A sample of stylistic analysis

The forthcoming extract presents two opening paragraphs of Th. Dreiser’s short story Typhoon, written at the end of the 20-ies and published in 1927 in his collection The Chains.

The paragraphs stand in sharp semantic contrast to each other: the first one describing the world of the Zobels, with their steady stability, conservatism, and adherence to the old days, the second one – the violent, shifting, changeable world of modern tendencies, demands and attitudes.

The contrast is reflected in the language, especially in the syntactical organization of the paragraphs: the unhurried, even archaic (‘ took unto himself’) structures, completed developed sentences are replaced by one-member sentences, rhetorical questions, detachment and other entities of empathic syntax.

Into a singularly restricted and indifferent environment Ida Zobel was born.	The narration begins with the partial inversion, promoting the adverbial modifier of place into the most conspicuous position, thus adding relevance and importance to the place of action. There are two epithets in it, one of which is a two-step epithet, i.e., epithet and intensifier (“singularly restricted”).
Her mother, a severe, prim German woman, died when she was only three, leaving her to care of her father and his sister, both extremely reserved and orderly persons.	All four epithets of the second sentence appear in apposition, which fact provides them with additional emphasis, produced by independent stress and intonation. One of the epithets, as in the preceding sentence, is also modified by an intensifier, thus becoming a two-step epithet.
Later, after Ida had reached the age of ten, William Zobel took unto himself a second wife, who resembled Zobel and his fist wife in their respect for labour and order.	The sentence, also partially inverted, begins with two detachments, separating both adverbial modifiers of time by commas. Opening sentences with adverbial modifiers, Dreiser draws the reader’s attention to the time, place and manner of action, which suggest a touch of authenticity to the narrated events: plausible circumstances of the action force plausibility upon action itself, making the reader believe that the narrated events had actually taken place in real life.
Both were at odds with the brash gayety and looseness of the American world in which they found themselves. Being narrow, sober, workaday Germans, they were annoyed by the groups of restless, seeking, eager, and as Zobel saw it rather scandalous men and women who paraded the neighborhood streets of an evening without a single thought apparently other than pleasure. And these young scamps and their girl friends who sped about in automobiles. The loose indifferent parents. What was become of such a nation? Were not the daily newspapers, which he would scarcely tolerate in his home longer, full of these wretched doings? The pictures of almost naked women, that filled them all! Jazz! Petting parties! High school boys with flasks on their hips! Girls with skirts to their knees, rolled-down stockings, rolled-down neck-bands, bare arms, bobbed hair, no decent, concealing underwear!	‘Brash’ – an epithet, offering the first indication of the Zobels’ world-outlook. The logical attribute ‘American’ serves to stress the foreign (German) origin of the personages and the alien, forbidden atmosphere of their relations with the outer world. Two contrasting strings of epithets (three in each string) characterize the two opposing parties – the Zobels and the young society. The subjectivity of Zobel’s evaluations is stressed by two parentheses (‘ as Zobel saw it’ and ‘ apparently ’). They lessen the finality and disapprobation of otherwise negative qualifications and prepare the ground for the next sentence. ‘ As Zobelsaw it’ is used in the function of the author’s remark, introducing the opinion of the character in the form of his represented speech, which, once introduced, is carried to the end of the paragraph. Pay attention to syntactical and lexical changes which indicate this shift of planes of narration: two elliptical sentences are followed by several rhetorical questions addressed to nobody in particular and mentally answered by one questioner himself. And then again a series of highly-emphatic exclamatory sentences, mainly one-member and even one-word. The emotional state of the character is revealed not only through the syntax but also through the abundance of most subjective stylistic means – epithets, and qualitative words (“ paraded ”, “ sped about ” and others). Besides them there are also repetitions (‘ The loose…rolled-down’), hyperboles (‘without a single thought,’ ‘filled them all’, etc.) – another token of fluttered emotions.
“What---a daughter of his grow up like this! Be permitted to join in this prancing route to perdition! Never!”	The represented inner speech of Mr. Zobel very naturally culminates in direct orders, which open up the next paragraph and are placed in invertedcommas. But we perceive here that the author’s presentation of Zobel‘s words does not occur simultaneously with their utterance, and the pronoun ‘ his ’ used instead of ‘ mine’ indicates the fact. Thus we may state this paragraph of represented inner speech is followed by represented uttered speech, which enables the writer to convey the feelings and emotions of his character but as if from within, through the character himself.

 

Задание 2. Сделайте стилистический анализ следующего отрывка.

There would have been no silly row that night at all if it hadn’t been for Farren. That disgusting scene before dinner! That was what had driven him, Campbell, to McClellan Arms. His hand hesitated on the wheel. Why not go back straight away and have the thing out with Farren?

