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EXPRESSIVE MEANS (EM) AND STYLISTIC DEVICES (SD)

In linguistics there are different terms to denote those particular means by which a writer obtains his effect. Expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic devices and other terms are all used indiscriminately. For our purposes it is necessary to make a distinction between expressive means and stylistic devices.

All stylistic means of a language can be divided into expressive means (EM), which are used in some specific way, and special devices called stylistic devices (SD).

The expressive means of a language are those phonetic means, morphological forms, means of word-building, and lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms, all of which function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms of the language, wrought by social usage and recognized by their semantic function have been fixed in grammars and dictionaries. Some of them are normalized, and good dictionaries label them as intensifiers. In most cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous forms.

The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic. The human voice can indicate subtle nuances of meaning that no other means can attain. Pitch, melody, stress, pausation, drawling, drawling out certain syllables, whispering, a sing-song manner of speech and other ways of using the voice are more effective than any other means Jn intensifying the utterance emotionally or logically.

Among the morphological expressive means the use of the Present Indefinite instead of the Past Indefinite must be mentioned first. This has already been acknowledged as a special means and is named the Historical Present. In describing some past event the author uses the present tense, thus achieving a more vivid picturisation of what was going on.

The use of shall in the second and third person may also be regarded as an expressive means. Compare the following synonymous statements and you will not fail to observe the intensifying element in the sentence with shall (which in such cases always gets emphatic stress).

He shall do it (= I shall make him do it).

He has to do it (= It is necessary for him to do it).

Among word-building means we find a great many forms which serve to make the utterance more expressive and fresh or to intensify it. The diminutive suffixes as - y ( ie ), - let, e. g. dear, dearie, stream, streamlet, add some emotional colouring to the words. We may also refer to what are called neologisms and nonce-words formed with nonproductive suffixes or with Greek roots, as: mistressmanship, cleanorama, walkathon (See p. 91).

Certain affixes have gained such a power of expressiveness that they begin functioning as separate words, absorbing all of the generalizing meaning they usually attach to different roots, as for example: 'isms and ologies'.

At the lexical level there are a great many words which due to their inner expressiveness, constitute a special layer. There are words with emotive meaning only, like interjections, words which have both referential and emotive meaning, like some of the qualitative adjectives; words which still retain a twofold meaning; denotative and connotative; or words belonging to special groups of literary English or of non-standard English (poetic, archaic, slang, vulgar, etc.) and some other groups. The expressive power of these words cannot be doubted, especially when they are compared with the neutral vocabulary.

The same can be said of the set expressions of the language. Proverbs and sayings as well as catch-words form a considerable number of language units which serve to make speech more emphatic, mainly from the emotional point of view. Their use in every-day speech can hardly be overestimated. Some of these proverbs and sayings are so well-known that their use in the process of communication passes almost unobserved; others are rare and therefore catch the attention of the reader or the listener.

Here is an example of a proverb used by Dickens in "Dombey and Son" to make up a simile.

"As thelaststrawbreakstheladencamel ' sback, this piece of underground information crushed the sinking spirits of Mr. Dombey."

In every-day speech you often hear such phrases as "Well, it will only addfueltothefire ", and the like, which can easily be replaced by synonymous neutral expressions, like "It will only make the situation worse."

Finally at the syntactical level there are many constructions which, being set against synonymous ones, will reveal a certain degree of logical or emotional emphasis.

Let us compare the following pairs of structures:

"I have never seen such a film." " Neverhave I seen such a film."

"Mr. Smith came in first." " Itwas Mr. Smith who came in first."

The second structure in each pair contains emphatic elements. They cause intensification of the utterance: in the first case emotional in character, in the second, logical.

In the English language there are many syntactical patterns which serve to intensify emotional quality. Examples of these emotional constructions are:

He is a brute of a man, isJohn.

Isn ' tshe cute!;

Foolthat he was!

These expressive means of the English language have so far been very.little investigated except, perhaps, certain set expressions and to some extent affixation. Most of them still await researchers. They are widely used for stylistic purposes, but these purposes likewise have not yet been adequately explained and hardly at all specified.

Yet they exist in the language as forms that can be used for emphasis, i.e., to make a part of the utterance more prominent and conspicuous, as a segmental analysis of the utterance shows. This inevitably calls for a more detailed analysis of the nature of the emphatic elements which we have named expressive means of the language. Not infrequently, as we shall see later, some expressive means possess a power of emotional intensification which radiates through the whole of the utterance. Lately a new concept has been introduced into linguistics— that of super-segmental analysis. This takes into account not only what the words mean in the given context, but also what new shades of meaning are at issue when the utterance is analysed as a whole.

The expressive means of the language are studied respectively in manuals of phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics, however, observes not only the nature of an expressive means, but also its potential capacity of becoming a stylistic device.

What then is a stylistic device (SD)? It is a conscious and intentional literary use of some of the facts of the language (including expressive means) in which the most essential features (both structural and semantic) of the language forms are raised to a generalized level and thereby present a generative model. Most stylistic devices may be regarded as aiming at the further intensification of the emotional or logical emphasis contained in the corresponding expressive means.

