2
Expressive means and stylistic devices
Stylistics
Lecture 2
Expressive means and stylistics devices
In linguistics there are different terms to denote those particular means by which a
writer obtains his effect. Expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic devices and other
terms are all used indiscriminately For our purposes it is necessary to make a distinction
between expressive means and stylistic devices. All stylistic means of a language can
be divided into expressive means, which are used in some specific way, and special
devices called stylistic devices. The expressive means of a language are those phonetic
means, morphological forms, means of word-building, and lexical, phraseological and
syntactical forms, all of which function in the language for emotional or logical
intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms of the language have been
fixed in grammars and dictionaries. Some of them are normalized, and good dictionaries
label them as intensifiers. In most cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous
forms.
The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic. Pitch, melody,
stress, pausation, drawling, drawling out certain syllables, whispering, a sing-song
manner of speech and other ways of using the voice are more effective than any other
means in intensifying the utterance emotionally or logically. Among the morphological
expressive means the use of the Present indefinite instead of the Past Indefinite must
be mentioned first. This has already been acknowledged as a special means and is
named the Historical Present. In describing some past events the author uses the
present tense, thus achieving a more vivid picturisation of what was going on.
The use of "shall" in the second and third person may also be regarded as an
expressive means. Compare the following synonymous forms and you will not fail to
observe the intensifying element in the sentence with "shall".
He shall do it = (I shall make him do it)
He has to do it = (It is necessary for him to do it)
Among word - building means we find a great many forms which serve to make the
utterance more expressive and fresh or to intensify it. The diminutive suffixes as - (ie),
- let, e. g. dear, dearie, stream, streamlet, add some emotional colouring to the words.
Certain affixes have gained such a power of expressiveness that they begin
functioning as separate words, absorbing all of generalizing meaning they usually attach
to different roots, as for example: -ism and ologies.
At the lexical level there are a great many words which due to their inner
expressiveness, constitute a special layer There are words with emotive meaning only,
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Expressive means and stylistic devices
like interjections, words which have both referential and emotive meaning, like
some of the qualitative adjectives, words belonging to special groups of Literary English
or of non - standard English (poetic, archaic, slang, vulgar, etc.) and some other groups.
-The same can be said of the set expressions of the language. Proverbs and
sayings as well as catch - words for a considerable number of language units which
serve to make speech more emphatic, mainly from the emotional point of view. Their
use in everyday speech can hardly be overestimated. Some of these proverbs and
sayings are so well - known that their use in the process of communication passes
almost unobserved.
The expressive means of the language are studied respectively in manuals of
phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics, however, observes not only the
nature of an expressive means, but also its potential capacity of becoming a stylistic
device.
What then is a stylistic device? It is a conscious and intentional literary use of
some of the facts of the language including EM in which the most essential features
both structural and semantic of the language forms are raised to a generalized level
and thereby present a generative model. Most stylistic devices may be regarded as
aiming at the further intensification in the corresponding EM.
This conscious transformation of a language fact into a stylistic devise has been
observed by certain linguists whose interests in scientific research have gone beyond
the boundaries of grammar.
The birth of a SD is not accidental. Language means which are used with more or
less definite aims of communication and in one and the same function in various
passage of writing, begin gradually to develop new features, a wider range of functions
and become a relative means of the language. It would perhaps be more correct to say
that/unlike expressive means, stylistic devices are patterns of the language whereas the
expressive means do not form patterns. They are just like words themselves, they are
facts of the language, and as such are, or should be, registered in dictionaries.
The interrelation between expressive means and stylistic devices can be worded in
terms of the theory of information. Expressive means have a greater degree of
predictability than stylistic devices. The latter may appear in an environment which may
seem alien and therefore be only slightly or not at all predictable. Expressive means are
commonly used in language, and are therefore easily predictable. Stylistic devices carry
a greater amount of information because if they are at all predictable they are less
predictable than expressive means. It follows that stylistic devices must be regarded as
a special code which has still to be deciphered.
