Poetry: English Prosody

Poetry: English Prosody
The main feature that ditinguishes poetry from other written genres is succinctness, a tight structure and higher concentration of content ¡V crowded into fewer words ¡V than you usually find in ordinary prose.
Poetry can be analyzed as to its form and its content. Ideally, the two should reflect and reinforce each other in expressing the message of the poem.

FORM:
Number of lines: The number of lines may be a clue that a poem belongs to a special verse form, for example, a sonnet or a limerick, which normally has five lines. A poem or stanza with one line is called a monostich, one with two lines is a couplet; with three, tercet or triplet; four, quatrain. six, hexastich; seven, heptastich; eight, octave. Also note the number of stanzas.

Meter: English has stressed and unstressed syllables. English is considered a stress-timed language, unlike French, which is a syllable-timed language. In poetry, stressed and unstressed syllables are often put together in specific patterns. In poetry these patterns are called meter, which means 'measure'. The meters you find in poetry are the same ones we use in everyday speech. The main difference is that in speech these patterns tend to occur spontaneously and without any special order; in poetry they are usually carefully chosen and arranged.
Here are the most common meters you find in English poetry. / represents a stressed, long syllable;¡Cstands for an unstressed, short syllable (not to be confused with 'long' and 'short' vowels), also called a mora (pl. morae). The first word of each meter below (e.g. 'iambic') is the adjective form, the one in parentheses is the noun form.

iambic (iamb; L. iambus, Gk iambos; a pre-Hellenic word) ¡C/ ¡C/ ¡C/ ¡C/
trochaic (trochee; Gk. trochaios 'running') /¡C /¡C /¡C /¡C
dactylic (dactyl; Gk. daktylos 'finger' with one long, two short joints) /¡C¡C /¡C¡C /¡C¡C /.¡C¡C
anapestic (anapest; Gk. ana 'back' + paiein 'to strike', i.e., a reversed dactyl) ¡C¡C/ ¡C¡C/ ¡C¡C/ ¡C¡C/

A fifth kind of meter is called spondaic (spondee; Gk sponde 'solemn libation', which was accompanied by a solemn melody) and consists of two consecutive long, stressed syllables: /; and a sixth is caled pyrrhic (from a word for an ancient Greek war dance); this is a metrical foot having two short or unaccented syllables. There are other meters, but these are mostly from Greek and Latin poetry (the preceding six are also found in Greek and Latin poetry), and are not very applicable to English poetry. Often the same rhythm will not be used throughout a whole poem, or even a whole line; there may be an extra beat here, one omitted there; or the meter may simply change. Poets often seem to establish a regular pattern, but then put in something 'unexpected' to startle the reader, or to achieve some special effect. You can divide the rhythms above into parts. Circle each group of symbols containing just one long, stressed syllable / in each example above. You will find that each line has four such groups. Each one of these groups is called a foot, and counting the number of feet is one way of determining the length of a line of poetry. Here are the literary terms for each line length as regards number of feet: one foot: monometer; two feet: dimeter; three feet, trimeter; four feet, tetrameter; five feet, pentameter; six feet, hexameter; seven feet, heptameter.
caesura: a caesura is simply a pause. Absence of sound is also an important element of poetry. Make sure you insert caesuras where they are called for. Not all caesuras are the same length; some are quite long, others are very short. Normally there is a fairly long caesura at the end of every line of poetry. There is usually also a very short caesura after every 'foot'.
punctuation and capitalization: An important thing to remember is that almost any kind of punctuation you see in a poem tends to signal a pause or caesura. Some poets use very conventional punctuation, some use none at all. Some follow their own special rules in the use of punctuation, e.g. E. E. Cummings, who is also noted for seldom using capital letters in his poetry. You know from your experience with Chinese that different ways of punctuating a phrase or sentence (i.e. Â_¥y) can sometimes result in different meanings.


Rhyme (rime):
Rhyme is the effect created by matching sounds at the end of words. Ordinarily this includes the last accented vowel and the sounds that follow it, but not the sound of the preceding consonant(s).
Masculine rhyme falls on one syllable: fat, cat; repair, affair. Feminine or double rhyme includes two syllables, of which only the first is stressed: better, setter; pleasure, treasure. Triple rhyme, often reserved for light verse and doggerel, involves three syllables: practical, tactical.
There are different kinds of rhyme: exact rhyme (perfect, full, true, complete, whole), which repeats end sounds precisely; slant rhyme (half, approximate, imperfect, near, off, oblique) provides an approximation of the sound: cat, cot; hope, cup; defeated, impeded. Identical rhyme repeats the entire sound, including the initial consonant, sometimes (as in rime riche) with two different meanings and/or spellings, e.g. two, too. Eye rhyme looks as though it should rhyme, but does not, e.g. great, meat; proved, loved. Apocopated rhyme pairs a masculine and feminine ending, rhyming on the stress: cope, hopeless; kind, finder. In mosaic rhyme, two words rhyme with one, or two with two: master, passed her; chorus, before us; went in, sent in.
Most rhyme occurs at the end of the line and is called terminal rhyme. Initial rhyme comes at the beginning of a line, and is sometimes combined with end rhyme. Internal rhyme occurs within one or more lines. Crossed or interlaced rhyme combines internal and end rhyme to give a long-line couplet the effect of a short-line quatrain. Enclosed rhyme envelops a couplet with rhyming lines in the pattern abba. In interlocking rhyme a word unrhymed in a first stanza is linked with words rhymed in the next to create a continuing pattern, e.g. aba bcb cdc.
The functions of rhyme are essentially four: pleasurable, mnemonic, structural and rhetorical. Like meter and figurative language, rhyme provides a pleasure derived from fulfillment of a basic human desire to see similarity in dissimilarity, likeness with a difference. As a mnemonic aid, it couples lines and thoughts, imprinting poems and passages on the mind in a manner that assists later recovery. As a structural device, it helps to define line ends and establishes the patterns of couple, quatrain, stanza, ballad, sonnet, and other poetic units and forms. As a rhetorical device, it helps the poet to shape the poem and the reader to understand it. Because rhyme links sound, it also links thought, pulling the reader's mind back from the new word to the word that preceded it.
The effect of rhyme in a poem depends to a large extent on its association with meter. Rhymes gain emphasis in sound and rhetoric when they are heavily stressed. Rhyme is frequent in the poetry of many but not all languages. It is rare in Greek, Latin, and Old English, though it has been common in English since the 14th century. By a more extended definition it can cover the sound patterns of the poetry of all languages and periods, and may include any sound echo, such as alliteration (alliterative verse ÂùÁn¸Ö was briefly popular in China's Northern and Southern Dynasty period), assonance, consonance and repetition.

