Lexical Expressive Means and Stylistic Devices

Interjections and Exclamatory Words. Interjections are words we use when 
we express our feelings strongly and which may be said to exist in language as 
conventional symbols of human emotions. In traditional grammars the interjection 
is regarded as a part of speech. 
e. g. Oh, where are you going to, all you Big Steamers? 
The interjection oh, by itself may express various feelings such as regret, 
despair, disappointment, sorrow, surprise and many others. Interjections can be 
divided into primary and derivative. Primary interjections are generally devoid of 
any logical meaning. Interjections such as: Heavens! Good gracious! God knows! 
Bless me! are exclamatory words generally used as interjections. The epithet 
is based on the interplay of emotive and logical meaning in an attributive word, 
phrase or even sentence, used to characterize an object and pointing out to the 
reader some of the properties or features of the object with the aim of giving an 
individual perception and evaluation of these features or properties.
17
Classification of Epithets 
From the point of view of their compositional structure epithets may be 
divided into: 
1) simple (adjectives, nouns, participles): e.g. He looked at them in animal panic. 
2) compound: e.g. apple - faced man; 
3) sentence and phrase epithets: e.g. It is his do - it - yourself attitude. 
4) reversed epithets - composed of 2 nouns linked by an of-phrase: e.g. "a shadow 
of a smile"; 
Semantically according to I. Galperin epithets are divided into: 
1) associated with the noun following it, pointing to a feature which is essential to 
the objects they describe: e.g. dark forest; careful attention. 
2) unassociated with the noun, epithets that add a feature which is unexpected and 
which strikes the reader: e.g. smiling sun, voiceless sounds. 
17
Angermuller J (2018) Truth after post-truth: for a strong programme in discourse studies. Palgrave Commun 
4(1):30. 

---

36 
Oxymoron is a combination of two words in which the meaning is opposite 
in sense. 
e. g. speaking silence, cold fire, living death. 
Close to oxymoron is paradox - a statement that is absurd on the surface. 
e.g. War is peace. The worse - the better. 
Trite oxymoron. e.g. Awfully beautiful. 
CLUSTER 
Words in a context may acquire additional lexical meanings 
not fixed in the 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. What is known in linguistics as 
transferred meaning is practically the interrelation between two 
types of lexical meaning: dictionary and contextual. 
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. Hence the term transferred should be used 
signifying the development of the semantic structure of the word. 
In this case we do not perceive two meanings. When we perceive 
two meanings of the word simultaneously, we are confronted with 
a stylistic device in which the two meanings interact.