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The function of irony is to convey a negative meaning. Usually only positive concepts are used to convey a negative meaning.
Besides the relations of two meanings, irony may be based on the opposition between two style levels. Elements of poetic diction or elevated vocabulary acquire the stylistic function of irony when used in colloquial speech.
As we know, the emotive meaning of a word can be clearly understood if we introduce the notion of neutral meaning. It denotes the unemotional communication. Stylistic significance of emotional words and constructions are easily sensed when they are set against the non emotional words and constructions.
Usage of Interjections in Belles letters style. Usually these words express our feeling such as regret, despair, sorrow, woe, surprise, astonishment etc. in the previous parts we have spoken about interjections which were defined as expressive means of the language. Emotionally coloured features of interjections after conscious and intentional intensification of their structural and semantic properties move up to a generalized status and become a stylistic device.
Interjections may be divided into simple and derivative.
Simple interjections : Oh! Ah! Bah! Pooh! Gosh! Hush! Alas!
Derivative interjections: Heavens! Good gracious! Dear me! Good! By the lord! God knows! Bless me! Hum bug!
There are a number of adjectives and adverbs which may be classified as interjections in Belles letters style. Among them are the following: terrible, awful, great, wonderful, splendid. When they are used as interjections they are not used in their logical dictionary meanings as intensifiers.
Usage of epithets in Belles letters style. The epithet is a SD which is built on the interplay of two meanings of a word: emotive and logical. It denotes a permanent or temporary quality of a person, thing, idea, phenomenon and characterizes it from the point of view of subjective perception: gooseberry eyes, cat-like eyes, proud boxing gloves, iron hate, waiting silence, silver hair, roseberry blond hair. The degree of individual subjective evaluation is clearly seen if we compare these word combinations with the traditional logically founded word combinations: black, green, small, large eyes; light, heavy, good, black boxing gloves, great, long deep silence, black, white, long, grey, short hair.
A comparison of such word combinations as “iron gate” and “iron will” shows the difference between an epithet and a logical attribute. In the first case “iron” is a logical attribute denoting a special type of gates, whereas in “iron will” – iron serves as an epithet and denotes an “ unyielding will”. The same refers to “green meadow”, “green old age”, “ green thoughts”, “steel weapon” and “steel will” etc.
An epithet has always an emotional meaning or connotation. This meaning may be combined with denotational meaning or it may exist independently.
After the long usage epithets form fixed word combinations which are established in the language and enter the group of set expressions: true-love, merry mind, lady gay, sweet smile, heated discussion.
Individual epithets depend on the author’s style and his artistic purpose. Eg: He looked shy and embarrassed and a wild hope came to me (G.Green).
The studio was filled with the rich odor of roses… the heavy scent of the lilac, the delicate perfume of the thorn (I.Murdoch).
Semantic criterion gives us the right single out a feature which is essentially typical, inherent in the concept of the object they describe: the red sunset, the towering woods, dark clouds etc. unassociated epithets characterize the object through a feature which is not typical and alien for this object. Such association immediately brings surprising effect, attracts the reader’s attention. Eg.: elegant books, smiling year, dim roar, the wild moon. These adjectives indicate properties which are associated with other notions: elegant manners, smiling child, dim light (outline, memories etc).
Syntactically an epithet may either precede its head- word or it may follow it. Post-positive epithets may be expressed by a prepositional phrase: leaves of brownish gold. They carried a little feeling of holiday with them.
While speaking about epithets we must distinguish different structural types such as: simple, compound, string, phrase, sentence epithets and reversed epithets. Here are the illustrations: Simple epithets: a brainless animal, a sensible stroke .
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