A Linguistic And Rhetorical Approach To Antonymy In English

This paper is a study of antonymy in English from linguistic and rhetorical perspectives, specifically its semantic features and its rhetorical use.The traditional approach classifies antonyms into root antonyms and derivational antonyms from morphological point of view and the specific semantic features reflected in antonymy are neglected. With more semantic than morphological concern, modern linguists categorize opposites into various types, but the term antonym is still defined in a narrow sense, which includes only gradable opposites, with other types of opposites such as complementaries and converse terms excluded. The too strict definition presents a misleading picture of opposites, which are in fact of various types and commonly used in the natural language, thereby hindering the inclusive study of antonymy.The paper holds that two words can be taken as antonyms without having to be gradable, if there is a strong semantic opposition between them. The term antonym is then meant to include various types of opposites, i.e., antonyms in a narrow sense (gradable opposites) and antonyms in a 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), which do contrast in some way but are not considered "good" antonyms, are also examined, with various factors studied which prevent them from being considered "good" antonyms.Despite the fact that antonyms, either in the narrow sense or in the wider sense or even near-opposites, are commonly and often rhetorically used in the natural language, little amount of research has been done on the rhetorical use of antonymy, and theattention ever given has been focused on 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.The paper points out that, 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. 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 finally both the semantic normality and "abnormality" in various frames are studied.It is argued in this paper that the rhetorical use of antonymy basically adds to the expressiveness and forcefulness of the discourse, and that what makes it possible for the rhetorical effect to be achieved is the special operation mechanism of antonymy in rhetoric, i.e., antonymy operates by going beyond the superficial semantic abnormality, especially revealing different sorts of superficial opposition and arriving at the unity, thereby creating rhetorical effect.