Chapter II Stylistic analysis

      Contents 

Introduction                                                                                                               3

Chapter I Theoretical assumptions of stylistics         

1.1. Definition of style in works of different linguists                                              5

1.2. The various approaches to the study of stylistics                                               7

1.2.1. Linguistic stylistics

1.2.2. Literary stylistics                                                                                                                                                                           

1.2.3. Functional stylistics                                                                                       22

1.3. Problem of image-creation in fiction texts

Conclusion on chapter 1                                                                                          33

Chapter II Stylistic analysis

2.1. The revelation of the ways of image-creation in fiction texts

2.1.1. The stylistic analysis of “The Selfish Giant” by Oscar Wilde

2.1.2. Stylistic analysis of “Louise” by William Somerset Maugham                 49

2.2.

Conclusion on chapter 2                                                                                         53

General conclusion                                                                                                  54

Bibliography                                                                                                            55

Appendix                                                                                                               59 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

     Introduction

     Stylistics is the study of varieties of language whose properties position that language in context, and tries to establish principles capable of accounting for the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language. A variety, in this sense, is a situationally distinctive use of language. For example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all are used distinctively and belong in a particular situation. In other words, they all have ‘place’ or are said to use a particular 'style'.

     Stylistics is a branch of linguistics, which deals with the study of varieties of language, its properties, principles behind choice, dialogue, accent, length, and register. Stylistics also attempts to establish principles capable of explaining the particular choices made by individuals and social groups in their use of language, such as socialisation, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.

     The diploma paper consists of introduction, two chapters, conclusion and the list of references. The introduction outlines the aim, the tasks, the topicality and the value of the present work. The chapter I presents the theoretical part, where the assumptions of stylistics, its sources and classification are presented. The chapter II is the practical part of our investigation. It includes the stylistic analyses of fiction texts and their interpretation. The conclusion describes the results of the investigation, presented in the previous parts of the work.

     The aim of this work is to describe and to classify the ways of image-creation in fiction texts.

     The tasks, set before the investigation, are the following:

     - to consider the structure of stylistics, its main branches and ways of their development;

     - to describe the theoretical approaches to the study of stylistics through the attentive analysis of the scientific literature, devoted to the stylistics;

     - to study the methods of the stylistic analysis, its forms and elements;

     - to analyze literary fiction texts and to define various ways of image-creation, used by the authors;

     - to describe and classify the methods of image-creation, defined in the fiction texts under analysis.

     Though the ways and methods of image-creation are widely-studied in the modern linguistic science, there are always new ways appear. The list of image-creation methods is constantly changing, and fixation and description of the new ones makes the topicality of the work.

     The topicality of the work is predetermined by the fact that a lot of questions connected with understandings of sense of different texts.

     The object of our research is the means of image-creation literature. The subject of this graduation paper the realization of methods of image creation in the English literature.

     The following tasks are to be solved in this paper:

     - to reveal and describe methods of image creation in the English literature

     - to define what role played by stylistic at creation of texts

     The theoretical value of the given work is that the materials, investigation and conclusion represented in it enter into scientific use the helpful information about stylistic devises.

     The practical value of the research is that its results may be used in lectures and practical courses English language, general linguistics, in special courses. 
 
 
 
 
 
 

     Chapter I Theoretical assumptions of stylistics

     1.1. Definition of style in works of different linguists                                             

     The word style is derived from the Latin word `stylos` which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Now the word `style` is used in so many senses that it has become a breeding ground for ambiguity. The word is applied to the teaching of how to write a composition; it is also used to reveal the correspondence between thought and expression; it frequently denotes an individual manner of making use of language; it sometimes refers to more general, abstract notions thus inevitably becoming vague and obscure, as, for example, “Style is the man himself” (Buffon), “Style is depth” (Derbyshire); “Style is deviations” (Enkvist); “Style is choice” and the like. All these ideas directly or indirectly bear on issues in stylistics. Some of them become very useful by revealing the springs which make our utterance emphatic, effective and goal-directed. It will therefore not come amiss to quote certain interesting observations regarding style made by different writers from different angles. Some of these observations are dressed up as epigrams or sententious maxims like the ones quoted above [Bagget 2005, 243].

