Stylistic lexicology

Exercise I. Indicate the type and the functions of superneutral words in the following examples:

1. Chiromancy is a most dangerous science, and one that ought not to be encouraged, except in a tête-à-tête. (O. Wilde)

2. The only horrible thing in the world is ennui. That is the one sin for which there is no forgiveness. (O. Wilde)

3. Camillo Stela, one of Moretti’s soldati, had been caught in a murder committed during a robbery. (S. Sheldon)

4. He turned off down an even smaller forest road, a deserted voie communale; and a mile or so along that he came on the promised sign Manoir de Coetminais. Chemin prive. (J. Fowles)

5. Back in the long room, Breasly told David to make himself at home. He had some letters to write. They would meet there again for an aperitif at half past seven. (J. Fowles)

6. No more nights out with the girls, shopping, flirting, sex, bottles of wine and fags. Instead I am going to turn into a hideous grow-bag-cum-milk-dispensing machine which no one will fancy and which will not fit into any of my trousers, particularly my brand new acid-green Agnes B jeans. (H. Fielding)

7. It is such a bloody bore when the weather is so hot and one’s soi-disant boyfriend refuses to go anywhere nice with you. (H. Fielding)

8. I stepped down into the sunken garden. They were playing Viennese waltzes in a rather smart fin de millennium sort of way. (H. Fielding)

9. Mason Verger’s major domo, Cordell, was a large man with exaggerated features who might have been handsome with more animation in his face. (Th. Harris)

10. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to hear that,” Kelly told her sotto voce.

(P. Jordan)

11. I do not pretend that the conversations I have recorded can be regarded as verbatim reports. (W.S. Maugham)

12. I have done this for the same reasons as the historians have, to give liveliness and verisimilitude to scenes that would have been ineffective if they had been merely recounted. (W.S. Maugham)

13. “Nous autres Americains, we Americans,” he said, “like change. It is at once our weakness and our strength.” (W.S. Maugham)

14. His business connections with the impecunious great both in France and in England had secured the foothold he had obtained on his arrival in Europe as a young man with letters of introductions to persons of consequence. (W.S. Maugham)

15. He took an immense amount of trouble to make himself agreeable to aging women, and it was not long before he was the ami de la maison, the household pet, in many an imposing mansion. (W.S. Maugham)

16. “I’ve noticed you give me a pretty good optical inspection from time to time.” (O Henry)

17. “I beg to repeat my request relative to your quitting the apartment”.

(O Henry)

18. “When I saw that he wasn’t after Miss Willella I had more endurable contemplations of that sandy-haired snoozer.” (O Henry)

19. “Mrs. Brown, formerly Aunt Maggie,” says I to her, “I am going to extend my feet alternately, one after the other, in such a manner and direction that this tenement will recede from me in the quickest possible time”. (O Henry)

20. “I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about my dad dying recently… Imagine if my dad had never been there and I’d never had his love. I wouldn’t be me at all. I’d be someone else. Maybe someone you could never have fallen in love with. Sometimes we spend too much time wishing life wasn’t the way it is. Sometimes, I guess, you just have to be grateful for what you’ve got.” She lets out a nervous laugh. “And here endeth the sermon.” (M. Gayle)

21. If this was, by any remaining chance, just an über-romantic date, it would seem like a pretty extreme piece of odd behaviour. (H. Fielding)

22. “You still doing that stuff?” said Travis the actor, Schadenfreude glinting in the ice-blue wolf eyes. (H. Fielding)

Exercise II. Indicate the type and the functions of subneutral words in the following examples:

1. In exchange for his life, Stela agreed to sing. It was the most beautiful music Di Silva had ever heard, a song that was going to bring the most powerful Mafia Family in the east to its knees (S. Sheldon).

2. With all the publicity you’re getting on this case, you’ll be a shoo-in to be nominated and then elected governor, Bobby. (S. Sheldon).

3. “What the hell do you think this is – a tea party?” (S. Sheldon).

4. “I’m terribly sorry, I –”

“I don’t give a damn whether you’re sorry. Don’t you ever be late again!”

(S. Sheldon)

5. “Is Stela still willing to be cross-examined?”

“Cross-examined? He’s a basket case! Scared out of his wits. He won’t take the stand again”. (S. Sheldon)

6. “Parker, your client is booked on bedpain.”

“My client is booked on what?”

“Bedpain. Burglary, with a Break, Enter, Dwelling, Person, Armed, Intent to kill, at Night. Get it?”

“Got it”. (S. Sheldon)

7. “See what I mean,” muttered Breasly. “Needs her bloody arse tanned.” (J. Fowles)

8. – Julia dear, will you marry me? Not immediately, I don’t mean. But when we’ve got our feet on the ladder… And you know I do like you most awfully. I mean, I’ve never met anyone who’s a patch on you.

