Glossary of stylistic terms

Appendix 1.

Allegory is anextended metaphor through an entire speech or passage so that objects, persons, and actions in the text are equated with meanings that lie outside the text.In Aesop’s fables and in George Orwell’s Animal Farm, for example, the animal characters represent people.

e.g. The kingdom of heaven is like to a grain of mustard seed, which a man took, and sowed in his field: Which indeed is the least of all seeds: but when it is grown, it is the greatest among herbs, and becometh a tree, so that the birds of the air come and lodge in the branches there of (Mattew; 13:31-32).

It is used:

- to enlighten the hearer by answering questions and suggesting some principles;

- for the purpose of moral instruction.

Alliteration is the repetition of initial consonant sound in two or more words following each other immediately or at short intervals.

e.g. For my part, I abominate all honorable respectable t oils, t rials and t ribulations of every kind whatsoever. (H. Melville)

It is used:

- to emphasise certain words or a line;

- to unite words through a kind of repetition;

- to make phrases catchy;

- to achieve a melodic or emotional effect;

- to enhance the rhythm of the sentence;

- as a substitute for rhymes.

Allusion is a reference to a fact that the writer thinks the reader already knows. Allusions can be made to matters of general knowledge such as sports, to characters and incidents connected with well-known works of literature, Bible, to historical events and characters.

e.g. Out she swept like the bad fairy at the christening. (Driddle)

It is used:

- to characterise through analogy;

- to broaden the nominal meaning of a word or a phrase into a generalised

concept.

Anadiplosis is the repetition of the final unit of one utterance at the beginning of the next utterance.

e.g. I was home in a sleeping world, a world as harmless as a sleeping cat. (R. Chandler)

It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained-glass window. (R. Chandler)

It is used:

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Anaphora implies identity of one or several initial elements in some successive sentences.

e.g. Hunger stole upon me so slowly that at first I was not aware of what hunger really meant. Hunger had always been more or less at my elbow when I played, but now I began to wake up at night to find hunger standing at my bedside, staring at me gaunly. (R. Wright)

It is used:

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Anticlimax consists in adding one weaker element to one or several strong ones, mentioned before.

e.g. Not all men are annoying. Some are dead. (anonymous)

In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. (R. Chandler)

It is used:

- to produce “defeated expectancy” effect;

- to attract the reader’s attention;

- to produce humorous or satirical effect;

- to decline from a noble (pompous), impressive tone to a less exalted one.

Antithesis consists in putting together two ideas that are quite opposite.

e.g. Imagination was given to man to compensate for what he is not, and a sense of humour to console him for what he is. (anonymous)

Shallow men believe in luck. Strong men believe in cause and effect. (R.W. Emerson)

It may be used:

- to create certain rhythmic effect;

- to compare two objects or to set a contrast between them;

- to connect words, clauses or sentences and to unite their senses;

- to disconnect words and disunite their senses.

Antonomasia is the use of a common name as a proper name and vice versa.

e.g. He is still Mr. New Broom, slightly feared. (D. Lodge)

Mr. Altruism. Mr Al Truism. (P. Auster)

It may serve:

- to characterise the bearer of the name;

- to create some humorous effect.

Aposiopesis denotes intentional break in the narrative.

e.g. He had a gopher-wood stave with which… well, some of the animals carry stripes to this day. (J. Barnes)

He almost smiled. And I was grateful. He is a source of guilt and annoyance to me now, but he was my friend, and – … (J. Banville)

It is used to convey:

- the emotional state of the speaker depriving him of the ability to express himself in terms of language;

- unwillingness to proceed;

- the speaker’s uncertainty as to what should be said;

- hint, warning, promise.

Assonance is the repetitionof the same stressed vowelsfollowed by different consonants in two or more neighbouring words.

e.g. Str i ps of t i nfoil w i nking like people.

It is used:

- to enrich ornament within the line;

- as a substitute for end-rhyme;

- to give the poet more flexibility as it doesn’t so much determine the

structure or form of a poem.

Asyndeton is deliberate omission of conjunctions.

e.g. The day, water, sun, moon, night – I do not have to purchase these things with money (T.M. Plautus)

It is used:

- to impart dynamic force to the text;

- to produce strong rhythmic impact.

