The Third Group of Lexical Stylistic Devices
A cliche is a hackneyed phrase, once original, which has lost its imaginative power in the course of time. It is a stable word-combination which has been accepted as a language unit, e.g., rosy dreams of youth, deceptively simple, growing awareness, Jack of all trades, sound judgement, etc.
He has a man of sound judgement. (Hardy)
Cliches partially retain their emotional colouring as they can express attitudes and possess evaluative power but there is always a contradiction between what is aimed at and what is actually attained.
A proverb is a short wise saying in wide use held to embody a general truth. Proverbs accumulate the life experience of the community and serve as conventional practical symbols for abstract ideas. They are didactic and image bearing.
e.g. First come, first served. Out of sight, out of mind.
Speech is silver, silence is gold.
Brevity in proverbs is often underlined by the omission of connectives as in the above examples.
Being registered in language, proverbs and sayings are units of language, its expressive means. But when they undergo the process of decomposition, they acquire additional stylistic meaning and become stylistic devices. The modified form of the proverb is perceived against the background of the fixed one,
e.g. Come, he said, the milk is spilt. The use of the decomposed proverb “No use crying over spilt milk” implies new feelings and new understanding.
I said I’d like to go down and stay a few days there and they said no. All this about making your bed and having to lie on it. (Binchy) The use of the decomposed proverb ‘As you make your bed so you will lie on it’ underlines the attitude of the parents to what their daughter has done.
She remembered her mother once telling her that the O’Shaughnessys never washed their dirty linen in public. (O’Flanagan)
An epigram is akin to a proverb; it is a short clever saying or a poem with a witty ending coined by well-known people. ” A thing of beauty is a joy forever”. (Keats) “Failure is the foundation of success and success is the lurking place of failure”(Maugham). Epigrams should not be confused with aphorisms, clever original quotations, and paradoxes, statements, which are contradictory, absurd on the surface, e.g. Dishonesty in a woman is a thing you never blame deeply. (Fitzgerald)
A quotation is a repetition of a phrase or statement from a book, speech, etc., used by way of authority, illustration, proof or as a basis for further speculation on the matter in hand. A quotation is always set against the other sentences in the text by the greater volume of sense and significance. Unlike epigrams, quotations do not need to be short. They are used as a stylistic device with the aim of expanding the meaning of the sentence quoted as the original meaning may be modified by a new context. In this quality they are mostly used in the belles-lettres style and publicistic style. They are abnormal for fiction but may be used for the sake of stylization.
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e.g. The other contained a rather apt quotation from “Anthony and Cleopatra”: “These violent deaths have violent ends and in their triumph die.”(Rendel)
What a poor piece of psychology that was on Shakespeare’s part when he said that the evil men do lives after them, the good are off interred with their bones.(Rendel)
An allusion is an indirect reference, by word or phrase, to a historical, literary, mythical, biblical fact or a fact of everyday life made in the course of speaking or writing. As a rule, no identification of the source is given which makes allusions different from quotations.
e.g. As the priest read out the prayer about this night being in heaven and may the angels come to meet her, Kit held Steve’s hand very tight. (Binchy)
Love isn’t about making rules – thou shalt not do this or do that (Binchy)
You look like Dick Wittington, Kit had said. (Binchy)
You did him no service by giving him this Alice in Wonderland place to live. (Binchy)
An allusion has certain semantic peculiarities and the meaning of the word (the allusion) should be regarded as a form for the new meaning, so the primary meaning of the alluded word or phrase serves as a basis for the new meaning, e.g., ”’Pie in the sky’ for Railmen”, this newspaper headline refers to the refrain of the workers’ song: ”You’ll get a pie in the sky when you die”. The headline implies that railmen have been given promises, nothing else. Linguistically the allusion ‘pie in the sky’ assumes a new meaning “nothing but promises”.
STYLISTIC TERMS
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