Stylistic semasiology

Anti-climax (bathos). By anti-climax, any deviation of the or­der of ideas found in climax is usually meant. But it should be un­derlined that anti-climax consists in weakening the emotional effect by adding unexpectedly weaker elements to the strong ones which were mentioned above. Usually anti-climax is employed for hu-mouristic purposes. E. g.:
«The woman who could face the very devil himself nr a mouse — loses her grip and goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightnings (Twain).
Figures of Contrast
These figures are formed by intentional combination in speech of ideas, incompatible with one another. The figures in question are antithesis and oxymoron.
Antithesis is a confrontation of two notions which underlines the radical difference between them.
Two words or expressions of the opposite meanings may be used to characterize the same object. E. g.:
«It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of ffoolishness...» (Dickens).
Antithesis may be used to depict two objects with opposite characteristics. E. g.:
«His fees were high; his lessons were light...» (O'Henry).
Two objects may be opposed as incompatible by themselves and each of them obtain a characteristic opposite to that of the other. E. g.:
«For the old struggle — mere stagnation, and in place of dan­ger and death, the dull monotony of security and the horror of an unending decay!» (Leacock).
It is a lexico-syntactical SD. Two parallel sentences expressing opposite ideas are combined in a syntactical whole/Words set one against another acquire contextual meanings which make them antonymical:
e.g. They speak like saints and act like devils.
"Some people have much to live on and little to live for" {O. Wilde).
Here we observe the contextual opposition of postpositions "on" and "for".
The main function of antithesis is to stress the dialectical unity of two op­posing features.