Syntax studies types of relations between the units and the reference and syntactical stylistic devices deal with the syntactical arrangement of the utterance which give some emotional colouring and creates logical emphasis
The main stylistic devices
-inversion
-repetition
-parallel construction
-antithesis
Inversion -we must differentiate between grammatical and stylistic inversion.
In grammatical inversion the word order may be changed due to the structure of the utterance. It is inevitable and obligatory. Never before, had I seen such a sight – gram inversion.
In stylistic inversion the author chooses the type of the utterance.
There are several typical patterns / types of change of the word order.
1. object + subject + predicate (“ talent Mr. Micauwber has, capital Mr. Micauwber has not” by Dickens “the Oxen”) talent and capital – objects of our thought – ðåìà, logically stressed. + parallel construction, inversion, antithesis. Pivotal line.
2. noun + attribute (“the raven” once upon a midnight dreary)
3. predicate/ predicative + subject He must forget it – the past was done with. Forget it, he must. Rude am I in my speech. Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky.
4. adverbial modifier + subject + predicate At you feet I fall (Øåêñïèð)
5. postpositive + subject t+ predicative (+ the verb + subject)
In went Mr. Pick / out they rushed – the action is dynamic and quick in character.
There was not a moment to be lost, away went Alice like the wind.
In an article – up goes unemployment, up goes prices, tumbles the labour vote. (ðåçêî ïîäñêî÷èëè öåíû… êàòàñòðîôè÷åñêè óïàë…)
Used in:
poetry,
articles,
newspapers,
emotive prose,
in speech (rarely),
in public speech.
Ellipsis “nothing so difficult as a beginning” – omitting the link verb.
Repetition (ðåòàðäàöèÿ)- a powerful syntactical stylistic device which adds logical emphasis to some units of the utterance: a morpheme, word, phrase or even sentence. It is a powerful rhetorical device traditionally used in public speeches. It is
It is used to draw the reader’s attention to the key word or phrase of the utterance. It is the same or a similar unit that is repeated throughout the utterance or even a longer stretch of the text.
e.g. It were better that he knew nothing, better for common sense, better for him, better for me.
It is a powerful rhetorical device traditionally used in public speeches. It is
(‘a government of the people, by the people, for the people’ – from Gettisburg address of Abraham Lincoln)
-- in poetry: My heart’s in the Highlands, my heart is not here,
My heart’s in the Highlands, a-chasing the deer…
(Robert Burns)
1. anaphora - the repeated unit is at the beginning of the successive parts. The changing information (rheme) is logically emphasized and the repeated unit is the background. “This leaflet is threatening. This leaflet is abusing. This leaflet is insulting. ” It serves to convince, by appealling not only to the minds but also to the feelings of the readers. The question arises whether the utterance could have been shortened which would have been in line with the demands of newspaper style. Let’s try to change it transforming the three sentences into one ------
This leaflet is threatening, abusing and insulting. The content of the utterance would be very much the same, but it would lose its expressive power.
2. epiphora - the repeated unit is in the end. “I wake up and I am alone, and I walk about the town and I am alone and talk to people and I am alone, whatever I do, I am alone”
3. chain repetition (reduplication) a……b, b……c, c……d. A smile would come to his face: the smile extended into a laugh, the laugh into the raw, and the raw became general.
4. framing (a compositional pattern)
living is the art of loving
loving is the art of caring
caring is the art of sharing
sharing is the art of living
6. synonymic repetition (replacing) – it rained and rained. They talked and talked. The book costs probably pounds and pounds.
Used in poetry, in spoken language (to intensify an idea).
Parallel construction – a syntactical stylistic device formed by the same syntactical pattern and this pattern is the basis for several sentences/parts of a sentence in close succession. First youborrow, then youbeg. This leaflet is threatening, this leaflet is abusing, this leaflet is insulting. – to influence readers' emotions.
The 1st example is called partial parallelism and the 2nd – complete parallelism (+ repetition – they often go together).
Be bald. Be beautiful. Be brown. – êðàñêà ä/ âîëîñ. It arouses readers' feelings.
