Lecture 3

1. Types of meaning.
2. Stylistic devices based on the interaction of dictionary and contextual meanings (metaphor, personification,
metonymy, synecdoche, irony).
3. Stylistic devices based on the interaction of logical and nominal meanings (antonomasia).
4. Stylistic devices based on the interaction of logical and emotive meanings (epithet, hyperbole, oxymoron).
Types of meaning
1. Logical meaning
• Primary and secondary
• Direct and indirect/figurative/transferred
• Dictionary and contextual
2. Emotive meaning
3. Nominal meaning

2. Stylistic devices based on the interaction of dictionary and contextual meanings. Types of metaphors

Semantic:
- trite/hackneyed/dead
- stylistic
Structural
- simple
- sustained/prolonged

Metaphor
• The President began scratching the back of his neck, something he always did when wrestling with a difficult
decision. (J. Grisham)
• The café was half full, with the same academic types buried in their morning papers, lost in their own worlds. (J.
Grisham)
Sustained metaphor

A poor man is a rat in a maze. His choices are made for him by a power beyond himself. He becomes a machine
whose fuel is hunger. His satisfactions are pitifully restricted. Of course there is also the exceptional rat who
breaks out of the maze, driven most often by an exceptional and uncommon hunger. Or by accident. Or luck. Like
you and me. (1. Shaw)
Personification
• She didn't want to tell him that their marriage was limping along for years. (D. Steel)
• His feet were killing him but he would never think of declining. (J. Grisham)
• Homes stand shoulder to shoulder like painted toy soldiers: chests pushed out, stomachs tucked in, proud and
protective of all within. (C. Ahern)
• Lowell's eyes always betrayed him because he was never deceitful. (J. Grisham)

Forms of metonymies

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• the result for the cause: Grey hair should be respected (old age)
• the cause for the result: This author lives by his pen only (his writings are the source of his earnings):
•the symbol for the thing signified: The crown had to yield to the demand of the people (the King. monarchy):
• the characteristic feature for its bearer: Through the sunlit solitude of the square this bonnet and this dress
floated northwards (A.Bennet). A hat passed by (a man);
•the instrument for the action: "Give every man thine ear, and few thy voices (W. Shakespeare); "As the sword is
the worst argument that can be used" (Byron) (fighting)
• the container for the thing contained or on the contrary: The wood sings (birds in the wood); the kettle boils
(the water in the kettle):
• the name of the thing for its owner: The ham sandwich is waiting for his check; . an abstract noun for a concrete
one or on the contrary: Labour demonstrated in the street (workers);
• material for the thing made of it. He paid in gold (gold coins):
• the name of the creator for his creation: the complete Chesterton (stories by Chesterton).
Metonymy
• It was cool and sunny, and the sidewalk bustled with lunch traffic. The shoulders and heads moved quickly by. (J.
Grisham)
• Coal thrived on hatred. He had the President's ear, - and that was all that mattered. (J. Grisham)
• He didn't want to spoil Paris for them. (D. Steel)
Synecdoche
• The long nose knows about its way through the crowd.
• When a monarch needs new lands, he sends a soldier to war.

Irony
• "Beg your pardon," said Hetly, as sweetly as her acid tones permitted. (O'Henry)
• We hastily found glasses and gave the toast, with the enthusiasm and the expressions of men honouring a
suicide pact. (Richard Gordon)
• "Who cut your hair?" Edward Scissorhands? I managed to beep myself from asking. (D. Frank)
• For the past five years, James Cameron and his wife Peggy had divided the chores: Peggy did the cleaning and
cooking for the two dozen boarders, and James did the drinking. (S. Sheldon)

• Oh, I love London Society. I think it has immensely improved. It is entirely composed now of beautiful idiots and
brilliant lunatics. (O. Wilde)
• Mother gasped and put her hand to her heart, or where one's heart would be if one had one.. (D. Frank)
• All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his. (O. Wilde)
Forms of antonomasia
• - the name of some famous personality for a characteristic feature, e.g. He is the napoleon of crime (a genius of
a criminal);
• the name of the place where some event happened for the very event, e.g. Pearl Harbour - the symbol of bitter
defeat; •- the name of some establishment to denote its policy, e.g. the White House, the Pentagon, the Kremlin,
Wall Street;
• - geographical names used as common nouns to denote things originating from there, e.g. boston, china,
champaign;
•- names of things or processes after their inventors, e.g. diesel, mackintosh, sandwich, pasterization.
Antonomasia
• Your Mrs. What's-her-name sounds firmly British (B. Nickols)

