1. Slang forms the biggest one. Slang words, used by most speakers in very informal communication, are highly emotive and expressive and as such, lose their originality rather fast and are replaced by newer formations. This tendency to synonymic expansion results in long chains of synonyms of various degrees of expressiveness, denoting one and the same concept. So, the idea of a "pretty girl" is worded by more than one hundred ways in slang.

In only one novel by S. Lewis there are close to a dozen synonyms used by Babbitt, the central character, in reference to a girl: "cookie", "tomato", "Jane", "sugar", "bird", "cutie", etc.

The substandard status of slang words and phrases, through universal usage, can be raised to the standard colloquial: "pal", "chum," "crony" for "friend"; "heavies", "woolies" for "thick panties"; "booze" for "liquor"; "dough" for "money"; "how's tricks" for "how's life"; "beat it" for "go away" and many many more - are examples of such a transition.

2. Jargonisms stand close to slang, also being substandard, expressiveand emotive, but, unlike slang they are used by limited groups of people,united either professionally (in this case we deal with professionalJargonisms, or professionalisms), or socially (here we deal withjargonisms proper). In distinction from slang, Jargonisms of both typescover a narrow semantic field: in the first case it is that, connected withthe technical side of some profession. So, in oil industry, e.g., for theterminological "driller" (буровщик) there exist "borer", "digger","wrencher", "hogger", "brake weight"; for "pipeliner" (трубопроводчик)- "swabber", "bender", "cat", "old cat", "collar-pecker", "hammerman";for "geologist" - "smeller", "pebble pup", "rock hound", "witcher", etc.From all the examples at least two points are evident: professionalismsare formed according to the existing word-building patterns or presentexisting words in new meanings, and, covering the field of specialprofessional knowledge, which is semantically limited, they offer a vastvariety of synonymic choices for naming one and the same professionalitem.

Jargonisms proper are characterized by similar linguistic features, but differ in function and sphere of application. They originated from the thieves' jargon (l'argo, cant) and served to conceal the actual significance of the utterance from the uninitiated. Their major function thus was to be cryptic, secretive. This is why among them there are cases of conscious deformation of the existing words. The so-called back jargon (or back slang) can serve as an example: in their effort to conceal the machinations of dishonest card-playing, gamblers used numerals in their reversed form: "ano" for "one", "owt" for "two", "erth" for "three".

Anglo-American tradition, starting with E. Partridge, a famous English lexicographer, does not differentiate between slang and Jargonisms regarding these groups as one extensive stratum of words divided into general slang, used by all, or most, speakers and special slang, limited by the professional or social standing of the speaker. This debate appears to concentrate more on terminology than on essence. Indeed slang (general slang) and jargonisms (special slang) have much in common: are emotive, expressive, unstable, fluctuating, tending to expanded synonymity within certain lexico-semantic groups and limited to a highly informal, substandard communication. So it seems appropriate to use the indicated terms as synonyms.

3. Vulgarisms are coarse words with a strong emotive meaning, mostly derogatory, normally avoided in polite conversation. History of vulgarisms reflects the history of social ethics. So, in Shakespearian times people were much more linguistically frank and disphemistic in their communication than in the age of Enligtenment or the Victorian era, famous for its prudish and reserved manners. Nowadays words which were labelled vulgar in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries are considered such no more. In fact, at present we are faced with the reverse of the problem: there are practically no words banned from use by the modern permissive society. Such intensifiers as "bloody", "damned", "cursed", "hell of", formerly deleted from literature and not allowed in conversation, are not only welcomed in both written and oral speech, but, due to constant repetition, have lost much of their emotive impact and substandard quality. One of the best-known American editors and critics Maxwell Perkins, working with the serialized 1929 magazine edition of Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms found that the publishers deleted close to a dozen words which they considered vulgar for the publication. Preparing the hard-cover edition Perkins allowed half of them back ("son of a bitch", "whore", "whorehound," etc.). Starting from the late fifties no publishing house objected to any coarse or obscene expressions. Consequently, in contemporary West European and American prose all words, formerly considered vulgar for public use (including the four-letter words), are accepted by the existing moral and ethical standards of society and censorship.

4. Dialectal words are normative and devoid of any stylistic meaning in regional dialects, but used outside of them, carry a strong flavour of the locality where they belong. In Great Britain four major dialects are distinguished: Lowland Scotch, Northern, Midland (Central) and Southern. In the USA three major dialectal varieties are distinguished: New England, Southern and Midwestern (Central, Midland). These classifications do not include many minor local variations Dialects markedly differ on the phonemic level: one and the same phoneme is differently pronounced in each of them. They differ also on the lexical level, having their own names for locally existing phenomena and also supplying locally circulating synonyms for the words, accepted by the language in general. Some of them have entered the general vocabulary and lost their dialectal status ("lad", "pet", "squash", "plaid").

Each of the above-mentioned four groups justifies its label of special colloquial words as each one, due to varying reasons, has application limited to a certain group of people or to certain communicative situations.

