Expressive Means. Outline Expressive Means Figures of Identity

Expressive Means

Outline Expressive Means Figures of Identity (simile, synonymous replacements) Figures of Inequality (specifying synonyms, climax, anticlimax, pun, zeugma, pretended inequality -tautology) Figures of Contrast (oxymoron, antithesis)

Expressive Means Expressive means are special language media which produce the desirable effect of the utterance.

Figures of Identity Forms of active identification include statements actively expressing acts of claiming the identity, the equality of two notions.

Figures of Identity (2) Simile is an explicit statement of partial identity (affinity, likeness, similarity) of two objects. Simile employs two names of two separate objects and at least one more component part – a word/ word-group signalizing the idea of comparison.

Figures of Identity (3) Formal signs of simile: like, -like, as, as if, as though, to resemble, to remind one of, to bear a resemblance to, to have a look of, etc. e.g. as cool as a cucumber My heart is like a singing bird. She was a mouse-like creature. It fits like a glove.

Figures of Identity (4) e.g. She heaved away from the table like a pregnant elephant. She had the mentality of a cockroach and not an ordinary one at that , but one who had been dropped on its head as a baby. Brandon liked me as much as Hiroshima liked the atomic bomb.

Figures of Identity (5) Synonymous replacements are used to avoid monotonous repetition of the same word in a sentence or a sequence of sentences. e.g. He brought home numberless prizes. He told his mother countless stories every night about his companions. She told his name to the trees. She whispered it to the flowers. She breathed it out to the birds. At times she would ride her palfrey along the sands of the sea and call “Guido” to the waves….

Figures of Inequality

Specifying Synonyms Function –precision in characterizing the object of speech. e.g. Just at daybreak I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They were not yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs – they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams.

Climax / Gradation Climax is an arrangement of correlative ideas in which what precedes is less than what follows. e.g. I am sorry, I am very sorry, I am so extremely sorry. The book has a power, so to speak, a very exceptional power; in fact, one may say without exaggeration it is the most powerful book of the month.

Anti-climax /Bathos Anti-climax is a addition of one weaker element to one or several strong ones mentioned before. e.g. A woman who could face the very devil himself of a mouse – looses her grip and goes all to pieces in front of a flash of lightning.

Anti-climax /Bathos (2) e.g. Just at daybreak I was awakened by a series of awful screams from Bill. They were not yells, or howls, or shouts, or whoops, or yawps, such as you’d expect from a manly set of vocal organs – they were simply indecent, terrifying, humiliating screams such as women omit when they see ghosts or caterpillars.

Pun / Calembour Pun is “play upon words” based on polysemy or homonymy. e.g. – Have you been seeing spirits? Or taking any? Officer: What steps would you take if an enemy tank were coming toward you? Soldier: Long ones.

Zeugma Zeugma is grammatical combination of unequal, semantically heterogeneous or even incompatible words or phrases. It is co-occurrence and seeming analogy of syntactical connection of two or more units (words, phrases) with another unit. e.g. She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief.

Zeugma (2) e.g. She possessed two false teeth and a good heart. At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humor, put on kimono, airs and the water to boil for coffee.

Tautology Tautology Pretended Mere repetition of the same word or word-combination e.g. That’s that. For East is East and West is West… Befehl ist Befehl. Tautology Disguised Expression of the same idea twice with new words or periphrasis. e.g. Make yourself an honest man and then you may be sure there is one rascal less in the world. Heads, I win, tails, you lose.

Figures of Contrast Oxymoron (Gr. sharp-dull) – ascribing some feature to an object incompatible with that feature. e.g. O brawling love! O loving hate! O any thing! Of nothing first create. O heavy lightness! Serious vanity! Mis-shapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Figures of Contrast (2) Antithesis (Gr. against statement) – any active confrontation, emphasized co-occurrence of notions, really or presumably contrastive. e.g. It was the best of times. It was the worst of times: it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the era of incredulity…