After all, what did it mater? He stopped the car and lit a cigarette, smoking fast and savagely. If the whole place was against him, he hated the place anyhow. There was only one decent person in it, and she was tied up to that brute Farren. The worst of it was, she was devoted to Farren. She didn’t care twopence for anybody else, if Farren would only see it. And he, Campbell, knew it as well as anybody. He wanted nothing wrong. He only wanted, when he was tired and fretted, and sick of his own lonely, uncomfortable shack of a place, to go and sit among the cool greens and blues of Gilda Farren’s sitting-room and be soothed by her slim beauty and comforting voice. And Farren, with no more sense of imagination than a bull, must come blundering in, breaking the spell, putting his own foul interpretation on the thing, tramping the lilies in Campbell’s garden of refuge. No wonder Farren’s landscape looked as if they were painted with an axe. The man had no delicacy. His reds and blues hurt your eyes, and he saw life in reds and blues. If Farren were to die, now if one could take his bullneck in one’s hands and squeeze it till his great staring blue eyes popped out like – he laughed – like bull’s eyes – that was a damned funny joke. He’d like to tell Farren that and see how he took it.

Farren was a devil, a beast, a bully, with his artistic temperament, which was nothing but inartistic temper. There was no peace with Farren about. There was no peace anywhere. (D.Sayers)

Задание3. Сделайте стилистический анализ эссе.

Текст эссе “The Unkindest Cut” (Rod Usher):

When you go into hospital do you – and they – really know what you’re in for?

A NOSOCOMIAL ILLNESS SOUNDS LIKE A CLOWN WITH A sore nose. But it's nothing so amusing. It comes to us from the Greek nosokameion, meaning hospital, and is used mainly in those magazines which make Stephen King's stories look oh so tame: medical journals. Doctors call nosocomial illnesses all those awful things that can happen to you when you go to a hospital to get better from whatever took you there in the first place. In the United States, some 88,000 people die each year of complications from nosocomial illness, about a third of which are estimated to have been preventable.

Before going on to frighten the dying daylights out of you, I admit to being a hospitophobe. I can't get through the automatic doors of a hospital or clinic without fighting a tremendous urge to turn and run. Feigning deep paternal involvement I did manage to get gowned up for my son's birth decades ago, but my true state was revealed when the gloved intern asked me to tie his mask. I stood behind him and pulled it tight—missing his mouth but fully covering both eyes.

It's not the pain or the blood. I've had my appendix axed, my tonsils tonsured and my vas tubes ectomized. This last was under a local anesthetic at a clinic in Lon­don soon after the above birth. After the snipping they gave me a nice cuppa tea, then off I went to work a few miles away at the bbc—on my Vespa motor scooter. Talk about bad vibes!

No, it's not squeamishness, it's the fact that hospitals and doctors can kill you. I accept that they don't do so on purpose, but it happens. And there's a spooky word that pairs with nosocomial: iatrogenic. It means a disease or symptoms induced in a patient by a physician. So they can kill you with bad advice, misdiagnosis or mismedication even be­fore you pass through those automatic doors.

My hospitophobia goes back to having to cover an inquest as a junior reporter in Australia. A woman had an ectopic preg­nancy, meaning the fetus forms in the fallopian tubes rather than the uterus, and the team terminating her impossible ges­tation miscounted the surgical sponges they used. The one they left inside the woman killed her. An honest mistake. But be­cause doctors and hospitals speak another language, cover up for each other and wield godlike power over us, how can we guard against becoming a nosocomial statistic or suffering some iatrogenic illness? Hospital rules. Doctor's orders.

Doctoritis and hospitophobia have been reinforced by a horrendous story in my daily paper in Spain. A 39-year-old woman, Rafaela Martinez Ruiz, went to a hospital in Cordoba, for what was reported to be a routine ultrasound. Somehow— no one has yet explained—she was confused with a 71-year-old woman, also called Rafaela Martinez Ruiz, who had ovarian cancer. Surgeons removed the uterus and both ovaries from the healthy woman. It was discovered later that she was newly pregnant. Now, apart from losing that baby, she can never have another. The tragedy happened a year ago, in Cordoba's Queen Sofia Hospital, but has only now come to light because the woman is suing. The national daily El Pais commented that the case indicates "the increasing dehumanization of medicine," the use of routines that have as their point of reference "not the sick person but pa­per and machinery."

Last week, the magazine Sciences et Avenir reported a study of several hun­dred French hospitals and the chances of dying during four categories of surgery. In some hospitals the likelihood of death during the same operation is 20 times greater than in others. One tip: try not to have your heart attack in Brest or Reims.

If I had my way, hospitals would be re­quired to have a chart in the foyer saying how many people die there each year from nosocomial causes. Plus another on golden staph, and one on a.d.r.s. You don't know what an a.d.r is? According to a study reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, Adverse Drug Reactions—that's those in hospitals, not addicts in alleys—are between the fourth and sixth leading cause of all deaths in the U.S. The study estimates that in 1994, 2.2 million hospi­talized Americans had a serious a.d.r.; 106,000 had fatal ones.

