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Syntactical level of stylistic analysis
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Questions and tasks
Questions:
1. Comment on the length of the sentence and its structural patterns being stylistically relevant.
2. Punctuation marks and their stylistic potential.
3. Discuss different types of rhetorical questions and their stylistic functions.
4. Different types of repetition and their stylistic functions.
5. Different types of parallelism and their stylistic relevance.
6. Discuss inversion, its types and functions.
7. Suspense and detachment. Their stylistic relevance.
8. Ellipsis. Its types and varieties, stylistic functions.
9. Apokoinu constructions.
10. Speak on the break (aposiopesis).
11. Comment on various types of connection and their stylistic relevance:
a. Polysyndeton
b. Asyndeton
c. Attachment
Task 1
Define the type of syntactical stylistic devices dealing with the omission of elements:
1. Then he said, “You think it’s so? She was mixed up in this lousy business”? (Barth)
2. He was the man killed the deer. (Warren)
3. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind. (Dickens)
4. Malay Camp. A row of streets crossing another row of streets. Mostly narrow steers. Mostly dirty streets. Mostly dark streets. (Abrahams)
5. His forehead was narrow, his face wide, his head large, and his nose all on one side. (Dickens)
6. A solemn silence: Mr. Pickwick humorous, the old lady serious, the fat gentleman cautious and Mr. Miller timorous. (Dickens)
7. He, and the falling light and dying fire, the time-worn room, the solitude, the wasted life, and gloom, were all in fellowship. Ashes, and dust, and ruin! (Dickens)
8. She merely looked at him weakly. The wonder of him! The beauty of love! Her desire toward him! (Dreiser)
9. What I had seen of Patti didn’t really contradict Kitty’s view of her: a girl, who means well, but. (Aldridge)
10. There was a whisper in my family that it was love drove him out and not love of the wife he married. (Steinbeck)
11. Ever since he was a young man, the hard life on Earth, the panic of 2130, the starvation, chaos, riot, want. Then bucking through the planets, the womanless, loveless years, the alone years. (Bradbury)
12. “I just work here”, he said softly. “If I didn’t” – he let the rest hang in the air, and kept on smiling. (Chandler)
13. I love Nevada. Why, they don’t even have mealtimes here. I never met so many people didn’t own a watch. (Miller)
14. I’m a horse doctor, animal man. Do some farming, too. Near Tulip, Texas. (Capote)
15. This is a story how a Baggins had an adventure. He may have lost his neighbours’ respect, but he gained – well, you will see whether he gained anything in the end. (Tolkien)
16. “I’ll go, Doll! I’ll go”! This from Bead, large eyes larger than usual behind his horn-rimmed glasses. (Jones)
17. A black February day. Clouds hewn on ponderous timber weighing down on the earth: an irresolute dropping of snow specks upon the trampled wastes. Gloom but no veiling of angularity. The second day of Kennecott’s absence. (Lewis)
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18. And we got down at the bridge. White cloudy sky, with mother-of-pearl veins. Pearl rays shooting through, green and blue-white. River roughed by a breeze. White as a new file in the distance. Fish-white streak on the smooth pin-silver upstream. Shooting new pins. (Conrad)
19. “He was shouting out that he’d come back, that his mother had better have money ready for him. Or else! That is what he said: ‘Or else!’ It was a threat”. (Christie)
