Narrative; - as a means of dynamic description. Emphatic construction “It is he...Who” is turning the simple sentence into a complex one.

e.g. It was only then that I realized it was she I had seen on the lawn that day at Professor Something’s party. (J. Banville)

Emphatic construction with “do” reveals a certain degree of logical and emotional emphasis.

e.g. Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her. (W. Wordsworth)

Enumeration is built up by means of the repetition of homogeneous syntactical units.

e.g. She had lived through and noticed a certain amount of history. A war, a welfare state, the rise of meritocracy, European unity, little England, equality of opportunity, women liberation, the death of the individual. (A.S. Byatt)

Heterogeneous enumeration is used:

- to give the insight into the mind of the observer who pays attention to the variety of miscellaneous objects;

- for the purpose disorderly and therefore striking description;

- to arrest the reader’s attention, making him decipher the message.

Epiphora is the repetition of the same unit at the end of two or more successive clauses or sentences.

e.g. World is evil

Life is evil

All is evil

if i ride the horse of hate

with its evil hooded eye

turning world to evil. (L. Ferlinghetti)

It is used:

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Epithet is a word or a group of words giving an expressive characterization of the object described.

e.g. Trite epithets: blood-thirsty thoughts, dead silence, etc.

Genuine epithets: knifing hangover, elephantine body, industrial-looking food, much-to-long-and-tight-under-the arms dress, she said it in an I-don't-think-you're-being-very-sensitive sort of voice, the tiny box of a kitchen.

It is used to show individual attitude of the speaker towards the person or thing described.

Euphemism is a word that replaces another word of similar but stronger meaning.

e.g. I was thinking an unmentionable thing about your mother. (I. Shaw)

It is used:

- to soften an otherwise coarse or unpleasant idea, to produce mild effect;

- to avoid any kind of discrimination (agism, sexism, etc).

Graphon is intentional violation of the spelling of a word/word combination used to reflect its authentic pronunciation.

e.g. “Thith thtuff thtics in my mouth’, complained the rat. ‘It’th worth than caramel candy’. (E.B. White)

It is used:

- to characterise the speaker as a person of a certain locality, breeding,

education and even social standing;

- to show the speaker’s inability to pronounce words according to the

standard (intoxication, lisp, stammer, etc);

- to reproduce the emphatic pronunciation of words.

Hypallage – metonymical/transferred epithet.

e.g. He took his sad chair and lit a cigarette.

Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement.

e.g. She wore a hat with a crown the size of a whisky glass and a brim you could have wrapped the week’s laundry in. (R. Chandler)

The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. (R. Chandler)

It is used:

- to exaggerate quantity or quality;

- to serve expressive and emotive purposes;

- to produce some humorous effect.

Inversion consists in unusual arrangement of words for the purpose of making one of them more emphatic.

e.g. Of my country and of my family I have little to say. (E.A. Poe)

Irony is the use of a word in a sense that is opposite of its usual meaning. There is always a contrast between the notion named and the notion meant.

e.g. A nice sense of humour – like a morgue attendant. (R. Chandler)

Irony is used:

• to intensify the evaluative meaning of the utterance;

• to produce humorous effect;

• to express very subtle, almost imperceptible nuances of meaning;

• to show irritation, displeasure, pity, regret, etc.

Litotes is expressing an idea by means of negating the opposite idea.

e.g. Mary was in a state of mind to rejoice in a connection with the Bertram family, and to be not displeased with her brother’s marrying a little beneath him. (J. Austen)

Metaphor is transference of names based on similarity between two objects.

e.g. Original metaphor: A man who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there are no eyes.

Trite metaphor: seeds of evil, roots of evil, to burn with desire.

If we do not make common cause to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage. (Abraham Lincoln)

It may serve:

• as an image-creative device;

• to characterise or describe objects or people;

• to impart some expressive or emotive force to utterance.

Meiosis is the opposite of Hyperbole. It is weakening, reducing the real characteristics of the object of speech.

e.g. The pennies were saved by bulldozing the grocer. (O. Henry)

It is used:

- to understate normal qualities of objects;

- to show the speaker’s intentional modesty.

Metonymy is based on contiguity of objects or phenomena having common grounds of existence in reality.

e.g. For several days he took an hour after his work to make inquiry taking with him some examples of his pen and inks. (T. Dreiser)

The pen is mightier than a sword. (anonymous)

It is used:

- to build up imagery;

- to show a property or an essential quality of the concept;

- to impart any special force to linguistic expression.

Onomatopoeia is using speech sounds to imitate the sound of what is being described – nature, people, things, animals etc.

e.g. buzz, whistle, ding-dong.

Crash! The old girl’s head went through the ceiling as though it were butter. (R. Dahl)

It is used:

- to bring out the full flavour of words, their expressive and emotive

connotations;

- to make the acoustic picture of reality;

- to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense.

Oxymoron is an attributive or an adverbial combination of two contradictory or incongruous words.

e.g.

O anything of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness, serious vanity!

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

(W. Shakespear)

Fresh oxymoron: I am a deeply religious unbeliever. (A. Einstein)

Trite oxymoron: awfully good, terribly nice, pretty dirty, etc.

It is used:

• to bring out new shades of meaning by putting together semantically contradictory words;

• to emphasize the emotive meaning;

• to show the author’s subjective individual perception of the object.

Paradox is an assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it.

e.g. It takes a lifetime to become young. (P. Picassso)

It is used:

- to produce the “defeated expectancy” effect;

- to produce humorous or satirical effect.

Parallelism consists in similarity of the syntactical structure of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. Parallelism may be complete, which consists in repetition of identical syntactical structures.

e.g. Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. (M. Sarton)

It is used:

- to convey the idea of semantic equality of the sentence parts;

- to produce some emotive impact on the reader;

- to emphasize the diversity or contrast of ideas (in combination with antithesis);

- to produce some rhythmic effect.

Parenthesis is a qualifying explanatory word or phrase, which interrupts a syntactic construction without effecting it.

e.g. His mouth was set grimly, and a nerve was twitching in his jaw – he had every right to be furious – but in his eyes all I could see was a sort of dreamy sadness. (J. Banville)

It is used:

- to create the second plane or background to the narrative;