Stylistic devices

 

SYNTACTICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES

GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Within the language as a system there establish themselves certain [definite types of relations between words, word-combinations, sentences and also between larger spans of utterances. The branch of language science, which studies the types of relations between the units enumerated, is called syntax.

In the domain of syntax, as has been justly pointed out by L. A. Bulakhovsky, it is difficult to distinguish between what is purely grammatical, i. e. marked as corresponding to the established norms, and what is stylistic, i. e. showing some kind of vacillation of these norms. This is particularly evident when we begin to analyse larger than the sentence units.

Generally speaking, the examination of syntax provides a deeper insight into the stylistic aspect of utterances.

The study of the sentence and its types and especially the study of the relations between different parts of the sentence has had a long history. Rhetoric was mainly engaged in the observation of the juxtaposition of the members of the sentence and in finding ways and means of building larger and more elaborate spans of utterance, as, for example, the period or periodical sentence. Modern grammars have greatly extended the scope of structural analysis and have taken under observation the pecul¬iarities of the relations between the members of the sentence, which somehow has overshadowed problems connected with structural and semantic patterns of larger syntactical units. It would not be an exaggera¬tion to state that the study of units of speech larger than the sentence is still being neglected by many linguists. Some of them even consider such units to be extralinguistic, thus excluding them entirely from the domain of linguistics.

Stylistics takes as the object of its analysis the expressive means and stylistic devices of the language, which are based on some significant structural point in an utterance, whether it consists of one sentence or a string of sentences. In grammar, certain types of utterances have already been patterned; thus, for example, we have all kinds of simple, compound or complex sentences, even a paragraph long, that may be regarded as neutral or non-stylistic patterns.

At the same time, the peculiarities of the structural design of utterances, which bear some particular emotional colouring, that is, which are stylistic and therefore non-neutral, may also be patterned and presented as a special system.

Stylistic syntactical patterns may be viewed as variants of the general syntactical models of the language and are the more obvious and conspicuous if presented not as isolated elements or accidental usages, but as groups easily observable and lending themselves to generalization.

This idea is expressed by G. O. Vinokur in his "Маяковский — новатор языка" where he maintains that in syntax it is no new material that is coined, but new relations, because the syntactical aspect of speech is nothing more than a definite combination of grammatical forms, and in this sense the actual words used are essentially immaterial. Therefore syntactical relations, particularly in poetic language, are that aspect of speech in which everything presents itself as actualization of the potential and not merely the repetition of the ready-made.1

By "the potential" Q. Vinokur apparently means variations of syntactical patterns.

It follows, therefore, that in order to establish the permissible fluctuations of the syntactical norm, it is necessary to ascertain what is meant by the syntactical norm itself. As a matter of fact any change in the relative positions of the members of the sentence may be regarded as a variant of the received standard, provided that the relation between them will not hinder the understanding of the utterance.

But here we are faced with the indisputable interdependence between form and content; in other words, between the syntactical design of the utterance and its concrete lexical materialization.

Syntactical relations can be studied in isolation from semantic content. In this case they are viewed as constituents of the whole and assume their independent grammatical meaning. This is most apparent in forms embodying nonsense lexical units, as in Lewis Carroll's famous lines, so often quoted by linguists.

"Twas brilling, and the slithy toves .   .      Did gyre and gimbol in the wabe: All mimsy were the borogroves, And the mome raths outgrabe."

The structural elements of these lines stand out conspicuously and make sense even though they, are materialized by nonsense elements. Moreover, they impose^on the morphemes they are attached to a definite grammatical meaning making it possible to class the units. So it is due to these elements that we can state what the nonsense words are supposed to mean. Thus, we know that the sequence of the forms forcibly suggests that after twas we should have an adjective; the у in slithy makes the word an adjective; gyre after the emphatic did can only be a verb. We know that this is a poem because it has rhythm (iambic tetrameter) and rhyme (abab in * toves—borogroves;' 'wabe—outgrabe').