alliteration (L. ad 'to' + littera 'letter''; ÀYÃý): Repetition of the same or similar consonant (¤l­µ/»²­µ) sound at the beginning of a word, e.g. 'Peter Piper picked a peck of pickled peppers.'
allusion (L. allusio 'a playing with'; ¨å¬G): A reference to another text or event.
ambiguity (L. ambi 'around' + agere 'act' ® ambigere 'to wander'; ª[¸q): Something suggesting more than one meaning or interpretation.
anonymous (Gk. an 'without' + onyma 'name'; ¤£¨ã§@ªÌ©m¦Wªº¡B§H¦W): 'Without a name'; indicates that an author of a work is not known.
antithesis (Gr. anti 'against' + tithenai 'to place'; ¹ï°¸): A direct contrast or opposition.
antonym (Gk. anti 'opposite' + onyma 'name'; ¤Ï¸q»y): A word opposite in meaning to another.
assonance (L. ad 'to' + sonare 'sound'; 'to sound in answer'; ¥b¿Ó­µ): Repetition of vowel (¥À­µ/¤¸­µ) sounds, e.g. 'They flee from me that sometime did me seek.'.
cacophony (Gk. kakos 'bad, evil' + phone 'voice' adj. cacophonous; ¨ë¦ÕªºÁn­µ): 'Bad-sounding'.
cliché (F. clicher 'to stereotype' from Gk. klitsch, 'clump, claylike mass' ® 'to pattern in clay'; ³¯µüÀݽÕ): A tired expression that has lost its original power to surprise because of overuse.
connotations (L. com- 'together' + notare 'to mark'; Áô§t·N¸q): The implied meanings of a word; its overtones and associations over and above its literal, dictionary meaning.
consonance (L. com 'with' + sonare 'to sound'; »²­µÃý): Repetition of inner or end consonant sounds, e.g. the r and s in 'broods with warm breast'.
context (L. com- 'together' + texere 'to weave'; ¤W¤U¤å¡N»y¹Ò): The verbal or physical surroundings of a text.
denotation (L. de 'down' + notare 'to mark'; ¥»¸q): The basic dictionary meaning of a word without any of its associated meanings.
ellipsis (Gk. elleipein 'to fall short [of a perfect circle]'; ¬Ù²¤ªk): Omission, a leaving out of something, which is nevertheless still implied.
enjambement, or run-on lines (Fr. en 'in' + jambe 'leg', enjamber 'encroach'; ¸ó¦æ³sÄò): In enjambement the grammatical sense runs from one line of poetry to the next without pause or punctuation; opposite of end-stopped line.
euphemism (Gk. eu 'good' + phanai 'to say'; ©e°û»y): An attractive substitute for a harsh or unpleasant word or concept; a less direct way of referring to something potentially offensive.
euphony (Gk. eu 'good' + phone 'voice'; adj. euphonious; ®®¦Õ»y­µ): 'Good-sounding', melodious.
expletive (L. ex 'out' + plere 'to fill'; ¶ñ¥Rµü¡N»y§Uµü¡N·P¹Ä»y¡N©»y): An unnecessary word or phrase used as a filler in speaking or writing ('you know') or as an aid to metrical regularity in verse ('oh'); an exclamation or oath.
explication (F. from L. ex 'out' + plicare 'to fold'; §@«~¤ÀªR): An explanation, analysis, or interpretation of a text.
genre (F. from L. genus 'kind'; Åéµô¡N¤åÅé): A certain form or style of writing; e.g. poetry, novel, essay.
hyperbole (Gk. hyper 'over' + ballein 'to throw', i.e., 'throw too far; excess'; ¦j±iªk): exaggeration, overstatement.
metaphor (Gk. meta 'over' + pherein 'to bear'; Áô³ë): The comparison of one thing to another, treating something as if it were something else; a metaphor can be plain, implied, or dead.
metathesis (Gk. meta 'over' + tithenai 'place'; ­µ¦ìÅÜ´«): Interchanging of letters, sounds or syllables within a word, e.g. Old English brid became Modern English bird through metathesis; a modern example would be pretty, purty.
metonymy (Gk. meta 'other' + onyma 'name'; Âà»y¡B­É¥N): 'Substitute meaning'; an associated idea names the item: "Homer is hard." for "Reading Homer's poems is hard."
mixed metaphor (²VÂøÁô³ë): Changed or contradictory metaphors in the same discourse:, e.g. The population explosion has paved the way for new intellectual growth. Mixed metaphors are considered a sign of poor writing in English, but not necessarily in Chinese. The lines: ¸ÀÅܪº­y¸ñ and ¹¡¨ü°§¾jªº§é¿i are acceptable Chinese; a literal translation of them into English would not be.
monologue (Gk. monos 'single' + legein 'to speak'; ¿W¥Õ): A text recited by one person alone.
narrator (L. narrare 'to tell'; ±Ô­zªÌ): One who tells a story or narration.
neologism (Gk. neos 'young, new' + logos 'word'; ·sµü): A newly coined word.
onomatopoeia (Gk onoma 'name' + poeia 'making'; ÀÀÁnµü): The use of words formed or sounding like what they signify; examples: mew, mew; clang, clang; swish.
oxymoron (Gk. oxys 'sharp, acid' + moros 'foolish' ® 'a pointed stupidity'; ¥Ù¬Þ§Î®eªk¡N°f³ë; An apparently self-contradictory figure of speech, e.g. 'a fearful joy', or 'the sonorous silence'.
paradox (Gk. para 'side' + "thought", i.e., 'other than what you expect' ¦ü«D¦Ó¬O): An apparently untrue or self-contradictory statement or circumstance that proves true upon reflection or when examined in another light.parody: (Gk. 'beside, subsidiary, or mock song'): A parody imitates the serious manner and characteristic features of a particular literary work in order to make fun of those same features. The humorist achieves parody by exaggerating certain traits common to the work, much as a caricaturist creates a humorous depiction of a person by magnifying and calling attention to the person's most noticeable features. The term parody is often used synonymously with the more general term spoof, which makes fun of the general traits of a genre rather than one particular work or author. Often the subject matter of a parody is comically inappropriate, such as using the elaborate, formal diction of an epic to describe something trivial like washing socks or cleaning a dusty attic. (source)
paralepsis: (Gk. para 'side' + leipein 'to leave'; Mention of desire to omit something in order to emphasize it. Also called apophasis.
parallelism (Gk. para 'side by side', allelos 'one another'; ¹ï¥M¡N¥­¦æµ²ºcªº¹B¥Î): The comparison of things by placing them side by side; a one-to-one correspondence of form, meaning, or both in a text.
paraphrase (Gk. paraphrazein 'to say in other words; ÅÜ´«±¹µü¡N·NĶ): A rendering in other words of the sense of a text or passage.
personification (F. from L. persona 'actor's face mask, character'; ÀÀ¤H¤Æ): The technique of treating abstractions, things or animals as persons; a kind of metaphor; also called anthropomorphism (Gk. anthropos 'man' + morphe 'form').
poetic license (L. licere 'to be permitted'; ¸Öªº¯}®æ): The liberty taken by a poet who achieves special effects by ignoring the conventions (e.g. grammar) of prose.
point of view (±Ô¨ÆÆ[ÂI): The vantage point from which a story is told or an account given. "I", or "he/she", etc.
prose (L. prosa, for prorsa (oratio) 'direct speech'; ´²¤åÅé): Ordinary writing patterned on speech, as distinct from poetry (Gk. poiein 'to make').
prosody (Gk. pros 'to' + oide 'song, ode'; ¸ÖÅé¾Ç¡NÃý«ß¾Ç): The analysis and description of meters; metrics; the patterns of accent in a language.
pun (clipped form of It. puntiglio 'fine point'; ÂùÃö»y): A figure of speech involving a play on two or more words which sound similar but have different meanings, or refer to different things; usually humorous, but sometimes with serious intent
redundancy (L. re(d) [an intensifier] + undare 'surge, swell' < unda 'wave'; ÂØ»y): 'Overflowing'; repetitive, using many more words than necessary; also called pleonasm, tautology.
refrain (F. from Latin refringere 'to break off'; °Æºq): A set phrase or chorus recurring throughout a song or poem, usually at the end of a stanza or at some other regular interval.
repetition: (L. re 'again' + petere 'to demand, rush at, fall'; ­«½Æ): Using the same sound, word, etc. more than once; may be used for emphasis or other reasons.
rhetorical question (Gk. rhetor 'orator'; ­×Ãã©ÊºÃ°Ý¥y): A question posed for rhetorical effect, usually with a self-evident answer.
rhyme scheme (ME, F. rime; Gk. schema 'a form'; ®æ«ß): The pattern created by the rhyming words of a poem or stanza. Usually Latin letters are used to designate the same rhyme, e.g. abab cdcd.
satire (L. satira or satura 'satire, poetic medley'; ¿Ø¨ë¡NÃÕ¿Ø): Literature that ridicules vices and follies.
scansion (L. scandere 'to climb, mount'; Ãý«ß¤ÀªR): A system for analyzing and marking poetical meters and feet.
shaped poem (L. carmen figuratum; also called figure poem): A poem constructed so that its shape on a page presents a picture of its subject.
simile (L. 'a likeness'; ©ú³ë): The comparison of one thing to another using the word, or a word meaning, like.sound symbolism (»y­µªí¸q): A relationship between the sound structure and/or qualities of a word and its referent.
stanza (vul. L. stantia 'standing'; ¸`): Any grouping of lines in a separate unit in a poem; sometimes called a verse.
synaesthesia (Gk. syn 'together' + aisthesis 'sense-impression'; Ápı): Close association or confusion of sense impressions. The result is essentially a metaphor, transferring qualities of one sense to another, e.g. a 'loud color'.synecdoche (Gk. synekdoche 'to receive together'; ´£³ëªk¡BÁ³ë¡B¥H°¾¥N¥þ) Reference to something by just a part of it. "New York won the World Series," instead of "The New York Yankees won the World Series." See also: metonymy.
synonym (Gk. syn 'together' + onyma 'name'; ªñ¸q»y): A word that means the same or almost the same as another.
tone (Gk. tonos 'stretching, tone'; »y®ð): An author's revealed attitude toward his or her subject or audience: sympathy, longing, amusement, shock, sarcasm, etc.
understatement (»´´y²H¼g): An ironic minimizing of a fact in order to emphasize it; meiosis (Gk. meioun 'to make smaller').verse (L. vertere 'to turn'): (1) (¤@¦æ¸Ö) One line of poetry; (2) (¸`) a stanza; (3) (¸Ö [Á`ºÙ]) poetry in general; (4) (»´ÃP«ÕÀqªº¸Ö) light poetry as opposed to serious.
zeugma (Gk. 'yoke'; ³m¦¡·f°tªk): The technique of using one word to yoke two or more others for ironic or amusing effect, achieved when as least one of the yoked is a misfit, e.g. "He took leave and his hat."


Rishi Kumar Nagar

SCANNING THE POEM

SCANNING THE POEM
Scanning poetry is different from skimming it. To scan a poem means to identify the rhythm, which in English poetry comes from the alteration of stressed and unstressed syllables.
Begin by looking at the polysyllabic words--the words of more than one syllable. Say each word aloud and try to determine which syllable you stress. If you are unsure, look up the word in the dictionary, where you will see an accent mark either before or after the stressed syllable. In The American Heritage College Dictioanry, for example, the accent appears before the stressed syllable. If you are using another dictionary, look up "pronunciation" in the dictionary's guide to reading entries. In your text book, place an accent mark (/) over each stressed syllable and a horizontal line over the unstressed syllables (-).
Now look for all the one-syllable structure words--words that have little or no meaning, but rather serve to connect other words and show their relationships. Structure words include articles (a, an, the), conjunctions (and, or, but), prepositions (of, in, on, to, etc.), and auxiliaries (have, may, do, will, etc.). Mark these words as unstressed.
Mark one-syllable nouns and verbs as stressed.
Read the poem aloud, using your marks as a guide to which syllables to stress. Look for one of the following patterns: iambic (- /), trochaic (/ -), anapestic (- - /), and dactyllic (/ - -). Most English poetry that has a regular rhythm is iambic. If you don't see one of these patterns, try to change a few of the marks on the one-syllable words. If you see a pattern now, write the name of the rhythm in your notebook. You probably still will notice a few anomalies, places where the rhythm changes from the regular pattern, but ignore these anomalies for now. If you still don't see a pattern, count the number of stressed syllables in three consecutive lines. If these lines do not have the same number of stressed syllables, the poem probably does not have a regular rhythm; in other words, it probably is written in free verse.
Draw vertical lines around each instance of a pattern. Each one of these units is called a "metrical foot" or simply a "foot." For example, if the line you scanned has the markings - / - / - / - / - /, you would recognize the iambic pattern and mark the line this way: - / - / - / - / - /. Count the number of units in each line. In most cases, this number will be the same for every line of the poem. In the previous example, you would count five units, or five feet. Use the following terms to identify the number of feet in the lines: dimeter (2 feet), trimeter (3 feet), tetrameter (4 feet), pentameter (5 feet), and hexameter (6 feet). You now have identified the overall pattern of rhythm in the poem. In our example, the rhythm is iambic pentameter.


A unit with two stresses is called a spondee, and a unit with two unstressed syllables is called a pyrrhic foot. Try to determine what role these anomalies play. For example, many times spondees call attention to important words, images, or ideas.
Look for rhyme. Look at the final words in the first and second lines. Do they rhyme with each other or any other final words? If so, the poem probably has a rhyme scheme, a pattern of rhyme. To label the rhyme scheme, place the letter "a" at the end of the first line. If the final word in the next line rhymes with this word, label it "a" also; otherwise, label it "b." Continue this process, identifying rhyming words with the same letter. Now look at the words that rhyme. Are they similar in meaning, or are they contrasting words? In your notebook, note any places where the rhyme is significant and suggest a way this rhyme contributes to the poem's meaning.
Finally, read the poem one more time aloud. Practice using pauses and stress to make the poem's meaning come alive in your recitation. In your notebook, make any final comments on the way the poem's content and form work together to create meaning.
Quick Guide to Prosody

Think of the major technical components of poetry as roughly equivalent to the way music is represented on the page, turning something you hear into something you can see.

I. RHYME involves matching sounds of words. As melody is to music, so is RHYME to poetry. The sounds of vowels are what create most rhymes. Because you can hear the words that match they have sounds that are (somewhat) analagous to different notes (do, re, mi etc.) .

To scan a poem for ryhme, you assign a single alphabetical letter, starting with a to the sound of the last word in the line. Whatever the first sound or end rhyme is, mark it "A." If the next word has the same vowel sound (tree, sea or tree, see), mark the next line "A." IF the next line has a different vowel sound, mark it "B." Lines with the same end vowel sound, the same rhyme, get the same letter.

Example: The first four lines of Byron's "She Walks in Beauty":

She walks in beauty like the night a
Of cloudless climes and starry skies b
And all that's best of dark and bright a
Meet in her aspect and her eyes. b

In this case a and b are both exact rhymes. Any pattern of lines that alternate in this way form an example of alternate rhyme.When any line rhymes with the very next line, that is called a couplet. If three lines in a row rhyme, that's a triplet.



