REGINA KOŽENIAUSKIENĖ

Vilnius University

THE PLAY OF REWORKED PHRASEOLOGY IN THE MEDIA

KEYWORDS: reworked phraseology, syntactic destructive figures, accumulation, hyperbaton, parcellation, parenthesis.

INTRODUCTION

Living language everywhere in the world, even one as old as Lithuanian, is constantly renewing itself and adapting to the concerns of the times. The reworking of phraseology is one of the most striking examples of linguistic renewal: expressions and widely circulated quotations that seem to have become fixed for eternity—integral, indivisible, with a stable lexical and grammatical structure—are changed stylistically and semantically. Most importantly, this renewal has no end: each time, an author revitalizes even the same expression, creatively changing it in a different way and adapting it to new conditions and a new context¹. This testifies to the language’s “good health: it is dynamic, open, and strives to adapt to living reality”².

This article adopts a broad conception of phraseology³, whose most important distinguishing feature is the fixed nature of an expression, and according to which phraseology would include not so much figurative idioms (in this article, their

¹ For example, one can find a dozen or so completely different reworkings of the title of the well-known novel by Jonas Avyžius, The Time of the Emptying Homesteads: ranging from references to a shortage of funds and assessments of the state of “Sodra” to television’s metamorphoses and descriptions of politicians’ behavior. Here are a few: The Time of Dwindling Money, The Time of Television’s Ultimate Emptying, The Time for Building Fences, Now Is the Time for Channel-Hopping, The Time of Sodra’s Emptying, and so on (all the reworkings were selected from texts by Skirmantas Valulis, except the last, which is by Eugenija Gribauskienė).

² http://www.delfi.lt/news/daily/lithuania/v-alisauskas-kalbininkas-turi-buti-tarnas-o-ne-diktatorius.d?id=61285085#ixzz2S6oIKFCG.

³ Juozas Pikčilingis in Lithuanian stylistics included popular literary quotations, “winged” phrases, and Biblical sayings in the section on “Phraseology,” in addition to phraseological units (see Pikčilingis 1975: 361–370). Discussing ways of actualizing advertising language, Kazimieras Župerka mentions side by side not only the stylization and paraphrasing (reworkings) of phraseological units but also of quotations from well-known texts, proverbs, sayings, maxims, lines from poems, song motifs, and well-known (advertising) slogans, all belonging to the phenomenon of intertextuality (Župerka 2008: 89–90). The author of this article shares this view (see Koženiauskienė 2013: 60–86).

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(not many), but also, more broadly, commonly used fixed expressions of various types, “as well as such units of minor folklore as proverbs, sayings, riddles, conundrums, elements of fairy tales, games, counting-out rhymes, and imitations; in addition, curses, words used in various rituals and prayers, etiquette phrases and other expressions of politeness, aphorisms, maxims, well-known quotations or allusions to them, slogans, warnings, verbal elements of advertisements, and all sorts of other expressions not included in the preceding sections, provided they are sufficiently fixed, widespread, retrievable from memory, and their missing links are readily inferred” (Marcinkevičienė 2001: 83).

The relationship between traditional⁴ and re-created⁵ phraseology is reminiscent of ancient palimpsests⁶. Because writing materials were scarce, new texts were written on costly papyri or parchment after the old text had been scraped off; sometimes a third text replaced the second, and so on. The original, or even the secondary, text would show through, and it was sometimes possible to make out what had previously been written there. Sometimes these texts complemented one another quite by chance; at other times they clashed, provoking amusement, intrigue, or surprise. Likewise, re-created phraseology does not erase the familiar expression from the addressee’s memory, although it sometimes contradicts it; indeed, the expression and its context say everything the author did not say but wished to convey through playful subtext, in a quite different time, under changed living conditions and circumstances, and about other actors.

The re-creation of phraseology has been studied by Lithuanian and foreign scholars. In Lithuania, a doctoral dissertation has been devoted to it (Butkutė 2010), presenting a wide variety of ways of modifying phraseology: from expanding its composition, swapping components, and omitting them to developing it into a broader context. Nevertheless, many aspects of this topic remain unexplored and relevant. This article offers, for the first time, a new perspective on re-created phraseology: it describes and analyses it in the context of the syntactic figures that accompany it. Phraseology itself is usually figurative and meaningful, but the syntactic figures arranged around it add still more playfulness and new content from a stylistic perspective.

The subject of the article is the very latest 2013 journalistic texts⁷ (the main sources are online newspapers Lrytas.lt, Respublika.lt, Delfi.lt,

⁴ Further: conventional, familiar.

⁵ Further: occasional, renewed, paraphrased.

⁶ Gr. palimpsēstos – scraped off anew.

⁷ Evaluative critical, polemical, and political commentaries and editorials in the publicistic style.

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15min.lt, TV antenna) the context of the reworked phraseology and the syntactic figures accompanying it is used. The aim is to show the relationship between playfully reworked phraseology and the most prominent destructive figures, the rhetorical function they perform, their place in paragraph structure, and to reveal the reasons for their use. The research methods are descriptive, stylistic-structural, and semantic analysis.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN REWORKED PHRASEOLOGY AND DESTRUCTIVE FIGURES

All syntactic figures—both constructive and destructive⁸ (Клюев 2001: 238–261)—transform the structure of normative syntax (utterances or sentences) and, by changing it, create new models; only in this case are they justified in being called figures, that is, when performing a rhetorical function. The difference is that constructive figures are “more balanced” (Клюев 2001: 238), based on smooth, albeit excessive, repetition and enumeration; they do not conflict with traditional phraseology, but instead create parallel correspondences:

Television is good-natured, only its criticism is malicious⁹.

