第十章 PERSONIFICATION，ZOOSEMY，ONOMATOPOEIA.2
（Tristan Jones）
6. The rangy dog darted from between the wheels and ran ahead. Instantly two ranch shepherds flew out at him. Then all three stopped and with stiff quivering tails, with taut straight legs, with ambassadorial dignity, they slowly circled, sniffing daintily.
（J. Steinbeck）
7. Oak sighed a deep honest sigh — none the less so in that, being like the sigh of a pine plantation, it was rather noticeable as a disturbance of the atmosphere.
（T. Hardy）
8. And now, if I had time and room to describe the state of men's fair, in the country through which I have passed, I should show, that the people at Westminster would have known how to turn paradise itself into hell.
（Cobbett）
9. The crowd began to hiss and boo him for his unsportsmanlike conduct, but he sat unmoved. Another great outburst of applause was Danny's as he walked back across the ring. When Danny stirred, there were ohs! and ahs! of delight.
（J. London）
第十一章 IRONY, PARADOX, OXYMORON, INNUENDO, SARCASM
11.1 Irony
11.1A Irony的含义与形式
1） Irony译作“反语”，一般指用同本意相反的词语表示本意。例如明明天气不好，却故意说：
It's a nice, pleasant sort of weather indeed!
又如英语中的Gotham是有名的愚人村，却故意说：
They are almost as wise as the wise men of Gotham.
2） 英语中的反语可分为三种类型：
第一种叫Verbal irony，指说话人利用词汇、语法手段表示明显的反意，例如：
It must be delightful to find oneself in a foreign country without a penny in one's pocket.
I stayed in the hospital ten days with my sister who was dying. Barbara, my ex-best friend, came to my house to look after my children. She helped things out and took my things out. She did help!
（CNN, Dec. 1993）
第二种叫Circumstantial irony，也叫Irony of fate，指由于事态的发展同某人原来的意料或期待相反而造成的一种嘲弄。例如在Kate Chopin的短篇小说The Story of an Hour中，Mallard太太得知丈夫因车祸去世的消息时表面上一阵号哭，心底里却暗自高兴，她早就盼望的一天来到了，不禁低声对自己说：“Free! Body and soul free!”但当她暗自得意时，丈夫突然出现在门口！原来他大难不死，安然回家，而Mallard太太却由于这突如其来的刺激而心脏病发作，不治身亡，这是否算命运多舛？
第三种叫Dramatic irony，它同上面第二种密切相关，区别在于它往往指作者对Irony of fate叙述中带总结性的画龙点睛之笔，突出戏剧性的转变，如Kate Chopin在上面那个故事结尾时写道：
When the doctors came, they said she had died of heart disease — of joy that kills.
句中的joy语义双关：医生们以为她是由于看到丈夫生还后欣喜至极，以致引发心脏病；故事的读者则不难看到事情正好相反——她是乐极生悲，是由于庆幸丈夫去世过分激动了，结果又事与愿违，受到突然刺激而猝死的。
Dramatic irony也指作家利用上下文或特定的历史背景暗示某段话所表示的是反义，这种反语较为含蓄。例如下例中的“西方的良心”就是反话，因为以色列人从西方大国在1973年阿以冲突中的所作所为中发现，他们的一切言行实际上都是从维护自己的利益出发的，因而有种“痛心疾首”之感：
In the October 1973 war，Israel ... also suffered an acute understanding of the “conscience of the west” under oil pressure.
11.1B Irony的使用
反语是一种很常用的修辞手法，但使用中应掌握分寸，即不可滥用，让别人难以接受，又不宜过于隐晦，使人家难以明白你的真正意思。在使用反语时，必须处理好反语的线索（Clue），这也是我们分析和理解反语的钥匙。
反语线索主要表现为3个特点：
1） 形式与内容之间不协调，或辞面意义和辞里含义之间形成反差。例如：
Conscience is the inner voice which warns us that someone may be looking.
（H. L. Mencken）
上面这个句子以严肃、庄重的措辞开头，俨然是道德家或牧师说教布道，但所论及的内容却根本不搭界，这就是形式与内容之间的矛盾，也是反语的线索，例如：
“Every time we trusted Democrats,” says House Republican Whip Newt Gingrich, “they cheated.” Such kindergarden compliments were happily returned.
