Procedures of expressiveness in Skender Kulenović's short stories

Abstract

Skender Kulenović, outstanding writer characterized by the brittleness and clarity of his language, is one of the writers whose literary work represents a very fertile ground for different sociolinguistic, stylistic, lexico-semantic and other types of research. As in poems, so in prose, he chose his words carefully, matching them perfectly into given context. In this paper we will analyze emotional and expressive means in four narratives: „Vitezovi“, „Puče ti žica“, „Titiz“ i „Salkan Sitnica“. Chosen narratives are rich in descriptions and highly achieved in the field of stylistics where the author's stylistic competence comes to the fore. Expressiveness is one of the most important stylistic categories that completely involves enunciation whose basic carriers are stylistic figures and tropes.

The paper discusses not only contextual expressiveness, which includes figurative use of words (stylistic figures and tropes, especially similes as a very frequent figure, as well as accumulation, epithets, gradation, anaphora, parentheses etc.) but also inherent expressiveness. We have found a large number of diminutives, augmentatives, hypocoristics, pejoratives, vulgarisms, different types of idioms as well as superlatives which are used for emphasis, and less frequent lexemes. Lexic of oriental origin is highly represented and it gives a special stamp to the period between two world wars and was also used to colorfully represent Kulenović’s prose works.