It can be seen that the syntactic structure is preserved: The little orphan is good-natured, while her stepmother is malicious (S. Nėris).

⁸ The article draws only on the division of syntactic figures—in other words, macrofigures, whose essence is the transformation of sentence structure, not of a word (the latter are called microfigures)—into constructive and destructive figures, as presented by rhetoric scholar E. V. Kliujevas. Among constructive figures, this author lists parallelism, isocolon, epanalepsis (a type of repetition – R. K.), anaphora, epiphora, anadiplosis, symploce, diaphora, chiasmus, epanodos (a type of chiasmus – R. K.), asyndeton, polysyndeton, apo koinou (a type of chiasmus – R. K.), cyclos (framing – R. K.), and homoioteleuton. Among destructive syntactic figures are inversion, anastrophe (a type of inversion – R. K.), ellipsis, parcellation, hyperbaton, tmesis (parenthesis, interpolation – R. K.), accumulation, amplification, expletion (a more complex type of accumulation and amplification – R. K.), and contamination (chain – R. K.) (Клюев 2001: 238–261). Lithuanian stylisticians have not presented this kind of classification of figures, although all the figures are described in stylistics and rhetoric, sometimes under different names because of their numerous variants; therefore, in parentheses I explain which figure is essentially meant. The author of these lines (Koženiauskienė 2001: 254–328) classifies the listed figures according to the classification accepted in rhetoric: figurae per adiectionem (amplification), per detractionem (abbreviation), and per ordinem (composition). Most of the latter are called destructive figures by E. V. Kliujevas because of their unusual alteration of syntactic order (Latin ordo, inis – order), as well as the regrouping of syntactic units in several figures of abbreviation.

⁹ S. Valiulis, TV antenna, 1998 01 31–02 06.

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Because of the harmonious sound characteristic of the constructive figure of isocolon¹⁰, rhythm and a certain periodicity arise in parallel sentences. Nor is there any contradiction between the substituted lexical units. The neglected, poorly funded television not only does not conflict with, but also fits well with the little orphan, and criticism with the stepmother.

Destructive figures, by contrast, not only lack order but also conspicuously emphasize syntactic disorder. Unlike constructive figures, they do not connect separate words, utterances, or entire sentences, but separate, isolate, and fragment them, unexpectedly (and, from the perspective of natural syntax, even impermissibly) setting them apart from one another. Like everyday colloquial style, destructive figures are characterized by freedom, even by not entirely logical connections between words or sentences, an outburst of emotion, fragmentation, and spontaneity. Syntactic disharmony is deliberately created in the text: one hears breaks, intonational pauses, brief remarks, additions, complete stops, and unfinished thoughts.

When discussing the relationship between reworked phraseology and figures, it is necessary to emphasize that both constructive and destructive syntactic figures are suitable for modification:

From the mass-psychosis balloon that N. V. had been devilishly shrewdly inflating for several years, air whistles out of “The Path of Courage.” Sunset in the Garliava district. Of the ambition to govern Lithuania rightly, on the bald hill of pedophilia, only a rather foul-smelling alliance with the indicted prince of Kėdainiai remained¹¹.

The paragraph is composed of a weave of no fewer than three phraseological adaptations. First, from the traditional phraseologism to blow smoke in someone’s eyes, that is, to inflate something worthless with lies, the author creates the rather convoluted construction From the mass-psychosis balloon that N. V. had been devilishly shrewdly inflating for several years. This is followed by another separate and actualized adaptation, Sunset in the Garliava district (a modification of Petro Cvirka’s work Sunset in the Nyka district). The third reworking, on the bald hill of pedophilia, only a rather foul-smelling alliance with the indicted prince of Kėdainiai remained, comes from well-known lines in Antanas Baranauskas’s The Forest of Anykščiai. The author retains the constructive figure of homoioteleuton as in the original¹², but also employs a striking dest-

¹⁰ Abbr. isocolon – the repetition of the same or a very similar number of syllables or metrical units in homogeneous parallel syntactic constructions.

¹¹ www.15min.lt/.../rimvydas-valatka-kedofilijos-saulelydis-500-325175.

¹² Abbr. homoioteleuton – similarity of endings, the assonance of grammatical forms pliko / liko in syntactic structures of the same type; in this example it occurs together with parallelism—the foundation of constructive figures.

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...the figure of speech—hyperbaton¹³, casting grammatically related sentence parts across a great distance (inserting as many as eight words instead of three). The author creates a new text through irony—with wit and humor. The structural figure highlights the connection between the rather bent little pines and the ill-smelling union, but the humorous effect arises from the comic incongruity, from a peculiar dissonance between the context of nature’s little pines, described romantically, and the new realities of kedophilia and the Kėdainiai kniaz on trial. Brought together in one text, poetic though sad words and things very far from poetry clash, giving the reworking a new, mocking tone (helping this along are both the contaminative neologism kedophilia and the Russian loanword with a Lithuanian ending, kniaz).

