Classification of Lexical Stylistic Devices

Words in a context may acquire additional lexical meanings not fixed in the dictionaries, what we have called contextual meanings. The latter may sometimes deviate from the dictionary meaning to such a degree that the new meaning even becomes the opposite of the primary meaning. What is known in linguistics as transferred meaning is practically the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual.

Classification of Lexical Stylistic Devices

There are 3 groups.

1. The interaction of different types of lexical meaning.

a) dictionary and contextual (metaphor, metonymy, irony);

b) primary and derivative (zeugma and pun);

c) logical and emotive (epithet, oxymoron);

d) logical and nominative (autonomasia);

2. Intensification of a feature (simile, hyperbole, periphrasis).

3. Peculiar use of set expressions (cliches, proverbs, epigram, quotations).

The term ‘metaphor’ means transference of some quality from one object to another. We define metaphor as the power of realizing two lexical meaning simultaneously: “Dear Nature is the kindest Mother still” (Byron).

Zeugma is the use of a word in the same grammatical but different semantic relations to two adjacent words in the context, the semantic relation being, on the one hand, literal, on the other, transferred: “Dora, plunging at once into privileged intimacy and into the middle of the room” (B. Show).

Antonomasia is a lexical SD in which a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice verse: You are Romeo (not from “Romeo and Juliet”); Mrs. Snake.

Simile is a comparison between objects belonging to one class of things with the purpose of establishing the degree of their sameness or difference: “The boy seems to be as cleaver as his mother”.