CLASSIFICATION OF EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES BY Y.M.SKREBNEV

Paradigmatic «- 1. Phonetics -> Syntagmatic

stylistics «- 2. Morphology -> stylistics

(Stylistics of units) «- 3. Lexicology -> (Stylistics of

«- 4. Syntax -» sequences)

<- 5. Semasiology ->

One of the latest classifications of expressive means and stylistic devices is given in the book «Fundamentals of English Stylistics» Y. M. Skrebnev published in 1994 (47). Skrebnev's approach demonstrates a combination of principles observed in Leech's system of paradigmatic and syntagmatic subdivision and the level-oriented approach on which Galperin's classification is founded. At the same time it differs from both since Skrebnev managed to avoid mechanical superposition of one system onto another and created a new consistent method of the hierarchical arrangement of this material.

Skrebnev starts with a holistic view, constructing a kind of language pyramid.

He doesn't pigeonhole expressive means and stylistic devices into appropriate layers of language like Leech and Galperin. Skrebnev first subdivides stylistics into paradigmatic stylistics (or stylistics of units) and syntagmatic stylistics (or stylistics of sequences). Then he explores the levels of the language and regards all stylistically relevant phenomena according to this level principle in both paradigmatic and syntagmatic stylistics.

He also uniquely singles out one more level. In addition to pho­netics, morphology, lexicology and syntax he adds semasiology (or semantics).

According to Skrebnev the relationship between these five levels and two aspects of stylistic analysis is bilateral. The same linguistic material of these levels provides stylistic features studied by paradigmatic and syntagmatic stylistics. The difference lies in its different arrangement.

paradigmatic stylistics (Stylistics of units)

Looking closer into this system we'll be able to distinguish spe­cific units and their stylistic potentials or functions. Thus paradig­matic stylistics (styUstics of units) is subdivided into five bran­ches.

paradigmatic phonetics actually describes phonographical stylistic features of a written text. Since we cannot hear written speech but in our «mind» writers often resort to graphic means to reproduce the phonetic peculiarities of individual speech or dialect. Such intentional non-standard spelling is called «graphons» (a term borrowed from V.A.Kucharenko).

/ know these Eye talians! (Lawrence)—in this case the graphon is used to show despise or contempt of the speaker for Italians.

In Cockney speech whose phonetic peculiarities are all too well known you'll hear [ai] in place of [ei], [a:] instead of [au], they drop «h's» and so on. It frequently becomes a means of speech characterisation and often creates a humorous effect.

The author illustrates it with a story of a cockney family trying to impress a visitor with their «correct» English:

<'Father, said one of the children at breakfast. —I want some more 'am Phase».—You mustn't say 'am, my child, the correct form is 'am,— retorted his father, passing the plate with sliced ham on it. «But I did say 'am, pleaded the boy». «No, you didn't: you said 'am instead of 'am». The mother turned to the guest smiling: «Oh, don't mind them, ^s'r, pray. They are both trying to say 'am and both think it is 'am they ^Qre saying» (47, p. 41).

Other graphic means to emphasise the «unheard» phonetic character istics such as the pitch of voice, the stress, and other melodic feature are italics, capitalisation, repetition of letters, onomatopoeia (soun' imitation).

E. g. I AM sorry; «Appeeee Noooooyeeeeerr» (Happy New Year) cock-a-doodle-doo.

Paradigmatic morphology observes the stylistic potentials of gram: forms, which Leech would describe as deviant. Out of several va rieties of morphological categorial forms the author chooses a less predictable or unpredictable one, which renders this form some stylistic connotation. The peculiar use of a number of grammaiical categories for stylistic purposes may serve as an ample example of this type of expressive means.

The use of a present tense of a verb on the background of a past-tense narration got a special name historical present in linguistics.

E. g. What else do J remember? Let me see.

There comes out of the cloud our house... (Dickens)

Another category that helps create stylistic colouring is that of gender. The result of its deviant use is personification and depersonification. As Skrebnev points out although the morphological category of gender is practically non-existent in modern English special rules concern whole classes of nouns that are traditionally associated with feminine or masculine gender. Thus countries are generally classed as feminine (France sent her representative to the conference.) Abstract notions associated with strength and fierceness are personified as masculine while feminine is associated with beauty or gentleness (death, fear, war, anger— he, spring, peace, kindness— she). Names of vessel

and other vehicles (ship, boat, carriage, coach, car) are treated as feminine.

