The Problem of Stylistic Devices

The problem of stylistic devices touches upon the relative functional value of seemingly identical stylistic resources.

Stylistic device is a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical structural and/or semantic property of a language unit (neutral or expressive) promoted to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model.

Metaphor

Metaphor is a figure of speech in which a word or phrase is applied to an object or action that it does not literally denote in order to imply a resemblance.

Ex: he is a lion in battle

A distinction is made between a metaphor, which compares without like or as; a simile, which uses like or as in the comparison; and personification, which gives human qualities to something that is not human, usually in abstract ideas.

For example: the poem by Emily Dickinson shows how the concept of the brain as a container results in paradoxes as well as fascination with the brain:

THE BRAIN is wider than the sky,

For, put them side by side,

The one the other will include

With ease, and you beside.

The brain is deeper than the sea,

For, hold them, blue to blue,

The one the other will absorb,

As sponges, buckets do.

[...]

(Emily Dickinson 1976: 632) (Metaphors in Cognitive and Neurosciences Which impact have metaphors on scientific theories and models? By Juliana Goschler, Darmstadt (juliana.goschler@alumni.hu-berlin.de) )

Metonemy

Metonemy - метонимия (замена одного слова другим на основе связи их значений по смежности) - the substitution of a word referring to an attribute for the thing that is meant, for example, the use of the crown to refer to a monarch.

In other words the name of an object is transferred to take the place of something else with which it is associated. Normally it requires the knowledge of the target language culture.

Ex: If you say "I spent the evening reading Shakespeare" Shakespeare serves as metonymies. - Если вы сказали: "Я провел вечер, читая Шекспира", то Шекспир является метонимией (заменой "произведение Шекспира").

Institutional metonymies such as the Kremlin and the White House may or may not require any explanation.

Ex: the Kremlin - правительство России

the White House (the US presidency) - Белый дом, правительство США Both the FBI and the White House were determined to learn how the Post was getting its information and to put a stop to it. (C. Bernstein and B. Woodward, ‘All the President's Men’, ch. 4) - ФБР и Белый дом решили докопаться, каким образом "Вашингтон пост" получает подобную информацию, и положить этому конец.

Simile

Similes are more precise, more restricted than metaphors, thus they are easier to translate.

A simile is a comparison that shows similarities in things that are basically different. A simile is usually introduced by as or like. Similes are often used in both poetry and prose.

Ex: My heart is like a singing bird

Whose nest is in a watered shoot;

My heart is like an apple tree

Whose boughs are bent with thickest fruit.

Christina Rossetti

Ex: The ship … went on slowly and swift like a small planet.

Joseph Conrad

And the main problem is cultural, that is how one adopts or transfers the simile.

Ex: snow-white - 1) белоснежный; белый, как снег (в странах, где бывает снег);

2) белый, как перья цапли