The three playful reworkings and the destructive figures accompanying them twist and tangle the text so much that they further intensify its ironic function, better exposing the mass psychosis and the story devilishly cleverly concocted by the Garliava heroine. This paragraph features striking parceling¹⁴, which singles out in a separate sentence the semantically essential construction Sunset in Garliava County. Parceling then draws in its wake a hyperbaton that underscores the dissonance.

THE SPREAD OF PARCELING AND ITS POWER TO ACTIVATE PHRASEOLOGY

As reworked phraseology has become established in journalistic-style texts, it has shown a tendency to occur alongside parceling, from the headline to the final paragraph. “Segmentation (parceling) is particularly common in journalistic style” (Bitinienė 2007: 57). The stylist discusses semiotician R. Bartes’s ideas about parceled, segmented text, in which the author shows no “respect” for the natural segmentation of a text, continually pulling it apart in order to provide new information: “For the additional information in the segments, once it enters a new space of meaning, changes the meaning of the entire utterance” (Bitinienė 2007: 58). As the examples show, par-

¹³ Gr. hyperbaton—cast far away, displaced. A considerably more complex kind of inversion, in which abundant interpolations and long, disjointed enumerations break up and disrupt the natural flow of speech; the disarray of sentence parts creates a certain confusion in the addressee’s mind. It is called “one of the most frequently used and therefore most important figures” (Ziomek 1990: 221–222).

¹⁴ Lat. parcere—to use sparingly (in parts). Parceling is the intonational separation of a part from a whole, whereby that part acquires the value of an independent sentence. Each separated phrase, called a parcel, is given prominence. This figure is a means of highlighting the most important points of meaning.

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...celing, in its economical form, helps bring out the additional subtextual information of reworked phraseology.

Foreign stylistics scholars also write about the spread of parceling, the active use of this stylistic figure, and the tendency in contemporary syntax to modify syntactic constructions not only in literary style but also in journalistic style (in advertising and other so-called mass media). “Parcel(l)ation is not merely an individual authorial way of segmenting a text, but also a marked sociolinguistic phenomenon that reflects the principal tendencies in the evolution of contemporary spoken language” (Марышова 2011: 188). Parceling reinforces the playful irony of language and the nuances of meaning in a text; it “makes it possible to convey maximum information in a minimum amount of text” (Марышова 2011: 189). Parceled speech comes closer to colloquial style. A thought presented unhurriedly in short sentences with pauses is easier for the addressee to understand and grasp, and is therefore more effective and engaging.

The stylistic power of parceling to activate phraseology is exceptional. All syntactic figures belong to the devices of expressive syntax, but especially “parceling, segmentation¹⁵, lexical repetition, question-and-answer fragments in monologic texts, chains of nominative sentences, enumerations, and certain cases of word order” (Bitinienė 2007: 56). Thus, among the listed figures of expressive syntax, parceling and its variant, segmentation, are also mentioned first; associated with them are chains of nominative sentences¹⁶ and enumerations, which make it possible to intensify the semantic and expressive nuances of an utterance. Some scholars even “fear that parceling has now become an object of fascination, a fashionable game, a phenomenon spreading actively, a ‘linguistic passion’” (Марышова 2011: 186).

There are many examples of playful parceling in the media. Here is a headline from one of the most recent publications in TV Antenna: Television is dead. Long live television! (a reworked version of the saying The king is dead, long live the king), a striking example of parceling. The very first paragraph following it reads:

However much people may talk about the death of television, it keeps rising like that phoenix. Or a dragon.Whichever one you prefer¹⁷.

¹⁵A variant of parceling is segmentation. It consists in bringing the most important element to the fore in the nominative case.

¹⁶The same variant of parceling—segmentation—but here several nominatives are parceled out in succession.

¹⁷Savukynas, V. “Television is dead. Long live television!” — TV Antenna, September 14–20, 2013.

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In this short paragraph, the phraseology is somewhat reworked, and two more figures of parceling are used. The familiar expression rise like a phoenix from the ashes is both shortened and lengthened: from the ashes is omitted, but the pronoun that is added; moreover, an intriguing sentence, parceled out separately and beginning with the conjunction Or a dragon, is appended. The final sentence expressing an ancillary thought, parceled out independently, may be called an afterthought¹⁸.

Seeking expressive nuances in the saying, the authors, through reworked phraseology and accompanying parceling, create a fragmentarily vivid, considerably more effective and original saying, one that is therefore memorable and rich in subtext.

In media texts, the destructive figure of accumulation is also quite effective when accompanied by parceling¹⁹; its syntax is indeed sometimes rather overloaded and consequently confusing.

A veritable Sodom and Gomorrah – the English called Lithuanians in London menial laborers. [...] Herein lies the problem. Endless conspiracy theories, anger and overt aggression interspersed with sentimental tales about a state stretching from sea to sea and a mystical pagan civilization—not to mention movements à la N. V.—sit uneasily with the ability to laugh at oneself²⁰.

The widely used expression Sodom and Gomorrah, which itself comes from the Bible, denotes disorder on an unimaginable scale: universal depravity, appalling immorality and debauchery. The author’s use of phraseology symbolizing disorder fits well with the accumulative syntax. The author further expands this phraseology and intensifies it ironically, saying that this is a veritable Sodom and Gomorrah, although in fact he thinks the opposite: he sees no depravity among the English, since they are telling the truth. Through this reinterpreted biblical expression and overloaded syntax, which lists numerous details that are almost unrelated to one another, the author highlights the possibility of laughing at negative traits of his fellow countrymen. The accumulation further

¹⁸ Another variety of parceling is the afterthought, like a brief note added at the end.