(W.S. Maugham)

7. “Take my word for it, it won’t be long before they find out they’ve been sold a pup. He’s going to be a flop.” (W.S. Maugham)

8. “God, sorry about that lot. Will you be OK, hon?” whispered Magda, who knew how I was feeling. (H. Fielding)

9. “It’s ….” He broke down again. “It’s the thought of her going with that greasy beperfumed bouffant wop, and all my friends and colleagues of forty years saying ‘cheers’ to the pair of them and writing me off as history.” (H. Fielding)

10. The window of the Questura laboratory is garlanded with garlic to keep out evil spirits. With the last of his suspects visited and grilled to no effect, Pazzi stood at this window looking out on the dusty courtyard and despaired. (Th. Harris)

11. “When’s the diver coming up again?” he said.

“Not yet, sonny,” said the coast-guard. (D. du Maurier)

7. “I always wanted a Caddy. It cost me plenty, but it’s worth every nickel. Although I’ve had it now for eighteen months, I still get a bang out of it.” (J.H. Chase)

8. “I’m Tom Hackett. I don’t know if Jack ever mentioned me. He’s mentioned you to me often enough. I was passing and I wondered if the old sonofagun happened to be down here.” (J.H. Chase)

9. “There is a nice strip of beach not far from here,” he said, “Where boys and girls go for a little fun. I have a hide-out there and when I want a little extra money, I go down there and wit around. I’m not always lucky, of course, but the other night I was. I saw the wife of a well-known advertising magnate and a member of his staff having a work-out on the sands. It struck me this fella might be willing to part with a few bucks rather than have me call up his boss and tell him what had been going on. You’d be surprised at the number of suckers I catch in the course of a year this way. It helps quite a bit to increase my income.” (J.H. Chase)

10. “I’ll give to the end of the week to collect the dough. I’ll call you and tell you where to deliver it. Thirty thousand in cash.”

“I tell you I haven’t got it! Five is my top.”

“Be your age, buster. You can sell this bungalow. That’ll bring in fifteen thousand. She can raise some dough too. You want to get organized. This is a one-payment job. I’m not coming back for more.” (J.H. Chase)

7. He looked over his shoulder to see if anyone was listening, then leaning close and lowering his voice, he said: “Between friends, they have a roulette table upstairs. The table stakes are up to the ceiling. All the rest of the muck here is just a front. But keep it under your hat, friend. I’m doing you a favour, telling you.” (J.H. Chase)

8. I guessed she wouldn’t be talking like this if she hadn’t been three-quarters tight, but I was listening: listening as hard as I could.

(J.H. Chase)

7. “Okay. Get me to the Washington first then.”

“That’s the boy,” the driver said approvingly and swung off down a side street and increased his speed. “You a private dick?” (J.H. Chase)

7. “What’s that to you?” he growled. “Come to that: who are you? You’re not a cop, you’re not a newspaper man, and I’ll be damned if you are a shamus – just who the hell are you?” (J.H. Chase)

8. “Have you seen the sky today? It’s absolutely bloody gorgeous!”

(M. Gayle)

7. I told you, Helen’s in a coma. She’s never even going to know about it. If she croaks, you tell me, I come back to arrange the funeral. (M. Gabot)

Exercise III. Analyze the morphemic structure and the purpose of the occasional words in the following examples:

1. Julian enjoyed gambling on the futures market. Or at least he had done until recently, when he had begun to sustain heavy losses, outsmarted and outbid, outbought and outsold by a shadowy rival who seemed to second-guess his every thought. Poor Julian! (P. Jordan)

2. Whenever he met a great man he grovelled before him and my-lorded him as only a free-born Briton can do. (W.M. Thackeray)

3. To prove his case he cited some of the legendary events in which I’d supposedly been involved in my schooldays … and concluded with when I organized a policewoman kiss-o-gram for Mr. Frederick, my former teacher, to celebrate his fortieth birthday. (M. Gayle)

4. Just as I suspected it was dawning on him that I was employing the classic my-life’s-so-crap-I-don’t-want-to-moan-about-it-quite-yet diversionary questioning strategy, we reached our destination. (M. Gayle)

5. Even though it was only just after twelve the café was fairly packed, mainly with gaunt-looking studenty kids whose migratory path from Aston University’s campus to the city encompassed it. (M. Gayle)

6. “Last time I heard anything about your toings and froings you were living it up in Brighton, weren’t you?” (M. Gayle)

7. “My mum’s got a good memory for these things. Since your birthday and the-staying-out-all-night-without-telling-them episode I’ve had to walk on eggshells – especially with my mum.” (M. Gayle)

8. I told him I was going to go traveling and end up living in Australia with a Mel Gibson lookalike called Brad. (M. Gayle)

9. “I’m off to the bar,” said Gershwin, as he and I exchanged schoolboy smirks of the I-wouldn’t-like-to-be-him-right-now variety. (M. Gayle)

