Учебно-методический комплекс по учебной дисциплине «стилистика» для специальности «современные иностранные языки (перевод)»

 
LECTURE 2 
 
LEXICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES
Metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, allegory, irony, zeugma, pun, hyperbole,
litotes, epithet, oxymoron, antonomasia, personification, periphrasis.
 
 
Classification of Lexical Stylistic Devices 
There are 3 groups. 
1. The interaction of different types of lexical meaning. 

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a) dictionary and contextual (metaphor, metonymy, irony); 
b) primary and derivative (zeugma and pun); 
c) logical and emotive (epithet, oxymoron); 
d) logical and nominative (autonomasia); 
2. Intensification of a feature (simile, hyperbole, periphrasis). 
1. The interaction of different types of lexical meaning. 
a) Metaphor [
′metәfә, -fә:] 
is transference of names based on similarity between two 
objects, e.g. 
The trees are sentinels guarding the road
.
Metaphors can be classified 
semantically
, or according to their degree of 
unexpectedness. Genuine metaphors are unexpected, unpredictable, helping to visualize the 
picture. Their general stylistic function is not a mere nomination but its expressive 
characterization. Metaphor is one of the best image-creating devices favoured by poets and 
writers. Thus, Lawrens Ferlnghetti resorts to metaphors describing his “Big Fat Hairy 
Vision of Evil”: 
“Evil is sty in eye of universe
”; “
Evil is lush with horse teeth
”; “
Evil is love 
fried on the spit
”. 
Trite metaphors
are expressions that have been used so often that they have lost the 
impact they once had. But they have not lost their expressive force altogether, e.g.
 Her teeth 
are pearls; a flight of imagination; a burning question, a pillar of the state.
Trite metaphors are sometimes injected with new vigour by supplying a word or a 
phrase, quite unexpected in the given context. Such metaphors are called 
mixed
, e.g. 
The 
cold hand of death quenched her thirst for life
. The semantic links between two trite 
metaphors 
cold hand of death 
and 
thirst for life 
are disconnected by the word 
quench
– a 
hand can not quench the thirst. 
The structural types of metaphor
are: 
•
simple metaphor
which consists of a couple of words, creating a single image, e.g. 
the water is praying
; 
•
sustained metaphor
in which the central image is supplied with additional words 
bearing some reference to the main word. It can consist of a number of phrases or sentences. 
E.g. 
From now on we are just a couple of puppets. They’ll pull the string in London 
(A.J.Cronin). Sustained metaphor occurs whenever one metaphorical statement, creating an 
image (
puppets
) is followed by another containing a continuation or logical development of 
the previous metaphor (
They’ll pull the string in London
).