II. METER
If rhyme is like melody, meter is the aspect of time, involving rhythm and accents of poetry. Whereas musicians represent time and beat with a time signature, like 4/4, 3/4, or 6/8, readers of poetry record the beat of poetic words by dividing them into kinds of FEET based on lengths of syllables, and locations of spoken accents.

Here are the major kinds of POETIC FEET:
A foot can match one single word, or it can span several words.

iamb any two syllables, usually a single word but not always, whose accent is on the second syllable.
Example = upon, arise

trochee any two syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on the first syllable.
Example = virtue, further

anapest any three syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on the third syllable.
Example = intervene

dactyl any three syllables, usually a single word but not always, word whose accent is on the first syllable.
Example = tenderly

spondee any two syllables, sometimes a single word but not always, with strong accent on the first and second syllable.
Example (in this case no one word, but a series of words in this line:
The long day wanes, the slow moon climbs. The words "day wanes" form a spondee.

To name the kind of foot, use the adjective form of these words.
A line of iambs = iambic
A line of trochees = trochaic
A line of anapests = anapestic
a line of dactyls = dactylic
a line of spondees = spondaic

The number of feet in a given line is marked as a form of the word meter.
dimeter - a 2-foot line
trimeter a 3-foot line
tetrameter a 4-foot line
pentameter a 5-foot line
hexameter a 6-foot line
III. Names of Groups of lines
Any group of lines forming a unit is a stanza.
Stanza of 3 lines is a tercet
Stanza of 4 lines is a quatrain
Stanza of 6 lines is a sestet
Stanza of 7 lines is a septet
Stanza of 8 lines is an octave
How to Scan a poem.
Mark the rhyme, with single alphabets (eg. abab) and the meter by counting the number of feet, and the kind of feet in the line. Not all lines contain only one kind of foot. For example, quite often the first foot of an iambic line is reversed, making it a
trochee. When this happens in a poetic line it is called a "trochaic inversion." As you'll see these poetic laws are meant to be interpreted, and they are often bent.

Iamb = Ú / (second syllable gets the accent)
Ú / Ú / Ú / Ú /
My love is of a birth as rare a number of feet = 4 iambs
Ú / Ú / Ú / Ú /
As 'tis, for object, strange and high; b number of feet = 4 iambs
Ú / Ú / Ú / Ú /
It was begotten by Despair a number of feet = 4 iambs
Ú / Ú / Ú /Ú /
Upon Impossibility. b number of feet = 4 iambs

Remarks: the first stanza of Marvell's poem is therefore in iambic tetrameter. The basic foot is the iamb, and there are four of them in each line. Note how the first line shows iamb can be split across two words, and in line 4 how multiple iambs can occur within one word.


(Rishi Kumar Nagar, Jalandhar)

THETA THEORY

THETA THEORY

Theta theory is concerned with the assignment of an argument structure to a sentence. A verb has a number of the thematic (or ‘theta’) roles that must be assigned to its arguments, e.g. a transitive verb has one theta role to ‘discharge’ that must be assigned to an NP (Noun Phrase).

The easiest method of obtaining and applying theta probabilities will be with reference to whole theta grids. Each theta grid for a word will be assigned a probability that is not dependent on any particular items in the grid, but rather on the occurrence of the theta grid as a whole.

A preliminary version of the Penn Treebank bracketed corpus was analysed to extract information on the sisters of particular verbs. Although the Penn Treebank data is unreliable since it does not always distinguish complements from adjuncts (an adverb or a phrase that adds meaning to the verb in a sentence or part of a sentence), it was the only suitable parsed corpus to which the authors had access. Although the distinction between complements and adjuncts is a theoretically interesting one, the process of determining which constructions fill which functional roles in the analysis of real text often creates a number of problems.

Well beyond the framework of generative grammar, a central question of linguistic research is whether, or how, certain aspects of meaning influence the form of a sentence. It is assumed that a verb is lexically associated with information that determines, at least in part, the predicate-argument structures it can appear in. The lexical approach raises a set of basic questions. First, there is a properties problem: which kind of lexical information enters into the determination of argument structure? Second, there is an interface problem: how are the relevant chunks of information encoded, such that they are accessible to both general cognition, and the derivation of syntactic predicate-argument structures? Third, there is a mapping problem: how exactly are lexical-semantic properties translated into grammatical functions?

Every verb classifies the participants in the event, state, or process it denotes with respect to the cognitive domain in which it is to be interpreted, and it specifies whether the event participant is an agent or a patient in that domain. The Theta System thus derives exactly eight thematic roles as clusters.

The properties problem and the interface problem
The grammatically relevant property of verb meaning is agency in two crucial domains of cognitive event interpretation, folk physics and folk psychology. Encoded as clusters of binary features, this information is accessible in grammatical derivations by hypothesis. The third question regarding the mapping of lexical semantic information on syntactic functions is addressed on the basis of German data in chapters two, three and four. Chapter two lays the empirical basis with a detailed description of a set of German verbs. The chapter first develops the routines that allow us to postulate specific role-clusters for a given verb, and then establishes generalizations about the relation between role configurations and corresponding predicate-argument structures, including diathesis alternations. The overall conclusion is that Reinhart’s (2000, 2002) theory is accurate in most cases.

Although the generalizations of the Theta System are robust and most probably universal, they are by no means exhaustive. A number of non-semantic factors enter into the determination of syntactic structures, in particular morpho-phonology, and purely syntactic requirements like structural case. Objects of prosodic structure are interpreted by a mapping into syntax, and objects of syntactic structure are interpreted by a mapping into semantics. The relation between lexicon (all the words and phrases used and known by a particular person or group of people) and grammar is not an interface in this technical sense. It is assumed with Chomsky (1995) that a lexical item enters a grammatical derivation together with all of its features by being selected into an initial array.

Once a lexical item has been selected into an initial array, its features no longer form an unanalyzable unit. Generalizations over argument-linking are formulated in terms of merging instructions for thematic role-clusters. In general, the thematic roles provided by a lexical verb-entry merge with syntactic heads of category [/-N], and they are assigned to [/-V]. In particular, a [+] cluster must merge with the head v (which introduces external arguments), and the fully specified cluster must merge with V. No reference to arguments needs to be made in these merging instructions.

It is possible to make explicit generalizations on how the perception of predicate-argument relations determines the projection of syntactic argument structure, but no recursive, pre-syntactic system of event-representation is needed to do that. With the constructional approach, the present theory shares the assumption that a noun phrase can only receive an argument-interpretation, if it appears in a specific syntactic configuration. It sharply differs from the constructional approach in that it explains why and how the È role-assigning potential of any given construction depends on the lexical entries, from which it is projected.

THETA-THEORY REVIEW NOTES

1. As part of their lexical entry, verbs, and other content lexical categories, have an argument structure that can be viewed as a type of syntactically relevant semantic information.
2. The argument structure is simply a list of the theta-roles (or thematic-roles) realized by some argument.
3. An argument is an NP or S. All S-complements are arguments. All NPs, except pleonastic elements it & there, are arguments. Generally speaking, an argument is NP or S with semantic content.
4. There is a tight one-to-one correspondence between theta-roles and arguments. This is clearly specified in the Theta-criterion, the most important element of theta-theory: Theta-criterion: Every theta-role is assigned to one and only one argument. Every argument is assigned one and only one theta-role.

A theta-role is assigned both to a syntactic position & to the argument that occupies that position. A theta-position, then, is simply a position to which a theta-role is assigned.
The paradigmatic theta-positions are as follows:
a. Object position of a transitive verb in active voice:
... V'
/ \
Vtr NP
b. Subject position of a VP that is headed by a V with a "verber"
theta-role to assign (with external theta-role):
... S
/ \
NP VP

V
c. Object position of a preposition with semantic content:
... PP
/ \
P NP

(Rishi Kumar Nagar, Jalandhar)

LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM

LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM
Linguistic determinism is the idea that language shapes thought. Determinism itself refers to the viewpoint that all events are caused by previous events, and linguistic determinism can be used broadly to refer to a number of specific views.
For example, those who follow analytic philosophy from Ludwig Wittgenstein onward accept the proposition that the limits of one’s language mean the limits of one’s world. "The subject does not belong to the world, but it is a limit of the world." "About what one can not speak, one must remain silent." That is, the words we possess determine the things that we can know. If we have an experience, we are confined not just in our communication of it, but also in our knowledge of it, by the words we possess.
From an entirely different starting point, the Sapir–Whorf hypothesis argues that individuals experience the world based on the grammatical structures they habitually use. For example, speakers of different languages may see different numbers of bands in a rainbow. Since rainbows are actually a continuum of color, there are no empirical stripes or bands, and yet people see as many bands as their language possesses primary color words.
A separate angle on linguistic determinism maintains that language is the only thing that is ever known. The objective world is entirely removed by the presence of language. It is perceived, but human life is determined by having language and by the language's own internal demands. Like semiotics, which argues that a single grammar exists prior to all human activity, these linguistic determinists say that the structures, hierarchies, and hidden associations of our individual human languages determine the conclusions that we reach in our logic, the aspirations of our lived lives, and all our emotional content.

Fictional allusion
In George Orwell's novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, it is noted that the true purpose of Oceania's official language, Newspeak, is to reshape the English language so it is impossible to commit thought-crime. Many words are made obsolete to grant the Party a universally narrow way of thinking.

Criticism
Linguistic determinism is far from universally accepted. In August 2004, however, Peter Gordon, a psychologist at Columbia University, published a study that provides experimental support to the hypothesis of linguistic determinism. The study investigated abilities held by native speakers of the language of a tribe of hunter-gatherers in Brazil, Pirahã, which is a "one, two, many" language (that is, a language which contains words only for the numbers one and two, all other numbers being simply represented by a single word meaning "many"). It was demonstrated that these native speakers had an impaired ability to compare quantities of objects higher than three, and that their ability to conceive of numbers was comparable to that of an infant. Opponents of linguistic determinism, though, have suggested that Gordon's findings might be explained by other, non-linguistic factors, and that the issue remains far from settled. Idealism and empiricism both reject the idea that language is prior to knowledge (idealism) or sense (empiricism).