¹⁹ The very name of this figure denotes overload and disorder: Latin accumulare means ‘to load up, to accumulate.’ It must be emphasized that there are several varieties of accumulation: from an overloaded but relatively coherent enumeration of numerous details (the form in which it is usually presented by Lithuanian stylists) to the completely unorganized piling up of various aspects, in which the author seeks, through a confusing and extremely abundant enumeration of abstract elements, not to reveal an overall picture, but even deliberately to obscure it, thereby conveying in the subtext the real confusion of life itself. This variety of accumulation is a typical destructive figure.

²⁰ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/rimvydas-valatka-tikra-sodoma-ir-gomora-londono-lietuvius-anglai-isvadino-juodadarbiais-500-361948#ixzz2cPAJcocB.

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is reinforced by two destructive figures, hyperbaton and parenthesis²¹: not to mention movements à la N. V.

THE CONTRIBUTION OF PARENTHESES AND OTHER FIGURES TO REWORKED PHRASEOLOGY

Parenthesis, like parcellation, is counted among the most striking destructive figures. In E. V. Kliuev’s list of figures, it is matched exactly by tmesis²² (Клюев 2001: 256). These are various digressions introducing a remote subsidiary thought, serving the rhetorical function of margins, addenda, and clarifications, and creating an intriguing semantic perspective. Parenthesis breaks up a thought, unexpectedly, and sometimes aggressively, interrupting it and meandering off to the side. The researcher of parentheses, Gintautas Akelaitis, writes about this. “Parenthesis is that special linguistic device which makes it possible to express, at the same time, another thought (content), even if subsidiary, even if fragmentary. [...] The elements of parenthesis constitute one of the groups of expressive stylistic constructions. For this reason, parenthesis is a phenomenon of syntactic stylistics on the same level as ellipsis²³, parcellation, anacoluthon²⁴, and so on” (Akelaitis 2005: 30–31). As can be seen, the author lists the most striking destructive figures quite precisely, and parenthesis is justifiably included among them.

It happens that the phraseology itself functions as parenthesis (as it does with other figures):

V. U., N. V., P. G., P. S., A. P. and – you can’t take the words out of a song – V. L. himself is a fellow passenger in that same VU carriage. Unlikely as it may seem, this is a real political alliance²⁵.

Juozas Abaravičius writes that through parentheses and free, linear text, authors “give distinctive meaning to dialogism, contradictions, discrepancies, agreement

²¹Gr. parenthesis, Lat. interpositio—the unexpected insertion of a subsidiary thought in parentheses (it may also be set off by periods, dashes, or commas).

²²Gr. tmesis—an interpolation, an insertion (a type of parenthesis).

²³Gr. elleipsis—a lack, an omission. In the dynamic figure of ellipsis, any easily inferred part of a sentence may be omitted.

²⁴Gr. anakoluthus—inconsistent. This figure is called “one of the most complex destructive figures, in which cases, gender, etc., are deliberately misused and mismatched in a sentence. E. V. Kliuev gives the following example: ‘Gamsachduria, by the way, intelligentsia. This intelligentsia knew well where it was going.’” (Клюев 2001: 257).

²⁵ www.15min.lt/.../rimvydas-valatka-kedofilijos-saulelydis-500-325175.

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ir nesutikimo, dermės ir neder-mės sąveiką“ (Abaravičius 2002: 229). Šiame akumuliuotame tekste kaip tik ta prieštarų grandinė ir pertraukta ilga parentezės pauze. Jos tikslas aiškus: leisti skaitytojui atsipie-kėti po keistokai pateikto ilgo politinės draugijos sąrašo, prie kurio po brūkšniais išskirtos parentezės paminima dar viena, regis, visai nederanti VU26 bendrakeleivio pavardė. Populiaraus posakio žodžių iš dainos neišmesi forma čia išlaikyta, bet įgavusi visai kitą potekstę. Parentezė „nuosekli sakinio grandinė per-traukiama, pažeidžiama. Dėl to atsiranda ar tik suaktyvėja asociacijų, aliu-zijų ar apskritai potekstės tėkmė“ (Abaravičius 2002: 228).

The major destructive figures mentioned—parcellation, hyperbaton, accumulation, and parenthesis—are rarely entirely pure; depending on one another, they most often form a variety of inseparable combinations and combine with many other figures.

Misfortunes never come singly. It was not enough that the police folded up and bundled away P. G., a champion of traditional family values, several times, just as they had been taught in police academy to deal with hooligans; the fighter against gay windmills was also dumped by his wife. In full view of the entire nation. At such a time of struggle. And so mercilessly, too—accusing him of not caring for his family²⁷.

