General Notes on Styles and Stylistics

- monologue is never interrupted;

- character's utterances are much longer than in ordinary conversation;

 

The Pubicistic Style, its Substyles, and their Peculiarities

The Pubicistic Style treats certain political, social, economic, cultural problems. The aim of this style is to form public opinion, to convince the reader or the listener.

Substyles: The oratory essays, journalistic articles, radio and TV commentary.

Oratory. It makes use of a great hummber of expressive means to arouse and keep the public's interest: repetition, gradation, antithesis, rhetorical questions, emotive words, elements of colloquial speech.

Radio and TV commentary is less impersonal and more expressive and emotional.

The essay is very subjective and the most colloquial of the all substyles of the publicistic style. It makes use of expressive means and tropes.

The journalistic articles are impersonal.

The Newspaper FS, its Ssubstyles and their Peculiarities

To understand the language peculiarities of English newspaper style it will be sufficient to analyse the following basic newspaper features:

1) brief news items;

2) advertisements and announcements;

3) headlines;

Brief items: its function is to inform the reader. It states only facts without giving comments. The vocabulary used is neutral and common literary. Specific features are:

a) special political and economic terms;

b) non-term political vocabulary;

c) newspaper clichms;

d) abbreviations;

e) neologisms.

Headlines. The main function is to inform the reader briefly of what the news is to follow about. Syntactically headlines are very short sentences, interrogative sentences, nominative sentences, elliptical sentences, sentences with articles omitted, headlines including direct speech.

Advertisements and announcements. The function of advertisements and announcements is to inform the reader. There are two types of them: classified and non-classified. In classified the information is arranged according to the subject matter: births, marriages, deaths, business offers, personal etc.

The Scientific Prose Style, its Substyles and their Peculiarities

The style of scientific prose has 3 subdivisions:

1) the style of humanitarian sciences;

2) the style of "exact" sciences;

3) the style of popular scientific prose.

Its function is to work out and ground theoretically objective knowledge about reality

The aim of communication is to create new concepts, disclose the international laws of existence.

The peculiarities are: objectiveness; logical coherence, impersonality, unemotional character, exactness.

Vocabulary. The use of terms and words used to express a specialized concept in a given branch of science. Terms are not necessarily. They may be borrowed from ordinary language but are given a new meaning.

The scientific prose style consists mostly of ordinary words which tend to be used in their primary logical meaning. Emotiveness depends on the subject of investigation but mostly scientific prose style is unemotional.

Grammar: The logical presentation and cohesion of thought manifests itself in a developed feature of scientific syntax is the use of established patterns.

- postulatory;

- formulative;

- argumentative;

The impersonal and objective character of scientific prose style is revealed in the frequent use of passive constructions, impersonal sentences. Personal sentences are more frequently used in exact sciences. In humanities we may come across constructions but few.

The parallel arrangement of sentences contributes to emphasizing certain points in the utterance.

Some features of the style in the text are:

- use of quotations and references;

- use of foot-notes helps to preserve the logical coherence of ideas.

Humanities in comparison with "exact" sciences employ more emotionally coloured words, fewer passive constructions.

Scientific popular style has the following peculiarities: emotive words, elements of colloquial style

The Style of Official Documents and its Substyles

1) Language of business letters;

2) Language of legal documents;

3) Language of diplomacy;

4) Language of military documents; The aim:

1. to reach agreement between two contracting parties;

2. to state the conditions binding two parties in an understanding. Each of substyles of official documents makes use of special terms. Legal documents: military documents, diplomatic documents. The documents use set expressions inherited from early Victorian period. This vocabulary is conservative. Legal documents contain a large proportion of formal and archaic words used in their dictionary meaning. In diplomatic and legal documents many words have Latin and French origin. There are a lot of abbreviations and conventional symbols.

The most noticable feature of grammar is the compositional pattern. Every document has its own stereotyped form. The form itself is informative and tells you with what kind of letter we deal with.