Assignments for self-control

1. What can you say about the meaning of a word and its relation to the concept of an object (entity)?

2 What types of lexical meaning do you know and what stipulates their existence and differentiation?

3 What connotational meanings do you know? Dwell on each of them, providing your own examples.

4. What is the role of the context in meaning actualization?

5. What registers of communication are reflected in the stylistic-differentiation of the vocabulary?

6. Speak about general literary words illustrating your elaboration with examples from nineteenth- and

twentieth-century prose.

7. What are the main subgroups of special literary words?

8 What do you know of terms, their structure, meaning, functions?

9. What are the fields of application of archaic words and forms?

10. Can you recognize general colloquial words in a literary text? Where do they mainly occur?

11. What are the main characteristics of slang?

12. What do you know of professional and social jargonisms?

13. What connects the stock of vulgarisms and social history?

14. What is the place and the role of dialectal words in the national language? in the literary text?

15. To provide answers to the above questions find words belonging to different stylistic groups and

subgroups:

a) in the dictionary, specifying its stylistic mark ("label");

b) in your reading material, specifying the type of discourse, where you found it -authorial speech (narration description, philosophising) or dialogue.

Exercises

I. State the type and function of literary words in the following examples:

1. "I must decline to pursue this painful discussion. It is not pleasant to my feelings; it is repugnant to my feelings." (D.)

2. "I am not in favour of this modern mania for turning bad people into good people at a moment's notice. As a man sows so let him reap." (O.W.)

3. Isolde the Slender had suitors in plenty to do her lightest hest. Feats of arms were done daily for her sake. To win her love suitors were willing to vow themselves to perdition. But Isolde the Slender was heedless of the court thus paid to her. (L.)

4. "He of the iron garment," said Daigety, entering, "is bounden unto you, MacEagh, and this noble lord shall be bounden also." (W.Sc.)

5. If manners maketh man, then manner and grooming maketh poodle. (J. St.)

6. "Thou art the Man," cried Jabes, after a solemn pause, leaning over his cushion. "Seventy times didst thou gapingly contort thy visage - seventy times seven did I take council with my soul - Lo! this is human weakness: this also may be absolved. The first of the seventy first is come. Brethren - execute upon him the judgement written. Such honour have all His saints." (E. Br.)

7. At noon the hooter and everything died. First, the pulley driving the punch and shears and emery wheels stopped its lick and slap. Simultaneously the compressor providing the blast for a dozen smith-fires went dead. (S. Ch.)

8. "They're real!" he murmured. "My God, they are absolutely real!" Erik turned. "Didn't you believe that the neutron existed?" "Oh, I believed," Fabermacher shrugged away the praise. "To me neutrons were symbols л with a mass of Mn = 1.008. But until now I never saw them." (M.W.)

9. Riding back I saw the Greeks lined up in column of march. They were all still there. Also, all armed. On long marches when no action threatened, they had always piled their armour, helmets and weapons in their carts, keeping only their swords; wearing their short tunics (made from all kinds of stuff, they had been so long from home) and the wide straw hats Greeks travel in, their skins being tender to sun. Now they had on corselets or cuirasses, helmets, even grades if they owned them, and their round shields hung at their backs. (M.R.)

10. There wasn't a man-boy on this ground tonight did not have a shield he cast, riveted or carved himself on his way to his first attack, compounded of remote but nonetheless firm and fiery family devotion, flag-blown patriotism and cocksure immortality strengthened by the touchstone of very real gunpowder, ramrod minnie-ball and flint. (R.Br.)

11. Into the organpipes and steeples

Of the luminous cathedrals,

Into the weathercocks' molten mouths

Rippling in twelve-winded circles,

Into the dead clock burning the hour

Over the urn of sabbaths...

Erupt, fountain, and enter to utter for ever

Glory glory glory

The sundering ultimate kingdom of genesis' thunder. D. Th.)

12. If any dispassionate spectator could have beheld the countenance of the illustrious man, whose name forms the leading feature of the title of this work, during the latter part of this conversation, he would have been almost induced to wonder that the indignant fire that flashed from his eyes, did not melt the glasses of his spectacles - so majestic was his wrath. His nostrils dilated, and his fists clenched involuntarily, as he heard himself addressed by the villain. But he restrained himself again -he did not pulverize him.

"Here," continued the hardened traitor tossing the licence at Mr. Pickwick's feet; "get the name altered - take home the lady - do for Tuppy." (D.)

II. Think of the type of additional information about the speaker or communicative situation conveyed by the following general and special colloquial words:

1. "She's engaged. Nice guy, too. Though there's a slight difference in height. I'd say a foot, her favor." (T.C.)

2. "You know Brooklyn?"

"No. I was never there. But I had a buddy at Myer was from Brooklyn." (J.)