20. With these hurried words Mr. Bob Sawyer pushed the post boy on one side, jerked his friend into the vehicle, slammed the door, put up the steps, wafered the bill on the street-door, locked it, put the key into his pocket, jumped into the dickey, gave the word for starting. (Dickens)
21. There was no breeze came through the door. (Hemingway)
22. Secretly, after the nightfall, he visited the home of the Prime Minister. He examined it from top to bottom. He measured all the doors and windows. He took up the flooring. He inspected the plumbing. He examined the furniture. He found nothing. (Leacock)
23. “Well, guess it’s about time to turn in”. He yawned, went out to look at the thermometer, slammed the door, patted her head, unbuttoned his waistcoat, yawned, wound the clock, went to look at the furnace, yawned and clumped upstairs to bed, casually scratching his thick woollen undershirt. (Lewis)
24. “I got my feelings same as anyone else”. (Bernard Shaw)
Task 2
Define the type of syntactical stylistic devices dealing with the redundancy of elements:
1. The Widow Douglass, she took me for her son, and allowed she would civilize me… (Twain)
2. Bella soaped his face and rubbed his face, and soaped his hands and rubbed his hands, and splashed him, and rinsed him, and towelled him, until he was as red as beetroot. (Dickens)
3. It was a country cousin that Harris took in. (Jerome)
4. By the time he got all the bottles and dishes and knives and forks and glasses and plates and spoons and things piled up on big trays, he was getting very hot, and red in the face, and annoyed. (Tolkien)
5. Brave boy, he saved my life and shall not regret it. (Twain)
6. Jack Sprat’s pig,
He was not very little,
He was not very big…
Little Miss Muffet
She sat on a tuffet…
Ellen Adair she loved me well,
Against her father’s and mother’s will… (Tennyson)
7. You’ve made a nice mess, you have… You’d get a scaffolding pole entangled, you would… (Jerome)
8. “What sort of a place is Dufton exactly”?
“A lot of mills. And a chemical factory. And a Grammar school and a war memorial and a river that runs different colours each day. And a cinema and fourteen pubs. That’s really all one can say about it”. (Braine)
9. “You’re no gentleman, you’re not, to talk of such things. I’m a good girl, I am; and I know what the like of you are, I do”. (Bernard Shaw)
10. “I’m going away. He’s off his chumps, he is. I don’t want no balmies teaching me”. (Bernard Shaw)
11. “I always been a good girl; and I never offered to say a word to him; and I don’t own him nothing; and I don’t care; and I won’t be put upon; and I have my feelings the same as anyone else”.(Bernard Shaw)
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12. “Do hold your tongue, Clara”. (Bernard Shaw)
13. “You’re a great bully, you are. I won’t stay here if I don’t like. I won’t let nobody wallop me. I never asked to go to Buckingham Palace, I didn’t. I was never in trouble with the police, not me, I’m a good girl”. (Bernard Shaw)
14. “They all thought she was dead; but my father he kept ladling gin down her throat till she came to so sudden that she bit the bowl off the spoon”.
(Bernard Shaw)
Task 3
From the following examples you will get a better idea of the functions of various types of repetition. Analyse them and define the type(s).
1. Joe was a mild, good-natured, sweet-tempered, easy-going, foolish dear fellow. (Dickens)
2. They both looked hard, tough and ruthless, and they both looked very, very lethal. (Chase)
3. Yeah, uh, you’ve been busy, busy, busy, haven’t you. (Pendelton)
4. Oh, the dreary, dreary moorland!
Oh, the barren, barren shore! (Tennyson)
5. He ate and drank, for he was exhausted – but he little knew or cared what; and he wandered about in the chill rain, thinking and thinking, and brooding and brooding. (Dickens)
