The Concept of Imagery
1. Expressive means and stylistic devices.
2. The concept of imagery.
3. The structure of a verbal image.
1.In linguistics there are different terms to denote particular means
by which utterances are made more conspicuous, more effective, rendering additional information. They are called expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic markers, stylistic devices, tropes, figures of speech, etc., as opposed to what is called neutral. We shall differentiate between expressive means and stylistic devices.
The expressive means of a language are those phonetical, morphological, lexical, syntactical forms which exist in language for the purpose of logical or emotional intensification of the utterance. They are singled out at different levels of a language as having special functions in making the utterance emphatic. In some cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous forms.
e.g., She is an extremely nice person. – She is a very nice person.
Isn’t it lovely! -- It’s lovely, isn’t it?
Out they went. -- They went out.
The expressive means modify their meaning when used in different functional styles. They do not create images but increase expressiveness of speech, its emotional character.
A stylistic device is a conspicuous structural and /or semantic property of a language unit promoted to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model, i.e. a stylistic device is an abstract pattern which can be filled with any content, an abstract scheme to achieve a particular artistic effect.
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2. In our cognition or perception of the world there are three stages: 1) sensory perception, 2) intellectual perception (formation of concepts in men’s mind), 3) imaginative, or artistic perception (formation of images based on comparing things belonging to different spheres of life by way of association). Images may be realized by different means (sculpture, painting, architecture, etc.). Image is the main means of generalizing reality, a sign of objective correlation between men’s emotional sphere and a special form of social conscience. An artistic image is specific as it not only gives a man new perception of the world but evokes certain attitude to what is depicted.
The main functions of an artistic image are cognitive, communicative, aesthetic and educational.
Science and art are the two ways to cognize the world. Science does it analytically, art – synthetically by creating images as certain models. The dual psychological essence of any artistic image consists in the fact that it makes information of an image more influential by evoking feelings once experienced in the past, employing the memory of visual, aural, tactile sensations. Image may be defined as an artistic presentation of the general through the individual, of the abstract through the concrete.
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3. A bright, vivid verbal image is often based on tropes. Tropes are based on similarities between two different things, which belong to different spheres so that the comparison was unexpected. A trope is always a figurative use of words. A verbal image is a ‘pen – picture’ of a thing, person, idea expressed in a figurative way by words used in their contextual meaning.
Psychologically a verbal image is a complex phenomenon. It includes a double picture generated by linguistic means, based on the co-presence of two thoughts of different things acting together.
The structure of a verbal image includes: 1) the Tenor (T) (обозначаемое), which is a direct thought, 2) the Vehicle (V) (обозначающее), which is a figurative form, 3) the Ground for comparison (G), which is a similar feature of the Tenor and the Vehicle, 4) the Relations between the Tenor and the Vehicle (R).
T G R V
e.g. a) The old woman is sly like a fox.
T R V
b) The old woman is like a fox. (The ground for
comparison is implied in the stereotype.)
T R V
c) The old woman is a fox. (The ground for comparison
is implied.)
V
c) The old fox will deceive us. (All other elements of the
structure are implied.)
As for a type of a trope used (a) and (b) similes, (c) and (d) are metaphors.
The same processes can be traced in the following examples:
I told you that clown would marry you. (Binchy)
‘I’d say she was a stunner,’ Jennifer said. ’She must have been to get that dream boat she married.’ (Binchy)
Verbal images are subject to classification on different grounds. Images may be individual (dealing with concrete things, persons, ideas) or general, visual (creating mental pictures – e.g. the cloudy leafage of the sky) or acoustic created by onomatopoeia (e.g. howling of the wind in the street), or using other senses (e.g. cold comfort, sweet voice, sharp words, etc.)