（Gloria Barger）
这里的反语生动刻画了共和党和民主党议员们争吵程度之激烈和用词之尖刻。字面上似乎在“愉快地回报赞美”，实际上却是“猛烈抨击无稽之谈”。
2） 口气与内容之间的反衬，著名英国讽刺作家Jonathan Swift的名篇A Modest Proposal就是这样的一个范例。作者开头以郑重的口气从关系国家存亡的高度提出解决爱尔兰问题的“建议”：为了解决粮食不足和人口过多的双重难题，对那些穷人的小孩除“留种”者以外，应一律出售给富人家做“美味佳肴”。该“建议”说道：
... a young healthy child well nursed is at a year old a most delicious, nourishing, and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricassee or a ragout.
作者以“漫不经心”的口吻把这样一个充满血腥味的“建议”说得冠冕堂皇，正是为了对处于统治地位那些道貌岸然的衣冠禽兽进行无情的揭露和讽刺。
下例也是以淡然的口气提出严峻的社会主题：
By midmorning a forty-one-year-old teacher had been shot dead, with his security card in hand, and another teacher struck by two nine-millimeter bullets, was extraordinarily lucky to be alive. Two others narrowly escaped Nicholas Elliot's bullets.
The Atlantic杂志的这篇文章是有关一名中学生在学校拔出手枪打老师的报道，试想事情发生在学校，大白天，在每个人都有Social Security Card的美国，其严重性怎能用文字表达？于是作者干脆反其道而行之，以幽默的笔调“轻描淡写”，这样，却能更好地引起读者反思，唤起人们对美国严重社会问题的注意。
3） 词语的异常搭配或突降、双关等辞格的出现都可能是反语的标志，例如：
Heark ye, Clinker, you are a most notorious offender — you stand convicted of sickness, hunger, wretchedness, and want.
（Tobias Smollett）
动词短语“Stand convicted of”系法律用语，意为“犯有……罪”，但句中这个短语后面跟着的却不是什么罪行，而是一连串表示饥饿、贫困和不幸的词语，作者采用这种不同于常规的词语组合，意在嘲笑不合理的法律观念，为穷人鸣不平。又如：
He （Henry Ford） announced to the press that he'd turn over his war profits to the government.
But there's no record that he ever did.
（John Dos Passos）
俗话讽刺有的人讲空话“只听楼梯响，未见人下楼”，这位先生做得更绝，他居然通过新闻媒介夸下海口，收买人心，而行动呢？一点没有，从语言结构上看，这是一种突降，而且从but分句另起一段，用意是增强突降力度，产生强烈的反语讽刺效果。又如：
First Gentleman: Thou art always figuring disease in me, but thou art full of error, I am sound.
Lucio: Nay, not as one would say, healthy; but so sound as things that are hollow; impety has made a feast thee.
（W. Shakespeare）
这里“sound”一词语义双关；前者表示自己身体结实（响当当），后者反其意思而用之，说他那个酒色之徒身体极为虚亏（像空心的东西那样一碰就当当响），这是利用双关讲反语的一个好范例。
11.2 Irony的几种变异形式
11.2A Paradox
汉语里称这一辞格为“反论”，“逆论”，即乍听似乎荒唐而实际上却有道理的某种说法，故有人称之为“翻筋斗的真理”。例如：
More haste, less speed.
Paradoxically （enough）, the faster he tried to finish, the longer it seemed to take him.
In fact, it appears that the teachers of English teach English so poorly largely because they teach grammar so well.
（W. Johnson）
这里需要说明，对我们中国学生来说，英语语法还是需要学的，只是不应该把语法条条扣得太细太死，或机械地“以语法为纲”，因为那样的确不利于英语学习。
11.2B Oxymoron
1） 汉语称此辞格为“矛盾修饰法”，例如cruel kindness, bitter-sweet memories等，修饰成分与被修饰成分之间或修饰成分内部看起来有矛盾，实则相反相成。
2） 矛盾修饰结构主要有以下5种形式：
Adj.+N. creative destruction, living death, tearful joy, etc.
Adj.+Adj. cold pleasant manner, sour-sweet days, poor rich guys, etc.
Adv.+Adj. dully bright, mercifully fatal, falsely true, etc.
V.+Adv. hasten slowly （=make haste slowly）, shine darkly, groan loudly, etc.
