Macrostructural and microstructural stylistic figures based on legal vocabulary describing the form and content of social relations as a means of expressing the author's irony in the third volume of M. Proust's novel "In Search of Lost Time" ("la recherche du temps perdu") "At Guermantes" ("Le Côté de Guermantes")

Abstract

The article analyzes microstructural (metaphor and figurative comparison) and macrostructural (allusion) stylistic figures, including legal vocabulary, through which the author ironically describes both the essence and the form of social relations, primarily between representatives of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie. Legal terms from the field of criminal procedure, as well as administrative, constitutional, criminal, civil and commercial law used as a figurative part of these figures were selected as the object of the study. Traditionally, terms are divided into commonly used, i.e. used in everyday life; terms used in many branches of knowledge, not only in jurisprudence, but, say, also in logic, and special legal terms that indicate phenomena peculiar to law. In this work we use the methods of lexical, semantic and stylistic analysis. For the analysis of stylistic figures, we turn to the classification of J. Molyneux, who divides them into macrostructural (not having any pronounced features; not always noticeable in the text and may not be understood: in our case, this is an allusion to the situation from constitutional law) and microstructural (immediately noticeable in the text; used to create them vocabulary cannot be replaced by another; they are understood unambiguously; in our case, these are metaphors and figurative comparisons). Through the use of these figures, the author's irony is expressed at all levels: both in describing the social relations of aristocrats and bourgeois among their own kind, and in their interaction with each other. In the contexts under consideration, the "sublime" vocabulary also sometimes coexists with the vocabulary of a more "low" style, which allows you to create a contrast between how certain social relations are seen by the characters and what they really are.