Linguistic Stylistics - Gabriela Missikova part2

The second group is related to death (e.g. to die transformed into to fall asleep, to join the silent majority, etc.).

The third group provides examples of conversational taboos viewed historically. From the 19th century Victorian era several examples are listed: pregnant women were described as being in an interesting condition, in a delicate condition, in the family way or expectant; the word leg was substituted by limb, trousers were inexplicables, unmentionables, etc. These, from the present perspective, humorous inventions were obviously extreme attempts to avoid naming very common objects of everyday life. However, there are still many sensitive topics in the ettiquette of British and American culture that lead to the coinage of new euphemisms, mainly when people talk about the human body and its biological functions. For example, the word naked may be replaced by the phrase in one’s birthday suit, the verbs to sweat, to spit, to urinate are replaced by better sounding equivalents: to perspire, to expectorate, to pass water. Other euphemisms are used when talking about someone’s appearance, for instance, fat – stout, portly, plump, rotund or heavyset; certain states such as drunk

– intoxicated, merry, feeling mellow, tired and emotional, mad – queer, etc.

The last area of euphemisms, studied by E. Ciprianová, is related to the linguistic representation of social reality. In the 1980s, as a result of the movement for political correctness, many euphemisms were coined. They referred to physically or mentally handicapped people (e.g. blind people – hard of seeing, sightless, visually challenged, visually impared; deaf people – hard of hearing, people with hearing impairments; etc.). Social groups perceived as disadvantaged because of age (elderly

–senior citizens), marital status (unmarried mother – single parent), race (Negro, colored, black – African-American, Afro-American), material conditions (poor people

–underprivileged, poor countries – the Third World, developing countries, emerging nations). Certain professions were also renamed, for example, garbage man – sanitary engineer, janitor – custodial engineer, postman – letter carrier, undertaker – funeral director, exterminator – pest control officer. (In: Ciprianová, 2002).

Hyperbole

Hyperbole is a deliberate overstatement or exaggeration, the aim of which is to intensify one of the features of the object in question to a degree which will show its utter absurdity. For example,

“Those three words conveyed the one idea of Mr. Dombey’s life. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in and the sun and moon were made to give them light. Rivers and seas were formed to float their ships; rainbows gave them promise of fair weather; winds blew for or against their enterprises; stars and planets circled in their orbits to preserve inviolate a system of which they were the centre.”

(Ch. Dickens)

“Oh, it was so cold, the water’d take your breath away, but you’d soon forget that, and it was the best day of the week.”

(D. Lessing)

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5.3Peculiar Use of Set Expressions

Cliché

Generally defined as an expression that has become stereotyped. It has lost originality, ingenuity, and impact by long overuse. There is one more point that should be stressed, a cliché strives after originality, whereas it has lost the aesthetic generating power it once had (Galperin, ibid., p. 175). Examples of a real cliché are: rosy dreams of youth, the patter of little feet, deceptively simple. Definitions taken from various dictionaries show that cliché is a derogatory term and it is therefore necessary to avoid anything that may be called cliché mainly in creative writing. K. Wales (ibid., p. 66) points out that we could hardly do without them in ordinary colloquial and familiar speech and provides examples of habitual collocations (deep feeling, slim chance), similes (as dead as a doornail) and formulas (many happy returns) where pragmatic motivation (consolation, politeness, etc.) is primary.

Proverbs and Sayings

Proverbs and sayings can be best characterised by their semantic aspect. Unlike ordinary utterances, proverbs and sayings convey ideas which are not expressed directly. Thus their literal meaning is secondary and can be overseen. It is their transferred meaning which contains the ideas the recipient should infer. In general, proverbs and sayings are the concentrated wisdom of the people. They can achieve new freshness when used in a novel, specific way (defamiliarization of notoriously known language items by means of the exploitation of the contextual aspect, modifications of structural patterns, substitutions of lexical items, etc.). The following examples illustrate the original use of proverbs by J. Galsworthy and D. Lessing:

“Come!” he said, “milk’s spilt.”

(from It is no use crying over spilt milk!)

“You know which side the law’s buttered.”

(from His bread is buttered on both sides.)

“Yet they too smash everything up, not just the usual undergraduate loutishness, boys will be boys, but what seems to be a need for systematic destruction.”

