A Linguistic and Rhetorical Approach to Antonymy in English

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

One of the most important fields of linguistic study is semantic relations (and lexical relation in particular), which include synonymy, antonymy, hyponymy, and the part-whole relation, etc. Antonymy, or oppositeness of meaning, has long been recognized as one of the most important semantic relations. Human thinking and language are closely related, and the significance of antonymy in human thinking is inevitably reflected in human language. Lyons (1968: 469) believes that human beings have “a general tendency to ‘polarize’ experience and judgement — to ‘think in opposites’”, and this would account for the existence of large numbers of antonyms and semantically contrasting terms in the vocabulary of natural languages. On the one hand, words of most syntactic classes in English have their antonyms, especially content words such as adjectives, verbs, nouns and adverbs, and polysemous words even have more than one antonym. On the other hand, the more frequently used a word is, the more likely it has its antonym(s), and many words in English which have their antonyms are, in fact, common words.

Antonymy is a kind of very useful semantic relation. Antonym pairs are used in a large number of idioms and proverbs in English. Whether in common speech or in literary writing, antonymy is often employed to achieve rhetorical effects, in fact, it is even indispensable in such figures of speech as oxymoron, paradox, and irony. Furthermore, antonymy also has its remarkable significance in language teaching and learning. It is commonly used in folk definitions, i.e. a thing or quality can often be defined in terms of what it is not, for example, big can be defined as “not small”. When teaching their children or students new words, parents and teachers often resort to this means. Lexicographers often do the same thing in defining a word in their dictionaries. In fact, antonymy, as Jackson (1988) notes, ranks the second (only next to synonymy), in terms of frequency, among the various semantic relations used in dictionary definitions. It even seems that there can hardly be a lexicographer who never takes advantage of synonymy or antonymy and successfully compiles a good dictionary. Antonymy, especially in the way of forming derivational antonyms, has considerably enriched the English language. At the same time, many EFL learners, and native speakers as well, do find it an effective way to enlarge their vocabulary by making use of antonymy, since each antonym pair is in itself a semantic set and an associative bond.

In spite of all its usefulness, antonymy does not seem to have always been given as much attention as it deserves in linguistic field. First of all, when typed in a Microsoft Word file, the word antonymy is always underlined red, which means it is not included in the Windows 98 (I am using it) English vocabulary. Although the same thing does not happen to the word antonym, it does not happen to words denoting other semantic relations like synonymy and hyponymy, either. In fact, many popular and desk dictionaries published home and abroad in 1970s and 1980s do not include the word antonymy, either. Secondly, in the very few, and “small”, dictionaries of English antonyms ever published, there are not many entries, all with only simple explanations and few examples. Thirdly, the issue of antonymy in English used to be somehow ignored for a long time in China’s linguistic field. In fact, as indicated in The List of Papers on Foreign Language Teaching and Research, a book (complied by Lanzhou University Library in 1980) including most papers (if not all) ever published in China between 1950 and 1979 in the field of foreign language teaching and research, not a single paper is on antonymy in English. It was not until 1980s that Chinese scholars began to pay some attention to antonymy in English, and papers on this topic have since been found in academic journals and some space devoted to it in books on lexicology and semantics. Yet the major concern was either on the simple classification of antonyms or on the mere exemplification of antonymy being employed in different figures of speech, with no detailed analysis made.

Among western scholars, Lyons (1968) and Egan (1968) are two of the foregoers who tried in 1960s to make a detailed and systematic study of antonymy in English. They both begin the related sections of their books by mentioning the “confusion” people felt about antonymy. Egan (1968:26a), in her “Survey of the History of English Synonymy”, which forms the Introduction to Webster’s New Dictionary of Synonyms, notes that “[t]here are probably few words more generally used with less understanding of their meaning than the word antonym.” Lyons (1968:460), in the chapter “Semantic Structure” of his Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics, admits that “it [antonymy] has been the subject of a good deal of confusion.” At the same time, Lyons believes that the reason for the confusion is “partly because it [antonymy] has generally been regarded as complementary to synonymy and partly because most semanticists have failed to give sufficient attention to different kinds of ‘opposites’”. And he follows by classifying “opposites” into three types, with the term antonymy for just one of them, and the other two being complementarity and converseness. Egan made her own classification, i.e. contradictory terms (or contradictories), contrary terms (or contraries) and a few others.

Other linguists who showed their interest in antonymy and followed include Lehrer and Lehrer (1982) and Cruse (1986), who make their own classification of different types of opposites and, more important, discuss why some pairs of words fail to be antonyms while they do contrast in some way. Lyons (1977), in his two-volume book Semantics, also expands his discussion of antonymy in Lyons (1968) a little bit, further distinguishing the terms contrast, opposition and antonymy.[1] As a matter of fact, the main concern of these linguists was to try to categorize opposites into different types and determine the boundaries of antonymy. They then define the term antonym in a more narrow sense, using it only to refer to the set of gradable opposites (and mostly adjectives). Therefore, it seems, on the one hand, that a gradable word (e.g. hot in hot water, or big in a big mistake) is the antonym of another gradable word (e.g. cold in a cold attitude, or small in a small child) without having to depend on the context where they are actually used. On the other hand, it also seems that two words, if they are ungradable, are never antonyms even though they are opposed in meaning, but rather they are just one of the other kinds of opposites, male and female, for example, are specifically complementary terms.

On the one hand, it is the obvious reluctance of linguists to have the term antonym cover various types of opposites. On the other hand, it is the fact that opposites of one kind or another, not just antonyms in the strict sense as defined by many linguists, are widely used (and frequently used together) either to convey a meaning or to achieve a rhetorical effect. Therefore, to have antonym mean only gradable opposites while excluding many other kinds of opposites would only make it a term too strict or narrow to be useful, and it seems that to discuss the kind of semantic relation now meant by antonymy, one should not, or at least does not have to, refer to any other kinds of opposites.

Since, terminologically, the term antonym(y) is put forward, or coined, in analogy to synonym(y), which allows in not just the very few words that are strictly synonymous but practically also many others that are similar in one way or another. Therefore, it would be more reasonable to study antonymy in the way of discussing various types of opposites rather than just gradable opposites.

In this paper, the term antonym is meant to include various types of opposites, i.e., antonyms in the narrow sense (gradable opposites) and antonyms in the wider sense (other types of opposites). Since various types of opposites are covered by the term antonym, some of them are explored in details with reference to their semantic features. To have a better understanding of the properties of antonymy, near-opposites (or indirect antonyms), are also examined in this chapter, with various factors studied which prevent them from being considered “good” antonyms.

Rhetorically, little research has been done on antonymy, and most attention has been given to the incompatible co-occurring opposites (e.g., oxymoron) and specific rhetorical effect, whereas its operation mechanism has been somehow neglected or confused with the rhetorical effect.

Antonyms, either in the narrow sense or in the wide sense or even near-opposites, are commonly used in natural languages. In terms of the rhetorical use of antonymy, there is not only the co-occurrence of both members of an antonym pair (though often across syntactic boundary) but also the use of only one member if semantically “abnormal”, and semantically, the co-occurrence can be either “abnormal” or normal. It is the special operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric that makes it possible for the rhetorical effect to be felt. Specifically, the rhetorical use of antonymy is studied in the paper from the following aspects: first, the “abnormal” use of one member of an antonym pair is semantically and pragmatically analyzed with reference to the rhetorical effect; then the philosophical and psychological bases of the co-occurrence are explored, syntactic frames of the co-occurrence are observed, and both the semantic normality and “abnormality” in various frames are studied; and finally, the operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric is examined, which explains why the rhetorical effect can be felt.

CHAPTER TWO: ANTONYMY FROM SEMANTIC POINT OF VIEW

2.1 Antonymy as a different kind of semantic relation

Different semantic relations all have a basic quality to them in that they are found in all human languages and, interestingly, they seem to be characterized more easily by examples than by explanation, so, for example, if we want to teach someone what the word antonym means, the easiest way would be to give him or her some examples of antonyms: hot/cold, true/false, friend/enemy, love/hate, pass/fail, quickly/slowly, and up/down. Meanwhile, antonymy does have several characteristics which set it apart from the other semantic relations.