6. Gold! Gold! Gold! Gold!
Bright and yellow, hard and cold,
Molten, graven, hammer’d and roll’d,
Heavy to get and light to hold. (Hood)
7. Scrooge went to bed again, and thought, and thought, and thought it over and over and over. (Dickens)
8. I wake up and I’m alone and I walk round Warley and I’m alone; and I talk with people and I’m alone and I look at his face when I’m home and it’s dead. (Braine)
9. Babbit was virtuous. He advocated, though he did not practice, the prohibition of alcohol; he praised, though he did not obey, the laws against motor-speeding. (Lewis)
10. “To think better of it”, returned the gallant Blandois, “would be to slight a lady, to slight a lady would be to be deficient in chivalry towards the sex, and chivalry towards the sex is a part of my character”. (Dickens)
11. Halfway along the right-hand side of the dark brown hall was a dark brown door with a dark brown settie beside it. After I had put my hat, my gloves, my muffler and my coat on the settie we three went through the dark brown door into darkness without any brown in it. (Gilbert)
12. I might as well face facts: good-bye, Susan, good-bye a big car, good-bye a big house, good-bye power, good-bye the silly handsome dreams. (Braine)
13. I really don’t see anything romantic in proposing. It is very romantic to be in love. But there is nothing romantic about a definite proposal. (Wilde)
14. I wanted to knock over the table and hit him until my arm had no more strength in it, then give him the boot, give him the boot, give him the boot – I drew a deep breath. (Braine)
15. On her father’s being groundlessly suspected, she felt sure. Sure. Sure. (Dickens)
16. Now he understood. He understood many things. One can be a person first. A man first and then a black man or a white man. (Abrahams)
17. She stopped, and seemed to catch the distant sound of knocking. Abandoning the traveller, she hurried towards the parlour, in the passage she assuredly did hear knocking, angry and impatient knocking, the knocking of someone who thinks he has knocked too long. (Bennet)
18. Obviously – this is a streptococcal infection. Obviously. (Deeping)
19. And a great desire for peace, peace of no matter what kind, swept through her. (Bennett)
20. When he blinks, a parrot-like look appears the look of some heavily blinking tropical bird. (Miller)
21. And everywhere were people. People going into gates and coming out of gates. People staggering and falling. People fighting and cursing. (Abrahams)
22. I came back, shrinking from my father's money, shrinking from my father's memory: mistrustful of being forced on a mercenary wife, mistrustful of my father's intention in thrusting that marriage on me, mistrustful that I was already growing avaricious, mistrustful that I was slackening in gratitude to the dear noble honest friends who had made the only sunlight in my childish life. (Dickens)
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23. If you know anything that is not known to others, if you have any suspicion, if you have any clue at all, and any reason for keeping it in your own breast...think of me, and conquer that reason and let it be known! (Dickens)
24. I notice that father’s is a large hand, but never a heavy one when it touches me, and that father's is a rough voice but never an angry one when it speaks to me. (Dickens)
25. From the offers of marriage that fell to her, Dona Clara, deliberately, chose the one that required her removal to Spain. So to Spain she went. (Wilde)
26. There lives at least one being who can never change – one being who would be content to devote his whole existence to your happiness – who lives but in your eyes – who breathes but in your smile – who bears the heavy burden of life itself only for you. (Dickens)
27. It is she, in association with whom, saving that she has been for years a main fibre of the roof of his dignity and pride; he has never had a selfish thought. It is she, whom he has loved, admired, honoured and set up for the world to respect. It is she, who, at the core of all the constrained formalities and conventionalities of his life, has been a stock of living tenderness and love. (Dickens)
28. Then there was something between them. There was. There was. (Dreiser)
29. He ran away from the battle. He was an ordinary human being that didn't want to kill or be killed. So he ran away from the battle. (Heym)
30. Failure meant poverty, poverty meant squalor, squalor led, in the final stages, to the smells and stagnation of B. Inn Alley. (Daphne du Maurier)
31. “Secret Love”, “Autumn Leaves”, and something whose title he missed. Supper music. Music to cook by. (Updike)
32. Living is the art of loving.
Loving is the art of caring.
Caring is the art of sharing.
