Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde

 Stylistic Features of Oscar Wilde’s Wrightings

 PLAN NTRODUCTION Chapter 1 Oscar Wilde as a Brilliant Dramatist of His Time Chapter 2

 Investigation Proper 1.Some notes on style and stylistics 2.Lexical EMs and SDs 3.Syntactical Ems and SDs

 General Conclusions Bibliography

  

 Introduction

 Linguists pay considerable attention to the means of expressing emphasis. The object of stylistic analysis is the language in the process of its usage.

 The approach to the language material and the subject of stylistics and the subject of stylistics is of our concern in this diploma paper.

 As it is known stylistics treats with special means of the language that help us to have vivid and interesting speech.

 I will not go into details with regards to lots of expressive means and stylistic devices in Oscar Wilde’s plays as they are too many.

 My concern is the analysis of those stylistic devices and expressive means which are capable of making utterances emotionally coloured.I take only those stylistic devices which are based on some significant point in an utterance whether it consists of one sentence or a string of sentences.

 Usually the effect of stylistic devices exceeds the bounds of one sentence and the investigation touches upon the features of speech.

 My diploma paper deals with those stylistic devices which are more often used in the plays, according to the table of frequency of their usage given by me at the end of the diploma paper.

 The difference between stylistic devices and expressive means is not large, they are closely connected with each other. The division of things into expressive means and stylistic devices is purely conventional with the borders between them being somewhat shaky.

 Stylistic expressive means have a kind of radiating effect. They noticeably colour the whole of the utterance no matter whether they are logical or emotional. They reproduce the author’s thoughts and feelings and make the reader to think and feel what the author wants him to think and feel.

 The initial task of my diploma paper is to specify the subject of investigation. It is the means of emphasis.

 According to Hornby, emphasis is a force or stress, laid on a word or words to make significance clear, or to show its importance”.*

 Emphasis is achieved by lexical and syntactical expressive means.

 In my diploma paper I will consider only some of expressive means mostly used in Oscar Wilde’s plays.

 It is interesting to note what Soshalskaya E.G. says about the analysis which indicates the necessity and importance of the investigation proper in my diploma paper.

 “The purpose of Stylistic Analysis,-she says,- is to help the students to observe the interaction of form and matter to see how through the infinite variety of stylistic devices and their functions the message of the author is brought home to the reader.”**

 Well, it is interesting to know what is O.Wilde’s purpose using these stylistic devices, in what way he uses them, what he wants the reader to understand; mostly, what kind of stylistic devices he uses in his plays and to try and explain what makes his style unforgettable and recognizable as unique and original one.

  CHAPTER 2

 Investigation Proper

 1. Some notes on style and stylistics.

 The word “style” is derived from the Latin word “stylus” which meant a short stick sharp at one end and flat at the other used by the Romans for writing on wax tablets. Now the word “style” has a very broad meaning. We speak of style in architecture, painting, clothes, behaviour, literature, speech, etc. The style of any period is the result of a variety of complex and shifting pressures and influences. The way we think and speak modifies the way we write, or the way other write, influences our thought and speech. There is the constant interaction between life and literature. Books reflect the shape of our experience, but our experience of life is also shaped by the books we read. In every age the major writers help to shape the thinking and feeling, and hence the style, of their contemporaries.

 Raymond Chapman, the author of “A Short Way to Better English”, says that “A good style of writing has three qualities, which may be described as accuracy, ease and grace.”7 There are always three influences that will exert their pressure on a writer’s style. One is his own personality, his own way of thinking and feeling that determines his mode of expression. The second is the occasion on which he is writing, the particular purpose that directs his pen at the moment of writing, so that the same man may employ different styles on different occasions. The third is the influence of the age in which he lives. In other words, a writer’s style is his individual and creative choice of the resources of the language. The limitations upon the choice are superimposed by the writer’s period, his genre and his purpose. Since style is something ingrained in writing, it follows that a man’s way of writing will be an expression of his personality and his way of looking at life. This explains the famous and much-quoted definition of style given by Buffon, a French writer and naturalist of the eighteenth century. He wrote: “Le style, c’est l’homme meme.” (“Style, it is the man himself.”)8

 Stylistics, sometimes called linguo-stylistics, is a branch of general linguistics. It has now more or less definitely outlined. It deals mainly with two interdependent tasks:

 the investigation of the inventory of special language media which by their ontological features secure the desirable effect of the utterance;

 certain types of texts (discourse) which due to the choice and arrangement of language means are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication.

 The two objectives of stylistics are clearly discernible as two separate fields of investigation. The inventory of special language media can be analysed and their ontological features revealed if presented in a system in which the co-relation between the media becomes evident.

 The types of texts can be analysed if their linguistic components are presented in their interaction, thus, revealing the unbreakable unity and transparency of constructions of a given type. The types of texts that are distinguished by the pragmatic aspect of the communication are called functional styles of language (FS). The special media of language which secure the desirable effect of the utterance are called stylistic devices (SD) and expressive means (EM).*

 The first field of investigation, i.e. SDs and EMs, necessarily touches upon such general language problems as the aesthetic function of language, synonymous ways of rendering one and the same idea, emotional colouring in language, the interrelation between language and thought, the individual manner of an author in making use of language and a number of other issues.