A closer examination of the structural elements will show that they outnumber the semantic units: nineteen structural elements and eleven

are meant to be semantic. The following inferences may be drawn from

this fact:

1) it is the structural element of the utterance that predetermines the possible semantic aspect;

2) the structural elements have their own independent meaning which may be called structural or, more widely, grammatical;

3) the structural meaning may affect the lexical, giving contextual meaning to some of the lexical units.

B. PROBLEMS CONCERNING THE COMPOSITION OF SPANS OF UTTERANCE LARGER THAN  THE SENTENCE

In recent years a new theory concerning the inner relations between context and form within the sentence has appeared. This theory, elabo¬rated by S. Harris, N. Chomsky, M. Postal and others, is called Genera¬tive Grammar. It maintains that grammar must not only describe the laws which regulate the functioning of linguistic units but must also be capable of generating new sentences.

"A grammar of this kind," writes John Lyons, "is 'predictive' in that it establishes as grammatical, not only 'actual' sentences, but also 'potential' sentences." l

The reference to Lyons's statement has direct bearing on the problems of stylistic syntax. The fact is, as will be seen later, that any one of the syntactical SDs is capable of generating an unlimited number of senten¬ces within the given pattern. However, according to orthodox generative grammar, some of them are regarded as 'ill-formed' and even 'ungram-matical' inasmuch as they fail to meet the requirements of the basic (kernel) structures.

The theory further maintains that there are two kinds of structures — a deep structure and a surface structure. The latter are the actual senten¬ces produced by the former, which is not presented in language units and therefore unobservable.

Mention of this theory is made here, firstly, because in modern sty-listics attempts are being made to build up a grammar which would generate deviant constructions and thus broaden the limits of the 'well-formed' sentences which are regarded as the only ones that are 'grammat¬ical'. Another reason is that transformation, one of the basic methods employed in generative grammars, is very effectively used in stylistics when it is necessary to find the stylistic meaning of this or that sentence structure. A third reason is that generative grammars aim at reconstruct¬ing the processes connected with the formation of sentences. This has direct bearing on the interpretation of syntactical SDs and particularly on their linguistic nature.

This theory enables the interpreter to look at a sentence from the point of view of what is 'behind' the sentence.

As J. P. Thorne states, "Generative grammar is important to stylist¬ics because in addition to these'surface structure' facts, it is concerned

with the so-called 'deep structure' aspects of language, that is, those facts about linguistic structure which cannot be directly related to what can be observed. Most stylistic judgements relate to deep structure."1

It follows then that the so-called generative grammar is not so strik¬ingly new. This is also noted by the well-known linguists John Lyons and D. Bolinger, 2 who state positively that there is nothing new in the theory of generative grammar.

Another development in linguistics also having direct bearing on the problems which concern us when dealing with syntactical SDs, is 'text-linguistics', as it is called. This development, which as yet has not been formed as a separate theory, aims at investigating the objective criteria concerning ways and means of constructing texts of different kinds and genres. 3

For this purpose it is first of all necessary to find the elements into which any text may fall. In other words, there must be certain constituent units of which any text is composed.

Phonemes, the smallest language units, function within morphemes and are dependent on them, morphemes function within words, words — within sentences, and sentences function in larger structural frames which we shall call "supra-phrasal units". Consequently, neither words nor separate sentences can be regarded as the basic constituents of a text. They are the basic units of lower levels of language-as-a-system, as is shown above.

Supra-Phrasal Units

The term supra-phrasal unit (SPU) is used to denote a larger unit than a sentence. It generally comprises a number of sentences interdependent structurally (usually by means of pronouns, connectives, tense-forms) and semantically (one definite thought is dealt with). Such a span of utterance is also characterized by the fact that it can be extracted from the context without losing its relative semantic independence. This cannot be said of the sentence, which, while representing a complete syntactical unit, may, however, lack the quality of independence. A sentence from the stylistic point of view does not necessarily express one idea, as it is defined in most manuals of grammar. It may express only part of one idea. Thus the sentence: "Guy glanced at his wife's untouched plate", if taken out of the context, will be perceived as a part of a larger span of utterance where the situation will be made clear and the purport of verbal expression more complete.

