Assignments for stylistic analysis

1. Say what can be considered the subject matter of the extract.

2. What tone prevails in the piece?

3. Analyse the syntactic and compositional arrangement of the three utterances within the extract.

4. What are the stylistic functions of simile and detachment in the second sentence? What effect is produced by the second instance of simile contain­ing allusion?

5. Point out all cases of alliteration observed in the text and analyse whether they serve any pragmatic function.

6. Characterise the types and stylistic functions of all metaphoric ex­pressions used in the extract. What image is created by their means?

Item 3

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnat­ural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machin­ery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.

From Charles Dickens' Hard Times

Assignments for stylistic analysis

1. Characterise the subject matter of the extract, the compositional es­sence of the introductory sentence, the manner of the subject matter presen­tation, and define the idea rendered in the text.

2. Analyse the syntactic expressive means and stylistic devices the writ­er resorts to in the utterances within the extract. Point out the function and effect of each syntactic stylistic peculiarity.

3. Explain the stylistic value of the expressions: "it was a town of un­natural red and black like the painted face of a savage"; "the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness".

4. What stylistic notions are observed within the following: "intermina­ble serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled'"} What functions do they perform in the text?

5. Point out the words and phrases which form the tone of the extract.

What tone is observed?

6. Analyse what prevails in the text - metonymic or metaphoric expres­sions. Characterise the stylistic functions performed in the extract by each.

7. Explain how the notion of modality is applied to image creation within the extract. Define the formed image.

Item 4

It was Miss Murdstone who was arrived, and a gloomy-looking lady she was; dark, like her brother, whom she greatly resembled in face and voice; and with very heavy eyebrows, nearly meeting over her large nose, as if, being disabled by the wrongs of her sex from wearing whiskers, she had carried them to that account. She brought with her two uncompromising hard black boxes, with her initials on the lid in hard brass nails. When she paid the coachman she took her money out of a hard steel purse, and she kept the purse in a very jail of a bag which hung upon her arm by a heavy chain, and shut up like a bite. I had never, at that time, seen such a metallic lady altogeth­er a Miss Murdstone was.

From Charles Dickens' David Copperfield

Date: 2016-01-03; view: 905