N.+N. love-hate relationship, the sound of silence, etc.
11.2C Innuendo
汉语称“暗讽”是用婉转的口气讲反话。例如：
— Have you finished my book yet?
— Sorry, I stopped at page 412, with 407 pages to go.
答话人表示已读了412页，但不想再读下去了。又如：
— It's rather cold today, isn't it?
— But the weatherman said it would be warm. He must take his readings in a bathroom.
说话人是笑气象员的预报不准确。
11.2D Sarcasm
1） 同Innuendo相反，Sarcasm是指尖刻的挖苦，甚至是严厉的叱责，汉语中称作“讽刺”、“讥讽”、“挖苦”，等，常常是单刀直入，不留情面地以反话指责别人，使人家在感情上受到刺激甚至伤害。例如：
When children call a boy “Four Eyes” because he wears glasses, they are speaking in sarcasm.
“How unselfish you are!” said Ellen in sarcasm as her sister took the biggest piece of cake.
（Liang Shin-chiu）
2） Sarcasm和Irony, Satire同义，区别在于：Sarcasm的特点是尖刻，往往蓄意中伤或讥讽，Irony的特点是幽默或俏皮，故意使用同本意相反的说法，必须靠其语调或笔调表示真意；Satire可用来泛指Irony, Sarcasm等，其特点是用来讽刺社会现象或一些人，不像sarcasm那样指个人。试比较：
（A） Irony
In the novel Vanity Fair, W. M. Thackeray comments of a “good woman” that “those who know a really good woman are aware that she is not in a hurry to forgive, and that the humiliation of an enemy is a triumph to her soul.”
（B） Satires
A Kid being mounted on the roof of a lofty house, and seeing a Wolf pass below, began to revile him. The Wolf merely stopped to reply: “Oh, my brave friend, it is not you who revile me, but the place on which you are standing.”
（Aesop's Fables）
（C） Sarcasm
In the evening the poor wounded boy was taken to that experienced doctor, who by applying some poisonous concoction of crushed leaves to his left eye, succeeded in blinding him!
练习十一 （Exercise Eleven）
I. Preview Questions:
1. What are the three types of Irony?
2. Why is it said that Paradox implies some “truth which has turned a somersault”?
3. Can you tell the five common constructions of Oxymoron with examples?
4. Which is stronger and more direct between Innuendo and Sarcasm?
5. Irony, Sarcasm and Satire can be regarded as synonyms; each one of them, however, has something different from another either in meaning or usage. Do you agree with this statement?
6. Can you analyse the clue in an Irony with an example?
II. Identify the figure used in each sentence:
1. While in bed, she called to mind all the sour-sweet days.
2. That man's as practical as Don Quixote.
3. — Have you finished my book yet?
— Sorry, I stopped at page 412, with 407 pages to go.
4. At eleven, she enjoyed the fright of reading Dracula.
5. How great you are to lord it over a small nation!
6. The child is father to the man.
III. Read the following and then decide whether each of the statements is true （T） or false （F）:
Irony is using words in a sense very different from their usual meaning, often, in fact, the very reverse of it. The simplest form occurs when a term is given its opposite meaning. Here, for example, a historian describes a party at the court of the English King James I:
Later the company flocked to the windows to look into the palace courtyard below. Here a vast company had already assembled to watch the King's bears fight with greyhounds, and mastiffs bait a tethered bull. These delights were succeeded by tumblers on tightropes and displays of horsemanship.
（C. P.V. Akrigg）
By “delights” we are expected to understand “abominations,” “detestable acts of cruelty.”
In subtler forms irony plays more lightly over words, pervading an entire passage rather than twisting any single term into its opposite. An instance occurs in this sentence （the writer is commenting upon the decline of the medieval Knight at Arms）:
In our end of time the chevalier has become a Knight of Pythias, or Columbus, or the Temple, who solemnly girds on sword and armor to march past his own drugstore.
（Morris Bishop）
None of Bishop's words means its reverse. Indeed the whole sentence is to be read literally. Still, Bishop intends us to smile at modern men playing at knighthood. The irony is found in the fact that some of the words ought not to be taken literally. A twentieth-century business man ought not to “solemnly gird on sword and armor,” unconscious of the disparity between romantic ideals and modern life.