The phraseologism to fight windmills has been renewed by the author through the replacement of just one sound. In fact, the verb to fight has been replaced by the related-root noun fighter. The ingenious play on similarly sounding words gays / winds (the figure of paronomasia²⁸) calls to mind the familiar expression: to fight windmills, that is, to fight an imaginary enemy. Thus, this is a Quixotic struggle. The expression is further intensified through parcellation, hyperbaton, and ellipsis, as well as its subtype, adjunction²⁹. Such a structure, distant from normative syntax, clearly demonstrates the author’s ability to create an effect of playful wit: after all, this

²⁶ In the media, this abbreviation, which denotes the initials of a politician involved in a lawsuit, is usually written with periods, but they are absent in this text (probably a deliberate attempt to create sarcastic wordplay by juxtaposing it with the abbreviation for Vilnius University).

²⁷ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/rimvydas-valatka-ikliu-vo-kaip-mu-sele-i-isrugas-500-358795#ixzz2b5QHnnv9.

²⁸ Greek paronomasia—literally, “alongside the name.” This figure is in itself a form of verbal play, a means of wit, in which a logical causal connection is found between words that sound alike but have nothing in common. Most often, this figure serves the rhetorical function of sarcasm.

²⁹ Latin adiunctio—addition, attachment. This is a subtype of ellipsis in which several sentence elements are added to one constituent. It usually occurs together with inversion or hyperbaton. For more on adjunction and its types, see Koženiauskienė 2001: 302–305.

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the protagonist loudly proclaims everywhere and always his concern for the traditional family and its preservation, yet he himself was unable to preserve his own. The parcellation of three separate sentences shifted to the end helps emphasize and underscore each detail of this misfortune, reinforcing the familiar saying stated at the beginning, that Misfortunes never come singly. What is left unsaid and shifted to the end, what is concealed—and concealed three times over—always intrigues. The parcelled text without adjunction would read as follows:

[...] the fighter against gay windmills was also dumped by his wife. In full view of the entire nation [dumped him]. At such a time of struggle [dumped him]. And so mercilessly, too [dumped him]—accusing him of not caring for his family³⁰.

Looking at the syntax of this paragraph, we can see that the three sentences split off and shifted to the end are not actually independent, but are merely extracted from the main sentence and placed outside it. Without the main sentence, their meaning would be unclear. They are like three afterthoughts added once the main idea has already been expressed, but the hyperbaton makes these negative comments particularly significant: the addressee will remember them most. The destructive figure adjunction, a subtype of ellipsis, is also perceptible in this paragraph and serves the rhetorical function of arousing attention. The word dumped, omitted three times (and inserted by me in square brackets—R. K.), further intensifies the semantic effect. Although these words are omitted, they stand out all the more and become more significant because of adjunction at the end, which is able to draw the addressee’s attention.

THE PLACE OF PHRASEOLOGY IN PARAGRAPH STRUCTURE

In the media, all kinds of fixed expressions are reinterpreted: folkloric phraseologisms, as well as expressions of biblical and mythological origin, lines from well-known songs and literary quotations, novel titles, and lines from tiresome advertisements or political posters (see Koženiauskienė 2013: 72–76; 168–170). Regardless of the origin of the phraseology³¹, its place in the syntactic structure of a single complete thought, which in written text usually consists of a para-

³⁰ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/rimvydas-valatka-ikliuvo-kaip-mu-sele-i-isrugas-500-358795#ixzz2b5QHNnnv9.

³¹ The article’s author deliberately selected at least a couple of examples of phraseology from different origins.

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graph, varies: it may be used at the beginning, in the middle, or at the end of a paragraph. In all three cases, it is accompanied by playful syntactic figures of disruption and performs different rhetorical functions.

Phraseology at the beginning may already appear in the publication’s headline. “In order to attract attention, authors give titles a negative connotation [...]. Most often, expressive devices are employed to make headlines more vivid (Mažylė 2012: 170). Witty phraseology, as a stylistic device, is particularly well suited to this:

Don’t weep at the grave (in memoriam to the Lithuanian basketball church)³² – such is the article’s title.

What could evoke more negativity than a sad in memoriam? And not for just anyone, but for the deified Lithuanian basketball. The highlighted line of Julius Janonis’s poetry is exact, but incomplete: extracted from its context, it expresses an unfinished thought (this is the so-called omission of components, or aposiopesis), and is transferred to an entirely different context, which the author himself explains in parentheses. Nevertheless, the original context fits well: Don’t weep at the grave of your brave friends, / those who fell in battle are heroes. The article’s author is indeed talking about those who lost the battle—that is, those who fell in battle, our heroes, the basketball players. But the revolutionary poet’s verses, written on an entirely different subject, conflict both with basketball, which is being discussed, and even more so with the religious terminology used throughout the article: church, church council, cardinal, priests, bishops, prayer, hymn, service, and so on. On the other hand, they both conflict and fit (a harmony of disharmony), because basketball is the second religion worshipped by Lithuanians (the author calls it the Lithuanian basketball church). This is what the entire article paragraph looks like with this phraseology:

Tragedy? Don’t weep at the grave. It would be foolish to explain that Cardinal Kęstutis chose the wrong prayers and hymns for the quarter-final service, or appointed the wrong basketball priests as bishops just before our most important church council in four years³³.

The phraseology set apart in the paragraph as a separate parceled sentence Don’t weep at the grave. The accompanying figures of accumulation and hyperbaton merely emphasize how

³² http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/neverkit-pas-kapa-in-memoriam-lietuvos-krepsinio-baznyciai-500-240368#ixzz2aR sqhAU9.

³³ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/neverkit-pas-kapa-in-memoriam-lietuvos-krepsinio-baznyciai-500-240368#ixzz2aRsqhAU9.

