Lecture 9 Theme: mudle lexical stylistic devices the plan

Gradation
Gradation presents a structure in which every successive sentence or phrase (new concept) is emotionally stronger or logically more important than the preceding one. E.g.:
1. “For that one instant there was no one else in the room, in the house, in the world, besides themselves…”(Wilson)
2. It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city.
3. The human heart has hidden treasures,

In secret kept, in silence sealed, - The thoughts, the hopes, the dreams, the pleasures

Whose charms were broken if revealed. (Ch. Bronte`) Correspondingly, in the third example each word of the structural unit coming one after the other (the thoughts, the hopes the dreams the pleasures) is understood to be more convincing in the revealing the author’s idea. Such an organization of the utterance creates a gradual intensification of its significance, both the logical and emotive and attracts the reader’s attention more completely. Of course, there are no objective linguistic criteria to estimate the degree of importance or significance of each constituent. It is only the analysis of synonym that helps us to feel the increase. There is also a case when every successive part of a climax is expressed by a word presenting a less significant concept, so that instead of increase there is a certain decrease of logical importance and emotion: “No tree, no shrub, no blade of grass… that was not owned”. (Galsworthy) A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways; logical, emotional and quantitative. Logical climax is based on the use of a successive unit which is stronger than the preceding one from the point of view of its meaning: “Threaten him, imprison him, torture him, kill him; you will never
induce him to betray his country”. The word “kill” is the strongest in meaning among all these contextual synonyms. Emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by
words of emotional meaning. Your son is very ill – seriously ill- desperately ill. Of course, emotional climax, based on synonymous words with emotional meaning will cause certain semantic differences in these words – such is the linguistic nature of stylistic synonyms, but emotional meaning will be the prevailing one. Here is another example:
“He was pleased when the child began to adventure across floors on hand and knees; he was gratified, when she managed the trick of balancing herself on two legs; he was delighted when she first said “ta-ta”, and eh was rejoiced when she recognized him and smiled at him ”. (Alan Paton)
Very often every successive member of a climax is a natural logical consequence of the preceding one: “I swear to God I never saw the beat of this winter. More snow, more
cold, more sickness, more death”. (M. Wilson) Quantitative climax presupposes the use of hyperbole:
1. “Farmers’ wives who had strength, endurance and energy of locomotives and the appetites of dinosaurs”. (B. Macdonald)
2. “They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens”. (S. Maugham) Climax like many other stylistic devices, is a means by which the author discloses his world outlook. The main syntactical pattern of climax consists of a clause or sentences based on lexical repetition. The stylistic function of this stylistic device is to show the importance of things in the utterance, to show the significance of things described and to show the dynamic development of the same process Antithesis Antithesis is a stylistic device, which is based on the opposition of concepts. There are logical and stylistic opposition implies the use of dictionary antonyms, i.e. words that are contrary in meaning to others: white – black, day – night, long – short, young – old, etc. Stylistic opposition is based on relative opposition, which arises out of the context through the expansion of objectively contrasting pairs, as in:
Youth is lovely, age is lonely, Youth is fiery, age is frosty. (Longfellow) Here the objectively contrasted pairs are “youth - age”, fiery – frosty”. “Lovely” and “lonely” cannot be regarded as objectively opposite concepts. It is not only the semantic aspect, which explains the linguistic nature of antithesis; the structural pattern also plays an important role. Antithesis is
generally moulded in parallel construction: “We are young, friend, like the flowers,
You are old, friend, like the tree, What concern have you with ours?
You are dying, we’re to be It is very true, I’m dying, You are roses still in bud…” (J. Mansfield)
In this poem antithesis is based on the following oppositions: young – old, flowers – trees, dying – to be; only the first opposition “young – old” may be considered as dictionary antonyms, the rest are contextual antonyms, and bring emphasis to the whole poem. The use of antithesis built on the contextual antonyms is clearly seen in the next example: “They speak like saint and act like devils.
Better to reign in the hell than serve in heaven”. In this passage antithesis is based on the following oppositions: saint – devil, to reign – to serve, hell – heaven. These pairs are contextual antonyms, and bring emphasis to the text. Antithesis often comes with many stylistic devices such as repetition, parallel construction, epigram and others: “If there were no bad people, there would be good lawyers” (Dickens). As a rule antithesis displays one of the functions more clearly than the others. This function will then be the leading one in the given utterance