Catch-phrase

A catch-phrase is a short sentence or an expression which is well-known because it is often used by a particular well-known person, especially a movie star or an entertainer who appears on television. One of several catch-phrases used by British comedian Arthur Askey (1900-82) was “Hello playmates!”. The phrase was widely mimicked by others, especially in the 1940s and 1950s. The catch-phrase “I want to be alone” is associated with the Sweedish-born US film actress Greta Garbo. She said the words in Grand Hotel (1932) and, in conjunction with her aloof beauty and reclusive lifestyle they became one of the best known of all cinema legends. The line from the film

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Casablanca (1942), starring Ingrid Bergman and Humphrey Bogart, “here’s looking at you, kid” became the latter‘s catch-phrase. Another catch-phrase “Carry on, London” is connected with the pre-war (1933) radio programme In Town Tonight. It was introduced by an excerpt of the sound of London‘s traffic (always the same sound) being brought to a halt by a voice shouting ‘Stop’. Interesting people who were visiting the capital were then introduced and interviewed. At the end of the programme the voice restored the traffic with the phrase “Carry on, London”, which in the Blitz and later V2 and V1 attacks became a slogan expressing that London will survive.

A catch-phrase connected with a TV commercial “alas, my poor brother” is borrowed from a Bovril advertisement in the 1920s. The exclamation, with its echoes of Hamlet’s famous line, is uttered by a bovine lamenting the transformation of an erstwhile sibling into a tin of the beefy beverage.

Catch-phrases are often connected with a particular historical event, for example, “Abyssinia!” is a catch-phrase dating from the time of the Abyssinian War (1935-36) and it means „I‘ll be seeing you“. Another catch-phrase “according to plan” was derived from communiques issued during World War I when it became associated with official attempts to cover up military blunders and setbacks. It was thus employed ironically to describe things that did not go according to plan. The catch-phrase “Anything goes” meaning “anything is permissible” originated in America in the 1930s. It was the title song of the 1934 Cole Porter musical chosen intentionally to reflect the liberated moral climate of the times:

In olden days, a glimpse of stocking Was looked on as something shocking, But now, Heaven knows,

Anything goes.

(In: Brewer’s Dictionary of the 20th-Century Phrase and Fable. London, 1993.)

Aphorism

A consise and often witty statement of wisdom or opinion, such as ‘Children should be seen not heard’ or ‘People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’

(Hirsch, Kett, Trefil, 1993, p.144).

Epigrams

An epigram is any pithy, witty saying or short poem. An aphorism can serve as an epigram, if it is brief. Several authors are noted for their epigrams (ibid., p. 148):

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Quotations

A repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech and the like, used by way of authority, illustration, proof or as a basis for further speculation on a matter. For example:

“Next to the originator of a good sentence is the first quoter of it.”

(R. W. Emerson)

Some quotations are now fixed in dictionaries and labelled as proverbs. For instance, the sentence:

“If you can‘t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.”

was originally pronounced by Major-General Harry Vaughan. The US President Harry S. Truman used it in 1952 when he announced that he would not be standing again for the presidency. The quotation is now considered as a proverb (Brewer, 1994; Kvetko, 2002).

Allusions

An indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythological or biblical fact or to a fact of everyday life made in the course of writing or speaking. The use of allusion presupposes knowledge of the fact, thing or person alluded to on the part of the reader or listener. As a rule no indication of the source is given:

“Where is the road now, and its merry incidents of life! ...old honest, pimplenosed coachmen? I wonder where are they, those good fellows? Is old Weller alive or dead?”

(W. Thackeray, an allusion to the famous character of Ch. Dickens’s novel)

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Chapter 6:

STYLISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF LEXICAL

EXPRESSIVE MEANS

6.1Stylistic Characteristics of Parts of Speech

Basic lexis

can be classified according to different criteria, for example standard vs. nonstandard words and expressions, abstract vs. concrete words, colloquial vs. literary

(bookish), colloquial vs. technical terms, etc. The overlap of all these categories creates a group of neutral words which are commonly known as standard vocabulary. Based on the frequency of usage of particular parts of speech the following types of style can be examined (Mistrík, ibid., pp. 42-102):

•Nominal style abounds in nouns and thus is mainly static. The long sentences prevail in this style because many facts and data have to be provided. The degree of repetition of words and expressions is quite low. The lexis of this style uses nouns (nominal lexis), denoting persons, animals, objects, materials, etc. The classification of nominal lexis into several groups is possible (these are commonly known pairs of categories, as for example, abstract/concrete, collective/group nouns, Sg/Pl, etc.).