Chiasmus is a kind of parallelism (reverse parallelism) in which the word order followed in the first phrase or clause is inverted in the second.

e.g. Few rich men own their own property. The property owns them. (R.G. Ingersoll)

It is used:

- to bring in some additional meaning;

- to emphasise certain parts of the utterance;

- to break the monotony of parallel constructions;

- to contribute to the rhythmical quality of the utterance.

Climax (Gradation) denotes such an arrangement of notions, expressed by words, word-combinations or sentences in which what precedes is less significant than what follows.

e.g. I am not in recession. I’m doing fine. I’m well-off. I’m almost rich. (D. Lodge)

It is used:

- to intensify the logical importance or emotional (nervous) strain;

- to show the increase in the volume, quantity, size, etc.

Detachment is tearing a secondary part of the sentence away from the word it refers to, and gaining some independence and greater degree of significance. Detached parts are separated by means of commas and dashes.

e.g. She set her face and gazed under half-dropped lids at the funeral, stoic, fate-like. (D.H. Lawrence)

It is used:

- to emphasise a word or a phrase;

- to impart some additional syntactical meanings to the word or a phrase.

Ellipsis means the omission of one or both principle parts of a sentence.

e.g. If word got out, just think what would happen. Dogs as smart as men? A blasphemous assertion. (P. Auster)

It is used:

- to reproduce the direct speech of characters;

- to impart brevity, a quick tempo and emotional tension to the

narrative;

- as a means of dynamic description.

Emphatic construction “It is he...who” is turning the simple sentence into a complex one.

e.g. It was only then that I realized it was she I had seen on the lawn that day at Professor Something’s party. (J. Banville)

Emphatic construction with “do” reveals a certain degree of logical and emotional emphasis.

e.g. Nature never did betray

The heart that loved her. (W. Wordsworth)

Enumeration is built up by means of the repetition of homogeneous syntactical units.

e.g. She had lived through and noticed a certain amount of history. A war, a welfare state, the rise of meritocracy, European unity, little England, equality of opportunity, women liberation, the death of the individual. (A.S. Byatt)

Heterogeneous enumeration is used:

- to give the insight into the mind of the observer who pays attention to the variety of miscellaneous objects;

- for the purpose disorderly and therefore striking description;

- to arrest the reader’s attention, making him decipher the message.

Epiphora is the repetition of the same unit at the end of two or more successive clauses or sentences.

e.g. World is evil

Life is evil

All is evil

if i ride the horse of hate

with its evil hooded eye

turning world to evil. (L. Ferlinghetti)

It is used:

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Epithet is a word or a group of words giving an expressive characterization of the object described.

e.g. Trite epithets: blood-thirsty thoughts, dead silence, etc.

Genuine epithets: knifing hangover, elephantine body, industrial-looking food, much-to-long-and-tight-under-the arms dress, she said it in an I-don't-think-you're-being-very-sensitive sort of voice, the tiny box of a kitchen.

It is used to show individual attitude of the speaker towards the person or thing described.

Euphemism is a word that replaces another word of similar but stronger meaning.

e.g. I was thinking an unmentionable thing about your mother. (I. Shaw)

It is used:

- to soften an otherwise coarse or unpleasant idea, to produce mild effect;

- to avoid any kind of discrimination (agism, sexism, etc).

Graphon is intentional violation of the spelling of a word/word combination used to reflect its authentic pronunciation.

e.g. “Thith thtuff thtics in my mouth’, complained the rat. ‘It’th worth than caramel candy’. (E.B. White)

It is used:

- to characterise the speaker as a person of a certain locality, breeding,

education and even social standing;

- to show the speaker’s inability to pronounce words according to the

standard (intoxication, lisp, stammer, etc);

- to reproduce the emphatic pronunciation of words.

Hypallage – metonymical/transferred epithet.

e.g. He took his sad chair and lit a cigarette.

Hyperbole is an exaggerated statement.

e.g. She wore a hat with a crown the size of a whisky glass and a brim you could have wrapped the week’s laundry in. (R. Chandler)

The coffee shop smell was strong enough to build a garage on. (R. Chandler)

It is used:

- to exaggerate quantity or quality;

- to serve expressive and emotive purposes;

- to produce some humorous effect.

Inversion consists in unusual arrangement of words for the purpose of making one of them more emphatic.

e.g. Of my country and of my family I have little to say. (E.A. Poe)

Irony is the use of a word in a sense that is opposite of its usual meaning. There is always a contrast between the notion named and the notion meant.

e.g. A nice sense of humour – like a morgue attendant. (R. Chandler)

Irony is used:

- to intensify the evaluative meaning of the utterance;

- to produce humorous effect;

- to express very subtle, almost imperceptible nuances of meaning;

- to show irritation, displeasure, pity, regret, etc.

