XIII Международная студенческая научная конференция Студенческий научный форум - 2021

Oxymoron is a combination of two words (mostly “adjective + noun” or “adverb + adjective”) in which the meanings of the two clash, being opposite in sense, for example: “low skyscraper”, “horribly beautiful”, “honest thief”. The word oxymoron is autological, i.e. it is itself an example of an oxymoron.It comes from the Ancient Greek word oxymoron, a compound of the words oxus, meaning “sharp” or “keen” and moros, meaning “dull” or “stupid.” Therefore, it means something akin to wise foolishness.

If the primary meaning of the qualifying word changes, the stylistic effect of oxymoron is lost. Some oxymoronic groups, if repeated frequently, lose their stylistic quality and gradually fall into the group of acknowledged word-combinations which consist of an intensifier and the concept intensified. This is the case with former oxymoronic combinations (“awfully nice”, “awfully glad”, “terribly sorry” and the like) have lost their primary logical meaning and are now used with emotive meaning only, as intensifiers. The essence of oxymoron consists in the capacity of the primary meaning of the adjective or adverb to resist for the overwhelming power of semantic change which words undergo in combination.

In oxymoron the logical meaning holds fast because there is no true word-combination, only the juxtaposition of two non-combinative words. But there’s still a peculiar change in the meaning of the qualifying word. It assumes a new life in oxymoron, definitely indicative of the assessing tendency in the writer’s mind.

The main structural model of oxymoron is “adjective + noun”. The resistance of the two component parts to fusion into one unit manifests itself most strongly in this structural model (“open secret”, “old news”, “wise fool”). In the “adverb + adjective” model the change of meaning in the first element is more rapid and the resistance to the unifying process is not so strong (“falsely true”, “friendly fire”). However, the tendency to combine the uncombinative can be found in structurally different models. For example: “verb + adverb” (“to groan loudly”), “adjective + adjective” (“hateful good”).

Depending on the sense relation obtained between the two terms comprising the oxymoron, two types of oxymoron can be distinguished: direct and indirect. Examples of direct oxymoron are: “wet dryness” and “sound silence”. These cases are characterized by the fact that the head noun and the modifiers represent direct antonyms. Typically, direct antonyms are two lexical items that represent two opposite poles on a certain dimension as in hot and cold where the relevant dimension is heat, wet and dry where the relevant dimension is wetness.

The indirect oxymoron can be defined as an oxymoron in which one of the terms is not the direct antonym of the other but rather the hyponym of its antonym. The indirect oxymoron can be illustrated by examples such as “whistling silence”, “sunny coldness” and “watery dryness”. In “whistling silence”, whistling represents the hyponym of sound, which is the antonym of the head noun of the oxymoron – silence.

Sometimes the tendency to use oxymoron is the mark of certain literary trends. Poets try to join words of contradictory meaning together in search of new shades of meaning in existing words (“peopled desert”, “populous solitude”, “proud humility”). At times an oxymoron may call attention to the dual nature of an object or concept (“sweet sorrow”). Other examples of oxymoron from Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet – “loving hate”, “heavy lightness”, “bright smoke”, “cold fire” and “sick health”.

Oxymoron also draws attention to different ideas. For example, when Hamlet kills Polonius, Hamlet says: "I must be cruel only to be kind". Cruelty and kindness are opposite traits, yet Hamlet pairs them together in the idea that murder is a charitable act when the victim is a betrayer. Oxymoron also may present a concept in a new light to emphasize the author’s creativity.

Oxymoron is used to indicate sarcasm and satire especially when the opposition is between personal feelings and the reality. For example: “I despise its very vastness and power. It has the poorest millionaires, the littlest great men, the haughtiest beggars, the plainest beauties, the lowest skyscrapers, the dolefulest pleasure of any town I ever saw”. In this example, taken from «The Duel» by O. Henry, six pairs of oxymoron are used in describing the same society. With such a striking contrast, the emptiness, corruption and vanity of the noble society is satirized.

All in all, oxymoron is a lexical device which syntactic and semantic structures come to clashes. It is a figure of speech that:

combines two words or ideas usually thought of as opposite or incompatible;

is intentional;

is short and self – contained;

can be direct and indirect;

is used to produce various rhetorical functions.

Finally, it could be said that oxymoron reflects the complexities and ironies of life itself and of things not being quite what they seem. Oxymoron makes the reader think more deeply about the multiple meanings of experience.

List of references:

Chuanyu, F. Linguistic and Rhetorical Approach to Antonymy in English, 2008.

M. Flayih. A Linguistic Study of Oxymoron, 2009. 40 p.

Galperin I.R. English Stylistics. Moscow: USSR, 2014. 333 p.

Small, K. Oxymoron, 2008.

Harris, P. A Handbook of Rhetorical Devices, 2008.

Literary devices. Definition of Oxymoron http://www.literarydevices.com/oxymoron/