(+ inversion – by Dickens) Out came the chase, in went the horses, on sprang the boys, in got the travelers.
The functions:
· structural function of parallelisms arouses feelings of readers and it's rhythm that intensifies emotions
· semantic (the load of information is similar) presupposes equal semantic significance of the component parts – none of the part is more important from the point of view of information.
It is used:
o in poetry (R.Burns – "Highlands" - rhysm)
o in prose
o publicist and newspapers (the leaflet)
o advertisements
Antithesis – àíòèòåçà – ðåçêîå ïðîòèâîïîñòàâëåíèå ïðîòèâîïîëîæíîñòåé – syntactically it's another case of parallelism, the difference being in the semantic opposition of the components in two similar structures. Youth is lovely, age is lonely. (age – ñòàðîñòü, youth & age – contrasted pair, lovely & lonely accept it)
Between two parts conjunction "but" is implicit, though it's not used, we can use transformation to put it in.
Antithesis must be distinguished from contrasting forms of the kind from top to bottom, up and down – we can't insert "but", though they have opposition – so they are based on opposition, not antithesis.
The basic functions of antithesis are
· copulative – ñîåäèíèòåëüíàÿ and comparative – ñðàâíèòåëüíàÿ.
· rhyme forming and rhythm – rhyme usually in proverbs.
Shakespeare
"A madrigal": youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold,
Youth is wild and age is tame.
Wild – wishing no control
And – the idea is contrasting and can be transferred into "but".
Talent Mr. … has…
Chiasmus – [kai zm s] – õèàçì. It's based on the repetition of a syntactical pattern but it has a cross order of words/phrases. Äâåðè çàêðûâàþòñÿ, çàêðûâàþòñÿ äâåðè. Coleridge: Down dropped the breeze, the sails dropped down.
The sudden change in the structure by its unexpectedness requires a slight pause before the 2nd part, drawing the readers'/listeners' attention to the particular utterance which the author thinks very important.
This device was very mush favoured by Byron: 'tis a pity though, in this sublime world, that
Pleasure's a sin, and sometimes sin's a pleasure.
The witty arrangement of words gives the utterance an epigrammatic character.
The stylistic functions of chiasmus have so far been little investigated, but:
· it's obvious that the 1st part of chiasmus is somewhat incomplete – it calls for continuation, which can be observed in the 2nd part. The 2nd part is more important – it bears more information, it's more emphatic.
· Like parallel construction chiasmus creates rhythm. There's some paradox, but sometimes it sounds humorous (chiasmus + pun) Soldiers face powder, girls powder faces. (powder - metonymy)
| The engineer minds the train and the teacher trains the mind. |
Sus'pense – ðåòàðäàöèÿ. It's a compositional device, which consists in arranging the information in such a way, that the less important parts of the utterance/poem/story are at the beginning while the main idea is withheld till the end of it. Thus the reader is kept in suspense, it always requires long stretches of speech and writing.
Also – a story "Good shot" – not about âûñòðåë, à ñíèìîê.
| In Kipling's "If" where all the 8 stanzas consist of if-clauses only the last 2 lines constitute the principal part of the sentence which conveys the main idea and shows that you can overcome everything. | If you can keep you head when all about you Are losing theirs and blaming it on you… …Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it… And which is more, you'll be a Man, my son. |
Climax – íàðàñòàíèå – an arrangement of sentences of homogeneous parts of one sentence which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance of emotional tension of the utterance. He watched her eagerly, bitterly, ecstatically as she walked lightly from him. – the last adj shows the most emotional part. It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a jem of a city (jew – äðàã.êàìåíü, city is repeated – epiphora; jem – inverted epithet).
· Hhere we can see a gradual increase in emotion evaluation à it's called emotional climax, it's often accompanied by parallelism/repetition.
· Qquantitative climax presupposes numerical increase. Maugham: They looked at hundreds of houses, they climbed thousands of stairs, they inspected innumerable kitchens.
The stylistic function is to show the relative importance as seen by the author or to depict the phenomena dynamically.