Litotes is expressing an idea by means of negating the opposite idea.

e.g. Mary was in a state of mind to rejoice in a connection with the Bertram family, and to be not displeased with her brother’s marrying a little beneath him. (J. Austen)

Metaphor is transference of names based on similarity between two objects.

e.g. Original metaphor: A man who cannot wonder is but a pair of spectacles behind which there are no eyes.

Trite metaphor: seeds of evil, roots of evil, to burn with desire.

If we do not make common cause to save the good old ship of the Union on this voyage, nobody will have a chance to pilot her on another voyage. (Abraham Lincoln)

It may serve:

- as an image-creative device;

- to characterise or describe objects or people;

- to impart some expressive or emotive force to utterance.

Meiosis is the opposite of Hyperbole. It is weakening, reducing the real characteristics of the object of speech.

e.g. The pennies were saved by bulldozing the grocer. (O. Henry)

It is used:

- to understate normal qualities of objects;

- to show the speaker’s intentional modesty.

Metonymy is based on contiguity of objects or phenomena having common grounds of existence in reality.

e.g. For several days he took an hour after his work to make inquiry taking with him some examples of his pen and inks. (T. Dreiser)

The pen is mightier than a sword. (anonymous)

It is used:

- to build up imagery;

- to show a property or an essential quality of the concept;

- to impart any special force to linguistic expression.

Onomatopoeia is using speech sounds to imitate the sound of what is being described – nature, people, things, animals etc.

e.g. buzz, whistle, ding-dong.

Crash! The old girl’s head went through the ceiling as though it were butter. (R. Dahl)

It is used:

- to bring out the full flavour of words, their expressive and emotive

connotations;

- to make the acoustic picture of reality;

- to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense.

Oxymoron is an attributive or an adverbial combination of two contradictory or incongruous words.

e.g.

O anything of nothing first create!

O heavy lightness, serious vanity!

Misshapen chaos of well-seeming forms!

Feather of lead, bright smoke, cold fire, sick health!

(W. Shakespear)

Fresh oxymoron: I am a deeply religious unbeliever. (A. Einstein)

Trite oxymoron: awfully good, terribly nice, pretty dirty, etc.

It is used:

- to bring out new shades of meaning by putting together semantically contradictory words;

- to emphasize the emotive meaning;

- to show the author’s subjective individual perception of the object.

Paradox isan assertion seemingly opposed to common sense, but that may yet have some truth in it.

e.g. It takes a lifetime to become young. (P. Picassso)

It is used:

- to produce the “defeated expectancy” effect;

- to produce humorous or satirical effect.

Parallelism consists in similarity of the syntactical structure of successive phrases, clauses or sentences. Parallelism may be complete, which consists in repetition of identical syntactical structures.

e.g. Loneliness is the poverty of self; solitude is the richness of self. (M. Sarton)

It is used:

- to convey the idea of semantic equality of the sentence parts;

- to produce some emotive impact on the reader;

- to emphasize the diversity or contrast of ideas (in combination with antithesis);

- to produce some rhythmic effect.

Parenthesis is a qualifying explanatory word or phrase, which interrupts a syntactic construction without effecting it.

e.g. His mouth was set grimly, and a nerve was twitching in his jaw – he had every right to be furious – but in his eyes all I could see was a sort of dreamy sadness. (J. Banville)

It is used:

- to create the second plane or background to the narrative;

- to make some part of a sentence more conspicuous.

Periphrasis is a stylistic device, which is used to replace the name of an object by description of its most specific features.

e.g. The man was shouting some choice Anglo-Saxon phrases at the policeman. (P. Auster)

It is used:

- to bring out and intensify some features or properties of the given object;

- to achieve a more elegant manner of expression;

- to avoid monotonous repetition.

Personification is a kind of metaphor. It is a representation of inanimate objects or abstract ideas as living beings. The abstract ideas are often capitalized and can be substituted by the pronouns 'he' or 'she'.

e.g. When sorrows come, they come not single spies

But in battalions. (W. Shakespeare)

Experience is a good teacher, but she sends in terrific bills. (M. Antrim)

Personification may be used:

- as an image-creating device;

- to characterise or describe objects or people;

- to impart some expressive or emotive force to the utterance.