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the author assesses the situation of Lithuanian basketball, the uncertainty of basketball players’ position, the losses, and the resulting confusion in the minds of compatriots.

Church texts are similarly wittily deconstructed and adapted to the most unexpected fields: the military, politics, sport, banking, and so on.

Let us fall to our knees anew before the hammer and sickle. Only in a European way—of our own free will. The police and B. V. and company will help us. And we’ll receive even more awards³⁴.

The opening words of Antanas Strazdas’s hymns, well known for being sung in church before Mass, are ironically reworked by adding two words: Anew. Thus these words immediately make clear what is meant, especially when the thought is continued: before the hammer and sickle. The conflict in this utterance arises from the sacred words of the hymn and the hammer and sickle, symbol of the atheistic Soviet Union, before which we have already once fallen. The phraseology reflecting the conflict between religious hymn and atheism is reinforced by accompanying destructive figures: as many as three instances of parcelation and an ellipsis.

When placed at the beginning (usually also in the headline), reworked phraseology immediately attracts the addressee’s attention and creates an unexpected, intriguing impression: it is a short and effective advertisement for the entire publication, conveying its most important message to the addressee.

Phraseology in the middle of a text also creates a distinctive effect. The phrase from a political campaign poster, We deserve to live better, became a classic because of its ambiguous meaning: voters applied these words not to themselves, but to the politicians striving for power. The reworking itself expresses precisely this verdict passed by society.

Instead of humor, B. V. was generously endowed with slow thinking. This would have remained a national security secret if, after 20 years in the Seimas, the Social Democrats had not decided that their friend, who had sat there for so long, deserved to live better—as minister of agriculture³⁵.

In this paragraph, the phraseology in the middle, as the culmination of the entire paragraph, is framed by destructive figures. First, parcelation, where a subordinate attributive clause is unusually set apart as an independent sentence. Then—hyperbaton. Because of the destructive figures used, the long pause cuts across the paragraph’s syntactic

³⁴ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/rimvydas-valatka-kujis-pjautuvas-ir-j-stalinas-vel-pagarboi-500-334703#ixzz2T9D1wLDD.

³⁵ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/rimvydas-valatka-paplauke-ministrai-kietuole-ir-pukuotukas-500-325861#ixzz2Rpoohyrx.

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The taxi performs a rhetorical function of irony, as if confirming the minister’s “slowed thinking.”

Another example of mid-positioned phraseology:

At a time when D. G. herself was forced to hold an umbrella over Israeli President Sh. P’s head, undiplomatic conversations between two Lithuanian diplomats were already circulating on “YouTube.” About the cool young prime minister, an even cooler president and the mad ambassadors of Armenia and Azerbaijan, who walk into our Ministry of Foreign Affairs every other day. To complain. One says Lithuania is pro-Armenian, the other that it is pro-Azerbaijani³⁶.

In this paragraph, the phraseology inserted in the middle is reworked quite inventively. Hearing two rhythmic eight-syllable lines, we can indeed draw parallels with a text by S. Nėris, faintly audible in the subtext:

About the third brother Jonas—What a splendid rider he is. About Eglė, the serpent’s wife, Who turned her children into trees.

Thus, the undiplomatic conversations of Lithuanian diplomats are implicitly likened to trifles, to long tales told to “little ones.” The shift from the motif of fairy tales to prosaic everyday life gives the text its wit, and it is used to describe parceling wittily: first, “conversations” is set apart by a full stop. About..., then comes the one-word parceling, set apart by full stops: To complain. The twists where these tales intersect with reality are further underscored by hyperbaton: one would normally say walk in to complain, but this is split by the long phrase into our Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

One more example of mid-positioned phraseology.

For most of you, or even for those who never read this newspaper or portal under any circumstances (or who will cancel their subscription as of tomorrow), this was proof that the media, having fallen below the skirting boards, is now ripping tiles off the concrete floor and sinking even lower. Down where the cellar is and the gates of hell already stand³⁷.

In the middle of the paragraph, phraseology is reworked through contamination, as the phraseological unit a blow below the belt is combined by the author with the expression—

³⁶ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/rimvydas-valatka-ik he went like a fly into manure-500-358795#ixzz2b5RXMkrd.

³⁷ http://www.lrytas.lt/lietuvos-diena/komentarai/tetutes-neringos-krepsys-kaip-pamoka-ziniasklaidai.htm 2013 08 22.

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to fall low (figuratively, this means moral decline), and an occasional formation is derived: fallen below the skirting boards. This unprecedented expression is then developed ironically, shifting to speech that seems literal, although the figurative sense of the gates of hell is subsequently resumed. This somewhat jumbled formation, which goes hand in hand with the destructive figures of parcellation and hyperbaton at the end of the paragraph, is further reinforced by accumulation and parenthesis (or cancels the subscription starting tomorrow), demonstrating the author’s desire to mock, to show the media’s supposed decline and collapse.

The middle phraseology, framed by destructive figures, becomes the paragraph’s climax, the height of the author’s wit.

And the phraseology at the end confirms the rhetoricians’ idea that what is placed at the end remains longest in the addressee’s memory.