LINGUISTIC RELATIVITY
Many linguists, including Noam Chomsky, contend that language in the sense we ordinary think of it, in the sense that people in India speak Hindi, is a historical or social or political notion, rather than a scientific one. For example, Telugu and Tamil are much closer to one another than various dialects of Hindi are. But the rough, commonsense divisions between languages will suffice for our purposes.
There are around 5000 languages in use today, and each is quite different from many of the others. Differences are especially pronounced between languages of different families, e.g., between Indo-European languages like English and Hindi and Ancient Greek, on the one hand, and non-Indo-European languages like Hopi and Chinese and Swahili, on the other.
Many thinkers have urged that large differences in language lead to large differences in experience and thought. They hold that each language embodies a worldview, with quite different languages embodying quite different views, so that speakers of different languages think about the world in quite different ways. This view is sometimes called the Whorf-hypothesis or the Whorf-Sapir hypothesis, after the linguists who made if famous. But the label linguistic relativity, which is more common today, has the advantage that makes it easier to separate the hypothesis from the details of Whorf's views, which are an endless subject of exegetical dispute.
The suggestion that different languages carve the world up in different ways, and that as a result their speakers think about it differently has a certain appeal. But questions about the extent and kind of impact that language has on thought are empirical questions that can only be settled by empirical investigation. And although linguistic relativism is perhaps the most popular version of descriptive relativism, the conviction and passion of partisans on both sides of the issue far outrun the available evidence. As usual in discussions of relativism, it is important to resist all-or-none thinking. The key question is whether there are interesting and defensible versions of linguistic relativism between those that are trivially true (the Babylonians didn't have a counterpart of the word ‘telephone’, so they didn't think about telephones) and those that are dramatic but almost certainly false (those who speak different languages see the world in completely different ways).


Hypothesis
Like many other relativistic themes, the hypothesis of linguistic relativity became a serious topic of discussion in late-eighteenth and nineteenth-century Germany, particularly in the work of Johann Georg Hamann (1730-88), Johann Gottfried Herder (1744-1803), and Wilhelm von Humboldt (1767-1835). It was later defended by thinkers as diverse as Ernst Cassirer and Peter Winch. Thus Cassirer tells us that
...the distinctions which here are taken for granted, the analysis of reality in terms of things and processes, permanent and transitory aspects, objects and actions, do not precede language as a substratum of given fact, but that language itself is what initiates such articulations, and develops them in its own sphere (1946, p. 12).
But the hypothesis came to prominence though the work of Edward Sapir and his student Benjamin Lee Whorf. Indeed, it is often called the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, or simply the Whorf hypothesis.
There are connections among some of these writers; for example, Sapir wrote his M.A. thesis on Herder's Origin of Language. Still, this is a remarkably diverse group of thinkers who often arrived at their views by different routes, and so it is not surprising that the linguistic relativity hypothesis comes in a variety of forms.

Sapir and Whorf
It will help to see why the linguistic relativity hypothesis captivated so many thinkers if we briefly consider the more arresting claims of Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf. Sapir was an American anthropological linguist who, like so many anthropologists of his day, was a student of Franz Boas. He was also the teacher of Whorf, a businessman and amateur linguist.
Unlike earlier partisans of linguistic relativism, Sapir and Whorf based their claims on first-hand experience of the cultures and languages they described, which gave their accounts a good deal of immediacy. I will quote a few of the purpler passages to convey the flavor of their claims, for this was partly what galvanized the imagination of so many readers.

Sapir
In a paper published in 1929 Sapir tells us:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society. It is quite an illusion to imagine that one adjusts to reality essentially without the use of language and that language is merely an incidental means of solving specific problems of communication or reflection (1929, p. 209).
Our language affects how we perceive things:
Even comparatively simple acts of perception are very much more at the mercy of the social patterns called words than we might suppose. …We see and hear and otherwise experience very largely as we do because the language habits of our community predispose certain choices of interpretation (p. 210).
But the differences don't end with perception:
The fact of the matter is that the ‘real world’ is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. No two languages are ever sufficiently similar to be considered as representing the same social reality. The worlds in which different societies live are distinct worlds, not merely the same worlds with different labels attached (p. 209).

Whorf
The linguistic relativity hypothesis grained its widest audience through the work of Benjamin Lee Whorf, whose collected writings became something of a relativistic manifesto.
Whorf presents a moving target, with most of his claims coming in both extreme and in more cautious forms. Debate continues about his considered views, but there is little doubt that his bolder claims, unimpeded by caveats or qualifications, were better suited to captivate his readers than more timid claims would have been.
When languages are similar, Whorf tells us, there is little likelihood of dramatic cognitive differences. But languages that differ markedly from English and other Western European languages (which Whorf calls, collectively, “Standard Average European” or SAE) often do lead their speakers to have very different worldviews. Thus
We are thus introduced to a new principle of relativity, which holds that all observers are not led by the same physical evidence to the same picture of the universe, unless their linguistic backgrounds are similar, or can in some way be calibrated. …The relativity of all conceptual systems, ours included, and their dependence upon language stand revealed (1956, p. 214f, italics added).
We dissect nature along lines laid down by our native languages. The categories and types that we isolate from the world of phenomena we do not find there because they stare every observer in the face; on the contrary, the world is presented in a kaleidoscopic flux of impressions which has to be organized by our minds--and this means largely by the linguistic systems in our minds (p. 213).
…no individual is free to describe nature with absolute impartiality but is constrained to certain modes of interpretation even while he thinks himself most free (p. 214).
In fairness it must be stressed that these passages come from a single essay, “Science and Linguistics,” of 1940, and in other places Whorf's tone is often more measured. But not always; elsewhere he also says thing like
…users of markedly different grammars are pointed by their grammars toward different types of observations and different evaluations of externally similar acts of observation, and hence are not equivalent as observers but must arrive at somewhat different views of the world (1956, p. 221).
And in yet a third essay “facts are unlike to speakers whose language background provides for unlike formulation of them” (1956, p. 235).
The passages from Sapir and Whorf bristle with metaphors of coercion: our thought is “at the mercy” of our language, it is “constrained” by it; no one is free to describe the world in a neutral way; we are “compelled” to read certain features into the world (p. 262). The view that language completely determines how we think is often called linguistic determinism. Hamann and Herder sometimes seem to equate language with thought, and in these moods, at least, they came close to endorsing this view.

The Many Versions of Linguistic Relativism
Any serious discussion of the linguistic relativity hypothesis requires us to answer three questions
Which aspects of language influence which aspects of thought in some systematic way?
What form does that influence take?
How strong is that influence?
For example, certain features of syntax or of the lexicon might exert a causal influence on certain aspects of visual perception (e.g., on which colors we can discriminate), classification (e.g., on how we sort things by their color), or long-term memory (e.g., on which differences among colors we remember most accurately) in clearly specifiable ways. If there is such an influence we would also like to know what mechanisms mediate it, but until we have clearer answers to the first three questions, we are not well positioned to answer this.
Human languages are flexible and extensible, so most things that can be said in one can be approximated in another; if nothing else, words and phrases can be borrowed (Schadenfreude, je ne sais quoi). But what is easy to say in one language may be harder to say in a second, and this may make it easier or more natural or more common for speakers of the first language to think in a certain way than for speakers of the second language to do so. A concept or category may be more available in some linguistic communities than in others (e.g., Brown, 1956, pp. 307ff). In short, the linguistic relativity hypothesis comes in stronger and weaker forms, depending on the hypothesized forms and the hypothesized strength of the hypothesized influence.

Language
Various aspects of language might affect cognition.
Grammar Languages can differ in their grammar or syntax. To take a simple example, typical word order may vary. In English, the common order is subject, verb, object. In Japanese it is subject, object, verb. In Welsh, verb, subject, object. Languages can differ in whether they make a distinction between intransitive verbs and adjectives. And there are many subtler sorts of grammatical difference as well. It should be noted that grammar here does not mean the prescriptive grammar we learned in grammar school, but the syntactic structure of a language; in this sense, a grammar comprises a set of rules (or some equivalent device) that can generate all and only the sentences of a given language.

Lexicon

Different languages have different lexicons (vocabularies), but the important point here is that the lexicons of different languages may classify things in different ways. For example, the color lexicons of some languages segment the color spectrum at different places.
Semantics Different languages have different semantic features (over and above differences in lexical semantics)

Metaphor

Different languages employ different metaphors or employ them in different ways.

Pragmatics

It is increasingly clear that context plays a vital role in the use and understanding of language, and it is possible that differences in the way speakers of different languages use their languages in concrete settings affects their mental life.
For the most part discussions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis have focused on grammar and lexicon as independent variables. Thus, many of Whorf's claims, e.g., his claims about the way Hopi thought about time, were based on (what he took to be) large-scale differences between Hopi and Standard Average European that included grammatical and lexical differences (e.g., 1956, p. 158). Subsequence research by Ekkehart Malotki (e.g., 1983) and others suggests that Whorf's more dramatic claims were false, but the important point here is that the most prominent versions of the linguistic relativity hypothesis involved large-scale features of language.

Thought
Language might influence many different aspects of thought. Most empirical work has focused, appropriately enough, on those aspects that are easiest to assess without relying on language. This is important, since we otherwise risk finding influences of one aspect of language on some related aspect of language, rather than on some aspect of thought. Commonly studied cognitive variables include perceptual discrimination, availability in memory, and classification.

Rishi Kumar Nagar

Doing Stylistic Analysis

Doing Stylistic Analysis

(or four steps to heaven)

READ THROUGH THE WHOLE OF THIS PAGE CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU BEGIN WORK ON YOUR ANALYSIS ... FOLLOW THE DIRECTIONS BELOW.

Step One: Initial Guidance
DO NOT DO ANYTHING BUT READ THROUGH THIS SECTION
DO NOT START WRITING OR NOTE-TAKING YET!

If you are offered a choice, DO NOT choose to analyse any text that you really think you don't understand! Go for something you think you can make some sense of, even on an initial reading. Do give the author credit for having thought about the way the text is phrased: assume that it's unlikely that s/he simply stuck something down without thinking, though you may feel (and eventually be able to prove from linguistic evidence) that a particular choice is not working well.

Once you have the text(s) you intend to work on, START THINKING AND NOTE-TAKING AS SOON AS POSSIBLE after finishing this handout, so that if you have a deadline to meet, you don't have to rush at your work at the last minute.

STRUCTURE YOUR WORK, either along lines indicated to you (if any), or in any other way that you prefer. But if you create your own structure, make it explicit by using (sub-)headings. Make sure you cover all the areas you need to. You could also number your own paragraphs and sub-paragraphs, to help you decide if you've got things in the best order, but It's not necessary to retain the numbers once you are satisfied you've finished moving things about.

ALWAYS refer to line or sentence numbers in your chosen text, unless you are referring to longish sections. This avoids confusion and saves time and space. If however you find you have a very large number of such references in a short space, consider rephrasing or referring to longer stretches of the text you are analysing, in order simplify and clarify for the marker.

Follow the normal conventions for general presentation and short quotations as described in 'General Instructions' above. In addition, remember the following layout requirements (which are normal for all academic work) :

INDENT any long quotes from the course reading, with the attribution following aligned to the right-hand margin, and including page numbers: and always leave a one-line space before and after the quotation;

SINGLE INVERTED COMMAS are used for short (one-line or less) quotes, and these are not indented, and can simply follow a colon;

UNDERLINING (or italicisation) is appropriate for single words or short phrases quoted as part of your own sentence.

Step Two: Producing material and planning your work
YOU MAY NOW PICK UP A PEN!

Allow yourself plenty of time to do the analysing. No matter how long you allow, it will take longer than that!