     Style is a quality of language which communicates precisely emotions or thoughts, or a system of emotions or thoughts, peculiar to the author”. (J Middleton Murry) “… a true idiosyncrasy of style is the result of an author’s success in compelling language to conform to his mode of experience”. (J. Middleton Murry). “Style is a contextually restricted linguistic variation”. (Enkvist).  “Style is a selection of non-distinctive features of language”. (L. Bloomfield). “Style is simple synonymous with form or expression and hence a superfluous term”. (Benedetto Croce)[ Riffaterre 1964, 316]. “Style is essentially a citational process, a body of formulae, a memory (almost in the cybernetic sense of the word). A cultural and not an expressive inheritance”. (Roland Barthes) [Chatman 1967,30]. Some linguists consider that the word `style` and the subject of linguistic stylistics is confined to the study of the effects of the message, i.e. its impact on the reader. Thus Michael Riffaterre writes that “Stylistics will be linguistics of the effects of the message, of the output of the act of communication, of its attention –compelling function”. This point of view has clearly been reached under the influence of recent developments in the general theory of information. Language being one of the means of communication or, to be exact, the most important mans of communication, is regarded in the above quotation from a pragmatic point of view.

            Stylistics in that case is regarded as a language science which deals with the results of the act of communication. To a very considerable degree this is true. Stylistic must take into consideration the “output of the act of communication”. But stylistics must also investigate the ontological, i.e. natural, inherent, and functional peculiarities of the means of communication. Which may ensure the effect sought? Archibald A. Hill states that “A current definition of style and stylistics is that structures, sequences, and patterns which extend, or may extend, beyond the boundaries of individual sentences define style, and that the study of them is stylistics ”The truth of this approach to style and stylistics lies in the fact that the author concentrates on such phenomena in language as present a system, in other words, on facts which are not confined to individual choices and patterns of choices (emphasis added) among linguistic possibilities.” [ Archibald 1978,54] This definition indirectly deals with the idiosyncrasies peculiar to a given writer. Somehow it fails to embrace such phenomena in text structure where the `individual` is reduced to the minimum or even done away with entirely (giving preferences to non-individualistic forms in using language means). However, this definition is acceptable when applied to the ways men-of-letters use language when they seek to make it conform to their immediate aims and support. A somewhat broader view of style is expressed by Werner winter who maintains that “A style may be said to be characterized by a pattern of recurrent selections from the inventory of optional features of a language. Various types of selection can be found; complete exclusion of an optional element, obligatory inclusion of a feature optional else where, varying degrees of inclusion of a specific variant without complete elimination of competing features.” [Werner 1967,324].

            The idea of taking various types of selection as criteria for distinguishing styles seems to be a sound one. It places the whole problem on a solid foundation of objective criteria, namely, the interdependence of optional and obligatory features. There is no point in quoting other definitions of style. They are too many and heterogeneous to fall under one more or less satisfactory unified notion. Undoubtedly all these diversities in the understanding of the word `style` stem from its ambiguity. But still all these various definitions leave an impression that by and large they all have something in common. All of them point to some integral significance, namely that style is a set of characteristics by which we distinguish one author from another or members of one subclass from members of the same general class.What are these sets of characteristics typical of a writer or of a subclass of the literary language will be seen in the analysis of the language means of a given writer and of the subclasses of the general literary standard. 