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Topic 3
Lexical Stylistic Devices
1. Types of lexical meaning of a word.
2. Lexical stylistic devices. Classification of lexical stylistic devises.
1. As it is known from the course of lexicology any word has a certain structure of its meaning which includes different components among which we can find denotative (obligatory for all words) and connotative (optional, which can’t be found in neutral words). In its turn a connotative component falls into emotional, evaluative, expressive and stylistic components. The emotional component is present in words expressing emotions and feelings, eg. Oh! Honey! Love! But they shouldn’t be confused with the words naming emotions and feelings, like fear, delight, gloom, etc., and the words whose emotional character depends on associations, connected with a denotate: death, tears, honour. The evaluative component expresses approval or disapproval, it is closely connected with the logical component, e.g. time-tested method (approval) – out-of-date method (disapproval). The word possesses the expressive component if it underlines by its imagery what is called by other syntactically connected words.
e.g. She was a thin, frail little thing. The word “ thing ” instead of a “girl” underlines the idea of fragility of the girl, expressed by the adjectives thin, frail, little.
e.g. Life was not merely to be slaved away. Expressivenes of the verb “ slave” is based on a metaphoric transfer, it is imagery expressiveness.
In a context words may acquire additional meaning not fixed in dictionaries, which is called contextual. The latter may deviate from the dictionary meanings so that the new meaning may become the opposite of the primary meaning.
e.g. the word ”sophisticated” originally meant “wise, then through its associations with the Sophists, it came to mean ‘over-subtle, marked byspecious reasoning’. After that it developed the additional sense of ‘adulterated, i.e. spoilt by admixture of inferior material’, then it gave birth to a new shade ‘corrupted’, then suddenly it ceased to mean ‘unpleasantly worldly-wise’ and came to mean admirably worldly-wise’, and then ‘highly complex mechanically, requiring skilled control’.
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What is known as transferred meaning is practically the interrelation of two types of meanings: dictionary and contextual. When the deviation of the contextual meaning from the dictionary one is carried to a degree that it causes an unexpected turn in the recognized logical meaning, we register a stylistic device.
For stylistic purposes it is necessary to distinguish logical, emotive and nominal types of meaning. Logical meaning is the precise naming of a feature of the idea, phenomenon or objects by which we recognize the whole concept. It is called otherwise referential or denotative or direct meaning.
Emotive meaning refers to things or phenomena directly, but through the feelings and emotions the speaker has to these things or phenomena, i.e. the emotive meaning bears reference to things, phenomena or ideas through a kind of evaluation of them.
e.g. I feel so darned lonely. (G.Greene)
Nominal meaning is characteristic of proper names, the logical meaning of the words they originate from may be forgotten. Most proper names have nominal meaning homonymous to common nouns with their logical or emotive meanings. To distinguish nominal meaning from logical one, the former is designated by a capital letter, e.g., smith-Smith, taylor-Taylor, free land-Freeland. In vocabulary one can find illustrations to the opposite process when a nominal meaning becomes the origin for a logical one. Thus the words ‘ hooligan’, 'boycott’ are said to have appeared. The nominal meanings of these words have faded away and we perceive only the logical meaning.
2. Interaction of different types of meaning formed the basis for classification of lexical stylistic devices into several groups. I.R.Galperin classifies them into three big groups. The first group is based on the interaction of various components of lexical meaning of a word; it consists of four subgroups. The first subgroup is based on the interaction of primary and contextual meanings (metaphor, metonymy, and irony).
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The second subgroup is based on the interaction of primary and derived logical meanings (zeugma, pun).
The third subgroup is based on the interaction of logical and emotive meanings (epithet, oxymoron).
The fourth subgroup is based on the interaction of logical and nominal meanings (antonomasia).
The second group of lexical devices is based on the intensification of a certain feature of a thing or phenomenon; i.e. one of the qualities of the object in question is made to sound essential. Here belong simile, periphrasis, euphemism, and hyperbole.
The third group represents set expressions which can create a certain effect and can be used for stylistic purposes, among them cliches, proverbs and sayings, epigrams, quotations, allusions, decomposition of set phrases.
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