I know, I know. Doctors and hospitals save far more lives than they take, and I acknowledge a recent poll in Australia which found 88% of people think nurses have high or very high ethical standards, while for journalists it's, um, 9%. But here's a second opinion nevertheless: If you must be cut, take along a felt-tip pen and demand on your skin a dotted line for the scalpel. Remember, medicos are mortal, or as Proust put it, "A doctor who doesn't say too many foolish things is a patient half-cured." Like the tango, informed consent takes at least two; and consultation is not a synonym for listening.

One doctor I do respect is an Irishman I used to go to. Once after an examination he pronounced, "I'm not sure at all. What do you think?" That's what I call bedside manners.

Задание 4. Ознакомьтесь с исторической справкой и текстом знаменитой речи Мартина Лютера Кинга “I Have a Dream”. Найдите в данном материале черты, характерные для стиля ораторской речи.

 

 

As the centenary of Abraham Lincoln's Emancipation Proclama­tion was celebrated in 1963, the Na­tional Association for the Advance­ment of Colored People, using the slogan 'Free by '63', launched a massive campaign for justice for America's blacks. The most impor­tant demonstrations were in Birming­ham, Alabama (where Martin Luther King, 1929-68, led a march on the city hall, was twice thrown into jail but won substantial measures of de­segregation) and in Selma where a grand march of protest to Montgom­ery was addressed by King and Ralph Bunche, until then the only black American winner of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Then Philip Randolph, dean of the black American leaders, proposed a march on Washington for jobs and freedom. There was no precedent for a convocation, of national scope and gargantuan size,' King wrote later, 'Complicating the situation were innumerable prophets of doom who feared that the slightest incident of violence would alienate Congress and destroy all hope of legislation.'

Yet 210,000 gathered at the Washington Monument in August and marched to the Lincoln Memo­rial, where the high point of the day was the speech by Martin Luther King, the voice of black Americans. He had written it in longhand the night be­fore and did not finish it until 4 a.m. Now, standing before the marchers, King rose to the drama of the occa­sion, and delivered one of the most memorable speeches of the century. No public figure of his generation could match the skill with which he made a mastery of the spoken word the servant of his cause. *****

Five score years ago, a great Ameri­can, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proc­lamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of Negro slaves who had been seared in the flames of wither­ing injustice. It came as a joyous day­break to end the long night of captivity.

But one hundred years later, we must face the tragic fact that the Ne­gro is still not free. One hundred years later, the life of the Negro is still sadly crippled by the manacles of segrega­tion and the chains of discrimination. One hundred years later, the Negro lives on a lonely island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity. One hundred years later, the Negro is still languished in the corners of American society and finds himself an exile in his own land. So we have come here today to drama­tize an appalling condition.

In a sense we have come to our nation's Capital to cash a check. When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men would be guaranteed the un-alienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note in­sofar as her citizens of color are con­cerned. Instead of honoring this sa­cred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check; a check which has come back marked 'insuf­ficient funds.' But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt. We refuse to believe that there are insuffi­cient funds in the great vaults of op­portunity of this nation. So we have come to cash this check - a check that will.give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice. We have also come to this hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to en­gage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradual­ism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of Democracy.

Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice.

Now is the time to open the doors of opportunity to all of God's children.

Now is the time to lift our nation from the quicksands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood.

It would be fatal for the nation to over­look the urgency of the moment and to underestimate the determination of the Negro. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating au­tumn of freedom and equality. Nine­teen sixty-three is not -an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be nei­ther rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights. The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of jus­tice emerges.

But there is something that I must say to my people who stand on the warm threshold which leads into the 'palace of justice’. In the process of gain­ing our rightful place we must not be guilty of wrongful deeds. Let us not seek to satisfy our thirst for freedom by drinking from the cup of bitterness and hatred. We must forever conduct our struggle on the high plane of dignity and discipline. We must not allow our creative protest to degenerate into physical violence. Again and again we must rise to the majestic heights of meeting physical force with soul force. The marvelous new militancy which has engulfed the Negro community must not lead us to a distrust of all white people, for many of our white brothers, as evidenced by their presence here today, have come to realize that their destiny is tied up with our destiny and their freedom is inextricably bound to our freedom. We cannot walk alone.

And as we walk, we must make the pledge that we shall march ahead. We cannot turn back. There are those who are asking the devotees of civil rights, ‘When will you be satisfied?’ We can never be satisfied as long as the Negro is the victim of the unspeakable horrors of police brutality. We can never be satisfied as long as our bodies heavy with the fatigue of travel, cannot gain lodgings in the motels of the highways and the hotels of the cities. We cannot be satisfied as long as Negro’s basic mobility is from a smaller ghetto to a larger one. We can never be satisfied as long as a Negro in Mississippi cannot vote and a Negro in New York believes he has nothing for which to vote. No, no, we are not satisfied, and we will not be satisfied until justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.

