STYLISTICS
SEMINAR 1
Basic Notions of Stylistics
1. The notion of style. Individual style. Style as choice. Style as deviation. What does style express?
2. Denotation and connotation as the basic opposition in linguostylistics. The structure of connotative meaning. Types of connotations: systemic and contextual (inherent and adherent), general and personal.
1. Analyse the connotative aspect of word meaning in the following words:
cosmopolitan, polymath, crony, zealous, cowkin, wholesome, despicable, garish (colour), gad, to renounce, narrow-minded, breathtaking, absorbing (tale), top-notch, fuddy-duddy, lickspittle, to assist, foxie.
2. Each pair of words below has roughly the same denotative meaning. With the aid of a dictionary, define the difference in their connotations:
childish – childlike; feminine (adj) – effeminate (adj);
loving – amorous; to request – to plead;
modest – prudish; generous – prodigal;
agreeable – pliant; to evaluate – to criticize;
investigation – inquisition; to satisfy – to glut;
pious – sanctimonious; saliva – spit;
omission – error; to observe – to ogle;
to blemish – to mutilate; to misappropriate – to steal;
courage – nerve; nightgown – negligee;
practical – unimaginative; hypocritical – diplomatic;
do-gooder – philanthropist; scholarly – bookish.
3. Give your own definitions of the following words describing the personal connotations and associations the words evoke in your mind. Compare your definitions with the ones in the dictionaries:
childhood, student, career, money, enemy, lady, gentleman, morning, spring.
4. Analyse contextual connotations of words in the following passages. Speak about the character of the change of connotation.
But every Englishman is born with a certain miraculous power that makes him master of the world…
… As the great champion of freedom and national independence he conquers and annexes half the world and calls it Colonization. (B. Shaw).
Her husband in the waiting room. Very well dressed, with an expensive stomach on him, a red purple nose. Drinking too much, the doctor thought to himself. If he doesn’t stop he’ll die soon from the effects of a fatty heart. (W. Macken).
Mrs. Milburn brought her over for tea and I give credit where credit is due. She did look wonderful. She’s the unfreckled, blond type, with big blue eyes and she had on one of those “simple” dresses that are just right – the kind I always intend to buy and then discover they cost thirty-nine-fifty when I’ve got only nineteen dollars. Well, while Mrs. Milburn and my mother were in the room, that girl was “lovely” – you know, positively poisonous. She said high-minded things, designed to make her appear like the model of the younger generation. (L. Baker).
The happy pair were seated, not opposite each other, but rectangularly, at the handsome rosewood table, they dined without a cloth – a distinguishing elegance – and so far had not spoken a word.
STYLISTICS
SEMINAR 2
Stylistic function, its main properties.
Stylistic context. Difference between lexical and grammatical context, on the one hand, and stylistic context, on the other hand. M. Riffaterre’s interpretation of context. Micro- and macro-context.
Foregrounding: definition, functions, means. Convergence of SDs. Defeated expectancy. Coupling. Strong positions of the text.
B. 1. Analyse the following texts and comment on the properties of stylistic function realized in them:
(1) Kenneth Rexroth
Lion
The lion is called the king
Of beasts. Nowadays there are
Almost as many lions
In cages as out of them.
If offered a crown, refuse.
(2) N. West
Autumn comes
And trees are shedding their leaves,
And Mother Nature blushes
Before disrobing.
2. Give examples to illustrate different types of context:
1) lexical context, grammatical context;
2) stylistic context;
3) micro- and macro-context/
3. Analyse convergence in the following passages. Define the component parts of each convergence, state its function.
(1) Sara was a menace and a tonic, my best enemy; Rozzie was a disease, my worst friend. (J. Carry).
(2) The Montana sunset lay between two mountains like a gigantic bruise from which dark arteries spread themselves over a poisoned sky. An immense distance under the sky crouched the village of Fish, minute, dismal and forgotten. (F.S. Fitzgerald).
4. Analyse defeated expectancy in the following examples:
(1) Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. (O. Wilde).
(2) There, as it should be, the druggest is a counselor, a confessor, an advisor, an able and willing missionary and mentor whose learning is respected, whose occult wisdom is venerated and whose medicine is often poured, untasted, into the gutter. (O. Henry).
5. On the basis of the books you read (stories, novels, poems) speak of the role of strong positions of the title, the beginning and the end of the text.