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 • Adrian shook hands with his roommate, George Somebody from Richmond, Virginia. (D. Frank) • She certainly
was one feisty little Chihuahua, wasn't she? (D. Frank)
• It seemed I had the Clint Eastwood of Charleston County for a chauffeur, which suited me fine, although I should
have requested a cardiologist. (D. Frank)
Antonomasia
The rest of the party had been something of a blur, although not because of drink. I never drank much. But the
names had been flung at me in such quick succession, Senator So-and-So, Congressman This, Congressman That,
His Excellency, The Ambassador of What Country, Mr. Blank, ... Mrs. Whoever ..
(1. Shaw)

Types of epithets
• Fixed (Merry Christmas)
Homeric (swift-footed Achilles, rosy fingered dawn)
•Semantic groups:
- Affective/emotive proper (gorgeous, magnificent)
- Figurative/transferred (a sleepless pillow, a ghost-like face)
Epithets are expressed by:
 adjectives, qualitative adverbs (an anxious look, to answer bitterly/harshly)
 nouns (You, ostrich!)
 postpositive attributes (Richard the Lion Heart, Henry the Blue Beard)
Structural types of epithets
• Single
• Pair (a tired old town)
• Chain/string (You're a scolding, unjust, abusive, aggravating, bad old creature! (). Jerome)
• Two-step (a pompously majestic female)
Structural types of epithets (cont.)

• Phrase (He nodded his head in a horse-trying to-get-rid-of-a-fly-on-his-nose kind of way. (C. Ahern); Catherine
stood up straight and gave him her warmest I'll-be-a-great-secretary smile. (S. Sheldon)

• Inverted (His name was Mungo McSween, and he was a huge bear of a man. (S. Sheldon)
Define the type of the epithet

• She had a disaster of a night. (A. Kane)

Sophie had come to see her father as a cold, hard, unfeeling, ruthless man, which was precisely what he was. (D.
Steel)

• He was in his tell-it-like-it-is mode. (A. Kane)

• You're a has-been, passed-over, middle-aged woman.

(M. Binchy)

• She was greeted by a small dumpling of a woman. (S. Sheldon)

Hyperbole

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 • Then the Big Ben beside her bed tore her out of sleep with its ruthless howl. (S. King)
Trying to set up what she had here, halfway across the country, would take a million dollars and a million years.
(b. Stewardson)
• The agent's jaw was practically touching his desk. (A. Kane)
• The kitchen looked as if a bomb had hit it. (M. Binchy)
• Had he not enjoyed enough skirts to fill a department store? (D. Frank)
• The sheets were so thin you could read a book through them. (D. Frank)

Test on Lecture 3
• 1. The interrelation between dictionary and contextual meanings is called a) emotive meaning; b) nominal
meaning; c) transference of meaning
• 2. Metaphor is a stylistic device based on
a) some unexisting or supposed likeness between objects; b) some existing or supposed likeness between objects;
c) interaction between dictionary and nominal meanings
• 3. Epithets can be expressed by
a) adjectives and pronouns; b) nouns, pronouns and adjectives; c) adjectives, adverbs and nouns
• 4. Hyperbole is a
a) deliberate overstatement; b) deliberate understatement; c) reference to some known fact
• 5"The brisk voice belonged to one of the white caps." Find out the type of stylistic device
a) metonymy; b) metaphor; c) oxymoron
• 6. "Maurice was an actor about a million years ago." The sentence contains a
a) metonymy; b) metaphor; c) hyperbole
• 7. Structurally we distinguish ... metaphors
a) simple and sustained; b) sustained and prolonged; c) prolonged and trite
• 8. Synechdoche is based on the relationship between
a) the container and the thing contained; b) an abstract noun for the concrete one;
c) singular and plural
• 9, "Speaking names" belong to
a) metonymy; b) antonomasia; c) synechdoche

Meiosis
•It isn't very serious. I have this tiny little tumor on the brain. (J.D. Salinger)
•lt cost me a pretty penny, I can tell you. • Annie Telford's too fond of a drop of the hard stuff to put the rent
money aside, the rest of us do. (K. Flynn)

Oxymoron
It takes a heap of sense to write good nonsense. (Mark Twain)
• When he finally emerged from the theatre, Nino was waiting, inconspicuously visible (E. Seagal)
• She found herself thinking more and more about the ugly-attractive man with the strangely compelling voice.
(S. Sheldon)
• He was being brutally honest. (A. Christie)
• Let's figure out what to do about this lovely fiasco. (D. Frank)
W. Shakespeare - sweet sorrow
• E. Hemingway - scalding coolness

• Lord Tennyson - falsely true

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• Lord Byron - melancholy merriment