First, most languages have morphological processes which can create antonyms. In many languages, including English, the most commonly used opposites tend to be morphologically unrelated (e.g. good/bad, high/low, beautiful/ugly, big/small, old/young). But, as Lyons (1977) believes, these are outnumbered in the vocabulary by such morphologically related pairs as married/unmarried, friendly/unfriendly, formal/informal, legitimate/illegitimate, etc. In addition to un- and in- (and its variants like im-, il- and ir-), English also has the prefixes non- (Christian/non-Christian, realistic/non-realistic), dis- (like/dislike, honest/dishonest) and de- (colonize/decolonize, emphasize/deemphasize), as well as the suffixes -less and -ful, which together sometimes form pairs of antonyms (harmless/harmful). However, English does not have derivational processes involving other kinds of semantic relations; that is, there are no affixes which create synonyms or hyponyms or form the name of a part from a whole.

Second, language learners expect that there will be pairs of antonyms available to label certain types of concepts. In fact, as Kagan (1984) claims, children do not have to be explicitly taught that there are such things as opposites; instead they seem to expect to find them. This kind of expectation may exist for other kinds for semantic relations too, but it seems to be especially strong in the case of antonymy. In the case of synonymy, for example, research suggests that children do not expect to find synonyms. According to “mutual exclusivity” principle,[2] when young children hear a new word, they assume that it is distinct in meaning from the words they already know. Even adult speakers feel the usefulness of antonyms when expanding the vocabulary of their native language. As Miller and Fellbaum (1991) remark, students learning a second language, when given only one member of an antonymous or opposed verb pair, will insist upon being taught the other member. My teaching experiences also show that many EFL learners simply go further and prove Miller and Fellbaum’s (1991) remarks, as they are interested in being taught (or finding themselves) antonyms not only of verbs but also of words of other syntactic classes, especially adjectives. It is good, of course, to know the antonym of a word, for it will not only give us a firmer grasp of the meaning of the word to which it is opposed, but inversely, of itself.

Third, of all the semantic relations, antonymy is the most readily apprehended by ordinary speakers. Cruse (1986), for example, judging from his own children, believes that, to grasp the basic notion of antonymy, one does not even have to be older than three. Even if his children are not typical, children’s natural expectation in general to find antonyms and parents’ and/or teachers’ preference to resort to antonyms in teaching words certainly make it easier for children to grasp antonymy than they do other semantic relations.

Another interesting thing about antonymy is that opposites possess a unique fascination, and exhibit properties which may appear paradoxical. Indeed, there is a widespread idea that the power of uniting or reconciling opposites is a magical one. They seem as different as they can possibly be, in fact, the meanings of a pair of opposites are felt intuitively to be maximally separated. Yet they still have something in common. In some measures of semantic similarity, antonyms pattern much like synonyms. For example, in word association tests, people often respond to a word with its opposite or with a synonym. In addition, the members of a pair have almost identical distributions, that is to say, very similar possibilities of normal and abnormal occurrence. The closeness of opposites is also reflected in the frequency of speech errors in which the intended word is substituted by its opposites. The paradox of simultaneous difference and similarity can be partly explained by the fact that the opposites typically differ along only one dimension of meaning, in respect of all other features, they are identical, hence their semantic closeness; along the dimension of difference, they occupy opposing poles, hence the feeling of difference. For example, hot and cold share the dimension of TEMPERATURE but occupy opposite poles along this dimension.

It could be seen from the above discussion that antonymy has its unique characteristics, not just linguistically, but psychologically and anthropologically as well. While some of these characteristics will be followed up (in Chapter Three, for example), the discussion of antonymy in the next section will focus on the linguistic aspect, and in particular, different types of opposites and their semantic features --- antonyms in the narrow sense and antonyms in the wider sense, both of which are taken as direct antonyms, and also near-opposites, which are taken as indirect antonyms.

2.2 A semantic approach to antonymy

In its widest sense, as used by many people and in some dictionaries and thesauri, the term antonym is the same as opposite, and it has been applied to many types of semantic opposition, from prototypical antonyms such as hot/cold and large/small to pairs of words which show only a vague or limited type of semantic contrast, e.g., parent/child or frank/hypocritical. In fact, the word opposite is employed in many dictionary definitions of antonym.[3]

The term antonym was first introduced in 1867 by C.J. Smith in his book A Complete Collection of Synonyms and Antonyms. In defining the term, he related synonym and antonym, stating that “words which agree in expressing one or more characteristic ideas in common he [the author] has regarded as Synonyms, those that negative one or more such ideas he has called Antonyms.” Smith adopted this term primarily because of its analogy to synonym and knew that only by considerable stretching could the meaning he proposed for it be made to approach the meaning of what he thought of as its Greek original. Egan (1968) thinks that the word opposite itself has a wide range of meanings and that the concept of opposition is so complex. In fact, in order to show how complex it can be, Egan makes a detailed analysis of its physical connotations.[4] After the analysis, Egan examines the words listed as antonyms in the dictionaries and manuals of synonyms and antonyms and finds a large number of them fall into two well-known logical categories, those of contradictory terms (or contradictories) and contrary terms (or contraries), and some other classes. Like Egan, other linguists, including Lyons (1968), Lyons (1977), Lehrer and Lehrer (1982), and Cruse (1986), have the similar feeling about the complexity of the concept of opposition and also try, though terming it in different ways, to categorize opposites into different types. They then define the term antonym in a narrower sense, using it only to refer to the set of gradable opposites, a set which has many interesting properties such as implicit comparison and markedness.

In the next three sections, the paper discusses some of the different types of opposites, with gradable opposites seen as antonyms in the narrow sense. Section 2.2.1 focuses on this particular type of opposites. Section 2.2.2 focuses on antonyms in the wider sense--- other types of opposites. There are still some words, however, which do contrast in meaning but are not generally considered antonyms, or at least not “good” antonyms, and an examination of them would surely be of some help to the understanding of antonymy. Section 2.2.3 then focuses on such words, which are termed as near-opposites.

2.2.1 Antonyms in the narrow sense --- gradable opposites

In the narrow sense, antonyms are just gradable opposites, or contraries, originally a logical term used in contrast to contradictories.[5] Though applying more widely, the logical distinction of contradictories and contraries corresponds to the distinction of ungradable and gradable lexemes within the class of lexical opposites in a language, and the correspondence that lies in between is gradability.

In the case of ungradable opposites, the predication of either one of the pair, when used as predicative expressions, implies the predication of the negation of the other, and the predication of the negation of either implies the predication of the other. For example, the proposition “X is female” implies “X is not male”; and “X is not female” (provided that “male” and “female” are predicable of X) implies “X is male”.

With gradable opposites, however, the situation is different. The predication of the one implies the predication of the negation of the other: the proposition “X is hot” implies “X is not cold”; and “X is cold” implies “X is not hot”. But “X is not hot” does not generally imply “X is cold”, though on occasions it may be interpreted in this way.[6]

Grading involves comparison. When we compare two or more objects with respect to their possession of a certain property, it is usually, though not always, appropriate to enquire whether they have the property to the same degree or not. When, for example, X is as hot as Y or X is hotter than Y is given as the answer to the question Is X as hot as Y? both the question and the answer depend on the gradability of hot. A lexeme like female, on the other hand, is ungradable: we would not normally say X is as female as Y or X is more female than Y.[7] Each of these lexemes is paired in the vocabulary with what would generally be described as its opposites: cold and male respectively. So both hot and cold are gradable lexemes, whereas female and male are both ungradable.

While there are also nouns (e.g., friend/enemy) and verbs (e.g., love/hate) which show the properties of gradability, usually included in the set of gradable opposites are those common and prototypical pairs of opposites, i.e., adjectives such as hot/cold, big/little, good/bad, high/low, tall/short, and wet/dry. Since grading is bond up with the operation of comparison and the properties of things compared are typically denoted by adjectives, it would be more illustrative, and more convenient, to give most attention to the adjectives of this type.

The defining property of the set of gradable opposites, as manifested in the above examples, is that the opposites name qualities which can be conceived of as “more or less”. Take, for example, hot and cold again, which describe opposite ends of the scale of TEMPERATURE. We can say “X is hotter than Y”, or “A is fairly cold”, “B is very hot” and so on. Ungradable opposites, however, do not bear this property.[8]

Besides, with gradable opposites, the scale (dimension) with which each pair is associated has a neutral mid interval. Between the opposite poles named by hot and cold, for example, there is a mid interval, i.e., something can neither hot nor cold, or it might be warm, cool, or lukewarm, etc. While it is true that most gradable scales, unlike the temperature scale, do not have names for mid intervals, it does not mean that they are not there, but rather they are less lexicalized. Consider the SIZE scale for example. We know that it is possible for something to be neither big nor little but some size in between, even though we do not have a word to describe this. We could use a phrase such as of average size though.