•Verbal style abounds in verbs and is very dynamic. The lexis used in this style denotes processes (processual lexis) and consists of different types of verbs: auxiliaries, lexical verbs, clips, etc.

Qualifying lexis

are mainly adjectives, adverbs and numerals. They are mainly used to modify nouns and verbs, and to express qualities (number or amount) of persons, things and processes.

Some adjectives, being part of a nominal phrase, undergo interesting changes within the process of language development. What is known as “univerbalisation” in Slovak can be compared with the word-forming process in English called conversion. In the case of “univerbalisation”, the main idea is to reduce a noun phrase into a single word expression (mainly) in spoken colloquial language which brings about a change of stylistic characteristics, i.e. formal expressions are made informal. In addition to colloquial language, many examples can be found in the language of newspapers. In the case of English conversion the change of stylistic characteristics does not always take place (for instance, to call > a call, to go > a go, empty > to empty, carpet > to carpet, etc.). Conversion is a standard word-forming process,

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which is very frequent and popular in English. Considering the qualities of the English language system, there are no syntactic or morphological limitations or obstacles to conversion (there is no inflection in English). Conversion especially blossoms in certain fields, for example, in the language of computers where the number of used words is limited, so they often serve for nouns and verbs (sometimes also adjectives and adverbs) at the same time. Examples of the Slovak “univerbalisation” resembling conversion are hlavný čašník > hlavný, chorý človek > chorý, drahá žena > drahá, vysoká škola > vysoká, etc. (Compare the examples of English conversion, for example, poor people > the poor, unemployed people > the unemployed, high school > a/the high, etc.) The word-forming process known as clipping should be mentioned here too. Examples like final exams > finals, delicatessen > deli, binoculars > binocs, permanent waves > perm, resemble the process of univerbalisation even closer, they involve changes in stylistic classification. (Some examples of blends could be quoted here as well.)

Grammatical lexis

is present in every language and its main function is to enable the construction of (smaller or bigger units of) utterances which are in accordance with the grammar of particular languages. The functions of prepositions and conjunctions are commonly known, however, in stylistics, we often study peculiar usage of grammatical lexis. For example, secondary prepositions are always expressive (stylistically marked) and the study of synonymy and repetition of prepositions brings about information on the style of the studied text. Conjunctions can also be used in a very specific way; they can be overused or omitted in the text, which is also a stylistically relevant piece of information.

Historically marked lexis

as opposed to the neutral lexis, always brings expressiveness to the text. For example, the following groups of words are always stylistically marked, that is they create expressiveness in the text: anachronisms, archaisms, historicisms, neologisms. It is not common to use these terms in English stylistics. Discussing archaic lexis, I. R. Galperin (ibid., p. 75) refers to obsolescent words (gradually passing out of use), obsolete words (already gone completely but still recognized by the speakers) and archaic proper (no longer recognizable in modern English).

A detailed explanation of the above mentioned groups of words can be found in a dictionary of poetic terms written in Slovak by T. Žilka (1987) who defines archaisms (from Gk. archaios = ancient) as words or phrases which are outdated, obsolete and out of use. Their stylistic function lies in their capability to evoke the atmosphere of the time of their active usage, for instance, in historical fiction (ibid., p. 142).

Anachronisms (from Gk. anachronismos = ‘generally valid’ or ‘without time restriction’) are traditionally understood as the words which are outdated or archaic. However, as a specific stylistic device, verbal and factual anachronism can be classified. When a word or notion which simply does not fit into the time of a text (a novel, drama, etc.) is used, we recognise verbal anachronism (Sk. slovné

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anachronizmy). This is often the case of the historical or mythological literary works where items or particular realia from later historical periods appear. For instance in W. Shakespeare‘s tragedy Julius Caesar we have a clock striking but there was not this kind of clock in ancient Rome. Similarly, in J. Anouilha‘s play Antigona some characters are smoking. As T. Žilka further points out, the second type of anachronism, so called factual anachronism (Sk. vecný anachronizmus) functions as a much stronger stylistic device. It is used intentionally as one of the secondary features of science-fiction literature to foreground the theme and language, to evoke a grotesque situation (ibid., p. 143-4). For example, the characters ‘from the past’ or ‘from the future’ are brought alive to exhibit specific characteristics and qualities of the ‚present‘ people. We have to note here that the notion of anachronism seen as a stylistic device overlaps the borders of the lexical level.