3. I didn't really do anything this time. Just pulled the dago out of the river. Like all dagos, he couldn't swim. Well, the fellow was sort of grateful about it. Hung around like a dog. About six months later he died of fever. I was with him. Last thing, just as he was pegging out, he beckoned me and whispered some excited jargon about a secret (Ch.)

4. "Here we are now," she cried, returning with the tray. "And don't look so miz." (P.)

5. "What's the dif," he wanted to know. (Th.S.)

6. Going down the stairs he overheard one beanied freshman he knew talking to another. "Did you see that black cat with the black whiskers who had those binocks in front of us? That's my comp рrоf." (В. М.)

7. "Don't you intend to get married?" asked Eugene curiously. "I don't know," she replied, "I'd want to think about that. A woman-artist is in a d - of a position anyway," using the letter d only to indicate the word "devil". (Dr.)

8. "There we were... in the hell of a country - pardon me - a country of raw metal.

...It's like a man of sixty looking down his nose at a youth of thirty and there's no such God-darned - pardon me - mistake as that. (G.)

9. "All those medical bastards should go through the ops they put other people through. Then they wouldn't talk so much bloody nonsense or be so damnably unutterably smug." (D. C.)

10. "I thought of going to the flicks," she said. "Or we could go for a walk if it keeps fine." (J.Br.)

11. "Let me warn you that the doc is a frisky bacheldore, Carol. Come on, now, folks, shake a leg. Let's have some stunts or a dance or something." (S.L.)

12. "Goddamn sonofabitching stool," Fishbelly screamed, raining blows on Bert's head. "Lawd Gawd in heaven, I'll kill, kill every chink-chink goddamn chinaman white man on this sonofabitching bastard earth." (Wr.)

13. There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of unwashed crocks in the kitchen. (A. T.)

14. "Of course I've spent nine years around the Twin Cities - took my B.A. and M.D. over at the U, and had my internship in a hospital in Minneapolis." (S.L.)

15. "How long did they cook you?" Dongeris stopped short and looked at him. "How long did they cook you?" "Since eight this morning. Over twelve hours." "You didn't unbutton then? After twelve hours of it?"

"Me? They got a lot of dancing to do before they'll get anything out of me." (Т. Н.)

16. "Nix on that," said Roy. "I don't need a shyster quack to shoot me full of confidence juice. I want to go through on my own steam." (B. M.)

17. "Go in there, you slob. I hope you get a hell of a lot of fun out of it. He looks too damned sick." (H.)

18. Just then Taylor comes down. "Shut up and eat," my mother says to him before he can open his mouth. In less than five minutes my father is back. "Keep the kids home," he says.

"My God," my mother says wearily, "them under foot all day." (Sh. Gr.)

19. "Don't wanna sleep, Don't wanna die, just wanna go a-travelin' through the pastures of the sky." (T.C.)

20. "Never heard anything so bloody daft in all my life." (J.Br.)

21. "You know. The mummies - them dead guys that get buried in them toons and all." (S.)

22. His expenses didn't go down... washing cost a packet, and you'd be surprised the amount of linen he needed. (S.M.)

23. "We'll show Levenford what my clever lass can do. I'm looking ahead, and I can see it. When we've made ye the head scholar of the Academy, then you'll see what your father means to do wi' you. But ye must stick in to your lessons, stick in hard." (A. C.)

24. Wee modest crimson tipped flow'r,

Thou's met me in an evil hour;

For I maun crash amang the stoure

Thy slender stem:

To spare thee now is past my pow'r

Thou bonnie gem.

(R. B.)

25. "That's so, my lord. I remember having tae du much the same thing, mony years since, in an inquest upon a sailing vessel that ran aground in the estuary and got broken up by bumping herself to bits in a gale. The insurance folk thocht that the accident wasna a'tegither straightforward. We tuk it upon oorsels tae demonstrate that wi' the wind and tide setti' as they did, the boat should ha' been wellaway fra' the shore if they started at the hour they claimed tae ha' done. We lost the case, but I've never altered my opeenion." (D.S.)

III. Compare the neutral and the colloquial (or literary) modes of expression:

1. "Also it will cost him a hundred bucks as a retainer."

"Huh?" Suspicious again. Stick to basic English.

"Hundred dollars," I said. "Iron men. Fish. Bucks to the number of one hundred. Me no money, me no come. Savvy?" I began to count a hundred with both hands. (R.Ch.)

2. "...some thief in the night boosted my clothes whilst I slept. I sleep awful sound on the mattresses you have here." "Somebody boosted...?" "Pinched. Jobbed. Swiped. Stole," he says happily. (K.K.)

3. "Now take fried, crocked, squiffed, loaded, plastered, blotto, tiddled, soaked, boiled, stinko, viled, polluted."

"Yes," I said.

"That's the next set of words I am decreasing my vocabulary by", said Atherton. "Tossing them all out in favor of-"

"Intoxicated?" I supplied.

"I favor fried," said Atherton. "It's shorter and monosyllabic, even though it may sound a little harsher to the squeamish-minded."

