Graphic. Punctuation
Phonetic Stylistic Devices
English Vocabulary
Lexical Stylistic Devices
Syntactical Stylistic Devices
Decoding Stylistics
Biographies
Guidelines
Analysis
Texts
Expressive means/ stylistic means/ stylistic markers/
stylistic devices/ tropes/ figures of speech
What is a stylistic device?
A stylistic device (SD) is a conscious and intentional intensification of some structural or semantic property of a language unit. The interplay or clash of the dictionary and contextual meanings of words brings about the stylistic devices.SDs always carry some additional information, either emotive or logical.
SDs must be regarded as a special code which has to be well known to the reader in order to be deciphered easily.
Stylistic devices are designed to achieve a particular artistic effect.
There are phonetic, graphical, lexical and syntactical stylistic devices
Phonetic stylistic devices
Separate sounds due to their acoustic properties may awake certain ideas, feelings, images, and emotions. Think of a gentle lapping and bubbling of water… What do you feel listening to the screeching of something against a window pane?• So, different sounds have different effect on us. The sounds of language also create different responses in us and writers and poets use this in their works. By choosing words writers can evoke strong emotional responses and reinforce the meaning they wish to convey.
The most common sound features are rhyme, rhythm, alliteration, assonance and onomatopoeia.
Rhyme
Rhyme /raim / is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sounds, chaining two or more lines of a poem.Rhyme has several functions:
• it adds a musical quality to the poem;
• it makes the poem easier to remember;
• it affects the pace and tone of the poem.
There are several different types of rhyme:
1. True/perfect/full rhyme (точная)-identical sounds correspond exactly
Boat-float; might-right; kite-night; day-say; goes-flows
2. Incomplete/imperfect/half rhyme/slant rhyme (приблизительная):
fresh-flesh; road-boat; loads-lads; honour-won her (составная).
3. Eye-rhyme (видимая, приблизительная):
advice-compromise; have-grave; love-prove; flood-doom (ассонансы и консонансы)
4. End rhymes (концевая) fall at the end of the lines. They mark the end of the line.
5. Internal rhymes (внутренняя) occur within the same line:
‘I bring fresh showers to the thirsting flowers’
The internal rhyme has two functions: dissevering and consolidating, realized simultaneously.
According to the way the rhymes are arranged within the stanza, there are some certain models:
• Couplets-aa(смежная)
• Cross rhymes-abab(перекрестная)
• Framing rhyme-abba(рамочная)
Rhythm
РИТМОМ называется всякое равномерное чередование, например ускорения и замедления, ударных и неударных слогов и даже повторение образов и мыслей и т.д.Всякое литературное произведение отражает идеи, жизненный опыт и отношение к событиям его автора, сконденсированные в символы, способные передать эмоции, эти символы и эмоции располагаются в известном порядке и ритме.
Информация, которую несет ритм, не всегда можно передать словами, она проигрывает в пересказе. Ритм придает особую важность тем или иным идеям и чувствам, высказанным словами, но он несет и самостоятельную нагрузку, передающую реакцию человека на время.
Ритм имеет большое значение не только для поэзии, но и для прозы. Ритм прозы основан на повторе образов, тем, на параллельных конструкциях, кольцевых подхватах, на употреблении предложений с однородными членами.
Ритм может имитировать движение, поведение, обстановку, волнение общее настроение.
Rhythm /ri m / is a flow, movement, characterized by regular recurrence of elements or features.
Rhythm in language demands oppositions that alternate: long-short; high-low; stressed-unstressed, narrow-broad, and other contrasting segments of speech. Harmony is not only a matter of similarity, but also of dissimilarity, and in good poetry, irregularities of lines are among the most important features of the poem.
Actually, the beauty of the poem is less dependent upon the regularities than the irregularities of the poem.
Rhythm is flexible and it is perceived at the background of the metre.
Metre
Metre /mi:tэ / is any form of periodicity in verse. The kind of the metre is determined by the number and the character of syllables of which it consists. The metre is the phenomenon characterized by its strict regularity, consistency and exchangeability.Metrical Terms and Scansion
The basic unit of metre is the foot, which consists of one stressed and one or more unstressed syllables. The most common are:Iamb (iambic) –one unstressed syllable followed by one stressed syllable
Trochee (trochaic) - one stressed syllable followed by one unstressed syllable
Anapest (anapestic)-two unstressed syllables followed by one stressed syllable
Dactyl (dactylic) - one stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables
Monosyllable (monosyllabic)- one stressed syllable
Spondee (spondaic) - two stressed syllables.
Analyzing metre is called scansion. Scanning a poem we count the number of syllables and identify the position of the stress. Then we divide the line into feet and determine the metrical length of the line:
monometre-one foot
dimetre- two feet
trimetre- three feet
tetrameter-four feet
pentametre-five feet
hexameter -six feet
heptameter-seven feet
octametre-eight feet.
Then we give the metre a name, for example, iambic pentametre, trochaic dimetre. Iambic pentametre is the metrical form that most closely resembles natural speech and it is the most widely used metre in English poetry
The analysis of metre is meaningful only if it contributes to our understanding of a poem. The rhythm may establish an atmosphere or create a tone, and deviations from the predominant metrical pattern may highlight key elements.
End-stopped line
When a pause occurs at the end of a line we refer to it as an end-stopped line:‘The trees are in their autumn beauty,
the woodland paths are dry.’