Business letters contain: heading, addressing, salutation, the opening, the body, the closing, complimentary clause, the signature. Syntactical features of business letters are - the predominance of extended simple and complex sentences, wide use of participial constructions, homogeneous members.

Morphological peculiarities are passive constructions, they make the letters impersonal. There is a tendency to avoid pronoun reference. Its typical feature is to frame equally important factors and to divide them by members in order to avoid ambiguity of the wrong interpretation.

 

 

 

 

ASSIGNMENTS FOR STYLISTIC ANAIYSIS JOHN GALSWORTHY

THE MAN OF PROPERTY IRENE'S RETURN

The passage deals with Irene's return home after Bosinney's death.

On reaching home, and entering the little lighted hall with his latchkey, the first thing that caught his eye was his wife's gold-mounted umbrella lying on the rug chest. Flinging off his fur coat, he hurried to the drawing-room.

The curtains were drawn for the night, a bright fire of cedar logs burned in the grate, and by its light he saw Irene sitting in her usual corner on the sofa. He shut the door softly, and went towards her. She did not move, and did not seem to see him.

"So you've come back?" he said. "Why are you sitting here in the dark?"

Then he caught sight of her face, so white and motionless that it seemed as though the blood must have stopped flowing in her veins; and her eyes, that looked enormous, like the great, wide, startled brown eyes of an owl.

Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl, bunched in its soft feathers against the wires of a cage. The supple erectness of her figure was gone, as though she had been broken by cruel exercise; as though there were no longer any reason for being beautiful, and supple, and erect.

"So you've come back," he repeated.

She never looked up, and never spoke, the firelight playing over her motionless figure.

Suddenly she tried to rise, but he prevented her; it was then that he understood.

She had come back like an animal wounded to death, not knowing where to turn, not knowing what she was doing. The sight of her figure, huddled in the fur, was enough.

He knew then for certain that Bosinney had been her lover; knew that she had seen the report of his death — perhaps, like himself, had bought a paper at the draughty corner of a street, and read it.

She had come back then of her own accord, to the cage she had pined to be free of - and taking in all the tremendous significance of this, he

longed to cry: Take your hated body, that I love, out of my house! Take away that pitiful white face, so cruel and soft- before I crush it. Get out of my sight; never let me see you again!"

And, at those unspoken words, he seemed to see her rise and move away, like a woman in a terrible dream, from which she was fighting to awake - rise and go out into the lark and cold, without a thought of him, without so much as the knowledge of his presence.

Then he cried, contradicting what he had not yet spoken, "No; stay there!" And turning away from her, he sat down in his accustomed chair on the other side of the hearth.

They sat in silence.

And Soames thought: "Why is all this? Why should I suffer so? What have I done? It is not my fault!"

Again he looked at her, huddled like a bird that is shot and dying, whose poor breast you see panting as the air is taken from it, whose poor eyes look at you who have shot it, with a slow, soft, unseeing look, taking farewell of all that is good — of the sun, and the air, and its mate.

So they sat, by the firelight, in the silence, one on each side of the hearth.

And the fume of the burning cedar logs, that he loved so well, seemed to grip Soames by the throat till he could bear it no longer. And going out into the hall he flung the door wide, to gulp down the cold air that came in; then without hat or overcoat went out into the Square.

Along the garden rails a half-starved cat came rubbing her way towards him, and Soames thought: "Suffering! when will it cease, my suffering?"

At a front door across the way was a man of his acquaintance named Rutter, scraping his boots, with en air of "I am master here". And Soames walked on.

From far in the clear air the bells of the church where he and Irene had been married were pealing in "practice" for the advent of Christ, the chimes ringing out above the sound of traffic. He felt a craving for strong drink, to lull him to indifference, or rouse him to fury. If only he could burst out of himself, out of this web that for the first time in his life he felt around him. If only he could surrender to the thought: "Divorce her - turn her out! She has forgotten you. Forget her!"

If only he could surrender to the thought: "Let her go - she has suffered enough!"

