Практикум з стилістики англійської мови 
p align="left">Antithesis is a good example of them: syntactically, antithesis is just another case of parallel constructions. But unlike parallelism, which is indifferent to the semantics of its components, the two parts of an antithesis must be semantically opposite to each other, as in the sad maxim of O.Wilde: "Some people have much to live on, and little to live for", where "much" and "little" present a pair of antonyms, supported by the ' contextual opposition of postpositions "on" and "for". Another example: "If we don't know who gains by his death we do know who loses by it." (Ch.) Here, too, we have the leading antonymous pair "gam - lose" and the supporting one, made stronger by the emphatic form of the affirmative construction - "don't know / do know".Antithesis as a semantic opposition emphasized by its realization in similar structures, is often observed on lower levels of language hierarchy, especially on the morphemic level where two antonymous affixes create a powerful effect of contrast: "Their pre-money wives did not go together with their post-money daughters." (H.) The main function of antithesis is to stress the heterogeneity of the described phenomenon, to show that the latter is a dialectical unity of two (or more) opposing features. Exercise I. Discuss the semantic centres and structural peculiarities of antithesis: 1. Mrs. Nork had a large home and a small husband. (S.L.) 2. In marriage the upkeep of woman is often the downfall of man. (Ev.) 3. Don't use big words. They mean so little. (O.W.) 4. I like big parties. They're so intimate. At small parties there isn't any privacy. (Sc.F.) 5. There is Mr. Guppy, who was at first as open as the sun at noon, but who suddenly shut up as close as midnight. (D.) 6. Such a scene as there was when Kit came in! Such a confusion of tongues, before the circumstances were related and the proofs disclosed! Such a dead silence when all was told! (D.) 7. Rup wished he could be swift, accurate, compassionate and stern instead of clumsy and vague and sentimental. (I.M.) 8. His coat-sleeves being a great deal too long, and his trousers a great deal too short, he appeared ill at ease in his clothes. (D.) 9. There was something eery about the apartment house, an unearthly quiet that was a combination of overcarpeting and underoccupancy. (H.St.) 10. It is safer to be married to the man you can be happy with than to the man you cannot be happy without. (E.) 11. Then came running down stairs a gentleman with whiskers, out of breath. (D.) 12. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair; we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way - in short the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. (D.) 13. Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron, and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky tonks, restaurants and whore houses and little crowded groceries and laboratories and flophouses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said "Whores, pimps, gamblers and sons of bitches", by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men" and he would have meant the same thing. (J. St.) ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL1. Comment on linguistic properties of sentences which are foregrounded in lexico-syntactical stylistic devices.2. What do you know about antithesis? Why is it viewed separately from parallel constructions?3. Have you ever met, in your home-reading, cases of antithesis in which the structure of a word was also used in the creation of the SD?Another type of semantically complicated parallelism is presented by climax, in which each next word combination (clause, sentence) is logically more important or emotionally stronger and more explicit: "Better to borrow, better to beg, better to die!" (D.) "I am firm, thou art obstinate, he is pig-headed." (B.Ch.) If to create antithesis we use antonyms (or their contextual equivalents), in climax we deal with strings of synonyms or at least semantically related words belonging to the same thematic group.The negative form of the structures participating in the formation of climax reverses the order in which climax-components are used, as in the following examples: "No tree, no shrub, no blade of grass that was not owned." (G.) It is the absence of substance or quality that is being emphasized by the negative form of the climax, this is why relative synonyms are arranged not in the ascending but in the descending order as to the expressed quality or quantity. Cf.: "Be careful," said Mr. Jingle. "Not a look." "Not a wink," said Mr. Tupman. "Not a syllable. Not a whisper." (D.)Proceeding from the nature of the emphasized phenomenon it is possible to speak of logical, emotive or quantitative types of climax. The most widely spread model of climax is a three-step construction, in which intensification of logical importance, of emotion or quantity (size, dimensions) is gradually rising Step by step. In emotive climax though, we rather often meet a two-step structure, in which the second part repeats the first one and is further strengthened by an intensifier, as in the following instances: "He was so helpless, so