1.2. The various approaches to the study of stylistics 

         Stylistics refers to stylistic study specially. The aim of the stylistic study is to interpret the literary meaning and aesthetic effect of literature texts linguistically. There are many definitions on the stylistics. N. Leech and R. Short defined that “Compared with many other studies, literary stylistics is a new science, a linguistic approach towards literature works. It applies theories of modern linguistics to the study of literature and attempts to relate the critic’s concern with aesthetic appreciation and the readers’ intuition with the linguist’s concern with linguistic description”. A. Thornborrow defined that “By far the most common kind of material studied by stylistics is literature.The stylistics we are discussing here is modern stylistics, a discipline that applies concepts and techniques of modern linguistics to the study of styles of language use. It has two subdivisions: general stylistics and literary stylistics, with the latter concentrating solely on unique features of various literary works, and the former on the general features of various types of language use.” That is to say, stylistics goes beyond the linguistic description of the literature texts; its final purpose is to relate literary effects to relevant linguistic causes. It is the most explored section in the stylistic domain.

     Stylistics, sometimes called lingvo-stylistics, is a branch of general linguistics. It has now been more or less definitely outlined. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks:

     a) the investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance and

     b) certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication.

     The two objectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of investigation. The inventory of special language media can be analyzed and their ontological features revealed if presented in a system in which the co-relation between the media becomes evident.

     The types of texts can be analyzed if their linguistic components are presented in their interaction, thus revealing the unbreakable unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called functional styles of language (FS); the special media of language which secure the desirable effect of the utterance are called stylistic devices (SD) and expressive means (EM).

     The first field of investigation, i.e. SDs and EMs, necessarily touches upon such general language problems as the aesthetic function of language, synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, emotional colouring in language, the interrelation between language and thought, the individual manner of an author in making use of language and a number of other issues.

     The second field, i.e. functional styles, cannot avoid discussion of such most general linguistic issues as oral and written varieties of language, the notion of the literary (standard) language, the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, the generative aspect of literary texts, and some others.

     In dealing with the objectives of stylistics, certain pronouncements of adjacent disciplines such as theory of information, literature, psychology, logic and to some extent statistics must be touched upon. This is indispensable; for nowadays no science is entirely isolated from other domains of human knowledge; and linguistics, particularly its branch stylistics, cannot avoid references to the above mentioned disciplines because it is confronted with certain overlapping issues.

     The branching off of stylistics in language science was indirectly the result of a long-established tendency of grammarians to confine their investigations to sentences, clauses and word-combinations which are "well-formed", to use a dubious term, neglecting anything that did not fall under the recognized and received standards. This tendency became particularly strong in what is called descriptive linguistics. The generative grammars, which appeared as a reaction against descriptive linguistics, have confirmed that the task of any grammar is to limit the scope of investigation of language data to sentences which are considered well-formed. Everything that fails to meet this requirement should be excluded from linguistics.

     But language studies cannot avoid subjecting to observation any language data whatever, so where grammar refuses to tread stylistics steps in. Stylistics has acquired its own status with its own inventory of tools (SDs and EMs), with its own object of investigation and with its own methods of research.

     The stylistics of a highly developed language like English or Russian has brought into the science of language a separate body of media, thus widening the range of observation of phenomena in language. The significance of this branch of linguistics can hardly be over-estimated. A number of events in the development of stylistics must be mentioned here as landmarks.A great number of monographs, textbooks, articles, and dissertation papers are now at the disposal of a scholar in stylistics. The stream of information grows larger every month. Two American journals appear regularly, which may keep the student informed as to trends in the theory of stylistics. They are Style issued at the Arkansas University (U.S.A.) and Language and Style published in Southern Illinois University (U.S.A.).

     It is in view of the ever-growing significance of the exploration of language potentialities that so much attention is paid in lingvo-stylistics to the analysis of expressive means (EMs) and stylistic devices (SDs), to their nature and functions, to their classification and to possible interpretations of additional meanings they may carry in a message as well as their aesthetic value.

     In order to ascertain the borders of stylistics it is necessary to go at some length into the question of what is style.

     The word stуle is derived from the Latin word 'stylus' which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets.