/Another deviant use of this category according to Skrebnev is the use of animate nouns as inanimate ones that he terms «depersonification» illustrated by the following passage:

«Where did you find it?» asked Mord Em'ly of Miss Gilliken with a satirical accent.

«Who are you calling "it"?» demanded Mr. Barden aggressively. «P'raps you'll kindly call me 'im and not it». (Partridge)

Similar cases of deviation on the morphological level are given by the author for the categories of person, number, mood and some others.

Paradigmatic lexicology subdivides English vocabulary into stylistic layers. In most works on this problem (cf. books by Galperin, Arnold, Vinogradov) all words of the national language are usually described in terms of neutral, literary and colloquial with further subdivision into poetic, archaic, foreign, jargonisms, slang, etc.

Skrebnev uses different terms for practically the same purposes. His terminology includes correspondingly neutral, positive (elevated) and negative (degraded) layers.

Subdivision inside these categories is much the same with the ex­clusion of such groups as bookish and archaic words and special terms that Galperin, for example, includes into the special literary vocabulary (described as positive in Skrebnev's system) while Skreb­nev claims that they may have both a positive and negative stylistic function depending on the purpose of the utterance and the context. The same consideration concerns the so-called barbarisms or foreign words whose stylistic value (elevated or degraded) depends on the kind of text in which they are used. To illustrate his point Skrebnev gives two examples of barbarisms used by people of different social class and age. Used by an upper-class character from John Galsworthy the word chic has a tinge of elegance showing the character** knowledge of French. He maintains that Italian words ciao and bambina current among Russian youngsters at one time were also considered stylistically 'higher' than their Russian equivalents. At the same time it's hard to say whether they should all be classified as positive just because they are of foreign origin. Each instance of use should be considered individually.

Stylistic differentiation suggested by Skrebnev includes the following stratification

Positive/elevated

poetic;

official;

professional.

Bookish and archaic words occupy a peculiar place among the other 1 positive words due to the fact that they can be found in any other group (poetic, official or professional).

Neutral

Negative/degraded

colloquial; neologisms;

jargon;

slang;

nonce-words;

vulgar words.

Special mention is made of terms. The author maintains that the stylistic function of terms varies in different types of speech. In non-professional spheres, such as literary prose, newspaper texts, everyday speech special terms are associated with socially presti­gious occupations and therefore are marked as elevated. On the other hand the use of non-popular terms, unknown to the average speaker, shows a pretentious manner of speech, lack of taste or tact.

Paradigmatic syntax has to do with the sentence paradigm: complete­ness of sentence structure, communicative types of sentences, word order, and type of syntactical connection.

Paradigmatic syntactical means of expression arranged according to these four types include

Completeness of sentence structure

ellipsis;

aposiopesis;

one-member nominative sentences.

Redundancy: repetition of sentence parts, syntactic tautology (prolepsis), Polysyndeton.

Word order

Inversion of sentence members.

Communicative types of sentences

Quasi-affirmative sentences: Isn't that too bad? = That is too bad.

Quasi-interrogative sentences: Here you are to write down your age and birthplace = How old are you? Where were you born?

Quasi-negative sentences: Did I say a word about the money (Shaw) = / did not say...

Quasi-imperative sentences: Here! Quick! — Come here! Be quick!

In these types of sentences the syntactical formal meaning of the structure contradicts the actual meaning implied so that negative sentences read affirmative, questions do not require answers but are in fact declarative sentences (rhetorical questions), etc. One commu­nicative meaning appears in disguise of another. Skrebnev holds that «the task of stylistic analysis is to find out to what type of speech (and its sublanguage) the given construction belongs.» (47, p. 100).

Type of syntactic connection

detachment;

parenthetic elements;

asyndetic subordination and coordination.