Not every stylistic use of a language fact will come under the term SD. There are
practically unlimited possibilities of presenting any language fact in what is vaguely
called it's stylistic use.
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Expressive means and stylistic devices
General notes on functional styles of language
A functional style of language is a system of interrelated language means which
serves a definite aim in communication. A functional style is thus to be regarded
as the product of a certain concrete task set by the sender of the message.
Functional styles appear mainly in the literary standard of a language.
The literary standard of the English language, like that of any other developed
language, is not so homogeneous as it may seem. In fact the standard English literary
language in the course of its development has fallen into several subsystems each of
which has acquired its own peculiarities which are typical of the given functional style.
The members of the language community, especially those who are sufficiently trained
and responsive to language variations, recognize these styles as independent wholes.
The peculiar choice of language means is primarily predetermined by the aim of the
communication with the result that a more or less closed system is built up. One set of
language media stands in opposition to other sets .of language media with other aims,
and these other sets have other choices and arrangements of language means.
What we here call functional styles are also called registers or d i s u r s e s.
In the English literary standard we distinguish the following major functional styles
(hence FS):
1) The language of belles-lettres.
2) The language of publicistic literature.
3) The language of newspapers.
4) The language of scientific prose.
5) The language of official documents.
As has already been mentioned, functional styles are the product of the development of
the written variety of language. l Each FS may be characterized by a number of
distinctive features, leading or subordinate, constant or changing, obligatory or optional.
Most of the FSs, however, are perceived as independent wholes due to a peculiar
combination and interrelation of features common to all (especially when taking into
account syntactical arrangement) with the leading ones of each FS.
Each FS is subdivided into a number of substyles. These represent varieties of the
abstract invariant. Each variety has basic features common to all the varieties of the
given FS and peculiar features typical of this variety alone. Still a substyle can, in some
cases, deviate so far from the invariant that in its extreme it may even break away.
We clearly perceive the following substyles of the five FSs given above.
The belles-letters FS has the following substyles: a) style of poetry, b) of emotive prose,
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Expressive means and stylistic devices
c) of drama
The
publicistic
F S comprises the following substyles: a) the language style of
oratory; b) the language style of essays;
c) the language style of feature articles in newspapers and journals.*
The newspaper FS falls into a) the language style of brief news items and
communications; b) the language style of newspaper headings and c) the language
style of notices and advertisements.
The scientific prose FS also has three divisions: a) the language style of humanitarian
sciences; b) the language style of "exact" sciences; c) the language style of popular
scientific prose.
The official document FS can be divided into four varieties: a) the language style of
diplomatic documents; b) the language style of business documents; c) the language
style of legal .documents; d) the language style of military documents.
The classification presented here is by no means arbitrary. It is the result of long and
minute observations of factual material in which not only peculiarities of language usage
were taken into account but also extralinguistic data, in particular the purport of the
communication. However, we admit that this classification is not proof against criticism.
Other schemes may possibly be elaborated and highlighted by different approaches to
the problem of functional styles. The classification of FSs is not a simple matter and any
discussion of it is bound to reflect more than one angle of vision. Thus, for example,
some stylicists consider that newspaper articles (including feature articles) should be
classed under the functional style of newspaper language, not under the language of
publicistic literature. Others insist on including the language of every' day-life
discourse into the system of functional styles. Prof. Budagov singles out only two main
functional styles: the language of science and that of emotive literature.
The development of the English language
The Germanic tribes, Jutes (), Saxons () and the Angles (), came to
England around the 5 th century AD and began to live in the Jutland, Holstein
() and Schleswig () areas. Later the Jutes settled in Kent and the
southern Hampshire (), the Saxons in the rest of the south of the Thames and
the modern Middlesex, and the Angles spread throughout the rest of England and as far
as up to the Scottish lowlands. In Germanic, Angles were called the Angli, and that was
transformed to Engle in Old English, and thus the land of all three tribes was collectively
called (Engle+land) England. The Jutes, Saxons and Angles held their dialects
separately. Later two separate Anglian dialects developed. The dialect of the North of
Humber river was called Northumbrian () and of the south was called the
Mercian (). Also the Saxons dialect was called West saxon as they were
settled in the west, and the dialect of Jutes was called the Kentish who were on the
southern and eastern sides of the river Thames. Thus there were four main dialects in
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Expressive means and stylistic devices
England.