     Now the word 'style is used in so many senses that it has become a breeding ground for ambiguity. The word is applied to the teaching of how to write a composition (see below); it is also used to reveal the correspondence between thought and expression; it frequently denotes an individual manner of making use of language; it sometimes refers to more general, abstract notions thus inevitably becoming vague and obscure, as, for example, "Style is the man himself" (Buffon), "Style is depth" (Derbyshire);* "Style is deviations" (Enkvist); "Style is choice", and the like.

     All these ideas directly or indirectly bear on issues in stylistics. Some of them become very useful by revealing the springs which make our utterances emphatic, effective and goal-directed. It will therefore not come amiss to quote certain interesting observations regarding style made by different writers from different angles. Some of these observations are dressed up as epigrams or sententious maxims like the ones quoted above. Here are some more of them.

     "Style is a quality of language which communicates precisely emotions or thoughts, or a system of emotions or thoughts, peculiar to the author." (J. Middleton Murry).

     Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which examines, analyses and classifies various phenomena of the vocabulary, grammar and phonetics from the point of view of their stylistic function. In other words it studies principles and effects of a choice and use of phonetic, lexical, grammatical language means for transmission of thought, attitudes and emotions in various situations of communication. It’s conventional to distinguish between: stylistics of the language or linguistic stylistics; stylistics of speech or literary stylistics. 

     1.2.1. Linguistic stylistics

     Stylistics of the language or linguistic stylistics occupies itself with various questions of style peculiar to the national language, 1) i.e. it studies expressive, emotional, evaluative potential of various language units on the one hand, 2) on the other hand, deals with peculiarities of vocabulary, grammar, syntax of such subsystems of the language, which are known as functional styles. The linguistic project constitutes the connection between the two other subprojects. It consists of two parts.

     1. On the one hand, linguistic insights will be re-interpreted as instruments for stylistic analysis. Starting points are the English tradition in stylistics and especially the recent development of cognitive poetics. These insights will be transferred to Dutch, using linguistic analyses of relevant elements and constructions in Dutch. On the same basis, the repertoire of possible stylistically effective features of Dutch will be supplemented. Findings will contribute to the selection of stylistic features that will be investigated in the other two subprojects.

     2. On the other hand, results from the other two subprojects will be interpreted in the theoretical framework of cognitive linguistics. An important challenge for linguistics in this programme is the question whether one can find independent evidence for connections between linguistic features of formulations (micro-level) and effects at the textual macro-level as proposed in the other two subprojects. This project's scientific relevance for the field of linguistic study consists in exploring the way the semantic description of individual linguistic elements may benefit from the macro-level perspective induced by the other subprojects.

     In linguistics there are different terms to denote particular means by which utterances are foregrounded, i.e. made more conspicuous, more effective and therefore imparting some additional information. They are called expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic markers, stylistic devices, tropes, figures of speech and other names. All these terms are used indiscriminately and are set against those means which we shall conventionally call neutral.

     Most linguists distinguish ordinary (also: substantial, referential) semantic and stylistic differences in meaning. In fact all language means contain meaning—some of them contain generally acknowledged grammatical and lexical meanings, others besides these contain specific meanings which may be called stylistic. Such meanings go alongside primary meanings and, as it were, are superimposed on them. Stylistic meanings are so to say de-automatized. As is known, the process of automatization, i.e. a speedy and subconscious use of language data, is one of the indispensable ways of making communication easy and quickly decodable. But when a stylistic meaning is involved, the process of de-automatization checks the reader's perception of the language. His attention is arrested by a peculiar use of language media and he begins, to the best of his ability, to decipher it. He becomes aware of the form in which the utterance is cast and as the result of this process a twofold use of the language medium  ordinary and stylistic becomes apparent to him. As will be shown later this twofold application of language means in some cases presents no difficulty. It is so marked that even a layman can see it, as when a metaphor or a simile is used. But in some texts grammatically redundant forms or hardly noticeable forms, essential for the expression of stylistic meanings which carry the particular additional information desired, may present a difficulty. What this information is and how it is conveyed to the mind of the reader can be explored only when a concrete communication is subjected to observation, which will be done later in the analyses of various stylistic devices and in the functioning of expressive means. In this connection the following passage from "Investigating English Style" by D. Crystal and D. Davy is of interest: "Features which are stylistically significant display different kinds and degrees of distinctiveness in a text: of two features, one may occur only twice in a text, the other may occur thirty times,— or a feature might be uniquely identifying in the language, only ever occurring in one variety, as opposed to a feature which is distributed throughout many or all varieties in different frequencies" [Crystal 1969, 21].

