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Classification of Epithets
From the point of view of their compositional structure epithets may be divided
into:
1) simple (adjectives, nouns, participles): e.g. He looked at them in animal panic.
2) compound: e.g. apple - faced man;
3) sentence and phrase epithets: e.g. It is his do - it - yourself attitude.
4) reversed epithets - composed of 2 nouns linked by an of phrase: e.g. «a shadow of a
smile»;
Sometimes three, four, five, and even more epithets are jo i n e d in chains. They are
called string e p i t h e t s [13]. 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 t r a n s f e r r e d e p i t h e t . Tran sferred
epithets are ordinary logical attributes generally describing the state o f human being
by referring to an inanimated objects. E.g.:
sick chamber, sleepless pillow, merry
hours.
As all the other stylistic devices, epithets gradually losing their emotive charge
become hackneyed. Epithets in such combination s as
bright smile, happy end, lucky
chance
can hardly be called original, they are fixed, or traditional. In folklore one can
find a vast quantity of fixed, language epithets as
golden hair, sweet smile, dark
forest, bright sun
etc.
Individual epithets depend on the author s style and his artistic purpose:
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“He looked shy and embarrassed and a wild hope came to me.”
Epithets should not be m i x e d up with logical attributes which have the same
syntactical function but which do not convey the subjective attitude o f the author
towards the described object. Thus the epithet is markedly subjective and evaluative.
The logical attribute is purely objective, non-evaluative. For example, in
green
meadows, white snow, round table, blue skies
and the like, the adjectives are more
logical attributes than epithets. They indicate those qualities of the objects which may
be regarded as generally recognized. But in
wild wind, heart-burning smile, steel will,
cat-like eyes, iron hate, silver hair
the adjectives do not point to inherent qualities o f
the objects described. They are subjectively evaluated.
Compare:
1. He unlocked the iron gate easily;
2. The iron hate pushed him on again.
Iron
in the first case does not depend upon the individual outlook of the author,
while in the second case
iron
qualities anger, i.e. the first example illustrates the
logical attribute and the second presents a genuine epithet. Epithets may be classified
from different standpoints: s e m a n t i c and s t r u c t u r a l. Semantically, epithets
may be divided into two groups: a s s o c i a t e d and u n a s s o c i at e d.
Semantically according to I. Galperin [13].
1) associated with the noun following it, pointing to a feature which is essential to the
objects they describe: dark forest; careful attention.
2) unassociated with the noun, epithets that add a feature which is unexpected and
which strikes the reader: smiling sun, voiceless sounds.
When the link between components is comparatively close, we say there is a
stable word combination. Combinations of this type appear as a result of the frequent
use of certain epithets:
bright face, sweet smile, un earthy beauty, pitch darkness,
deep feeling.
Language epithets have a tendency to become obsolescent. That is the
fate of man y emotional elements in the language. They gradually lose their emotive
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charge and are replaced by new ones which in their turn will be replaced by
neologisms.
Thus, the functions of epithets of this kind are to show the evaluating, subjective
attitude of the writer to wards the thing described. But for this purpose the author does
not create his own, new, unexpected epithets; he uses traditional, “language” epithets
as they belong to the language-as-a-system.
Thus epithets may be divided into l a n g u a g e epithets and s p e e c h epithets.
An example of speech epithet is:
sleepless bay.
Stylistic function of epithet is to give subjective evaluation o f thing and notions.
In most cases, as it was stated before, it is the writer ’s subjective attitude to what he
describes.
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