ANALYSIS OF LEXICAL EXPRESSIVE MEANS AND STYLISTIC DEVICES

Abstract

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.
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.