B. Interaction of different types of lexical meaning

LEXICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC

DEVICES

A. INTENTIONAL MIXING OF THE STYLISTIC ASPECT OF WORDS

BATHOS

Heterogeneity of the component parts of the utterance is the basis for a stylistic device called bathos. This device is half linguistic, half logical. Unrelated elements are brought together as if they denoted things equal in rank or belonging to one class, as if they were of the same stylistic aspect. By being forcibly linked together, the elements acquire a slight modification of meaning.

" But oh? ambrosial cash! Ah! who would lose thee?

When we no more can use, or even abuse thee! "

(" Don Juan")

Ambrosial is a poetic word meaning 'delicious', 'fragrant', 'divine'. Cash is a common colloquial word meaning 'money', 'money that a person actually has', 'ready money'.

Whenever literary words come into collision with non-literary ones there arises incongruity, which in any style is always deliberate, inasmuch as a style presupposes a conscious selection of language means.

This device is a very subtle one and not always discernible even to an experienced literary critic. The difficulty lies first of all in the inability of the inexperienced reader to perceive the incongruity of the component parts of the utterance. Byron often uses bathos, for example,

" They grieved for those who perished with the cutter

And also for the biscuit-casks and butter."

The copulative conjunction and as well as the adverb also suggest the homogeneity of the concepts those who perished and biscuit-casks and butter. The people who perished are placed on the same level as the biscuits and butter lost at the same time.

B. INTERACTION OF DIFFERENT TYPES OF LEXICAL MEANING

Words in context, as has been pointed out, may acquire additional lexical meanings not fixed in dictionaries, what we have called contextual meanings. The latter may sometimes deviate from the

dictionary meaning to such a degree that the new meaning even becomes the opposite of the primary meaning, as, for example, with the word sophisticated (see p. 121). This is especially the case when we deal with transferred meanings.

What is known in linguistics as transferred meaning is practically the interrelation between two types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual. The contextual meaning will always depend on the dictionary (logical) meaning to a greater or lesser extent. When the deviation from the acknowledged meaning is carried to a degree that it causes an unexpected turn in the recognized logical meanings, we register a stylistic device.

The transferred meaning of a word may be fixed in dictionaries as a result of long and frequent use of the word other than in its primary meaning. In this case we register a derivative meaning of the word. The term 'transferred' points to the process of formation of the derivative meaning. Hence the term 'transferred' should be used, to our mind, as a lexicographical term signifying diachronically the development of the semantic structure of the word. In this case we do not perceive two meanings.

When, however, we perceive two meanings of a word simultaneously, we are confronted with a stylistic device in which the two meanings interact.