Transcript IMAGERY. LEXICAL SDs

IMAGERY. LEXICAL SDs
Lecture 3.1
The concept of imagery

Ways of cognition:
 Science
- analytically
 art - synthetically (creating images).
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Image –
 a sensory perception of
an abstract notion.
Images in literature
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Literary art is a representation of reality in verbal
images.
Words:
lose their direct signification
 are adapted for artistic effect
 get a new, contextual meaning.

The man was drowned in the river.
She looked in his eyes, drowning him in sweetness.
Images in literature

Imagery is
 the
use of images in writing,
 the use of words that bring pictures to the mind and
force and beauty to speech
 and give an aesthetic pleasure to the reader.

Images are made of words, but an image is a
supraverbal entity.
Images in literature
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The image is an artistic presentation of the general
through the individual, of the abstract through the
concrete.
Writers create images of everything: human beings,
animals, natural phenomena, events, feelings, ideas.
General images embrace a whole book or story
(Soames Forsyte). Individual image can give a close-up
of a certain thing for a moment to foreground it (cold
autumn wind – thistly wind).
Psychological grounds

The image awakens in the reader’s mind the old
perception and sensations, different sensuous
associations:
 visual
- purple or golden clouds
 acoustic - swish went the scythe
 tactile - soft smile
 thermal – warm embrace
 gustatory – sweet pleasure
The structure of the Image
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T – the tenor – the subject of speech
(обозначаемое)
V – the vehicle – the thing with which T is identified
(обозначающее)
The ground – the common feature of T and V
(основание сравнения)
The technique of identification – the type of trope
and its lexical and grammatical peculiarities.
Tropes

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The trope denotes the use of a word or phrase in an
unusual figurative sense.
I.R. Halperin explains tropes as
 an
interplay between the direct meaning
 and a transferred meaning
 imposed
on the word by the context.
The rain poured all day.
A stream of letters poured into the office.
Tropes

The transferred and the direct meanings are caught
by the reader’s mind simultaneously, because they
run parallel, one of them taking precedence over
the other.
The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.
(E.Pound)
Tropes

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Trope is a figure of speech involving a “turn” or change of
sense, the use of a word in a sense other than literal.
Symbol – is something that is itself and yet stands for or
suggests something else


(a flag – a piece of coloured cloth stands for a nation).
Synaesthesia
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– the concurrent response of two or more of the senses to the
stimulation of one.;
one sensation is described in terms of another;
appeals to different senses in one image.
cold eye, soft wind, heavy silence, hard voice, a black look, a
sweet melody
Lexical Stylistic Devices
1. Bathos


- dropping from the sublime to the ridiculous
Sometimes it is an attempt to treat poetically a
commonplace idea.
But the wisdom of our ancestors shall not be
disturbed… or the country is done for.
(Но мудрость наших предков не должна быть
потревожена… а то Англия протянет ноги.)
2. Metaphor

applying the name of one thing to another thing in
order to foreground some similarity between them.
Something is something (A = B)
The world is a great snowball rolling downhill
(contextual meaning, danger.)
Metaphor

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A metaphor is an imaginative identification of one
concept (the tenor) with another (the vehicle).
Metaphor is an implied analogy, imaginatively
indentifying one object with another and ascribing to
the first object one or more of the qualities of the
second.
The tenor is the idea being expressed (the subject of
the comparison).
The vehicle is the image by which this idea is conveyed
(the subject communicated).
Types of metaphor

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Simple - may occur in a single isolated comparison.
Extended/large – functions as the controlling image
of a whole work (an image or metaphor that runs
throughout and determines the form or nature of a
literary work).
Types of metaphor

Implied metaphor talks about A as if it were B,
using terms, appropriate to B
A
does what B usually does.
The beautiful treacherous Mediterranean. There it lay
curled beneath them, its white silky paws touching the
shore.
The fog comes
On little cat feet…
Grammatical types of Metaphor

Grammatically metaphors can be embodied in
a noun (the world is a snowball),
 an adjective (thistly wind),
 a verb (the trees danced),
 an adverb (the leaves fell sorrowfully).

Noun and non-noun metaphors
The noun-metaphors fall into 3 structural types:
 Tenor is vehicle (The world is a snowball)
 Tenor becomes vehicle (The waves turned into snakes)
 Something makes tenor into vehicle (The sun made every
cloud a bonfire)
In non-noun metaphors vehicle is implied (its implicit).
The vehicle must be guessed by the reader through its
properties or actions denoted by adjectives, verbs, etc.
Classes of metaphor
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Genuine (fresh): are created by writers to make up
images.
Trite/dead: are not created in speech, are used
automatically as expressive means, are fixed in
dictionaries (cup of satisfaction, ray of hope).
Yet trite metaphors can be revived by extension. They
are called sustained metaphors. The principal image is
called the central image and the additional extended
images are called contributory.
Personification

– a kind of metaphor in which the properties of a
person are transferred upon inanimate things.
their grammatical and lexical valency changes,
 the pronouns “he” and “she” are used instead of “it”.
 The verbs want, think, smile are introduced.