     The category of expressiveness has long been the subject of heated discussions among linguists. In its etymological sense expressiveness may be understood as a kind of intensification of an utterance or of a part of it depending on the position in the utterance of the means that manifest this category and what these means are. Emotiveness, and correspondingly the emotive elements of language, are what reveal the emotions of writer or speaker. But these elements are not direct manifestations of the emotions they are just the echoes of real emotions, echoes which have undergone some intellectual recasting. They are designed to awaken co-experience in the mind of the reader. Expressiveness is a broader notion than emotiveness and is by no means to be reduced to the latter. Emotiveness is an integral part of expressiveness and, as a matter of fact, occupies a predominant position in the category of expressiveness. But there are media in language which aim simply at logical emphasis of certain parts of the utterance. They do not evoke any intellectual representation of feeling but merely serve the purpose of verbal actualization of .the utterance. Thus, for example, when we say "It was in July 1975 that the cosmos experiment of a joint American-Soviet flight took place" we make the utterance logically emphatic by a syntactical device which will be described in due course. The same thing is to be observed in these sentences:

     (1) Mr. Smith was an extremely unpleasant person.

     (2) Never will he go to that place again.

     (3) In rushed the'soldiers!

     (4) It took us a very, very long time to get there.

     In sentence (1) expressiveness is achieved by lexical means—the word 'extremely'. In (2) and (3) by syntactical means—different types of inversion. In (4) the emphasis is materialized by the repetition of the word 'very' which is in itself a word used to intensify the utterance.

     But in the sentences:

     (1) Isn't she cute!

     (2) Fool that he was!

     (3) This goddam window won't open!

     (4) We buddy-buddied together.

     This quickie tour didn't satisfy our curiosity, we can register positive emotiveness", inasmuch as there are elements that evoke certain representations of the feeling of the speaker. In sentence (1) and (2) there are syntactical means which evoke this effect. In (3) and (4) there are lexical means — 'goddam', 'buddy-buddied' (= were on very friendly relations); in (5) — a morphological device (the suffix—ie).

     It must be noted that to draw a hard and fast distinction between logical and emotional emphasis is not always possible. The fact is that the logical and the emotional frequently overlap. A too strong logical emphasis may colour the utterance with emotional elements, thus causing a kind of expressiveness which is both logical and emotive. However, the extremes are clearly set one against the other. Now it should be possible to define the notion of expressive means. The expressive means of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word-building, lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms which exist in language-as-a-system for the purpose of logical and/or emotional intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms, wrought by social usage and recognized by their semantic function, have been singled out in grammars, courses in phonetics and dictionaries (including phraseological ones) as having special functions in making the utterances emphatic. Some of them are normalized, and good dictionaries label them as "intensifies". In most cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous forms. Compare, for example, the following pairs:

     (1) He shall do it! = I shall make him do it.

     (2) Isn't she cute! = She is very nice, isn't she?   

     Expressiveness may also be achieved by compositional devices in utterances comprising a number of sentences—in syntactical wholes and in paragraphs. This will be shown in the chapter on syntactical stylistic devices.