The adjectives in the set also most clearly exhibit other characteristic properties of gradable opposites, such as implicit comparison and markedness. Grading, or comparison involved in it, may be explicit or implicit or even semi-explicit.

Explicitly comparative sentences fall into two types. First, two things may be compared with respect to a particular “property”, and this “property” predicated of the one is either of the same degree as or in a greater degree than it is of the other. For example, in the sentences Our house is as big as yours and Our house is bigger than yours, one house is explicitly compared with the other in terms of their property of SIZE. Second, two states of the same thing may be compared with respect to the “property” in question: e.g., Our house is bigger than it used to be.

Grading may also be semi-explicit, which means the use of some comparative construction without explicit mention of the standard of comparison. Take, for example, Our house is bigger. It is graded semi-explicitly, and the standard of comparison will usually have been previously introduced in the context. In other words, it is presumably derived from a sentence of either one or the other of the above-mentioned two types of explicit comparison. So too is Our house is too big, in which the standard of comparison is more complex, since it brings in the notion of purpose and a whole range of possible criteria which may or may not be made explicit (“…too big for us to maintain”, “…too big for its site”, etc.). Unless the relevant standard of comparison can be established from the context or otherwise, it cannot be determined what proposition is expressed by sentences of this kind, since a proposition must logically have some determinate truth-value; and utterances like these, in other words, may be ambiguous without the relevant standard of comparison.

If not explicitly or semi-explicitly comparative, sentences containing gradable opposites are always implicitly so. Implicit comparison can easily be seen in examples such as big and small, tall and short and hot and cold. Such words as big and small, or tall and short do not refer to independent “opposite” qualities, but are merely lexical devices for grading as “more than” or “less than” with respect to some implicit norm. In other words, they are purely relative terms which lose all significance when deprived of its connotation of “more than” and “less than”. When we say, for example, Our house is big, we are implicitly comparing the house with something else and asserting that it is bigger. The standard of comparison may or may not have been explicitly introduced in the context in which the sentence is uttered. If not, a generally accepted norm is involved, as is commonly the case. Our house is big might therefore be understood as meaning something like “Our house is bigger than the normal house” or “Our house is big for a house”. The norm may also be variable across different languages (or cultures) and across different groups within the same society. The implicit “size-norm” for elephants, for example, is not necessarily the same as the implicit “size-norm” for animals. It is quite acceptable, therefore, to say A small elephant is a large animal; and the semantic analysis of this sentence should take something like the following form: “An elephant which is small-rather-than-large by comparison with the norm relevant for elephants is (nevertheless) large-rather-than-small by comparison with the norm relevant for animals”. It is by no means illogical to say that a tall child is tall in comparison to other children of the same age, but may in fact be much shorter than a short adult, and that a hot day describes a hotter-than-average day, but an overall temperature that is much lower than the one described by a hot oven.

Other properties of gradable opposites clearly exhibited are in markedness, specifically in the distinction between the marked member of an antonym pair and the unmarked.

One property of gradable opposites clearly exhibited in markedness involves an adjective’s behavior in questions. When used in a question, the marked term implies a particular value while the unmarked does not have such an implication. For example, the sentence How big is it? does not presuppose that the object of the inquiry will be classified as big rather than small, but is completely open, or unmarked, as to the expectations of the inquirer. It is neutral as a question and can be used whether or not the inquirer knows the approximate size of the object and whether it is big, small or of average size. It may then be regarded as equivalent to Is it big or small (or of average size)? The question, as Lyons (1968) points out, brings into the discussion a scale recognized by the participants as relevant and asks that the object be measured, as it were, along this scale. The first-level measurement is in terms of the dichotomy “big-rather-than-small” or “small-rather-than-big” (by comparison with the norm). If the inquirer has some reason to believe that the object is bigger or smaller than the average size, and the first-level description as big or small is not sufficiently precise for the purpose, it is always possible to put the further, “marked” questions Hów big is it? or Hów small is it? (with the acute accent on the word hów? as different from the “unmarked” How big is it?). The “marked” questions Hów big is it? or Hów small is it? carry with them the presupposition that the object in question has already been placed towards one end of the scale rather than the other, and seek further specification of the place of the object on the scale relative to the relevant “size-norm”.

Another property of gradable opposites in terms of markedness is that the unmarked antonym can generally appear in a wider range of syntactic contexts. In particular, unmarked antonyms can occur with measure phrases but marked ones usually cannot, so we can say that something is 3 feet tall (or long) but not 3 feet short. Similarly, ratios are usually only possible with the unmarked antonyms. For example, when comparing two persons with respect to their ages, we can say that A is twice as old as B, but generally we can’t say that B is twice as young as A.

It also has to be noted that if the name of the semantic scale is morphologically related to one of the antonyms, it is related to the unmarked member, so for example, the name of the scale of LENGTH is related to the unmarked long rather than the marked short. Morphology plays another role: in pairs in which one antonym is derived from the other, the derived member is said to be marked, so formal is unmarked and informal is marked.

Many pairs of gradable antonyms contain one marked term and one unmarked, e.g., old/young, heavy/light, fast/slow, whereas many other pairs are made up of two marked terms, e.g., innocent/guilty, beautiful/ugly. In pairs with both members marked, either one of the two members, when used in a question, implies a particular value, and neither of them can be used so that the distinction between the two is neutralized. For example, the sentence How beautiful is she? is used only when the inquirer believes that the person of the inquiry is beautiful rather than ugly. Likewise, the sentence How ugly is she? presupposes that the person of the inquiry has been classified as ugly rather than beautiful.

The discussion has so far been focused on gradable opposites, antonyms in the narrow sense, with reference to their various properties. There are other types of opposites which lack the special properties found in gradable opposites, but, like them, show a “dependence on dichotomization” (Lyons 1977). In other words, like antonyms in the narrow sense, these other types of opposites are also pairs of words which share some kind of semantic dimension.

2.2.2 Antonyms in the wider sense --- other types of opposites

As mentioned in the above section, the distinction of contradictories and contraries, though applying more widely, corresponds to the distinction of ungradable and gradable opposites. Logically, ungradable opposites differ from gradable opposites the same way as do contradictories from contraries.

In the above section, the difference between ungradable and gradable opposites is briefly discussed in analogy to contradictories and contraries. Yet there is a type of opposites, the complementary opposites (sometimes known as contradictories) which are ungradable but most similar to the gradable opposites. Examples of complementaries include adjectives such as true/false, dead/alive, and male/female. They are alike in that the assertion of a sentence containing one member of a pair of a gradable opposites or complementary terms implies the denial of a sentence containing the other member. Also like the gradable opposites, the complementary pairs share a semantic dimension.

Significantly, however, the semantic dimension a complementary pair shares has no middle values. The essence of a pair of complementaries is that between them they exhaustively divide some conceptual domain into two mutually exclusive compartments, so that what does not fall into one of the compartments must necessarily fall into the other. For example, we know that if someone is not dead, they must be alive; if a statement is not true, it is false, and so on.[9]

As a matter of fact, complementarity may be regarded as a special case of incompatibility holding over two-term sets. The assertion of one member of a set of incompatible terms implies the denial of each of the other members in the set taken separately, so if something is (wholly) red, for example, it implies that it is not (even partly) blue, or green etc. The denial of one member of a set of incompatible terms implies the assertion of the disjunction of all the other members, so for instance, if something is not red, it implies that it may be blue or green or in any other colors. In a two-term set of incompatible terms, there is only one other member, and the denial of the one implies the assertion of the other and the assertion of the one implies the denial of the other.

While it is important to draw the distinction between gradable opposites and complementaries (as has been done early in this section and in the preceding section), it is sometimes hard to decide whether a pair of opposites belongs in the set of gradable opposites or in the set of complementaries, as in the case of clean/dirty. Clean and dirty are both gradable adjectives: we can say that something is fairly clean, very clean, extremely dirty, and we can say that X is cleaner/dirtier than Y. However, the scale of clean and dirty does not seem to have a middle term. Whenever something is not clean, it can be described as dirty, so it sounds strange to say “It’s neither clean nor even slightly dirty.” The case of wet and dry is similar in that there are words such as damp and moist which appear to name midpoints of the scale, but they are, it seems, just more specific terms for types of wetness.

