Chapter intensification of a certain feature of a thing or phenomenon

Actuality of the theme of research is to study on the importance of Intensification of a certain feature of a thing of phenomenon (euphemism, hyperbole)
The aim of the research to is find solutions of problems of selecting and evaluating interactions in teaching foreign languages, developing intellectual, personal and professional abilities by applying interaction methods.
The tasks of the research:
- to investigate the modern ways of intensification in teaching;
- to define the types of interaction;
- to pay attention to the peculiarities of ways of intensification teaching in modern teaching system
The object of the research is to define the process of learning intensification and its pecularities.
The subject of the coursework is to research on Intensification of a certain feature of a thing of phenomenon (euphemism, hyperbole)
Theoretical significance of the research is to provide teachers with modern ways of interaction which can be useful in teaching.
The practical significance of the research is that these interesting and stimulating ways and means of studying the styles of Intensification: euphimism and hyperbole.
The structure of the research. The coursework consists of introduction, main part, conclusion and the list of used literature. Introduction has information about view the theme and reveals aims, duties and practical value of the coursework. Main part consists of two chapters which include some famous suggestion and useful information. Conclusion combines the main and significant results of our investigation. The last part of our coursework shows the list of used literatures.

CHAPTER I INTENSIFICATION OF A CERTAIN FEATURE OF A THING OR PHENOMENON
1.1. Intensification and its features
Intensification is an increase in strength or magnitude (or intensity). Agricultural intensification is an increase of productivity per acre. The intensification of a conflict, as in a war, usually means an increase in fighting. Gender intensification is an increasing preference by boys for boy things and by girls for girl things.
[1,2] "In the third group of stylistic devices, which we now come to, we find that one of the qualities of the object in question is made to sound essential. This is an entirely different principle from that on which the second group is based, that of interaction between two lexical mean­ings simultaneously materialized in the context. In this third group the quality picked out may be seemingly unimportant, and it is fre­quently transitory, but for a special reason it is elevated to the greatest importance and made into a telling feature. The intensification of some feature of the concept in question is realized in a device called simile." [2, 115] Ordinary comparison and simile must not be confused. They represent two diverse processes. Comparison means weighing two objects belonging to one class of things with the purpose of establishing the degree of their sameness or differ­ence. To use a simile is to characterize one object by bringing it into contact with another object belonging to an entirely different class of things. Comparison takes into consideration all the properties of the two objects, stressing the one that is compared. Simile excludes the properties of the two objects except one which is made common to them." [2,116] For example, 'The boy seems to be as clever as his mother' is ordinary comparison. 'Boy' and 'mother' belong to the same class of objects human beings and only one quality is being stressed to find the resemblance. Similes forcibly set one object against another regardless of the fact that they may be completely alien to each other. And without our being aware of it, the simile gives rise to a new understanding of the object characterizing as well as of the object characterized. Similes have formal elements in their structure: connective words such as like, as, such as, as if, seem. Here are some examples of similes taken from various sources and illustrating the variety of structural designs of this stylistic device. The structure of this simile is interesting, for it is sustained. Let us analyses it. The word 'jerked' in the micro context, i. е., in combin­ation with 'thoughts' is a metaphor, which led to the simile 'like the misfiring’s of a defective carburetor' where the verb to jerk carries its direct logical meaning. Therefore, the linking notion is the movement jerk­ing which brings to the author's mind a resemblance between the wor­king of the man's brain and the badly working, misfiring carburetor. In other words, it is action that is described by means of a simile."[3,44-45]" The semantic nature of the simile-forming elements seems and as if is such that they only remotely suggest resemblance. Quite differ­ent are the connectives like and as. These are more categorical and es­tablish quite straightforwardly the analogy between the two objects in question. Periphrasis is the re-naming of an object by a phrase that brings out some particular feature of the object. The essence of the device is that it is decipherable only in context. If a periphrastic locution is understandable outside the context, it is not a stylistic de­vice but merely a synonymous expression." [3,51] "Such easily decipherable periphrases are also called traditional, dictionary or language periph­rases. The others are speech periphrases. Here are some examples of well-known dictionary periphrases. Most periphrastic synonyms are strongly associated with the sphere of their application and the epoch they were used in. Feudalism, for example, gave birth to a cluster of periphrastic synonyms of the word. Traditional, language or dictionary periphrases and the words they stand for are synonyms by nature, the periphrasis being expressed by a word combination." [3,67] "Periphrasis as a stylistic device is a new, gen­uine nomination of an object, a process which realizes the power of language to coin new names for objects by disclosing some quality of the object, even though it may be transitory, and making it alone repre­sent the object, but at the same time preserving in the mind the ordin­ary name of the concept. Here are some such stylistic periphrases. The object clause 'what, can never be replaced' is a periphrasis for the word mother. The concept is easily understood by the reader within the given context, the latter being the only code which