Paradigmatic semasiology deals with transfer of names or what are traditionally known as tropes. In Skrebnev's classification these expressive means received the term based on their ability to rename: figures of replacement.

All figures of replacement are subdivided into 2 groups: figures of quantity and figures of quality.

Figures of quantity. In figures of quantity renaming is based on inexactitude of measurements, in other words it's either saying too much (overestimating, intensifying the properties) or too lit­tle (underestimating the size, value, importance, etc.) about the object or phenomenon. Accordingly there are two figures of this type.

Hyperbole

E.g. You couldn't hear yourself think for the noise.

Meosis (understatement, litotes).

E. g. It's not unusual for him to come home at this hour.

According to Skrebnev this is the most primitive type of renaming.

Figures of quality comprise 3 types of renaming:

• transfer based on a real connection between the object of nomi­nation and the object whose name it's given.

This is called metonymy in its two forms: synecdoche and periphrasis.

E- g. I'm all ears; Hands wanted.

Periphrasis and its varieties euphemism and anti-euphemism.

E. g. Ladies and the worser halves; I never call a spade a spade, I ca it a bloody shovel.

• transferbased on affinity (similarity, not real connection metaphor.

Skrebnev describes metaphor as an expressive renaming on the basis of similarity of two objects. The speaker searches for associations in] his mind's eye, the ground for comparison is not so open to view as with metonymy. It's more complicated in nature. Metaphor has no formal limitations Skrebnev maintains, and that is why this not a purely lexical stylistic device as many authors describe it (s Galperin's classification).

This is a device that can involve a word, a part of a sentence о a whole sentence. We may add that whole works of art can be viewe as metaphoric and an example of it is the novel by John Updike «Th Centaur».

As for the varieties there are not just simple metaphors like She i a flower, but sustained metaphors, also called extended, when one metaphorical statement creating an image is followed by another linked to the previous one: This is a day of your golden opportunity, Sarge. Don't let it turn to brass. (Pendelton)

Often a sustained metaphor gives rise to a device called catachresis (or mixed metaphor)—which consists in the incongruity of the parts of a sustained metaphor. This happens when objects of the two or more parts of a sustained metaphor belong to different semantic spheres and the logical chain seems disconnected. The effect is ' usually comical.

E. g. «For somewhere», said Poirot to himself indulging an absolute riot ₀f mixed metaphors «there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrow into the air, one will come down and hit a glass-house!» (Christie)

A Belgian speaking English confused a number of popular proverbs and quotations that in reality look like the following: to look for a needle in a haystack; to let sleeping dogs lie; to put one's foot down; I shot an arrow into the air (Longfellow); people who live in glass houses should not throw stones.

Other varieties of metaphor according to Skrebnev also include

Allusion defined as reference to a famous historical, literary, mytho­logical or biblical character or event, commonly known.

E.g. It's his Achilles heel (myth of vulnerability).

Personification — attributing human properties to lifeless objects.

E.g. How soon hath Time, the subtle thief of youth, Stol'n on his wing my three and twentieth year! (Milton)

Antonomasia defined as a variety of allusion, because in Skrebnev's view it's the use of the name of a historical, literary, mythological or biblical personage applied to a person described. Some of the most famous ones are Brutus (traitor), Don Juan (lady's man).

It should be noted that this definition is only limited to the allusive nature of this device. There is another approach (cf. Galperin and others) in which antonomasia also covers instances of transference of common nouns in place of proper names, such as Mr. Noble Knight, Duke the Iron Heart.

Allegoryexpresses abstract ideas through concrete pictures.

E. g. The scales of justice; It's time to beat your swords into ploughshar

It should be noted that allegory is not just a stylistic term, but als a term of art in general and can be found in other artistic forms: painting, sculpture, dance, and architecture.

• transfer by contrastwhen the two objects are opposed implies irony.

Irony (meaning «concealed mockery», in Greek eironeia) is a device based on the opposition of meaning to the sense (dictionary and contextual). Here we observe the greatest semantic shift between the notion named and the notion meant.

Skrebnev distinguishes 2 kinds of ironic utterances:

— obviously explicit ironical, which no one would take at their face value due to the situation, tune and structure.