"But there are degrees of difference," I objected. "Just being tiddled isn't the same as being blotto, or-"

"When you get into the vocabulary-decreasing business," he interrupted, "you don't bother with technicalities. You throw out the whole kit and caboodle - I mean the whole bunch," he hastily corrected himself. (P.G.W.)

4. "Do you talk?" asked Bundle. "Or are you just strong and silent?" "Talk?" said Anthony. "I, burble. I murmur. I gurgle - like a running brook, you know. Sometimes I even ask questions." (Ch.)

5. "So you'll both come to dinner? Eight fifteen. Dinny, we must be back to lunch. Swallows," added Lady Mont round the brim of her hat and passed out through the porch.

"There's a house-party," said Dinny to the young man's elevated eyebrows. "She means tails and a white tie."

"Oh! Ah! Best bib and tucker, Jean." (G.)

6. "What do you really contemplate doing?" "No Plaza? Not even when I'm in the ohips?" "Why are you so rich?" (J.O'H.)

7. "Obviously an emissary of Mr. Bunyan had obtained clandestine access to her apartment in her absence and purloined the communication in question." It took Lord Uffenham some moments to work this out, but eventually he unravelled it and was able to translate it from his butler's language. What the man was trying to say was that some low blister, bought with Bunyan's gold, had sneaked into the girl's flat and pinched the bally things. (P.G.W.)

8. ''I say, old boy, where do you hang out?" Mr. Pickwick responded that he was at present suspended at the George and Vulture. (D.)

9. "The only thing that counts in his eyes is solid achievement. Sometimes I have been prostrate with fatigue. He calls it idleness. I need the stimulation of good company. He terms this riff-raff. The plain fact is, I am misunderstood." (D. du M.)

10. "The scheme I would suggest cannot fail of success, but it has what may seem to you a drawback, sir, in that it requires a certain financial outlay."

"He means," I translated to Corky, "that he has a pippin of an idea but it's going to cost a bit." (P.G.W.)

11. Mrs. Sunbury never went to bed - she retired, but Mr. Sunbury who was not quite so refined as his wife always said: "Me for Bedford." (S.M.)

12. "He tried those engineers. But no soap. No answer." (J.O'H.)

13. "You want to know what I think? I think you're nuts. Pure plain crazy. Goofy as a loon. That's what I think." (J.)

14. The famous Alderman objected to the phrase in Canning's inscription for a Pitt Memorial "He died poor" and wished to substitute "He expired in indigent circumstances." (Luc.)

15. "I am Alpha and Omega - the first and the last," the solemn voice would announce. (D. du M.)

16. The tall man ahead of him half-turned saying "Gre't God! I never, I never in all my days seen so many folks." Mr. Munn thought that he, too, had never seen so many people, never before. (R.W.)

17. It may sound to some like cold-blooded murder of the English tongue, but American kids have been speaking a language of their own since they annoyed their Pilgrim parents at Plymouth Rock.

Ask a teen-ager today what he thought of last night's rock show. If he liked it, it was "wicked" or "totally awesome". But if he didn't, it was "groady" or "harsh".

Young people punctuate their sentences with slang. They drop phrases that would make Professor Henry Higgins turn over in his grave. Twice.

"It's just like a dictionary that only teen-agers understand," said Michael Harris, 17, a high school student in Richmond, Va. "You go home and you have to spell it for your parents. They don't even know what you're talking about."

But this has been going on for years. Slang is as old as English itself, says Stuart Berg Flexner, editor-in-chief of the Random House Dictionary, author of the Dictionary of American Slang.

It offended puritan parents that their Pilgrim children took their traditional farewell - God be with you - and turned it into "good-bye", Flexner says.

Today's words are obsolete tomorrow.

"I may call somebody a jerk, but today they would call him a nerd," says Flexner, 54. "Each generation seems to want to have some of its own words."

"It's not so much to shut out adults - although that's a part of it. It gives them identity with their own age group. They sort of belong to their own club," he says.

There is valleytalk and preppyspeak, jocktalk and street language.

Take Moon Unit Zappa's Valley Talk. The daughter of famed rocker Frank Zappa was 14 years old when her dad sat her before a microphone and documented her language in a pop song.

"Gag me with a spoon," she says to show disgust. "Groady to themax."

Legions of youngsters across America picked it up. The song, and language, was a coast-to-coast hit. But that killed it.

"Valley Speak is out," reports Jane Segal, 16, a reformed Valley Girl at Santa Monica High School. "It went out after the song was played to death. It was really popular, and then everyone got so sick of the stupid song they quit saying that stuff."

"No one ever says 'Gag me' anymore," she says. "'Totally' is still hanging on, and everyone uses' "like". They say it everywhere, just sprinkle it in. I do it subconsciously, I use it like "um."

Flexner considers slang.a reflection of American pop culture. Words come and go like No. 1 hit songs. Once a word is widely known it may be dropped, relegated to the used-slang bin alongside "swell" from the '50s and "groovy" from the '60s.

