Lexical Stylistic Devices and Expressive Means

DIFFERENT TYPES OF WORD AND MEANING

• There are:• Content words: refer to the word and our

linguistics relationship with it. They serve to name things express relations, perceptions, states, and actions

• Functional words: work within language and how they operate in relationship with other words to order the utterance in speech or discourse.

DIFFERENT TYPES OF WORD AND MEANING

• There are:• Content words: book, building, panther,

lawyer, stupid, georgeous, depressed, enthusiastically, connect, study, bring, die.

• Functional words: and, or, above, below, notwithstanding, however, will, should .

ClassificationThere are 3 main groups:

1. Interaction of word meanings: enrich, affect or change the whole or part of a message or text

2. Intensification of a feature or phenomenon: it highlights or emphasizes a certain aspect of the thing referred to.

3. Special use of set expressions: distortions or changes in elements of idiomatic expressions, phrases or texts.

Types of meaning

▪Primary: main meaning in dictionaries. ▪Derivatives: secondary or acquired

meanings in dictionaries.▪Contextual: a meaning a word is given

or acquires when used. It depends on the communicative situation and/or the variety of language where it is used.

Types of meaning, examples

Primary: the word table is according to

the merriam webster dictionary is a) “a

piece of furniture that has a flat top and one or

more legs. b): a piece of furniture with a flat

surface that is designed to be used for a

particular purpose” we are dining at the table.

Types of meaning, examples cont.

▪Derivatives: systematic arrangement of data. ex. the table shows the employees’ salaries from lowest to highest.

▪Contextual: (a group o people in a conference room) this table has to decide right now at this very moment if we go on strike or accept the Company’s decision to reduce the paid holidays.

Types of context

• Context of culture: the social, economical or cultural conventions or history or the discourse or text

• Context of utterance: situation within which discourse is conducted, for example, physical surrounding or space or setting; the people participating, the channel or means used, aural, visual, electronic, written; the time,

• Context of Reference: the topic (fields of domain) or subject or theme.

Interaction of meanings

There are four subdivisions depending on the interactions of:

1. Primary and Contextual meanings2. Primary and Derivative meanings3. Logical and Emotive meanings4. Logical and Nominal meanings

Primary and Contextual

To this group belong:• Metaphor: identification between two

entities that have or seem to have nothing in common.

• Metonymy (synecdoche): substitution or reference o own thing by mentioning another associated or partially related to it logically.

Primary and Contextual

To this group belong:• Metaphor: a) Life´s but a walking shadow ,

a poor player. b) Duke players came out with volcanoes’ eyes, spitting fire like mad dragons on the run. the iron lions roared all the way on Malecon avenue.

• Metonymy (synecdoche): a) those hot pants are gonna give a heart attack. b) my thirst can be quenched with just one glass of your precious wine.

• Irony: speaking of a group of politicians trying to pass a given law: i guess I’m in the wrong room. someone must have led my to the first-graders (mentally-disabled , retarded) room instead of the Dominican Republic Senate.

Primary and Derivative

Zeugma: when a word determines or operatives grammatically onto two other words phrases; one of them has a literal meaning and the other has a figurative or metaphorical one. Ex: at gun point they made Johnny pick up the piece of chicken from the muddy ground. Then, at the order of the gunner, he ate the dirty chicken wing and his heart out/ he swallowed the dirty chicken wings and his pride. (swallow the chicken wing-literal meaning/ swallow one’s pride-figurative meaning)

PUNS

• Pun: we activate or play with two meaning of a word or words simultaneously. We based this on emphasizing the different meanings of a word (polysemy) or on the same spelling and pronunciation of two words or the same sound of two different words (homonymy).

• examples: Can you please watch my watch ? it’s a gift from my late grandpa.

• write that right!! I don’t want them to misunderstand it.

BASIS of PUNS

Logical and Emotive

• Interjections: words that express our emotional reactions towards something. They can be primary ( sounds/words with no logical meaning) ex.: wow!! or derivative (words that mean something, but are used to expressed our emotions ex.: what the hell!!! Goddamn!!!. The emotional charge or meaning is predominant.