 The second field, i.e. functional styles, cannot avoid discussion of such most general linguistic issues as oral and written varieties of language, the notion of literary language, the constituents of texts larger than the sentence, the generative aspect of literary texts and some others.

 In dealing with the objectives of stylistics, certain pronouncements of adjacent disciplines such as theory of information, literature, logic and to some extent statistics must be touched upon. This is indispensable; for nowadays no science is entirely isolated from other domains of human knowledge. The linguistics, particularly its branch stylistics, cannot avoid references to the above mentioned disciplines because it is confronted with certain overlapping issues.

 In linguistics there are different terms to denote particular means by which utterances are foregrounded, i.e. made more conspicuous, more effective and therefore imparting some additional information. They are called expressive means, stylistic devices, tropes, figures of speech and other names. All these terms are used indiscriminately and are set against those means which we shall conventionally call neutral. Most linguists distinguish ordinary semantic and stylistic differences in meaning. They distinguish three main levels of expressive means and stylistic devices: phonetic, lexical and syntactical.

 Phonetic expressive means and stylistic devices. As it is clear from the title, the stylistic use of phonemes and their graphical representation is viewed here. The stylistic approach to the utterance is not confined to its structure and sense. There is another thing to be taken into account which plays an important role. This is the way a word, a phrase or a sentence sounds. The sound of most words taken separately will have little or no aesthetic value. It is in combination with other words that a word may acquire a desired phonetic effect. The way a separate word sounds may produce a certain euphonic impression, but this is a matter of individual perception and feeling and therefore subjective.

 Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices. The main function of the word is to denote. Thus, the denotational meaning is the major semantic characteristic of the word. The words in context may acquire additional lexical meanings not fixed in dictionaries. What is known in linguistics as “transferred meaning” is particularly the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual. When the deviation from the acknowledged meaning is carried to a degree that it causes an unexpected turn in the recognised logical meanings, we register a stylistic device.

 Syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices. Stylistic study of the syntax begins with the study of the length and the structure of the sentence. Stylistic syntactical patterns may be viewed as variants of the general syntactical models of the language and are the more obvious and conspicuous if presented not as isolated elements or accidental usage, but as group easily observable and lending themselves to generalisation.

 This brief outline of the most characteristic features of the language styles and their variants will show that out of the number of features which are easily discernible in each of the styles, some should be considered primary and others secondary; some obligatory, others optional; some constant, others transitory.

 I think that the most important and interesting is lexical level.

 It includes more bright and vivid units of the language.

  2. Lexical expressive means and stylistic devices.

 Each art has its own medium, i.e. its own material substance. Colours are the material substance of painting, sounds-the material substance of music. It is the language that is the material substance of literature. But language consists of colours and sounds due to the existence of expressive means and stylistic devices.

 Language is capable of transmitting practically any kind of information. It has names for all things, phenomena and relations of objective reality. It is so close to life that an illusion of their almost complete identity is created, for man lives, works and thinks in the medium of language. His behaviour finds an important means of expression primarily in language. In the present chapter we shall try to analyse some lexical expressive means and stylistic devices used by Oscar Wilde in his plays.

 EPIGRAM and PARADOX.

 The majority critics of the nineteenth century agree that Wilde is the most paradoxical writer of his time.

 According to professor Sosnovskaya V.B., paradox based on contrast, being a statement contradictory to what is accepted as a self-evident or proverbial truth.9

 The appeal of paradox lies in the fact that, however contradictory it may seem to be to the accepted maxim, it contains nevertheless, a certain grain of truth, which makes it an excellent vehicle of satire. Indeed, it is a device much favoured by many English and American satirists. Paradox can be considered a figure of speech with certain reservations, since the aesthetic principle, that underlies it, i.e. contrast has divers linguistic manifestations.

 According to professor Galperin I.R., epigram is a stylistic device akin to a proverb, the only difference being that epigrams are coined by individuals whose names we know, while proverbs are the coinage of the people. In other words, we are always aware of the parentage of an epigram and therefore, when using one, we usually make a reference to its author.10

 Epigrams and paradoxes as stylistic devices are used for creating generalised images. Usually it is the Present Indefinite Tense. This form of the verb makes paradoxes and epigrams abstract.

 e.g. “Men marry because they are tired,

 women because they are curious.

 Both are disappointed.” (p.138).11

 “Nothing spoils a romance so much as

 a sense of humour in the woman”. (p.108).

 “Ideals are dangerous things,

 realities are better. They wound,

 but they are better.” (p.85).

 “Women are pictures,

 Men are problems.” (p.138).

 In Wilde’s paradoxes and epigrams the verb “to be” is widely used. This verb intensifies the genetic function and makes aphorisms and paradoxes humorous. It makes also the ironical definition of phenomena of life.

 e.g. “Curious thing, plain women are always jealous

 of their husbands,

 beautiful women never are.”(p.108).

