About Stylistics

Tuesday, November 20, 2012

Example of Allusion

Allusion:

I thought the software would be useful, but it was a Trojan Horse.

Antonomasia

Transferred Epithet

Gothic Novel

Sunday, November 18, 2012

Transferred Epithet

A transferred epithet is an adjective modifying a noun that it does not normally modify but which makes figurative sense:

Blind mouths! that scarce themselves know how to hold / A sheep hook.
In an age of pressurized happiness, we sometimes grow insensitive to subtle joys.

The transferred epithet can be used to introduce emphatically an idea that an author plans to develop.

Functional Styles

Research Topics

Gothic Novel

Pragmatic Stylistics

Antonomasia

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

English newspaper genres

The following newspaper genres (or types of text) can be differentiated:

Brief news items
Press reports
Articles purely informational in character
Advertisements
Announcements
Feature articles (features, feature stories, human interest stories)
Editorials
Leading articles (leaders)
Sports news

Functional Styles

Research Topics

Two Basic Fields of Stylistics

Monday, October 15, 2012

The irony is a 'hidden smile'.

In irony subjectivity lies in the evaluation of the phenomenon. The essence of irony consists in the foregrounding not of the logical but of the evaluative meaning.

Irony thus is a stylistic device in which the contextual evaluative meaning of a word is directly opposite to its dictionary meaning. The context is arranged in such a way that the qualifying word in irony reverses the direction of the evaluation and a positive meaning is understood as a negative one and (much-much rare) vice versa, e.g. “She turned with the sweet smile of an alligator”. The word ”sweet” reverse their positive meaning into the negative one due to the context. Irony does not exist outside the context.

There are two types of irony: verbal and sustained.

Newspaper Genres

Functional Styles

Research topics

Two Basic Fields of Stylistics

What is Antonomasia

Antonomasia is a lexical stylistic device in which a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice versa. Its logical meaning serves to denote concepts and thus classify individual objects into groups (classes). The nominal meaning of a proper name is suppressed by its logical meaning and acquires the new – nominal – component. Nominal meaning has no classifying power for it applies to one single individual object with the aim not of classifying it constituting a definite group, but, on the contrary with the aim of singling it out of the group of similar objects, of individualizing one particular object. The word “Mary” does not indicate if the denoted object refers to the class of women, girls, boats, cats, etc. But in the example, “He took little satisfaction in telling each Mary, something…” the attribute “each”, used with the name, turns it into a common noun denoting any woman. Here we deal with a case of antonomasia of the first type.

Another type of antonomasia we meet is when a common noun is still clearly perceived as a proper name. Such popular English surnames as Mr.Clerk or Mr.Black used to mean occupation and color. Also, such names as Mr.Snake or Mr.Backbite immediately raise associations with certain human qualities due to the denotational meaning of the words “snake” and “backbite”. Antonomasia is created mainly by nouns, more seldom by attributive combinations (as in “Dr.Fresh Air”) or phrases (as in “Mr.What’s-his-name’).

Transferred Epithet

Gothic Novel

Research Topics

Sunday, October 14, 2012

Research topics in the field of stylistics

1. Popular scientific style as a means of conveying information
2. Analysis of scientific style and its genres
3. Technical style in various fields of technology
4. Science fiction and its origins
5. Popular scientific style and science fiction: a comparative analysis
6. Types and functions of newspapers in the United Kingdom
7. Pragmatics of a newspaper style
8. Newspaper genres and their functions
9. The style of brief news items and the feature articles: a comparative analysis
10. Stylistic peculiarities of newspaper advertisements
11. Editorials, leaders and features as genres of the newspaper style: a comparative analysis
12. Newspaper headings and their characteristic features
13. Business style and its genres
14. The style of official documents: forms and functions
15. The style of legal documents (contracts, etc.)
16. Business letter writing traditions and stylistic features in the modern society
17. Administrative style and its characteristic features (memorandums, military documents, pacts, treaties)
18. Medical style and characteristic features of its genres (dentistry; drugs; microsurgery; diseases: children’s diseases, etc.)
19. Colloquial style as a simple communicative style (case studies)
20. Slang and its features in different countries: a comparative analysis
21. The Internet style and its differences from other styles: a comparative analysis
22. Internet style and its genres (comparative analysis of genres)
23. Sports news in the newspaper style
24. Newspaper clichés and their effects on the readers
25. Journalistic style and its functions
26. Stylistic functions of acronyms in English newspapers
27. Functions of acronyms in various styles
28. Stylistic devices in non-fiction styles: a comparative analysis
29. Stylistic peculiarities of public speeches: a comparative analysis
30. Pragmatics and stylistics: a comparative study
31. The pragmatics of style
31. Stylistics and translation
32. Linguistic stylistics and literary stylistics: a comparative study
33. Allusions in various styles (newspaper, business, public speeches, etc.): a comparative analysis
34. Stylistic analysis of public speeches (comparative analysis of various speeches given by famous people)
35. Scientific and popular scientific style: a comparative analysis
36. Public speech and face-to-face communication: a comparative analysis
37. Stylistic devices and expressive means: a comparative study
38. Advertisements and announcements in newspaper style: a comparative study
39. Forms and functions of commercial correspondence (offers, orders, invoices, claims, complaints, etc.): a comparative analysis
40. Eliminating emotionality and expressiveness in technical and scientific style: a comparative study.