Sharing is the art of living. (Davies)
Task 4
Find and analyse cases of detachment, parenthesis, and suspense. Comment on the structure and functions of each:
1. I regarded us as lost souls, condemned by the Fates (Clotho, Lachesis, and Atropos – I remember looking them up, and weeping at the justice of their names) never to consummate our love, separated by prior commitments and by barriers of position and caste (be sure I never mentioned this to her!), et cetera, et cetera. (Barth)
2. She narrowed her eyes a trifle at me and said I looked exactly like Celia Briganza’s boy. Around the mouth. (Salinger)
3. He observes it all with a keen quick glance, not unkindly, and full rather of amusement than of censure. (Virginia Woolf)
4. It was not the monotonous days uncheckered by variety and uncheered by pleasant companionship, it was not the dark dreary evenings or the long solitary nights, it was not the absence of every slight and easy pleasure for which young hearts beat high or the knowing nothing of childhood but its weakness and its easily wounded spirit, that had wrung such tears from Nell. (Dickens)
5. Here is a long passage – what an enormous perspective I make of it! – leading from Peggoty’s kitchen to the front door. (Dickens)
6. I have been accused of bad taste. This has disturbed me not so much for my own sake (since I am used to the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune) as for the sake of criticism in general. (Maugham)
7. … he was struck by the thought (what devil’s whisper? – what evil hint of an evil spirit?) – supposing that he and Roberta – (no, say he and Sondra – no, Sondra could swim so well, and so could he) – he and Roberta were in a small boat somewhere and it should capsize at the very time, say, of this dreadful complication which was so harassing him? What an escape! What a relief from a gigantic and by now really destroying problem! On the other hand – hold – not so fast! – for could a man even think of such a solution in connection with so difficult a problem as this without committing a crime in his heart, really – a horrible, terrible crime? (Dreiser)
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8. The main entrance (he had never ventured to look beyond that) was a splendiferous combination of a glass and iron awning, coupled with a marble corridor lined with palms. (Dreiser)
9. That bit of gold meant food, life… power to go on writing and – who was to say? – maybe to write something that would bring in many pieces of gold. (London)
Task 5
Analyse the cases of inversion. Distinguish between the cases of stylistic inversion and inversion resulting from mere inaccuracy of speech. Comment on the structure and functions of each:
1. That I don’t accept the Prince’s list, your starboard eye has already observed… (Barth)
2. No sooner had the final cymbal clashed than the house lights went out completely and the electric footlights rose, playing on the mauve velvet stage curtain.(Barth)
3. With fingers weary and worn… (Hood)
4. A good generous prayer it was. (Twain)
5. Rude am I in my speech…(Shakespeare)
6. Eagerly I wished the morrow. (Poe)
7. A tone of most extraordinary comparison Miss Tox said it in.(Dickens)
8. In went Mr. Pickwick. (Dickens)
9. Down dropped the breeze…(Coleridge)
10. Women are not made for attack. Wait they must. (Conrad)
11. Out came the chase – in went the horses – on sprang the boys – in got the travellers.(Dickens)
12. And she saw that Gopher Prairie was merely an enlargement of all the hamlets which they had been passing. Only to the eyes of a Kennicot was it exceptional.(Lewis)
13. Inexplicable was the astonishment of the little party when they returned to find out that Mr. Pickwick had disappeared. (Dickens)
14. Dull would he be of soul who could pass by
A sight so touching in its majesty… (Wordsworth)
15. Came a day when he dragged himself into the Enquirer alley, and there was no Cheese-face. (London)
16. Came frightful days of snow and rain. He did not know when he made camp, when he broke camp…(London)
17. Over by St Paul he stands and there is no money in it…(Galsworthy)
18. “Yes, sir, that you can”. (Pendelton)
19. A piece of sheer bad luck that was. (Christie)
20. Very true those words are, sir.(Christie)
21. Been an athlete all his life, he had. (Christie)
22. In manner, close and dry. In voice, husky and low. In face, watchful behind a blind. (Dickens)
Task 6
Analyse the cases of convergence. Name the stylistic devices involved (inversion, detachment, parenthesis, suspense). Comment on the structure and functions of each:
1. And doggedly along by the railings of the Grand Park towards his father’s house, he went trying to tread on his shadow… (Galsworthy)
2. Rolling in money, the Carpenters were. (Christie)
3. Benny Collan, a respected guy, Benny Collan wants to marry her. An agent could ask for more? (Capote)