If only he could surrender to the desire: "Make a slave of her- she is in your power!"

If only even he could surrender to the sudden vision: "What does it all matter?" Forget himself for a minute, forget that it mattered what he did, forget that whatever he did he must sacrifice something.

If only he could ad on an impulse!

He could forget nothing; surrender to no thought, vision, or desire; it was all too serious; too close around him, an unbreakable cage.

On the far side of the Square newspaper boys were calling their evening wares, and the ghoulish cries mingled and jangled with the sound of those church bells.

Soames covered his ears. The thought flashed across him that but for a chance, he himself, and not Bosinney, might be lying dead, and she, instead of crouching there like a shot bird with those dying eyes -

1. Speak on the way Irene is presented in the passage:

a) in the author's description and b) in represented speech.

2. Pick out metaphors and similes and analyse them.

3.  Discuss epithets in the author's speech and in represented speech.

4.  Analyse represented speech used in the passage and its peculiarities.

5.  Pick out cases of the combination of represented speech with direct speech and speak on the effect achieved.

6. Speak on the function of repetition.

7.  Discuss the images the author repeatedly resorts to  describe Irene.

 

F. SCOTT FITZGERALD

THE GREAT GATSBY

The passage deals with the description of the major character of the novel and American society after World War I.

He did extraordinarily well in the war. He was a captain before he went to the front, and following the Argonne bat ties he got his majority and the command of the divisional machine-guns. After the Armistice he tried frantically to get home, but some complication or misunderstanding sent him to Oxford instead. He was worried now -there was a quality of nervous despair in Daisy's letters. She didn't see why he couldn't come. She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all.

For Daisy was young and her artificial world vas redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of theyear, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in newtunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.

Through this twilight universe Daisy began to move again with the season; suddenly she was again keeping half a dozen dates a day with half a dozen men, and drowsing asleep at dawn with the beads and chiffon of an evening dress tangled among dying orchids on the floor beside her bed. And all the time something within her was crying for a decision. She wanted her life shaped now, immediately- and the decision must be made by some force - of love, of money, of unquestionable practicality - that was close at hand.

That force took shape in the middle of spring with the arrival of Tom Buchanan. There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position, and Daisy was flattered. Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief. The letter reached Gatsby while he was still at Oxford.

1. Speak on the subject-matter of the passage.

2. What SDs are used in the first paragraph to show the mood of the characters after World War I?

3. Analyse the stylistic peculiarities (syntactical and phonetic) in the sentence "She was feeling the pressure of the world outside, and she wanted to see him and feel his presence beside her and be reassured that she was doing the right thing after all."

4.  What EMs and SDs stress the contradictory character of bourgeois society? (Pick out epithets, contextual antonyms, oxymoronic combinations, etc.)

5.  Analyse the SDs of zeugma in the sentence "There was a wholesome bulkiness about his person and his position", and say how it reveals the author's attitude to Tom Buchanan.

6. Analyse the last two paragraphs of the passage. Comment on the implication suggested by a kind of antithesis "Doubtless there was a certain struggle and a certain relief, and the unpredictability of the clinching sentence.

7. Summing up the analysis discuss the SDs used to describe Daisy's "artificial world".

 

 

OSCAR WILDE

AN IDEAL HUSBAND

Act I

Mrs. Chiveley, a cunning adventuress, comes to sir Robert Chiltem - a prominent public figure with the purpose of backmailing him. Mrs.Cheveley: Sir Robert, I will be quite frank with you. I want you to withdraw the report that you had intended to lay before the House, on the ground that you have reasons to believe that the Commissioners have been prejudiced or misinformed, or something. Then I want you to say a few words to the effect that the Government is going to reconsider the question, and that you have reason to believe that the Canal, if completed, will be of great international value. You know the sort of things ministers say in cases of this kind. A few ordinary platitudes will do. In modern life nothing produces such an effect as a good platitude. It makes the whole world kin. Will you dc that for me?

Sir. RobertChiltern: Mrs. Cheveley you cannot be serious in making me such a proposition!