 “The men are all dowdies and the women

 are all dandies.” (p.186).

 “A man who moralises is usually a hypocrite,

 and a woman who moralises is invariably

 plain.” (p.69).

 Another means which helps to create the generalisation is the choice of words. Wilde often resorts to the use of some abstract notions, concrete notions are rare.

 e.g. “Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit ;

 touch it and the bloom is gone.” (p.296).

 “Duty is what one expects from others,

 it is not what one does himself.” (p.131).

 “Life is terrible. It rules us,

 we do not rule it.” (p.75).

 “Experience is a question of instinct

 about life.”(p.72).

 All kinds of works – intensifiers, such as “Never, always, often” are used by Oscar Wilde for creating the abstractness and generalisation.

 e.g. “Questions are never indiscreet.

 Answers sometimes are.” (p. 180)

 “Beautiful women never have time. They are

 always so occupied in being jealous of other

 people’s husbands.” (p.108)

 “All men are married women’s property” (p.114)

 “The clever people never listen and the stupid

 people never talk.”(p.109)

 For creating the abstractness Wilde also uses such words as “men, women, people, we, one”, etc.

 e.g. “One should never trust a woman who tells one

 her real age” (p.110).

 “We men know life too early. And we women

 know life too late. That is the difference between

 men and women” (p.165).

 “People are either hunting for husbands, or hiding

 from them” (p.181).

 One of the most characteristic and essential features of epigrams and paradoxes is their shortness and conciseness. They are achieved by the syntactical pattern of an epigram or paradox. The syntax of these stylistic devices is laconic and clear – cut.

 e.g. “Men become old, but they never become good”

 (p.33).

 “Do not use bid words. They mean so little”

 (p.252).

 In these examples we can see the parallel constructions widely used by Oscar Wilde. They serve a perfect means of creating the clear-cut syntax of epigrams and paradoxes.

 Another peculiarity of Wilde’s epigrams and paradoxes is his use of such construction as “that is the difference…”

 e.g. “Cecil Graham: Oh, wicked women bother one. Good

 women bore one. That is the difference between them”

 (p.68)

 “Lord Illingworth: we men know life too early.

 Mrs. Arbuthnot: And we women know life too late. That

 is the difference between men and women” (p.165).

 This phrase “That is the difference…” seems to sum up the whole epigram or paradox. With the help of this phrase Oscar Wilde tries to show how great the difference is between the two objects or phenomena compared. Some of Wilde’s paradoxes and epigrams are formed with the help of contextual antonyms and contrasting pairs:

 e.g. “The body is born young and grows old. That is life’s

 tragedy. The soul is born old but grows young. That is

 the comedy of life” (p.111).

 “Men become old, but they never become good” (p.33).

 One of the most important functions of epigrams and paradoxes is that of speech characterisation. But Wilde’s epigrams and paradoxes have another important function also. It is the showing of bourgeois morality. With the help of his epigrams and paradoxes the author shows us his characters, their way of life, manners, their thoughts and the bourgeois society of his time.

 In these four Wilde’s plays there is a group of people such as Lady Bracknell, Mrs.Cheveley, Lord Illingworth and others , whose behaviour and way of life give us a clear picture of the upper-class society. These very people with their paradoxes and epigrams open their thoughts and feelings.

 e.g. “A man who allows himself to be convinced by an argument is a

 thoroughly unreasonable person”(p.185).

 “The world was made for men and not for women”(p.100).

 We can see the corruptibility of the ruling classes, their mean, shallow spirited interests, and their intrigues against each other. At first sight they seem to be real gentlemen and ladies. But in fact they are spoiled people who try to achieve their aims, however bad and selfish they sometimes may be, at all costs.

 e.g. “Sir Robert Chiltern: Every man of ambition has to fight his

 century with its own weapons. What this century worships is

 wealth. The God of this century is wealth.”(206).

 It is evident what weapons Sir R.Chiltern means. It is money and the way it is earned by is unimportant. The way of earning money may be different: bribery, blackmail, forgery and other immoral actions. Once Sir Chiltern achieved his aims at the cost of his honour-he sold the secrete information. He had not any regret for what he had done. He said that he had fought the century with his own weapon and won. And when his misdemeanour was revealed, he tried to save himself.

 Another “immoralist” of the English society is Mrs.Cheveley.

 e.g. “Nowadays, with our modern mania for morality, every one has

 to pose as a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other

 seven deadly virtues”(p.192).

 “People are either hunting for husbands or hiding from

 them”(p.181).

 She also had achieved her aims by the immoral actions: bribery and blackmail.

 Most of Wilde’s characters are true representatives of their society. They are Lord Darlington, Lady Bracknell and especially Lord Illingworth, a person with cynical attitude towards everything in the world, who does not value the sincere human relations, to whom love, friendship ,faithfulness mean nothing. This can be clearly seen from some of his remarks.