Stylistic Means

All stylistic means of the English languages can be divided into expressive means (EM) and stylistic devices (SD). “The expressive means of a language are those phonetic, morphological, word building, lexical, preseological or syntactical forms which exist in language as-a-system for the purpose of logical and various dictionaries. Among lexical EM we must mention words with emotive meanings, interjections, polysemantic words, vulgar words, slang etc. The fact that polysemantic words retain their primary and secondary meanings is of great importance for stylistics. It is quite easy to understand the meaning of the following phrases; He grasped the main idea; a burning question; pity melted her heart. The italicized words are used in their secondary transferred dictionary meanings. But the primary and secondary meanings are realized simultaneously. The expressiveness of these words becomes obvious when compared with neutral equivalents; He understood the main idea; an important question; pity softened her heart. According to Prof I.R. Galperin`s definition Stylistic Devise is a conscious and intentional intensification of some type structural or semantic property of a language unit promoted to a generalized status and thus becoming a generative model. SD must always have some function in the text, besides they bring some additional information. The conception that words possess several meanings gives rise to such SDS as metaphor, metonymy, irony, epithet and others. Thus, a metaphor is a conscious and intentional intensification of typical semantic properties of a word: “Oh, Rain”-said Mor. He enveloped her in a great embrace. (I. Murdoch). The dictionary meaning of the verb “envelope” is “to wrap up, coer on all sides”. The contextual meaning is “to embrace” The typical features of proverbs and sayings serve as the foundation for an SD which is called epigram, i.e. brevity, rhythm and other properties of proverbs constitute a generative mo0del