     The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic. The human voice can indicate subtle nuances of meaning that no other means can attain. Pitch, melody, stress, pausation, drawling out certain syllables, whispering, a sing-song manner and other ways of using the voice are much more effective than any other means in intensifying an utterance emotionally or logically. In the language course of phonetics the patterns of emphatic intonation have been worked out, but many .devices have so far been little investigated. Paradoxal though it may seem, many of these means, the effect of which rests on a peculiar use of the voice, are banned from the linguistic domain. But there has appeared a new science—"paralinguistics"—of which all these devices are the inventory. The writer of this book holds the opinion that all the vocal peculiarities enumerated should be recognized as legitimate members of the phonetic structure of language and (hat therefore the term 'paralinguistics' should be done away with. Professor Seymour Chatman introduces the term 'phonostylistics' and defines it as a subject the purpose of which is "the study of the ways in which an author elects to constrain the phonology of the language beyond the normal requirements of the phonetic system" [Chatman 1967, 34 ].

     As can be inferred from this quotation, phonetic expressive means and particularly phonetic stylistic devices are not deviations from "the normal requirements of the phonetic system" but a way of actualizing the typical in the given text. Vocal phenomena such as drawling, whispering, etc. should be regarded as parts of the phonemic system on the same level as pitch, stress and tune. Passing over to some preliminary remarks on the morphological expressive mеans of the English language, we must point to what is now a rather impoverished set of media to which the quality of expressiveness can be attributed. However, there are some which alongside their ordinary grammatical function display a kind of emphasis and thereby are promoted to EMs. These are, for example, The Historical Present; the use of shall in the second and third person; the use of some demonstrative pronouns with an emphatic meaning as those, them ("Those gold candles Fixed in heaven's air"—Shakespeare); some cases of nominalization, particularly when conversion of verbal stems is alien to the meaning of the verbs or the nominalization of phrases and sentences and a number of other morphological forms, which acquire expressiveness in the context, though this capacity is not yet registered as one of the latent properties of such forms.

     Among the wоrd-building means we find a great many forms which serve to make the utterance more expressive by intensifying some of their semantic and/or grammatical properties. The diminutive suffixes -y (-ie), -let, e.g. 'dearie', 'sonny`, 'auntie', 'streamlet', add some emotional colouring to the words. We may also refer to what are called neologisms and nonce-words formed with non-productive suffixes or with Greek roots, as 'cleanorama'. Certain affixes have gained such a power of expressiveness that they begin functioning as separate words, absorbing all of the generalizing meaning they attach to different roots, as, for example, isms and clones at the lexical level there are a great many words which due to their inner expressiveness constitute a special layer. There are words with emotive meaning only (interjections), words which have both referential and emotive meaning (epithets), words which still retain a twofold meaning: denotative and connotative (love, hate, sympathy), words belonging to the layers of slang and vulgar words, or to poetic or archaic layers..The expressive power of these words cannot be doubted, especially when they are compared with the neutral vocabulary. All kinds of set phrases (phraseological units) generally possess the property of expressiveness. Set phrases, catch words, proverbs, sayings comprise a considerable number of language units which serve to make speech emphatic, mainly from the emotional point of view. Their use in every-day speech is remarkable for the subjective emotional colouring they produce. It must be noted here that due to the generally emotional character of colloquial language, all kinds of set expressions are natural in everyday speech. They are, as it were, part and parcel of this form of human intercourse. But when they appear in written texts their expressiveness comes to the fore because written texts, as has already been pointed out, are logically directed unless, of course, there is a deliberate attempt to introduce an expressive element in the utterance. The set expression is a time-honoured device to enliven speech, but this device, it must be repeated, is more sparingly used in written texts. In everyday speech one can often hear such phrases as: "Well, it will only add fuel to the fire" and the like, which in fact is synonymous to the neutral: "It will only make the situation worse."

