Epithet is a stylistic device based on the interaction of the logical and emotive meanings. It shows the purely individual emotional attitude of the writer or the speaker towards the object mentioned. Epithet is expressed by:
1) adjectives;
2) adverbs; Adjectives and adverbs constitute the greatest majority of epithets.
3) participles, both present and past;
4) nouns, especially often in of-phrases;
5) word-combinations;
6) whole phrases. The last two groups of epithets help the writer in a rather concise form to express the emotional attitude of a personage towards an object or phenomenon. In most cases it is a direct quotation of the character’s remark. Such a usage of a quotation for an epithet stresses the subjectivity, individuality of the character’s perception. It renders the emotional attitude of the personage. Phrase-epithet helps not only to reveal the individual view of the author and his characters but at the same time to do it in a rather economical manner. One more structural type of epithet is “monopolized” by the English language. It is based on the illogical syntactical relations between the modifier and the modified. Such constructions enable the writer to use nouns of high emotional coloring, supplying them with additional characteristics without overcrowding the description. Epithets vary not only in structure but in the manner of application too. So, most often we meet one-word, or simple epithet. Rather often epithets are used in pairs. Not seldom three, four, five and even more epithets are joined in chains. From the viewpoint of their expressive power epithets can be regarded as those stressing qualities of the object or phenomenon and as those transferring the quality of one object to its closest neighbour. When the same definition is given to a smile it becomes an individual evaluation of the same, and is classified as a transferred epithet. A metaphoric epithet presents a metaphor within an epithet. In most cases metaphoric epithet is expressed by adjectives and adverbs. Into the same group of metaphoric epithets must be included compound epithets, the second element of which is “-like”. As all the other stylistic devices, epithets become hackneyed through long usage. Epithets should not be mixed up with logical attributes which have the same syntactical function but which do not convey the subjective attitude of the author towards the described object, pointing out only the objectively existing feature of the same.
e.g. “Can you tell me what time that game starts today?” The girl gave him a lipsticky smile.
Hyperbole
Hyperbole is a stylistic device based on the interaction between the logical and emotive meanings of a word. It is a deliberate over statement. Both the writer and the reader (or the speaker and the listener) are fully aware of the deliberateness of the exaggeration. The use of hyperbole shows the overflow of emotions in the speaker, and the listener is carried away by the flood. Very often the hyperbole is used to create humorous or satirical effect and so to express the author’s attitude towards the described. Through continuous usage hyperbole may lose its originality and become trite. A kind of hyperbole with the same inner mechanism of the device is presented by understatement which is, too, based on the interaction between the logical and emotive meaning and shows the overflow of the speaker’s sentiments. The specific feature of this kind of hyperbole is the direction of the exaggeration: hyperbole enlarges, while understatement deliberately diminishes the described object, phenomenon, etc. e.g. “The little woman, for she was of pocket size, crossed her hands solemnly on her middle.”
Oxymoron
Oxymoron is based on the interaction of logical and emotive meanings. It presents a combination of two contrasting ideas. The oxymoron reveals the contradictory sides of one and the same phenomenon. One of its components discloses some objectively existing feature or quality, while the other one serves to convey the author’s personal attitude towards the same. The structure of oxymoron is extremely varied. By most critics it is regarded as an attributive syntagma. As soon as an oxymoron gets into circulation it loses its most characteristic feature of bringing two opposite ideas together and becomes a phraseological unit.
e.g. awfully nice, pretty bad, mighty small.