Теоретические и методологические проблемы

исследования языка

Doctor of Philology Boyeva-Omelechko N.B.

Pedagogical Institute of South State University

Rostov-on-Don, Russia

Lexical and Grammatical Antonyms in Dan Brown’s

“Angels and Demons”

One of the most famous modern writers is Dan Brown, the author of “The Da Vinci Code”, “Deception Point”, “Digital Fortress” and the novel in question “Angels and Demons”. These novels are extremely intelligent and intricately layered with remarkable research and detail. They are true masterpieces – from their opening pages to their stunning conclusions.

It’s worth mentioning than not only the plots of the novels but also the individual style of Dan Brown contributes to the success of his books. In particular the author skillfully uses oppositions of both lexical antonyms (notional words with opposite meanings belonging to the same part of speech) and grammatical ones. The latter include, according to our research (Боева, 2001), oppositions of affixes, articles, postpositions, prepositions, words belonging to different parts of speech, grammatical forms and constructions as well as so called textual (textually conditioned) antonyms that is words which can form antonymic oppositions not with definite but practically with any words in a text (noun opposite, adjective unlike, adverb otherwise etc.).

The very title of the novel “Angels and Demons” consists of antonyms referring to the sphere of religion. It serves as a introduction to the plot of the novel, clearly showing that the struggle of the good and evil will be in the centre of the narration.

In the novel we come across other antonyms typical of the religious antinomic picture of the world reflecting reality in binary oppositions (Бердяев, 2003):

(1) ‘God created… light and dark, heaven and hell –’

‘Exactly,’ Vittoria said ‘He created everything in opposites. Symmetry, perfect balance’ (p.94).

(2) He held the science and religion were not enemies, but rather allies – two different languages telling the same story, a story of symmetry and balance… heaven and hell, night and day, hot and cold, God and Satan. Both science and religion rejoiced in God’s symmetry… the endless contest of light and dark (p.51).

Following the principle of symmetry D.Brown builds his plot around the search for antimatter (the affixal antonym of the word matter with a zero affix), which one of his characters defines as “matter’s opposite” (p. 94).

Other affixal antonyms of this type (negative / zero affix) can be found in the novel alongside with antonyms each having an antonymous affix:

(1) Four couplets of stressed and unstressed syllables (p. 294).

(2) Our external walls are shielded electronically to protect our internal communications (p. 174).

D. Brown widely uses pairs of lexical and affixal (grammatical) antonyms to verbalize interconnected (the Russian term – сопряжённые) concepts, that is concepts and anticoncepts (the latter term is used by Y. Stepanov (Степанов, 2007).

Other types of grammatical antonyms can also be found in “Angels and Demons”:

– oppositions of articles:

(1) ‘It was Beruni.’ She paused. The Beruni (p. 317).

(2) The four missing men were no ordinary cardinals. They were the cardinals (p. 147);

– oppositions of postpositions:

A black van’s been going in and out all night (p. 472).

– opposition of prepositions:

(1) The Catholic Church will continue with or without Vatican City (p. 184).

(2) Now, across the piazza, men moved in and out of the church (p. 326);

– oppositions of grammatical forms:

(1) ‘You believed God chose you?’

‘I did. And I do (p. 371)’ (opposition past / present).

(2) ‘I won’t hesitate to shoot.’

‘You’ve already hesitated’ (p. 454) (opposition future / past).

(3) ‘They killed privately, dropping bodies when no one was looking.’

‘What are you saying?’ Langdon asked. ‘That you are going to brand and kill them in public?’ (p. 183) (opposition adverb / noun);

– oppositions of syntactic constructions (affirmative / negative sentence):

The purple spots in his vision faded. The guilt however didn’t (p. 250).

D. Brown often uses textual antonyms:

(1) You’ve come for the woman. Do not pretend otherwise (p. 454) (= Do not pretend that you didn’t come for the woman).

(2) ‘God is in all things.’

‘Except science’ (p. 585) (= God isn’t in science).

So we see that that the use of antonyms and antonymic cohesion (connection of sentences with the help of antonymic oppositions the members of which are situated in different sentences) can be treated as the mark of D.Brown’s individual style. Antonyms help the author to make his narration more expressive, vivid and dynamic thus keeping the reader’s attention.

References:

1. Бердяев Н.А. Диалектика божественного и человеческого. – М.: АСТ, 2003.

2. Боева Н.Б. Грамматическая антонимия в современном английском языке: дис. … д-ра филол. наук. – М., 2001.

3. Степанов Ю.С. Концепты. Тонкая плёнка цивилизации. – М.: Языки слав. культур, 2007.

4. Brown D. Angels and Demons. – London: Corgi Books, 2001.