     Finally, at the syntactical level there are many constructions which, when set against synonymous neutral ones, will reveal a certain degree of logical or emotional emphasis. In order to be able to distinguish between expressive means and stylistic devices, to which we now pass, it is necessary to bear in mind that expressive means are concrete facts of language. They are studied in the respective language manuals, though it must be once again regretfully stated that some grammarians iron out all elements carrying expressiveness from their works, as they consider this quality irrelevant to the theory of language. Stylistics studies the expressive means of language, but from a special angle. It takes into account the modifications of meanings which various expressive means undergo when they are used in different functional styles. Expressive means have a kind of radiating effect. They noticeably colour the whole of the utterance no matter whether they are logical or emotional.

     Thus, a stylistic device (SD) is a conscious and intentional intensification of some typical structural and/or semantic property of a language unit (neutral or expressive) promoted to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model. It follows then that an SD is an abstract pattern, a mould into which any content can be poured. As is known, the typical is not only that which is in frequent use, but that also which reveals the essence of a phenomenon with the greatest and most evident force. SDs function in texts as marked units. They always carry some kind of additional information, either emotive or logical. That is why the method of free variation employed in descriptive linguistics cannot be used in stylistics because any substitution may cause damage to the semantic and aesthetic aspect of the utterance. A. W. De Groot points out the significance of SDs in the following passage:"Each of the aesthetically relevant features of the text serves to create a feature of the gestalt of the poem. In this sense the relevant linguistic features may be said to function or operate as gestalt factors." [De Groot 295.]. The idea of the function of SDs is expressed most fully by V. M. Zhirmunsky in the following passage: "The justification and the sense of each device lies in the wholeness of the artistic impression which the work of art as a self-contained thing produces on us. Each' separate aesthetic fact, each poetical device (emphasis added) finds its place in the system, the sounds and sense of the words, the syntactical structures, the scheme of the plot, the compositional purport — all in equal degree express this wholeness and find justification."[Жирмунский 1928, 354]. The-motivated use of SDs in a genuine work of emotive literature is not easily discernible, though they are used in some kind of relation to the facts, events, or ideas dealt with in the artistic message. Most SDs display an application of two meanings: the ordinary one, in other words, the meaning (lexical or structural) which has already been established in the language-as-a-system, and a special meaning which is superimposed on the unit by the text, i.e. a meaning which appears in the language-in-action.

     Sometimes, however, the twofold application of a lexical unit is accomplished not by the interplay of two meanings but by two words (generally synonyms) one of which is perceived against the background of the other. This will be shown in subsequent chapters. The conscious transformation of a language fact into a stylistic device has been observed by certain linguists whose interests in linguistic theory have gone beyond the boundaries of grammar. Thus A. A. Potebnya writes:"As far back as in ancient Greece and Rome and with few exceptions up to the present time, the definition of a figurative use of a word has been based on the contrast between ordinary speech, used in its own, natural, primary meaning, and transferred speech." [Потебня 1905, 204]The contrast which the author of the passage quoted points to, can not always be clearly observed. In some SDs it can be grasped immediately; in others it requires a keen eye and sufficient training to detect it. It must be emphasized that the contrast reveals itself most clearly when our mind perceives twofold meanings simultaneously. The meanings run parallel: one of them taking precedence over the other. Thus in The night has swallowed him up the word 'swallow' has two meanings: a) referential and b) contextual (to make disappear, to make vanish). The meaning (b) takes precedence over the referential (a).The same can be observed in the sentence: Is there not blood enough upon your penal code that more must be poured forth to ascend to Heaven and testify against you? (Byron) The interrogative form, i.e. the structural meaning of a question, runs parallel with the imposed affirmative thought, i.e. the structural meaning of a statement, and it is difficult to decide which of the two structural meanings—the established or the superimposed—takes the upper hand. In the following chapters where detailed analysis of the different SDs will be carried out, we shall try, where possible, to consider which of the two meanings realized simultaneously outweighs the other. The birth of SDs is a natural process in the development of language media. Language units which are used with more or less definite aims of communication in various passages of writing and in various functional styles begin gradually to develop new features, a wider range, of functions, thus causing polyfunctionality. Hence they can be presented as invariants with concrete variables. The interrelation between expressive means and stylistic devices can be worded in terms of the theory of information. Expressive means have a greater degree of predictability than stylistic devices. The latter may appear in an environment which may seem alien and therefore be only slightly or not at all predictable. Expressive means, on the contrary, follow the natural course of thought, intensifying it by means commonly used in language. It follows that SDs carry a greater amount of information and therefore require a certain effort to decode their meaning and purport. SDs must be regarded as a special code which has to be well known to the reader in order to be deciphered easily.

