In linguistics there are different terms to den _by which utterances are foreground, i.e. made more conspicuous, more "effective and therefore imparting some additional information. They are called expressive means, stylistic means, stylistic markers, stylistic devices, tropes, "figures of speech and other names. All these terms are used indiscriminately and are set against those means which we shall conventionally call neutral. Most linguists distinguish ordinary (also: substantial, referential) semantic and stylistic differences in meaning. 58), others besides these contain specif. lc. meanings which may be called sty I i s t i c. Such meanings go alongside primary meanings and, as it were, are superimposed on them.
Stylistic meanings are so to say deautomatized. As is known, the process of automatization, i.e. a speedy and subconscious use of language data, is one of the indispensable ways of making communication easy and quickly decodable.
But when a stylistic meaning is involved, the process of deautomatization checks the reader's perception of the language. His attentionis arrested by a peculiar use of language media and he begins, to the best of his ability, to decipher it. He becomes aware of the form in which the utterance is cast and as the result of this process a twofold use of the language medium—ordinary* and stylistic—becomes apparent to him. As will be shown later this application of language means in some cases presents no difficulty. It is so marked that even a layman can see it, as when a metaphor or a simile is used. But in some texts grammatically redundant forms or hardly noticeable forms, essential for the expression of stylistic meanings which carry the particular additional information desired, may present a difficulty.
What this information is and how it is conveyed to the mind of. the reader can be explored only when a concrete communication is subjected to observation, which will be done later in the analyses of various stylistic devices arid in the functioning of expressive means.
In this connection the following passage from "Investigating English Style" by D. Crystal and D. Davy is of interest: "Features which are stylistically significant display different kinds and degrees of distinctiveness in a text: of two features, one may occur only twice in a text, the other may occur thirty times,— or a feature might be uniquely identifying in the language, only ever occurring in one variety, as opposed to a feature which is distributed throughout many or all varieties in different frequencies."1