A Linguistic Study Of English Antonymy And Its Rhetorical Application

This dissertation is a study of antonymy in English from linguistic and rhetorical approaches, especially its semantic features and rhetorical application.There is no consensus about the defining of antonymy. Traditional view classifies antonyms into root antonyms and derivational antonyms from morphological point of view. With more semantic than morphological concern, modern linguists categorize opposites into various types, but the term antonym is narrowed only to refer to gradable opposites, excluding other types of opposites such as complementaries and converse terms, etc. The too strict sense goes against the fact that antonymy is commonly used in natural languages. This study holds that the term antonym is to include various types of opposites, (i.e., antonyms in a wider sense) on the condition that the two words are semantically contrasted and have shared semantic range. Antonymy possesses several unique properties such as binarity, inherentness and patency.Although antonymy is considered as a kind of opposition by some linguists, in order to study antonymy in rhetorical use, antonyms are equal to opposites in a wider sense. The properties of various opposites are explored in detail with reference to their semantic characteristics, with emphasis paid on gradable opposite and its properties like comparison, committedness and markedness. In order to have a better understanding of the nature of antonymy, near-opposites which do contrast in some way but are not considered true antonyms are also examined.As an important semantic relation, antonymy is often rhetorically used in the practice of language. There is the use of only one member rhetorically, but more often seen is the co-occurrence of both members of an antonym pair used either literally (semantically normal) or figuratively (semantically abnormal). The bases of the co-occurrence are explored psychologically and philosophically, and the syntactic frames of the co-occurrence are observed. Antonymy is closely associated with the forming of idioms and figures of speech to achieve rhetorical effect such as expressiveness, forcefulness, humor, and sarcasm. What makes it possible for the rhetorical effect to be felt is the rationale for the working mechanism of antonymy. By human inference arrives the deep unity through sorts of superficial opposition.