• Epithet: attributive word (mainly adjectives) that are used to determine or describe something that by nature or logic belong to other category.That furious red of the fiery rose just kills me.

Logical and emotive

• Oxymoron: two words of opposing meaning combine grammatically.

• adj+noun: the impatient patients looked at the nurses in fear; Mr. Grenoble was the most visionary blind men in history. tender rocks populate that beach.

• adverb+adjective: he looked distressfully meditative; he moved his expressively silent eyes from side to side as if trying to find something queer.

Logical and emotive

• Oxymoron: • adv+verb: they calmly ran through the

backstreet.

Logical and Nominal

• Antonomasia: using a proper noun as common or vice versa. ex: Asia speaks not only chinese but several of the many languages in Asia. of all the lilies I´ve seen, You are the Lily that smells the finest.

Intensification of a Feature

• Simile: comparing two things that belong to different nature or domain.

• Hyperbole: an exaggeration made deliberately• Periphrasis: using more words than needed to

express something. Don’t confuse with paraphrasing or using different words to express the same ideas.

• Euphemism: using more word than needed to deliberately avoid using an offensive, vulgar, word or expression.

Intensification of a Feature Simile: she looked at me with eyes like a moonless night.

• Hyperbole: she blink ten thousand times in astonishment.

• Periphrasis: they ate at a red flat round surface of wood placed horizontally with four sticks vertically stuck to it.

• Euphemism: she is a terrific fan of a sport of pronouncing words that hate what we call truth . That poppy of a nymphomaniac female canine broke in my house, borrowed my car keys without my permission and went for an eternal ride I don’t know where. (the son of a bitch broke into my house and stole my car.)

Special use of set expressions(idiomatic expressions or sayings etc.)• Among these we have:• Proverbs or sayings: birds of a feather flock together.

No pain; no gain.• Epigrams:

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. (The Bible).”“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal;that they are endowed by their Creatorwith certain unalienable rights;that among these are Life, Libertyand the pursuit of Happiness.”—Thomas Jefferson, with Benjamin Franklin

Special use of set expressions(idiomatic expressions or sayings etc.)• Epigrams:

"There is no 'I' in team“. Dean Smith, the legendary coach of the North Carolina Tarheels.

"But coach, there is an 'I' in win.” Michael Jordan, freshman player of the above-mentioned team.

• Quotation: is based on the repetition of another person's written or speech words, in order to illustrate, sustain or prove what you say. It relies on the expertise or knowledgeable reputation of the persons quoted or cited. It is usually brief as epigrams or proverbs, but different from them in that a quotation can make use of charts or other kinds of reproducible materials.

• Quotation: everybody in this world is equal. We breathe, eat, drink, have children, die. As the great British playwright once put it “all the world’s a stage and we are merely players.” Quotations must always be placed within quotation marks (“ ”).

• Allusion: when a reference is made to a historical, person, fact, place or situation. Example: the three glorious fathers of the great island of the tainos where the visionary Italian Mariner stepped a European foot for the first time are prominent examples of Leaders who not only offer their gratuitous efforts and intelligence for the sake of liberty, but also are ready to render the precious and invaluable sacred gift of their life for cause of freedom.

• Allusion: In the previous examples the first underlined phrase makes allusion to Duarte, Sanchez and Mella. While the second one makes allusion to Santo Domingo or Dominican Republic (the great island of the tainos). The third one makes reference or alludes to Christopher Columbus (the visionary Italian mariner) arguably recognized as the “discoverer” of the American Continent.

Deconstruction of set expressions happens when we revive or emphasize the meanings of individual words that are part of an idiomatic expression, proverbs or saying. The expression has both its meaning as a set or expression and as individual words.

Twice upon a time there was a boy who diedAnd lived happily ever after, but that's another chapter

Deconstruction of set expressions in the example above the classical beginning of many stories “once upon a time” is punned, changed or distorted by the use of “twice”. Here the numerical meaning of the word once is enhanced and its meaning and psychological suggestive power as a long period of time is put on second place.