In the beginning, the Northumbrians held prominence in literature and culture, but after
the Viking invasions (793-865) the cultural leadership went to the West Saxon group. In
the later part of 9th century the Parker Chronicle (or Anglo-Saxon Chronicle) was written,
and thus, West Saxons dialect became the Standard Old English. According to the
literary development of the English language, it could be classified as: Old English,
Middle English, Early Modern English and Modern English.
Old English (9th and 10th centuries)
The English language uses the Latin alphabet of 26 consonants and vowels. In the
beginning there were very few words of general use like, words of kinship: faedor,
modor, brothor, sweostor; 25 names with their inflections like mon, men and some
adjectives and verbs. There were two demonstratives: se, seo (that) and thes (this), but
there were no articles. So the good man was written as se (that) goda mon, and a good
man was an (one) goda mon. Verbs had only two tenses: present-future and past with
inflections. There were three genders. The word order in a sentence was not of much
importance in those days as long as the theme was understood. But Old English is
totally incomprehensible for modern English knower. It was more like the modern
German of today. For example: Hie ne dorston forth bi th ere ea siglan (they dared not
sail beyond that river).
Middle English is the name given by historical linguists to the diverse forms of the
English language in use between the late 11th century and about 1470, when a form of
London-based English began to become widespread, a process aided by the
introduction of the printing press into England by William Caxton in the late 1470s. A
great role in literary English played Chancery Standard which was a written form of
English used by government bureaucracy and for other official purposes from the late
15th century. It is believed to have contributed in a significant way to the development of
the English language as spoken and written today. Because of the differing dialects of
English spoken and written across the country at the time, the government needed a
clear and unambiguous form for use in its official documents. Chancery Standard was
developed to meet this need.
Although it is possible to overestimate the degree of culture shock which the transfer of
power in 1066 represented, the removal from the top levels of society of an Englishspeaking political and ecclesiastical hierarchy, and their replacement with one speaking
Norman French and using Latin for administrative purposes, opened the way for the
introduction of Norman French as a language of polite discourse and literature, and
fundamentally altered the role of Old English in education and administration. This
period of tri-lingual activity developed much of the flexible triplicate synonymy of modern
English.
Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of
the Middle English period (the latter half of the 15th century) to 1650. Thus, the first
edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to
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the late phase of Early Modern English. Prior to and following the accession of James I
to the English throne the emerging English standard began to influence the spoken and
written Middle Scots of Scotland.
Current readers of English are generally able to understand Early Modern English,
though occasionally with difficulties arising from grammar changes, changes in the
meanings of some words, and spelling differences. The standardization of English
spelling falls within the Early Modern English period and is influenced by conventions
predating the Great Vowel Shift, explaining much of the non-phonetic spelling of
contemporary Modern English.
Modern English (1660 onward)
Until the eighteenth century the uniformity was the result of social pressure
rather than of educational theory. Early English grammars ( the first appeared in 1586 )
had been written either to help foreigners learn English or to prepare English students
for study of Latin grammar. On the whole these books neither had nor were intended to
have any influence on the use of English by native speakers. It was not until about 1750
that there was any general attempt to teach Englishmen systematically how to use their
own language.
The grammarians of the 18 th century like Ribert lowth and James Buchanan
took a critical view and spent a lot of time in correcting the shortcomings and the
impurities of the English language that were commonly in use. For example a third
alternative, more perfect, you was the term was frequently used among educated
people.
During that time Lindley Murray published his Grammar in 1795 followed by
English Reader in1799 and English Spelling Book in 1804.
The vocabulary of English language is a mixture of Germanic, greek, Latin and French
words. There are a number of dialects and subdialects in United Kingdom. For instance,
Southeast England, Northern, Midland, Norfolk, South Western, Wales and Lowland
Scottish.
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