Mrs.Cheveley: I am quite serious.

Sir Robert Chiltern (coldly): Fray allow me to believe that you are not.

Mrs. Chevel ey (speaking with great deliberation and emphasis): Ah! but I am. And if you do what I askyou, I... will pay you very handsomely!

Sir RobertChiltern: Pay me!

Mrs.Cheveley: Yes.

Sir RobertChiltern:! am afraid I don't quite understand what you mean.

Mrs.Cheveley (leaning back on the sofa and looking at him): How very disappointing! And I have come all the way from Vienna in order that you should thoroughly understand me.

Sir Robert Chiltern: I fear I don't.

Mrs. Chevel e у (in. her most nonchalant manner): My dear Sir Robert, you are a man of the world, and you have your price, I suppose. Everybody has nowadays. The drawback is that most people are so dreadfully expensive. I know I am. I hope you will be more reasonable in your terms.

Sir Robert Chiltern (rises Indignantly): If you will allow me, I will call your carriage for you. You have lived so long abroad, Mrs. Cheveley, that you seem to be unable to realize that you are talking to an English gentleman.

Mrs.Cheveley (detains him by touching his arm with her fan, and keeping it there while she is talking): I realize that I am talking to a man who laid the foundation of his fortune by selling to a Stock Exchange speculator a Cabinet secret.

Sir Robert Chiltern (biting his lip): What do you mean?

Mrs. Cheveley (rising andfacing him): I mean that I know the real origin of your wealth and your career, and I have got your letter, too.

Sir Robert  С h i 11 e r n: What letter?

Mrs. Cheveley (contemptuously): The letter you wrote to Baron Amheim, when you were Lord Radley's secretary, telling the Baron to buy Suez Canal shares — a letter written three lays before the Government announced its own purchase.

Sir Robert Chiltern (hoarsely): It is not true.

Mrs. Cheveley: You thought that letter had been destroyed. How foolish of you! It is in my possession.

Sir Robert Chiltern: The affair to which you allude was no more than a speculation. The House of Commons had not yet passed the bill; it might have been rejected.

Mrs.Cheveley: It was a swindle. Sir Robert. Let us call things by their proper names. It makes everything simpler. And now I am going to sell you that letter, and the price I ask for it is your public support of the Argentine scheme. You made your own fortune out of one canal. You must help me and my friends to make our fortunes out of another!

Sir Robert Chiltern: It is infamous, what you propose — infamous!

Mrs. Cheve ley: Oh, no! This is the game of life as we all have to play it. Sir Robert, sooner or later!

Sir Robert Chiltern: I cannot do what you ask me.

Mrs.Cheveley: You mean you cannot help doing it. "You knowyou are standing on the edge of a precipice. And it is not for you to make terms. It is for you to accept them. Supposing you refuse -

Sir Robert Chiltern: Whatthen?

Mrs. Cheveley: Mydear Sir Robert, whatthen? You are ruined, that is all! Remember to what a point your Puritanism in England has brought you. In oil days nobody pretended to be a bit better than his neighbors. In fact, to be a bit better than one's neighbour was considered excessively vulgar and middle-class. Nowadays, with our modem mania for morality, every one has to pose a' a paragon of purity, incorruptibility, and all the other seven deadly virtues - and what is the result? You all go over like ninepins - one after the other. Not a year passes in England without somebody disappearing. Scandals used to lend charm, or at least interest, to a man - now they crush hem. And yours is a very nasty scandal. You couldn't survive it. If it were known that as a young man, secretary to a great and important minister, you sold a Cabinet secret for a large sum of money, and that was the origin of your wealth and career, you would be hounded out of public life, you would disappear completely And after all, Sir Robert, why should you sacrifice your entire future rather than deal diplomatically with your enemy? For the moment I am your enemy I admit it! And I am much stronger than you are. Tie big battalions are on my side. You have a splendid position, but it is your splendid position that makes you so vulnerable. You can't defend it! And I am in attack. Of course I have not talked morality to you. You must admit h fairness that I have spared you that. Years ago you did a clever, unscrupulous thing; it turned out a great success. You owe to it your fortune and position. And now you hive got to pay for it. Sooner or later we have all to pay for what we do. You have to pay now: Before I leave you to-right, you have got to promise me to suppress your report, aid to speak in the House in favour of this scheme.