Historicisms and neologisms are often viewed as the opposite poles of the same axis (Mistrík, ibid., p. 90). Historicisms are defined as words belonging to the standard language and denoting realia which has ceased to exist. Thus we can find historicisms mainly in historical texts where they often function as technical terms (Mistrík, ibid., p. 73).

In general, the sources of anachronisms, archaisms, historicisms and neologisms are mainly the language of the Bible, liturgy, legal language and local dialects.

There is also a special group of words called nonce words, that means ‘created for one occasion’. They do not catch on and the creator usually remains the only person who used them. This is very often the case of the (creative) writers, for example the dream language of James Joyce in Finnegan’s Wake.

Professionally marked lexis

is represented by the group of words called professionalisms. Professional expressions often create a whole complex of language means which is known as professional slang or jargon (informal language of people of the same profession or professional interests). Professionalisms are often created as informal (slang) counterparts of technical terms.

Expressive lexis

In stylistics, we often discuss the lexis which creates expressiveness in utterances. In addition to their expressive function some lexemes also have an emotional function and can create emotiveness. All emotive lexis is expressive, but not all expressive lexis is emotional. Expressiveness is superordinated, a more general term than emotiveness. For example, swear words are always expressive, that is stylistically marked, but have no emotive function. (Emotive function means to show or / and create emotions.) The following groups of words and more (semantically and formally) fixed expressions (idioms) represent expressive lexical means:

•euphemisms, e.g. die > pass away or depart this life, it should be noted here that some euphemisms are not appropriate in certain texts;

•melioratives (they “better” the meaning), e.g. illegitimate child > love child;

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•pejoratives (they “worsen” the meaning), e.g. die > go West, push up (the) daisies, turn one's toes;

•vulgarisms (also called swear words, dirty words, four letter words);

•diminutives (denote something “small, weak, cute or loveable”);

•laudatives (from Latin laudo > to praise, express appraisal, often overlap with diminutives and familiar words);

•augmentatives (opposite to diminutives, they denote something strong and big, or unpleasant).

Other means of expressiveness are, for example, particles, exploitation of onomatopoeia and children’s speech.

Lexis of foreign origin

is represented by borrowed and loan-words. Some of these words are specific for the language communities living in Europe thus they are sometime called Europeisms.

Phraseological lexis

is a powerful means of expressiveness. As P. Kvetko (2002) points out the terms collocations and idioms are most frequently used to refer to different, the same or very similar words or multi-word expressions. To refer to more semantically and formally fixed expressions, the term idiom is frequently used (phraseme, phraseological unit). The most relevant features of idioms are: multi-word character, institutionalization, certain degree of semantic opacity and fixedness, ready-made reproduction, functional unity, etc. (ibid., p. 12).

Idioms are always foregrounded in text, their form being often as equally expressive as their meaning. In fact, many metaphors, metonyms, personifications, hyperboles, absurdities, understatements, exaggerations, ironies, etc. are idioms exhibiting a certain degree of opacity. In addition to a degree of opacity or transparency, P. Kvetko also considers a specific degree of motivation and distinguishes three main types of idioms: pure idioms (kick the bucket), semi-opaque idioms (behind closed doors) and semi-idioms (sb‘s blue-eyed boy). He also claims that the boundaries between these groups are not always clear cut (ibid., p. 23).

Creation of fixed expressions and phrases is connected with some phenomena which were mentioned earlier. For example, the tendency to make expressions shorter, i.e. univerbalisation or univerbalism, and the tendency to use more words instead of one, i.e. multiverbalism (e.g. sanitary engineer < garbage man, custodial engineer < custodian, janitor, mortical surgeon < undertaker, preowned car < second hand car, etc.).

The use of flowery language provides interesting material for stylistic study (e.g. ‘Too many cooks spoil the broth.’ > Too great a number of culinary assistants may impair the flavour of the consommé. or ‘Native insects do more damage to trees and grass than we realise.’ > Endemic insect populations cause little-realised amounts of damage to forage and timber.).

Among phraseological lexis proverbs, quotations and abbreviations are classified too.

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