It's impossible to start writing an analysis immediately you feel you can begin to interpret the text, so don't try it! But DO note down your major reactions and responses to the text as you read, especially any 'impressions' as to what the more subtle meanings are. A record of your initial understanding will be essential later on.

Next, you are going to SKETCH OUT YOUR ROUGH ANALYTICAL NOTES as you analyse. If you do this carefully, it will provide you with much more material than you can possibly use, so that later you can select the most pertinent parts to include in your final write-up.

START METHODICALLY: decide which bits of your text are foregrounded or obviously deviant, and then decide what language levels the foregrounding operates on. This will enable you to decide which language levels to analyse throughout the text in most detail. If nothing seems foregrounded or deviant, look at each language level separately, and collect as much information as you reasonably can.

DO NOT EXCEED about 12-15 sides of double-spaced A4 in all (i.e. including lists, appendices, etc.) for this draft analysis (often referred to in the trade as 'scribble' ! ). More than that and you can be sure you are going into too much detail, getting bogged down, or stuck on one aspect, or repeating yourself! On the other hand, you will find you can't produce less than an absolute minimum of 5 sides, even in note form, if you cover all basic aspects.

KEEP TO YOUR PLANNED STRUCTURE for analysing : following inspiring thoughts as they occur will not produce good stylistic analyses. If such thoughts intrude, however, don't lose them: note them down (on a separate sheet of A4 kept for that purpose) and at a later stage, decide consciously whether or not you want to use them.

When you have produced and noted down all the analytical material you think you could need, TAKE A BREAK, or leave the work until the next day.




Step Three: Drafting your work
You now need to link up your analytical data and your initial impressions,
and make them into a coherent ESSAY PLAN.

Compare your collection of analytical data with the first impressions that you noted down under 2.2 above. Select those bits of data that support your initial interpretation, and those, if any, that interestingly contradict it. Specify closely all these aspects of the analytical data, so that you can explain clearly how they relate to meaning.

Plan to use only the most salient material in your final submission. (You can always include lists, etc., as an Appendix, but don't put anything significant there, as your tutor/marker may not spot it.) Be firm - exclude data that only amounts to a statement of what's there, and does not link to interpretation interestingly. But don't yet throw away what you think you don't want to use : you may find as you go along that some parts of it come in useful.

TAKE YOUR TIME AT THIS STAGE AND KEEP REFERRING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE DATA AND YOUR INITIAL UNDERSTANDING OF THE TEXT. It may be at this point that looking at the data affects how you have understood the text. Highlight or otherwise mark any bits of the data that cause this to happen, and indicate what they made you think.

Arrange your material in a coherent way, whether by language level or otherwise: make sure you are not repeating the same conclusions under different headings (if you are, perhaps you should organise by 'foregrounded/deviant areas'). You don't need much of an introduction : If you want to put one in, just say how the text works overall, and what you think it means. I would advise you to plan out any introduction LAST, when you know what you are 'going' to say (because you will already have said it!).

Now take a break, or leave the final writing up to another day (this will give you the necessary perspective on what you finally include/exclude).

Step Four: Writing up
TAKE YOUR TIME: BE SURE YOU'VE COVERED EVERYTHING NECESSARY BEFORE you consider writing your work up (especially if for submission)

Look again at your 'linking notes', and number the items you intend to cover, in the order you intend to cover them in your final presentation. Make sure that you have in mind the need to produce INTERESTING comments as well as ACCURATE analysis.

Make additional notes of any RELEVANT quotations/citations or terminological language from the course reading or any other independent reading that you feel may be useful, keeping them to a minimum, and ensuring that you ONLY INSERT THEM WHERE THEY RELATE CLOSELY TO WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SAY. Try not to include very general definitions or broad statements from the course reading.

Make sure that any individual organisational plan you have decided to use does not oblige you to write very long sections: this could mean that you include irrelevant or uninteresting information, and possibly obscure the 'good bits'! Lists or parts of lists (e.g. of word functions or sentence structures) MAY be included if you feel that they will be essential, but beware of taking up good writing time with simply reproducing lists, tables and the like. You may use footnotes and/or appendices, and these are not normally included in word counts.

Write up each section as independent from the others. Then look at them collectively to decide whether or not they are in the best order for you to draw any conclusions.

Remember that this is NOT a literary essay. Any conclusion should relate very narrowly to what you found through analysis that affected your initial interpretation in any way.

After all this, it should be more obvious than usual that you are aiming to produce a specialised piece of academic writing, not an impressionistic or casual response to the text you are examining.


KEEP THIS SHEET to hand during your preparation - and afterwards. As well as keeping you on the right track for your stylistics work, it will also serve as a general working methodology for any material that requires careful analysis; for example, you may wish to use it

as a guide to producing your own notes from academic reading (except that you don't do Step Four, the 'write up', of course);

to examine short extracts of any literary texts that you are studying, to see if you can work out what an author is actually doing, rather than just accepting the judgements of others;

to enable you to produce orderly and elegant linguistic analyses of any texts you are working with (you would then probably include much more of your technical data).

In fact, wherever there's text to be examined, your training in stylistic analysis will help you (advertising, political speeches, partisan language of any kind, etc, ...). Try it!

Rishi Kumar Nagar

STYLISTICS

STYLISTICS
STYLISTICS is the study of varieties of language the properties of which position that language in context. For example, the language of advertising, politics, religion, individual authors, etc., or the language of a period in time, all belong in a particular situation. In other words, they all have ‘place’.
• Stylistic analysis in linguistics refers to the identification of patterns of usage in speech and writing.
• Stylistic analysis in literary studies is usually made for the purpose of commenting on quality and meaning in a text.
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 socialization, the production and reception of meaning, critical discourse analysis and literary criticism.
Other features of stylistics include the use of dialogue, including regional accents and people’s dialects, descriptive language, the use of grammar, such as the or passive voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the use of particular language registers, etc.
Many linguists do not like the term ‘stylistics’. The word ‘style’, itself, has several connotations that make it difficult for the term to be defined accurately. Stylistics is a distinctive term that may be used to determine the connections between the form and effects within a particular variety of language. Therefore, stylistics looks at what is ‘going on’ within the language; what the linguistic associations are that the style of language reveals.
Examples
1. A stylistic analysis of a road sign which reads NO RIGHT TURN might make the following observations.
 The statement is a command.
 It is cast in the imperative mode.
 The statement lacks a subject and a verb.
 These ( a subject and a verb) are implied [THERE IS].
 The statement is unpunctuated.
 Capitals have been used for emphasis.
 Simple vocabulary to suit wide audience.
 Extreme compression for rapid comprehension.
 Form entirely suited to audience and function.



2. Take the opening lines of Shakespeare’s Richard III
Now is the winter of our discontent
Made glorious summer by this sun of York;
A stylistic analysis might reveal the following points:
 the play is written in poetic blank verse
 that is - unrhymed, iambic pentameters
 the stresses fall as follows
 Now is the winter of our discontent
 [notice that the stress falls on vowel sounds]
 the first line is built on a metaphor
 the condition of England is described in terms of the season ‘winter’
 the term ‘our’ is a form of the royal “we”
 the seasonal metaphor is extended into the second line
 ... where better conditions become ‘summer’
 the metaphor is extended even further by the term ‘sun’
 it is the sun which appears, ‘causing’ the summer
 but ‘sun’ is here also a pun - on the term ‘son’
 ... which refers to the son of the King
 ‘York’ is a metonymic reference to the Duke of York
• In a complete analysis, the significance of these stylistic details would be related to the events of the play itself, and to Shakespeare’s presentation of them.
• In some forms of stylistic analysis, the numerical recurrence of certain stylistic features is used to make judgements about the nature and the quality of the writing.
• However, it is important to recognise that the concept of style is much broader than just the ‘good style’ of literary prose.
• For instance, even casual communication such as a manner of speaking or a personal letter might have an individual style.
• However, to give a detailed account of this style requires the same degree of linguistic analysis as literary texts.


OVERVIEW
The situation in which a type of language is found can usually be seen as appropriate or inappropriate to the style of language used. A personal love letter would probably not be a suitable location for the language of this article. However, within the language of a romantic correspondence there may be a relationship between the letter’s style and its context. It may be the author’s intention to include a particular word, phrase or sentence that not only conveys their sentiments of affection, but also reflects the unique environment of a lover’s romantic composition. However, by using so-called conventional and seemingly appropriate language within a specific context (apparently fitting words that correspond to the situation in which they appear) there exists the possibility that this language may lack exact meaning and fail to accurately convey the intended message from author to reader, thereby rendering such language obsolete precisely because of its conventionality. In addition, any writer wishing to convey their opinion in a variety of language that they feel is proper to its context could find themselves unwittingly conforming to a particular style, which then overshadows the content of their writing.
REGISTER
In linguistic analysis, different styles of language are technically called register. Register refers to properties within a language variety that associates that language with a given situation. This is distinct from, say, professional terminology that might only be found, for example, in a legal document or medical journal. The linguist Michael Halliday defines register by emphasising its semantic patterns and context. For Halliday, register is determined by what is taking place, who is taking part and what part the language is playing. (H’day, Lang’, 23) In Context and Language (1995), Helen Leckie-Tarry suggests that Halliday’s theory of register aims to propose relationships between language function, determined by situational or social factors, and language form. The linguist William Downes makes the point that the principal characteristic of register, no matter how peculiar or diverse, is that it is obvious and immediately recognisable.
Halliday places great emphasis on the social context of register and distinguishes register from dialect, which is a variety according to user, in the sense that each speaker uses one variety and uses it all the time, and not, as is register, a variety according to use, in the sense that each speaker has a range of varieties and chooses between them at different times. For example, Cockney is a dialect of English that relates to a particular region of the United Kingdom, however, Cockney rhyming slang bears a relationship between its variety and the situation in which it appears, i.e. the ironic definitions of the parlance within the distinctive tones of the East-End London patois. Subsequently, register is associated with language situation and not geographic location.