very helpless." (W.D.) "She felt better, immensely better." (W.D.) "I have been so unhappy here, so very very unhappy." (D.)Climax suddenly interrupted by an unexpected turn of the thought which defeats expectations of the reader (listener) and ends in complete semantic reversal of the emphasized idea, is called anticlimax. To stressthe abruptness of the change emphatic punctuation (dash, most often) is used between the ascending and the descending parts of the anticlimax. Quite a few paradoxes are closely connected with anticlimax.Exercise II. Indicate the type of climax. Pay attention to its structure and the semantics of its components:1. He saw clearly that the best thing was a cover story or camouflage. As he wondered and wondered what to do, he first rejected a stop as impossible, then as improbable, then as quite dreadful. (W.G.)2. "Is it shark?" said Brody. The possibility that he at last was going to confront the fish - the beast, the monster, the nightmare - made Brody's heart pound. (P.B.)3. If he had got into the gubernatorial primary on his own hook, he would have taken a realistic view. But this was different. He had been called. He had been touched. He had been summoned. (R.W.)4. We were all in аll tо one another, it was the morning of life, it was bliss, it was frenzy, it was everything else of that sort in the highest degree. (D.)5. Like a well, like a vault, like a tomb, the prison had no knowledge of the brightness outside. (D.)6. "I shall be sorry, I shall be truly sorry to leave you, my friend." (D.)7. "Of course it's important. Incredibly, urgently, desperately important." (D.S.)8. "I never told you about that letter Jane Crofut got from her minister when she was sick. He wrote Jane a letter and on the envelope the address was like this: Jane Crofut; The Crofut Farm; Graver's Corners; Sutton County; New Hampshire; United States of America." "What's funny about it?" "But listen, it's not finished: the United States of America; Continent of North America; Western Hemisphere; the Earth; the Solar System; the Universe; the Mind of God - that's what it said on the envelope." (Th.W.)9. "You have heard of Jefferson Brick, I see. Sir," quoth the Colonel with a smile. "England has heard of Jefferson Brick. Europe has heard of Jefferson Brick." (D.)10. After so many kisses and promises - the lie given to her dreams, her words, the lie given to kisses, hours, days, weeks, months of unspeakable bliss. (Dr.)11. For that one instant there was no one else in the room, in the house, in the world, besides themselves. (M.W.)12. Fledgeby hasn't heard of anything. "No, there's not a word of news," says Lammle. "Not a particle," adds Boots. "Not an atom," chimes in Brewer. (D.)13. Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can discover everything except the obvious. (O.W.)14. This was appalling - and soon forgotten. (G.)15. He was unconsolable - for an afternoon. (G.)16. In moments of utter crises my nerves act in the most extraordinary way. When utter disaster seems imminent, my whole being is simultaneously braced to avoid it. I size up the situation in a flash, set my teeth, contract my muscles, take a firm grip of myself, and without a tremor always do the wrong thing. (B.Sh.)ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL1. Speak about the SD of climax and its types.2. In what way does the structure of an emotive climax differ from that of other types?3. What can you say about the negative form of the climax?4. What is an anticlimax?5. Is every paradox expressed by a climax? A structure of three components is presented in a stylistic device extremely popular at all times - simile. Simile is an imaginative comparison of two unlike objects belonging to two different classes. The one which is compared is called the tenor, the one with which it is compared, is called the vehicle. The tenor and the vehicle form the two semantic poles of the simile, which are connected by one of the following link words "like", "as", "as though", "as like", "such as", "as...as", etc. Simile should not be confused with simple (logical, ordinary) comparison. Structurally identical, consisting of the tenor, the vehicle and the uniting formal element, they are semantically different: objects belonging to the same class are likened in a simple comparison, while in a simile we deal with the likening of objects belonging to two different classes. So, "She is like her mother" is a simple comparison, used to state an evident fact. "She is like a rose" is a simile used for purposes of expressive evaluation, emotive explanation, highly individual description.The tenor and the vehicle may be expressed in a brief "nucleus" manner, as in the above example, or may be extended. This last case of sustained expression of likeness is known as epic, or Homeric simile.If you remember, in a metaphor two unlike objects (actions, phenomena) were identified on the grounds of possessing one common characteristic. In a simile two objects are compared on the grounds of similarity of some quality. This feature which is called foundation of a simile, may be explicitly mentioned as in: "He stood immovable like a rock in a torrent" (J.R.), or "His muscles are