Disparity is the common denominator in both these examples of irony: the difference between the ideal and the actual, between what we profess and what we do, between what we expect and what we get. In stressing such disparities, irony is fundamentally different from simile and metaphor, which build upon similarity. The whole point of irony is that things are not what they seem or what they should be or what we want them to be. They are different.
Irony reveals these differences in several ways. One is by using words in a double sense （“delights”）, making them signify both the ideal and the actual. Another is by setting side by side contrasting images of what could be （or once was） and what is （the chevalier girding on his sword and the neighborhood druggist）. Either way, we are made conscious of the gap between “ought” and “is”: people ought to treat dumb animals kindly, for instance; they do take pleasure in sadism.
Writers using irony must be reasonably sure that readers will understand the special sense in which they use their language. Sometimes the ironist depends upon the general knowledge and attitudes of the audience. Akrigg's ironic use of “delights” is successful because modern readers know that such amusements are not delightful. Here is another example of irony that is played off against the reader's values and expectations:
Proud as a peacock, NBC announced an uplifting afternoon of sports programming. “In Chicago,” the press release read, “six night club strong men compete for the title of ‘America's Toughest Bouncer’ as they throw a 110-pound stuntman for distance and accuracy, and run an obstacle course by leaping a bar and threading through a maze of chairs and tables to crash through a door.”
Supplementing this cultural offering was a chug-a-lug drinking contest, a tug-of-war between Teamsters and Longshoremen and a field-gunnery meet in which teams of the Royal navy in England race against the clock to dismantle a cannot, reassemble it and fire it three times.
（Melvin Durslag）
Durslag does not label the words “uplifting” and “cultural offering” as ironic. He depends upon his readers knowing that tossing a human being “for distance and accuracy” is not an uplifting cultural event. And he assumes-properly — that they will recognize the allusion to NBC's promotional slogan （“Proud as a peacock.”） and understand the irony.
Statements:
1. Irony differs from simile and metaphor by building upon similarities.
2. Irony usually contains the difference between the ideal and the actual, between what we profess and what we do, between what we expect and what we get.
3. “The press” in Durslag's passage is an example of Metonymy, referring to newspapers and magazines in general.
4. In Akrigg's description, “these delights” are in ironical sense, which are “not what they seem or what they should be or what we want them to be”.
5. According to Bishop, it is something ironical for modern people to “solemnly gird on sword and armor.”
6. The words “uplifting” and “cultural offering” are not ironic in Durslag's writing.
7. If you want to express your idea in an ironical way, you should see that your reader（s） understand the special sense of your wording, especially in written form where you can't resort to the help from intonations, gestures or facial expressions.
第十二章 HYPERBOLE, UNDERSTATEMENT, EUPHEMISM
12.1 Hyperbole
12.1A Hyperbole的含义与形式
1） 运用丰富的想象，在数量、形状或程度上加以渲染以增强表达效果，就是Hyperbole，汉语叫做“夸张”辞格。试比较：
一般表达方式 夸张说法
Thank you. / Thanks. Thanks a million.
John is a good second baseman. John is the greatest second baseman in the world.
They laughed heartily. They almost died laughing.
When she smiled, other people were all gay. Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.
I'm hungry. I'm starving!
2） 夸张的形式灵活多样，最基本的是下述两种：
一是用语法上的比较级、最高级结构或表示极端意义的词语。例如：
From his mouth flowed speech sweeter than honey.
So great was his splendor in arms that the sun's brilliance seemed dim by comparison.
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Mark Twain's description of a tree after an ice storm：
... it stands there the acme, the climax, the supremest possibility in art or nature, of bewildering, intoxicating, intolerable magnificence. One cannot make the words strong enough.
二是用数量或程度上大得多或小得多的词语。例如：
The two sisters are different in a thousand and one ways.
（On the New England weather） In the spring I have counted one hundred and thirty six different kinds of weather inside of four and twenty hours.
（Mark Twain）
12.1B Hyperbole的使用
1） 夸张是一种生动有力的强调形式，能给读者/听者造成深刻的形象或声响概念，因而在文学作品和日常生活中都很常见。例如：
For she was beautiful — her beauty made
The bright world dim, and everything beside
Seemed like the fleeting image of a shade.
雪莱的这些诗句同汉语中“沉鱼落雁之姿，闭月羞花之貌”异曲同工，通过夸张，使诗意极浓，形象极美。又如：
