5.

Wordplay, or pun (Italian “a fine point”), is the type of language use that aims at ambiguity
resulting from the intentional violation of referential connections of a word in the context. Pun is
one of major means of creating a humorous effect, which is actually its main stylistic function. In
punning, or playing on words, we usually deal with one word-form used in two or more
meanings.
It is often an effect of the so-called “breach of expectancy” (or defeated expectancy) - the
reader’s/listener’s expectations are not met:
- The farmer allows walkers to cross the field for free, but the bull charges, (to charge - (1)
to ask an amount of money as a price; (2) to rush forward and attack smb)
Puns can be formed by the intentional misinterpretation of one speaker’s words by the other: it
happens when the first speaker uses a word/phrase in one meaning and his interlocutor
pretends that he understands it differently, thus intentionally misinterpreting this word.
Here we often deal with the use of homonyms in one and the same context:
• Professor- "You missed my class yesterday, didn’t you? ” Student - "Not in the least, sir, not in
the least. ’’
We observe one more typical variety of puns when “two contiguous utterances similar in form,
their elements are having different meanings” are used in one context [93, p. 157]. They are
usually parallel phrases (the so- called lexical chiasmus) with the inverted order of words used in
their different meanings:
He checked his cash, cashed in his checks
Most frequently wordplay is based on the use of polysemantic words, but in fact punning
can be realized on all the levels of language hierarchy ( phonographical, morphological,
lexical, phraseological, syntactic, textual, intertextual and even interlingual)
The homophonic and/or homographic pun is usually called paronomasia: words with similar
or the same spelling and/or sounding but different meanings are used in one context to create a
comic or satirical effect:
Some folks are wise, and some are otherwise. (T.Smollett)
A young man married is a man that’s marred. (W.Shakespeare) (to mar = “to spoil”)
When a polysemantic verb controls two or more objects that have different syntactic and
semantic relations to it, we deal with one more figure of inequality called zeugma. Unlike in a
pun, this verb is not repeated in the sentence.
6. Hyperbole [hai'paibali] (Greek “excess”) is a stylistic device of most evident and intentional
exaggeration for emphasis or comic effect. It is not meant to be literally understood. ( to be
scared to death; haven \t seen you for ages; so hungry that he/she could eat a horse; a person of
no brains; to have all the time in the world, etc ) They do not have great stylistic value and
belong to the system of the language.
Their stylistic functions are numerous:
• to intensify some idea and produce a more striking effect: e.g. Her family is one aunt about
a thousand years old. (F. S. Fitzgerald)
• to enhance emotionality: e.g. We shall obey, were she ten times our mother. (W. Shakespeare)
 • to create an ironic effect: e.g. The earth was made for Dombey and Son to trade in, and the
sun and moon were made to give them light. (Ch. Dickens)
• to produce a comic effect. It is very often used in humorous literature: e.g. She had bright,
bulging eyes and a lot of yellow hair, and when she spoke she showed about 57 front teeth
A special type of hyperbole that aims at intensification of smallness is sometimes called
understatement, e.g.:
(a) I haven’t slept one wink,
(b) She wore a pink hat, the size of a button.
Hyperbolic metaphors or metaphoric hyperboles are not rare. A created image is often
exaggerated to absurdity in a sustained metaphor or in a chain of metaphors. For example: “ The
sun was laughing ” is a metaphor (personification) but “The sun shook with laughter and almost
fell down to earth ” is a hyperbolic metaphor. The similar case we find in: "It was so cold that
even the polar bears were wearing jackets. ”
Furthermore, hyperbole is often realized by means of simile (imaginative comparison), which
may be combined with and complicated by metaphor (personification) and irony. For example
“She has about as much brain as a retarded billiards ball”.
Some structurally simple (at first sight) cases of hyperbole may turn out to be tropeic hybrids.
For example,
“Our aunt is so fat, when she walks by the TV, we miss three showsl”. The listener/reader
interprets this hyperbolic phrase by combining both the semes: “The aunt is so fat that it takes
her far too much time to move her gigantic body in space. So we deal here with a type of
hyperbole based on metonymy.
The opposite of hyperbole is meiosis. This device is classed as a trope, but it will be more
logical analyze separately from both tropes and “tropeic hybrids”, since it possesses some
definite syntactic characteristics. Meiosis is an attempt to downplay the significance or size of
an unpleasant thing, though not all meiosis examples refer to something negative.
Difference Between Meiosis, Litotes, and Understatement
Understatement involves any minimization of something, and can be used for humorous
purposes, to comfort people, to be humble, and many other purposes. Both litotes and meiosis
are forms of understatement, and thus have more specialized forms.
 Litotes: Litotes refers to the practice of negating something in order to prove the
opposite. This means a situation in which the thing denied is negative and the opposite one is a
positive thing. For example: “It wasn’t bad.”; He's not the friendliest person; It wasn't a terrible
trip.
 Meiosis: Meiosis differs from other forms of understatement due its use of euphemism
(ефемізм). Euphemism allows people to skirt around unpleasant things while they talk or
write, and minimize the discomfort .
 For example,
 - The Troubles (a period of violence in Northern Ireland) - This is a form of meiosis
because it purposefully downplays the events which in reality, were extremely serious and life
threatening.
-Some jobs are given slang titles as a form of meiosis, these titles belittle the actual jobs and
mock them. - Grease-monkey (mechanic)
Ambulance-chaser (personal injury lawyer)
Shrink (psychiatrist)

