Figurative usage of words and expressiveness of the text

The paper analyzes contextually expressive lexis or figurative usage of words. It is about usage of figures of speech and tropes, whose recognition and analysis requires context in which they appear and at the same time effect the text expressiveness. Essays (published in the collection Sadašnjost za vječnost) and feuilletons (published in the collection En Passant) by Veselko Tenžera, were used for the purpose of this paper. Following figures of speech and tropes were analyzed in terms of their frequency: ellipsis, personification, comparison, hyperbole, metonymy, oxymoron, irony and sarcasm. The analysis shows that figurative usage of words contributes to expressiveness of the text, because in this way additional possibilities are used in language as a system for making new connections between words. The uniqueness of these texts is the author’s creativity, individuality and subjectivity in creating new unusual language forms whose meaning and function are conditioned mainly by the context in which they are put by Tenžera.