This document contains information from a presentation on lexical expressive means and stylistic devices in the English language given by Ekaterina Andreevna Volgina. It discusses various tropes or figures of speech such as metaphor, metonymy, irony, hyperbole, personification and epithets. It provides examples of each trope and discusses their semantic, structural and distributional aspects. It also lists sources that were consulted in preparing the presentation. The presentation aims to outline key tropes and analyze their functions in stylistic expression in English.

1. Пединститут ЮФУ
Тема: Lexical Expressive means and stylistic
devices
Волгина Екатерина Андреевна
Кандидат филологических наук, доцент кафедры теории и
практики английского языка,
Ул.Большая Садовая,33.тел.240-82-09
г.Ростов-на-Дону,28.09.2011.

2. Волгина Екатерина Андреевна
Кандидат филологических наук, доцент
кафедры теории и практики английского
языка,
 Ул.Большая Садовая,33.тел.240-82-09
 г.Ростов-на-Дону,28.09.2011.

3. Основные пункты презентации
 1.Transferrence
 2. Tropes
 3. Figures of quantity
 4. Figures of quality

4. Список источников
• Арнольд И.В.Стилистика. Современный английский
язык. Учебник для вузов (7-ое издание). — М.,
Флинта-Наука. 2007.
• Волгина Е.А. Стилистический анализ. РГПУ, 2004
• Знаменская Т.А. Стилистика английского языка
(основы курса) М. 2002.
• Скребнев Ю. М. Основы стилистики английского
языка М.: Высш.шк., 2002
• Peter Verdonk. Stylistics.Oxford,2003.
• H.C.Widdowson. Practical Stylistics. Oxford University
Press, 1992.

5. Literature on Metaphor
 1.Aristotle. Poetics and Rhetoric
 2. I.A.Richards.The Philosophy of Rhetoric, 1936
 3.Kenneth Burke. Grammar of Motives, 1945
 4.Lakoff G. & M.Johnson. Metaphors We Live By,
1980
 5. Thornbury,S. Metaphors We Work By, 1991
 6. Cameron &Low. Metaphoric Intelligence and
Foreign Language Learning.2001
 7. Robin Tolmach Lakoff. The Language War, 2000.

6. Literature on Metaphor
 Eggigton, W. The English Language
Metaphors We Plan By., 1997.
 Gwynn R. “Captain on My Ship”:
Metaphor and the Discourse of
Chronic Illness” in L.Cameron &
G.Low. 1999

7. LEXICAL STYLISTIC DEVICES (1)
Figures of Quantity: Hyperbole,
Understatement (Meiosis).
Figures of Quality:
Metonymy - based on contiguity,
Metaphor - based on similarity, likeness, affinity,
Irony – two objects are diametrically opposite.

8. Interaction of different
types of lexical meanings
(Galperin)(2)
 Interaction of primary & contextually
imposed meanings=metaphor,
metonomy, irony
 Interaction of logical & emotive
meanings= epithet, oxymoron
 Intensification of a certain feature of a
thing = hyperbole.

9. Epithet (3)-Interaction of
logical and emotive
meaning
 From Greek “epitheton”
 Epithet = an individual emotional
appraisement of an object, state or
action .
 E.g. He found himself waving a school-
masterish finger in front of his face.

10. Epithet (4)
 By an adjective: a monstrous fish
 By participle I or II: crabbed age, a
god- fearing man
 By an of-phrase: an air of indifference
 By an adverb: she glanced at him
furtively

11. EPITHETS
SEMANTIC STRUCTURAL DISTRIBUTIONAL

12. SEMANTIC Standpoint
(6)
 Associated: silvery fur
 Unassociated: silvery laughter

13. STRUCTURAL:(7)
 Composition:
simple- sleepless bay
compound- heart-burning sigh,
phrase epithet in preposition – the sunshine-in-the-
breakfast-room smell,
don’t –you- touch -me look
reversed (Galperin) this devil of a woman,
Or (metaphorical)= the shadow of a smile
Syntactical epithet A dog of a fellow
Her brute of a brother

14. Distributional:
 String epithets: a plump, rosy-
cheeked, wholesome, apple-
faced young woman.
 Transferred epithets:
 sleepless pillow,
 merry hours,
 unbreakfasted morning
 drunken dark

15. Slide 9.Hyperbole
 I was scared to death when he entered the
room.
 The girls were dressed to kill.
 Her family is one aunt about a thousand
years old.

