Peculiar Use of Set Expressions: The Cliche, Proverbs ,Epigram, Quotation, Allusion

The Cliche
A cliche 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. Cliche is a kind of stable word combination which has become familiar and which has been accepted as a unit of a language
e. g. rosy dreams of youth, growing awareness.

Proverbs are short, well-known, supposedly wise sayings, usually in simple language.
e.g. Never say never. You can't get blood of a stone.
Proverbs are expressions of culture that are passed from generation to generation. They are words of wisdom of culture- lessons that people of that culture want their children to learn and to live by They are served as some symbols, abstract ideas. Proverbs are usually dedicated and involve imagery. e.g. Out of sight, out of mind.

Epigram is a short clever amusing saying or poem. e.g. A thing of beauty is a joy forever.

Quotation is a phrase or sentence taken from a work of literature or other piece of writing and repeated in order to prove a point or support an idea. They are marked graphically: by inverted commas: dashes, italics.

Allusion is an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical. literary, mythological fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing. The use of allusion presupposes knowledge of the fact, thing oк person alluded to on the part of the reader or listener

Saying

A short well-known expression — a pithy remark of wisdom and truth or a general advice.

Example: The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

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30. Stylistics and dictemic analysis

A paragraph is a part of the written speech which makes up a relatively completed part of a literary text. The theory of paragraph can be traced back to the works of Alexander Matveevich Peshkovsky (Александр Матвеевич Пешковский; 11 (23) August 1878, Tomsk – 27 March 1933, Moscow). It was further developed in the works of N. S. Pospelov.

Peshkovsky used the term paragraph, however he was dissatisfied with this term, because it was taken from typography and had nothing to do with syntax. However, later there appeared such terms. The segments of the text were called supra-phrasal unities, or complex syntactic unity.

The graphical property wasn’t taken into account, or it was treated as optional. The constituent properties were the relative meaningful completion and semantic cohesion based on conjunctive, pronominal, adverbial and other lexico-syntactic means of cohesion. This terminology seems to be more strict, because it allows to avoid mixing up syntactico-intonational and typographical notions. Nevertheless, some scholars still use the term paragraph, because it’s convenient element while treating a work of art.

While reading, the paragraph is characterized by a certain prolonged pause which separates paragraphs. This delimiting pause between paragraphs summarizes all which is said above in the preceding paragraph and prepares the passage to the next one. This pause and the structure of the paragraph are characterized by relevant stylistic and textual functions. They help to allocate accents, they create the composition of text, they make conspicuous the principals of the selection of the material and the degree of generalization and completeness.

The supra-phrasal unity is syntactical intonational unity of a higher level than a sentence. It consists of one or several sentences which are connected by conjunctive or adverbial means, pronominal or lexical repetition, the unity of the time plain which is expressed by the common theme and which is studied by syntax and literary stylistics.

The function of cohesion is completed by all elements which repeat something from the preceding information, that substitute or denote something in the preceding or following text. This cohesion may be realized also without special lexical and grammatical means. Thus, the paragraph may be treated as compositional device which helps the reader to comprehend the text, because graphically it reflects its logical and emotive structure.

The characteristic features of the paragraph, which distinguish one style from another and one writer from another, are its relative completeness or incompleteness, self-dependence of the sentences making it up. For example, in the works of impressionists aiming at creating the general impression we can see the lack of syntactic and other formal means of cohesion in the paragraph. In classical works of art we can come across various types of lexical and grammatical constructions.

We should also emphasize that from the point of view of the decoding stylists each element of the text, including the paragraph, influences the reader only in connection with other elements of the text on the whole. That is why while treating the paragraph it’s worth taking into account that its certain self-dependence is relative.

The borders of the paragraph and supra-phrasal unities may coincide. But it’s not obligatory. The paragraph may comprise several supra-phrasal unities, and one supra-phrasal unity may comprise several paragraphs. Thus, the notions of the paragraph and supra-phrasal unity are different. The supra-phrasal unity is a syntactic notion. It’s a chain of sentences united by the theme, the completion of the idea and the communicative prospective. As for the paragraph, it is a graphical compositional unit of the written text. The structure of the paragraph is studied by literary stylistics.

However, we may say that the notion of the supra-phrasal unity doesn’t occupy a due place in the hierarchy of language units. This problem was solved in the school of communicative paradigmatic linguistics in the works of Mark Yakovlevich Blokh (Марк Яковлевич Блох; born in 1924, Kiev). He came up with the notion of a dicteme as a minimal topical unit of the text. The dicteme may be build up either by a cumuleme, i. e. a unity of sentences, or by a single sentence. In the written text the dicteme is normally presented by a paragraph. It is the dicteme where the topic, or the theme, is revealed and the situation of communication takes place. It is important for the appropriate interpretation of the functions of language units. The dicteme is a unit of a dictemic level, i. e. the level higher than the proposemic level, or the level of the sentence.

Thus, the dicteme occupies an appropriate place in the hierarchy of language units. The units of previous levels reveal their functions in the dicteme.

The dicteme is also characterized by its own functions. One of them is stylization. This stylistic characteristic is accumulated from dicteme to dicteme and is reflected on the level of the whole text. No text can exist beyond some stylistic characteristics. But the utterance acquires this stylistic reference only in a certain communicative context. The unit of realization of this context is the dicteme. Thus, the dicteme performs the function of stylization which means the process and result of revealing the sum of the stylistic markers in the dicteme and via the dicteme in the text.

The study of stylization represents a vast problem of lingvostylistics. All language units have their final functional realization on the level of the text as the result of the mental activity of men. Only comprehensive dictemic analysis enables the researcher of lingual phenomena to understand and estimate appropriately the role of language means in rendering certain stylistic information and the functional contribution of language units into the topic, communicative task and stylistic reference of the text.

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