Others stick around like golden oldies.

"There are classics. Once" a good phrase comes along it's pretty hard to replace it," says Scott Wenger, 19, a New York University student. "Flipped" out still means crazy and "pulling an allnighter" still means to study.hard until all hours of the morning for exams."

Teen-agers may dream up slang, but adults use it too. Julia Shields, 42, a high school English teacher in Charlottesville, Va., is an avowed user.

"I love slang, think it's colorful, wonderful, metaphoric. Some of it is quite clever," she says. "I hate it, but I call everything "neat". It's such a horrible, vague, meaningless word. But I use it in every sentence."

Slang is not the talk of board rooms and diplomatic sessions. Because young people spend more time informally than adults, and slang is a product of relaxing the rules, high schools and college campuses are breeding grounds for it. (C. R.)

IV. Speak about the difference between the contextual and the dictionary meanings of italicized words:

1. Mr. James Duffy lived in Chapelizod because he wished to live as far as possible from the city of which he was the citizen and because he found all the other suburbs of Dublin mean, modern and pretentious. (J.J.)

2. He does all our insurance examining and they say he's some doctor. (S.L.)

3. He seemed prosperous, extremely married and unromantic. (S.L.)

4. "What do you think?" The question pops their heads up. (K.K.)

5. We tooled the car into the street and eased it into the ruck of folks. (R.W.)

6. He inched the car forward. (A.H.)

7. "Of course it was considered a great chance for me, as he is so rich. And - and - we drifted into a sort of understanding - I suppose I should call it an engagement -"

"You may have drifted into it; but you will bounce out of it, my pettikins, if I am to have anything to do with it." (B.Sh.)

8. He sat with the strike committee for many hours in a smoky room and agonized over ways and means. (M.G.)

9. Betty loosed fresh tears. (Jn.B.)

10. When the food came, they wolfed it down rapidly. (A.M.)

11. He had seen many places and been many things railroad foreman, plantation overseer, boss mechanic, cow-puncher, and Texas deputy-sheriff. (J.R.)

12 Station platforms were such long, impersonal, dirty, ugly things, with too many goodbyes, lost hearts, and tears stamped into the concrete paving. (A. S.)

13. "Let me say, Virginia, that I consider your conduct most unbecoming. Nor at all that of a pure young widow."

"Don't be an idiot. Bill. Things are happening."

"What kind of things?"

"Queer things." (Ch.)

14. I need young critical things like you to punch me up. (S.L.)

15. Oh! the way the women wear their prettiest every thing' (T.C.)

2.3 Lexical Stylistic Devices

Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Play on Words. Irony. Epithet.

Hyperbole. Understatement. Oxymoron

You know by now that among multiple functions of the word the main one is to denote, denotational meaning thus being the major semantic characteristic of the word. In this paragraph we shall deal with the foregrounding of this particular function, i.e. with such types of denoting phenomena that create additional expressive, evaluative, subjective connotations. We shall deal in fact with the substitution of the existing names approved by long usage and fixed in dictionaries by new, occasional, individual ones, prompted by the speaker's subjective original view and evaluation of things. This act of name-exchange, of substitution is traditionally referred to as transference, for, indeed, the name of one object is transferred onto another, proceeding from their similarity (of shape, colour, function, etc.), or closeness (of material existence, cause/ effect, instrument/result, part/whole relations, etc.).

Each type of intended substitution results in a stylistic device (SD) called also a trope. 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".

From previous study you know that nomination - the process of naming reality by means of the language - proceeds from choosing one of the features characteristic of the object which is being named, for the representative of the object. The connection between the chosen feature, representing the object, and the word is especially vivid in cases of transparent "inner form" when the name of the object can be easily traced to the name of one of its characteristics. Cf.: "railway", "chairman", "waxen". Thus the semantic structure of a word reflects, to a certain extent, characteristic features of the piece of reality which it denotes (names). So it is only natural that similarity between real objects or phenomena finds its reflection in the semantic structures of words denoting them: both words possess at least one common semantic component. In the above examples with the "sun" this common semantic component is "hot" (hence - "volcano", "pancake" which are also "hot"), or "round" ("ball", "pancake" which are also of round shape).

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, orginal, 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.

Exercise I. Analyse the given cases of metaphor from all sides mentioned above - semantics, originality, expressiveness, syntactic function, vividness and elaboration of the created image. Pay attention to the manner in which two objects (actions) are identified: with both named or only one - the metaphorized one - presented explicitly:

1. She looked down on Gopher Prairie. The snow stretching without break from street to devouring prairie beyond, wiped out the town's pretence of being a shelter. The houses were black specks on a white sheet. (S.L.)

2. And the skirts! What a sight were those skirts! They were nothing but vast decorated pyramids; on the summit of each was stuck the upper half of a princess. (A.B.)