4. Talent, Mr. Micawber has; capital, Mr. Micawber has not. (Dickens)
5. It was indeed, to Forsyte eyes, an odd house. (Galsworthy)
6. How many pictures of new journeys over pleasant country, of resting places under the free broad sky, of rambles in the fields and woods, and paths not often trodden – how many tones of that one well-remembered voice, how many glimpses of the form, the fluttering dress, the hair that waved so gaily in the wind – how many visions of what had been and what he hoped was yet to be – rose up before him in the old, dull, silent church! (Dickens)
7. Corruption could not spread with so much success, though reduced into a system, and though some ministers, with equal impudence and folly, avowed it by themselves and their advocates, to be the principal expedient by which they governed; if a long and almost unobserved progression of causes and effects did not prepare the conjuncture. (Bolingbroke)
Supplement
There are cases of convergence when, for instance, different schemes of speech based on a specific distribution of sentence members are used together. Consider the below fragments from The Floating Opera by John Barth:
· In fact, even to think of the name Adam’s Original and Unparalleled Floating Opera – its completely unsuitable significance – when I had before me the extraordinary case of Morton v. Butler, was the greatest of accidental ironies: never did there exist such an unparalleled floating opera as the law in its less efficient moments, and seldom had the law such inefficient moments as those during which it involved itself – nay, diffused, dissipated, lost itself – in Morton v. Butler.
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· I must say that at the moment I felt wonderful about my father. His concern for me, the (for him) remarkable diplomacy of his approach, his generosity – all these, I see now, were ordinary sentiments, not unusual in themselves; but then I was a very ordinary sort of young man, too, at the time, and the sentiments, if commonplace, were nonetheless uncommonly strong. My ailing heart felt lodged in my throat; I couldn’t speak.
Some of the given episodes from John Barth’s book “ The Floating Opera” tell about a certain Mr. Mack who was in the habit of disinheriting his “heirs”. As a result he left neither more nor fewer but eighteen contradicting wills. Read the record of one of many a hearing on the litigation and say whether the narrator – who is Mr. Mack’s son’s lawyer and friend – is serious about his commentary on the importance of rhetoric in legal action.
The final test was in the form of a hearing. Harrison and I appeared at the Baltimore courthouse early in January; Judge Lasker read the terms of Will and declared that if no one present could offer evidence of such sympathies as were therein interdicted, he was prepared to declare the matter settled and to order the will executed. Froebel then appeared, much to my surprise, and announced that he had such evidence, enough to warrant the reversal of bequests provided for by our will, and was ready to offer it to the court.
“You told me there wasn't anything,” I reminded Harrison, who had turned white.
“I swear there isn't!” he whispered back, but nevertheless he began perspiring and trembling a little. I sat back to see what Froebel had cooked up.
“What will you attempt to prove?” the Judge asked him.
“That as recently as last year, your honor, while his poor father was in the grave – perhaps speeded there (who knows?) by his son's regrettable irresponsibility – that just last year, your honor, this son, who is now so eager to take from his mother what is rightfully hers, was aiding and abetting actively, with large gifts of money, that doctrine against which his father's entire life was such an eloquent argument; confident, I doubt not, that he could conceal his surreptitious Bolshevism until such time as he was in a position to devote the whole of the Mack estate toward overthrowing the way of life that made its accumulation possible!”
Froebel was a past master of the detached noun clause: judge and spectators were stirred.
“For heaven's sake!” Harrison whispered. “You don't think he means my Spanish donations!”
“If you were silly enough to make any, then I daresay he does,” I replied, appalled anew at Harrison's innocence.
And indeed, the “Spanish donations” were precisely what Froebel had in mind. He offered in evidence photo stated checks, four of them, for one thousand dollars each, made out to an American subscription agency representing the Spanish Loyalist government. They were dated March 10, May 19, September 2, and October 7, and all were signed Harrison A. Mack, Jr.
Judge Lasker examined the Photostats and frowned. “Did you write these checks?” he asked Harrison, passing the pictures to him.
“Of course!” Harrison yelled. “What the hell's that”.