10. “Yes, indeedy,” said Gershwin. “And not only have I always wanted to be sexy but I’ve always wanted to fly a plane.” (M. Gayle)

11. “Careerwise, I think things have turned out pretty much the way I always thought they would.” (M. Gayle)

12. “And someone to slob out in front of the TV with for the rest of the evening so that I don’t feel alone in loserdom.” (M. Gayle)

13. “My suggestion is that if we’re going to do this, let’s just keep to the unusual – the I-never-thought-they’d-be-doing-that-in-a-million-years ones.” (M. Gayle)

14. At ease with myself, thanks to the alcohol, I entered into conversation after conversation of the I-can’t-believe-it’s-you variety, the I-can’t-believe-how-bald-you-are variety, and the I-can’t-believe-you’re-not-in-prison-yet variety. (M. Gayle)

15. In your last e-mail you asked for some advice culled from my experience of the front line of thirtydom that might be useful to you as you turn twenty-five. (M. Gayle)

16. As long as he has enough money in his pocket to get a round in at the pub he’s a self-proclaimed ‘happy chappy.’ (M. Gayle)

17. Like all good office workers I have no intention of using it for a good half-hour and have started it up merely to state my intentions to the world that I will be working soonish. (M. Gayle)

18. You are a listening-to-serious-music-on-your-serious-hi-fi-on-your-serious-headphones-because-your-partner-won’t-let-you-play-it-loud- because-she’s-watching-EastEnders type of bloke. (M. Gayle)

19. All the Teen Scene staff are dressed as if they’re part of some impossibly trendy twentysomething secret army. (M. Gayle)

20. You know – that they’re not utter basket cases. Because the thing you have to remember about teenage girls is that, at the end of the day, they’re all only a few steps away from basket-casedom. (M. Gayle)

21. I haven’t bothered with music mags since I stopped going out with muso types. (M. Gayle)

22. The section needs a young, fresh, funky approach to agony-uncling.

(M. Gayle)

23. On a high I get in a round of drinks, and when I return some more girls from Femme have arrived and insist on being ‘Love Doctored.’

(M. Gayle)

24. It’s the whole girl-with-a-good-voice-acoustic-guitar-and-a-string-of-broken-relationships thing. But it’s done very well, Stella will love it.

(M. Gayle)

25. We both live in a world where everything that’s seen as important is to do with being the latest, the most fashionable, the most must-have.

(M. Gayle)

Exercise IV. Discriminate between different types of violation of phraseological units.

1. I always say beauty is only sin deep. (Saki)

2. It serves me right for putting all my eggs in one bastard. (D. Parker)

3. You can lead a boy to college, but you cannot make him think.

(E. Hubbard)

4. I stumbled back to the flat wondering if I could turn Rebecca into a buffalo and set her on fire without creating enough smoke to alert Scotland Yard. (H. Fielding).

5. The same thing is true of London, but in a less marked degree; there birds of a feather flock much less together. (W.S. Maugham)

6. Guide: “Quick! There is a leopard. Shoot him on the spot!”

Lord Dumbleigh: “Which spot? I say, be specific, my man.”

7. A man in the house is worth two in the street. (M. West)

8. A diplomat is a person who can tell you to go to Hell in such a way that you actually look forward to the trip. (Anonymous)

9. When I’m good, I’m very, very good, but when I’m bad, I’m better.

(M. West)

10. In any case, I packed my trunk fast and came up here. I thought I’d better see my bridges in flames behind me before I finished writing: to you. They are entirely reduced to ashes now. (J. Webster)

11. It was a joy to me the way he never knew when his leg had been pulled. (D. du Maurier)

12. I decided he must be the skeleton in the family cupboard. (D. du Maurier)

13. “The hotel is run by a Miss Dupont – Mademoiselle Dupont,” Carley explained. “But it seems she’s away in Brest for the day.”

“When the cat’s away,” Ma said. (H.E. Bates)

14. “Right first time,” she said. “Crazy. Mad. Mad as those hares.”

(H.E. Bates)

15. They seemed nearer, not only mentally, but physically, when they read, than when she was in his arms, and this was often, for they fell half into love almost from the first. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

16. “You were brought up to work – not especially to marry. Now you’ve found your first nut to crack and it’s a good nut – go ahead and put whatever happens down to experience.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

17. Dick got up to Zurich on less Achilles’ heels than would be necessary to equip a centipede. (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

18. Wolf-like under his sheep’s clothing of long-staple Australian wool, he considered the world of pleasure – the incorruptible Mediterranean with sweet old dirt caked in the olives trees, the pleasant girl near Savona with a face as green and rose as the colour of an illuminated missal.

(F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

19. “You’re the solid one, you do the work. It’s a case of hare and tortoise – and in my opinion the hare’s race is almost done.” (F. Sc. Fitzgerald)

20. “Familiarity, I think, bred discontent.” (M. Gayle)