16. Oxymoron (10)
 Interaction of logical and emotive meanings:
 Oxymoron:
 1.“It was you who made me a liar”, she cried silently.
 2.O serpent heart, hid with a flowing face.
 Did ever dragon keep so fair a cave?
 Beautiful tyrant, friend angelical.
 Dove feather’s raven, wolfish – ravening
lamb.
 Despised substance of divinest show.
 Just opposite to what thou justly seems
 A damned saint, an honourable villain

17. METONYMY(11)-interaction of
dictionary and contextual logical
meanings
 She is coming, my life , my fate.
 He made his way through the
perfume and conversation.

18. Metonymy(12)
 1. Language metonymy: the Crown – Monarchy
 the bar –the lawyers
 the pulpit – the priests
 2. Speech metonymy: From the cradle to the grave

19. TYPES of METONYMY (13)
 1. Names of tools instead of names of actions : Give
every man thine ear and few thy voice .
(Shakespeare)
 2. Consequence instead of cause: It (fish)
desperately takes the death.
 3. Characteristic feature of the object: The
moustache was standing by the window.
 Symbol instead of object symbolized:Crown for
King, or Queen.

20. Synecdoche (14)
 Return to her and fifty men dismissed?
 No, rather I abjure all roofs, and
choose
 To wage against the enmity o’ the air,
 To be a comrade with the wolf and
owl.
 Shakespeare, King Lear).
 Hands wanted. All hands on deck.

21. METAPHOR (15)
 Trite: Seeds of evil, to burn with
desire.
 Fresh: He smelled the ever-beautiful
smell of coffee imprisoned in the can.
 They walked along, two continents of
experience and feeling, unable to
communicate.

22. Prolonged Metaphor (16)
 We need you here. It’s a dear old
town, but it’s a rough diamond, and
we need you for the polishing, and
we’re ever so humble…

23. Catachresis (17)
 “For somewhere”, said Poirot to himself,
indulging in an absolute riot of mixed
metaphors, “ there is in the hay a needle,
and among the sleeping dogs there is one
on whom I shall put my foot, and by
shooting the arrow into the air, one will
come down and hit a glass-house”.
 To look for a needle in a haystack,
 To let sleeping dogs lie,
 To put one’s foot down,
 I shot an arrow into the air.

24. Personification (18)
 Now the bright morning-star, day’s harbinger,
 Comes dancing from the East, and leads
with her
 The flowery May, who from her green lap
throws
 The yellow cowslip and the pale primrose.
(Milton, Song on May Morning)

25. Personification (19)
 E.g. But the privations, or rather the
hardships, of Lowood lessened.
Spring drew on; she had indeed
already come, the frosts of winter had
ceased; its snows were melted; its
cutting winds ameliorated.

26. IRONY (20)- from Greek
“eironeia’
 She turned with the sweet smile of an
alligator
 Mr Micawber said in his usual plain
manner.
 Verbal Irony:
 E.g. Last time it was a nice, simple,
European-style war.

27. Irony (21)
 He was fond of everyone who was good
to him – of his pony- of Lord Southdown
who gave him the horse - of Molly, the
cook who told him stories at night – of
Briggs, his mother’s companion whom
he laughed at – and of his father.
(Thackeray, Vanity Fair).

28. Lexical stylistic devices
(22)
 1. Transference and transferred
meaning.
 2. Tropes (stylistic devices) as
figurative, image-bearing stylistic
means.
 3. Classification of tropes in the
English language.
 4.The structural types and functions of
the tropes.

29. Terms for the lecture
“lexical expressive means”
 (23)
Transfer of names
 Transference,
 denomination
 Trope
 Imaginative,
 figurative,
 lingual
 Inconsistent
 Variable
 Contiguity
 Qualitatively
 Quantitatively
 Meiosis
 Epithet
 Metaphor
 Metonymy
 irony

30. Transference and
transferred meaning.
(24)
 1. Transference is the act of name-
exchange, substitution.
 2. Transferred meaning is the
interrelation between two types of
lexical meaning: dictionary and
contextual (Galperin).
 3. Name-exchange, substitution,
interrelation, interaction -= “a transfer
of name” or transference.

31. Tropes (25)
 1. From the Greek “tropos” - “turning”.
 2. Stylistic markers, stylistic devices, figures of
speech, figures of replacement, trope.
 3. Tropes are descriptive, figurative stylistic means.
A tropes is based upon comparison between two
phenomena which resemble each other in certain
features.

32. Screbnev’s theory
 Quantitative deviation is the
overestimation of the dimensions of
the object
 Qualitative deviation is a radical
difference between the usual meaning
of a linguistic unit and its actual
reference

33. Thank you!
Ул.Большая Садовая,33.тел.240-82-09