hard as rock". (T.C.) You see that the "rock" which is the vehicle of two different similes offers two different qualities as their foundation - "immovable" in the first case, and "hard" in the second. When the foundation is not explicitly named, the simile is considered to be richer in possible associations, because the fact that a phenomenon can be qualified in multiple and varying ways allows attaching at least some of many qualities to the object of comparison. So "the rose" of the previous case allows to simultaneously foreground such features as "fresh, beautiful, fragrant, attractive", etc. Sometimes the foundation of the simile is not quite clear from the context, and the author supplies it with a key, where he explains which similarities led him to liken two different entities, and which in fact is an extended and detailed foundation. Cf.: "The conversations she began behaved like green logs: they fumed but would not fire." (T.C.)A simile, often repeated, becomes trite and adds to the stock of language phraseology. Most of trite similes have the foundation mentioned and conjunctions "as", "as...as" used as connectives. Cf.: "as brisk as a bee", "as strong as a horse", "as live as a bird" and many many more.Similes in which the link between the tenor and the vehicle is expressed by notional verbs such as "to resemble", "to seem", "to recollect", "to remember", "to look like", "to appear", etc. are called disguised, because the realization of the comparison is somewhat suspended, as the likeness between the objects seems less evident. Cf.: "His strangely taut, full-width grin made his large teeth resemble a dazzling miniature piano keyboard in the green light." (J.) Orf "The ball appeared to the batter to be a slow spinning planet looming toward the earth." (В. М.)Exercise III. Discuss the following cases of simile. Pay attention to the semantics of the tenor and the vehicle, to the briefer sustained manner of their presentation. Indicate the foundation of the simile, both explicit and implicit. Find examples of disguised similes, do not miss the link word joining the two parts of the structure:1. The menu was rather less than a panorama, indeed, it was as repetitious as a snore. (O.N.)2. The topic of the Younger Generation spread through the company like a yawn. (E.W.)3. Penny-in-the-slot machines stood there like so many vacant faces, their dials glowing and flickering - for nobody. (B.N.)4. 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 a flint - as soft as a mole; As white as a lily - as black as coal; As plain as a pike - as rough as a bear; As tight as a dram - as free as the air; As heavy as lead - as light as a feather; As steady as time - uncertain as weather; As hot as an oven - as cold as a frog; As gay as a lark - as sick as a dog; As savage as a tiger - as mild as ц dove; As stiff as a poker - as limp as a glove; As blind as a bat - as deaf as a post; As cool as a cucumber - as warm as toast; As flat as a flounder - as round as a ball; As blunt as a hammer - as sharp as an awl; As brittle as glass - as tough as gristle; As neat as a pin - as clean as a whistle; As red as a rose - as square as a box. (O.N.)5. She has always been as live as a bird. (R.Ch.)6. She was obstinate as a mule, always had been, from a child. (G.)7. Children! Breakfast is just as good as any other meal and I won't have you gobbling like wolves. (Th.W.)8. Six o'clock still found him in indecision. He had had no appetite for lunch and the muscles of his stomach fluttered as though a flock of sparrows was beating their wings against his insides. (Wr.)9. And the cat, released, leaped and perched on her shoulder: his tail swinging like a baton, conducting rhapsodic music. (T.C.)10. He felt that his presence must, like a single drop of some stain, tincture the crystal liquid that was absolutely herself. (R.W.)11. He has a round kewpie's face. He looks like an enlarged, elderly, bald edition of the village fat boy, a sly fat boy, congenitally indolent, a practical joker, a born grafter and con merchant. (O'N.)12. You could have knocked me down with a feather when he said all those things to me. I felt just like Balaam when his ass broke into light conversation. (S.M.)13. Two footmen leant against the walls looking as waxen as the clumps of flowers sent up that morning from hothouses in the country. (E.W.)14. The Dorset Hotel was built in the early eighteen hundreds and my room, like many an elderly lady, looks its best in subdued light. (J.Br.)15. For a long while - for many years in fact - he had not thought of how it was before he came to the farm. His memory of those times was like a house where no one lives and where the furniture has rotted away. But tonight it was as if lamps had been lighted through all the gloomy dead rooms. (T.C.)16. It was an unforgettable face, and a tragic face. Its sorrow welled out of it as purely, naturally and unstoppably as water out of a woodland spring. (J.F.)17. He ached from head to foot, all zones of pain seemingly interdependent. He was rather like a Christmas tree whose lights wired in series, must all go out if even one bulb is defective. (S.)
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