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Phonetic Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

The stylistic approach to the utterance is not confined to its structure and sense. There is another thing to be taken into account which in a certain type of communication plays an important role. This is the way a word, a phrase or a sentence sounds. The sound of most words taken separately will have little or no aesthetic value. It is in combination with other words that a word may acquire a desired phonetic effect. The way a separate word sounds may produce a certain euphonic effect, but this is a matter of individual perception and feeling and therefore subjective.

The theory of sense - independence of separate sounds is based on a subjective interpretation of sound associations and has nothing to do with objective scientific data. However, the sound of a word, or more exactly the way words sound in combination, cannot fail to contribute something to the general effect of the message, particularly when the sound effect has been deliberately worked out. This can easily be recognized when analyzing alliterative word combinations or the rhymes in certain stanzas or from more elaborate analysis of sound arrangement.

Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a combination of speech sounds which alms at imitating sounds produced in nature (wind, sea, thunder, etc.) by things (machines or tools, etc.) by people (singing, laughter) and animals. Therefore the relation between onomatopoeia and the phenomenon it is supposed to represent is one of metonymy There are two varieties of onomatopoeia: direct and indirect.

Direct onomatopoeia is contained in words that imitate natural sounds, as ding-dong, burr, bang, cuckoo. These words have different degrees of imitative quality. Some of them immediately bring to mind whatever it is that produces the sound. Others require the exercise of a certain amount of imagination to decipher it. Onomatopoetic words can be used in a transferred meaning, as for instance, ding - dong, which represents the sound of bells rung continuously, may mean 1) noisy, 2) strenuously contested.

Indirect onomatopoeia demands some mention of what makes the sound, as rustling of curtains in the following line.

And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain. Indirect onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds the aim of which is to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense. It is sometimes called "echo writing". An example is: And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" (E. A. Poe), where the repetition of the sound [s] actually produces the sound of the rustling of the curtain.

Alliteration

Alliteration is a phonetic stylistic device which aims at imparting a melodic effect to the utterance. The essence of this device lies in the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant sounds, in close succession, particularly at the beginning of successive words: Doom is dark and deeper than any sea dingle (W. Auden),or, "Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before" (E. A. Poe).

In D.Thomas poems there may be found a special Welsh type of alliteration when a line contains two symmetrical alliterations: Woke to my hearing from harbour and neighbour wood (w -- h -- h -- w)

In modern poetry alliteration is an intermediate agent. Its role is expressive: alliterated words emphasize the most important idea. In one of W.Auden's poems (from `the Age of Anxiety') during the war four men met in the bar in New York and talked. Due to alliteration reader's attention focuses on the speakers' harmful ideology: stylistic onomatopoeia rhythmic english

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.

Alliteration, like most phonetic expressive means, does not bear any lexical or other meaning unless we agree that a sound meaning exists as such. But even so we may not be able to specify clearly the character of this meaning, and the term will merely suggest that a certain amount of information is contained in the repetition of sounds, as is the case with the repetition of lexical units.

Rhyme

Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combination of words. Rhyming words are generally placed at a regular distance from each other. In verse they are usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines.

Identity and similarity of sound combinations may be relative. For instance, we distinguish between full rhymes and incomplete rhymes. The full rhyme presupposes identity of the vowel sound and the following consonant sounds in a stressed syllable, including the initial consonant of the second syllable (in polysyllabic words), we have exact or identical rhymes.

Incomplete rhymes present a greater variety They can be divided into two main groups: vowel rhymes and consonant rhymes. In vowel-rhymes the vowels of the syllables in corresponding words are identical, but the consonants may be different as in flesh - fresh -press. Consonant rhymes, on the contrary, show concordance in consonants and disparity in vowels, as in worth - forth, tale - tool -treble - trouble; flung - long.

Modifications in rhyming sometimes go so far as to make one word rhyme with a combination of words; or two or even three words rhyme with a corresponding two or three words, as in "upon her honour - won her", "bottom -forgot'em- shot him". Such rhymes are called compound or broken. The peculiarity of rhymes of this type is that the combination of words is made to sound like one word - a device which inevitably gives a colloquial and sometimes a humorous touch to the utterance. Compound rhyme may be set against what is called eye - rhyme, where the letters and not the sounds are identical, as in love - prove, flood - brood, have - grave. It follows that compound rhyme is perceived in reading aloud, eye - rhyme can only be perceived in the written verse.