E. g. A fine friend you are! That's a pretty kettle offish!

— and implicit, when the ironical message is communicated a wider context like in Oscar Wilde's tale «The Devoted Friend» I where the real meaning of the title only becomes obvious after you read the story. On the whole irony is used with the aim of critical evaluation and the general scheme is praise stands for blame and extremely rarely in the reverse order. However when it does happen the term in the latter case is astheism.

E. g. Clever bastard! Lucky devil!

One of the powerful techniques of achieving ironic effect is the mixture of registers of speech (social styles appropriate for the occasion): high-flown style on socially low topics or vice versa.

Syntagmatic stylistics (stylistics of sequences)

Syntagmatic stylistics (stylistics of sequences) deals with the stylistic functions of linguistic units used in syntagmatic chains, in linear combinations, not separately but in connection with other units. Syntagmatic stylistics falls into the same level determined branches.

Syntagmatic phonetics deals with the interaction of speech sounds and intonation, sentence stress, tempo. All these features that charac­terise suprasegmental speech phonetically are sometimes also called prosodic.

So stylistic phonetics studies such stylistic devices and expressive means as alliteration (recurrence of the initial consonant in two or more words in close succession). It's a typically English feature because ancient English poetry was based more on alliteration than on rhyme. We find a vestige of this once all-embracing literary device in proverbs and sayings that came down to us.

E. g. Now or never; Last but not least; As good as gold.

With time its function broadened into prose and other types of texts.

It became very popular in titles, headlines and slogans.

E. g. Pride and Prejudice. (Austin)

Posthumous papers of the Pickwick Club. (Dickens)

Work or wages/; Workers of the world, unite!

Speaking of the change of this device's role chronologically we should make special note of its prominence in certain professional areas of modern English that has not been mentioned by Skrebnev. Today alliteration is one of the favourite devices of commercials and advertising language.

E. g. New whipped cream: No mixing or measuring. No beating or bothering.

Colgate toothpaste: The Flavor's Fresher than ever—It's New. Improved. Fortified.

Assonance (the recurrence of stressed vowels).

E. g.... Tell this soul with sorrow laden, if within the distant Aiden; /| shall clasp a sainted maiden, whom the angels name Lenore. (Рое)

Paronomasia (using words similar in sound but different in meaning with euphonic effect).

The popular example to illustrate this device is drawn from E. A. Poe's Raven.

E.g. And the raven, never flitting, still is sitting, still is sitting

Rhythm and meter.

The pattern of interchange of strong and weak segments is called rhythm. It's a regular recurrence of stressed and unstressed syllables that make a poetic text. Various combinations of stressed and un­stressed syllables determine the metre (iambus, dactyl, trochee, etc.).

Rhyme is another feature that distinguishes verse from prose and consists in the acoustic coincidence of stressed syllables at the end of verse lines.

Here's an example to illustrate dactylic meter and rhyme given in Skrebnev's book

Take her up tenderly, Lift her with care, Fashion'd so slenderly Young and so fair.

(Hood)

Syntagmatic morphology deals with the importance of grammar forms used in a paragraph or text that help in creating a certain stylistic effect.

We find much in common between Skrebnev's description of this area and Leech's definition of syntagmatic deviant figures. Skrebnev writes: «Varying the morphological means of expressing grammatical notions is based... upon the general rule: monotonous repetition of morphemes or frequent recurrence of morphological meanings expressed differently...» (47, p. 146).

He also indicates that while it is normally considered a stylis­tic fault it acquires special meaning when used on purpose. He describes the effect achieved by the use of morphological syn­onyms of the genetive with Shakespeare— the possessive case (Shake­speare's plays), prepositional o/-phrase (the plays of Shakespeare) and an attributive noun (Shakespeare plays) as «elegant variation» of style.

Syntagmatic lexicology studies the «word-and-context» juxtaposition that presents a number of stylistic problems—especially those con- nected with co-occurrence of words of various stylistic colourings.

Each of these cases must be considered individually because each literary text is unique in its choice and combination of words. Such phenomena as various instances of intentional and unintentional lexical mixtures as well as varieties of lexical recurrence fall in with this approach.

