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Language, Imagery and Style
Language, Imagery and Style
· Vocabulary: the selection of one word or a group of words rather than another.
· Grammar: the use of tense, mood and modality for stylistic purposes.
· Syntax (sentence/paragraph structure): the use of sentences which are long or short, complete or
incomplete, complex or simple.
· Coherence and cohesion means: the use of certain means that hold discourse together.
Language Aspects
· general or specific
· abstract or concrete
· formal or informal
B. Length of sentences (measured in number of words, an average sentence comprises 7-9 words)
C. Kinds of sentences
· inversions
· sentence openers (words, phrases or clauses, which are not part of the subject cluster)
F. Paragraphing
· words and phrases co-refer (i.e. refer to other entities). Pronouns such as ‘he’, ‘she’, ‘they’, ‘it’ refer
back to people or things already mentioned,
· verbs that have already been used are repeated in condensed, substitute forms, e.g. He thought he had
missed the train. If so (missed the train) he would have to walk,
Grammar
Tense – most narrative is written in the simple past tense but other tenses are sometimes used to create
different effects. (e.g. Generic Present, etc.)
Mood can be reflected through the use of grammar – the declarative mood is the most common, but
the use of imperatives and interrogatives can influence the pace and change the focus.
Modality (the use of modal verbs) also contributes to the overall impression the text produces through
the changes in tone and atmosphere.
Syntax
1. Simple sentences have one main clause (one subject and one verb).
2. Compound sentences have two (or more) main clauses, i.e. two subjects and two verbs which are
linked by coordinating words or conjunctions (and, but, or, nor, either, neither).
3. Complex sentences, like compound sentences, consist of two or more clauses but these are linked
together by subordination using words such as because, when, although. This kind of sentence is the
most complicated and in prose usually signals a fairly sophisticated style.
In answer to this first question, a sentence may perform various functions. For example:
· exclamatory sentences always end with an exclamation mark and contain exclamations.
Here are some general pointers:
· short, simple sentences could be used to give the sense of action speeding up, or a sense of
breathlessness,
Home Activity 1:
Vocabulary: the great fish, It was too good to last, Bad luck to your mother, chop of the teeth, the
clicking, thrusting all-swallowing jaws
Grammar: most narrative is written in the simple past tense, sentence without verb (Bad luck to your
mother)
Vocabulary: sash, my heart leaped, foolish blood, Her image accompanied, my body was like a harp,
her words and gestures were like fingers running upon the wires
Grammar: most narrative is written in the simple past tense, passive voice, past perfect
Syntax: short, simple sentences could be used to give the sense of action speeding up, or a sense of
breathlessness
Vocabulary: death, crouch over him, bitter cold, great need, sin, open-breeched to the winds of
heaven, ill-luck, bitter December weather
Home Activity 2:
Home Activity 3:
1) “Then with an enormous, shattering rumble, sludge-puff sludge…puff, the train came into the
station.” (A. Saxton) – onomotopoeia
2) “Luscious, languid and lustful, isn’t she?” “Those are not the correct epithets. She is – or rather was –
surly, lustrous and sadistic” (E. Waugh) – alliteration
4) “There must be Jods thrown down and trumpets blown.” (J. Keats) - assonance
Home Activity 4:
Part II
Semantically, there should be differentiated two main groups, the biggest of them being affective
(or emotive proper). These epithets serve to convey the emotional evaluation of the object by the
speaker. The second group – figurative, or transferred epithets – is formed by metaphors,
metonymies and similes expressed by adjectives.
Oxymoron (оксюморон) joins two antonymous words into one syntagm most frequently
attributive, (‘loving hatred’) or adverbial (‘shouted silently’).
Allusion (аллюзия) is reference to a famous historical, literary, mythological, biblical or
everyday life character or event, commonly known.
Zeugma (also syllepsis ‘зевгма’) is based on the interaction of a free meaning and a
phraseological meaning of a word or between the meanings of two homonyms.
Semantically-false chain (семантически ложная цепочка) is a variation of zeugma, it is
formed by a number of homogeneous members, which are semantically disconnected, but
attached to the same verb.
Pun (also ‘paronomasia’ – каламбур, игра слов) is based on polysemy and the use of
homonyms.
Violation of a phraseological unit (нарушение структуры фразеологизма) may have
different syntactical patterns
Home Activity 1
Shakespeare has
exploited the words
“sole” and “soul.”
Both sound the same,
though they have
different meanings
Violation of a Restoring the literal Little John was born The inner mechanism
phraseological unit original meaning of with a silver spoon in of this device lies in
(нарушение the word, which lost his mouth which was the literal
структуры some of its semantic rather curly and large. interpretation of the
фразеологизма) independence and After a while and a elements of a
strength in a cake he crept phraseological unit,
phraseological unit nervously to the door though the ways to
or cliche. of the parlour. achieve it are different
Home Activity 2
Home Activity 3
1) “I loved Ophelia: forty thousand brothers could not, with all their quantity of love make up my
sum”. – hyperbole. This quote expresses Hamlet’s love perfectly by saying how much he truly
loves her. It also shows the sadness in his speech by showing how he won’t have the love he
used to have.
2) “The sun stepped out of the clouds and smiled momentarily”. – personification. gives things life
or some similarity with human beings
3) “Is life worth living? It depends on the liver!” – pun. to make the reader laugh
4) “He could feel the steel going right through him”. – metonymy. steel instead of dagger or knife
aristocracy instead of the aristocrats
5) “All the world´s a stage and all the men and woman merely players”. – metaphor.