Polysyndeton is deliberate repetition of connectives before each component part, when it is generally not expected.

e.g. They come running to clean and cut, and pack, and cook, and can the fish.

It serves:

- to introduce strong rhythmic effect;

- to strengthen the idea of equal logical importance of connected components;

- to emphasise the simultaneity of actions or close connection of properties enumerated, or to promote a high flown tonality of a narrative.

Pun is a play of words based on polysemy or homonymy. In other words, pun is based on the interaction of two well-known meanings of a word or the interplay of word or word combination that sound the same.

e.g. Her real name is Marples. I call her Marbles for a joke. If she ever moves or retires, I’ll be able to say I’ve lost my Marbles. (D. Lodge)

“I have this fabulous idea for a kind of English Twin Peaks”. “What is it?’ I said, averting my eyes from her own twin peaks”. (D. Lodge)

Pun is used:

- to produce humorous effect;

- to make the two meanings more conspicuous or set a contrast between them.

Simile is an imaginative comparison that shows partial identity of two objects belonging to two different classes.

e.g. I felt like an amputated leg. (R. Chandler)

Simile is used:

- to characterise the given objects or phenomena;

- to create an image;

- to bring out unexpected, striking similarities of different objects.

Repetition is recurrence of the same element (word or phrase) within the sentence.

e.g.

To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant and a time to pluck up…

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and to laugh; a time to mourn and a time to dance…

A time to love, and a time to speak; a time of war and a time of peace.

Ecclesiastes

In much wisdom is much grief, and whoever increases knowledge increases sorrow.

Ecclesiastes

Afterwards I thought I might have heard the swish of a sap. Maybe you always think that - afterwards. (P. Auster)

She looked beyond the frightened pensioners, the girls who looked like women, the women who looked like men, the men who looked like psychos. (Tony Parsons)

It is used:

- for emphasis or for a special effect (e.g. intensifying the duration of the process);

- to attract the reader’s attention to the key-word of the utterance;

- to give rhythm to the utterance.

Rhetorical question implies asking question not to gain information, but to assert more emphatically the obvious answer to what is asked. No answer is expected by the speaker.

e.g. Who said you should be happy? Do your work. (Collette)

It is used:

- to express some additional shade of meaning (doubt, assertion, suggestion);

- to enhance the emotional charge of the utterance.

Synecdoche is a kind of metonymy. This term denotes using the name of a part to denote the whole or vice versa.

e.g. Miss Bertrams were too handsome themselves to dislike any woman for being so too, and were almost as much charmed as their brothers with her lively dark eye, clear brown complexion, and general prettiness. (J. Austen)

It is used:

- to show a property or an essential quality of the concept;

- to impart any special force to linguistic expression.

Syntactic tautology implies 1) recurrence of the noun subject in the form of the corresponding personal pronoun; 2) repetition of the sentence by means of the pronominal subject and an auxiliary or modal verb, representing the predicate.

e.g. That Willie Sawyer he don’t know how to have any fun at all. (E. Hemingway)

She knows a lot about religion, does Sally. (D. Lodge)

It is used:

- to make the noun subject of the sentence more prominent;

- to reproduce the peculiarities of colloquial speech or the speech of uneducated people.

Symbolism. A word functions as a symbol when it is used to indicate not only its usual referent, but also something quite different. Some symbols have traditional associations. For example, the word flag refers not only to a cloth banner, but it also symbolises the country that flies it. Other conventional symbols include a circle – perfection; the sun – power or reason; greenery – youth; winter – old age; and a road – the path of life. For example, when Walt Whitman used the symbol of the “ship of state” in his poem O Captain! My Captain! readers knew that the poem was actually referring to the ship of the United States and its lost captain, Abraham Lincoln. Writers can also create their own associations between unlike things, establishing personal symbols.

Synesthesia is adescription of a sensory experience as if it were perceived through another sense. For example, describing a painter’s colours – a visual experience – in auditory terms – as clashing or loud. The following lines from William Blake’s poem, London, use synesthesia to describe an auditory phenomenon – a soldier’s sigh – in visual terms: “And the hapless soldier’s sigh / Runs in blood down palace walls.”

Zeugma consists in combining unequal semantically heterogeneous or even incompatible words or phrases.

e.g. He lost his hat and his temper.

She dropped a tear and her pocket handkerchief.

It is used:

- to produce humorous effect;

- to make the two meanings more conspicuous.

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