Stylistic

Devices
Prepared by:Zhazgul
Kachkynbekova
 Stylistic Devices
Phono-graphical
Lexical
Syntactical
Lexico-syntactical

PHONO-GRAPHICAL LEVEL

Phonetic means
Craphon
Graphical means
Phonetic means
Onomatopoeia –the act of
creating or using words that
sounds that are similar to the
noise the words refer to
e.g “shh", “zip", "murmur",
"bump", “yuk“, “buzz”
Alliteration –the repetition of consonants
e.g. He swallowed the hint with a gulp
and a gasp and a grin.

Assonance -the repetition of similar

vowels
e.g. brain drain; chips and dips; no pain,
no gain
 Craphon
intentional violation of the graphical shape
of a word (or word combination)
e.g. "gimme" (give me), "lemme" (let
me), "gonna" (going to), "gotta" (got to),
"coupla" (couple of), "mighta" (might
have), "willya" (will you)
Graphical Means
changes of the type (italics,
capitalization), spacing of
graphemes (hyphenation,
multiplication) and of lines
e.g. "Help. Help. HELP."
Lexical Stylistic Devices
 Metaphor  Metonymy.
 Synecdoche
 Play on Words.
 Irony
 Epithet
 Hyperbole
 Understatement
 Oxymoron
Metaphor
– a comparison of two unlike
things without using the words like
or as.
e.g. You are my angel.
He is a walking dictionary.
The leaves fell sorrowfully.
 The hotel is a diamond in the
sky.
Personification
– the giving of human qualities to an
animal, object, or idea.

e.g. The sun is smiling at us.

e.g. He turned over another page
of his life.
Trees danced in the wind.
Metonymy
Closely associated with that thing or
concept.
e.g. There is no news from Downing Street, 10
yet.
The White House will be making an
announcement around noon.
His uncle was just released from the big
house.
Synecdoche
type of metonymy: is based on the
relations between a part and the
whole
e.g. I need more hands down here.
The alumni visited campus last week.
“Nice wheels!”
It ‘s a cruel world!
Forbes wants to interview me!
Play on Words / Pun
one word-form is deliberately used in two
meanings.
e.g. The Importance of Being Ernest.
e.g. A committee is a group that
keeps minutes and wastes hours.
e.g. Work is a four-letter word.
Play on Words
Zeugma - deliberately use of two or more
homogeneous members, which are not
connected semantically:
 e.g. "He took his hat and his leave”.
e.g. Он с легкостью разбивал кирпичи
и женские сердца.
e.g. Она лишилась своих денег и веры
в правосудие.

Irony
the contextual evaluative meaning of a
word is directly opposite to its dictionary
meaning
e.g. 10 pounds for 10 days!? You are
very generous. (meaning – greedy)
A pilot has a fear of heights.

Epithet
expresses characteristics of an
object, both existing and imaginary
e.g. It was a nasty day.
fixed (“true love", "merry Christmas”)
phrase-epithets ("a move-if-you-dare
expression“)
inverted epithets (“the giant of a man”)

Antonomasia
a proper name is used instead of a
common noun or vice versa
e.g. Dr. Rest, Dr. Diet and Dr. Fresh
Air
e.g. Now let me introduce you that's
Mr. What's-his-name, you
remember him, don't you?
 Hyperbole
deliberate exaggeration
e.g.
"I have told you a thousand times”
I am so hungry I could eat horse.

Understatement
the opposite of hyperbole
e.g. My mother is not very well at the
moment. (the woman is at hospital
with a stroke.)
Oxymoron
combination of two semantically
contradictory notions e.g.
"awfully pretty“
e.g. There were some bookcases of
superbly unreadable books
“O loving hate!”
SYNTACTICAL LEVEL
Sentence length and
structure
Syntactical SDs

Sentence Length
One-Word Sentences – a
very strong emphatic impact
 e.g. The neon lights in the
heart of the city flashed on and
off. On and off. On. Off. On.
Off. Continuously.
Asyndeton
Deliberate omission of conjunctions:
e.g. Secretly, after the nightfall, he
visited the home of the Prime Minister.
He examined it from top to bottom. He
measured al the doors an windows. He
took up the flooring. He inspected the
plumbing. He examined the furniture. He
found nothing.
Polysyndeton
Excessive use of conjunctions:
e.g. Everybody you love will be
dead – mum and little Sue and
Charlie and Mrs. Furrow –
unless you make the right
decision, now.
Syntactical SDs
rhetorical
question-is a question ask to
make a point, rather that get an
answer.

e.g. Don’t you care about me?