     The notion of language as a special code is now very much practised in the analyses of the functions of language, units. E. Stankievicz sees a kind of code-switching when SDs are employed. He also acknowledges the twofold application of the language code when "... the neutral, basic code serves as the background against which the elements of another system acquire expressive prominence within the context of the basic system" [Stankievicz 1964, 246]. SDs are used sparingly in emotive prose, lest they should overburden the text with implications thus hindering the process of decoding. They are abundantly used in poetry and especially so in some trends of poetical tradition, consequently retarding menial absorption of the content [Гальперин 1974, 136]. Not every stylistic use of a language fact will come under the term SD, although some usages call forth a stylistic meaning. There are practically unlimited possibilities of presenting any language fact in what is vaguely called its stylistic use. For a language fact to be promoted to the level of an SD there is one indispensable requirement, which has already been mentioned above, viz. that it should so be used to call forth a twofold perception of lexical or/and structural meanings. Even a nonce use can and very often does create, the necessary conditions for the appearance of an SD. But these are only the prerequisites for the appearance of an SD. Only when a newly minted language unit which materializes the twofold application of meanings occurs repeatedly in different environments, can it spring into Hie as an SD and subsequently be registered in the system of SDs of the given language. Therefore it is necessary to distinguish between a stylistic use of a language unit, which acquires what we call a stylistic meaning, and a stylistic device, which is the realization of an already well-known abstract scheme designed to achieve a particular artistic effect. Thus many facts of English grammar are said to be used with stylistic meaning. But most of them have not yet been raised to the level of SDs because they remain unsystematized and so far perceived as nonce uses. They are, as it were, still wandering in the vicinity of the realm of SDs without being admitted into it. This can indirectly be proved by the fact that they have no special name in the English language system of SDs. An exception, perhaps, is the Historical Present which meets the requirements of an SD. So far the system of stylistic devices has not been fully recognized as legitimate members of the general system of language. This is mainly due to the above-mentioned conception of grammatical theory as dealing exclusively with a perfectly organized and extremely rigid scheme of language rules, precise and accurate in its application 
 
 

     1.2.3.Literary stylistics 

     Stylistics of speech or literary stylistics studies the style of various writers or literary movements, or certain stylistic phenomena taken in their chronological developments, it deals with study of real text with the aim of discovering how content is expressed not only according to the norm but also due to deviation (отклонение) of the norm.

     In the literary language the norm is the invariant of the phonemic, morphological, lexical and syntactical patterns in circulation during a given period in the development of the given language.

     Any literary work of irrespective of its genre (poem, short story, novel, etc.), or its literary trend (realistic, naturalistic, romantic, etc.) is a unique and complete world, created by the author in precisely the way his imagination has urged him to create. Though it is a product of the author's imagination, it is always based upon objective reality. A literary work is thus a fragment of objective reality arranged in accordance with the vision of the author and permeated by his idea of the world.

     The Theme of a literary work may be understood to be an interaction of human characters under certain circumstances, such as some social or psychological conflict (war and peace, clash of ideologies and the like).

     Within a single work the basic theme may alternate with rival themes and their relationship may be very complex. Theme is the interpreted aspect of life(war and peace, race discrimination and the like).The same theme may be the basic theme, rival themes, by-themes.