• James Thomson - expressive silence

• John Milton - darkness visible

• G. Chaucer - hateful good
Various structural types of oxymora

1. Single-Word & Compound-Word Oxymorons

• Bittersweet
• Sophomore
• Frenemy (friend + enemy)
• Love-hate
2. Adjective + Noun
Controlled chaos
• Crash landing
• Cruel kindness
• Deafening silence
• Definite possibility
• Deliberate mistake
• Even odds
• Exact estimate
• Fine mess
• Foolish wisdom
• Friendly fire
• Friendly foe
• Hateful love
• Heavy lightness
• Honest thief
Living dead
• Loud whisper
• Loving hate
• Old news
• Open secret
• Organized chaos
• Original copy
• Peaceful war
• Pretty ugly
• Civil war
• Inside out
• Growing small
• Working vacation
• Light heavyweight
• Perfect imperfections
• Random order

• Same difference

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• Silent scream
• Sweet misery
• Sweet sorrow
• Terrible beauty
• True lies
• True myth
• Unbiased opinion
• Virtuous lie
• Wakeful sleep
• Walking dead
3. Adverb + Adjective/Adverb
• Alone together
• Awfully good
• Definitely undecided
• Falsely true
• Painfully beautiful
• Perfectly imperfect
• Seriously funny
• Strangely familiar
• Strangely normal
• Terribly good
• Truly false
4. Miscellaneous
• Act naturally
Agree to disagree
• Kill with kindness
• Make haste slowly
• Describe as undescribable

Lecture 3 (cont.)
1. Stylistic devices based on the interrelation of primary and derivative logical meanings (zeugma, pun).
2. Stylistic devices which give additional characteristics to the objects described (simile, periphrasis, euphemism).
3. The use of phraseological units (proverbs, sayings, epigrams).
4. Allusion, its types and functions.
5. Stylistic use of synonyms.
Allusions in context
• <...> Besides, everybody had a weak spot, and any man could be forgiven if their Achilles heel just happened to
be her. (C. Ahern)
• I just didn't know how to open the Pandora's box. I mean, too many years had passed. (D. Frank)
• "To speak or not to speak," as your so great Shakespeare says, "that is the question." I did not trouble to correct
the quotation. (A.Christie)
• "No," he said wistfully, "I suppose not. It's time to dress. To dress - to dine, and if to dine, to sleep, to dream.
And then what dreams might come." (J. Galsworthy)
Epigrams
•A cynic is a man who, when he smells flowers, looks around for a coffin. (H.L. Mencken) • God heals, and the
doctor takes the fee. (Benjamin Franklin)

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• He who can does. He who cannot, teaches. (George B. Shaw) • Familiarity breeds contempt - and children.
(Mark Twain)
• Never let a fool kiss you or a kiss fool you. (Joey Adams)
• Keep your eyes open before marriage and half shut afterwards. (Benjamin Franklin)
• Truth is the most valuable thing we have. Let us economize it. (Mark Twain)
1. Stylistic devices based on the interrelation of primary and derivative logical meanings. Zeugma
•She lowered her sign and her jaw in the same moment. (D. Frank)
•Later on he took me aside for a whiskey and a father and-son talk. (D. Frank)
•As commanded, I put on a tie and a smile and came downstairs, committed to being nice for a while. (D. Frank)
•Richard was already at his desk with a tall cup of coffee, The Wall Street Journal, and evidently very little to do.
(J. Grisham)
PUN
1) Homographs
2) Homophones
3) One word is expressed, another is implied
4) Play upon verb-adverb combinations
5) Play upon literal and figurative meanings 6) Play upon grammatical and phonetic structures
Examples of puns
• Scientists say it may be possible to live on Mars.... Well, I tried it for a month, gained 60 pounds, and the doctor
said I was border-line diabetic.
• Did you know alligators can grow up to 15 feet? - But most have 4.
•-Me: Our neighbor died.
-Wife: Who, Ray?
-Me: I don't think cheering is appropriate now.
• Two antennas got married. The wedding was okay but the reception was awesome.
• So I met Bruce Lee's vegetarian brother. Brocko Lee.
-Me: I'm addicted to collecting magazines. -Therapist: It sounds like you have a lot of issues.
• I accidentally put my checkbook through the wash. Is that money laundering?
• My wife brought home a box of nice fresh peaches for us to enjoy. My family devoured the whole box before I
got home. I was peachless.
• What do you call a bee that comes from America? A US bee. I ate so many frog legs last night I thought I was
going to croak.
•A giant panda walked into a restaurant. He ordered some food, ate it, then pulled a gun and blew the brains out
of the waiter. Alerted by the shots, the manager appeared just as the panda was making his way to the door.
"Hey, you!" yelled the manager "You just shot my waiter! Where do you think you're going?" The beast replied
calmly: "I'm a panda. Look it up in the dictionary." When the panda had gone, the manager thumbed through the
dictionary. Sure enough, under panda it said: "Furry mammal, lives in China. Eats shoots, and leaves."
• Q: What did the pencil say to the paper?
A: I can't take my "i"s off you.
• Q: Why did the elephant hate to play cards in the jungle?
A: Because there were too many cheetahs.

