Dominant Lexical and Grammatical Means of Stylistic Expression of the Texts of English and German-language National Anthems

The article is devoted to the study of the means of creating artistic imagery in the texts of English and German national anthems. The aim of the work is to clarify the dominant lexical and grammatical means, methods and techniques of linguostylistics, used in the texts of the mentioned anthems. The research methods are established procedures and methods of stylistic interpretation and hermeneutic description of observed speech phenomena, as well as a comparative analysis of the means of expression characteristic of these texts. It was found that among the whole variety of stylistic figures, techniques and means known to linguistics, only two of their lexical and grammatical types are used in the studied texts – figures of substitution (tropes) and figures of addition. At the same time, it was noticed that only that part of the figures of substitution is implemented here, the logical and semantic basis of which is comparison, and among the figures of addition – that part of them that is based on repetition. It was proved that among the former for hymns, similes, periphrase, metaphor and metonymy are productive, and among the latter – amplification, syntactic parallelism, anaphora and epiphora. The most productive trope among both text clusters was the epithet – the only stylistic device that brings together figures of substitution and figures of addition. It is also proven that, being quantitatively limited in terms of the dominance of the aforementioned hyperonymic figures, the stylistic “assortment” of the texts of English and German-language hymns turns out to be completely unlimited in terms of their hyponymic varieties – descending means of aesthetic expression of artistic speech. Stylistic figures, techniques and means, actualized in the texts of English and German-language anthems, turn out to be aimed at the implementation of a single cognitive-suggestive guideline – aesthetic influence on the clients of the discourse through artistic imagery.