STYLISTICS
SEMINAR 3
1. Norm and variation. The notion of norm. The hierarchy of norms. Variations of the norm. Deviation from the norm.
2. Stylistic differentiation of the vocabulary. Neutral words and their characteristics. Literary words, their types. Functions of literary words. Colloquial words, their types and functions.
B. 1. To provide answers to task 2 find words belonging to different stylistic groups and subgroups:
a) in dictionaries, specifying the dictionary stylistic meaning;
b) in your reading material, specifying the type of discourse where you found it (dialogue, narration, description, interior monologue, etc.)
2. Explain the difference in functional stylistic (and sometimes other components of) connotation among the members of the following groups of words:
- to begin, to start, to get started, to commence;
- to continue, to go on, to get on, to proceed;
- to end, to finish, to be through, to be over, to terminate;
- child, baby, kid, brat, bearn, infant, babe;
- to rise, to mount, to ascend;
- to leave, to give up, to abandon;
- valley, dale;
- act, deed;
- fair, beautiful;
- to ask, to question, to interrogate.
3. In what way do the following texts differ in style? What is the difference due to?
(1) – They chucked a stone at the cops, and then did bunk with the loot.
- After casting a stone at the police, they absconded with money.
(2) – King Charles was publicly decapitated.
- King Charles was publicly beheaded.
- They chopped off King Charles’s head in the sight of anyone who cared to see it done.
4. State the type and function of literary and colloquial words in the following examples:
(1) The story of your romantic origin as related to me by mamma, with unpleasing comments, has naturally stirred the deepest fibres of my nature. Your Christian name has an irresistible fascination. The simplicity of your nature makes you exquisitely incomprehensible to me… (O. Wilde).
(2) – Will it rain do you think?
- The shallow depression in the west of these islands is likely to move slowly in an easterly direction. There are no indications of any great change in the barometrical situation. (B. Shaw).
(3) The Flower Girl: …Now you are talking! I thought you’d come off it when you saw a chance of getting back a bit of what you chucked at me last night. (Confidentially). You’d had a drop in, hadn’t you? (B. Shaw).
(4) “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’, translated to Corky, “that he has got a pippin of an idea but it’s going to cost a bit.”
(5) He kept looking at the fantastic green of the jungle and then at the orange-brown earth, febrile and pulsing as though the rain were cutting wound into it. Ridges flinched before the power of it.
The Lord giveth and He taketh away, Ridges thought solemnly.
(6) Be silent and hearken unto me, ye quaint little islanders. Give ear, ye men. Hear me, ye women.
Hearken to me then, oh ye compulsory educated ones.
(7) “…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.
STYLISTICS
SEMINAR 4
Phonostylistics. Graphical Stylistic Devices.
1. The problem of sound-meaning relationship.
2. Sound instrumenting. Alliteration. Assonance. Onomatopoeia. Sound contrast.
3. Rhythm in poetry and in prose.
4. Graphical stylistic devices.
B. 1. Indicate phonetic SDs, speak on the effects produced by them:
(a) “Oh my children, me poor children!
Listen to the words of wisdom,
Listen to the words of warning,
From the lips of the Great Spirit,
From the Master of Life, who made you!
“I have given you lands to hunt in,
I have given you streams to fish in,
I have given you bear and bison,
I have given you roe and reindeer,
I have given you brant and beaver
Filled the marshes full of wild-fowl,
Filled the rivers full of fishes;
Why then are you not contented?
Why then will you hunt each other?
Henry W. Longfellow.
(b) The German machine-guns were tat-tattatting at them.
“Zwiing, crash, claang!” – four heavy shells screamed towards them and denotated with awful force within a hundred yards.”
Over came another little bunch of whizz – bangs, in corroboration – crash, crash, crash, crash.
“Ping!” went a sniper’s rifle.
“Zwiing, crash!” to the right; “Zwiing, crash!” to the left; Zwiing, crash!” to the right; “Zwiing, crash!” to the left. He sat there alone for thirty-five minutes – thirty-five Zwiing, crash.
(Aldington)
(c) Then, with one final, furious burst of speed, they would triumphantly reach the top, where they would stand up straight, flap their flippers in delight, and flop down on to their tummies for a ten-minute rest.
(G. Durrell)
(d) Мазурка раздалась. Бывало,
Когда гремел мазурки гром,
В огромном зале все дрожало,
Паркет трещал под каблуком,
Тряслися, дребезжали рамы;
Теперь нетто, и мы, как дамы,
Скользим по лаковым доскам.
(А.С. Пушкин)
(e)
Eulalie.