Do you want to be failure for the
rest of your life?
Are you kidding?
Inversion
Inversion is a literary device in which the writer purposefully
reverse order of words, phrases.

And here emerged another problem

e.g.

e.g. Ten days and ten nights did they stay

on hunger strike.
“Powerful you have become, the dark
side I sense in you”.
 REPETITION
anaphora: the beginning of two or more
successive sentences (clauses) is repeated -
a..., a..., a...
e.g. Mother was a cook, mother was a teacher,
mother was a referee, mother was a mother.
epiphora: the end of successive sentences
(clauses) is repeated -...a, ...a, ...a.
e.g. Kate was there, Mick was there, Mrs Harley
was there – and none of them could explain what
they saw.
ordinary repetition has no
definite place in the
sentence and the repeated
unit occurs in various
positions - ...a, ...a..., a..
successive repetition is a
string of closely following each
other reiterated units -
...a, a, a...
e.g. Say it, say it, say it now.
Parallel constructions

Repetition of the same

grammar structure
e.g. Mother cooks dinner.
Father watches TV. Children
bother mother and father at the
same time.
Chiasmus
if the first sentence (clause) has a direct
word order - SPO, the second one will have
it inverted - OPS.

e.g. He loved girls, but girls didn’t love him.

“Let us negotiate out of fear, but let us never
fear to negotiate” J.Kennedy.
Если гора не идет к Магомету, то
Магомет идет к горе.
Detachment
a stylistic device based on singling
out a secondary member of the sentence
with the help of punctuation
(intonation)
e.g. She was crazy about you. In the
beginning.
I have to beg you for money, daily.
Break (aposiopesis)
The device of suddenly taking break
in speech.

e.g. "Good intentions, but…“

"It depends“.
I’m so angry, I could – I
could-!
Lexico-Syntactical Stylistic
Devices
Antithesis
 Climax
Anticlimax
Simile
Litotes
Periphrasis
Antithesis
the two parts of an antithesis
must be semantically opposite
to each other
e.g. "If we don't know who gains
by his death we do know who
loses by it."
e.g. Don't use big words. They
mean so little.
Climax
Climax is a figure of speech that
word order is used to build
excitement or anticipation.

e.g. "No tree, no shrub, no blade of

grass that was not owned."
"She felt better, immensely
better."
 “Out of the frying pan and into
the fire”.

Anticlimax
Anti-Climax indicates falling from a higher to
a lower level of excitement.

 e.g. You have just won a brand new set of pencils! 

Among the great achievements of Benito Mussolini’s
regime were revival of a strong national consciousness,
the expansion of Italian empire and the running of the
trains on time
 Women have a wonderful instinct about things. They can
discover everything except the obvious.
 Many paradoxes are based on anticlimax

Simile
– a comparison of two unlike things using
the words like or as.

e.g. ―Life is like a box of chocolates.

―The girl is as beautiful as a rose.
My Love is like a melody.
"His muscles are hard as rock".
Litotes
a two-component structure in which two
negations are joined to give a positive
evaluation

e.g. That’s not a bad idea.

It wasn’t terrible trip.
"Her face was not unpretty".
Kirsten said not without dignity: "Too much
talking is unwise."
Periphrasis
roundabout form of expression instead of a
simpler one
e.g. The reason of my sleepless night was
standing in the doorway with an innocent look.
e.g. weak sex" (women); "my better half (my
spouse);
 Euphemistic (the underprivileged)
Euphemism
It is a polite expression used in place of words or
phrases that might otherwise be considered harsh
or unpleasant.
e.g. passed away – (died)
I have to spent a penny. (have to urinate)
I really need a bit of peace. (go away)