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 цdove; 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.)
18. Indian summer is like a woman. Ripe, hotly passionate, but fickle, she comes and goes as she pleases so that one is never sure whether she will come at all nor for how long she will stay. (Gr.M.)
19. You're like the East, Dinny. One loves it at first sight or not at all and one never knows it any better. (G.)
20. He felt like an old book: spine defective, covers dull, slight foxing, fly missing, rather shaken copy. (J.Br.)
21. Susan at her piano lesson, playing that thing of Scarlatti's. The sort of music, it struck him, that would happen if the bubbles in a magnum of champagne were to rush up rhythmically and as they reached the surface, burst into sound as dry and tangy as the wine from whose depth they had arisen. The simile pleased him so much. (A.H.)
22. There was no moon, a clear dark, like some velvety garment, was wrapped around the trees, whose thinned branches, resembling plumes, stirred in the still, warm air. (G.)
23. There are in every large chicken-yard a number of old and indignant hens who resemble Mrs. Bogart and when they are served at Sunday noon dinner, as fricasseed chicken with thick dumplings, they keep up the resemblance. (S.L.)
24. H.G.Wells r.eminded her of the rice paddies in her native California. Acres and acres of shiny water but never more than two inches deep. (A.H.)
25. On the wall hung an amateur oil painting of what appeared to be a blind man's conception of fourteen whistling swan landing simultaneously in the Atlantic during a half-gale. (Jn.B.)
26. Today she had begun by watching the flood. The water would crouch and heave at a big boulder fallen off the bluff-side and the red-and-white foam would fly. It reminded her of the blood-streaked foam every heave would fling out of the nostrils of a windbroke horse. (R.W.)
27. I'm not nearly hot enough to draw a word-picture that would do justice to that extraordinarily hefty crash. Try to imagine the Albert Hall falling on the Crystal Palace and you will have got the rough idea. (P.G.W.)
28. Her startled glance descended like a beam of light, and settled for a moment on the man's face. He was fortyish and rather fat, with a moustache that made her think of the yolk of an egg, and a nose that spread itself. His face had an injected redness. (W.D.)
29. Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl bunched in its soft feathers against the wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her body was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel exercise, as though there were no longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect. (G.)
30. Someone might have observed in him a peculiar resemblance to those plaster reproductions of the gargoyles of Notre Dame which may be seen in the shop windows of artists' colourmen. (E.W.)
31. Walser felt the strangest sensation, as if these eyes of the trapeze gymnast were a pair of sets of Chinese boxes, as if each one opened into a world into a world, an infinite plurality of worlds, and these unguessable guests exercised the strongest possible attraction, so that he felt himself trembling as if he, too, stood on an unknown threshold. (An.C.)
32. All was elegant, even sumptuous, finished with a heavy rather queasy luxury that always seemed to have grime under its fingernails, the luxury peculiar to this country. (An.C.)
ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL
1. What is a simile and what is a simple comparison?
2. What semantic poles of a simile do you know?
3. Which of the link words have you met most often?
4. What is the foundation of the simile?
5. What is the key of the simile?
6. What is a trite simile? Give examples.
7. What is an epic simile?
8. What is a disguised simile?
9. What are the main functions of a simile?
10. Find examples of similes in your reading. State their type, structure and functions.
Litotes is a two-component structure in which two negations are joined to give a positive evaluation. Thus "not unkindly" actually means "kindly", though the positive effect is weakened and some lack of the speaker's confidence in his statement is implied. The first component of a litotes is always the negative particle "not", while the second, always negative in semantics, varies in form from a negatively affixed word (as above) to a negative phrase.
Litotes is especially expressive when the semantic centre of the whole • structure is stylistically or/and emotionally coloured, as in the case of the following occasional creations: "Her face was not unhandsome" (A.H.) or "Her face was not unpretty". (K.K.)
The function of litotes has much in common with that of understatement - both weaken the effect of the utterance. The uniqueness of litotes lies in its specific "double negative" structure and in its weakening only the positive evaluation. The Russian term "литота" corresponds only to the English "understatement" as it has no structural or semantic limitations.
Exercise IV. Analyse the structure, the semantics and the functions oflitotes:
1. "To be a good actress, she must always work for the truth in what she's playing," the man said in a voice not empty of self-love. (N.M.)
2. "Yeah, what the hell," Anne said and looking at me, gave that not unsour smile. (R.W.)
3. It was not unnatural if Gilbert felt a certain embarrassment. (E. W.)
4. The idea was not totally erroneous. The thought did not displease me. (I.M.)
5. I was quiet, but not uncommunicative; reserved, but not reclusive; energetic at times, but seldom enthusiastic. (Jn.B.)
6. He had all the confidence in the world, and not without reason. (J.O'H.)
7. Kirsten said not without dignity: "Too much talking is unwise." (Ch.)
8. "No, I've had a profession and then a firm to cherish," said Ravenstreet, not without bitterness. (P.)
9. I felt I wouldn't say "no" to a cup of tea. (K.M.) 10. I wouldn't say "no" to going to the movies. (E.W.)
11. "I don't think you've been too miserable, my dear." (P.)
12. Still two weeks of success is definitely not nothing and phone calls were coming in from agents for a week. (Ph.R.)
ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL
1. What is a litotes?
2. What is there in common between litotes and understatement?
3. Describe most frequently used structures of litotes.
Periphrasis is a very peculiar stylistic device which basically consists of using a roundabout form of expression instead of a simpler one, i.e. of using a more or less complicated syntactical structure instead of a word. Depending on the mechanism of this substitution, periphrases are classified into figurative (metonymic and metaphoric), and logical. The first group is made, in fact, of phrase-metonymies and phrase-metaphors, as you may well see from the following example: "The hospital was crowded with the surgically interesting products of the fighting in Africa" (I.Sh.) where the extended metonymy stands for "the wounded".