7. Oxymoron [(oksi'mo:ron] is a lexical-syntactic stylistic device presenting a combination of two

contrasting ideas. In fact, the word “oxymoron” is an oxymoron itself because its two Greek roots are
opposite in meaning - “oxys” = sharp + “moros” = foolish.
For example, as “speaking silence ”, ”deafening silence ”, “dumb confession ”, “civilwar”, “oldnews”,
“awfully well”, “mightysmall”. (Compare in Ukrainian: cyxe вино; живий nopmpem; dopocлi dimu;
Usually the first word has lost completely its logical (denotative) meaning and is used as an intensifier
(instead of the word “very”).
The most widely used structural type of oxymoron is attributive, i.e. a combination of an adjective and
a noun. It is used to emphasize its stylistic function: e.g. sweet sorrow.
Still there are also other structural types of oxymoron: noun-noun; adjective-adjective; adverb-adverb;
adverb-verb/verb-adverb; adverb-adjective and free syntactic patterns, e.g.:
• A neon sign reads “Welcome to Reno - the biggest little town in the world'
• The bitter-sweet union did not last long.
• The garage was full of nothing
Oxymoron is related to antithesis and paradox since all three employ some type of a contradiction. Yet
they are different devices.
Structurally, oxymoron is a word-combination, whereas antithesis is based on syntactic parallelism, i.e.
it consists of two parallel phrases/constructions. Semantically, in antithesis two contrasting ideas are
opposed, while in oxymoron they are brought together. In fact, the contradictoriness of ideas is justified
by oxymoron which “embodies” (втілює в життя) the so called dialectal triangle.

Oxymoron is also close to logical-semantic paradoxes (see below), i.e. seemingly self-contradictory
statements, being a “contracted paradox” . The following oxymoronic phrase might be treated as a sort
of paradox (with an ironic tinge) used to emphasize the contradiction :"the street damaged by
improvements ”
8. Antonomasia [aentano'meizia] (Greek “naming instead”) is a SD based on the simultaneous
realization of two lexical meanings - the logical and nominal ones. It is used for brevity and
picturesqueness.
There are various types of antonomasia. The first type occurs when a proper name (name of an
individual person, place, etc.) is turned (semantically) into a common noun.
There are so-called historical cases of antonomasia:
e.g.: diesel (an internal-combustion engine thus named after the German engineer R. Diesel);
mackintosh (thus called after the Scottish chemist Ch. Mackintosh who invented the fabric); sandwich
(after Lord Sandwich)
• Former geographic names that serve as common nouns to denote things originated from them: e.g.:
china, Champagne, Chester, Bordeaux.
They are studied by lexicology and have hardly any stylistic significance. This cannot be said about
metaphorical and metonymic varieties of antonomasia, which are based on the similar mechanisms of
name-transference.
1) metaphorical antonomasia is
(a) the use of the name of a historical, literary, mythological, biblical personage applied to a person
whose features resemble those of a well-known original,
or
(b) the geographic name connected with some historical event, which is used for its essence
e.g.:
(a) He is a regular Sherlock Holmes. (C. Doyle) (= an observant person)
He is that Napoleon of crime, Professor Moriarty. (C.Doyle) (= the genius of a criminal)
2 . metonvmic antonomasia is observed when a personal name stands for something connected with
the bearer of that name who once really existed.
e.g.: This is my real Goya. (J. Galsworthy) (= a picture painted by F. Goya)
I am fond of Dickens. (= Dickens’s books)
The second type of antonomasia is based on a reversed process of using a common noun as an
individualizing proper name (we observe capitalization in this case):
e.g.: We call him Mr. Know-All even to his face and he took it as a compliment. (W.S. Maugham)
A specific variety of this type is the case when common nouns are used in their nominal function to
characterize the bearer of this name. They are termed “speaking”, or “telling” or “telltale", or “token
names”. In 18-19 centuries it was customary to provide literary personages with “speaking” names that
characterize their personalities (usually negatively)
“In everyday life we sometimes meet a person with an unusually appropriate name: the very tall person
called Long, for example. In a novel it is different. The peculiar appropriateness of a name such as
Heathcliff is surely hardly 84 ever met with in real life” [160, p. 89].

In some types of “speaking names” the pragmatic potential is also realized by means of their
onomatopoeic effect (i.e. sounding): LordBrabason Vavasour Vere de Vere (from J.Fowles). Thus
antonomasia (“speaking names”) is intended to point out the most characteristic feature of a
personage or event:
Sir Peter Teazle (to tease - “ to make fun of somebody in a playful or unkind way”)
Such names are extremely difficult to translate since without translation they lose their qualifying
power. There also persists a very strong tendency in show business to change names and apply more
striking, characteristic or just melodious stage names or pseudonyms