It is also noticeable that the difference between the two sets of opposites is not always clear-cut in the “logic” of everyday discourse. For example, gradable opposites are frequently employed in everyday language-behavior as complementaries. For most practical purposes we can usually get along quite well by describing things, in a first approximation as it were, in terms of a yes/no classification, according to which things are either good or bad, big or small, etc. (relative to some relevant norm). If we deny that something is good or assert that something is not good without qualifying our statements in any way or supplying any information relevant to the dichotomous yes/no classification, it is reasonable for the other participants to assume that we are satisfied with a first approximation in terms of which gradable opposites are interpretable as complementaries. For example, if we give the answer “No” to the question “Was it a good film?”, it may well be understood to imply “It was a bad film”, unless we go on to qualify our denial and make clear, as it were, that we are not content to make our judgment in terms of the polarized contrast of good and bad, by saying, for example, it was not good, but it was not bad either.

Apart from the above two cases, the “unusual” use of the two sets of opposites (and others to be further classified) is commonly found both in everyday language behavior and in literary writings, and more significantly, they are so used for rhetorical purposes, a detailed discussion of which will be made in Chapter Three of this paper. In spite of all this, it does not follow that the classification of gradable opposites and complementaries is unnecessary or so confusing.

In the above discussion of complementaries, although the reference has been made mostly to adjectives, verbs such as pass/fail and obey/disobey, nouns such as day/night, prepositions such as in/out, and adverbs such as backwards/forwards are also sometimes considered examples of complementaries, since there is no clear or significant mid interval in the semantic dimension with which each pair is associated. Besides, opposites can be further classified to include directional opposites, reverse opposites and relational opposites.

Directional opposites are generally adverbs or prepositions and include pairs such as up/down, in/out, and clockwise/anti-clockwise, which apparently denote opposite directions. Verbs or nouns (as observed in the following two separate types) that analogically or metaphorically denote opposite directions can also be taken as a subtype of directional opposites.

Reverse opposites are yet another type of opposites which include adjectives or adverbs which signify a quality or verbs or nouns which signify an act or state that reverse or undo the quality, act, or state of the other. Although they are neither contradictory nor contrary terms, they present a clear opposition. Many verbs contained in this class, e.g., tie/untie, marry/divorce, enter/leave, appear/disappear can be thought of as a subtype of directional opposites, because they all describe activities which result in an object undergoing a change from one state to another; the two members of the reverse pair involve the same two states, but the direction of change is different in each case. For example, the verb tie means roughly “to cause something to go from the state of being untied to the state of being tied”, while untie means “to cause something to go from the state of being tied to the state of being untied.” Thus, the opposition seen in pairs of reverse verbs is similar to the kind of opposition in pairs of directional prepositions such as to/from.

Relational opposites[10] include pairs such as predecessor/successor, parent/child, teacher/student, buy/sell and above/below. These are pairs of words which indicate such a relationship that the existence of one of the pair presupposes the existence of the other, or that one of them cannot be used without suggesting the other. This class can also be taken as a subclass of the directional opposites, since these pairs express a relationship between two entities by specifying the direction of one relative to the other along some axis. In examples such as above/below, this axis is spatial, but other examples (e.g., ancestor/descendant) involve an analogical or metaphorical extension of spatial dimensions. Besides, many opposites of this type involve social roles (teacher/student, doctor/patient) or kinship relations (father/mother).

The various types of opposites discussed so far---gradable opposites, complementaries, relational opposites, and so on---all illustrate the essential properties of antonymy: they are pairs of words which simultaneously seem close and yet far apart in meaning, words which share some kind of semantic dimension but denote contrasting values along that dimension. But simply looking at the different types of opposites does not go very far in explaining what makes two particular words antonyms. To address this question, it is useful to look at near-opposites, pairs of words which contrast in some way but which do not seem to be “real” opposites. In the next section, why some words are just near-opposites rather than “good” antonyms, or what prevents them from being opposites in real sense, is analyzed, which might lead to a deeper understanding of the essential properties of antonymy.

2.2.3 Indirect antonyms --- near-opposites

Opposites fall into different types, with some more prototypical than others, but why are some word pairs considered, or felt to be, good antonyms while others are not? There are, in fact, various factors which prevent some word pairs from being “real” opposites, and which, in turn, somehow answer the question of what makes good antonyms. The following is an examination of these factors.

First of all, some word pairs are only weakly contrasted because of the difficulty of establishing what the relevant dimension or axis is. For example, work and play seem somewhat like opposites because in a particular context, there are two alternatives that provide an either/or choice. At the same time, we know that the two alternatives do not exhaust the logical possibilities (in addition to being at play or at work, a person could be asleep, for example), so they are not felt to be true opposites.

Secondly, some near-opposites may be a result of multi-dimensional scales. Take, for example, words related to intelligence. Dictionaries of antonyms list many different words as possible antonyms of clever, including dull, stupid, unintelligent, unskillful, slow, dense, simple, and foolish. These “antonyms” of clever are all partial synonyms of each other, and clever itself has many partial synonyms, including bright, smart, able, intelligent, skillful, ingenious. All of the synonyms of clever contrast at least loosely with all of the synonyms of stupid, but only a few of the possible pairs form good examples of antonyms, e.g., skillful/unskillful and intelligent/unintelligent. Most of the combinations seem only to form near-opposites, e.g., clever/unskillful or ingenious/dense. While all these words are related to a scale of intelligence, this scale is not a simple one. Each of these words may be connected to the various ways of being clever. Intelligent might be more appropriate for mathematical skills, for example, than for interpersonal relationships, whereas skillful may be more applicable to interpersonal relationships than to mathematical abilities.

Thirdly, why some pairs of words are near-opposites rather than antonyms can also be attributed to the difference in distance from the midpoint along the semantic scale. Take, for example, excellent/bad and hot/freezing. In both the pairs, both words are associated with the same semantic dimension, but one term describes a state that is more “extreme” than the other. While excellent, good, bad, and terrible all lie along the same semantic dimension, they name point at different distance from the midpoint, i.e., excellent and terrible name the extreme ends of the dimension, farthest from the midpoint, while good and bad name points nearer to the midpoint. Therefore, good and bad, which are the same distance from the midpoint, are antonyms (so are excellent and terrible), while excellent/bad and good/terrible are only near-opposites. Similarly, in the case of temperature words, this distance-from-the-midpoint qualification would rule out antonym pairs such as freezing/warm and cold/boiling.

Finally, nonpropositional meaning, or connotation associated with the words, is also important to antonymy. To make a good pair of opposites, two words have to be closely matched both in their propositional meaning (or denotation) and in their nonpropositional meaning. Words which are matched in the former respect but not in the latter will be considered near-opposites rather than “good” antonyms. That is why, for instance, tubby and emaciated are not fully satisfactory opposites, although they incorporate a binary directional opposition. Tubby is an adjective that has rather positive connotations in that it is used to affectionately describe someone who is somewhat overweight but not dangerously so, while emaciated is more impersonal (it might be used as part of a medical description while tubby would not be) and also conveys the idea that the thinness is possibly life-threatening.

In this chapter, antonymy has been analyzed from the semantic point of view, first pointing out some characteristics of antonymy which set it apart from the other kinds of semantic relations, then discussing various types of opposites, focusing on the semantic features which distinguish these types. Probably because of its being so different a semantic relation from the others and the varied semantic features it presents, antonymy seems especially appealing to both linguists and average language learners and users. Meanwhile, it has to be noted that, when people resort to antonymy in the actual learning and using of language, they do not always take it as it is in the narrow, or strict, sense, but rather they take it as opposites of one kind or another. Based on the semantic discussion in this chapter, the next chapter is a study of antonymy from the rhetorical perspective.

CHAPTER THREE: ANTONYMY FROM RHETORICAL POINT OF VIEW

3.1 The rhetorical use of antonymy

Apart from the purpose of conveying basic meanings, antonymy is frequently used to achieve rhetorical effects. Basically, there is a violation of the distinction between gradable opposites and ungradable opposites, which is especially true of complementaries. Although by definition, complementaries are pairs which allow no logical middle term, in actual use, they are sometimes used like gradable adjectives. For example, we can say that someone is barely alive, or that one person is more married than someone else. In the cases where ungradable words are explicitly graded, secondary implications of the words arises and the rhetorical effect can be felt. That is, someone who is barely alive is actually entirely alive, but he or she is not as lively or energetic as most people; someone who is more married than someone else may indeed be married or even actually be single, but his or her behavior is more typical of what is “normally” characteristic of the married.

