Syntactical, Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

Groups of Syntactical Stylistic Devices:

1. Stylistic Inversion, Detached Construction, Parallel Construction, Chiasmus, Repetition, Enumeration, Suspense, Climax, Antithesis.
2. Asyndeton, Polysyndeton, The Gap-Sentence Link.
3. Ellipsis, Break-in-the-Narrative (Aposiopesis), Question-in-the-Narrative.
4. Rhetorical question, Litotes.

Parallel construction is a device which may be encountered not so much in the sentence as in the macro-structures dealt with earlier, viz. the SPU and the paragraph. The necessary condition in parallel construction is identical, or similar, syntactical structure in two or more sentences or parts of a sentence in close succession: «There were,…, real silver spoons to stir the tea with, and real china cups to drink it out of and plates of the same to hold the cakes and toast in» (Dickens).

style="text-align: justify;">Enumeration is a SD by which separate things, objects, phenomena, properties, action are named one by one so that they produce a chain, the links of which, being syntactically in the same position (homogeneous parts of speech), are forced to display some kind of semantic homogeneity, remote though it may seem: «The principle production of these towns…appear to be soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers and dock-yard men» (Dickens).

Antithesis is a SD based on the author’s desire to stress certain qualities of the thing by appointing it to another thing possessing antagonistic features. e. g. They speak like saints and act like devils.

Climax (Gradation) is an arrangement of sentences  which secures a gradual increase in significance, importance, or emotional tension in the utterance: «It was a lovely city, a beautiful city, a fair city, a veritable gem of a city» (Byron).»Little by little, bit by but, and day by day, and year by year the baron got the worst of some disputed question» (Dickens).

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