Sir Robert Chilter: What you ask is impossible.

Mrs.Cheveley: You must make it possible. You are going to make it possible. Sir Robert, you know whatyour English newspapers are like. Suppose that when I leave this house I drive down to some newspaper office, and give them this scandal and the proofs of it! Think of their loathsome joy, of the delight they would have in dragging you down, of the mud and mire they would plunge you in. Think of the hypocrite with his greasy smile penning his leading article, and arranging the foulness of the public placard.

Sir Robert Chiltern: Stop! You want me to withdraw the report and to make a short speech stating that I believe there are possibilities in the scheme?

Mrs. Cheveley (sifting down on the sofa): Those are my terms.

Sir Robert Chiltern (in a low voice): I will give you any sum of money you want.

Mrs.Cheveley: Even you are not rich enough. Sir Robert, to buy back your past. No man is.

1. Note the structure of the excerpt, the role and the character of the author's remarks.

2. Note the blending of colloquial and literary variants of language in the speech of the characters.

3. Pick out sentences of epigrammatic character in Mrs. Cheveley's speech and dwell on the typical features of bourgeois society revealed in them.

4.  Comment on the connotation of the word "gentleman" in Sir Chiltern's indignant speech: "You seem to be unable to realize that you ere talking to an English gentleman".

5. Note the peculiar use of the verbs: "to buy", "to sell", "to pay" in the speech of the characters. What insight into bourgeois society is given through manipulations with these words.

6.  Discuss the EMs and SDs used by Mrs. Cheveley in her monologues. Whit insight into Mrs. Cheveley's character is given through the EMs and SDs she uses.

7.  Speak on the SDs used by Mrs. Cheveley to characterise the English press.

8. Comment on the language used by Sir Robert Chiltern and Mrs. Cheveley and say how the author shows their characters through their speech.

9.  Summing up the discussion of the scene speak on Wilde's exposure of the evils of bourgeois society.

 

ROBERT FROST

THE KITCHEN CHIMNEY

 

1 .Builder, in building the little house,

In every way you may please yourself;

But please please me in the kitchen chimney:

Don't build me a chimney upon a shelf.

 

2.However far you must go for bricks.

Whatever they cost a-piece or a pound,

Buy me enough for a full-length chimney

And build the chimney clear from the ground.

 

3.1t's not that 1 am greatly afraid of fire,

But I never heard of a house that throve

(And I know of one that didn't thrive)

Where the chimney started above the stove.

 

4.And I dread the ominous stain of tar

That there always is on the papered walls,

And the smell of fire drowned in rain

That there always is when the chimney's false.

 

5. A shelf s for a clock or vase or picture.

But I don't see why it should have to bear

A chimney that only would serve to remind me

Of castles I used to build in air.

 

1.  Pick out cases in which Frost gives concrete descriptions of building the kitchen chimney.

2. Comment on the poet's address to the builder that opens the first stanza and speak on the peculiar use of the words "please" in this stanza.

3.  Say why it is important to "build the chimney clear from the ground". Note the implication in the third stanza "But I never heard of a house that throve (and I know of one that didn't thrive) where the chimney started above the stove".

4. Comment on the poet's dread of "the ominous stain of tar" (the fourth stanza) and say what may be implied in the lines: 'And the smell of fire drowned in rain that there always is when the chimney's false".

5. Speak on the meaning of the expression "to build castles in the air" and say why the poet alludes to this expression in the conclusion of his poem.

6. Comment on the conversational tone Frost builds into his verse. Speak on the EMs and SDs that show, "Frost's poems are people talking" as one of his critics maintained.