The theory of image. The image structure, types of images.

Image – a speech fragment that contains image-bearing information.

- any word expression that imparts picturesqueness and vividness.

In verbal art imagery is embodied in words used in a figurative way to attain a higher artistic expressiveness.

Unlike the words in literal expressions which denote, or say directly what they mean according to common verbal practice or dictionary usage, words in figurative expressions connote, or acquire additional layers of meaning in a particular context.

Thus, the literal (dictionary, logical) meaning is the one easily restored irrespective of the context, while the figurative (contextual) meaning is the one materialised in the given context.

So, the verbal image is a pen-picture of a thing, person or idea expressed in a figurative way, i.e. by words used in their contextual meaning. Images – due to their frequent use – often become recognized symbols.

E.g. a bridge for ‘transition from past to future, from bad to good, from danger to rescue’ (‘Old Man at the Bridge’ by E. Hemingway).Linguistic figurativeness or linguistic imagery can be found in various lexical lingual means that are termed either tropes (Ancient Gk. tropos ‘to turn’), or – like in our course – lexical stylistic devices.

A trope can be defined as a sort of transfer based on the interplay of lexical meanings of a word that results in establishing connections between different or even opposite notions or things, which are understood to have some similarity in the given context.NB! Imagery can be created by lexical SD’s only.

The rest of stylistic devices (morphological and syntactical, phonetic, graphic) do not create imagery, but serve as intensifiers: they can add some logical, emotive, expressive information to the utterance.

In rhetoric the verbal image is described as a complex phenomenon, a double picture generated by linguistic means, which is based on the co-presence of two thoughts of different things active together:

• the direct thought – the tenor (T).

• the figurative thought – the vehicle (V).

E.g. She (T) is a bird of passage (V).The tenor is the subject of thought, while the vehicle is the concept of a thing, person or an abstract notion with which the tenor is compared or identified.

As I.V. Arnold points out, the structure of a verbal image also includes:

• the ground of comparison (G) — the similar feature of Т and V;

• the relation (R) between Т and V;

• the type of identification/comparison or, simply, the type of a trope.

Images may be:

• general (macroimages), e.g. ‘The Moon and Sixpence’ by W.S. Maugham

• individual (microimages), e.g. that great ocean of deep depression. (Priestley)

I.R. Galperin divides images into three categories:

• visual, e.g. It was a feast of colour. (Maugham)

• aural (acoustic), e.g. He sprang to the machine, which was now going pocketa-pocketa-queep-pocketa-queep. (Thurber)

• relational, e.g. a man of figures, a man of great dignity. (Priestley)

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