Oxymoron

Oxymoron is a combination of two words in which the meanings of the two clash, being opposite in sense: a nice rascal, a deafening silence from Whitehall, a bitter sweet taste, an ugly beauty. These two incompatible characteristics produce a certain new feeling. These two characteristics are not just mutually exclusive. They present somewhat like a unity of simultaneously existing contradictory qualities in the described phenomenon.

As a rule, one of the two members of oxymoron illuminates the feature which is universally observed, while the other one offers a purely subjective individual perception of the object. Thus in an oxymoron we also deal with the foregrounding of emotive meaning.

Structures of oxymoron.

The most widely known structure of oxymoron is attributive. There may be one (a deafening silence) or two attributes to one object (It was a pleasing dreadful thought).

The next structure includes a verb: to shout mutely, to cry silently.

There are possible some other structures as well.

Originality of oxymoron becomes especially evident in non-attributive structures, which are used to express semantic contradiction. E.g.: “the street damaged by improvements” (O.Henry), or “silence was louder than thunder”. Or “You are wrong in the right way”.

Oxymorons rarely become trite, for their components, linked forcibly, repulse each other and oppose repeated use.

There are few colloquial oxymorons, all of them showing a high degree of the speaker’s emotional involvement in the situation, as in “damn nice”, awfully pretty”.

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is a SD in which emphasis is achieved through deliberate exaggeration. The feelings and emotions of the speaker are so ruffled that he resorts to intensifying the quantitative or the qualitative aspect of the mentioned object. Hyperbole is one of the most common expressive means of our everyday speech. When we describe our admiration or anger and say “I would gladly see this film a hundred times” or “ I have told it to you a thousand times” – we use trite language hyperboles, which through long and repeated use have lost their originality and remain signals of the speaker’s roused [rauzed] emotions.

Hyperbole may be the final effect of another SD – metaphor or irony (He has the tread of a rhinoceros [rainoseres]).

Hyperbole can be expressed by all notional parts of speech.

In case of hyperbole it is very important for both communicants to realize, that one of them is exaggerating not to denote actual quality or quantity, but to signal the emotional background of the utterance. If this mutual understanding is absent, hyperbole turns into a mere lie.

Types of hyperbole.

Usually we distinguish two types of hyperbole: 1) quantitative and 2) qualitative.

Quantitative hyperbole is usually less striking, less emphatic and less interesting. It’s trite hyperbole. E.g.: “I told you thousand times” or “She is a hundred years old”. These are mostly pure exaggerations.

The second type is much more interesting and expressive. It is often used to achieve a humorous effect. Some feature can be overstated to such a degree that it borders on absurdity. For example, a passage about a girl who was eavesdropping. She strained to overhear somebody’s conversation and the author says: “if her ear rotates much further to the left she’ll be picking up CNN on satellite”.