According to the way the rhymes are arranged within the stanza, certain models have crystallized, for instance:

1. couplets --when the last words of two successive lines are rhymed. This is commonly marked aa. (смежные (аа, bb))

BE a friend. You don't need money;

Just a disposition sunny;

Just the wish to help another

Get along some way or other;

2. triple rhymes--aaa

If you can keep your head when all about you

Are losing theirs and blaming it on you

If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,

But make allowance for their doubting too

3. cross rhymes--abab (перекрестные)

"TELL us a story," comes the cry

From little lips when nights are cold,

And in the grate the flames leap high.

"Tell us a tale of pirates bold,

4. framing or ring rhymes--abba (опоясывающие)

Rhythm

Rhythm exists in all spheres of human activity and assumes various forms. Rhythm is a flow, movement, procedure, etc. characterized by basically regular recurrence of elements or features, as beat, or accent, in alternation with opposite or different elements of features (Webster's New World Dictionary).

Rhythm can be perceived only provided that there is some kind of experience in catching the opposite elements or features in their correlation, and, what is of primary importance, experience in catching regularity of alternating patterns. In verse rhythm is regular succession of weak and strong stress. A rhythm in language necessarily demands oppositions that alternate: long, short; stressed, unstressed; high, low and other contrasting segments of speech.

The rhythm in prose is harder to perceive than that in verse. However, we can find steady alternation of comparable elements which affects the readers' emotional perception, though it is not clearly seen like in poems. Let us watch close connection of rhythmical and emotional lay out (line) in the extract from the novel “Death of the Hero” by R. Aldington

There shone the soft, slim yellow trumpet of the wild daffodil; the daffodil which has a pointed ruff of white petals to display its gold head; and the more opulent double daffodil which, compared with the other two, is like an ostentatious merchant between Florizel and Perdita. There were the many-headed jonquils, creamy and thick-scented; the starry narcissus, so alert on its long, slender, stiff stem, so sharp-eyed, so unlike a languid youth gazing into a pool; the hyacinth-blue frail squill almost lost in the lush herbs; and the hyacinth, blue and white and red, with its firm, thick-set stem and innumerable bells curling back their open points.Among them stood tulips -- the red, like thin blown bubbles of dark wine; the yellow, more cup-like, more sensually open to the soft furry entry of the eager bees; the large particoloured gold and red, noble and sombre like the royal banner of Spain.

The rhythm of the extract consists of repetitions in about equal interval of the elements of different levels: similar-formed syntactical complexes, similar syntagmas, words and sound are repeated. The repetition of these comparable elements is achieved mostly by special arrangement of epithets which help readers imagine the beauty of spring flowers in England.

Academician V.M. Zhirmunsky suggests that the concept of rhythm should be distinguished from that of a metre. Metre is any form of periodicity in verse, its kind being determined by the character and number of syllables of which it consists. The metre is a strict regularity, consistency and unchangeability. Rhythm is flexible and sometimes an effort is required to perceive it. In classical verse it is perceived at the background of the metre. In accented verse - by the number of stresses in a line. In prose - by the alternation of similar syntactical patterns. Rhythm in verse as a S. D. is defined as a combination of the ideal metrical scheme and the variations of it, variations which are governed by the standard. There are the following rhythmic patterns of verse:

iambus (ямб)

dactyl (дактиль)

amphibrach (амфибрахий)

anapaest (анапест)

Rhyme and Rhythm

rhyme n. 1. Correspondence of terminal sounds of words or of lines of verse. 2. A word that corresponds with another in terminal sound, as behold and cold.

rhythm n. 1.The pattern or flow of sound created by the arrangement of stressed and unstressed syllables in accentual verse or of long and short syllables in quantitative verse. 2. A specific kind of metrical pattern or flow: iambic rhythm.

iamb also iambus n. A metrical foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable, as in `di-vine'.

trochee n. A metrical foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable, as in `sea-son'.

anapest also anapaest n. A metrical foot composed of two unstressed syllables followed by a stressed one. (“'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house” ).

dactyl n. A metrical foot consisting of one accented syllable followed by two unaccented (as in `bat-te-ry').

amphibrach n. A trisyllabic metrical foot having one accented syllable between two unaccented syllables, as in the word `re-mem-ber'.

Rhythm is not a mere addition to verse or emotive prose, which also has its rhythm. Rhythm intensifies the emotions. It contributes to the general sense. Much has been said and writhen about rhythm in prose. Some investigators, in attempting to find rhythmical patterns of prose, superimpose metrical measures on prose. But the parametres of the rhythm in verse and in prose are entirely different.

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