FIELD, TENOR AND MODE
Halliday classifies the semiotic structure of situation as ‘field’, ‘tenor’ and ‘mode’, which, he suggests, tends to determine the selection of options in a corresponding component of the semantics. It is the ‘tenor’ that stands as a roughly equivalent term for ‘style’.
For an example on which to comment, here is a familiar sentence:
I swear by almighty God that the evidence I will give shall be the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
For Halliday, the field is the activity associated with the language used, in this case a religious oath tailored to the environment of a legal proceeding. Fowler comments that different fields produce different language, most obviously at the level of vocabulary The words ‘swear’ and ‘almighty’ are used instead of perhaps ‘pledge’ or ‘supreme’. In addition, there is the repetition of the word ‘truth’, which evidently triples and thereby emphasises the seriousness of the vow taken. (Incidentally, this linguistic technique is often employed in the language of politics, as it was for example in Prime Minister Tony Blair’s memorable ‘Education, Education, Education’ speech to the Labour Party Conference in 2000.) The tenor of this sentence would refer to the specific role of the participants between whom the statement is made, in this case the person in the witness box proclaiming their intention to be honest before the court and those in attendance, but most importantly God. Fowler also comments that within the category of tenor there is a power relationship, which is determined by the tenor and the intention of the speaker to persuade, inform, etc. In this case, the tenor is an affirmation to speak the truth before the court by recognising the court’s legal supremacy and at the risk of retribution for not doing so from this secular court and a spiritual higher authority. This, of course, is not directly stated within the sentence but only implied.
Halliday’s third category, mode, is what he refers to as the symbolic organisation of the situation. Downes recognises two distinct aspects within the category of mode and suggests that not only does it describe the relation to the medium: written, spoken, and so on, but also describes the genre of the text. Halliday refers to genre as pre-coded language, language that has not simply been used before, but that predetermines the selection of textural meanings. For instance, in the sentence above the phrase ‘the evidence I shall give’ is preferable to the possible alternatives ‘the testimony I will offer’ or even ‘the facts that I am going to talk about’.
As well as recognising different registers of language that appear to be suitable for a particular situation, stylistics also examines language that is specifically modified for its setting, an example being the alteration in tenor from informal to formal, or vice versa.
Consider the quotation below:
‘I was proceeding on my beat when I accosted the suspect whom I had reason to believe might wish to come down to the station and help with enquiries in hand.’
This language only belongs in a UK policeman’s notebook and may be read out in a court of law. The sentence is not only formal but highly conventional for the location in which it is found. In addition, it is also extremely ambiguous (a common feature of so-called conventunal language). Why ‘accosted’, for example, and not ‘arrested’, ‘collared’, ‘nabbed’, ‘nicked’ or even ‘pinched’? Either of which would express more accurately what occurred in language more suitable for the typical British ‘bobby’, rather than the pre-scripted text that is simply being recited parrot fashion.
The “uncouth rhymes” of epitaphs and greetings cards
As well as conventional styles of language there are the unconventional – the most obvious of which is poetry. In Practical Stylistics, HG Widdowson examines the traditional form of the epitaph, as found on headstones in a cemetery. For example:
His memory is dear today
As in the hour he passed away.
(Ernest C. Draper ‘Ern’. Died 4.1.38)
Widdowson makes the point that such sentiments are usually not very interesting and suggests that they may even be dismissed as ‘crude verbal carvings’, as does the English poet Thomas Gray in his ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’, who refers to them as ‘uncouth rhymes’. Nevertheless, Widdowson recognises that they are a very real attempt to convey feelings of human loss and preserve affectionate recollections of a beloved friend or family member. However, what may be seen as poetic in this language is not so much in the formulaic phraseology but in where it appears. The verse may be given undue reverence precisely because of the sombre situation in which it is placed. Widdowson suggests that, unlike words set in stone in a graveyard, poetry is unorthodox language that vibrates with inter-textual implications.
This is by Ogden Nash:
Beneath this slab
John Brown is stowed.
He watched the ads,
And not the road.
Nash is satirising the form. The epitaph is humorous but it is perhaps more funny because of the solemn location with which this language is normally associated.
Below is a standard rhyme that might be found inside a conventional Valentine’s card:
Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
[Tum-tee tum-tee tum],
I love you.
We might ask why roses for the characteristic example of ‘redness’ instead of perhaps an Indian Letter Box, which is considerably redder than the petals of any rose? Or, indeed, why violets as the archetypical illustration of ‘blueness’ and not, say, the Indian brinjals that are always relished as Bhartha, a cooked vegetable? Maybe because roses and violets are traditional tokens of romance, and their association with particular colours (as not all roses are red, nor all violets blue) reinforces the imagery: the red of a lover’s lips, the blue of their eyes, or the sea, or the sky, etc. – all very romantic stuff. The conventional symbolism of the verse is certainly appropriate for the setting of a Valentine’s card, but is this poetry?
Phonology
Here is Alfred Lord Tennyson’s ‘The Eagle’ (a fragment):
He clasps the crag with crooked hands;
Close to the sun in lonely lands,
Ringed with the azure world, he stands.
The wrinkled sea beneath him crawls;
He watches from his mountain walls,
And like a thunderbolt he falls.
As with the eagle, Tennyson leaves the reader balancing precariously on the end of the first verse with the single word ‘stands’. Again, however, why ‘like a thunderbolt’ for an appropriate simile for the description of the eagle’s decent and not, for example, ‘a brick’, or ‘a stone’, or ‘a sack of potatoes’? Perhaps the answer lies in the word’s syllabic (or syllable) structure: ‘thun-der-bolt’.
In ‘Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics’ in Style in Language (1960), Roman Jakobson explores the concept the ‘emotive’ or ‘expressive’ function of the language, a direct expression of the speaker’s attitude toward what they are speaking about, which tends to produce an impression of a certain emotion. The distinction here can be made between the spoken word and writing, spoken language having a possibly greater emotive function by emphasising aspects of the language in its pronunciation. For example, in English stressed or unstressed words can produce a variety of meanings. Consider the sentence ‘I never promised you a rose garden’ (the title of the autobiographical novel by Joanne Greenberg, which was written under the pen name of Hannah Green. 1964). This has a multitude of connotations depending on how the line is spoken. For example:
I never promised you a rose garden
I never promised you a rose garden
I never promised you a rose garden
I never promised you a rose garden
I never promised you a rose garden
I never promised you a rose garden
Or even:
I never promised you a rose garden
And there are many more besides these.
Implicature
In ‘Poetic Effects’ from Literary Pragmatics (1991), the linguist Adrian Pilkington analyses the idea of ‘implicature’, as instigated in the previous work of Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson. Implicature may be divided into two categories: ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ implicature, yet between the two extremes there are a variety of other alternatives. The strongest implicature is what is explicitly implied by the speaker or writer, while weaker implicatures are the wider possibilities of meaning that the hearer or reader may conclude.
Pilkington’s ‘poetic effects’, as he terms the concept, are those that achieve most relevance through a wide array of weak implicatures and not those meanings that are simply ‘read in’ by the hearer or reader. Yet the distinguishing instant at which weak implicatures and the hearer or reader’s conjecture of meaning diverge remains highly subjective. As Pilkington says: ‘there is no clear cut-off point between assumptions which the speaker certainly endorses and assumptions derived purely on the hearer’s responsibility.’ In addition, the stylistic qualities of poetry can be seen as an accompaniment to Pilkington’s poetic effects in understanding a poem’s meaning. For example, the first verse of Andrew Marvell’s poem ‘The Mower’s Song’ (1611) runs:
My mind was once the true survey
Of all these meadows fresh and gay,
And in the greenness of the grass
Did see its thoughts as in a glass
When Juliana came, and she,
What I do to the grass, does to my thoughts and me.
The strong implicature that is immediately apparent is that Marvell is creating a pastiche (distinct from parody) of the pastoral form: the narrator being the destructive figure of Demon the Mower and not the protective character of the traditional pastoral shepherd. The poem is also highly symbolic. In literary criticism grass is symbolic of flesh, while the mower’s scythe with which he works represents human mortality (other examples being Old Father Time and the Grim Reaper). Even the text on the page can be seen as a visual representation of the Mower’s agricultural equipment: the main body of each verse is suggestive of the wooden shaft of the scythe and the last flowing line of each verse the blade. (This visual similarity of text on the page and the poem’s subject is known as concrete poetry.) However, it is the concluding phrase, repeated in every stanza, that is most stylistically effective. This long sweeping line that extends beyond the margins of each verse does not simply recall the action of the scythe through the grass, but occurs at the exact moment of every pass and further illuminates the mower’s physical and emotional disquiet. These conceits do not appear by accident and are precisely intended by the poet to enhance to the poetic effects of the verse.
Here is another example from William Shakespeare’s ‘71’, Sonnets (1609):
No longer mourn for me when I am dead,
Than you shall hear the surly sullen bell
Give warning to the world that I am fled
From this vile world, with vilest worms to dwell:
On the face of things the poet appears to be saying: ‘When I have passed away, do not grieve for me.’ A full stop at the end of the first line, and nothing further, would certainly be enough to convey and satisfactory conclude the principal sentiment. Yet there is not a full stop. Indeed, there is no full stop until the end of line eight!
Looking at these first four lines, the first is a full sentence but ends with a comma. The first and second lines taken together are not a complete sentence and encourage the reader to continue onto the third line, which, taken with the first and second lines, is still not a complete sentence. The fourth line concludes the sentence but ends with a semicolon, again persuading the reader on to the fifth line, which begins with an abrupt exclamation, reinforcing the opening statement, and continuing to hold the reader’s attention:
Nay, if you read this line, remember not
The hand that writ it; for I love you so,
That I in your sweet thoughts would be forgot,
If thinking on me then should make you woe.
Here, it appears that Shakespeare is simply paraphrasing the first three lines with the additional fourth line showing concern for the reader’s emotions should they spend too much time reminiscing over the dead poet. The contradiction is puzzling. Why should the poet repeat what is apparently being explicitly asked of the reader not to do? And, again, the final four lines emphasise the point, once more beginning with the seemingly by now obligatory exclamation:
Oh, if (I say) you look upon this verse,
When I perhaps compounded am with clay,
Do not so much as my poor name rehearse;
Lest the wise world should look into your moan
And mock you with me after I am gone.
Furthermore, the poet asks the reader to not even repeat the ‘name’ of ‘the hand that writ it’, while the ending is tinged with more than a degree of false modesty within the realm of the unsentimental ‘wise world’. What on the surface appears to be one contention turns out to be quite the opposite. Shakespeare, far from telling to reader to forget him following his demise, is actually saying: ‘Remember me! Remember me! Remember me!’ And he does this through deceptively unconventional language that progresses and grows continuously into the traditional sonnet form.
Grammar
Although language may appear fitting to its context, the stylistic qualities of poetry also reveal themselves in many grammatical disguises. Widdowson points out that in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’ (1798), the mystery of the Mariner’s abrupt appearance is sustained by an idiosyncratic use of tense. For instance, in the opening lines Coleridge does not say: ‘There was ancient Mariner’ or ‘There arrived an ancient Mariner’, but instead not only does he immediately place the reader at the wedding feast, Coleridge similarly throws the Mariner abruptly into the middle of the situation:
It is an ancient Mariner
And he stoppeth one of three.
- ‘By thy long grey beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp’st thou me?
The bridegroom’s doors are opened wide,
And I am the next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May’st hear the merry din.’
Coleridge’s play with tense continues in stanzas four to six, as he swaps wildly from past to present and back again.
He holds him with his skinny hand,
‘There was a ship,’ quoth he.
‘Hold off! Unhand me, grey-beard loon!’
Eftsoons his hands dropt he.
He holds him with his glittering eye -
The Wedding-guests stood still,
And listens like a three years’ child:
The Mariner hath his will.
The Wedding-Guest sat on a stone
He cannot choose but hear;
And thus spake on that ancient man,
The bright-eyed Mariner.
The Mariner ‘holds’ the wedding-guest with his ‘skinny hand’ in the present tense, but releases it in the past tense; only to hold him again, this time with his ‘glittering eye’, in the present. And so on, back and forth like a temporal tennis ball but all adding to the enigma. The suggestion could be made that Coleridge was simply careless with the composition and selected these verb forms at random. However, the fact is that they are there in the text of the poem, and, as Coleridge himself would recognise, everything in a poetic text carries an implication of relevance.
Context
Another aspect of stylistics, as in the poem ‘I Saw a Peacock’, (‘A Person of Quality’, Westminster Drollery (1671) is when the meaning only becomes clear when the context is revealed:
I saw a peacock with a fiery tail
I saw a blazing comet drop down hail
I saw a cloud with ivy circled round
I saw a sturdy oak creep on the ground
I saw a *pismire swallow up a whale *[ant]
I saw a raging sea brim full of ale
I saw a Venice glass sixteen foot deep
I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep
I saw their eyes all in a flame of fire
I saw a house as big as the moon and higher
I saw the sun even in the midst of night
I saw the man who saw this wondrous sight
If we read the poem like this, it almost makes sense - but not quite. The reason is, perhaps, because we as readers are conditioned to reading poetry in a specific way, conventionally – line by line. By altering the phrases in each line, the descriptions are made coherent.
I saw a peacock
with a fiery tail I saw a blazing comet
drop down hail I saw a cloud
with ivy circled round I saw a sturdy oak
creep on the ground I saw a pismire
swallow up a whale I saw a raging sea
brim full of ale I saw a Venice glass
sixteen foot deep I saw a well full of men’s tears that weep
I saw their eyes
all in a flame of fire I saw a house
as big as the moon and higher I saw the sun
even in the midst of night
I saw the man who saw this wondrous sight
The anonymous narrator, sitting drinking by a fire and gazing at his mirror image in the ‘Venice glass’, is commenting on the reflected images that he sees in language that is similarly inverted.
There are, however, two important points worth mentioning with regard to the stylistician’s approach to interpreting poetry, and they are both noted by PM Wetherill in Literary Text: An Examination of Critical Methods (1974). The first is that there may be an over-preoccupation with one particular feature that may well minimise the significance of others that are equally important. The second is that any attempt to see a text as simply a collection of stylistic elements will tend to ignore other ways whereby meaning is produced. Nevertheless, meaning in poetry is conveyed through a multitude of language alternatives that manifest themselves as printed words on the page, style being one such feature. Subsequently, the stylistic elements of poetry can be seen as important in the interpretation of unconventional language that is beyond what is expected and customary. Poetry can be both sublime and even ridiculous yet still transcend established social values. Poetry is an original and unique method of communication that we use to express our thoughts, feelings and experiences.
This language gives us a new perspective on familiar themes and allows us to look at them without the personal or social conditioning that we unconsciously associate with them. So, although we may still use the same exhausted words and vague terms like ‘love’, ‘heart’ and ‘soul’ to refer to human experience, to place these words in a new and refreshing context allows the poet the ability to represent humanity and communicate honestly. This, in part, is stylistics, and this, according to Widdowson, and it seems reasonable to agree, is the point of poetry.