Here is the complete SPU.

Guy glanced at his wife's untouched plate.

"If you've finished, we might stroll down. I think you ought to be starting."

She did not answer. She rose from the table. She went into her room to see that nothing had been forgotten and then side by side with him walked down the steps. (Somerset Maugham)

The next sentence of the paragraph begins: "A little winding path..." This is obviously the beginning of the next SPU. So a supra-phrasal unit may be defined as a combination of sentences presenting a structural and semantic unity backed up by rhythmic and melodic unity. Any SPU will lose its unity if it suffers breaking.

But what are the principles on which the singling out of an SPU can be maintained? In order to give an answer to this question, it is first of all necessary to deepen our understanding of the term utterance. As a stylistic term the word 'utterance' must be expanded. Any utterance from a stylistic point of view will serve to denote a certain span of speech (language-in-action) in which we may observe coherence, interdepend¬ence of the elements, one definite idea, and last but not least, the pur¬port of the writer.

The purport is the aim that the writer sets before himself, which is to make the desired impact on the reader. So the aim of any utterance is a carefully thought-out impact. Syntactical units are connected to achieve the desired effect and it is often by the manner they are connected that the desired effect is secured.

Let us take the following paragraph for analysis:

"1. But a day or two later the doctor was not feeling well. 2. He had an internal malady that troubled him now and then, but he was used to it and disinclined to talk about it. 3. When he had one of his attacks, he only wanted to be left alone. 4. His cabin was small and stuffy, so he settled himself on a long chair on deck and lay with his eyes closed. 5. Miss Reid was walking up and down to get the half hour's exercise she took morning and evening. 6. He thought that if he pretended to be asleep she would not disturb him. 7. But when she had passed him half a dozen times she stopped in front of him and'stood quite still. 8. Though he kept his eyes closed he knew that she was looking at him." (Somerset Maugham)

This paragraph consists of eight sentences, all more or less independent? The first three sentences, however, show a considerable degree I of semantic interdependence. This can be inferred from the use of the |following cluster of concepts associated with each other: 'not feeling I weir, 'internal malady', 'one of his attacks'. Each phrase is the key to the sentence in which it occurs. There are no formal connectives, the con¬nection is made apparent by purely semantic means. These three senten¬ces constitute an SPU built within the larger framework of the paragraph. The fourth sentence is semantically independent of the preceding three. It seems at first glance not to belong to the paragraph at all. The fact that the doctor's'cabin was small and stuffy' and that 'he settled himself... on deck' does not seem to be necessarily connected with the thought ex¬pressed in the preceding SPU. But on a more careful analysis one can clearly see how all four sentences are actually interconnected. The link¬ing sentence is 4he only wanted to be left alone'. So the words Чау with his eyes closed' with which the fourth sentence ends, are semantically connected both with the idea of being left alone and with the idea ex¬pressed in the sentence: 'He thought that if he pretended to be asleep she would not disturb him.' But between this sentence and its semantic links May with his eyes closed' and 'wanted to be left alone', the sentence about Miss Reid thrusts itself in. This is not irrelevant to the whole situation and to the purport of the writer, who leads us to understand that the doctor was disinclined to talk to anybody and probably to Miss Reid in particular.

So the whole of the paragraph has therefore semantic and structural wholeness. It can, however, be split into two SPUs with a linking sen¬tence between them. Sentence 5 can be regarded as an SPU, inasmuch as it enjoys considerable independence both semantically and structurally. Sentences 6, 7 and 8 are structurally and therefore semantically inter¬woven. But when and though in the seventh and eighth sentences are the structural elements which link all three sentences into one SPU.