Some new more modern stylistic terms appear in this connection-stylistic irradiation, heterostylistic texts, etc. We can observe this sor of stylistic mixture in a passage from O'Henry provided by Skrebnev:

Jeff, says Andy after a long time, quite unseldom I have seen fit to impugn your molars when you have been chewing the rag with me about your conscientious way of doing business... (47, p. 149).

Syntagmatic syntax deals with more familiar phenomena since it has to do with the use of sentences in a text. Skrebnev distinguishes purely syntactical repetition to which he refers

parallelism as structural repetition of sentences though often accom- panied by the lexical repetition

E. g. The cock is crowing, The stream is flowing...

(Wordsworth)

and lexico-syntactical devices such as

anaphora (identity of beginnings, initial elements).

E. g. If only little Edward were twenty, old enough to marry well and fend for himself, instead often. If only it were not necessary to provide a dowaryforhis daughter. If only his own debts were less. (Rutherfurd)

Epiphora (opposite of the anaphora, identical elements at the end of sentences, paragraphs, chapters, stanzas).

E. g. For all averred, I had killed the bird. That made the breeze to blow. Ah wretch! Said they, the bird to slay, That made the breeze to blow!

(Coleridge)

Framing (repetition of some element at the beginning and at the end of a sentence, paragraph or stanza).

E. g. Never wonder. By means of addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, settle everything somehow, and never wonder. (Dickens)

Anadiplosis (the final element of one sentence, paragraph, stanza is repeated in the initial part of the next sentence, paragraph, stanza.

E.g. Three fishers went sailing out into the West. Out into the West, as the sun went down.

(Kingsley)

Chiasmus (parallelism reversed, two parallel syntactical constructions contain a reversed order of their members).

E. g. That he sings and he sings, and for ever sings he— I love my Love and my Love loves me!

(Coleridge)

Syntagmatic semasiology or semasiology of sequences deals with semantic relationships expressed at the lengh of a whole text. As distinct from paradigmatic semasiology which studies the stylistic effect of renaming syntagmatic semasiology studies types of names used for linear arrangement of meanings.

Skrebnev calls these repetitions of meanings represented by sense units in a text figures of co-occurrence. The most general types of] semantic relationships can be described as identical, different orl opposite. Accordingly he singles out figures of identity, figures of\ inequality and figures of contrast.

Figures of identity

Simile (an explicit statement of partial identity: affinity, likeness, similarity of 2 objects).

E. g. My heart is like a singing bird. (Rosetti)

Synonymous replacement (use of synonyms or synonymous phrases to avoid monotony or as situational substitutes).

E. g. He brought home numberless prizes. He told his mother counties stories. (Thackeray)

E.g. I was trembly and shaky from head to foot.

Figures of inequality

Clarifying (specifying) synonyms (synonymous repetition used to

characterise different aspects of the same referent).

E.g. You undercut, sinful, insidious hog. (O'Henry)

Climax (gradation of emphatic elements growing in strength).

E. g. What difference if it rained, hailed, blew, snowed, cycloned? (O'Henry).

Anti-climax (back gradation—instead of a few elements growing in intensity without relief there unexpectedly appears a weak or contrastive element that makes the statement humorous or ridiculous).

E. g. The woman who could face the very devil himself or a mouse—goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning. (Twain)

Zeugma (combination of unequal, or incompatible words based on the economy of syntactical units).

E. g. She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief. (Dickens)

Pun (play upon words based on polysemy or homonymy).

E. g. What steps would you take if an empty tank were coming toward you?—Long ones.

Disguised tautology (semantic difference in formally coincidental parts of a sentence, repetition here does not emphasise the idea but carries a different information in each of the two parts).

E. g. For East is East, and West is West... (Kipling)

Figures of contrast

Oxymoron (a logical collision of seemingly incompatible words).

E. g. His honour rooted in dishonour stood, And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

(Tennyson)

Antithesis (anti-statement, active confrontation of notions used to show the contradictory nature of the subject described).

E. g. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times; it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the era of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of Darkness... Hope... Despair. (Dickens)

His fees were high, his lessons were light. (O'Henry)

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