Stylistic Devices
Tracking lexical change in present-day English
Raymond Hickey
Essen University
1 Introduction For several centuries English has been well known for its many cases of conversion, for instance it is used very frequently by Shakespeare, almost as a stylistic device of his. And to this day it has remained a prominent feature of the language. The standard definition of conversion (Bauer
1988: 90-2; Spencer 1991: 20) is a change in word-class without any alteration in form, i.e. zero-derivation (Cruse 1986: 132f.). Take for example the following instances. (1)
He binned (v) the letter. Å bin (n)
They rubbished (v) the idea. Å rubbish (n)
Dave was out clubbing (v) on Saturday. Å club (n)
He claims that he has been scapegoated. (v) Å scapegoat (n) But even these examples show that conversion involves subtle semantic shifts which are not obvious if it is treated as a mechanical process, for instance the second example, to rubbish is not “to make rubbish” but to
“reject something as worthless”, i.e. “to treat as rubbish”. The third example shows the use of to club in the sense of “to visit many clubs in succession, or at least one club for a prolonged period of time”. The second point to note here is that cases of conversion are to be found most commonly in colloquial registers of English. If you look up to rubbish in a recent Oxford dictionary such as the tenth edition of the
Concise Oxford Dictionary (2000) then you find that it is labelled
“British informal”; the CoBuild dictionary also labels it “informal”. The source of these instances in informal speech is of relevance to the matter at hand and will be returned to presently.
93
In recent decades a further development can be observed25 which, for the want of a better word, I term univerbation. By this is meant that structures consisting of several words are reduced to one, as when a
verbal
Raymond Hickey
Essen University
1 Introduction For several centuries English has been well known for its many cases of conversion, for instance it is used very frequently by Shakespeare, almost as a stylistic device of his. And to this day it has remained a prominent feature of the language. The standard definition of conversion (Bauer
1988: 90-2; Spencer 1991: 20) is a change in word-class without any alteration in form, i.e. zero-derivation (Cruse 1986: 132f.). Take for example the following instances. (1)
He binned (v) the letter. Å bin (n)
They rubbished (v) the idea. Å rubbish (n)
Dave was out clubbing (v) on Saturday. Å club (n)
He claims that he has been scapegoated. (v) Å scapegoat (n) But even these examples show that conversion involves subtle semantic shifts which are not obvious if it is treated as a mechanical process, for instance the second example, to rubbish is not “to make rubbish” but to
“reject something as worthless”, i.e. “to treat as rubbish”. The third example shows the use of to club in the sense of “to visit many clubs in succession, or at least one club for a prolonged period of time”. The second point to note here is that cases of conversion are to be found most commonly in colloquial registers of English. If you look up to rubbish in a recent Oxford dictionary such as the tenth edition of the
Concise Oxford Dictionary (2000) then you find that it is labelled
“British informal”; the CoBuild dictionary also labels it “informal”. The source of these instances in informal speech is of relevance to the matter at hand and will be returned to presently.
93
In recent decades a further development can be observed25 which, for the want of a better word, I term univerbation. By this is meant that structures consisting of several words are reduced to one, as when a
verbal