5.1. Stylistic Syntax and Its Concern
Stylistic Syntax concerns itself with the expressive potential of syntax, i.e. with how the expressive values of syntax are used for a stylistic effect. Syntax as a branch of language science studies a set of rules governing sentence constructions, arrangements of sentence elements, types of relations between words, word-combinations, sentences, supra-phrasal units, etc. They belong to the communicative side of the language, i.e. they serve the purpose of human communication (‘what to say’). Beyond this communicative side lies the emotive side (‘how to say’).
In traditional Stylistics all syntactic structures aimed at expressiveness are called figures of speech.
Sentences vary according to the type of communication and their structure.
According to the type of communication sentences are classified into the interrogative, declarative, imperative, exclamatory.
Exclamatory sentences carry expressiveness as their inherent quality. They are marked by a peculiar word-order, structure and emotive intonation.
Declarative, interrogative and imperative sentences may also acquire an emotional tone marked by emphatic intonation in speech and by exclamatory marks in writing.
E.g. I must swim!
The structural syntactic aspect is sometimes regarded as the crucial issue in stylistic analysis, although the peculiarities of syntactic arrangement are not so conspicuous as the lexical and phraseological properties of the utterance.
The examination of syntax provides a deeper insight into the stylistic aspect of utterances. I.R. Galperin groups all figures of speech according to:
- Compositional patterns of syntactic arrangement
- Stylistic inversion
- Detached construction
- Parallel construction
- Suspense
- Climax (Gradation)
- Anticlimax
- Antithesis
- Particular ways of combining parts of the utterance
- Asyndeton
- Polysyndeton
- Particular use of colloquial constructions
- Ellipsis
- Break-in-the-narrative (Aposiopesis)
- Question-in-the-narrative
- Represented speech
- Stylistic use of structural meaning
- Rhetorical question
- Litotes
5.2. Compositional Patterns of Syntactical Arrangement
Stylistic Inversion is a figure of speech based on specific word order. It aims at attaching logical stress or additional emotional colouring to the surface meaning of the utterance. Therefore a specific intonation pattern is the inevitable element of inversion. Stylistic inversion in Modern English should not be regarded as violation of Standard English. It is only a practical realization of what is potential in the language itself.
The following patterns of stylistic inversion are most frequently met in both English prose and poetry:
- The object is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
E.g. Talent Mr. Micawber has; capital Mr. Micawber has not.
- The attribute is placed after the word it modifies. This model is often used when there is more than one attribute.
E.g. With finger weary and worn...(Thomas Hood);
Once upon a midnight dreary...(E.A.Poe)
- The predicative is placed before the subject.
E.g. A good generous prayer it was. (Mark Twain)
- The predicative stands before the link-verb and both are placed before the subject
E.g. Rude am I in my speech... (Shakespeare)
- The adverbial modifier is placed at the beginning of the sentence.
E.g. Eagerly I wished the morrow. (Poe)
My dearest daughter, at your feet I fall. (Dryden)
- Both modifier and predicate stand before the subject.
E.g. In went Mr. Pickwick. (Dickens); Down dropped the breeze. (Coleridge)
These models comprise the most common and recognized models of inversion. However, in Modern English and American poetry there appears a definite tendency to experiment with the word order to the extent, which may render the message unintelligibly. In this case there may be an almost unlimited number of rearrangements of the members of the sentence.
Detached construction is a SD in which one of the secondary parts of a sentence by some specific consideration of the writer is placed so that it seems formally independent of the word it logically refers to. They seem to dangle in the sentence as isolated parts.
Detached parts assume a greater degree of significance and are given prominence by intonation. The most common cases of detached constructions are those in which an attribute or an adverbial modifier is placed not with its immediate referent, but in some other position.
E.g. Sir Pitt came in first, very much flushed, and rather unsteady in his gait. (Thackeray)
The essential quality of detached constructions lies in the fact that the isolated parts represent a kind of independent whole thrust into the sentence or placed in a position which will make the phrase seem independent. But this phrase cannot become a primary member of the sentence.