Here is an example in which a reworked phraseological expression finally closes a text rich in accumulation and parcellation and serves as a final conclusion. In order to show that conservatives themselves do not understand what conservatism is, the author deliberately speaks in such a jumbled way: in accumulated language, conservatism drowns as if in a fog of incomprehensibly tangled words. This “gives the author the opportunity, with empty, messed-up constructions piled one upon another, to drive the addressee to despair, only to extend a helping hand at the last moment—and break the chain of ‘deliberations’” (Клюев 2001: 259).

Even if to hell with that conservatism, which most conservatives don’t understand anyway, if all that remains is the naked calculation that having D. G. in the presidential chair for another five years is better than nothing—since she at least listens to V. L.—it was still somewhat uncomfortable this time to listen to V. L. and A. K.’s duet of oaths of party loyalty to the president. Why? For a good month, V. L. had been berating A. K. for a lack of love for one’s neighbor. Fine and true words. It would be a sin to disagree. A person does not live by managing crises alone³⁸. Cf.: A person does not live by bread alone (NT, Mt 4,4).

Hyperbaton further emphasizes the disorder of accumulation in the reworking itself. In the original, bread is emphasized and is therefore placed at the end. In the new version, bread is replaced by crisis management, while the word alive, moved to the end, becomes the most important.

And one more example in which the same phraseological expression is altered in two ways and moved to the end in both cases:

³⁸ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/v-landSbergis-nokdaune-n-venckiene-pogrindy-prie-razlivo-500-329932#ixzz2d4xD81Ac.

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Even if A. K. wins the Conservatives’ superfinal, and it looks as though he will, that will be only his personal victory. The outcome of these elections could not be called The Patriarch’s Winter. But even A. K.’s victory will not become a Conservative spring³⁹.

In this paragraph, the closing phraseology is quite ingeniously reworked from the title of the book The Autumn of the Patriarch (Gabriel García Márquez). In the first expression, only the season is changed; in the second, both lexemes are changed, but it is clear that both derive from the same work. Both expressions are accompanied by parceling (unusually, a period rather than a comma is placed before the conjunction but) and a parenthesis (and it looks as though he will). Where there is parceling and a parenthesis is also inserted, elements of hyperbaton usually appear as well. The reader will certainly notice and remember the wittily crafted expressions placed at the end.

Phraseology placed at the end creates the impression of a strong logical emphasis and a pleasingly worded final conclusion. It is like a long-awaited escape from convoluted speech, finally found.

REASONS FOR REWORKING PHRASEOLOGY

Freedom of speech, the democratization of language, with an increasing shift away from the official language toward private usage and an informal, everyday conversational style (Miliūnaitė 2009: 41–43), the influence of youth language, and the desire to attract readers amid the aggressively growing competition among media outlets—these are just some of the reasons for the rapid transformation of language, the replacement of normative syntax and familiar syntactic constructions, and, consequently, the increasingly widespread reworking of phraseology. With witty and inventive reworkings of expressions, authors seek to put readers in a favorable frame of mind right from the headline.

“Traditional phraseology no longer meets the needs of the contemporary reader, and is therefore refined, semantically and stylistically reworked, contradicted, and its meaning rejected” (Stojanova 1999: 336). What is written about the renewal of traditional phraseology (a concept that also includes paremias⁴⁰) in other countries also applies to the situation of Lithuanian phraseology in the broad sense. Hungarian scholar Anna Litovkina writes: “Parodying proverbs is not a new phenomenon, but in the last two decades proverbs have been distorted

³⁹ http://www.15min.lt/naujiena/ziniosgyvai/komentarai/v-landsbergis-nokdaune-n-venckie-ne-pogrindy-prie-razlivo-500-329932#ixzz2d4xD81Ac.

⁴⁰ Gr. paroimia – proverb, saying. The concept of paremias has broadened considerably in recent decades: it also includes “winged” phrases, maxims, aphorisms, quotations of literary origin, and the like.

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and parodied so intensively that the new variants are sometimes heard much more often than the original proverbs” (Litovkina 2004: 295). Phraseology is often reworked as if in play: ironized, parodied, criticized; both the lexis and the syntax are changed—“that which is old, outdated, no longer suited to these times” (Zaikauskienė 2008: 86).

The proliferation of reworked phraseology and the destructive figures that accompany it in the media may also be associated with a fashionable tendency in journalistic-style texts of various genres. On the other hand, this sociolinguistic phenomenon may have arisen from conflicts and contradictions in social, economic, political, and cultural life. Destructive figures, which are of the same nature as reworked phraseology, greatly help to reflect these contradictions and create dynamism and tension: “to present a thought non-linearly, to vary sentence intonation, to redistribute the positions of logical stresses in order to give expression to the contradictory, dilemma-ridden development of thought.” (Abaravičius 2002: 223). By critically parodying, ironizing, and dismantling what is old, authors aptly reflect this pervasive tension and the instability of life.

CONCLUSIONS

1. The impact of reworking phraseology, as well as the stylistic possibilities for actualizing its content and activating language, increases when it intertwines with syntactic destructive figures. The effect of these figures also becomes more pronounced.

2. Depending on where in the syntactic structure the paraphrased text occurs, phraseology can be distinguished at the beginning, middle, or end of a paragraph. It has been established that, regardless of the position phraseology occupies in the syntactic structure, in the media of recent years it is primarily combined with the now widespread use of parcelling. Other prominent destructive figures accompany it: hyperbaton, accumulation, ellipsis, adjunction, and parenthesis.