makes the deciphering of the phrase possible. This is sufficiently proved by a simple transformational operation, taking the phrase out of its context. The meaning of 'what can never be replaced' used indepen­dently will bear no reference to the concept mother and may be inter­preted in many ways." [4,76] "The periphrasis here expresses a very individual idea of the concept. In some cases, periphrasis is regarded as a demerit and should have | no place in good, precise writing. This kind of periphrasis is generally called circumlocution. Thus, Richard Altick states that one of the ways of obscuring truth. A round-about way of speaking about common things has an unnec­essarily bombastic, pompous air and consequently is devoid of any! aesthetic value. " [5,73 ] "That is why periphrasis has gained the reputation of leading to redundancy of expression. Here is an example of the exces­sive use of periphrasis by such an outstanding classic English writer as Dickens. One is particularly struck by the art he, displays in the use of periphrasis: one and the same thought, simple and empty as, for example, 'wooden tables are made of wood', drags along in a string of long sentences, periods, tropes and figures of speech; he turns it around and around, extends it pages long and sprinkles it with punctuation marks. Everything is so flowery, everywhere there is such an abundance of epithets and imagery that the inexperienced reader marvels at these purple patches of jeweled and his fascination vanishes only when he puts a question to himself as to the content of the flamboyant article: for to his surprise in lieu of any content he finds mere woolly phrases and fluffy self-conceit." [5,75] "This kind of writing often appears in the West, particularly since the West began to rot; here in Russia where authorship has not yet become a habit, such phenomena are hardly possible. Stylistic periphrasis can also be divided into logical, and fig­urative. Logical periphrasis is based on one of the inherent pro­perties or perhaps a passing feature of the object described, as in instruments of destruction - 'pistols'; the most pardonable of human weaknesses by Dickens - 'love', the object of his admiration that proportion of the population, which is yet able to read words of more than one syllable, and to read them without perceptible movement of the tips.

2. 
   Euphimism
   

Euphemism, as is known, is a word or phrase used to replace an unpleasant word or expression by a conventionally more acceptable one, for example, the word 'to die' has bred the following euphemisms: to pass away, to expire, to be no more, to depart, to join the majority, and the more facetious ones: to kick the bucket, to give up the ghost, to go west." [7,21] "So, euphemisms are synonyms which aim at producing a delib­erately mild effect.
The origin of the term euphemism discloses the aim of the device very clearly, i. e. speaking well. In the vocabulary of any language, synonyms can be found that soften an otherwise coarse or unpleasant idea. Euphemism is sometimes figuratively called "a whitewashing device. The linguistic peculiarity of euphemism lies in the fact that every euphemism must call up a definite synonym in the mind of the reader or listener. This synonym, or dominant in a group of synonyms, as it is often called, must follow the euphemism like a shadow, as to possess a vivid imagina­tion, or to tell stories in the proper context will call up the unpleasant verb to lie. The euphemistic synonyms given above are part of the language-as a system. They have not been freshly invented. They are expres­sive means of the language and are to be found in all good dictiona­ries." [6,33] They cannot be regarded as stylistic devices because they do not call to mind the key-word or dominant of the group; in other words, they refer the mind to the concept directly, not through the medium of another word. Compare these euphemisms with the following from Dickens's Pickwick Papers. Euphemisms may be divided into several groups according to their spheres of application. The most recognized are the following: 1) religious, 2) moral, 3) medical 4) parliamentary.
The life of euphemisms is short. They very soon become closely as­sociated with the referent, which is the object named and give way to a newly-coined word or combination of words, which, being the sign of a sign, throws another veil over an unpleasant or indelicate concept. The evolution over the years of a civilized mental health service has been marked by periodic changes in terminology. The madhouse became the lunatic asylum; the asylum made way for the mental hospital — even if the building remained the same. Idiots, imbeciles and the feeble-minded became low, me­dium and high-grade mental defectives. All are now to be lumped together as patients of severely subnormal personality."[7,40] The insane became persons of unsound mind, and are now to be mentally ill patients. As each phrase develops the stigmata of po­pular prejudice, it is abandoned in favor of another, some­times less precise than the old. Unimportant in themselves, these changes of name are the signposts of progress. It is interesting to remark that shift has now become a name for a type of girl's or young woman's outer garment, and smock is a little girl's dress, or an overgarment worn by artists. Conventional euphemisms employed in conformity to social usages are best illustrated by the parliamentary codes of expression. In an article headed "In Commons, a Lie is Inexactitude written by James Feron in The New York Times, we may find a number of words that are not to be used in Parliamentary debate. "When Sir Winston Churchill, some years, ago, writes Feron, termed a parliamentary op­ponent a purveyor of terminological inexactitudes, everyone in the chamber knew he meant liar. Sir Winston had been ordered by the Speaker to withdraw a stronger epithet."[7,43] So, he used the euphemism, which became famous and is still used in the Commons. It conveyed the insult without sounding offensive, and it satisfied the Speaker. he authors further points out that certain words, for instance traitor and coward, are specifically banned in the House of Commons because earlier Speakers have ruled them disorderly or unparliament­ary. Speakers have decided that jackass is unparliamentary but goose is acceptable; dog, rat and swine are out of order, but halfwit and Tory clot are in order.