A variant of detached construction is parenthesis - a qualifying, explanatory or appositive word, phrase, clause, sentence, etc. which interrupts a syntactic construction without otherwise affecting it
E.g. June stood in front, fending off this idle curiosity - a little bit of a thing, as somebody said, ‘all hair and spirit’. (Galsworthy)
Parallel construction is a device, which deals not so much with a sentence but with supra-phrasal units and paragraphs. The necessary condition in parallel construction is identical or similar structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession.
E.g. There were, [...], real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and real china cups to drink it out of, and plates of the same to hold the cakes and toast in. (Dickens)
Parallel constructions are often backed up by repetition of words (lexical repetition) and conjunctions or prepositions (polysyndeton). Pure parallel construction, however, depends only on repetition of the syntactical design of the sentence.
Parallel constructions may be partial and complete. Partial parallel arrangement is the repetition of some part of successive sentences or clauses.
E.g. Our senses perceive no extremes. Too much sound deafens us; too much light dazzles us; too great distance or proximity hinders our view.
Complete parallel arrangement, also called balance, is the repetition of identical structures throughout the corresponding sentences.
E.g. And so, from hour to hour, we ripe and ripe,
And then, from hour to hour, we rot and rot. (Shakespeare)
Chiasmus (reversed parallel constructions) is a SD based on the repetition of a syntactic pattern of two successive sentences or parts of a sentence, in which the word-order of one of the sentences is inverted as compared to that of the other.
E.g. He kissed her, she allowed him to be kissed.
E.g. He looked at the gun, and the gun looked back at him.
The device is effective as it helps to lay stress on the second part of the utterance, which is opposite in structure. Chiasmus can appear only when there are two successive or coordinate parts of a sentence.
Repetition is an EMs of the language used when the speaker is under the stress of strong emotion.
E.g. «Stop!» - she cried. «Don’t tell me! I don’t want to hear; I don’t want to hear what you’ve come for. I don’t want to hear.» Here repetition is not a SD; it is a means by which the excited state of the speaker’s mind is shown.
When used as a SD, repetition acquires quite different functions. It does not aim at making a direct emotional impact. On the contrary, repetition aims at logical emphasis to fix the attention of the reader on the key-word of the utterance.
E.g. For that was it! Ignorant of the long stealthy march of passion, and of the state of which it had reduced Fleur; ignorant of how Soames had watched her, ignorant of Fleur’s reckless desperation...- ignorant of all this, everybody felt aggrieved. (Galsworthy)
Repetition is classified according to compositional patterns:
- Anaphora – the repeated word comes at the beginning of two or more sentences. (e.g. above)
- Epiphora – the repeated unit is placed at the end of the consecutive sentences.
E.g. I am exactly the man to be placed in a superior position in such a case as that. I am above the rest of mankind, in such a case as that. I can act with philosophy in such a case as that. (Dickens)
- Framing – repetition arranged in the form of a frame: the initial parts of a syntactic unit, in most cases of a paragraph, are repeated at the end of it.
E.g. Poor doll’s dressmaker! How often so dragged down by hands that should have raised her up; how often so misdirected when losing her way on the eternal road and asking guidance. Poor, little doll’s dressmaker. (Dickens)
- Anadiplosis (or linking repetition) - the last word or phrase of one part of an utterance is repeated at the beginning of the next part, thus hooking the two parts together.
E.g. Freeman and slave... carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary re-constitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. (Marx, Engels)
- Chain-repetition – the linking repetition used several times.
E.g. A smile would come into Mr. Pickwick’s face: the smile extended into a laugh: the laugh into a roar, and the roar became general. (Dickens)
Enumeration is a SD by which separate things, objects, phenomena, actions, etc. are named one by one so that they produce a chain of homogeneous parts of speech. Enumeration as a SD has no continuous existence in their manifestation. Sometimes the grouping of absolutely heterogeneous notions occur only in isolated instances to meet some peculiar purpose of the writer.
E.g. There Harold gazed on a work divine,
A blending of all beauties: stream and dells,
Fruit, foliage, crag, wood, cornfield, mountain, vine
And chiefless castles breathing stern farewells
From grey but leafy walls, where Ruin greenly dwells. (Byron)
There is hardly anything in this enumeration that could be regarded as making some extra impact on the reader: each word is closely connected with the following and the preceding ones, and the effect is what the reader associates with natural scenery. The following example is different:
E.g. Scrooge was his sole executor, his sole administrator, his sole assign, his sole residuary legatee, his sole friend and his sole mourner. (Dickens)
The enumeration here is heterogeneous; the legal terms placed in a string together with such words as ‘friend’ and ‘mourner’ result in a kind of clash, a thing typical of any SD.
Enumeration is often used as a device to depict scenery through a tourist’s eyes:
E.g. Fleur’s wisdom in refusing to write to him was profound, for he reached each new place entirely without hope or fever, and could concentrate immediate attention on the donkeys and tumbling bells, the priests, patios, beggars, children, crowing cocks, sombreros, cactus-hedges, old high white villages, goats, olive-trees, greening plains, singing birds in tiny cages, watersellers, sunsets, melons, mules, great churches, pictures, and swimming grey-brown mountains of a fascinating land. (Galsworthy ‘To Let’)
In this example the various elements of enumeration can be grouped in semantic fields:
E.g. donkeys, mules, crowing corks, goats, singing birds;
E.g. priests, beggars, children, watersellers;
E.g. villages, patios, cactus-hedges, churches, tumbling bells, sombreros, pictures;
E.g. sunsets, swimming grey-brown mountains, greening plains, olive-trees, melons.
Galsworthy found it necessary to arrange them not according to logical semantic centres, but in some other order, which would apparently suggest the rapidly changing impressions of a tourist. Enumeration of this kind assumes a stylistic function and may be regarded as a SD.
E.g. The principal production of these towns… appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers and dock-yard men. (Dickens Pickwick Papers)
Suspense is a compositional device which consists in arranging the matter of a communication so that the less important, descriptive, subordinate parts are amasses at the beginning, while the main idea is withheld till the end of the sentence. Thus the reader’s attention is held and his interest kept up:
E.g. Mankind, says a Chinese manuscript, which my friend M. Was obliging enough to read and explain to me, for the first seventy thousand ages ate their meat raw. (Charles Lamb)
Sentences of this type are called periodic sentences, or periods. Their function is to create suspense, to keep the reader in a state of uncertainty and expectation. This device is especially favoured by orators, apparently due to the strong influence of intonation which helps to create the desired atmosphere of expectation and emotional tension which goes with it.
Suspense always requires long stretches of speech or writing, but the main purpose is to prepare the reader for the only logical conclusion of the utterance.
E.g. If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance to their doubting too; […]
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings – nor lose the common touch
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And – which is more – you’ll be a Man, my son! (from If by Kipling)
Climax (Gradation) is an arrangement of sentences (or of homogeneous parts of one sentence) so that each in turn has a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance:
E.g. It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city.
E.g. All this was her property, her delight, her life.
A gradual increase in significance may be maintained in three ways: logical, emotional and quantitative.
Logical climax is based on the relative importance of the component parts considered from the viewpoint of the concepts embodied in them:
E.g. Nobody ever stopped him in the street to say, with gladsome looks, “My dear Scrooge, how are you? When will you come to see me?” No beggars implored him to bestow a trifle, no children asked him what it was o’clock, no man or woman ever once in all his life inquired the way to such and such a place, of Scrooge. Even the blind men’s dogs appeared to know him, and when they saw him coming on, would tug their owners into doorways […]; and then wag their tails, as though they said, “No eye at all is better than an evil eye, dark master!”(Dickens Christmas Carol)
Emotional climax is based on the relative emotional tension produced by words with emotive meaning:
E.g. He was pleased when the child began to adventure across floors on hands and knees; he was gratified, when she managed the trick of balancing herself on two legs; he was delighted when she first said ‘tata’; and he was rejoiced when she recognized him and smiled at him. (Alan Paton)
Quantitative climax is an increase in the volume of the corresponding concepts:
E.g. They looked at hundreds of houses; they climbed thousands of stairs; they inspected innumerable kitchens. (Maugham)
The most wide-spread climax is a three-step structure, in which the intensification of the logical importance, emotion or quantity is rising from step to step, though in emotive climax one can come across a two-step structure (here the 2nd part repeats the 1st one, but with some intensifier):
E.g. I’ll be sorry, I’ll be truly sorry to leave you here, my friend.
There is a device that is called anticlimax. It is such an arrangement of ideas, in which there is a gradual increase in significance, but the final idea (which the reader expects to be the culminating one, like in climax) is trifling or farcical; i.e. it is a sudden drop from the serious to the ridiculous:
E.g. In days of yore, a mighty rumbling was heard in a Mountain. It was said to be in labour, and multitudes flocked together, from far and near, to see what it would produce. After long expectations and many wise conjectures from the bystanders – out popped, a Mouse! (Aesop The Mountain In Labour)
E.g. This war-like speech, received with many a cheer,
Had filled them with desire of fame, and beer. (Byron)
Antithesis is a SD consisting of two steps, the lexical meanings of which stand in opposition. The main function is to stress heterogeneity of the described phenomenon, to show it as a dialectical unity of two or more opposing features.
E.g. Some people have much to live on, but little to live for.
E.g. I like big parties, they are so intimate.
5.3. Peculiar Ways of Combining Parts of the Utterance
Asyndeton is connection between parts of a sentence or between sentences without any formal sign, when there is a deliberate omission of the connective conjunctions where it is generally expected to be according to the norms of the literary language.
E.g. Arthur looked at his watch; it was nine o’clock. (Voynich)
E.g. The policeman took no notice of them; his feet were planted apart on the strip of crimson carpet stretched across the pavement; his face, under the helmet, wore the same solid, watching look as theirs. (Galsworthy)
Polysyndeton is a SD of connecting words, sentences or phrases by using connective conjunctions.
E.g. The heaviest rain, and hail, and sleet, could boast of the advantage over him in only one respect. (Dickens)
The Gap-Sentence Link is a type of sentence connection, which is not immediately obvious and it requires a certain mental effort to grasp the interrelation between the parts, i.e. to bridge the semantic gap.
E.g. She and that fellow ought to be sufferers, and they were in Italy. (Galsworthy)
In this example the 2nd part, which is hooked by ‘and’, seems to be unmotivated, and thus the whole sentence seems to be illogical. After a careful semantic analysis it becomes clear that the exact logical variant of the utterance would be: “Those who ought to suffer were enjoying themselves in Italy” (where well-to-do English people go for holidays).
5.4. Peculiar Use of Colloquial Constructions
Ellipsis is a typical phenomenon in conversation, arising out of the situation. It becomes a SD when it imitates the common features of colloquial language.
Ellipsis is a pattern, in which one or more members of the sentence are omitted but they can easily be restored by the context. This typical feature of the spoken language assumes a new quality when used in written language. It is characteristic of a dialogue to create the effect of naturalness and authenticity of lively emotional speech.
E.g. See you tomorrow. Had a good time. You say that?
Aposiopesis (or Break-in-the-Narrative) is an unfinished syntactic structure used to show great excitement, strong emotions, etc. paralleling the person's speech; or his deliberate stop in the utterance to conceal its meaning; to show unwillingness to go on or to suggest that what remains unspoken can be guessed. Aposiopesis is mainly used in the dialogue, and is graphically marked by dashes and suspension marks (dots).
E.g. You just come home or I'll…
E.g. Good intention but…
Question-in-the-Narrative changes the real nature of a question and turns it into a SD. Normally, questions are asked by one person and expected to be answered by another. A question-in-the-narrative is asked and answered by one and the same person, usually the author. It has strong emotional implication and close to a rhetoric question (to which the answer is not really necessary), because here the answer is not known for sure.
E.g. How long must it go on? How long must we suffer? Where is the end? What is the end? (Norris)
E.g. Scrooge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise? Scrooge and he were partners for I don't know how many years. (Dickens)
Represented Speech. There are three ways of reproducing actual speech:
a) Direct speech – repetition of the exact utterance as it was spoken;
b) Indirect speech – conversion of the exact utterance into the relater’s mode of expression;
c) Represented speech – representation of the actual utterance by a second person, usually the author, as if it had been spoken, whereas it has not really been spoken but is only represented in the author's words.
There is also a SD, called represented speech, which conveys to the reader the unuttered or inner speech of the character, thus representing his thoughts and feelings.
To distinguish between the two varieties of the represented speech we call the author's representation of the actual speech uttered represented speech, and the representation of the character's thoughts and feelings – unuttered or inner represented speech.
Uttered represented speech demands that the tense should be switched from the present to the past and that the personal pronouns should be changed from 1st and 2nd person to 3rd person as in indirect speech, but the syntactic structure of the utterance does not change.
E.g. Could he bring a reference from where he now was? He could. (Dreiser)
E.g. A maid came in now with a blue gown very thick and soft. Could she do anything for Miss Freeland? No, thanks, she could not, only, did she know where Mr. Freeland's room was? (Galsworthy)
Unuttered or Inner represented speech is a psychological phenomenon; it is very fragmentary, incoherent, isolated, and consists of separate units which only hint at the content.
E.g. An idea had occurred to Soames. His cousin Jolyon was Irene's trustee, the first step would be to go down and see him at Robin Hill. Robin Hill! The odd -–the very odd feeling those words brought back. Robin Hill – the house Bosinney had built for him and Irene – the house they had never lived in – the fatal house! And Jolyon lived there now! H'm! (Galsworthy)
Unlike the uttered represented speech it is usually introduced by verbs of mental perception (think, meditate, feel, occur, wonder, ask, tell oneself, understand, etc)
E.g. Over and over he was asking himself: would she receive him? Would she recognize him? What should he say to her?
5.5. Stylistic Use of Structural Meaning
Every syntactic structure has its definite function, which is sometimes called structural meaning. When a structure is used in some other function it assumes a new meaning which is similar to lexical transference of meaning. This can be seen in two syntactic SDs:
Rhetorical Question is a special SD, whose essence consists in reshaping the grammatical meaning of the interrogative sentence. I.e. the question is no longer a question but a statement expressed in the form of an interrogative sentence. Thus there is a simultaneous interplay of two structural meaning: 1) that of the question and 2) that of the statement (either affirmative or negative).
E.g. Are these the remedies for a starving and desperate populace?
Litotes is a SD consisting of a peculiar use of negative constructions. The negation plus noun or adjective serves to establish a positive feature in a person or thing. This positive feature, however, is diminished in quality as compared with a synonymous expression making a straightforward assertion of the positive feature. Lets compare the following two pairs of sentences:
E.g. It’s not a bad thing. = It’s a good thing.
E.g. He is no coward. = He is a brave man.
‘Not bad’ is not equal to ‘good’ although the two constructions are synonymous. The same can be said about the 2nd pair, no coward and ‘a brave man’. In both cases the negative construction is weaker than the affirmative one. Still we cannot say that the two negative constructions produce a lesser effect than the corresponding affirmative ones, just on the contrary. The stylistic effect of litotes depends mainly on intonation.
E.g. He was not without taste. It troubled him not a little. He found that this was no easy task.
A variant of litotes is a construction with two negations, as in ‘not unlike’, ‘not unpromising’, not displeased’, etc
Litotes is used in different styles of speech, excluding those, which may be called matter-of-fact styles, official style and scientific prose.