Litotes – ëèòîòà – it's a special stylistic device which is based on transference of structural meaning in which negation implies affirmation: It's not uncommon for Russian students nowadays to travel the world/abroad. à It's common….
The difference is – the speaker expresses the idea in a less categorical way than in the sentence "it's common…". The sense is – óìåíüøåíèå êàòåãîðè÷íîñòè. They're synonymous forms but with slight difference.
Litotes may have a variety of purposes:
o they may be regarded as deliberate understatements
o they may point to the author's restrained tone of writing
o they may render subtle irony She's not without talent.
There are several means of creating it:
1. nno/not + a word with a negative affix She's not totally hope less. not unnatural
2. nno/not + a word with a negative connotation He's no coward.
3. nnot without + noun/adj He's not without taste.
4. nnot + too/totally/altogether/ at all + adj It was not totally erroneous.
In cases of litotes much depends on intonation and the lexical meaning of the 2nd component.
This device is used in various functional styles including matter-of-fact styles.
Poly'syndeton – ïîëèñèíäåòîí/ìíîãîñîþçèå. The poem "If". It's a stylistic device of connecting sentences/phrases by using connectives – ñâÿçóþùèå ýëåìåíòû before each component part. Generally it's the same. It may be a conjunction, preposition… The connectives are as a rule conj-s and prepositions and, if, but, or, then…
It can also be an adverb or a phrase - the moment – can be transformed à into "when".
The functions:
· rrhythmical – the 1st word is stressed after the unstressed connective
· ddisintegrating – ðàçúåäèíÿþùàÿ – unlike enumeration which integrates the homogeneous members into one unity/whole, polysyndeton causes each member to stand out conspicuously. Enumeration shows things united, polysyndeton shows them isolated. (The LXVI-th (66) sonnet of Shakespeare).
Rhetorical question – in such questions the answer is inside the question: "À ñóäüè êòî?" In rhetorical questions we observe a statement in the form of a question. Thus 2 structural meanings interplay: that of a statement and that of a question.
The rhetorical question needs no answer as the answer is in the question itself. "Íó ñêîëüêî ìîæíî òåáÿ æäàòü? Ñêîëüêî ðàç òåáå ïîâòîðÿòü òåáå îäíî è òî æå?". The implication is very rich. The meaning is a statement but syntactically it's a question. "Who is here so vile that will not love his county? Can be transformed into à There's no one here who will not love his country. If we compare the two possibilities we will see that the first one is more emotional and expressive. Besides, it is enriched by a modal shade of meaning. In this case it is conveys the speaker’s confidence (I’m sure) and a touch of challenge that has a powerful impact on the reader or listener. In other cases Rhetorical questionsmay convey doubt, scorn, other feelings that can be suggested by the context.
It's very important to remember that the intonation of a rhetorical question is special and quite different from that of an ordinary question.
It's used as a stylistic device in
1. iin poetry
2. eemotive prose
3. ppublic speeches
4. I when used in the spoken language, rhetorical questions are merely elements of emotional syntax of lively everyday speech.
Parceling – ïàðöåëëÿöèÿ – it's also a syntactical device consisting in the use of separate parts of the sentence forming a sentence in itself. Tomorrow. At 6. By all means. A sentence may be chopped into parts by fullstops. Nowadays authors penetrate into minds of their personages. This technique of writing is called STREAM of CONSCIENCE (Ïîòîê ñîçíàíèÿ) – Inner thoughts this is what modern writers tend to show in their novels and stories.
Parcelling is a clear indication of the stream of consciousness. Fullstops presuppose pauses typical of the technique of presenting narrative as the mixture of thoughts and sense perception.
Parcelling is used in the interior monologue. It’s intended to represent the way – often ungrammatical – people really think.
The 1st writers: James Joyce – Ireland; William Faulkner – the USA; Virginia Wîolfe – the USA.
In the story ‘ Yarrow" written by a modern American writer Carol Joyce Oats ……….
"– But who would know. If he kept going. – ÷åë óáèë äâîþðîäíîãî áðàòà.
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