E.g. It’s not a bad thing. – It’s a good thing. He is no coward. – He is a brave man. - LITOTES creates a purposeful understatement and the negative constructions produce a significant effect on the readers/listeners because they have an additional connotation.
E.g. I’m happy. – I’m not unhappy (=I’m happy, but my happiness is spoilt by something) He has taste. – He is not without taste (= He has taste, but…..) Litotes is more common in English than in Russian and is associated with a specifically English mode of expressing ideas through understatement and evasiveness. Charles Bally: negative sentences are used with the purpose of “refusing to affirm”. E.g. And Captain Trevelyan was not overpleased about it (A. Christie). E.g. “You wouldn’t exactly call Warly heavily industrialized” (J. Braine). His trick of seizing upon a phrase that has struck him (erroneously, as a rule) as a happy one, and doggedly sticking to it thereafter is one typical of a speaker who lacks all confidence. On Monday it was ‘not unpromising’; three times he declared that various aspects of the Summit preparations were ‘not unpromising’, and I was moved in the end to conclude that Mr. Lloyd is not unpoor Foreign Secretary, and that if he should not unshortly leave that office the not unbetter it would be for all of us, not unhim included (The Spectator, 1958) Irony [‘aırənı] - ирония E.g. She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator - Irony consists in stating the contrary of what is meant (E. Partridge).
- Irony is a stylistic device based on the simultaneous realization of dictionary and contextual meanings which stand in opposition to each other (Galperin).
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