Logical periphrases are phrases synonymic with the words which were substituted by periphrases: "Mr. Du Pont was dressed in the conventional disguise with which Brooks Brothers cover the shame of American millionaires." (M.St.) "The conventional disguise" stands here for "the suit" and "the shame of American millionaires" — for "the paunch (the belly)". Because the direct nomination of the not too elegant feature of appearance was substituted by a roundabout description this periphrasis may be also considered euphemistic, as it offers a more polite qualification instead of a coarser one.
The main function of periphrases is to convey a purely individual perception of the described object. To achieve it the generally accepted nomination of the object is replaced by the description of one of its features or qualities, which seems to the author most important for the characteristic of the object, and which thus becomes foregrounded.
The often repeated periphrases become trite and serve as universally accepted periphrastic synonyms: "the gentle / soft / weak sex" (women); "my better half (my spouse); "minions of Law" (police), etc.
Exercise V. Analyse the given periphrases from the viewpoint of their semantic type, structure, function and originality:
1. Gargantuan soldier named Dahoud picked Ploy by the head and scrutinized this convulsion of dungarees and despair whose feet thrashed a yard above the deck. (Th.P.)
2. His face was red, the back of his neck overflowed his collar and there had recently been published a second edition of his chin. (P.G.W.)
3. His huge leather chairs were kind to the femurs. (R.W.)
4. "But Pickwick, gentlemen, Pickwick, this ruthless destroyer of . this domestic oasis in the desert of Goswell street!" (D.)
5. He would make some money and then he would come back and marry his dream from Blackwood. (Dr.)
6. The villages were full of women who did nothing but fight against dirt and hunger and repair the effects of friction on clothes. (A.B.)
7. The habit of saluting the dawn with a bend of the elbow was a hangover from college fraternity days. (Jn.B.)
8. I took my obedient feet away from him. (W.G.)
9. I got away on my hot adolescent feet as quickly as I could. (W.G.)
10. I am thinking an unmentionable thing about your mother. (I.Sh.)
11. Jean nodded without turning and slid between two vermilion-coloured buses so that two drivers simultaneously used the same qualitative word. (G.)
12. During the previous winter I had become rather seriously ill with one of those carefully named difficulties which are the whispers of approaching age. (J. St.)
13. A child had appeared among the palms, about a hundred yards along the beach. He was a boy of perhaps six years, sturdy and fair, his clothes torn, his face covered with a sticky mess of fruit. His trousers had been lowered for an obvious purpose and had only been pulled back half-way. (W.G.)
14. When I saw him again, there were silver dollars weighting down his eyes. (T.C.)
15. She was still fat after childbirth; the destroyer of her figure sat at the head of the table. (A.B.)
16. I participated in that delayed Teutonic migration known as the Great War. (Sc.F.)
17. "Did you see anything in Mr. Pickwick's manner and conduct towards the opposite sex to induce you to believe all this?" (D.)
18. Bill went with him and they returned with a tray of glasses, siphons and other necessaries of life. (Ch.)
19. It was the American, whom later we were to learn to know and love as the Gin Bottle King, because of a great feast of arms performed at an early hour in the morning with a container of Mr. Gordon's celebrated product as his sole weapon. (H.)
20. Jane set her bathing-suited self to washing the lunch dishes. (Jn.B.)
21. Naturally, I jumped out of the tub, and before I had thought twice, ran out into the living room in my birthday suit. (В. М.)
22. For a single instant, Birch was helpless, his blood curdling in his veins at the imminence of the danger, and his legs refusing their natural and necessary office. (T.C.)
23. The apes gathered around him and he wilted under the scrutiny of the eyes of his little cousins twice removed. (An.C.)
ASSIGNMENTS FOR SELF-CONTROL
1. Speak about semantic types of periphrasis.
2. In what cases can a logical or a figurative periphrasis also be qualified as euphemistic?
3. What are the main stylistic functions of periphrases?
4. Which type of periphrasis, in your opinion, is most favoured in contemporary prose and why?
Exercise VI. Now, after you have been acquainted with the semantics, structures and functions of major syntactical stylistic devices, you may proceed, in the summarizing form, to cases of their convergence, paying attention to each SD contributing to the general effect and of course specifying those which bear the main responsibility for the creation of additional information and the intensification of the basic one:
1. In Paris there must have been a lot of women not unlike Mrs. Jesmond, beautiful women, clever women, cultured women, exquisite, long-necked, sweet smelling, downy rats. (P.)
2. The stables - I believe they have been replaced by television studios - were on West Sixty-sixth street. Holly selected for me an old sway-back black-and-white mare: "Don't worry, she's safer than a cradle." Which, in my case, was a necessary guarantee, for ten-cent pony rides at childhood carnivals were the limit of my equestrian experience. (T.C.)
3. However, there was no time to think more about the matter, for the fiddles and harp began in real earnest. Away went Mr. Pickwick — hands across, down the middle to the very end of the room, and halfway up the chimney, back again to the door - poussette everywhere - loud stamp on the ground - ready for the next couple - off again - all the figure over once more - another stamp to beat out the time - next couple, and the next, and the next again - never was such going! (D.)
4. Think of the connotations of "murder", that awful word: the lossof emotional control, the hate, the spite, the selfishness, the broken glass, the blood, the cry in the throat, the trembling blindness that results in theirrevocable act, the helpless blow. Murder is the most limited of gestures.(J.H.)