3. I was staring directly in front of me, at the back of the driver's neck, which was a relief map of boil scars. (S.)

4. She was handsome in a rather leonine way. Where this girl was a lioness, the other was a panther - lithe and quick. (Ch.)

5. His voice was a dagger of corroded brass. (S.L.)

6. Wisdom has reference only to the past. T-he future remains for ever an infinite field for mistakes. You can't know beforehand. (D.H.L.)

7. He felt the first watery eggs of sweat moistening the palms of his hands. (W. S.)

8. At the last moment before the windy collapse of the day, I myself took the road down. (Jn. H.)

9. The man stood there in the middle of the street with the deserted dawnlit boulevard telescoping out behind him. (Т.Н.)

10. Leaving Daniel to his fate, she was conscious of joy springing in her heart. (A.B.)

11. He smelled the ever-beautiful smell of coffee imprisoned in the can. (J. St.)

12. We talked and talked and talked, easily, sympathetically, wedding her experience with my articulation. (Jn.B.)

13. "We need you so much 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...". (S.L.)

14. They walked along, two continents of experience and feeling, unable to communicate. (W.G.)

15. Geneva, mother of the Red Cross, hostess of humanitarian congresses for the civilizing of warfare! (J.R.)

16. She and the kids have filled his sister's house and their welcome is wearing thinner and thinner. (U.)

17. Notre'Dame squats in the dusk. (H.)

18. I am the new year. I am an unspoiled page in your book of time. I am your next chance at the art of living.

I am your opportunity to practice what you have learned during the last twelve months about life.

All that you sought the past year and failed to find is hidden in me; I am waiting for you to search it out again and with more determination.

All the good that you tried to do for others and didn't achieve last year is mine to grant - providing you have fewer selfish and conflicting desires.

In me lies the potential of all that you dreamed but didn't dare to do, all that you hoped but did not perform, all you prayed for but did not yet experience. These dreams slumber lightly, waiting to be awakened by the touch of an enduring purpose. I am your opportunity. (Т. Н.) *

19. Autumn comes And trees are shedding their leaves, And Mother Nature blushes Before disrobing. (N. W.)

20. He had hoped that Sally would laugh at this, and she did, and in a sudden mutual gush they cashed into the silver of laughter all the sad" secrets they could find in their pockets. (U.)

21. All across the Union audiences clamour for her arrival, which will coincide with that of the new century. For we are at the fag-end, the smouldering cigar-butt, of a nineteenth century which is just about to be ground out in the ashtray of history. (An.C.)

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 cliche "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, which is quite understandable: the scope of human imagination identifying two objects (phenomena, actions) on the grounds of commonness of one of their innumerable characteristics is boundless while actual relations between objects are more limited. This is why metonymy, on the whole,- is a less frequently observed SD, than metaphor.

Similar to singling out one particular type of metaphor into the self-contained SD of personification, one type of metonymy - namely, the one, which is based on the relations between a part and the whole - is often viewed independently as synecdoche.

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).

Exercise II. Indicate metonymies, state the type of relations between the object named and the object implied, which they represent, lso pay attention to the degree of their originality, and to their syntactical function:

1. He went about her room, after his introduction, looking at her pictures, her bronzes and clays, asking after the creator of this, the painter of that, where a third thing came from. (Dr.)

2. She wanted to have a lot of children, and she was glad that things were that way, that the Church approved. Then the little girl died. Nancy broke with Rome the day her baby died. It was a secret break, but no Catholic breaks with Rome casually. (J.O'H.)

3. "Evelyn Glasgow, get up out of that chair this minute." The girl looked up from her book. "What's the matter?"

"Your satin. The skirt'll be a mass of wrinkles in the back." (E. F.)

4. Except for a lack of youth, the guests had no common theme, they seemed strangers among strangers; indeed, each face, on entering, had straggled to conceal dismay at seeing others there. (T.C.)

5. She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self-possessed arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms. (A.B.)

6. Dinah, a slim, fresh, pale eighteen, was pliant and yet fragile. (С. Н.)

7. The man looked a rather old forty-five, for he was already going grey. (K. P.)

8. The delicatessen owner was a spry and jolly fifty. (T. R.)

9. "It was easier to assume a character without having to tell too many lies and you brought a fresh eye and mind to the job." (P.)

10. "Some remarkable pictures in this room, gentlemen. A Holbein, two Van Dycks and if I am not mistaken, a Velasquez. I am interested in pictures." (Ch.)

11. You have nobody to blame but yourself. The saddest words of tongue or pen. (I.Sh.)

12. For several days he took an hour after his work to make inquiry taking with him some examples of his pen and inks. (Dr.)

13. There you are at your tricks again. The rest of them do earn their bread; you live on my charity. (E.Br.)

14. I crossed a high toll bridge and negotiated a no man's land and came to the place where the Stars and Stripes stood shoulder to shoulder with the Union Jack. (J. St.)