I am not unmindful that some of you have come here out of great trials and tribulations. Some of you have come fresh from narrow jail cells. Some of you have come from areas where your quest for freedom left you battered by the storms of persecution and staggered by the winds of police brutality. You have been the veterans of creative suffering. Continue to work with the faith that unearned suffering is redemptive.

Go back to Mississippi, go back to Alabama, go back to South Carolina, go back to Louisiana, go back to the slums and ghettos of our northern cities, knowing that somehow this situation can and will be changed. Let us not wallow in the valley of despair.

I say to you today, my friends, that in spite of the difficulties and frustrations of the moment I still have a dream. It is a dream deeply rooted in the American dream.

I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: ’We hold these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal.’

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slaveowners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a desert state sweltering with the heat of injustice and oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day the state of Alabama, whose governor’s lips are presently dripping with the words of interposition and nullification, will be transformed into a situation where little black boys and black girls will be able to join hands with little white boys and white girls and walk together as sisters and brothers.

I have a dream today.

I have a dream that one day every valley shall be exalted, every hill and mountain shall be made low, the rough places will be made plains, and the crooked places will be made straight, and the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together.

This is our hope. This is the faith with which I return the South. With this faith we will be able to hew out of the mountain of despair a stone of hope. With this faith we will be able to transform the jangling discords of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood. With this faith we will be able to work together, to pray together, to go to jail together, to stand up for freedom together, knowing that we will be free one day.

This will be the day when all of God’s children will be able to sing with new meaning

My country, ‘tis of thee,

Sweet land of liberty,

Of thee I sing:

Land where my fathers died,

Land of the pilgrims’ pride,

From every mountainside

Let freedom ring!*

And if America is to be a great nation this must become true. So let freedom ring from the prodigious hilltops of New Hampshire. Let freedom ring from the mighty mountains of New York. Let freedom ring from the heightening Alleghenies of Pennsylvania!

Let freedom ring from the snowcapped Rockies of Colorado!

Let freedom ring from the curvaceous peaks of California!

But not only that; let freedom ring from Stone Mountain of Georgia!

Let freedom ring from every hill and molehill of Mississippi. From every mountainside, let freedom ring.

When we let freedom ring, when we let it ring from every village and every hamlet, from every state and every city, we will be able to speed up that day when all of God’s children, black men and white men, Jews and Gentiles, Protestants and Catholics, will be able to join hands and sing in the words of the old Negro spiritual, ‘Free at last! free at last! thank God almighty, we are free at last!’

* American patriotic song “America”. Lyrics by Samuel Francis Smith, 1832. The tune,1500’s, has been known for over two centuries in many European countries, the most familiar being the British national anthem.

Задание 5. Проанализируйте следующие газетные материалы:

а) колонку “LIFELINE”, б) статью ”Life for man who killed lover’s husband’.

 

(USA TODAY)

а) Текст газетной колонки “LIFELINE”:

WHO DONE IT?: Random House has just bought a novel about American politics, reportedly with a six-figure advance. The author? "Anonymous," The writer's identity is so secret that even Random House publisher Harry Evans doesn't know who it is, and won't until just before the book comes out next winter, says RH's Carol Schneider, "This is not an attempt to deceive anyone," Schneider says. "The author wanted the book to be read for its own sake. Unfortunately, this is becoming a guessing game."

GRAHAM UPDATE: The Rev. Billy Graham has been released from a Toronto hospital. Doctors want him to cancel most speaking engagements for three months, but the evangelist is clue to speak at the 150th anniversary of the Southern Baptist Convention June 22. "He expects to keep that engagement, although his address may be abbreviat­ed," says spokesman Larry Ross. Ross said tests to deter­mine why Graham was bleeding from the colon did not detect abnormalities and doctors suspect aspirin intake played a "significant role."

MORE GUMP1SMS: Paramount has closed a deal with Forrest Gump author Winston Groom for worldwide media rights to his new novel, Gump & Co. The book begins where the first left off, tracing Forrest's relationship with Little Forrest. The book is set from 1980 through the present as Forrest con­tinues to meet notables and create national and international inci­dents. More than 1.9 million copies of Forrest Gump are in print. The new book, published by Pocket Books, is due out in August.

TAMPER-PROOF: Regulations that would make child-re­sistant packaging easier for most adults to open but still hard for kids are expected to be approved by the Consumer Product Safety Commission. It's "not for convenience but for safety," says CPSC chairman Ann Brown. New child-safe packaging rules were first approved in January, but have since been revised. If OKed, they would go into effect in 30 months.

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