“Order!” suggested the Judge. “Aren't you aware that the Loyalist movement is run by the Communist Party? Directed from the Kremlin?”
“Aw, come on!” Harrison pleaded, until I poked him and he sat down.
“May I point out,” Froebel continued blandly, “that not only is a gift to the Loyalists in essence a gift to Moscow, but this particular subscription agency is a Party organization under FBI surveillance. A man may donate to the Loyalists through honest, if vague, liberalism, I daresay; but one doesn't send checks to this subscription outfit unless one is sympathetic with the Comintern. Young Mr. Mack, like too many of our idle aristocrats, is, I fear, a blue blood with a Red heart”.
I believe it was this final metaphor that won Froebel the judgment. I saw the newspaper people virtually doff their hats in tribute, and scribble the immortal words for the next editions of their papers. Even the Judge smiled benignly upon the trope: I could see that it struck him square in the prejudices, and found a welcome there.
There was some further discussion, but no one listened closely; everyone was repeating to himself, with a self-satisfied smile, that too many young aristocrats are blue bloods with Red hearts. Blue bloods with Red hearts! How could mere justice cope with poetry? Men, I think, are ever attracted to the bon mot* rather than the mot juste*, and judges, no less than other men, are often moved by considerations more aesthetic than judicial. Even I was not a little impressed, and regretted only that we had no jury to be overwhelmed by such a purple plum from the groves of advocacy. A blue blood with a Red heart! How brandish reasonableness against music? Should I hope to tip the scales with puny logic, when Froebel had Parnassus in his pan? In vain might I warn Judge Lasker that, through the press, all America was watching, and Europe as well, for his decision.
“My client, a lover of freedom and human dignity”, I declared, “made his contributions to the oppressed Loyalists as a moral obligation, proper to every good American, to fight those Rebels who would crush the independence of the human spirit, and trample liberty under hobnailed boots! How can you charge him with advocating anarchy and violent overthrow, when in a single year he gives four thousand dollars to support the Spanish Government against those who would overthrow it?”
And on I went for some minutes, trying to make capital out of the Spanish confusion, wherein the radicals were the status quo and the reactionaries the rebels. It was an admirable bit of casuistry, but I knew my cause was lost. Only Froebel, I think, had ears for my rhetoric; the rest of the room was filled with blue bloods with Red hearts.
And Judge Lasker, as I think I mentioned, was famously conservative. Though by no means a fascist himself – he was probably uncommitted in the Spanish revolution – he epitomized the unthinking antagonism of his class toward anything pinker than the blue end of the spectrum: a familiar antagonism that used to infuriate me when, prior to 1924, I was interested in such things as social justice. When finally he ruled, he ruled in Froebel's favor.
“It does not matter whether there is a difference between the Moscow and Madrid varieties of communism”, he declared, “or whether the Court or anyone else approves or disapproves of the defendant's gifts or the cause for which they were intended. The fact is that the subscription agency involved is a communist organization under government surveillance, and a gift to that agency is a gift to communism. There can be no question of the donor's sympathy with what the agency represented, and what it represented was communism. The will before me provides that should such sympathy be demonstrated, as it has been here, the terms of the document are to be reversed. The Court here orders such a reversal”.
* Note: bon mot is the French for “good word”, mot juste is the French for “true word”.
Questions and tasks:
1. Find syntactical stylistic devices and expressive means marking the author’s style. Why are they so appropriate in this very story?
2. Find stylistic devices belonging to layers of language other than syntactical.
3. Analyze and characterize the lawyers’ rhetoric.
4. On top of everything what stylistic device defines the tonality of the fragment? Why?
RECOMMENDED LIRERATURE
- Арнольд И.В. Стилистика современного английского языка стр. 217-265I.R.
- Galperin I.R. Stylistics pp. 191-246.
- Кухаренко В.А. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. pp. 66-84.
- Кухаренко В.А. Seminars in Style. pp. 63-85
Seminar 7
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