15. The praise was enthusiastic enough to have delighted any common writer who earns his living by his pen. (S.M.)

16. He made his way through the perfume and conversation. (I.Sh.)

17. His mind was alert and people asked him to dinner not for old times' sake, but because he was worth his salt. (S.M.)

18. Up the Square, from the corner of King Street, passed a woman in a new bonnet with pink strings, and a new blue dress that sloped at the shoulders and grew to a vast circumference at the hem. Through the silent sunlit solitude of the Square this bonnet and this dress floated northwards in search of romance. (A.B.)

19. Two men in uniforms were running heavily to the Administration building. As they ran, Christian saw them throw away their rifles. They were portly men who looked like advertisements for Munich beer, and running came hard to them. The first prisoner stopped and picked up one of the discarded rifles. He did not fire it, but carried it, as he chased the guards. He swung the rifle like a club, and one of the beer advertisements went down (I.Sh.)

As you must have seen from the brief outline and the examples of metaphor and metonymy, the first one operates on the linguistic basis (proceeding from the similarity of semantic components of a word), while the latter one rests solely on the extralinguistic, actually existing relations between the phenomena denoted by the words.

Our next concern is a cluster of SDs, which are united into a small group as they have much in common both in the mechanism of their formation and in their functioning. They are - pun (also referred to as paronomasia), zeugma, violation of phraseological units, semantically false chains, and nonsense of non-sequence. In the stylistic tradition of the English-speaking countries only the first two are widely discussed. The latter two, indeed, may be viewed as slight variations of the first ones for, basically, the foursome perform the same stylistic function in speech, and operate on the same linguistic mechanism: namely, one word-form is deliberately used in two meanings. The effect of these SDs is humorous. Contextual conditions leading to the simultaneous realization of two meanings and to the formation of pun may vary: it can be misinterpretation of one speaker's utterance by the other, which results in his remark dealing with a different meaning of the misinterpreted word or its homonym, as in the famous case from the Pickwick Papers When the fat boy, Mr. Wardle's servant, emerged from the corridor, very pale, he was asked by his master: "Have you been seeing any spirits?" "Or taking any?" - added Bob Alien. The first "spirits" refers to supernatural forces, the second one - to strong drinks.

Punning may be the result of the speaker's intended violation of the listener's expectation, as in the jocular quotation from B. Evans "There comes a period in every man's life, but she is just a semicolon in his." Here we expect the second half of the sentence to unfold the content, proceeding from "period" understood as "an interval of time", while the author has used the word in the meaning of "punctuation mark" which becomes clear from the "semicolon", following it.

Misinterpretation may be caused by the phonetic similarity of two homonyms, such as in the crucial case of O. Wilde's play The Importance of Being Ernest.

In very many cases polysemantic verbs that have a practically unlimited lexical valency and can be combined with nouns of most varying semantic groups, are deliberately used with two or more homogeneous members, which are not connected semantically, as in such examples from Ch. Dickens: "He took his hat and his leave", or "She went home, in a flood of tears and a sedan chair". These are cases of classical zeugma, highly characteristic of English prose.

When the number of homogeneous members, semantically disconnected, but attached to the same verb, increases, we deal with semantically false chains, which are thus a variation of zeugma. As a rule, it is the last member of the chain that falls out of the thematic group, defeating our expectancy and producing humorous effect. The following case from S. Leacock may serve an example: "A Governess wanted. Must possess knowledge of Romanian, Russian, Italian, Spanish, German, Music and Mining Engineering."

As you have seen from the examples of classical zeugma, the tiesbetween the verb on one hand and each of the dependent members, onthe other, are of different intensity and stability. In most cases one ofthem, together with the verb, forms a phraseological unit or a cliche, inwhich the verb loses some of its semantic independence and strength(Cf.: "to take one's leave" and "to take one's hat"). Zeugma restores theliteral original meaning of the word, which also occurs in violation ofphraseological units of different syntactical patterns, as in Galsworthy'sremark: "Little Jon was born with a silver spoon in his mouth which wasrather curly and large." The word "mouth", with its content, is completelylost in the phraseological unit which means "to have luck, to be bornlucky". Attaching to the unit the qualification of the mouth, the authorrevives the meaning of the word and offers a very fresh, original andexpressive description.

Sometimes the speaker (writer) interferes into the structure of the word attributing homonymous meanings to individual morphemes as in these jocular definitions from Esar's dictionary: professorship -- a ship full of professors; relying - telling the same story again; beheld - to have somebody hold you, etc.

It is possible to say thus that punning can be realized on most levels of language hierarchy. Indeed, the described violation of word-structure takes place on the morphological level; zeugma and pun - on the lexical level; violation of phraseological units includes both lexical and syntactical levels; semantically false chains and one more SD of this group - nonsense of non-sequence - on the syntactical level.

Nonsense of non-sequence rests on the extension of syntactical valency and results in joining two semantically disconnected clauses into one sentence, as in: "Emperor Nero played the fiddle, so they burnt Rome." (E.) Two disconnected statements are forcibly linked together by cause / effect relations.