It follows then that an SPU can be embodied in a sentence if the sen¬tence meets the requirements of this compositional unit. Most epigrams are SPUs from the point of view of their semantic unity, though they fail to meet the general structural requirement, viz. to be represented in a number of sentences.

On the other hand, an SPU, though usually a component part of the paragraph, may occupy the whole of the paragraph. In this case we say that the SPU coincides with the paragraph.

It is important to point out that this structural unit, in its particular way of arranging ideas, belongs almost exclusively to the belles-lettres style, though it may be met with to some extent in the publicistic style. Other styles, judging by their recognized leading features, do not require this mode of arranging the parts of an utterance except in rare cases which may be neglected. '

Let us take a passage from another piece of belles-lettres style, a paragraph from Aldington's "Death of a Hero."

It is a paragraph easy to submit to stylistic and semantic analysis: it falls naturally into several SPUs.

"1. After dinner they ,sat about and smoked. 2. George took his chair over to the open window and looked down on the lights and movement of Piccadilly.-3. The noise of the traffic was lulled by the height to a long continuous rumble. 4. The placards of the evening papers along the railings beside the Ritz were sensational and bellicose. 5. The party dropped the subject of a possible great war; after deciding that there wouldn't be one, there couldn't. 6. George, who had great faith in Mr. Bobbe's political acumen, glanced through his last article, and took great comfort from the fact that Bobbe said there wasn't going to be a war. 7. It was all a scare, a stock market ramp... 8. At that moment three or four people came in, more or less together, though they were in separate parties. 9. One of them was a youngish man in immaculate evening dress. 10. As he shook hands with his host, George heard him say rather excitedly, "I've just been dining with..."

Analysis of this paragraph will show how complicated the composi¬tion of belles-lettres syntactical units is. There is no doubt that,there is a definite semantic unity in the paragraph. The main idea is the anxi¬ety and uncertainty of English society before World War I as to whether there would be, or would not be, a war. But around this main sense-axis there centre a number of utterances which present more or less in¬dependent spans of thought. Thus, we can easily single out the group of sentences which begins with the words 'After dinner' and ends with '...and bellicose'. This part of the text presents, as it were, the back-ground against which the purport of the author stands out more clearly, the last sentence of this SPU preparing the reader for the main idea of the paragraph—the possibility of war—which is embodied in the next supra-phrasal unit. This second SPU begins with the words 'The party dropped the subject of a possible great war' and ends with '...a stock market ramp...'. It is made structurally independent by the introduction of elements of uttered represented speech (see p. 238), the contractions wouldn't, couldn't, wasn't, the purely colloquial syntactical design there wouldn't be one, there couldn't, the colloquial word scare.

The shift to the third SPU is indicated by the dots after the word ramp (...). Here again it is the author who speaks, there are no further elements of represented speech, the shift being rather abrupt, because George's thoughts were interrupted by the entrance of the newcomers. The connecting 'At that moment' softens the abruptness.

The author's purport grows apparent through the interrelation—  an interrelation which seems to be organic—between the three SPUs: sensational and bellicose placards in the streets of London, the anxiety of the people at the party, the conviction backed up by such a reassuring argument as Mr. Bobbe's article that there was not going to fee a war, and the new guests bringing unexpected news.

SPUs are not always so easily discernible as they are in this paragraph from "The Death of a Hero". Due to individual peculiarities in combining ideas into a graphical (and that means both syntactical and semantic) unity, there may be considerable variety in the arrangement of SPUs and of paragraphs, ranging from what might be called clearly-marked borderlines between the supra-phrasal unit to almost imperceptible se¬mantic shifts. Indeed, it is often from making a comparison between the beginning and the end of a paragraph that one can infer that it con¬tains separate SPUs.

It follows then that the paragraphs in the belles-lettres prose style do not necessarily possess the qualities of unity and coherence as is the case with paragraphs in other styles of speech and particularly in the scientific prose style.

