Lexical level lexical Stylistic Devices

Exercise I. Comment on the length, the structure, the communicative type and punctuation of sentences, indicating connotations created by them:
1. Now, although we were little and I certainly couldn't be dreaming of taking Fonny from her or anything like that, and although she didn't really love Fonny, only thought mat she was supposed to because she had spasmed him into this world, already, Penny's mother didn't like me. (J.B.)
2. Soldiers with their cartridges gone wandered aimlessly out of the chaparral, dragging their rifles and plunged into the brush again on the other side of the railroad, black with powder, streaked with sweat, their eyes vacantly on the ground. (J.R.)
3. I like people. Not just empty streets and dead buildings. People. People. (P. A.)
4. "You know so much. Where is she?" "Dead. Or in a crazy house. Or married. I think she's married and quieted down." (T.C.)
5. "Jesus Christ! Look at her face!" Surprise. "Her eyes is closed!" Astonishment. "She likes it!" Amazement.
"Nobody could take my picture doing that!" Moral disgust. "Them goddam white folks!" Fascinated fear. (Wr.)
6. What courage can withstand the ever-enduring and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue? (W. I.)
7. Jonathan Livingstone Seagull narrowed his eyes in fierce concentration, held his breath, forced one... single – more... inch... of... curve – Then his feathers raffled, he stalled and fell. (Rch. B.)
8. A boy and a girt sat on stools drinking pop. An elderly man alone – someone John knew vaguely by sight – the town clerk? – sat behind an empty Coca-Cola bottle. (P. Q.)
9. The neon lights in the heart of the city flashed on and off. On and off. On. Off. On. Off. Continuously. (P. A.)
10. What is the opposite of faith? Not disbelief. Too final, certain, closed. Itself a kind of belief. Doubt. (S.R.)


Rhetorical Question
Rhetorical question. Unlike an ordinary question, the rhetorical question does not demand any information but serves to express the emotions of the speaker and also to call the attention of listeners. Rhetorical questions make an indispensable part of oratoric speech for they very successfully emphasize the orator's ideas. In fact the speaker knows the answer himself and gives it immediately after the question is asked. The interrogative intonation and / or punctuation draw the attention of listeners (readers) to the focus of the utterance.
Having the form of an interrogative sentence, a rhetorical question contains not a question but a covert statement of the opposite: Who does not know Shakespeare? (the implication is "everybody knows"); Is there not blood enough ... that more must be poured forth? (Byron) (= there certainly is enough blood). This king, Shakespeare, does not he shine over us all, as the noblest, gentlest, yet strongest, indestructible? (Carlyle) (= he certainly does).
The effect of the majority of syntactical stylistic devices depends on either the completeness of the structure or on the arrangement of its members. The order in which words (clauses) follow each other is of extreme importance not only for the logical coherence of the sentence but also for its connotational meanings. The following sprawling rambling sentence from E. Waugh's novel Vile Bodies, with clauses heaping one over another, testifies to the carelessness, talkativeness and emotionality of the speaker: "Well, Tony rang up Michael and told him that I'd said that William, thought Michael had written the review because of the reviews I had written of Michael's book last November, though, as a matter of fact, it was Tony himself who wrote it." (E.W.) More examples showing the validity of the syntactical pattern were shown in Exercise I on the previous page.