This conscious transformation of a language fact into a stylistic device has been observed by certain linguists whose interests in scientific research have gone beyond the boundaries of grammar. Thus A. A. Potebnja writes:

"As far back as in ancient Rome and Greece and with few exceptions up to the present time, the definition of a figurative use of a word has been based on the contrast between ordinary speech, used in its own, natural, primary meaning and transferred speech."

A.A.Potebnja thus shows how the expressive means of the Russian language are transformed into stylistic devices. He describes how Gogol uses the literal repetition characteristic of folklore instead of allusions and references.

The birth of an SD is not accidental. Language means which are used with more or less definite aims of communication and in one and the same function in various passages of writing, begin gradually to develop new features, a wider range of functions and become a relative means of expressiveness alongside the already recognized expressive means of the language, like proverbs or sayings, diminutive suffixes and the like. These SDs form a special group of language means which are more abstract in nature than the expressive means of the language. It would perhaps be more correct to say that unlike expressive means, stylistic devices are patterns of the language whereas the expressive means do not form patterns. They are just like words themselves, they are facts of the language, and as such are, or should be, registered in dictionaries.

This can be illustrated in the following manner:

Proverbs and sayings are facts of language. They are collected in dictionaries. There are special dictionaries of proverbs and sayings. It is impossible to arrange proverbs and sayings in a form that would present a pattern even though they have some typical features by which it is possible to determine whether or not we are dealing with one. These typical features are: rhythm, sometimes rhyme and/or alliteration.

But the most characteristic feature of a proverb or a saying lies not in its formal linguistic expression, but in the content-form of the utterance. As is known, a proverb or a saying is a peculiar mode of utterance which is mainly characterized by its brevity. The utterance itself, taken at its face value, presents a pattern which can be successfully used for other utterances. The peculiarity of the use of a proverb lies in the fact that the actual wording becomes a pattern which needs no new wording to suggest extensions of meaning which are contextual. In other words a proverb presupposes a simultaneous application of two meanings: the face-value or primary meaning, and an extended meaning drawn from the context, but bridled by the face-value meaning. In other words the proverb itself becomes a vessel into which new content is poured. The actual wording of a proverb, its primary meaning, narrows the field of possible extensions of meaning, i.e. the filling up of the form. That is why we may regard the proverb as a pattern of thought. So it is in every other case at any other level of linguistic research. Abstract formulas offer a wider range of possible applications to practical purposes than concrete words, though they have the same purpose.

The interrelation between expressive means and₍ stylistic devices can be worded in terms of the theory of information. Expressive means have a greater degree of predictability than stylistic devices. The latter may appear in an environment which may seem alien and therefore be only slightly or not at all predictable.'-'Expressive means are commonly used in language, and are therefore easily predictable. Stylistic devices carry a greater amount of information because if they are at all predictable they are less predictable than expressive means. It follows that stylistic devices must be regarded as a special code which has still to be deciphered. Stylistic devices are generally used sparingly, lest they should overburden the utterance with information.

Not every stylistic use of a language fact will come under the term SD. There are practically unlimited possibilities of presenting any language fact in what is vaguely called its stylistic use. But this use in no way forms an SD. For a language fact to become an SD there is one indispensable requirement, viz., that it should be so much used in one and the same function that it has become generalized in its functions. True, even a use coined for the occasion, that is a nonce use can, and very often does create the necessary conditions for the appearance of an SD. Thus many facts of English grammar are said to be used with a stylistic function, e. g. some of the English morphemes are used in definite contexts as full words, but these facts are not SDs of the English language. They are still wandering in the vicinity of the realm of stylistic devices without being admitted into it. Perhaps in the near future they will be accepted as SDs, but in the meantime they are not. This can indirectly be proved by the fact that they have no special name in the English language system of SDs. Compare such SDs as metaphor, metonymy, oxymoron, parallel construction and the like. These have become facts of a special branch of linguistic science, viz., stylistics. All these facts, however, are facts of general linguistics as well. But in general linguistics they are viewed as means either of creating new meanings of words, or of serving the purpose of making the utterance more comprehensible ( cf. the repetition of the subject of a sentence when there is a long attributive clause following the subject, which breaks the natural sequence of the primary members of the sentence and therefore requires the repetition of the subject).

So far stylistic devices have not been recognized as lawful members of the system of language. They are set apart as stylistic phenomena, this being regarded as a special domain, not part and parcel of the system of language. But the process of the development of language does not take into consideration the likes or dislikes of this or that linguist, it establishes its own paths along which the formation of the whole system of a language is moulded. The stylistic devices of a highly developed language like English or Russian have brought into the literary language a separate body of means of expression which have won recognition as a constituent to be studied in the branch of language study named Stylistics.

And yet some scholars still regard stylistic devices as violations of the norms of the language. (See Saintsbury, p. 13.) It is this notion which leads some prominent linguists (G. Vandryes, for example) to the conclusion that "The Belles-Lettres Style (where SDs flourish, I. G.) is always a reaction against the common language; to some extent it is a jargon, a literary jargon, which may have varieties."

The study of the linguistic nature of SDs in any language therefore becomes an essential condition for the general study of the functions of the SDs and ultimately for the system of the language in general, not excluding such elements of language as deal with the emotional aspect.

It is in view of this particular problem that so much attention is paid in this book to the analysis of the expressive means (EMs) and stylistic devices (SDs), their nature and functions, their classification and possible interpretations. They occupy considerable part of the book and constitute the concrete linguistic body of the manual.

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