In addition to unusual use of either one of a complementary pair as being gradable (without having to refer to the other), one member of an antonym pair can be used, in a particular context, actually to mean the other, as in the example provided by Grice (1975) in his paper Logic and Conversation. According to Grice, “B is a fine friend” is an utterance made by speaker A to a particular audience C who, like A, knows very well that B had been on good terms with A but B has lately betrayed A’s business secret to A’s rival. Speaker A makes a statement which he does not believe, and the audience knows that A knows that this is obvious to the audience. In making this statement, A wants to communicate something else, and since the most obviously related proposition is the contradictory of the one he purports to be putting forward, the actual message A imparts to B is “B is not a fine friend” (Grice 1975, 53). In this case, conversational implicature is produced, and the speaker’s intended meaning is ironically and sarcastically conveyed.

Literally, in the above cases, only one member of an opposite pair is involved, more commonly found in terms of the rhetorical use of antonymy, however, is the co-occurrence of both members of an opposite pair, though sometimes of the opposite meanings rather than two words which are strictly antonymous. The discussion of the rhetorical use of antonymy in the following sections of this chapter will focus on the co-occurrence.

3.2 Bases for the rhetorical use of antonymy

Among various semantic relations in natural languages, antonymy stands out in that there is a stronger association and higher rate of co-occurrence than other kinds. In fact, opposites are so strongly associated in people’s mind that, in word association tests (see Deese (1965), for example), the most common response to a word with an opposite is its opposite, e.g., the most common response to the word hot was cold and the most common response to the word cold was hot. In addition to this, people frequently use antonym pairs together within the same sentence or even the same phrase.

People have strong intuition about antonymous pairing of words, which occurs especially with prototypical antonyms, though less so with less prototypical opposites. This phenomenon (generally called the “clang phenomenon”) can be easily seen in word association tests. Among various associating rules, the minimal-contrast rule is most readily applied. In an association test, as Clark (1987) finds out, if a stimulus has a common “opposite” (an antonym), it will always elicit that opposite more often than anything else. Linguistically, the most frequent paradigmatic response tends to be a word with a maximum number of features in common with the stimulus. The paradigmatic response then forms a minimal contrast with the stimulus. In other words, the rule would be such that it is to change the sign of only one feature. For example, adjectives strongly elicit each other with a change of the feature [±Polar] (long v. short, good v. bad, etc.). Nouns, too, often show alterations of only one feature. Among animate nouns, the sign of [±Male] is reversed, giving male-female, man-woman, he-she, etc. (and vice verse) as most frequent responses, and so do verb “reverses”, e.g. give-take, sell-buy, go-come, and so on.

But why is there such a strong association in people’s mind? Firstly and essentially, the world where people live is bipolar to a certain extent, and this feature of the world is in a sense reflected in antonymy and usually described with various adjectives. This is also probably why adjectives have been attracting the most attention of researchers interested in antonymy. In fact, the semantic role of adjectives is to express values of attributes (properties, qualities, features, or dimensions), which are generally bipolar in nature. The bipolarity found in antonymy reflects the fact that many attributes in the world are bipolar. For example, the attribute of size (with the bipolar values large and small), the attribute of sex (which has two values, female and male) and the “evaluative” attribute, which ranges from good to bad. There are some exceptional kinds of attributes, e.g., color, which has many values (red, yellow, green, etc.), but by and large, most attributes are bipolar.

The fact that the bipolarity of the world is reflected in antonymy, it should also be noted, does not mean the bipolarity itself can be expressed only with two words which are strictly antonymous. It can be said that the meanings of adjectives are organized on the basis of antonymy, or that the entire adjectival vocabulary of English might be organized in the mind around the relation of antonymy. There is a basic set of antonym pairs, and most adjectives are either a member of one of these basic sets or a synonym of one of them.

Although many adjectives do not seem to have antonyms, any adjective with no direct antonym will be similar in meaning to some adjective with a direct antonym. Many adjectives have clear examples of antonyms (these are called direct antonyms) and the adjectives which do not have a direct antonym are synonyms of adjectives which do,[11] and thus can participate in antonymy indirectly. Adjective pairs which are thus “mediated” by a pair of direct antonyms are called indirect antonyms. For example, the pair vigilant/careless is mediated, presumably, by the direct antonym careful. That is, the antonyms careful and careless are directly linked as antonyms, and vigilant is linked to careful as a synonym, thereby being indirectly linked to careless. Take, for another example, the basic antonym pair wet and dry and the several adjectives which are related to these antonyms, including damp, moist and waterlogged, which are considered to be synonyms of wet, and baked, arid and parched, which are considered to be synonyms of dry. The synonyms of wet form a conceptual “cluster” in semantic memory, and likewise the synonyms of dry. These two semantic clusters are held together by the fact that they share a bipolar attribute. Wet and dry are somehow selected as the “labels” for the two poles of the attribute, and the fact that they are chosen as labels makes them direct antonyms.

The case with wet and dry and other adjectives in the group, which are considered synonyms of the two respectively, is also true of many other adjectives and words of other syntactic classes. This probably can answer, at least partially, why antonym pairs are so strongly associated (or more so than less prototypical opposites), or why subjects in word association tests often think of an antonym (sometimes an indirect one) of a given word.

Another reason for the strong association might lie in the fact that, cognitively, antonym pairs are often learned together: when teaching their children or students new words, parents and teachers often take advantage of antonymy; lexicographers often do the same thing in defining a word in their dictionaries; there are dictionaries (though not many) particularly of antonyms; and even in dictionaries of synonyms, antonyms, if any, are listed at the end of an entry.[12] In short, antonyms have a high frequency of co-occurrence, which makes them strongly associated in language users’ semantic memory.

As a matter of fact, the kind of association does not just happen in word association tests. In the actual use of language, people do tend to use some words together more often than expected by mere chance, and this is especially true in the case of antonyms. The high rate of co-occurrence of antonyms can be easily identified both in common speech and in literary writing. But why are antonym pairs used together so frequently? The strong association in word association tests itself would not account for much, or it does not mean that language users will automatically use antonym pairs together in their everyday discourse or literary writing. The rhetorical effect is argued for in the following discussion, i.e., it is for the rhetorical effect that antonym pairs are frequently used together.

3.3 Linguistic analysis of the rhetorical use of antonymy

The co-occurrence of antonym pairs can be either semantically normal or semantically “abnormal”, and in both cases, rhetorical effects can be felt, though generally speaking, the more semantically “abnormal” the co-occurrence, the stronger the rhetorical effect.

3.3.1 The normal and idiomatic use of antonymy

Semantically speaking, or in terms of the basic purpose of merely conveying semantic meanings, where two antonymous words co-occur, one of them or even both could be otherwise avoided.

Basically, actions and events that involve a change of state, for example, are very common in people’s experiences and thus are also common topics of communication. This is reflected in the lexicon, which contains many concepts denoting physical, temporal, emotional, and other changes. Explicit reference to one state often implies the opposite or reverse state, for example, opening something presupposes that it was closed; drying something implies that it is wet. So it would often be enough, so far as the basic communicative function is concerned, to refer to one word which defines the state either before or after the change. But frequently enough, the speaker actually uses both, resulting in the co-occurrence of a pair of semantically opposed words. Just look at the two examples of this from the Brown corpus,

1) After being closed for seven months, the Garden of the Gods club will have its gala summer opening Saturday, June 3.

2) Pass the iron rations please, and light another candle because it’s getting dark down here...

Overtly referring to the presupposition of the opposite state in describing a change often seems unnecessary, and the use of antonym pairs in such phrases as “not X but Y”, “instead of X, Y” and “Y, not X” sounds even more redundant. However, they do suggest that people are not using opposites together as a kind of reflex simply because they have heard other people use them together (as might be argued for in accounting for the subjects’ response in word association tests), but rather they choose to use them together because they are a very effective way of conveying a meaning or creating a rhetorical effect (for emphasis, for example).