Personification is often accompanied by capitalization
(Devouring Time). Personification is an implied metaphor,
the trick of talking about some non-human things as if
they were human.
Related devices

Conceit – outrageous metaphor, comparison between
two highly dissimilar objects.
Your mind and you are my Sargasso Sea.

Allegory - form of extended metaphor in which objects,
persons and actions in a narrative are equated with
meanings that lie outside the narrative itself. The
characters are usually personifications of abstract
qualities (fables).
3. Simile
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Foregrounding of one feature of the object
described and comparing it with another object,
which has this feature, but belongs to a different
class of things (A is like B).
May be based on different grammatical relations:
 adjectives
(attributes),
 adv. modifiers,
 verb – predicative.
Simile

Similes have in their structure formal elements,
connective words, such as
 like,
as, as if, seem, appear, etc.
e.g. She ran up the steps, light as a bird.

There are many traditional similes: as sly as a fox,
as busy as a bee, etc., which have become set
expressions.
Simile and comparison
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Comparison - two objects of the same class of
things.
The purpose of simile is to establish sameness or
difference between objects of different classes.
 The
boy is as clever as his father. // Her dog is as
clever as a professor.
 My house is like your house. // Her house was like a
bee-hive.
Simile and metaphor
Unlike metaphor, simile establishes the comparison
explicitly, with the words like or as.
My daughter dances like an angel.
My daughter is an angel.
Simile expresses explicit analogy and metaphor –
implied analogy. Simile specifically highlights one
aspect of an object of comparison.
4. Metonymy
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- is a trope in which instead of the usual word
denoting an object, another word is used, because
the things these two words name are connected in
life.
 The
theatre laughed.
 I’m fond of Dickens.
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Metonymy involves continuous association of a part
and a whole. Metaphor – discontinuous association
of two wholes.
Metonymy: relations within
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The main types of relations between tenor and vehicle:
an abstract notion is named instead of a concrete thing (and
vice versa): and Captive Good attending Captain Ill…
 the container is named instead of the contained: cup, tray,
glass;
 the relations of proximity: the table was merry;
 the material instead of the thing: the marble spoke;
 the instrument instead of the action: his sharp pen|tongue;
give every man thine ear and few thy voice

Metonymy
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Synechdoche – a trope in which a part signifies the
whole or when the whole signifies the part.
 e.g.

wheels – car; hands – man-labour
When metonymy is used creatively, it belongs to
SDs. When it is fixed in dictionaries, it belongs to
the language and is called trite.
5. Irony
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- a figure of speech in which the actual intent is
expressed through the words that carry the
opposite meaning.
Irony is based on simultaneous realization of two
opposite logical meanings of the word – dictionary
and contextual (good - bad).
The word containing irony is strongly marked by
intonation, it has an emphatic stress.
Types of comic
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Humour is a combination of mockery and sympathy, in which
the positive attitude prevails.
In irony the negative attitude prevails. The true sense is
masked, implied in words of contrary meaning.
Satire is a direct outright derision and ridicule of smb’s
faults and follies, there is no mask.
Sarcasm is a form of verbal irony in which under the guise
of praise a bitter expression of strong and personal
disapproval is given. It is intended to hurt.
Dramatic irony – the words or acts of a character in a play
carry a meaning unperceived by the character but
understood by the audience.
6. Zeugma
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is the use of a verb in the same grammatical but
different semantic relation to two subjects or objects
in the context.
The semantic relation is literal to one word and
figurative or phraseological to the other.
 e.g.

The boys took their places and their books.
Zeugma produces the stylistic effect of
foregrounding in the form of defeated expectancy.
Zeugma
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is widely used in English emotive prose, especially in
humouristic writing and poetry.
Its function - to keep the main common meanings of
words from fading away, to keep them fresh.
 e.g.
Tom paid him a visit and a fee.
 Пришел поэт, осыпанный почестями и перхотью.
7. Antonomasia

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is a trope based on the interplay between logical
and nominal meanings of a word, as a result of
which the person is given a new proper name.
Two types:
a
proper name is used as a common noun: Her husband
is an Othello.
 a common name is used as a proper name: Miss
Simplicity.
Antonomasia

Function:
 to
point out the leading, most characteristic features of
a person
 at the same time fixing this trait as a proper name.

Antonomasia can be fresh and trite:
 The
Iron Lady, The Prince of Peace, mother Theresa.