Exercise III. Analyse various cases of play on words, indicate which type is used, how it is created, what effect it adds to the utterance:

1. After a while and a cake he crept nervously to the door of the parlour. (A. T.)

2 There are two things I look for jn a man. A sympathetic character and full lips. (I.Sh.)

3. Dorothy, at my statement, had clapped her hand over her mouth to hold down laughter and chewing gum. (Jn.B.)

4. I believed all men were brothers; she thought all men were husbands. I gave the whole mess up. (Jn.B.)

5. In December, 1960, Naval Aviation News, a well-known special publication, explained why "a ship" is referred to as "she": Because there's always a bustle around her; because there's usually a gang of men with her; because she has waist and stays; because it takes a good man to handle her right; because she shows her topsides, hides her bottom and when coming into port, always heads for the buyos." (N.)

6. When I am dead, I hope it may be said:

"His sins were scarlet, but his books were read." (H. B.)

7. Most women up London nowadays seem to furnish their rooms with nothing but orchids, foreigners and French novels. (O.W.)

8. I'm full of poetry now. Rot and poetry. Rotten poetry. (H )

9. "Bren, I'm not planning anything. I haven't planned a thing in three years... I'm - I'm not a planner. I'm a liver."

"I'm a pancreas," she said. "I'm a --" and she kissed the absurd game away. (Ph. R.)

10. "Someone at the door," he said, blinking.

"Some four, I should say by the sound," said Fili. (A. T.)

11. He may be poor and shabby, but beneath those ragged trousers beats a heart of gold. (E.)

12. Babbitt respected bigness in anything: in mountains, jewels, muscles, wealth or words. (S.L.)

13. Men, pals, red plush seats, white marble tables, waiters in white aprons. Miss Moss walked through them all. (M.)

14. My mother was wearing her best grey dress and gold brooch and a faint pink flush under each cheek bone. (W.G1.)

15. Hooper laughed and said to Brody, "Do you mind if I give Ellen something?"

"What do you mean?" Brody said. He thought to himself, give her what? A kiss? A box of chocolates? A punch in the nose?

"A present. It's nothing, really." (P.B.)

16. "There is only one brand of tobacco allowed here - "Three nuns". None today, none tomorrow, and none the day after." (Br. B.)

17. "Good morning," said Bilbo, and he meant it. The sun was shining and the grass was very green. (A.T.)

18. Some writer once said: "How many times you can call yourself a Man depends on how many languages you know." (M.St.)

Assignments for self-control

1. What lexical meanings of a word can you name? Which of them, in most cases, is the most important one?

2. What SDs are based on the use of the logical (denotational) meaning of a word?

3. What is a contextual meaning? How is it used in a SD?

4. What is the difference between the original and the hackneyed SDs?

5. What is a metaphor? What are its semantic, morphological, syntactical, structural, functional peculiarities?

6. What is a metonymy? Give a detailed description of the device.

7. What is included into the group of SDs known as "play on words"? Which ones of them are the most frequently used? What levels of language hierarchy are involved into their formation?

8. Describe the difference between pun and zeugma, zeugma and a semantically false chain, semantically false chain and nonsense of non-sequence.

9. What meanings of a word participate in the violation of a phraseological unit?

10. What is the basic effect achieved by the play on words?

11. Find examples of each of the discussed stylistic devices in your home reading.

12. Try and find peculiarities in the individual use of various SDs by different authors known to you from your courses of literature, interpretation of the text, home reading.

In all previously discussed lexical SDs we dealt with various transformations of the logical (denotational) meaning of words, which participated in the creation of metaphors, metonymies, puns, zeugmas, etc. Each of the SDs added expressiveness and originality to the nomination of the object. Evaluation of the named concept was often present too, but it was an optional characteristic, not inherent in any of these SDs. Their subjectivity relies on the new and fresh look at the object mentioned, which shows the latter from a new and unexpected side. In irony, which is our next item of consideration, subjectivity lies in the evaluation of the phenomenon named. The essence of this SD consists in the foregrounding not of the logical but of the evaluative meaning. The context is arranged so that the qualifying word in irony reverses the direction of the evaluation, and the word positively charged is understood as a negative qualification and (much-much rarer) vice versa. Irony thus is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning, So, like all other SDs, irony does not exist outside the context, which varies from the minimal - a word combination, as in J. Steinbeck's "She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator," - to the context of a whole book, as in Ch: Dickens, where one of the remarks of Mr. Micawber, known for his complex, highly bookish and elaborate style of speaking about the most trivial things, is introduced by the author's words "...Mr. Micawber said in his usual plain manner".

In both examples the words "sweet" and "plain" reverse their positive meaning into the negative one due to the context, micro- in the first, macro- in the second case.

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.

Exercise IV. In the following excerpts you will find mainly examples of verbal irony. Explain what conditions made the realization of the opposite evaluation possible. Pay attention to the part of speech which is used in irony, also its syntactical function:

...