The euphemism is not part of the linguistic system of the language but a fact of speech. People resort to euphemisms either because they want to be polite or because they do not want to utter words deemed too harsh by the speakers or to hide unwanted realities. One of the essential functions of euphemism is to make the other party forget about the taboo. The euphemism is therefore the result of a meta-linguistic functional approach (it deals with the performance of any educated speaker and the place and it takes in a communication situation; the euphemism is not a system) focused on the illocutionary component of the act and aims precisely at minimizing a perlocutionary aspect: to hurt / offend unintentionally, deals with the assignment of auspicious names to adverse notions; the second concerns the process by which the expression which is considered inauspicious is desecrated by its replacement with a distant or weaker equivalent. The euphemism is created from the need to manipulate reality: man has sought ways to name a dangerous reality without violating prohibitions; in fact, without causing, in this way, the unpredictable and undesirable effects of the manifestation of that reality. In the paradigm of the euphemistic expressions degrees and nuances can be identified, reflecting distinct perspectives of knowledge and approach to reality. The periphrastic names that call without naming, to improve, attenuate, reinterpret suggest by restricting the content notes, they hypertrophy and generalize traits 6 Volume 75 considered to be positive by falsifying the essence, the scope or content notes – this also generates other effects such as changing reality or just changing a word, the creation of a new reality, The implicit taboos are traditional taboos that have accompanied the human civilization since its inception, and which, in one form or another, exist in all cultures of the world, constituting anthropological universals."[8,48-49] The implicit taboos are of two types: the sacred taboos and taboos of the impure. The sacred taboos are linked to the mythical-religious thinking and taboos of the superstitious fear. The initial motivation of certain language bans has diminished as the concerned object has acquired the character of taboo. The taboos of the impure are generated by a sense of revulsion or disgust (in this category can be found taboos in the field of the reproductive function (sexuality, pregnancy, menstruation, and those related to the excretory function. The explicit taboos are taboos born in modern western society, related to the coexistence in society of different categories of people, which have an explicit, motivated and legislated character and transgressions are punished immediately. These taboos are not universal; they vary from one culture to another and have been developing rapidly.
Choosing the right words to express what we want to say is a basic part of our communication with other people. Yet we also choose words not just for their precision in expressing what is on our mind, but also to reflect what we value or disvalue, to reveal shades of emotions, to persuade or dissuade.
I want to talk about one common use of words that has a special bearing on ethical discourse and debate. It is the use of euphemisms, defined in the dictionary as “a mild or less direct word used rather than one that is blunt or may be considered offensive.” My interest focuses on a deliberate choice of words (or phrases) designed to advance an ethical or political position, or a no less deliberate aim of extirpating words from ordinary discourse thought to be harmful to one’s convictions or political cause. This becomes particularly noticeable in connection with what are called political euphemisms. These are really understatements, the aim of which is to mislead public opinion and to express what is unpleasant in a more delicate manner. Sometimes disagreeable facts are even distorted with the help of a euphemistic expression. Thus, the headline in one of the British newspapers "Tension in Kashmir" was to hide the fact that there was a real uprising in that area; "Undernour­ishment of children in India" stood for starvation. In A. J. Cronin's novel 'The Stars look Down" one of the members of Parliament, speak­ing of the word combination "Undernourishment of children in In­dia" says: "Honorable Members of the House understand the meaning of this polite euphemism." By calling undernourishment a polite euphem­ism he discloses the true meaning of the word.
A number of us who believe serious health reform will require cutting Medicare benefits together with raising taxes have been urged not to use the word “rationing” in or around Washington or in the hinterlands. It is considered a politically toxic word by right and left in Congress though common by now in the medical and policy literature."[15,69] Sarah Palin’s “death panels” was an obnoxiously brilliant way of enhancing the long-standing political phobia about the government making decisions that could potentially limit life-extending treatment.