6) “She possessed two false teeth and a sympathetic heart”. – zeugma
7) “Many women try to look their horrid best”. – oxymoron
8) “The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in and the sun and moon were formed to
give them light; rivers and seas were made to float their ships”. – allusion. irony
9) “He knew the necessity of keeping as clear as possible from that poisonous many-headed
serpent, the tongue of people”. – metaphor.
10) “An ugly gingerbread brute of a boy with a revolting grin and as far as I was able to ascertain, no
redeeming qualities of any sort”. – epithet.
11) “Another person who makes both ends meet is an infant who sucks his toes”. - Violation of
phraseological units
12) “Then there’s that appointment with Mrs. What’s-her-name for her bloody for her bloody awful
wardrobe”. – hyperbole. Antonomasia
13) “... he’s a hard man to talk to. Impossible if you don’t share his fixations, of which Holly is one.
Some others are: ice hockey, Weimaraner dogs, ‘Our Gal Sunday’ (a soap serial), and Gilbert and
Sullivan – he claims to be related to one or the other, I can’t remember which”. – Semantical
false chain
14) “She saw around her multitudes of red lips, powdered cheeks, and cold, hard eyes”. –
synecdoche
15) “He saved her life and three dollars in her pocket.” – Zeugma
16) “Their bitter-sweet union did not last long.” – oxymoron
17) “An enormous grand piano grinned savagely at the curtains as is it would grab them, given the
chance.” – hyperbole
18) “She wore a pink hat, the size of a button.” – irony, meiosis
19) “We were fellow strangers.” – oxymoron
20) “A bulldog two years old for sale. Will eat anything. Very fond of children.” – pun
21) “They were wet to the skin and all were scared to death.” – tried hyperbole
Inversion (инверсия) is a very common device in English due to the fixed word order.
Rhetorical question (риторический вопрос) is a statement in the form of a question, it
presupposes the possible answer.
Apokoinu construction is characteristic of irregular oral speech, it presents a blend of two
clauses into one, which is achieved at the expense of the omission of the connecting word
and double syntactical function acquired by the unit occupying the linking position between
both former clauses.
Ellipsis (эллипсис) is the omission of one of the main members of the sentence.
Ellipsis (эллипсис) is the omission of one of the main members of the sentence.
Detachment (also ‘isolated members of the sentence’ обособление).
Aposiopesis (also break-in-the-narrative ‘умолчание’) is a norm of excited oral speech.
Suspense (напряжение) holds the reader in tense anticipation, is often realized through the
separation of predicate from subject or subject from predicative, by the deliberate
introduction between them of a phrase, clause or sentence (frequently parenthetic)
Repetition (also reiteration ‘повтор’).
· ordinary repetition offers no fixed place for the repeated unit – the model is as such:
aa…,..a.a.,.aaa..,…a., etc.
· anaphora/anaphoric repetition models differently: a….,a…..,a…..
· epiphora/epiphoric repetition: …..a,……a,…….a.
· framing: a….a, b…..b.
· anadiplosis/catch repetition: ….a, a…...
· chain repetition: …a, a….b, b…..c, c…., d…..
· morphological repetition a morpheme is repeated mainly to achieve humorous effect (e.g.
‘She unchained, unbolted and unlocked the door’)
· tautology or pleonasm repetition of ideas (e.g. ‘It was a clear starry sky, and not a cloud
was to be seen’; ‘He was the only survivor; no one else was saved’)
Parallelism (also parallel constructions) is a type of repetition when the whole structure of
the sentence is involved.
Chiasmus (also reversed parallelism ‘хиазм’) includes into its pattern two sentences, the
second of which necessarily repeats the structure of the first in a reversed manner, so that
the general formula of chiasmus is as such: SPO OPS (subject-predicate-object object-
predicate-subject).
Polysyndeton (многосоюзие) is a kind of repetition when conjunctions and connecting
words are repeated.
Asyndeton (бессоюзие) is a type of syntactical connection, which offers no conjunctions or
connecting words.
Gap-sentence link (примыкание) is a peculiar type of connection of sentences in which the
connection is not immediately seen and it requires an effort to grasp the interrelation
between the parts of the utterance.
Home Activity 4
Home Activity 5
Home Activity 6
1) “Slowly he walked again along the river-an evening of clear, quiet beauty, all harmony and comfort,
except within his heart.” –inversion
3) “The principle production of those towns are soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers and dock-
yard-men.” – parallelism, asyndeton
4) “Little by little, bit by bit, and day by day, and year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed
questions.” – parallelism
5) “It was an afternoon to dream. And she took out Jon’s letters.” - gap-sentence link
7) “There isn’t going to be room for nice people any more. It’s ended, it’s all over, it’s dead.” –
parallelism
10) “How could Jon, with his heart of gold, leave his family?” – rhetorical question
11) “Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face, and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and
splashed him, and rinsed him, and towelled him, until he was as red as beetroot.” - Polysyndeton
12) “I told her: ‘You’ve always acted the free woman, you’ve never let anything stop you from –’ ..That
made her snore” - Aposiopesis
13) “She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza’s boy. Around the
mouth.” – suspense, detachment
14) “There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out, and not love of the wife he
married.” - apocoinu construction
15) “No one seemed to take proper pride in his work: from plumbers who were simply thieves to, say,
newspapermen (he seemed to think them a specially intellectual class) who never by any chance gave a
correct version of the simplest affair.” - suspense