(Rishi Kumar Nagar, Jalandhar)

Styles and Stylistics

Styles and Stylistics

The subject of stylistics has so far not been definitely outlined. This is due to a number of reasons. First of all there is confusion between the terms style and stylistics. The first concept is so broad that it is hardly possible to regard it as a term. We speak of style in architecture, literature, behaviour, linguistics, dress and other fields of human activity. Even in linguistics the word style is used so widely that it needs interpretation. The majority of linguists who deal with the subject of style agree that the term applies to the following fields of investigation:

1) the aesthetic function of language;
2) expressive means in language;
3) synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea;
4) emotional colouring of language;
5) a system of special devices called stylistic devices;
6) the splitting of the literary language into separate sub-systems called stylistic devices;
7) the inter-relation between language and thought;
8) the individual manner of an author in making use of language.

The origin of the term Style and Stylistics.
Latin - stylus - a stick made of material for writing.
Stylistics - from French " Stylistique " -instrument for Writing.

1. There is a widely held view that style is the correspondence between thought and expression. The notion is based on the assumption; that of the two functions of language, (language is said to have two functions: it serves as a means of communication and also as a means of shaping one's thoughts). The first function is called communicative, the second - expressive, the latter finds its proper materialization in strings of sentences especially arranged to convey the ideas and also to get the desired response.
Indeed, every sentence uttered may be characterized from two sides: whether or not the string of language forms expressed is something well-known and therefore easily understood and to some extent predictable; whether or not the string of language forms is built anew; is, as it were, an innovation made on the part of the listener to get at the meaning of the utterance and is therefore unpredictable.
Many great minds have made valuable observations on the interrelation between thought and expression. The main trend in most of these observations may be summarized as follows the linguistic form of the idea expressed always reflects the peculiarities of the thought. And vice versa, the character of the thought will always in a greater or lesser degree manifest itself in the language forms chosen for the expression of the idea.

2. Another commonly accepted connotation of the term style is embellishment of language. This concept is popular and is upheld in some of the scientific papers on literary criticism. Language and style are regarded as separate bodies, language can easily dispense with style, which is likened to the trimming on a dress. Moreover, style as an embellishment of language is viewed as something that hinders understanding. In its extreme, style may dress the thought in such fancy attire that one can hardly get at the idea hidden behind the elaborate design of tricky stylistic devices.
This notion presupposes the use of bare language forms deprived of any stylistic devices of any expressive means deliberately employed. Perhaps it is due to this notion that the word "style" itself still bears a somewhat derogatory meaning. It is associated with the idea of something pompous, showy artificial, something that is set against simplicity, truthfulness, the natural. Shakespeare was a determined enemy of all kinds of embellishments of language.

3. A very popular notion among practical linguists, teachers of language, is that style is technique of expression. In this sense style is generally defined as the ability to write clearly, correctly and in a manner calculated to the interest of the reader. Style in this utilitarian sense should be taught, but it belongs to the realm of grammar, and not to stylistics. It sets up a number of rules as to how to speak and write and discards all kinds of deviations as being violations of the norm. The norm itself becomes rigid, self-sustained and to a very great extent inflexible.

4. The term style also signifies a literary genre. Thus we speak of classical style or the style of classicism; realistic style; the style of romanticism and so on. On the other hand, the term is widely used in literature, being applied to the various kinds of literary work, the fable, novel, ballad, story etc. Thus we speak of a story being written in the style of a fable or we speak of the characteristic features of the epistolary style or the essay and so on.

Finally there is one more important application of the term style. We speak of the different styles of language. A style of Language is a system of interrelated language means which serves a definite aim in communication. The peculiar choice of language means is primarily dependent on the aim of communication.
Thus we may distinguish the following styles within the English literary language: 1) the belles- letters style; 2) the publicistic style; 3) the newspaper style; 4} the scientific prose style; 5) the style of official documents and presumably some others. The classification presented here is not arbitrary, the work is still in the observational stage. The classification is not proof against criticism, though no one will deny that the five groups of styles exist in the English literary language.

Stylistics and its Subdivisions
1. Galperin: Stylisitics is a branch of general linguistics, which deals with the following two interdependent tasks:
a) studies the totality of special linguistic means ( stylistic devices and expressive means ) which secure the desirable effect of the utterance;
b) studies certain types of texts "discourse" which due to the choice and arrangement of the language are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of communication (functional styles).


Depending on the school of thought there are:
1. Linguo-stylistics;
2. Literary stylistics;
3. Stylistics of decoding;

1. Linguo - stylistics is the study of literary discourse from a linguistic orientation. The linguistics is concerned with the language codes themselves and particular messages of interest and so far as to exemplify how the codes are constructed.
2. Literary stylistics: is to explicate the message to interprete and evaluate literary writings as the works of art.
3. Stylistics of decoding can be presented in the following way:
sender - message - receiver speaker - book - reader.

Process of reading is decoding.
The subject of stylistics can be outlined as the study of the nature, functions and structure of stylistic devices, on the one hand, and, on the other, the study of each style of language as classified above, i, e, its aim, its structure, its characteristic features and the effect it produces, as well as its interrelation with other styles of language. The task we set before ourselves is to make an attempt to single out such, problems as are typically stylistic and cannot be treated in any other branch of linguistic science.

Expressive Means (EM) and Stylistic Devices (SD)
In linguistics there are different terms to denote those particular means by which a writer obtains his effect. Expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic devices and other terms are all used indiscriminately For our purposes it is necessary to make a distinction between expressive means and stylistic devices. All stylistic means of a language can be divided into expressive means, which are used in some specific way, and special devices called stylistic devices. The expressive means of a language are those phonetic means, morphological forms, means of word-building, and lexical, phraseological and syntactical forms, all of which function in the language for emotional or logical intensification of the utterance. These intensifying forms of the language have been fixed in grammars and dictionaries. Some of them are normalized, and good dictionaries label them as intensifiers. In most cases they have corresponding neutral synonymous forms.
The most powerful expressive means of any language are phonetic. Pitch, melody, stress, pausation, drawling, drawling out certain syllables, whispering, a sing-song manner of speech and other ways of using the voice are more effective than any other means in intensifying the utterance emotionally or logically. Among the morphological expressive means the use of the Present indefinite instead of the Past Indefinite must be mentioned first. This has already been acknowledged as a special means and is named the Historical Present. In describing some past events the author uses the present tense, thus achieving a more vivid picturisation of what was going on.



The use of "shall" in the second and third person may also be regarded as an expressive means. Compare the following synonymous forms and you will not fail to observe the intensifying element in the sentence with "shall".
He shall do it = (I shall make him do it)
He has to do it = (It is necessary for him to do it)
Among word-building means we find a great many forms which serve to make the utterance more expressive and fresh or to intensify it. The diminutive (less important) suffixes as: - let (book-booklet), -ie (dear-dearie), stream-streamlet etc add some emotional colouring to the words.
Certain affixes have gained such a power of expressiveness that they begin functioning as separate words, absorbing all of generalizing meaning they usually attach to different roots, as for example: -ism and ologies.
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, like interjections, words which have both referential and emotive meaning, like some of the qualitative adjectives, words belonging to special groups of Literary English or of non - standard English (poetic, archaic, slang, vulgar, etc.) and some other groups.

The same can be said of the set expressions of the language such as proverbs and sayings as well as catch - words for a considerable number of language units which serve to make speech more emphatic, mainly from the emotional point of view. Their use in everyday speech can hardly be overestimated. Some of these proverbs and sayings are so well - known that their use in the process of communication passes almost unobserved.
The expressive means (EM) of the language are studied respectively in manuals of phonetics, grammar, lexicology and stylistics. Stylistics, however, observes not only the nature of an expressive means, but also its potential capacity of becoming a stylistic device.
What then is a stylistic device (SD)? It is a conscious and intentional literary use of some of the facts of the language including EM in which the most essential features both structural and semantic of the language forms are raised to a generalized level and thereby present a generative model. Most stylistic devices may be regarded as aiming at the further intensification in the corresponding EM.
This conscious transformation of a language fact into a stylistic devise has been observed by certain linguists whose interests in scientific research have gone beyond the boundaries of grammar.

