Table of contents

Предисловие

Tasks for seminars

Sentences and extracts for analysis

Functional styles

Definitions of stylistic devices

Test

Books for reference

Additional list of books for reference

Предисловие

Учебное пособие ориентировано на студентов филологических специальностей факультета иностранных языков. Пособие содержит планы семинарских занятий и практические задания по изучаемым темам. В глоссарии представлены основные стилистические приемы, признаваемые большинством филологов. Пособие разработано на основе теоретических положений стилистики декодирования и классической стилистики английского языка.

Предложения и отрывки, предлагаемые на анализ, были взяты из произведений современных английских и американских авторов: Ф.С. Фицджеральда, С.У. Моэма, Р. Чандлера, Д. Хэммета, А. Кристи, Г.Э. Бейтса, М. Спарк, Дж. Чивера, М. Гордон и многих других. Представленные в пособии отрывки произведений и стихи могут быть использованы в качестве иллюстративного материала на семинарских занятиях.

Данное пособие окажет помощь студентам в освоении теоретического и практического материала при изучении вопросов стилистики английского языка на семинарских занятиях и при самостоятельной работе.

Seminar 1 General Notes on Style and Stylistics

1. Stylistics: aims, tasks and the object of this branch of linguistic studies.

2. Information theory and its application to the problems of stylistics.

3. Decoding stylistics.

4. Presupposition and implication.

Tasks

I. 1. Demonstrate the application of Information Theory to the problems of stylistics and illustrate the interaction of various codes in the given text. Before reading the text answer the question: What information about this text can you get from its graphic code? (Count its lines).

Anthem for Doomed Youth

Wilfrid Owen (1893-1918)

Wilfrid Owen – the poet of the First World War was killed just before the Armistice, and before he was able to complete the book of poetry he had planned. The subject of this book was, as he said in the preface, “War and the pity of War”. His friend Siegfried Sassoon (1886-1967), another well-known English poet, published the book of his poems after Owen’s death.

What passing bells for those who die as cattle?

Only the monstrous anger of the guns.

Only the stuttering rifles’ rapid rattle

Can patter out their hasty orisons.

No mockeries for them; no prayers nor bells,

Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,

The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells;

And bugles calling for them from sad shires.

What candles may be held to speed them all?

Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes

Shall shine the holly glimmer of good-byes.

The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall;

Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds.

And each slow dusk of a drawing-down of blinds.

2. Read the text aloud and pay attention to its sounding code.

3. The next step is the lexical code of the poem. What can you say about the choice of words? What atmosphere is created? What feelings are revealed in the poem?

4. Analyse the syntax of the poem. What parts is it divided into? How is this division of the sonnet marked? What is every part focused at? What can you say about their emotional colouring?

5. Are there any instances of an extralinguistic semiotic code in the poem? What code is it? What role does it play in revealing the message of the poem?

6. What is the theme and the message of the poem?

7. Sum up the information you have got about the poem and the personality of the poet. Apply the scheme of the process of literary communication in terms of Information Theory to this literary work.

II. Give your examples of violations of presupposition on the pragmatic and linguistic levels.

III. Comment upon textual, intertextual and extralinguistic presupposition. Find examples of each kind of presupposition in books you are reading.

IV. What can you say about presupposed and implied information in the following allusions:

1. Anne Riordan was listening to me with her lips slightly parted and a rapt expression on her face, as if she was looking at the Dalai Lama.

2. The house itself was not so much. It was smaller than Buckingham Palace, rather grey for California, and probably had fewer windows than the Chrysler Building.

3. I looked back at her smile before I went through. It was older than Egypt now.

4. His hair was brushed straight back from as good a profile as Barrymore ever had.

5. The light went out. The room was as black as Carrie Nation’s bonnet.

6. I reached it and put both my still half-dumb hands down on it and hauled it up to my mouth, sweating as if I was lifting one end of the Golden Gate Bridge.

7. “My God,” she wailed. “You look like Hamlet’s father!”

8. Randall and I took our hats off. In that neighbourhood that probably ranked you with Valentino.

9. Inside was a long dark hallway that had been mopped the day McKinley was inaugurated.

10. “Mr. Marlowe has a rather curious story,” the Chief said, cunning, like Richelieu behind the arras.

11. I lifted my face and looked at him. I felt as cold as Finnegan’s feet the day they buried him.

12. He was looking at the dusty windows with a sort of ecstatic fixity of expression, like a hunky immigrant catching his first sight of the Statue of Liberty.