Antonomasia (антономазия, переименование)


Oxymoron (оксюморон, оксиморон


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English Stylistics 3

Oxymoron (оксюморон, оксиморон)
This is a device which combines, in one phrase, two words (usually: noun + adjective) whose meanings are opposite and incompatible (несовместимы):
a living corpse; sweet sorrow; a nice rascal; awfully (terribly) nice; a deafening silence; a low skyscraper.
In other words it is a lexical stylistic device the syntactic and semantic structures of which come to clashes. In Shakespearian definitions of love, much quoted from his Romeo and Juliet, perfectly correct syntactically, at­tributive combinations present a strong semantic discrepancy between their members. Cf.: "O brawling love! O loving hate! O heavy light­ness! Serious vanity! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!"
As is clearly seen from this string of oxymorons, each one of them is a combination of two semantically contradictory notions, that help to emphasize contradictory qualities simultaneously existing in the described phenomenon as a dialectical unity. The most widely known structure of oxymoron is attributive, but there are also others, in which verbs are employed. Such verbal structures as "to shout mute­ly" (I.Sh.) or "to cry silently" (M.W.) seem to strengthen the idea, which leads to the conclusion that oxymoron is a specific type of epi­thet. But the peculiarity of an oxymoron lies in the fact that the speaker's (writer's) subjective view can be expressed through either of the members of the word combination.
Originality and specificity of oxymoron becomes especially evident in non-attributive structures which also, not infrequently, are used to express semantic contradiction, as in "the street damaged by improvements" (O.H.) or "silence was louder than thunder" (U.).
Oxymorons rarely become trite, for their components, linked for­cibly, repulse each other and oppose repeated use. There are few col­loquial oxymorons, all of them showing a high degree of the speaker's emotional involvement in the situation, as in "damn nice", "awfully pretty".



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