Stylistics is a branch of General Linguistics

Rubicon, benefit o f clergy, cut the Gordian knot, the hell-fire club; the war o f the Roses.

2. 
   Emotive and evaluative Ph.U. characterized by the use o f
   

emotive and evaluative words, interjections and exclamations {By Jove!; Good Heavens!; For M ercy ’s sake!; Good Lord!) and emo­ tive stylistic devices such as epithet: tender age; guardian angel; sleeping bleauty; knife-and-fork debater, a bird of paradise; irony: wholesome as a shoulder o f mutton to a sick horse', agree like cats and dogs; graceful as a hog on ice; hyperbole: to give worlds fo r smb.; work one ’s fingers to the bone; haven ’t seen smb. fo r ages', oxym oron: at a snail's gallop; busy idleness; one'spet aversion.

3. 
   Expressive Ph.U . containing different types o f inten- sifiers: too good to be true; beyond expression; at the very loose; too big fo r one's boots/shoes/trousers; at the very nick o f time; by all means; too much water drowned the miller; as much as o n e ’s life is worth; too clever by half; beyond expectations; beat smb. all to pieces; too many cooks spoil the broth; be the whole show.
   

One o f the major tasks o f Stylistic Phraseology is to study Ph.U. in the process o f their functioning in the text. Here Ph.U. may undergo noticeable changes and occasional transformations:

1. 
   S ubstitution o f com ponents: Sometimes I get fe d up with all mumbojumbo and abracadabra making it holy mysteries about simple things that I like to call a spade a shovel (cf. to call a spade a spade);
   
2. 
   A ddition of com ponents: She would have to go as before ju s t dropping people who were “t a l ly ”. But who w asn ’t? It was the thing to be “catty ”. They all scratched other people ’s backs and faces too when they weren 7 looking. Who in society was exempt from scratches and who didn 7 scratch. Not to scratch a little was so dreadfully dull. She couldn 7 imagine a scratchless life except perhaps in Italy (Galsworthy, 1956:65).
   

The Ph.U. “to scratch one’s backs” has additional com­ ponents “other people”, “and faces too”. Undoubtedly it intensifies
expressiveness o f the Ph.U. and refreshes the figurative mea­ ning o f Ph.U. Besides, a peculiar use o f the Ph.U. components in the chain o f the correlated words “scratches - to scratch - scratchless life" gives stimulus to additional associations which contribute much to the “renewal”.

3. 
   Ellipsis: He complained to Fleur that the book dealt with nothing but birds in the bush: it was unpractical (Galsworthy, The Silver Spoon); (cf. a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush);
   
4. 
   Inversion: to play a trick: It might not have been a very' nice trick he had played ’, to wear the mask of: Oh! What a m ask you have been wearing all these years! A horrible painted mask!
   
5. 
   Decomposition of Ph.U. Ph.U., as is known, is viewed not as an aggregate o f descrete elements, but as a whole. It means that the meaning o f the whole cannot be derived from the meanings o f the component parts. Decomposition consists in revising the inde­ pendent meaning o f the components o f phraseological units. The following example is interesting in this respect:
   

It wws raining cats and dogs and two kittens and a puppy landed on my window-sill (Chesterton).
The Ph.U. “to rain cats and dogs" is decomposed because each o f its components is used in its independent literal meaning. Decomposition here destroys the wholeness o f the Ph.U. and leads to an absurdity w hich in its turn entails a humourous effect.

4. 
   STY LISTIC SYNTAX
   

Stylistic Syntax deals with the problems o f syntactical expressive means and stylistic devices. It should be noted that the stylistic potential o f syntax is very high due to the structural diversity o f syntax. Therefore the syntactical aspect o f the language is considered a crucial issue in stylistic analysis.

are many emphatic structures in the English language:
Only after dinner did I make up my mind to go there.
It was after he had returned home that I told him news. It was not until M ay that we received a letterfrom him. It is twenty years since he has been working here.
It was you who made me a liar. To come tonight.
I do believe him.
A great majority o f emphatic structures are based on inversion, i.e. violation o f a traditional word-order:
Rude am I in my speech (Shakespeare);
Talent he has, capital he has not (Dickens);
Beautiful those donkeys were (Mansfield); '"i
Her love letters I returned to the detectives... (Greene).
Another noticeable cases o f stylistic syntax are detached and parenthetical constructions like: Daylight was dying, the moon rising, gold behind the poplars.
There are many SDs based on the syntactical arrangement o f an utterance. They are: parallel constructions, chiasmus, repetition, enumeration, suspense, gradation, antithesis, rhetorical question, ellipsis, represented speech, litotes. All these stylistic devices are regarded as elaborate designs aimed to produce a definite impact on the reader. In the belles-lettres text they assume various stylistic functions: to fix the reader’s attention, to intensify the utterance, to attach logical and emotional emphasis, to contribute to the rhyth­ mical quality o f the utterance, to secure emotional tension and so on. M ost interesting are the cases when the convergence o f syntac­ tical stylistic devices and expressive means is utilized in the text. The following is an interesting example illustrating the stylistic effectiveness o f the syntactical convergence:
Poor, poor dear Cat... this was the end o f the trap. This Was what people got fo r loving each other. Thank Godfo r gas, anyway. What must it have been like before there were anaesthetics? Once it
they were in the mill-race... You never got away with any­ thing. Gel away hell! It would what if she would die? She won 7 die. People won 7 die in childbirth nowdays. That was what all husbands thought. Yes. but what i f she should die? She won’t die. She’s ju s t having a bad time. The initial labor is usually protracted. She’s only having a bad time. Afterward w e ’d say what a bad time and Catherine would say it wasn 7 really so bad. But what i f she should die. She can 7 die. Yes, but what i f she should die? She can 7, 1 tell you. Don 7 be a Jool. I t ’s ju st a bad lime. I t ’s ju st nature giving the hell. Yes, but what i f she should die? She can 7 die. Why would she die? What reason is there fo r her to die? There’s ju s t a child that has to be born. It makes trouble and is born and then you look after it and get fo n d o f it maybe. But what i f she should die? She won 7 die. But what i f she should die? She won 7. She’s all right. But what i f she should die? She can 7 die. But what i f she should die? Hey, what about that? What i f she should die?
This extract excerpted from Hemingway’s novel “A Farewell to Arm” demonstrates the role of syntactical structures in conveying stylistic and conceptual infonnation of the utterance, it is the con­ vergence of syntactical means that makes the whole of the parag­ raph extremely emotive. Suffice it to mention that here a great deal of syntactical expressive means such as parallel constructions, ellipsis questions-in-the-narrative and stylistic devices such as represented speech, rhetorical question, repetition, polysyndeton, gradation are used. The whole extract is given in the form of the represented speech that conveys to the reader the inner speech of the character, his emotional state of anxiety, fear for the life of his wife. A special emphasis should be made on the recurrence of the phrase “and what if she should die?” repeated here ten times. It is by no means accidental. The repetition is used here to show that the character is under the stress of strong emotions. Besides it fixes the attention of the reader on the key words of the utterance, and creates the effect o f gradation, i.e. gradual increase o f emotional tension.