Devices based on the transferred use of structural meaning

Devices based on a peculiar use of colloquial constructions

Devices based on the principle of a type of connection

Asyndeton - асиндетон, бессоюзие – the omission of the conjunctions that ordinarily join coordinate words or clauses, as in the phrase “I came, I saw, I conquered”. (Vini, vidi, vici).

Polysyndeton (полисиндетон, многосоюзие) – the stylistic device of connecting sentences, or phrases or syntagms or words by using connectives, mostly conjunctions and prepositions, before each component part. For example, Should you ask me whence these stories? Whence these legends and traditions. With the dew, and damp of medows, With the curling smoke of wigwams… The repetition of conjunctions and other means of connection makes an utterance more rhythmical; so much that prose may even seem like poetry. So one of the functions of polysyndeton is a rhythmical one. In addition to this, polysyndeton has a disintegrating function. It generally combines homogeneous elements of thought into one whole resembling enumeration. But unlike enumeration polysyndeton has a disintegrating function. Enumeration shows the things united, polysyndeton shows them isolated. Polysyndeton has also the function of expressing sequence.

Ellipsis(ellipse) – afigure of speech characterized by the deliberate omission of a word or words that are, however, understood in light of the grammatical context. E.g. Nothing so difficult as a beginning…

Aposiopesis (break-in-the-narrative) a speaker's deliberate failure to complete a sentence. Aposiopesis may have different implications: speechless rage or exasperation, as in “Why, you...,” and sometimes implies vague threats as in, “Why, I'll....” The listener is expected to complete the sentence in his mind.

Question in narrative. E.g. Scroodge knew he was dead? Of course he did. How could it be otherwise?

Represented speech ( non-personal direct speech (half-reported speech ) - a style of narration in which the author describes the events, thoughts and feelings from the point of view of his literary character, as though it were the character himself expressing his opinion and estimation of those events, thinking aloud, as it were, (absence of quotation marks, the use of the third person instead of the first, and the tense shift required by the rule of sequence of tenses). E.g. Over and over he was asking himself: would she receive him?

Rhetorical questions. A rhetorical question is a question which is asked as a way of making a statement without expecting and answer. It may express different feelings. E.g. How long must we suffer? Where is the end?

Litotes [ lai'tquti:z] – a stylistic device consisting of a peculiar use of negative constructions. The negation plus noun or adjective serves to establish a positive feature in a person or thing. This positive feature is somewhat diminished in quality as compared with a synonymous expression making a straightforward assertion of the positive feature. E.g. It’s not a bad thing- It’s a good thing. He is no coward. – He is a brave man. In both cases, the negative construction is weaker than the affirmative one but still it has a stronger impact on the reader than the affirmative one. The stylistic effect of the litotes depends mainly on the intonation. A variant of litotes is a construction with two negations, as in (not uncommon, not unlike, not unpromising) where two negatives make a positive. E.g. It is not uncommon to find people here who know several languages. — Здесь нередко можно встретить людей, которые знают несколько иностранных языков

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