The birth of a SD is not accidental. Language means which are used with more or less definite aims of communication and in one and the same function in various passage of writing, begin gradually to develop new features, a wider range of functions and become a relative means of the language. It would perhaps be more correct to say that/unlike expressive means, stylistic devices are patterns of the language whereas the expressive means do not form patterns. They are just like words themselves, they are facts of the language, and as such are, or should be, registered in dictionaries.
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 are commonly used in language, and are therefore easily predictable. Stylistic devices carry a greater amount of information because if they are at all predictable they are less predictable than expressive means. It follows that stylistic devices must be regarded as a special code which has still to be deciphered.
Not every stylistic use of a language fact will come under the term SD. There are practically unlimited possibilities of presenting any language fact in what is vaguely called it's stylistic use.

Stylistic Classification of the English Vocabulary
1. General considerations. In order to get a more or less idea of the word stock of any language, it must be presented as a system, the elements of which are interconnected, interrelated and yet independent. The word stock of a language may be represented as a definite system in which different aspects of words may be singled out as interdependent. A special branch of linguistic science-lexicology - has done much to classify vocabulary. For our purpose, i. e. for linguistic stylistics, a special type of classification, stylistic classification is the most important.
An accordance with the division of language into literary and colloquial, we may represent the whole of the word stock of the English language as being divided into three main layers: the literary layer, the neutral layer and the colloquial layer. The literary and the colloquial layers contain a number of subgroups each of which has a property it shares with all the subgroups within the layer. This common property, which unites the different groups of words within the layer may be called its aspect. The aspect of the literary layer is its markedly bookish character. It is this that makes the layer more or less stable. The aspect of the colloquial layer of words is its lively spoken character. It is this that makes it unstable, fleeting.
The aspect of the neutral layer is its universal character. That means it is unrestricted in its use. It can be employed in all styles of language and in all spheres of human activity. The literary layer of words consists of groups accepted as legitimate members of the English vocabulary. They have no local or dialectal character. The colloquial layer of words as qualified in most English or American dictionaries is not infrequently limited to a definite language community or confine to a special locality where it circulates.

The literary vocabulary consists of the following groups of words: 1) common literary; 2) terms and learned words; 3) poetic words; 4) archaic words; 5) barbarisms & foreign words; 6) literary coinages including nonce words.

The colloquial vocabulary falls into the following groups: 1) common colloquial words; 2) slang; (very informal words and expressions that are more common in spoken language, especially used by a particular group of people, for example, children, criminals, soldiers, etc.) 3) jargonisms or professional words; 4) dialectal words; 6) vulgar words; 7) colloquial coinages (words used in conversation but not in formal speech or writing). The common literary, neutral and common colloquial words are grouped under the term standard English vocabulary.


Phonetic Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices
The stylistic approach to the utterance is not confined to its structure and sense. There is another thing to be taken into account which in a certain type of communication plays an important role. This is the way a word, a phrase or a sentence sounds. The sound of most words taken separately will have little or no aesthetic value. It is in combination with other words that a word may acquire a desired phonetic effect. The way a separate word sounds may produce a certain euphonic effect, but this is a matter of individual perception and feeling and therefore subjective.
The theory of sense - independence of separate sounds is based on a subjective interpretation of sound associations and has nothing to do with objective scientific data. However, the sound of a word, or more exactly the way words sound in combination, cannot fail to contribute something to the general effect of the message, particularly when the sound effect has been deliberately worked out. This can easily be recognized when analyzing alliterative word combinations or the rhymes in certain stanzas or from more elaborate analysis of sound arrangement.

Onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia is a combination of speech sounds which alms at imitating sounds produced in nature (wind, sea, thunder, etc.) by things (machines or tools, etc.) by people (singing, laughter) and animals. Therefore the relation between onomatopoeia and the phenomenon it is supposed to represent is one of metonymy There are two varieties of onomatopoeia: direct and indirect.
Direct onomatopoeia is contained in words that imitate natural sounds, as ding-dong, burr, bang, cuckoo. These words have different degrees of imitative quality. Some of them immediately bring to mind whatever it is that produces the sound. Others require the exercise of a certain amount of imagination to decipher it. Onomatopoetic words can be used in a transferred meaning, as for instance, ding - dong, which represents the sound of bells rung continuously, may mean 1) noisy, 2) strenuously contested.
Indirect onomatopoeia demands some mention of what makes the sound, as rustling of curtains in the following line. And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain. Indirect onomatopoeia is a combination of sounds the aim of which is to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense. It is sometimes called "echo writing". An example is: And the silken, sad, uncertain rustling of each purple curtain" (E. A. Poe), where the repetition of the sound [s] actually produces the sound of the rustling of the curtain.

Alliteration
Alliteration is a phonetic stylistic device which aims at imparting a melodic effect to the utterance. The essence of this device lies in the repetition of similar sounds, in particular consonant sounds, in close succession, particularly at the beginning of successive words: " The possessive instinct never stands still (J. Galsworthy) or, "Deep into the darkness peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing, doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals ever dared to dream before" (E. A. Poe).
Alliteration, like most phonetic expressive means, does not bear any lexical or other meaning unless we agree that a sound meaning exists as such. But even so we may not be able to specify clearly the character of this meaning, and the term will merely suggest that a certain amount of information is contained in the repetition of sounds, as is the case with the repetition of lexical units.

Rhyme
Rhyme is the repetition of identical or similar terminal sound combination of words. Rhyming words are generally placed at a regular distance from each other. In verse they are usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines.
Identity and similarity of sound combinations may be relative. For instance, we distinguish between full rhymes and incomplete rhymes. The full rhyme presupposes identity of the vowel sound and the following consonant sounds in a stressed syllable, including the initial consonant of the second syllable (in polysyllabic words), we have exact or identical rhymes.
Incomplete rhymes present a greater variety They can be divided into two main groups: vowel rhymes and consonant rhymes. In vowel-rhymes the vowels of the syllables in corresponding words are identical, but the consonants may be different as in flesh - fresh -press. Consonant rhymes, on the contrary, show concordance in consonants and disparity in vowels, as in worth - forth, tale - tool -treble - trouble; flung - long.
Modifications in rhyming sometimes go so far as to make one word rhyme with a combination of words; or two or even three words rhyme with a corresponding two or three words, as in "upon her honour - won her", "bottom –forgot them- shot him". Such rhymes are called compound or broken. The peculiarity of rhymes of this type is that the combination of words is made to sound like one word - a device which inevitably gives a colloquial and sometimes a humorous touch to the utterance. Compound rhyme may be set against what is called eye - rhyme, where the letters and not the sounds are identical, as in love - prove, flood - brood, have - grave. It follows that compound rhyme is perceived in reading aloud, eye - rhyme can only be perceived in the written verse.

Rhythm
Rhythm exists in all spheres of human activity and assumes multifarious forms. It is a mighty weapon in stirring up emotions whatever its nature or origin, whether it is musical, mechanical or symmetrical as in architecture. The most general definition of rhythm may be expressed as follows: "rhythm is a flow, movement, procedure, etc. characterized by basically regular recurrence of elements or features, as beat, or accent, in alternation with opposite or different elements of features" (Webster's New World Dictionary).
Rhythm can be perceived only provided that there is some kind of experience in catching the opposite elements or features in their correlation, and, what is of paramount importance, experience in catching regularity of alternating patterns. Rhythm is a periodicity, which requires specification as to the type of periodicity. Inverse rhythm is regular succession of weak and strong stress. A rhythm in language necessarily demands oppositions that alternate: long, short; stressed, unstressed; high, low and other contrasting segments of speech.
Academician V.M. Zhirmunsky suggests that the concept of rhythm should be distinguished from that of a metre. Metre is any form of periodicity in verse, its kind being determined by the character and number of syllables of which it consists. The metre is a strict regularity, consistency and unchangeability. Rhythm is flexible and sometimes an effort is required to perceive it. In classical verse it is perceived at the background of the metre. In accented verse - by the number of stresses in a line. In prose - by the alternation of similar syntactical patterns. Rhythm in verse as a S. D. is defined as a combination of the ideal metrical scheme and the variations of it, variations which are governed by the standard.
Rhythm is not a mere addition to verse or emotive prose, which also has its rhythm. Rhythm intensifies the emotions. It contributes to the general sense. Much has been said and writhen about rhythm in prose. Some investigators, in attempting to find rhythmical patterns of prose, superimpose metrical measures on prose. But the parametres of the rhythm in verse and in prose are entirely different.

Lexical Expressive Means and 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.
The transferred meaning of a word may be fixeв in dictionaries as a result of long and frequent use of the word other than in its primary meaning. In this case we register a derivative meaning of the word. Hence the term transferred should be used signifying th£ development of the semantic structure of the word. In this case we do not perceive two meanings. When we perceive two meanings of the word simultaneously, we are confronted with a stylistic device in which the two meanings interact.

Imagery
In philosophy "image" denotes the result of reflection of the object of reality in man's consciousness. On the sensible level our senses, ideas might be regarded as images. On a higher level of thinking images take the form of concepts, judgements, conclusions. Depending on the level of reflecting the objective reality ( sensual and conceptual) there are 2 types of images:
1. Art - reflects the objective reality in human life. While informing us of a phenomenon of life it simultaneously expresses our attitude towards it.
2. Literature - deals with a specific type of artistic images, verbal - is a pen - picture of a thing, person or idea expressed in a figurative way in their contextual meaning in music - sounds. The overwhelming majority of Iinguists agree that a word is the smallest unit being able to create images because it conveys the artistic reality and image. On this level the creation of images is the result of the interaction of two meanings: direct (denotation) and indirect (figurative). Lexical expressive meanings in which a word or word combination is used figuratively are called tropes. The verbal meaning has the following structure:

1. Tenor (direct thought) subjective;
2. Vehicle (figurative thought) objective;
3. Ground is the common feature of T and V;
4. The relation between T and V;
5. The technique of identification (The type of trope);

T G R V
e. g. She is sly like a fox (simile). Images may be individual, general.

a) deal with concrete thing or idea e.g. Thirsty wind.
b) embrace the whole book e. g. War and Peace.
c) visual
e. g. the cloudy lifeage of the sky
d) oral - created by sound imitations

Classification of Lexical Stylistic Devices
There are 3 groups.
1. The interaction of different types of lexical meaning.
a) dictionary and contextual (metaphor, irony);
b) primary and derivative (pun);
c) logical and emotive (epithet);
d) logical and nominative (autonomasia);

2. Intensification of a feature (simile, hyperbole).
3. Peculiar use of set expressions (cliches, proverbs, epigram, quotations).


(Rishi Kumar Nagar, Jalandhar.)