There are also cases where both of the two co-occurring antonyms could possibly be avoided and another word (if any) or expression semantically equal used instead. In fact, various syntactic frames of co-occurring antonyms are commonly found in natural languages, among which are (both) X and Y, X as well as Y, X and Y alike, (either) X or Y, neither X nor Y, from X to Y, and now X, now Y. When occurring in these frames, antonyms usually constitute the most salient points at either end of a continuous scale, which expresses an attribute. Referring to the salient antonymic values of that attribute can have the effect of denoting the entire range of values, even though the antonyms may not be endpoints of the scale. It could be said, therefore, speakers use antonyms together in a sentence in order to achieve a particular rhetorical effect, that of efficiently indicating a range of possible values. For example,

3) They were free with the fellows, young and old, about the place, and exchanged banter in rude phrases, which at first shocked her. (Theodore Dreiser: Sister Carrie)

4) That was one reason she did not look forward to Cathy's visit, short or long.

5) The Danderlea’s energies were claimed by buying and selling liquor, while Mrs Fortescue went out a lot. (Doris Lessing: Mrs Fortescue)

In 3), young and old is used actually to mean, and semantically could well be replaced by, “(fellows) regardless of age ” or “(fellows) of all ages”, rather than just “those who are young and those who are old”; short or long in 4) has the emphasis of “any visit” or “visit of any length in time”; buying and selling in 5) simply means the action of “trading”. Other examples could be readily found in the large number of English idioms, which are discussed in the next section.

Stylistically, the use of antonym pairs together is commonly found both in literary works and in everyday use of language. Due to their being too frequently used together, some antonym pairs, especially the frame X and Y (e.g., back and forth, far and near, thick and thin and high and low, etc.), have been labeled as idioms, acquiring all the qualities that are characteristic of idioms of other kinds.

First of all, they are almost as stable in construction as idioms. Therefore the change of X and Y to X and Z (even when Z is semantically the same as Y) or simply Y and X, for example, is not generally accepted, if not for some particular purpose. Antonym pairs that are idiomatically labeled, when they are used in different contexts, may also have multiple levels of meanings. For example, backwards and forwards in the following three contexts roughly means “back and forth”, “to and from” and “deeply or thoroughly” respectively,

6) “I’m drunk. Happy New Year. Whoops!” Studs yelled loudly: he staggered backwards and forwards with the utterance of each syllable. (James F. Farrell: The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan)

7) After two or three days, when I had established myself in my room and had gone backwards and forwards to London several times, and had ordered all I wanted of my tradesmen, Mr Pocket and I had a long talk together. (Charles Dickens: Great Expectations)

8) We know the D major and the “Emperor” inside out, backwards and forwards. (The World Book Dictionary)

Another quality of idiomatic antonym pairs is that their meaning can be reinforced by various means, such as by repetition as in 9), or by adding words as in 10) and 11).

9) A young man was grinding the valves, and as he twisted back and forth, back and forth, on the tool he looked up at the Joad truck. (John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath)

10) You can hear folks running them all day and all night, whooping and hollering, and the horses running back and forth…(William Faulkner: Spotted Horse)

11) Broken cups lay here, there, and everywhere over the floor. (Longman Dictionary of English Idioms)

With the repetition of, and suitable words added to, the customarily used idiomatic antonym pairs, the meaning is more vividly and forcefully conveyed than otherwise possible in each of the above contexts, i.e. in 9) and 10) the repetition of the actions described seems endless, and in 11) there are broken cups in every corner of the room.

Sometimes several pairs of antonyms are used together to make an exhaustive and impressive description of something, achieving a stronger rhetorical effect. In 12), for example, with the parallel construction of three pairs of antonyms which are generally used to describe people, the description would naturally be felt to be so inclusive as to include not only people of whatever color, whatever amount of wealth, whatever level of intelligence, but also people of whatever classification one may think of.

12) If I stayed, do you know what I would preach here?…That you are all lost here, black and white, rich and poor, the fools and the wise! (Maxwell Anderson: Lost in the Stars)

The rhetorical use of antonymy so far discussed is syntactically restricted and semantically normal. But, as a matter of fact, it is by no means so simple. In fact, many times, a single concept is expressed by words of different syntactic classes, e.g., death, die, dead and the contrasting life, live, alive, therefore, words of one syntactic class also frequently co-occur with semantically opposing or contrasting words from other syntactic classes.[13] In addition, there are also many cases where antonymy is “abnormally” or “illogically” used, which seems to more characteristic of the use of antonymy.

3.3.2 The “abnormal” use of antonymy

It is generally agreed that people have to be logical in thinking and using language, and illogic is not generally accepted. While many cases of rhetorical use of language (e.g., metaphor, hyperbole) seem to be more or less abnormal, the “illogical” use of language is especially true of the particular use of antonymy. It often happens that words of opposite meanings are put together to express something that seems illogical but actually, or in a sense, is not so. In fact, the rhetorical effect thus created is usually more expressive and striking, thus more strongly felt than in many other rhetorical devices.

Due to the normal dichotomization, complementary terms, for example, can only be used in the frame either X or Y, but not both X and Y, or neither X nor Y. Take, for example, the distinction of sex, there is a first-level, normal dichotomy into male and female, and this dichotomy reflects the assumption that a number of different biological and behavioral characteristics will “normally” be associated in the same person or animal. Therefore, a person, for example, must be either male or female. There are, however, many cases where the dichotomous classification is unsatisfactory either biologically or behaviorally, and then the terms hermaphrodite or homosexual are available to take account of these “abnormalities”. Most of the complementary terms in the everyday vocabulary of languages would seem to operate in the same way within the framework of the relevant presuppositions, beliefs and conventions subsumed under the notion of “restricted context”. Humor can be felt, however, when a person (either male or female) who, for example, is believed to have merits of both men and women is said (probably complimentarily) to be both male and female. Likewise, sarcasm is felt when a sissy man is described disapprovingly as neither male nor female, or more female than a woman.

It is also not difficult to think of circumstances in which one may assert of the same person that he is both a bachelor and married (or neither single nor married). This situation may arise, if the person (a man, for instance) in question is not in fact married according to the law and customs of the society, but nevertheless lives and behaves in a way characteristic of people to whom the term married is applied “normally” (living regularly with one woman, having children by her and maintaining a home, etc.), or if the person is legally married but lives or behaves like a bachelor. A humorous effect can also be created in saying that a person (in whichever marital status) is both a bachelor and married or neither single nor married.

Other cases of antonymy being “abnormally” used are such common figures of speech as oxymoron, paradox and irony, in which two opposing or contrasting meanings co-occur in one way or another. While they are different terminologically, these figures of speech do have something in common. The use of anonymy in all these cases can be syntactically more flexible and diverse than in idioms. Oxymoron and paradox, for example, are generally differentiated from each other in the way that the former is in the form of a phrase while the latter is in the form of a statement, yet they are both juxtaposition of contrasted or opposed meanings, which are incompatible. In fact, oxymoron is sometimes taken as “condensed paradox” and paradox as “expanded oxymoron”; for example, sentences are sometimes connected semantically by what is in effect oxymoron. In irony, only one (the literal meaning) of the opposite or contrasting meanings is explicitly expressed while the other (the intended meaning) is yet to be figured out, yet antonymy is indeed involved and the “abnormality” felt likewise. Therefore, irony could be taken as a special case of co-occurrence of two opposing or contrasting meanings. In a word, while all these figures of speech concerning the use of antonymy differ in syntactic form, they are all semantically “abnormal”, the following discussion will focus on just one of them in particular, i.e. oxymoron.

As a figure of speech, oxymoron has been defined in various ways, yet there is not one definition that is all accepted. However it is defined, oxymoron basically has two features: firstly, it is the juxtaposition of two apparently opposed or contrasted meanings (not necessarily two words) which are incompatible; secondly, the juxtaposition is usually surprising yet does in a way make sense, or, in Vicker’s (1988:406) words, “to use logic against logic”, thereby creating an emphatic or epigrammatic effect.