Enjambement /Run-on-line
Enjambement /Run-on-line are the terms we use when the sense of the sentence extends into the next line:‘And in the frosty season, when the sun
was set, and visible for many a mile
the cottage windows blazed through twilight gloom,..’
Caesura
If a strong break occurs in the middle of the line it is referred as Caesura:‘A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness.’
Enjambement /Run-on-line and Caesura give their own particular rhythm to poetry.
Rhymeless verse is called ‘blank verse’ (белый стих- in Russian) .It is mostly used by playwrights (Shakespeare, e.g.).
The structure of verse
Stanza
Two or more verse lines make a stanza/a strophe, so a stanza is a verse segment composed of a number of lines. The ballad stanza has four –lines, only the second and the fourth lines rhyme. The heroic couplet consists of two lines
Alliteration
Alliteration /эlitэ `rei n / is the repetition of similar sounds (usually consonants) at the beginning of successive words:‘And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman…’
Alliteration in the English language is deeply rooted in the tradition of English folklore. In Old English poetry alliteration was one of the basic principles of verse and its main characteristic.Alliteration in Old English verse was used to consolidate the sense within the line and therefore is sometimes called initial rhyme.
As a phonetic stylistic device alliteration aims at imparting a melodic effect to the utterance. Therefore alliteration is generally regarded as a musical accompaniment of the author’s idea, supporting it with some emotional atmosphere which each reader interprets for himself. Certain sounds, if repeated, may produce a special effect.
Thus the repetition of the sound /d / from Poe’s poem ‘The Raven’ may give a feeling of fear, anxiety, anguish or all this feelings together.
‘Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,
Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before.’
The sound /m/ is used by some poets to produce a somnolent effect:
“How sweet it were,…
To lend our hearts and spirits wholly
To the music of mild-minded melancholy;
To muse and brood and live again in memory.”
В современной английской поэзии аллитерация является не ведущим, а вспомогательным средством: аллитерируемые слова выделяют важнейшие понятия. Благодаря аллитерации внимание читателя фиксируется на ущербном мировоззрении говорящих:
‘We would rather be ruined than changed
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.’
Инструментовка - это соответствующая настроению сообщения фонетическая организация текста. Важную роль в инструментовке играют повторы, как отдельных звуков, так и слов. Чем теснее расположены повторы, тем они заметнее. Близость повторяющихся звуков называется теснотой ряда.
Ассонанс, или вокалическая аллитерация - повторение ударных гласных внутри строки или фразы.
Консонанс – повторение согласных внутри строки или фразы, но в отличие от аллитерации звуки расположены не в начале слов, а в середине или в конце (в составе приблизительной рифмы).
Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia /onэmэtэup?i:э/ is a combination of speech sounds which aims at imitating sounds produced in nature (wind, water, leaves, etc.),by animals, by people, and by things (machines or tools ).There are two varieties of onomatopoeia: direct and indirect.
Direct onomatopoeia imitates natural sounds, as buzz, bang beep, vroom, clap, click, cuckoo, rustle, giggle, mumble, whistle, crunch, splash, bubble, ping-pong, tick-tock, etc.
Animal sounds: cat – miaow, purr bird - chirp, tweet;
crow - caw, dog – woof, grrr, bow-wow
lion – roar horse – neigh
mouse – squeak pig –oink
wolf – ow ow owooooo, howl
human – blab, blah-blah, murmur
Indirect onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds that echoes the sense of the utterance:
‘And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain…’ where the repetition of the sound /s/ produces the sound of the rustling of the curtains.
The sound /w/ may reproduce the sound of wind:
‘Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet
A man goes riding by.’
Indirect onomatopoeia is sometimes used by repeating words which themselves are not onomatopoetic, as in Poe’s poem ‘The Bells’:
‘Silver bells…how they tinkle, tinkle, tinkle…
…From the bells bells, bells, bells,
Bells, bells, bells-
From the jingling and the tinkling of the bells’.
Another skilful example of onomatopoetic effect is shown in the poem ‘How the water comes down in Ladore’ by a romantic poet Robert Southey:
‘And nearing and clearing,
And falling and crawling and sprawling,
And gleaming and streaming and steaming and beaming,
And in this way the way the water comes down at Ladore’.
Сходство на фонетическом уровне влечет за собой возникновение новых смысловых связей. Явление парономасии заключается в близости звучания слов:
Graphons is unusual, non-standard spelling of words, showing authentic pronunciation, some peculiarity in pronouncing words or phrases emphatically.
‘Thquire! Your thervant! Thith ith a bad pieth of buithnith…’ (i.e. ‘Squire! Your servant! This is a bad piece of business’.
Most graphons show features of territorial or social dialect of the speaker.
‘Is that my wife? …I see it is, from your fyce…What gyme ‘as she been plying’? You gotta tell me ‘(London cockney dialect)
As for American English, here is an example of the Missouri Negro dialect from ‘The Adventures of Tom Sawyer’:
‘You know dat one-leigged nigger dat b’longs to old Misto Brandish? Well he sot up a bank, en say anybody dat put in a dollar would git fo’ dollars mo’ at en ‘er de year…’
Cacophony
Cacophony is a combination of harsh, unpleasant sounds:‘Gloved hands twisting knobs…’
‘I wakened on my hot, hard bed…’
Euphony
Euphony is rather close to assonance because it is a combination of sounds that we hear as pleasant and beautiful:‘The lone and level sands stretch far away…’
Practice Section
