THE COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE STYLISTIC FUNCTIONS OF PARADOX IN THE WORKS OF E. WAUGH AND R. DAHL

Abstract

The article is devoted to the comparative analysis of the stylistic functions of paradox in the novel of E.Waugh “Decline and Fall” and short stories by Roald Dahl. There is some diffi culty in studying paradox, which lies in the fact, that this phenomena has several meanings. Its explanation can be found in many dictionaries, encyclopaedias and references, as the term “paradox” is met in various spheres of human’s thought, and used in Philosophy, Literature Study, Logics, Stylistics, Rhetoric. II is obvious, that each discipline uses the term of “paradox” to mark different things. Due to the theoretical analysis of the scientifi c literature it was defi ned, that stylistic paradox is a grammatically correct utterance, a functional unit, which can take a form of a word up to the composite syntactic whole; it is characterized by logical and semantic contradictoriness of its components, expressed in its form and context; despite sound reasoning from acceptable premises, it leads to a conclusion that seems senseless, logically unacceptable, or self-contradictory but nonetheless it is true. Paradox can be characterized by the following features: alogism; simultaneous realization of contrast and alikeness relations; generalization; unexpectedness in interpretation of wellknown and common subject. According to the syntactical organization of the contradiction in the works of fi ction paradoxes are realized on the levels of: word combination, sentence, micro-context, and on the level of the literary work as a whole.
It was defi ned, that stylistic paradoxes of the novel “Decline and Fall” and short stories by Roald Dahl fulfi l the following stylistic functions: demonstrative, persuasive, satirical and cognitive, among which the satirical function is presented by the greater number of the paradoxes, found in the works of both writers.