SPUs are to be found in particular in poetical style. Here the SPUs, as well as the paragraphs, are embodied in stanzas. Due to the most typical semantic property of any poetical work, viz. brevity of expres¬sion, there arises the need to combine ideas so that seemingly independent utterances may be integrated into one poetical unity, viz. a stanza. Let us take for analysis the following stanza from Shelley's poem "The Cloud":

"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers

From the seas and the streams; I bear light shade for the leaves when laid

In their noon-day dreams. From my wings are shaken the dews that waken

The sweet buds every one, When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,

As she dances about the sun. I wield the flail of the lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under; And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder."

Here there are three SPUs separated by full stops.

Within the first, which comprises four lines, there are two more or less independent units divided by a semicolon and integrated by paral¬lel constructions (/ bring fresh showers; I bear light shade).

Within the second SPU—also four lines—there are also two inter-dependent ideas—the buds awakened by the dews and the earth moving around the sun. These are strongly bound together by the formal ele¬ments when and as forming one complex sentence and an SPU. The for¬mal means used to connect different spans of utterance affect their seman¬tic integrity.

The three SPUs of the stanza are united by one idea—  the usefulness of the cloud giving all kind of comfort, here moisture and shade, to what is growing..* showers, shade, dews, hail, rain.

The SPUs in sonnets qfe^ especially manifest. This is due to their strict structural and semantic rules of composition.

The Paragraph

A p a r a g r a p h is a graphical term used to name a group of sen¬tences marked off by indentation at the beginning and a break in the line at the end. But this graphical term has come to mean a distinct portion of a written discourse showing an internal unity. As a linguistic category the paragraph is a unit of utterance marked off by purely linguistic means: intonation, pauses of various lengths, semantic ties which can be disclosed by scrupulous analysis of the morphological aspect and meaning of the component parts, etc. It has already been stated elsewhere that the logical aspect of an utterance will always be backed up by purely linguistic means causing, as it were, an indivisible unity of extralin-guistic and intralinguistic approach.

Bearing this in mind, we shall not draw a mark of demarcation between the logical and the linguistic analysis of an utterance, because the paragraph is a linguistic expression of a logical, pragmatic and aesthet¬ic arrangement of thought.

Paragraph structure is not always built on logical principles alone, as is generally the case in the style of scientific prose. In the building of paragraphs in newspaper style, other requirements are taken into consideration, for instance, psychological principles, in particular the sensational effect of the communication and the grasping capacity of the reader for quick reading. Considerations of space also play ад im¬portant part. This latter consideration sometimes overrules the neces¬sity for logical arrangement and results in breaking the main rule of paragraph building, i.e. the unity of idea. Thus, a brief note containing information about an oil treaty is crammed into one sentence, it being, in its turn, a paragraph:

"The revised version of an international oil treaty is to-day before the Senate Relation Committee, which recently made it clear that the Anglo-American oil treaty negotiated last August would not reach the Senate floor for ratification, because of objections by the American oil industry to it."

Paragraph building in the style of official documents is mainly governed by the particular conventional forms of documents (charters, pacts, diplomatic documents, business letters, legal documents and the like). Here paragraphs may sometimes embody what are grammati¬cally called a number of parallel clauses, which for the sake of the whole¬ness of the entire document are made formally subordinate, whereas in reality they are independent items. (See examples in the chapter on official style, p. 312.)

Paragraph structure in the belles-lettres and publicistic styles is strongly affected by the purport of the author. To secure the desired impact, a writer finds it necessary to give details and illustrations, to introduce comparisons and contrasts, to give additional reasons and, finally, to expand the topic by looking at it from different angles and paraphrasing the idea. He may, especially in the publicistic style, intro¬duce the testimony of some authority on the subject and even deviate from the main topic by recounting an anecdote or even a short story to ease mental effort and facilitate understanding of the communication.

The length of a paragraph normally varies from eight to twelve sentences. The longer the paragraph is, the more difficult it is to fol¬low the purport of the writer. In newspaper style, however, most para¬graphs consist of one or perhaps two or three sentences.