In terms of semantic relation, the meanings that are juxtaposed in oxymoron are, in some cases, strongly opposed, e.g., living death in

13) When the doom of fifty years of living death was uttered by Judge Scott, Jim Hall… rose up and raged in the courtroom until dragged down by a dozen of his blue-coated enemies. (Jack London: White Fang)

According to componential analysis in semantics, among the semantic features of living and death, [+live] and [–live] are the strongest for each. Therefore, living and death are strongly opposed. Other examples of this kind are cruel kindness, victorious defeat, a wise fool, etc. But there are also many cases of juxtaposition in which the two meanings are just loosely contrasted. For example,

14) Every accusation against him has been amply proved, they have been indorsed and reindorsed by his own eloquent silence, … (Mark Twain: Running for Governor)

In this example, silence has the basic and strong feature of [-voice]; although eloquent can be analyzed to have the semantic feature of [+voice], yet compared with other features of the word, [+voice] is not so strong. Therefore, eloquent and silence are just loosely contrasted. However, the two words do satisfy, though in an indirect way, the principle of binary opposition, which is indispensable in oxymoron.

It has generally believed that the two meanings in oxymoron are in most cases strictly antonymous, or strongly opposed. According to Yeshayahu Shen (1987), however, there are much more chances of the two meanings in oxymoron being loosely contrasted than those of strong opposition. In fact, out of the 100 cases of oxymoron he collected at random, only sixteen are strictly opposed, while all the other 86 are more or less loosely contrasted. Although the finding might not be convincing enough (due to the relatively small number of cases collected, for example), it is not so surprising, either, for the reading experience at least of the author of this paper has just somehow proved his finding, though he has never been actually able to do similar statistical work. This is also one of the reasons why the author is reluctant to discuss antonymy, from any perspective, in its strict sense.

Syntactically, oxymoron is of varied frames,[14] it can be within phrase level, and the words which are used together within a phrase can either be of different syntactic class (as in 15), 16) and 17)) or of the same syntactic class (as in 18) and 19)). Specifically, the syntactic frame of oxymoron may fall into the following types:

a) adv. + adj. as in

15) The shackles of an old love straitened him,

His honour rooted in dishonour stood,

And faith unfaithful kept him falsely true.

(Tennyson)

b) adj. + n. as in

16) It is an open secret that Mary and John are engaged. (A Dictionary of American Idioms)

c) v. + adv. as in

17) He wished that he was ill, then he could stay away from school … He began groaning loudly. (Mark Twain)

d) adj. + adj. as in

18) The cat lay on the sofa, looking all drowsy and vivacious.

and e) n. + n. as in

19) Filling in a tax return calls for absolute honesty and cunning.

But since what is opposed or contrasted in oxymoron is not the word form but meaning,[15] then the syntactic frame of oxymoron can be more flexible than indicated in the above examples. In fact, it can be beyond phrase level, for example,

f) subject vs. predicate as in

20) Silence sings all around me; my head is bound with a band (F. S. Flint)

g) subject vs. predicative as in

21) A friend to everybody is a friend to nobody. (proverb)

h) subject vs. object as in

22) The greatest hates spring from the greatest love. (proverb)

and i) predicate vs. object complement as in

23) “And is he gone? And is he gone?” She cried, and wept out outright; “Then I will to the water go, And see him out of sight.” (Hood)

The syntactic frame of oxymoron can even go beyond clause level, for example,

j) main clause vs. subordinate clause as in

24) …for I Except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste, except you ravish me. (John Donne)

The reason for the acceptance of the “abnormal” use of some opposites is briefly discussed in 2.2.2 and above in this section. Oxymoron is a typical case of using logic, which is seemingly illogical, against logic, the kind that is generally or stereotypically accepted. The seemingly illogical juxtaposition of two meanings does make sense and usually goes beyond it to create rhetorical effect. But what makes it possible for the “abnormal” use of anonymy in general to be accepted and even usually preferred? This question will be answered in the next section, a study of the operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric.

3.4 The operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric and the rhetorical effect

It is generally believed that rhetoric should be based on logic, yet, though closely related, they are not the same thing and do not operate on the same level. In fact, the “rhetorical logic” usually operates on a deeper level than the “general logic”. To admit that one should not be logically contradictory in thinking and using language does not mean denying the contradiction or opposition that is there in the real world. It is by no means uncommon for contrasting features to coexist in the same thing. Therefore, two contrasting judgments of the same thing, when made from different angles or at different time, for example, may actually be logical. Superficially, the rhetorical use of antonymy violates the stereotypically accepted logic in the world, as is true of many other rhetorical devices; but in fact, such use of antonymy not only makes sense, but, more important, also creates rhetorical effect.

What accounts for the fact that the rhetorical use of antonymy does make sense is the power of imagination and inference of human beings and the context in which the rhetorical use of antonymy occurs.

Psycholinguistically speaking, human beings have the tendency to reject semantic vacancy in communication. Whenever they come across an utterance that seems illogical, they resort to the relevant context, or their power of imagination and inference with the help of their knowledge or understanding of the world, trying to figure out the deeper meaning, or what the language user may actually intend to mean.

Pragmatically speaking, the Cooperative Principle suggests a set of maxims which guide the conduct of conversation. When any of these maxims is violated, the result is either the failure of communication, or the arising of conversational implicature. The rhetorical use of antonymy is a typical case of purposeful violation of these maxims. For example, the normal and idiomatic use of antonymy violates the maxims of manner and quantity, the speaker definitely believing what they say is “brief” and “as informative”, while the “abnormal” use of antonymy is an violation of the maxim of quality, the speaker by no means believing what they say is “false” or they “lack adequate evidence” for what they say. Instead, by so doing, they mean to produce conversational implicature. When the hearer believes or knows that the speaker is intentionally violating the maxim(s), the conversational implicature can be picked up.

Of course, for the conversational implicature to be picked up and the rhetorical effect to be felt, the context, in various forms, of an utterance also plays an important role. It can be in the form of common knowledge as in

25) The mother is undergoing the joyful pain and the painful joy of childbirth.

As common knowledge, childbirth brings the mother physical pain, while to become a mother is also something joyful. In this sense, the mother experiences both the feelings, or a mixture of the two at the same time.

The context can also be textual as in 26) and 27),

26) “A tedious brief scene of young Pyramus

And his love Thisby; very tragical mirth.”

Merry and tragical! tedious and brief!

That is hot ice and wondrous strange snow.

(Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

In the above lines of poem, a few cases of oxymoron are employed, which are semantically incompatible. Even Theseus, a character in the poem, wonders “How shall we find the concord of this discord?” (Another case of oxymoron.) Philostrate, another character, offers an answer, which immediately follows in the same text, and with this answer, the conversational implicature is successfully picked up and the rhetorical effect felt.

27) A play there is, my lord, some ten words long,

Which is as brief as I have known a play;

But by ten words, my lord, it is too long,

Which makes it tedious; for in all the play

There is not one word apt, one player fitted.

And tragical, my noble lord, it is;

For Pyramus therein doth kill himself.

Which when I saw rehears’d, I must confess,

Made mine eyes water; but more merry tears

The passion of loud laughter never shed.

(Shakespeare: A Midsummer Night’s Dream)

Sometimes, the clue is not explicitly given in the immediate context, but has to be found in the larger context. For example,

28) Then had I not been thus exiled from light,

As in the land of darkness, yet in light,

To live a life half dead, a living death,

And buried; but, O yet more miserable!

(Milton: Samson Agonistes)

Samson Agonistes is betrayed by his wife, and captured and put in jail, blind. Physically he is alive, but, with the spiritual torture, he feels half dead. In fact, Milton is writing about himself, who used to be ambitious but now, being sick and blind, depressed. Without this larger context, the deep meaning of living death could hardly be successfully understood.

The power of imagination and inference of human beings and context in various forms, as shown in the above examples, are important factors that help or ensure the understanding of the deeper meaning of the rhetorical use of antonymy, thus its being accepted. Rather than simply making sense, the rhetorical use of antonymy usually creates strong rhetorical effect, and what makes it possible for the rhetorical effect to be felt is the operation mechanism in rhetoric that is particular to antonymy.

Antonymy is commonly and often purposefully used in order to achieve various rhetorical effects, such as brevity, humor, wittiness, sarcasm or provocation of thought. Involved in a given context may be more than one of these effects, with one stronger than the other(s) rather than mutually exclusive. As a matter of fact, exactly what a rhetorical effect is created in a given text, or how it is termed, is of relatively little importance. What really counts, however, is the fact that the use of antonymy basically adds to the expressiveness and forcefulness of the discourse. But how is it achieved, or what is it behind the various effects that makes them appreciated by the reader or hearer? To address this question, the operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric has to be studied.

