The category of gender

The category of gender. The EL is directed towards men and against women.

E.g. master – mistress, poet – poetess, governor – governess.

The male term carries more respect and prestige whereas the female word diminishes the dignity and importance of the word.

He is inquisitive – she is nosy; he shares information – she gossips; He discusses – she chatters; he loses his temper – she is hysterical; he’s cool – she is frigid.

The Article and its stylistic potential.

The article used with proper names creates stylistic connotations.

Indefinite article

E.g. :

• A Forsyte is not an uncommon animal. – refers to a representative of some family with either bad or good reputation.

• A Mr. Brown – charged with negative connotation and diminishes the person’s status.

• I have bought a Rembrandt recently (metonymic antonomasia) – the work produced by somebody.

• You are quite a Monte Cristo! (metaphoric antonomasia) – referring to the person sharing the same features with the famous person.

Definite article

• The Johnsons – family name in the plural – the whole family. You are not the

• Andrew Manson I married. – emphasizes the person’s good or bad qualities.

Absence of articles

the stylistic effect depends on the circumstances of communication, on the sublanguage the text belongs to. (In newspaper headlines, in reference books, telegrams, directions, instructions – officially business style, makes the texts brief and precise; in colloquial speech – carelessness and spontaneity).

Chair comfortable? – spontaneity

Newspaper style – concise and laconic

Official – business style – brief an pe…

The stylistic power of the pronoun.

The pronoun of one type can be transposed into the action sphere of the another. The idea of impersonality can be expressed by:

• personal pronouns we, you, they (They say);

E.g. How are we feeling today? – in the speech of physicians, nurses, mothers addressing children. It is used to unite the speaker and the listener.

The plural of majesty – used in royal speech. We, Charles the Second…

The plural of modesty – scientific prose “we” implies the author and his imaginary reader. Now, we come to the conclusion that…

The plural of humility – used ironically. Oh, we are proud…\

Jast you wait!

You beauty

One of them ladies

Them’s fighting words!

• the pronoun “one” (One never knows);

• a man, a chap, a fellow, a girl;

• noun “body.

Possessive pronoun

Possessive pronoun may be employed not referring to something that belongs to a person, but connecting it emotionally, thus performing emotive function. (Watch what you are about, my man! Take your precious Robert away from my house! Take this bag of yours out of here. The idea of his. Well, you tell that Herman of yours to mind his own business(London)) The structure this/that + noun + of + absolute pronoun – becomes extremely emphatic.

Demonstrative pronouns

Demonstrative pronouns normally serve to single out some objects that have been mentioned before out of the class of similar ones. Their stylistic function is revealed when they do not refer to the objects mentioned. In this case, they express emotions.

The so-called “illiterate demostrative”.

Indefinite pronoun transposed into the class of adj.

The grammatical category of comparison is of great stylistic value in the EL. It is typical of qualitative and quantitative adjectives. So, when adjectives which are normally not used in the comparative or superlative degree are used with this category, they are charged with the strong expressive color. E.g. pinkier, greener.

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Лекция 9.

Stylistic Syntax.

Compression (economy)

Redundance

Redistru

1.Ellipsis. -absence of one or both principal parts in sentence (the subject, the predicate). Ellipsis is typical of colloquial speech. Liveliness in speech. In the following dialogue two questions are answered elliptically. Represent the speech, in exposition, in special text.

:Eg.

- Were they interesting books? – Don’t know. Havent read them

-Where’s the man I’m going to marry? -Out of the garden.

Colloquial speech or character, gravity, amotional

In careless speech the link-verb to be is dropped habitually:“I love that girl.”“You what?” (McBain) In fiction, elliptical sentences are used to reproduce the direct speech of characters, or to impact (усилить) brevity, a quick tempo and emotional tension to the author’s narrative. “He became one of the prominent men of the House. Spoke clearly, sensibly, and modestly, and was never too long. ” (Collins). Elliptical sentences are very frequent in papers or handbooks on technology, encyclopedic dictionaries and reference books of the “Who’s Who” type, in telegraphic messages. The reason is clear: every word is paid for.

2. Nominative sentences’? function is a mere (простой ) statement of the existence of an object, a phenomenon: “London. Fog everywhere. Implacable November weather.” The stylistic effect produced by a nominative sentence is predetermined (предрешается) by the sense of the words of which they consist. Nominative sentences are wildly used in stage directions.3.Absence of auxiliary elements. “Operators” – (prepositions, conjunctions and so on) have, do, be, will, be are very often dropped in informal oral communications. “I been waiting here all morning…” (Robbins); “That be enough?” (Marcus); “She still writing poetry?”;

4.Asyndeton is the absence of conjunctions. Asyndetic connection b/w words, clauses and sentenced is based upon the lexical meanings of the parts connected. Absence of conjunction elements imparts dynamic force to the text. The facts show that in colloquial speech the most frequent are conditional and temporal asyndentic adverbial clauses: “He came. He saw. He conquered.”

5. Apokoinu construction – irregular oral speech, presents a blend of 2 clauses into 1; to emphasize the careless or uneducated character.( I’m first one saw her = I’m first one who saw her; It was then he met her. = It was then_he wet her; There was a door led to the kitchen. There’s not a man tries harder for his family)

6. Aposiopesis a sudden intentional break in the narration or dialogue. The listener should to complete the sentence in his mind. Graphicaly or with dash. Ex: “Surely you can’t wish..” – her voice trailed off . “If everyone at 20 realized that half his life was to be lived after 40…”

7. Break in the narrative (=mreak-in-narration) the character’s peech is interrupted by someone else’s words or actions.

Syntactical stylistic devices based on redundancy of language means:

Repetition is synt. exp-ve means which shows speaker’s strong emotions. It is a stylistic device which aims to attract readers attention to a certain idea. Adjacent sentences are often identical or analogous by their syntactical (or morphological) structures. Morphological: root repetition – semantic signiface. (murmuring voices, murmurous faces) affix repetition – (Yes he had done those sinful thing, secretly, filthily), (Bewitched and bewildered am I)

Lexical repetition proper key-word of the utterance:

Ordinary repetition – identical units which has no fixed structure.

Polysyndeton - repetition of conjunctions and or connecting words. associations with the style of the Bible, in which nearly every sentence, or at least almost every paragraph begins with and. Excessive use of the conjunction and often betrays (передаёт) the poverty (бедность) of the speaker’s syntax, showing the primitiveness of the character. The story would be the same in Ohio or Montana, in Kansas or Kentucky or Illinois.

Pleonasm\lexical tautology – repetition the same idea in different words. It’s considered to be a falt of style, use more words then necessary to express idea. .“I wished my hands and face before I come, I did… I know what the like of you are, I do.” (Shaw)

Syntactical tautology (prolepsis). -repetition of the noun in the form of the corresponding personal pronoun. The stylistic function is topicalization of the “theme”. “Miss Tillie Webster, she slept forty days and nights without waking up.” (O. Henry) (the speech of uneducated people).

Assimilation or even identity of two or more neighboring sentences is called parallelism (“parallel constructions”). parallelism is a variety of repetition, but not a repetition of lexically identical sentences, only a repetition of syntactical constructions: John kept silent; Mary was thinking. Parallelism contributes to rhythmic and melodic unification of neighboring sentences.

Lexico-syntactical repetitions: