Metaphor (метафора)
The most frequently used, well known and elaborated among them is a metaphor – transference of names based on the associated likeness between two objects, as in the "pancake", or "ball", or "volcano" for the "sun"; "silver dust", "sequins" for "stars"; "vault", "blanket", "veil" for the "sky".
The expressiveness of the metaphor is promoted by the implicit simultaneous presence of images of both objects – the one which is actually named and the one which supplies its own "legal" name. So that formally we deal with the name transference based on the similarity of one feature common to two different entities, while in fact each one enters a phrase in the complexity of its other characteristics. The wider is the gap between the associated objects the more striking and unexpected – the more expressive – is the metaphor.
If a metaphor involves likeness between inanimate and animate objects, we deal with personification, as in "the face of London", or "the pain of the ocean".
Metaphor, as all other SDs, is fresh, original, genuine, when first used, and trite, hackneyed, stale when often repeated. In the latter case it gradually loses its expressiveness becoming just another entry in the dictionary, as in the "leg of a table" or the "sunrise", thus serving a very important source of enriching the vocabulary of the language.
Metaphor can be expressed by all notional parts of speech, and functions in the sentence as any of its members.
When the speaker (writer) in his desire to present an elaborated image does not limit its creation to a single metaphor but offers a group of them, each supplying another feature of the described phenomenon, this cluster creates a sustained (prolonged) metaphor.
Metonymy (метонимия)
Metonymy, another lexical SD, – like metaphor – on losing its originality also becomes instrumental in enriching the vocabulary of the language, though metonymy is created by a different semantic process and is based on contiguity (nearness) of objects or phenomena. Transference of names in metonymy does not involve a necessity for two different words to have a common component in their semantic structures, as is the case of metaphor, but proceeds from the fact that two objects (phenomena) have common grounds of existence in reality. Such words as "cup" and "tea" have no linguistic semantic nearness, but the first one may serve the container of the second, hence – the conversational cliché "Will you have another cup?", which is a case of metonymy, once original, but due to long use, no more accepted as a fresh SD.
"My brass will call your brass," says one of the characters of A. Hailey's Airport to another, meaning "My boss will call your boss." The transference of names is caused by both bosses being officers, wearing uniform caps with brass cockades.
The scope of transference in metonymy is much more limited than that of metaphor. This is why metonymy, on the whole, is a less frequently observed SD, than metaphor.
In cases of metonymy, the name of one object is used instead of another, closely connected with it. This may include:
1. The name of a part instead of the name of a whole
(synecdoche, синекдоха):
Washington and London(= USA and UK) agree on most issues; He was followed into the room by a pair of heavy boots(= by a man in heavy boots); cf. the Russian: "Да, да", ответили рыжие панталоны (Чехов). In a similar way, the word crown (to fight for the crown) may denote "the royal power/the king"; the word colours in the phrase to defend the colours of a school denotes the organization itself.
2. The name of a container instead of the contents:
He drank a whole glassof whiskey (= drank the liquid contained in a glass). This is such a frequent type of transference of meaning in the language system that in many cases (like the latter example), it is not perceived as a stylistic device. Sometimes, however, the stylistic use of this change of meaning can be still felt, and then it is perceived as a figure of speech: The whole townwas out in the streets (= the people of the town).
3. The name of a characteristic feature of an object instead of the object:
The massacre of the innocents(=children; this biblical phrase is related to the killing of Jewish male children by King Herod in Bethlehem).
4. The name of an instrument instead of an action or the doer of an action:
All they that take the sword,shall perish with the sword(= war, fighting).
Let us turn swordsinto ploughs(=Let us replace fighting by peaceful work; Перекуем мечи на орала).
As a rule, metonymy is expressed by nouns (less frequently – by substantivized numerals) and is used in syntactical functions characteristic of nouns (subject, object, predicative).
Zeugma (зевгма, каламбур)
This is astylistic device that plays upon two different meanings of the word — the direct and the figurative meanings, thus creating a pun (игра слов). The effect comes from the use of a word in the same formal (grammatical) relations, but in different semantic relations with the surrounding words in the phrase or sentence, due to the simultaneous realization (in one text) of the literal and figurative meaning of a word:
A leopard changes his spots, as often as he goes from one spot to another (spot = 1. пятно; 2. место).
Dora plunged at once into privileged intimacy and into the middle of the room. (B. Sh.)
The title of O. Wilde's comedy The importance of being Earnest plays upon the fact that the word earnest (= serious) and the male name Ernest sound in the same way: one of the female characters in the play wished to marry a man with the name of Ernest, as it seemed to her to guarantee his serious intentions.
A similar effect may result from the decompositionof a set-phrase,when the direct and figurative meanings of the words within the set-phrase are realized at the same time:
May's mother always stood on her gentility, and Dot's mother never stood on anything but her active little feet. (D.)
Irony
Irony, like the stylistic device of zeugma, is based on the simultaneous realization of two opposite meanings: the permanent, "direct" meaning (the dictionary meaning) of words and their contextual (covert, implied) meaning. Usually the direct meaning in such cases expresses a positive evaluation of the situation, while the context contains the opposite, negative evaluation:
How delightful – to find yourself in a foreign country without a penny in your pocket!
Aren't you a hero – running away from a mouse!
I like a parliamentary debate,
Particularly when it is not too late. (B.)
The Holy Alliance (Russia, Prussia, Austria) was minded to stretch the arm of its Christian charity across the Atlantic and put republicanism down in the western hemisphere as well as in its own. (G.S.).
I do not consult physicians, for I hope to die without their help. (W.T.).
In the stylistic device of irony it is always possible to indicate the exact word whose contextual meaning diametrically opposes its dictionary meaning. This is why this type of irony is called verbal irony. There are very many cases, though, which we regard as irony, intuitively feeling the reversal of the evaluation, but unable to put our finger on the exact word in whose meaning we can trace the contradiction between the said and the implied. The effect of irony in such cases is created by a number of statements, by the whole of the text. This type of irony is called sustained, and it is formed by the contradiction of the speaker's (writer's) considerations and the generally accepted moral and ethical codes. Many examples of sustained irony are supplied by D. Defoe, J. Swift or by such XX-ieth c. writers as S. Lewis, K. Vonnegut, E. Waugh and others.
Antonomasia (антономасия, переименование)
Antonomasia is a lexical SD in which a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice versa, i.e. a SD, in which the nominal meaning of a proper name is suppressed by its logical meaning or the logical meaning acquires the new – nominal – component. Logical meaning, as you know, serves to denote concepts and thus to classify individual objects into groups (classes). Nominal meaning has no classifying power for it applies to one single individual object with the aim not of classifying it as just another of a number of objects constituting a definite group, but, on the contrary, with the aim of singling it out of the group of similar objects, of individualizing one particular object. Indeed, the word "Mary" does not indicate whether the denoted object refers to the class of women, girls, boats, cats, etc., for it singles out without denotational classification. But in Th. Dreiser we read: "He took little satisfaction in telling each Mary, shortly after she arrived, something...." The attribute "each", used with the name, turns it into a common noun denoting any female. Here we deal with a case of antonomasia of the first type.
Another type of antonomasia we meet when a common noun serves as an individualizing name, as in D. Cusack: "There are three doctors in an illness like yours. I don't mean only myself, my partner and the radiologist who does your X-rays, the three I'm referring to are Dr. Rest, Dr. Diet and Dr. Fresh Air."
Still another type of antonomasia is presented by the so-called "speaking names" – names whose origin from common nouns is still clearly perceived. So, in such popular English surnames as Mr. Smith or Mr. Brown the etymology can be restored but no speaker of English today has it in his mind that the first one used to mean occupation and the second one – color. While such names from Sheridan's School for Scandal as Lady Teazle or Mr. Surface immediately raise associations with certain human qualities due to the denotational meaning of the words "to tease" and "surface". The double role of the speaking names, both to name and to qualify, is sometimes preserved in translation. Cf. the list of names from another of Sheridan's plays, The Rivals: Miss Languish – Мисс Томней; Mr. Backbite – М-р Клевентаун; Mr. Credulous – М-р Доверч; Mr. Snake – М-р Гад, etc. Or from F. Cooper: Lord Chatterino – Лорд Балаболо; John Jaw – Джон Брех; Island Leap – High – Остров Высокопрыгия.
Antonomasia is created mainly by nouns, more seldom by attributive combinations (as in "Dr. Fresh Air") or phrases (as in "Mr. What's-his name"). Common nouns used in the second type of antonomasia are in most cases abstract, though there are instances of concrete ones being used too.
Epithet (эпитет)
This is a word or phrase containing an expressive characteristic of the object, based on some metaphor and thus creating an image:
О dreamy, gloomy, friendlytrees! (Tr.)
Note that in phrases like an iron (silver) spoon, the adjective is just a grammatical attribute to noun, not an epithet, as no figurative meaning is implied; on the other hand, in a man of iron will the adjective is already an epithet, as this is an expressive description, based on covert comparison (metaphor).
Аn epithet may be used in the sentence as an attribute: a silvery laugh; a thrilling story/film; Alexander the Great; a cutting smile, or as an adverbial modifier: to smile cuttingly. It may also be expressed by a syntactic construction (a syntactic epithet): Just a ghost of a smileappeared on his face; she is a doll of a baby;a little man with a Say-nothing-to-me, or -I'll- contradict- you expression on his face.
Fixed epithets (устойчивые) are often found in folklore: my true love; a sweet heart; the green wood; a dark forest; brave cavaliers; merry old England. Epithets are used singly (single epithets), in pairs, in chains, in two-step structures, and in inverted constructions, also as phrase-attributes. Pairs are represented by two epithets joined by a conjunction or asyndetically as in "wonderful and incomparable beauty" (O.W.) or "a tired old town" (H.L.). Chains(also called strings)of epithets present a group of homogeneous attributes varying in number from three up to sometimes twenty and even more. E.g. "You're a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature." (D.)
Two-step epithets are so called because the process of qualifying seemingly passes two stages: the qualification of the object and the qualification of the qualification itself, as in "an unnaturally mild day" (Hut.), or "a pompously majestic female". (D.) As you see from the examples, two-step epithets have a fixed structure of Adv + Adj model.
Phrase-epithets always produce an original impression Cf.: "the sunshine-in-the-breakfast-room smell" (J.B.), or "a move-if-you-dare expression". (Gr.) Their originality proceeds from the fact of the rare repetition of the once coined phrase-epithet which, in its turn, is explained by the fact that into a phrase-epithet is turned a semantically self-sufficient word combination or even a whole sentence, which loses some of its independence and self-sufficiency, becoming a member of another sentence, and strives to return to normality.
A different linguistic mechanism is responsible for the emergence of one more structural type of epithets, namely, inverted epithets. They are based on the contradiction between the logical and the syntactical: logically defining becomes syntactically defined and vice versa. E.g. instead of "this devilish woman", where "devilish" is both logically and syntactically defining, and "woman" also both logically and syntactically defined, W. Thackeray says "this devil of a woman". Here "of a woman" is syntactically an attribute, i.e. the defining, and "devil" the defined, while the logical relations between the two remain the same as in the previous example – "a woman" is defined by "the devil".
All inverted epithets are easily transformed into epithets of a more habitual structure where there is no logico-syntactical contradiction. Cf.: "the giant of a man" (a gigantic man); "the prude of a woman" (a prudish woman), etc.
Hyperbole and Understatement (гипербола и приуменьшение)
Hyperbole – a stylistic device in which emphasis is achieved through deliberate exaggeration, – like epithet, relies on the foregrounding of the emotive meaning. The feelings and emotions of the speaker are so raffled that he resorts in his speech to intensifying the quantitative or the qualitative aspect of the mentioned object. E.g.: In his famous poem "To His Coy Mistress" Andrew Marvell writes about love: "My vegetable love should grow faster than empires."
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 remained signals of the speaker's roused emotions.
Hyperbole may be the final effect of another SD – metaphor, simile, irony, as we have in the cases "He has the tread of a rhinoceros" or "The man was like the Rock of Gibraltar".
Hyperbole can be expressed by all notional parts of speech. There are words though, which are used in this SD more often than others. They are such pronouns as "all", ''every", "everybody" and the like. Cf.: "Calpurnia was all angles and bones" (H. L.); also numerical nouns ("a million", "a thousand"), as was shown above; and adverbs of time ("ever", "never").
Hyperbole is aimed at exaggerating quantity or quality. When it is directed the opposite way, when the size, shape, dimensions, characteristic features of the object are hot overrated, but intentionally underrated, we deal with understatement. The mechanism of its creation and functioning is identical with that of hyperbole. They differ only in the direction of the flow of roused emotions. English is well known for its preference for understatement in everyday speech – "I am rather annoyed" instead of "I'm infuriated", "The wind is rather strong" instead of "There's a gale blowing outside" are typical of British polite speech, but are less characteristic of American English.
Some hyperboles and understatements have become fixed, as we have in "Snow White", or "Liliput", or "Gargantua".
Oxymoron (оксюморон)
This is a device which combines, in one phrase, two words (usually: noun + adjective) whose meanings are opposite and incompatible (несовместимы): a living corpse; sweet sorrow; a nice rascal; awfully (terribly) nice; a deafening silence; a low skyscraper.
In Shakespearian definitions of love, much quoted from his Romeo and Juliet, perfectly correct syntactically, attributive combinations present a strong semantic discrepancy between their members. Cf.: "O brawling love! О loving hate! О heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!"
The most widely known structure of oxymoron is attributive, so it is easy to believe that the subjective part of the oxymoron is embodied in the attribute-epithet, especially because the latter also proceeds from the foregrounding of the emotive meaning. But there are also others, in which verbs are employed: "to shout mutely" (I.Sh.) or "to cry silently" (M.W.)
Originality and specificity of oxymoron becomes especially evident in non-attributive structures which also, not infrequently, are used to express semantic contradiction, as in "the street damaged by improvements" (O. H.) or "silence was louder than thunder" (U.).
