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Phraseology and its stylistic use.

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Set phrases possess certain properties of individual words.

Some of them are elevated: an earthly paradise; Some are subneutral:

to rain cats and dogs; to be in one's cups (= to be drunk);

Among the elevated phrases we can discern the same groups as among

the elevated words:

a) archaisms — the iron in one's soul ('permanent embitterment');

Mahomet's coffin ('between good and evil'); to play upon advantage ('to

swindle');

b) bookish phrases — to go to Canossa ('to submit'); the debt of nature

('death'); the knight of the quill ('writer'); gordian knot ('a complicated

problem');

c) foreign phrases — a propos de bottes ('unconnected with the pre-

ceding remark'); mot juste ('the exact word').

Subneutral phrases can also be divided into:

a) colloquial phrases — alive and kicking ('safe and sound'); a pretty

kettle offish ('muddle');

b) jargon phrases — a loss leader ('an article sold below cost to attract

customers');

c) old slang phrases — to be nuts about ('to be extremely fond of);

to shoot one's grandmother ('to say a non-sensical or commonplace

thing'); to keep in the pin ('to abstain from drinking'); to kick the bucket,

to hop the twig ('to die').

Even what might be called neutral phrases produce a certain stylis-

tic effect as opposed to their non-phrasal semantic equivalents (to

complete absence of phrases in the whole text)r Correct English and

good English are most certainly not identical from the viewpoint of

stylistics. Idioms and set expressions impart local colouring to the

text;

Absence of set phrases makes speech poor and in a way unnatural:

something like a foreigner's English. On the other hand, excessive use of

idioms offends the sense of the appropriate.

A very effective stylistic device often used by writers consists in

intentionally violating the traditional norms of the use of set phrases



Often the key-words of well-known phrases are purposely replaced.

Thus, unmasking the inhuman 'philosophy of facts' in his novel

Hard Times, Dickens ironically exclaims Fact forbid! instead of God

forbid!.

Mark Twain replaces the epithet in the expression The Golden Age,

naming satirically his contemporary epoch The Gilded Age.

A number of curious instances of distorting 'literalizing', combining

mid opposing phraseological expressions to achieve stylistic effects are

adduced by L. A. Barkova, who studied commercial advertising.8. The expression is

obviously derived from the internationally known phrase the other side

of the medal.

Changes in spelling (attaining a new meaning and at the same time

preserving the phonetical form of the original set expression) are also

resorted to. The well-known precept Waste not, want not (the idea of which

is 'wasting will make one suffer from want of what has been wasted', or

to put it shorter, 'wasting brings suffering') is used by the producer of

dietary foods, hinting in his advertisement at the disadvantage of being

fat: Waist not, want not.

A furniture shop praises its sofas: Sofa, So Good! (from so far, so good ).

A special device is the interaction of set phrases in an ad for a new

cookbook: The last word in French cookbooks by the first lady of French

cooking. The phrases last word and first lady make an antithesis, thus

enhancing the expressive force of the statement.

Sometimes allusions are made use of. The ad recommending Smirnoff's

Silver (a famous brand of whisky) says that it is for people who want a

silver lining without the cloud (the allusion is to the proverb Every cloud

has a silver lining, i.e. 'everything that is bad has a good side to it'). The

advertiser's assertion without the cloud could be a hint that the consumer

will have no hang-over afterwards.

All the examples of phraseology in advertising were collected by

L.A. Barkova. The author of the present book has only commented on

some of them.



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