Besides the outside world, there is an inner world in people’s mind as the reflection of the outside world. Both the worlds are full of opposition, and there is also opposition between the two worlds. Meanwhile, the opposites between the two worlds interact with each other and form a unity, and so do the opposites within each world. It is just the opposition of these three categories that antonymy reveals, and rhetorically, antonymy generally operates by going beyond the superficial opposition (which seems abnormal) and arriving at the unity, thereby creating the rhetorical effect in one form or another. This is what is meant by the operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric.

In the little research that has ever been done on the rhetorical use of antonymy, attention has been given mostly to the specific rhetorical effects, whereas the operation mechanism has either been ignored or sometimes confused with rhetorical effect. Since some of the rhetorical effects of antonymy have been illustrated in the above text,[16] the discussion in this section will be devoted mainly to the operation mechanism, specifically the three categories of opposition the rhetorical use of antonymy reveals and the unity formed in each case. They are:

i) Opposite features co-existing in a particular thing

29) … Dudley Field Malone called my conviction a “victorious defeat”. (John Scopes: The Trial That Rocked the World)

In the famous Monkey Trial in 1925, John Scopes, an American high school teacher, was accused, by fundamentalists, of diffusing Darwinism in his class and convicted. In this sense the conviction was a “defeat”. Yet with many famous scientists in court as witnesses and the famous attorney’s (W. J. Bryan) witty defense, the trial itself proved to be a successful lecture on Darwinism, and luckily enough, won John Scopes the scholarship to Chicago University. In this sense, however, the trial was “victorious”, both for the theory and John Scopes himself, the same trial bearing both the opposing features. No other comments on the conviction can be more appropriate than this one as scorn on the fundamentalists’ foolishness and hypocrisy and admiration for the teacher’s efforts in popularizing the scientific theory.

ii) The opposition between personal feelings and the reality

30) 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 pleasures of any town I ever saw. (O. Henry)

In this example, six pairs of words with opposite meanings are used in describing the same society. In reality, there are indeed many millionaires … and pleasures. But in the author’s eyes, they are just opposite to what they appear to be. With such a striking contrast, the emptiness, corruption and vanity of the superficially prosperous and noble society is pungently satirized.

iii) People’s contrasting or conflicting feelings

31)  Good night, good night! Parting is such sweet sorrow,

That I shall say good night till it be morrow.

(Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet)

Sweet sorrow in this example is a mixture of just two opposite feelings (a feeling of both sweet and sorrowful) Juliet feels at the same time when parting with Romeo. Simply with these two words, the character’s mingled feeling is economically and vividly depicted.

With the three essential categories of oppositions sharply revealed and unified, it is only natural that the rhetorical effect of antonymy is strongly felt. In some cases, due to its being much used or even lexicalized (e.g., bittersweet), the rhetorical use of antonymy may lose its freshness and can hardly have its rhetorical effect felt. Semantically, however, it does not mean that the opposition or contrast deep inside has perished.

CHAPTER FOUR: CONCLUSION

In this paper, antonymy is studied from a perspective both linguistic and rhetorical. Linguistically, it is proposed that rather than so strictly defined as to refer to the kind of semantic relation only between gradable opposites, which constitute only one of the various kinds of opposites in the language, antonymy should cover various kinds of opposites. Rhetorically, it is argued that antonym pairs or opposed meanings are used together more for a rhetorical effect than simply to convey a meaning, and the rhetorical use of antonymy is studied from different aspects.

To have the term antonymy cover various kinds opposites, the writer of this paper does not mean to suggest that they are the same. On the contrary, they do differ in one way or another, and in fact a considerable effort is made in the paper to categorize opposites into different types, i.e., antonyms in the narrow sense, antonyms in the wider sense and near-opposites (or indirect antonyms). The semantic features of each type of opposites are analyzed, and the examination of why some words (near-opposites) which do contrast in some way are not considered “good” antonyms would help to better reveal the properties of antonymy.

In the actual use of language, antonyms are often used either normally or “abnormally” and antonym pairs or words with contrasting meanings commonly co-occur either within or across syntactic boundaries. Rather than simply for the basic communicative purpose of conveying a semantic meaning, it is argued, people use antonymy more for a rhetorical effect, or for a more effective communication. Besides the semantic and pragmatic analysis of the logically “abnormal” use of one member of an antonym pair, the philosophical and psychological bases and common syntactic frames of co-occurring antonyms in the form of idioms and oxymoron are explored. The operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric is also examined, answering why the rhetorical effect of antonymy can be achieved.

In short, as an important semantic relation, antonymy not only has its semantic significance but rhetorical significance as well.

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[1] Contrast will be taken as the most general term, carrying no implications as to the number of elements in the set of paradigmatically contrasting elements. Opposition will be restricted to dichotomous, or binary, contrasts; and antonymy will be restricted still further, to gradable opposites, such as ‘big’:‘small’, ‘high’:‘low’, etc. (Lyons 1977, 279)

[2] It is a principle proposed in order to explain children’s early word learning. (see Markman 1994, for example.)

[3] It is, as Egan finds out, “a word of opposite meaning”(Webster’s New International Dictionary, Second Edition), “a term which is the opposite or antithesis of another, a counter term”(Oxford English Dictionary), “a word directly opposed to another in meaning; a counterterm: the opposite of synonym”(Funk and Wagnalls New Standard Dictionary), “a counterterm: an opposite; an antithetical word: the opposite of synonym”(Century Dictionary), and “a word that is opposite in meaning of a particular word”(New Century Dictionary). (Egan 1968, 26a)

[4] Egan writes: Opposition is a relation involved when two things are so placed that: (1) they may be connected by a straight line…drawn from one to another (as, opposite windows); (2) they lie at either end of an axis, diameter or the like (as, opposite points on the earth’s surface); (3) they are contagious but reversed in position (as, the opposite halves of the globe); (4) they face each other, the distance apart being of no consequence (as, partners stand opposite); (5) they depart or diverge from each other (as, to get their opposite ways); (6) they work against each other (as, opposite forces); (7) they cannot exist together because they reverse or undo each other (as, the opposite process of growth and decay); (8) they represent the obverse and the reverse (as, the opposite faces of a coin). (Egan 1968, 26a)

[5] According to the traditional logical distinction of contradictories and contraries, a proposition p is the contradictory of another proposition q, if p and q cannot both be true or both false; e.g., “This is a male cat”:“This is a female cat” (as well as such corresponding affirmative and negative propositions as “The coffee is cold”:“The coffee is not cold”). A proposition p is the contrary of another proposition q, if p and q cannot both be true (though both may be false); e.g., “The coffee is hot”:“The coffee is cold” (as well as such pairs as “All men are bald”:“No men are bald”).

[6] As to why it may be interpreted in this way, a further discussion will be made in the next section.

[8] Take, for instance, a typical pair of ungradable opposites, alive/dead. Except in figurative uses, people do not say “A is extremely dead,” or “B is fairly alive.”

[9] It is different in the case of gradable opposites. For example, if something is not hot, it is not necessarily cold, it can certainly be in the state of being “neither hot nor cold” instead.

[10] This type of opposites are also called relative terms (Egan 1968) and converse terms (Lyons 1977).

[11] “Synonyms” here is meant to be in a wide sense, with context taken into consideration.

[12] This is true of quite some dictionaries of synonyms, though the antonyms thus listed are in fact often indirect antonyms, as a group, of the entry word or its synonyms.

[13] While more examples of the co-occurrence of semantically opposing or contrasting words across syntactic boundaries will be provided in the following text, some have been included in the above text, i.e., in 2), light as a verb co-occurs with dark as an adjective, and in 12), the noun fool co-occurs with wise, an adjective.

[14] In fact, the frames from a) to j) do not make an exhaustive list; in some cases, it is difficult to define the way oxymoron is used exactly in terms of syntactic frames.

[15] Though the form may also be involved sometimes. In Example 15), for example, in both the pairs, honour/dishonour and faith/unfaithful, the two words are indeed morphologically related.

[16] Specifically, they are the effect of humor or sarcasm in the explicit grading of ungradable opposites (e.g., … more married than … in 3.1) and in the violation of dichotomization of complementary opposites (e.g., neither male nor female in 3.3.2), and the effect of emphasis in the semantically normal use of antonymy (e.g., the idioms of antonym pairs and the redundancy in the patterns of “not X but Y”, etc. in 3.3.1).