Cognitive-operational and speech-genre universalism of the oxymoron

Abstract

The article attempts to explicate the stylistic figure of the oxymoron as a phenomenon that shows the representation in the sphere of language of a specific property of human consciousness and the picture of the world structured by it – the presumption of the unsubstantial nature of opposites and the possibility, on this basis, of their discursive actualization in the formulas of semantic synthesis. It is shown that the contact arrangement of coreferent antonyms in a single syntagmatic construction is not enough to form an oxymoron (black-and-white movie). This figure of speech arises as a result of the presence of the subject of speech and their evaluative-characterizing intention in the semantic space of the text (sad-happy eyes). Evaluation individualizes the mode of reception and the resulting picture of the world. Thus, the oxymoron comes into play as a way of organizing the cognitive model of non-linguistic reality, as an individual experience of perceiving and semantizing objects and phenomena. On the basis of representative communicative and speech material, the author demonstrates the universal nature of the application and actualization of the oxymoron in the entire range of the main socially relevant types of discourse. It is important to note that each speechgenre area differs in its specificity in the interpretation of the text-forming and pragmatic potential of the oxymoron. In poetry, it can act as a structural-compositional model of the whole work, totally determining the possibility of the appearance and functionality of all other elements of the text. In official business discourse, the oxymoron is present implicitly, as an unarticulated and fundamentally rejected pragmatic antithesis to the technique of textual construction, focused on the exclusive and only relevance of denotative semantics for the organization of the message. The author believes that the constructively significant role of the oxymoron in the processes of reception and verbal representation of the world is proven. 

Keywords

• ontology of contrary
• perception of the world
• antonymy
• oxymoron
• colloquial speech
• fiction prose
• philosophical discourse
• scientific speech
• journalism
• religious discourse
• official-and-business speech