It is not, however, easy to come up with a good euphemism for rationing, though “setting limits” and “resource allocation” are the common code words. The argument, in short, is not whether rationing will be necessary– that is taken for granted– but how prudently to talk about it in the public square. I favor using the word openly, hoping the public and their legislators become accustomed to and, to some extent at least, comfortable saying it out loud. Many people whose prudence and political sensitivities I respect disagree with me.
I will move on to some uses of euphemisms which go well beyond prudence, to outright deceit: “ethnic cleansing” to remove undesirable ethnic groups from areas or countries, and sometimes sliding into genocide; “collateral damage,” a military euphemism for the killing of innocent civilians; the historical “removal and resettlement” of American Indians in the 19th century, verbally covering up a ruthless theft of their traditional tribal areas.
Moving back to medicine and health policy, I can do no better than to recall the early debates in the 1960s and 1970s that I was caught up in as I moved to a pro-choice position on abortion. Clearly, many of my fellow advocates sought euphemisms for the actual procedure, any phrase or word that would avoid acknowledging that abortion is the outright killing of fetuses, often by chopping them up, crushing their skulls, and otherwise destroying them. Better to talk about “emptying the uterine content” or “terminating pregnancy.” A recent and notable addition to the list is to speak not of infanticide but of “post-birth abortion.”
Another example that comes to mind is the phrase “sex workers.” It emerged as part of the sexual revolution–what’s wrong with turning sex into legitimate market product–but it also covers up the fact the fact of widespread abuses and subjugation of women, usually poor and uneducated. If whores are just sex workers, then their pimps are, I would judge, just managerial facilitators, doing their entrepreneurial bit for prostitution capitalism.
Recall as well the recent history of the euthanasia/physician-assisted suicide (PAS) debate. When ballot initiatives to legalize euthanasia in California failed in the mid-1990s, advocates for it decided that it would be wiser to go for PAS, and that strategy was successfully used in Oregon and Washington. I call that shift, however, a tactical and not euphemistic move. Yet the next stage of advocacy has been to get rid of the word “suicide” altogether, thought (no doubt correctly) to be harmful to the cause. And not only that, but to argue that a patient asking a physician for drugs to kill himself is not suicide at all. Instead, as the advocacy organization Compassion and Choices likes to put it, it is just a “choice,” not to be confused I suppose with jumping off a bridge or shooting oneself, which is, well, something else. That strategy may well work with those not addicted to the dictionary and traditional legal definitions of suicide, looking less inflammatory formulations.
The concept of “choice” as an advocacy tool requires an even closer look. It has typically been deployed when the legal status quo is that of an inability to make a choice. Obvious examples are the situation of prohibition laws denying the legal possibility of buying alcohol beverages, or that of a right to purchase contraceptives or the 1973 decision legalize of abortion. In each case, the aim was to empower people to make choices where none had earlier been legally possible. The word choice was used as an apparently neutral term whose aim was designed to legitimate the desired change. Politically it is less charged than the phrase pro-abortion, but in the hands of those favorable to abortion that is exactly the meaning they intend to convey. And it has worked.
I note that rhetorical effectiveness as one who is pro-choice on abortion, but I do not kid myself that killing fetuses is nothing more than “emptying the uterine content.” I no less oppose the use of choice as a way to redefine, and semantically hide, the fact that the aim is to empower patients, with the aid of their doctors, to commit suicide. I am thus not pro-choice. But then I am not pro-choice on the right of citizens to carry concealed weapons, on the right of patients to choose futile and expensive care from their doctors, or the right of mothers to choose genital mutilation for their daughters to uphold some cultural traditions. Choice is not a neutral word.
George Orwell made part of his reputation by underscoring the government manipulation of language to serve totalitarian causes. But euphemisms can also be used as smoke screens to serve good causes in the name of prudence, in the name of expanding the range of freedom, and for moral and political causes that can only be fully judged in the sunshine of straight language.
A final example. Doctors of late have been urged to be more open with patients in presenting a candidly unfavorable prognosis in a critical illness. Euphemisms based on the obligation of physicians to inspire hope in their patients have been taken as a long-standing, serious moral duty. Should the naked truth always be spoken to anxious patients and their families? No, sometimes it is prudent not to do so. But then neither should hope be offered in a way that seductively leads patients and families to want aggressive life-sustaining treatment continued that will be all but useless. The ethical problem is that of discerning the lines between prudential, seductive, and manipulative language. I do not claim they are always easy to see. An interesting article dealing with the question of "political euphem­isms" appeared in "Литературная газета" written by the Italian journalist Enzo Rava and headed "The Vocabulary of the Bearers of the Burden of Power." In this article Enzo Rava wittily discusses the euphemisms of the Italian capitalist press, which seem to have been borrowed from the American and English press. Thus, for instance, he mockingly states that capitalists have disappeared from Italy. When the adherents of capitalism find it necessary to mention capita­lists, they replace the word capitalist by the combination free enter­prisers, the word profit is replaced by savings, the building up of labor reserves stands for unemployment, dismissal discharge, firing of workers is the reorganization of the enterprise.
