and other exple­tives.
Contrary to Stephen Ullmann, we think that emotional meaning is inherent in a definite group of words and adherent to many words denoting emotions and feelings even when taken out of the context.
Ullmann's example of the word wall as bearing strong emotional meaning does not stand scrutiny. He overlooks the real, bearers of emotional meaning, viz. the words preceding or following it: 0, sweet, lovely (these three words are repeated several times), courteous, wicked. It goes without saying that these words strongly colour² the word wall, but no emotional meaning as a counterpart of logical meaning can be observed here.
Emotive meaning of words plays an important role in stylistics. Therefore it should never be underrated. A very keen eye or ear will always distinguish elements of emotive meaning. Emotional colouring may be regarded as a rudimentary stage of emotive meaning, which is generally fixed as an independent meaning in good dictionaries. Anyth­ing recognizable as having a strong impact on our senses may be con­sidered as having emotive meaning, either dictionary or contextual.
3.And finally we come to nominal meaning. There are words which, while expressing concepts, indicate a particular object out of a class. In other words these units of the language serve the purpose of singling out one definite and singular object out of a whole class of similar objects. These words are classified in grammars as prop­er nouns. The nature of these words can be understood if we have a clear idea of the difference between the two main aspects of a word: "nomination" and "signification". These aspects are also called "ref­erence" and "signification" or "denotation" and "connotation". The difference can roughly be illustrated by the following example.
Let us take the word table. The first thing that appears in our mind is the general notion deprived of any concrete features or properties. This is the signification. But by the word table we may also denote a definite table. In this case we use a definite article and the meaning becomes nominating. But we may also fix a definite name to the object which we want to be recognized as a unique object because of its pe­culiar properties. In this way proper names appear. Their function is not to single out one of the objects of the class for one particular oc­casion, as in the case with the use of the definite article, but to make it the bearer of the properties which our mind has attached to it. Thus nominal meaning is a derivative logical meaning. To distinguish nominal meaning from logical meaning the former is designated by a capital letter. Such words as Smith, Longfellow, Everest, Black Sea, Thames, Byron are said to have nominal meaning. The logical meaning from which they originate may in the course of time be forgotten and therefore not easily traced back. Most proper names have nominal meanings which may be regarded as homonyms of common nouns with their logical or emotional meanings, as Hope, Browning, Taylor, Scotland, Black, Chandler, Chester (from the Latin word castra — 'camp'). Hence logical meanings which nominate an object, at the same time signify the whole class of these objects. Nominal meanings which nominate an object are deprived of the latter function because they do not represent a class. It must be remembered however that the nominal meaning will always be secondary to the logical meaning. The process of development of meaning may go still further. A nom­inal meaning may assume a logical meaning due to certain external circumstances. The result is that a logical meaning takes its origin in a nominal meaning. Some feature of a person which has made him _or her noticeable and which is recognized by the community is made the basis for the new logical meaning. Thus dunce — ('a dullard, a stupid person') is derived from the personal name — Duns Scotus, a medieval scholastic; hooligan — ('a ruffian') is probably derived from the name of a rowdy family, cf. the Irish name Houligan, in a comic song popular about 1885; boycott ('refuse to do business with,' 'combine together against a person by breaking off all relations with him'). The verb boycott was first used in 1880 to describe the action of the Land League towards Captain Boycott, an Irish landlord. The nominal meanings of these words have now faded away and we perceive only one, the logi­cal meaning. But sometimes the process of attaching nominal meaning to a word with a logical meaning takes place, as it were, before our eyes. This is done for purely stylistic purposes and is regarded as a special stylistic device ..