Stylistic Syntax Syntactic Stylistic Devices

Lecture 8

Guide for Studying Drama

Like other forms of literature, drama requires the active involve­ment of its audience. When we read a play, we actively imagine how the playwright's words might come to life on stage. When we see a play in the theater, we add our own thoughts and feelings to what we see on the stage. Review the following questions when you read or see a play. In helping you to understand how drama creates its impact, this guide will increase your enjoyment of any play.

1. What important conflicts does the play present? What events of the plot develop these conflicts? What event is the play's climax, and how does it resolve the play's conflicts?

2. Who are the major characters in the play? What personality traits do they reveal in their dialogue with each other? In their soliloquies and asides? What do we learn about them from the comments of other characters?

3. What is the setting of the play? What is the play's historical and social background? How is the setting appropriate to the play's action?

4. What are the themes of the play? How are these themes revealed through the play's plot, setting, and characters?

5. In what ways could staging —scenery, lighting, costumes, and acting—establish the play's atmosphere, bring its characters to life, and highlight its major developments and themes?

6. Is the play a comedy or tragedy? If it is a tragedy, what is the tragic flaw of its hero?

Syntactic Stylistic Devices

ELLIPSIS

An elliptical sentence is such a syntactic structure in which there is no subject, or predicate, or both. The main parts of elliptical sentences are omitted by the speaker intentionally in cases when they are semantically redundant. For example:

- Where did you go?

- To the disco.

Assigned features. Elliptical sentences can not be viewed as stylistic devices in direct intercourse because they are devoid of suprasegmental information. Ellipsis becomes expressive when used in literature as a means of imitating real speech. Ellipsis makes speech dynamic, informative and unofficial.

Communicative functions. Ellipsis saves the speaker from needless ef­fort, spares his time, reduces redundancy of speech. Elliptical structures may also reveal such speakers' emotions as excitement, impatience, delight, etc. As a stylistic device, ellipsis is an effective means of protagonists' portrayal.

More examples:

- Hullo! Who are you?

- The staff.

- Where are the others?

- At the front.

Вгорі – темне непривітне небо, долі – холодна мокра земля, і більш нічого.

Скільки тобі вчитися в училищі? – Два роки.

Note. It is essential to differentiate between elliptical sentences and one-member structures. The problem is that they may look completely homonymous out of context. For example, the isolated sentence "Dark night" can be treated both as one-member (non-elliptical) or two-member elliptical struc­ture. What is what becomes clear only in speech. If a text begins with the sequence of sentences "Dark night. Strong wind. Loneliness", they are obviously one-member, having neither subject nor predicate. But if the im­plied subject and predicate can be easily and unambiguously restored in con­text, we deal with a two-member elliptical sentence. Thus, the sentence "At the front" of the above given example is two-member, elliptical, and extend­ed, its subject they and its predicate are being implied.

NOMINATIVE (NOMINAL) SENTENCES

A nominative sentence is a variant of one-member structures: it has neither subject nor predicate. It is called nominative or nominal because its basic (head) component is a noun or a noun-like element (gerund, numeral).

Classification. There are such structural types of nominative sentenc­es as:

1. Unextended nominative sentences consisting of a single element:

Morning. April. Problems.

2. Extended nominative sentences consisting of the basic component and one or more words modifying it:

Nice morning. Late April. Horribly great problems.

3. Multicomponent nominative sentences containing two or more basic elements:

Late April and horribly great problems.

Далина. Далечінь. Світлодаль... У мандрівку збирається молодь. Невпинне, безжальне, вперте обертання. Мовчазна безнадійність руху.

Безмежний простір, безкінечні небеса, виспів птаства, дзюркіт струмочків, пречиста весняна зелень, перші квіти.

Communicative functions. A sequence of nominative sentences makes for dynamic description of events. Sets of nominative sentences are used to expressively depict the time of the action, the place of the action, the attendant circumstances of the action, the participants of the action.

APOSIOPESIS (BREAK-IN-THE-NARRATIVE)

Like ellipsis, aposiopesis is also realized through incompleteness of sentence structure, though this incompleteness is of different structural and semantic nature: it appears when the speaker is unwilling to proceed and breaks off his narration abruptly:

If you go on like this...

Ну, взяв би і написав по-російському. А то...

Я ось йому покажу, де раки зимують. Буде він у мене...

Так ви самі їдете? А якже...

Голова правління їх утихомирює, а вони...

Assigned features. The information implied by aposiopesis is usually clear in communicative situation. Break-in-the-narrative expresses such modal meanings as threat, warning, doubt, indecision, excitement, and promise.

Note. Aposiopesis should not be confused with unintentional break in the narrative, when the speaker does not know what to say. Unintentional break off is of no stylistic significance, though it may serve as an indirect evidence of the speaker's confusion, his being at a loss.

ASYNDETON

It is deliberate omission of structurally significant conjunctions and connectives:

John couldn't have done such a silly thing, he is enough clever for that. Fathers, mothers, uncles, cousins.

Cocking tails and pricking whiskers,...

We had heard planes coining, seen them pass overhead, watched them go far to the left, heard them bombing...

Механізм справді був простий, зручний, корисний.

Пан директор сміється, сміється сонце, сміюсь і я.

Я знаю: в призначений долею вечір напророчать дорогу мені три зозулі в саду.

Communicative functions. Asyndeton makes speech dynamic and ex­pressive. Sometimes it implies the speaker's haste, nervousness and impatience.

PARCELING

Parceling is intentional splitting of sentences into smaller parts sep­arated by full stops:

Oswald hates Rolf. Very much.

Sally found Dick. Yesterday. In the pub.

Then the pain began. Slow. Deliberate. Methodical. And professional.

В четвертому класі щось заримував про собаку. По-російському.Жартівливе.

І слухає мій сум природа. Люба. Щира. Крізь плач. Крізь сміх.

Крізь листя дерев і контури хат виднілися далекі обриси поля. Зеленого, соковитого.

Оселився після війни в цьому місті. Знову ж таки з чистої випадковості, з обов'язку військової людини. Хоча й не скажеш, що це було у розладі з його бажанням.

Assigned features. Parceling is typical of spontaneous speech, where the function of dots is performed by pauses. In speech parceling may be non-stylistic, when it is just the resuit of the specific psychological process of forming and verbalizing human thoughts.

Communicative functions. When used in writing, parceling performs the following functions:

1. It reflects the atmosphere of unofficial communication and spontaneous character of speech.

2. It reflects the speaker's inner state of mind, his emotions, such as nervousness, irritation, excitement, confusion, perplexity, etc.

3. It may serve as a means of making information more concrete and more detailed.

REPETITION

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