• What do you call a woman who knows where her husband is every night? a widow.
•A man went into a bank and said to the cashier: " Will you check my balance?" So she pushed him.
• A termite walked into a bar and asked: "Is the bar tender here?"
• Two hamburgers walked into a bar. The bartender said: "Sorry, we don't serve food."
2. Stylistic devices which give additional characteristics to the objects described

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Simile
• Trite
Stylistic
• Disguised
Simple
• Epic/extended
Trite similes
As wet as a fish - as dry as a bone;
As live as a bird - as dead as a stone;
As plump as a partridge - as crafty as a rat;
As strong as a horse - as weak as a cat;
As hard as flint - as soft as a mole; As white as a lily-as black as coal;
As heavy as lead - as light as a feather; As steady as time - as uncertain as weather;
As cool as a cucumber - as warm as toast;
As flat as a flounder - as round as a ball. (0. Nash)
Similes
<...> He blew on his coffee and took tiny sips like a mouse nibbling on a hot piece of cheese. (C. Ahern)
His fingers ran up and down the silk tie, as though it were a pet and he was afraid it would run off. (C. Ahern)
"Oh!" her friend said, and stepped back as though I were spreading Ebola. (D. Frank)
I should have been exhausted, but I was strangely invigorated, like I'd caught a second wind while running a
marathon. (D. Frank)
On the other hand, her faculties were as sharp as a blade of marsh grass. (D. Frank)
Disguised similes
• When I held out the brown manila envelope, you'd have thought I was offering her a bug on a tray. (S. Grafton)
• He remembered the name right on cue and threw the man a smile, showing so many teeth he resembled a
tense chimpanzee. (C. Ahern)
• Sella would toss me little nuggets about Betts the same way! threw scraps of pot roast to my dogs. (D. Frank)
• The feeling in Carrie Ann's cheeks right then was something more akin to the blistering, cracking heat that peels
paint from woodwork in a house fire. (Ch. Manby)
The foundation of the simile is not clear
• Dennis was like a swarm of gnats at dusk.
• Stepping into a major trial is like plunging with a weighted belt into a dark and weedy pond.
• This car is as useless as a mule.
• You're like a black widow spider.
Simile (with an explanation)
• Dennis was like a swarm of gnats at dusk, annoying and confident that he would eventually get at you. (D.
Frank)
• Stepping into a major trial is like plunging with a weighted belt into a dark and weedy pond. You manage to
scramble up for air, but the rest of the world doesn't matter. And you always think you're drowning (J. Grisham)
• This car is as useless as a mule. It splutters like an old woman and has no energy. (S. Sheldon)
• You're like a black widow spider. You don't want anyone else to have any fun because you are not. (Ch.
Manby)
Extended/epic simile
Swift as a shadow, short as any dream, Brief as the lightning in the collied night... (W. Shakespeare)
Periphrasis
Figurative
• Trite

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The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of the fighting in Africa. (I. Shaw)
the cap and gown = student body
a gentleman of the long robe = a lawyer
the fair sex = women
one's better half =one's wife
to tie the knot = to marry
• Logical

Mr. Du Pout was dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American
millionaires. (M. St.)
Examples of Paraphrases
• The little boy with sobs plainly audible and with great globules of water running down his cheeks <...> (M.
Twain)
•Mr. Mac had served with the Rifle Brigade in the War, rising to the dizzy heights of captain by 1918, and had
travelled to Egypt, Mesopotamia and many other foreign places during his time in uniform. (K. Flynn)
• A long-haired relic from the seventies was adjusting a microphone, no doubt prepping for a screeching
denunciation of American misdeeds somewhere. (J. Grisham)
•As usual, there was no love lost between the new man in the Oval Office and his predecessor. (J. Grisham)
Euphemisms
• <...> Pictures in brass frames of relatives long gone to glory. (D. Frank)
• <...> The entire Western world knew he had a fondness for, well, girls with a generous nature. (D. Frank)
• Too early for supper, it was about half filled with tourists and locals seeking an afternoon hydration experience.
(D. Frank)
• Had he become so independent on Joanie that he would have gone to his dust without ever asking Sela to tell
him where I was? (D. Frank)
• Two days after the bombing, the Kramer twins were laid to rest in a small cemetery. (J. Grisham)

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