3. The effectiveness of reworked phraseology is greatly enhanced by the intertwining of destructive figures, and it performs the rhetorical functions of attracting attention, intriguing, satirical irony, wit, cleverness, and parody. A playfully reworked expression attracts the addressee’s attention, instantly brings the original phraseology—with all its conventional lexis and syntax—to mind, and only the context of the destructive figures suggests the true intention behind reworking the phraseology.

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LITERATŪRA

Abaravičius J. 2002: Skyrybos stilistika, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas.

Akelaitis G. 2005: Parentėzė poezijoje. – Žmogus ir žodis 1, 29–34.

Bitinienė A. 2007: Publicistinis stilius, Vilnius: Vilniaus pedagoginio universiteto leidykla.

Butkutė L. 2010: Okazionaliųjų frazeologizmų stilistinės išgalės publicistiniame stiliuje. Daktaro disertacija, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla.

Koženiauskienė R. 2001: Retorika: iškalbos stilistika, Vilnius: Mokslo ir enciklopedijų leidybos institutas.

Koženiauskienė R. 2013: Retorinė ir stilistinė publicistinių tekstų analizė, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla.

Litovkina A. T. 2004: Old Proverbs Never Die: Anti-Proverbs in the Language Classroom. – Res Humanae Proverbium et Sententiarum. Ed. Csaba Földes, Tübingen: Gunter Narr Verlag, 295–326.

Marcinkevičienė R. 2001: Tradicinė frazeologija ir kiti stabilūs žodžių junginiai. – Lituanistica 4, 81–98.

Mažylė J. 2012: Rašto raiškos (spaudos) žanrų klasifikavimas: tradicija ir konvergencija. – Medijos, žiniasklaida, žurnalistika tradicinėje ir tinklaveikos visuomenėje, Vilnius: Vilniaus universiteto leidykla, 160–178.

Miliūnaitė R. 2009: Dabartinės lietuvių kalbos vartosenos variantai, Vilnius: Lietuvių kalbos institutas.

Pikčilingis J. 1975: Lietuvių kalbos stilistika 2, Vilnius: Mokslas.

Zaikauskienė D. 2008: Formos ir turinio pokyčiai tradicinių lietuvių patarlių perdirbiniuose. – Tautosakos darbai XXXV, 84–93.

Ziomek J. 1990: Retoryka opisowa, Wrocław-Warszawa-Kraków: Zakład Narodowy im. Ossolińskich wydawnictwo.

Župerka K. 2008: Reklamos tekstas: pragmatika, stilius, kalba, Šiauliai: VšĮ Šiaulių universiteto leidykla.

Клюев Е. В. 2001: Риторика. Инвенция. Диспозиция. Элокуация, Москва: Издательство ПРИОР.

Марышова М. А. 2011: Стилистическая функция парцелляции в текстах разных жанров. – Stil: international journal, Beograd, 183–193.

Стоянова Е. 1999: „Новая“ фразеология в языке масс-медиа (на материале русского языка). – Русский язык и русская литература в современном обществе. Шумен, 335–340. Priega per internetą: <http://www.rusian.slavica.org/article 657.html>.

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PLAY ON RECREATED PHRASEOLOGY IN THE MEDIA

Summary

The recreation of phraseology in the media relies on both the change of conventional and well-established lexis as well as syntactic order. First of all, phraseology itself is figure-based; stylistically, the figures around it are none the less important. The article shows how syntactic destructive figures help to highlight the meaning, implication and reasons of recreation of phraseology.

As a result of the playful combination of recreated phraseology and destructive figures in the text, rhetorical functions of attraction of attention, intriguing, satire-based irony and parody become especially strong. In combination with phraseology, destructive figures, which simultaneously comment on it, help to explain and understand the recreation of traditional phraseology and to highlight the turn of thought. The effect of the figures themselves increases when they intertwine among themselves, support one another and go together with phraseology.

It has been proven that irrespective of the place of phraseology in the syntactic structure, it first of all combines with parcellation and other accompanying destructive figures – hyperbaton, accumulation, parenthesis, adjunction, ellipsis. The domination of parcellation and other destructive figures is seen in a number of publicistic texts of the journalism of evaluative type of recent years.

The phraseology of the beginning, centre and end can be distinguished by the place of the paragraph content structure in which the rephrased text is located. The wittily recreated phraseology positioned in the beginning immediately draws the addressee’s attention and makes an unexpected intriguing impression. Central phraseology, framed by destructive figures, becomes the culmination of the paragraph. The phraseology positioned at the end creates an impression of a strong logical highlight and a vividly formulated final conclusion.

The growth in the number of recreated phrases conflicting with conventional phraseology and the accompanying destructive figures can be associated with the confusion in social, economic, political and cultural life as well as the increased competition within the media.

Critically and ironically-minded authors with a negative and especially hyperbolic evaluation of topical life affairs, witty and ingenuous parody as well as brave destruction of the old try to attract the addressee and to grip his/her attention by any means possible.

KEYWORDS: recreated phraseology, syntactic destructive figures, accumulation, hyperbaton, parcellation, parenthesis.

REGINA KOŽENIAUSKIENĖ

Vilniaus universiteto Filologijos fakultetas

Universiteto g. 5, LT-01513 Vilnius

[email protected]

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