As has already been explained, genuine euphemism unavoidably calls up the word it stands for. It is always the result of some deliberate clash between two synonyms. If a euphemism fails to carry along with it the word it is intended to replace, it is not a euphemism, but a deliberate veiling of the truth. All these building up of labor reserves, savings, free enterprisers and the like are not intended to give the referent its true name, but to distort the truth. The above expressions serve that purpose. Compare these word combinations with real eu­phemisms, like a four-letter word or a woman of a cer­tain type all of which bring to our mind the other word and only through them the referent.
In language studies there are two very clearly-marked tendencies that the student should never lose sight of, particularly when dealing with the problem of word combination. They are: 1) the analytical tendency, which seeks to dissever one component from! another and 2) the synthetic tendency which seeks to integrate the parts of the combination into a stable unit.
These two tendencies are treated in different ways in lexicology and stylistics. In lexicology the parts of a stable lexical unit may be separated in order to make a scientific investigation of the character of the combination and to analyze the components. In stylistics we analyze the component parts in order to get at some communicative effect sought by the writer." [5,45] "It is this communicative effect and the means employed to achieve it that lie within the domain of stylistics.
The integrating tendency also is closely studied in the realm of lexicology, especially when linguistic scholars seek to fix what seems to be a stable word combination and ascertain the degree of its stability, its variants and so on. The integrating tendency is also within the domain of stylistics, particularly when the word combination has not yet formed itself as a lexical unit but is in the process of being so formed. A cliché is generally defined as an expression that has become hackneyed and trite. It has lost its precise meaning by constant reiteration; in other words, it has become stereotyped. As "Random House Dictionary" has it, "a cliché... has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long over-use." [5, 58]
This definition lacks one point that should be emphasized; that is, a cliché strives after originality, whereas it has lost the aesthetic gener­ating power it once had. There is always a contradiction between what is aimed at and what is actually attained. Examples of real clichés are: rosy dreams of youth, the patter of little feet, deceptively simple.
Definitions taken from various dictionaries show that cliché is a derogatory term and it is therefore necessary to avoid anything that may be called by that name. But the fact is that most of the widely-recognized word combinations which have been adopted by the language are unjustly classified as clichés. The aversion for clichés has gone so far that most of the lexical units based on simile are brand-, ed as clichés. In an interesting article entitled "Great Clichè Debate" published in the New York Times Magazine"^ we can read the pros and cons concerning clichés. This article is revealing on one main point. It illustrates the fact that an uncertain or vague term will lead to vari­ous and even conflicting interpretations of the idea embodied in the term. What, indeed, do the words stereotyped, hackneyed, trite convey to the mind? First of all they indicate that the phrase is in common use. Is this a demerit? Not at all. On the contrary: something common, habitual, devoid of novelty is the only admissible expression in some types of communications. In the article just mentioned one of the debater’s objects to the phrase Jack-of-all-trades and suggests that it should be "one who can turn his hand to any or to many kinds of work. His opponent naturally rejects the substitute on the grounds that Jack of all trades may, as he says, have long ceased to be vivid or original, but his substitute never was. And it is fourteen words in­stead of four. Determine to avoid clichés at all costs and you are almost certain to be led into gobbledygook.
Debates of this kind proceed from a grossly mistaken notion that the term cliché is used to denote all stable word combinations, whereas it was coined to denote word combinations which have long lost their novelty and become trite, but which are used as if they were fresh and original and so have become irritating to people who are sensitive to the language they hear and read. What is familiar should not be given a derogatory label. On the contrary, if it has become fa­miliar, that means it has won general recognition and by iteration has been accepted as a unit of the language.
But the process of being acknowledged as a unit of language is slow. It is next to impossible to foretell what may be accepted as a unit of the language and what may be rejected and cast away as being unfit, inappropriate, alien to the internal laws of the language, or failing to meet the demand of the language community for stable word combina­tions to designate new notions. Hence the two conflicting ideas: lan­guage should always be fresh, vigorous and expressive, and on the other hand, language, as a common tool for intercommunication should make use of units that are easily understood and which require little or no effort to convey the idea and to grasp it.