Lexical stylistic devices

Among lexical stylistic means we find the following figures of speech used in the text: an epithet, a metaphor, a simile and irony.

a) An epithet (эпитет) is, usually an attributive word or phrase expressing some quality of a person, thing or phenomenon. An epi­thet always expresses the author's individual attitude towards what he describes, his personal appraisal of it, and is a powerful means in his hands of conveying his emotions to the reader and in this way securing the desired effect. E.g. "a rigid and time-honored code, a code so severe...", "the cynical confidence", "the evil assumption", "Atticus's lonely walk", "Judge Tailor's voice... was tiny".

b) A simile (сравнение) is an expressed imaginative comparison based on the likeness of two objects or ideas belonging to different classes (in contrast to a comparison which compares things belong­ing to the same class and is not a figure of speech). The comparison is formally expressed by the words "as", "like", "as if", "such as",'"seem", e.g. "This case is as simple as black and white": "I saw the jury return, moving like underwater swimmers"; "...and it was like watching Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoul­der and pull the trigger...")

c) A metaphor (метафора) is an implied imaginative comparison
expressed in one word or in a number of words or sentences (the so-
called prolonged or sustained metaphor — развернутая метафора). А
metaphor expresses our perception of the likeness between two ob­
jects or ideas, e.g. "...Atticus wasn't a thunderer" (to thunder is to
make a loud noise, therefore a thunderer is one who thunders or ut­
ters something in a loud voice resembling the sounds made by thun­
der); "...it requires no sifting of complicated facts"; "...whoever breaks
it is hounded from our society..."; "No code mattered to her before she
broke it, but it came crashing down on her afterwards...";"... a phrase
that the Yankees... are fond of hurling at us"; "...and it was like watch­
ing Atticus walk into the street, raise a rifle to his shoulder and pull
the trigger..." (we find here a simile, as has been mentioned above,
which extends into a prolonged metaphor).

From these examples you can see that a metaphor can be expressed by different parts of speech. Note that practically every simile can be compressed into a metaphor and every metaphor can be extended into a simile.

d) Irony (ирония) is a figure of speech by means of which a word
or words (it may be a situation) express the direct opposite of what
their meanings denote, thus we often say "how clever!" when a per­
son says or does something foolish. Irony shows the attitude of the
author towards certain facts or events. There is only one example of
irony in the text: "And so a quiet respectable, humble Negro who had
the unmitigated temerity to feel sorry for a white woman..."

Дата добавления: 2015-11-14