Лингвистический анализ текста

Samuel Welles bearhugged him again, then broke and half ran for his waiting machine. Halfway he turned to call back:

"Good God. I just thought. Your name is Harry. What a fine name for a king!" "Not bad."

"Forgive me for leaving?!"

"The sun forgives all, Samuel. Go where it wants you." "But will England forgive?"

"England is where her people are. I stay with old bones. You go with her sweet flesh, Sam, her fair sunburnt skin and blooded body, get!"

"Good-bye."

"Good be with you, too, oh you and that bright yellow sport shirt!" […] And the last man left behind in great gasps and sobs cried out to himself:

Harry! Do you hate change? Against progress? You do see, don't you, the reasons for all this? That ships and jets and planes and a promise of weather piped all the folk away? I see, he said, I see. How could they resist when at long last forever August lay just across the sill?

Yes, yes! He wept and ground his teeth and leaned up from the cliff rim to shake his fists at the vanishing craft in the sky.

"Traitors! Come back!"

You can't leave old England, can't leave Pip and Humbug, Iron Duke and Trafalgar, the Horse Guard in the rain, London burning, buzz bombs and sirens, the new babe held high on the palace balcony, Churchill's funeral cortege still in the street, man, still in the street! and Caesar not gone to his Senate, and strange happenings this night at Stonehenge! Leave all this, this, this ! ?

Upon his knees, at the cliffs edge, the last and final king of England, Harry Smith wept alone. […]

The old man turned to see the countryside and thought, why this is how it was one hundred thousand years ago. A great silence and a great wilderness and now, quite late, the empty shell towns and King Henry, Old Harry, the Ninth.

He rummaged half blindly about in the grass and found his lost book bag and chocolate bits in a sack and hoisted his Bible, and Shakespeare and much-thumbed Johnson and much-tongued Dickens and Dryden and Pope, and stood out on the road that led all round England.

Tomorrow: Christmas. He wished the world well. Its people had gifted themselves already with sun, all over the globe. Sweden lay empty. Norway had flown. None lived any longer in God's cold climes. All basked upon the continental hearths of His best lands in fair winds under mild skies. No more fights just to survive. Men, reborn like Christ on such as tomorrow, in southern places, were truly returned to an eternal and fresh-grown manger.

Tonight, in some church, he would ask forgiveness for calling them traitors.

[…]

"Our ends are in our beginnings, eh?"

He pulled his cap tight. The wind was cold. He tasted the first snowflakes that fell to brush his lips.

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"O remarkable boy!" he said, leaning from an imaginary window on a golden Christmas morn, an old man reborn and gasping for joy, "Delightful boy, there, is the great bird, the turkey, still hung in the poulterer's window down the way?"

"It's hanging there now," said the boy.

"Go buy it! Come back with the man and I'll give you a shilling. Come back in less than five minutes and I'll give you a crown!"

And the boy went to fetch.

And buttoning his coat, carrying his books, Old Harry Ebenezer Scrooge Julius Caesar Pickwick Pip and half a thousand others marched off along the road in winter weather. The road was long and beautiful. The waves were gunfire on the coast. The wind was bagpipes in the north.

Ten minutes later, when he had gone singing beyond a hill, by the look of it, all the lands of England seemed ready for a people who someday soon in history might arrive....

Analyse the story in the terms to follow.

Expressive means:

•Comment on the usage of words. What layers of language do they belong to? Why?

-Analyse the characters’ speech.

-Pay special attention to the words the author used for description and narration. Is there any difference in the choice of words?

-Find lexical units belonging to different strata of vocabulary and explain the reason of this diversity, if any.

•Comment on the grammar and syntax of this piece of prose. Find grammar expressive means and draw conclusions about the peculiarities of the author’s style.

Stylistic Devices (allusion among them):

•Why is the phrase ‘the final day’ italicised?

•What role does the italicised word play in this extract and the story on the whole?

Couldn't you guess I would want to be the last man in all Britain, no, that hasn't the proper sound, Great Britain?"

•Find other examples of italicisation and comment on the ideas focused on.

•Why is England gendered as a female?

•Find other cases of personification and say what is gained by them.

•Comment on the usage of the word ‘tolls’ in the passage?

Last man in Great Britain, thought Harry, Lord, listen. It tolls.

What is the protagonist compared to? Name the stylistic device.

•Find other stylistic devices you are acquainted with and comment on the effect produced.

•What are the monarch butterflies compared with? Why did the author decide on this particular species?

•Who is John Bull and why is he mentioned here?

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•Why of all possible days of the year did Ray Bradbury choose the Christmas Eve?

•Reread this passage and say who this He is.

All basked upon the continental hearths of His best lands in fair winds under mild skies. Men, reborn like Christ on such as tomorrow, in southern places, were truly returned to an eternal and fresh-grown manger.

•Comment on this allusion to Christ. Is it the only one in the story?

•If Henry is compared to Christ, who is Sam Welles then according to this biblical allusion?

•Find other allusions in this story, comment on their origins, and dwell upon the role they play in the story, what do they stand for? What is the author’s message? Would the story have the same impact on the reader if there were no allusions?

•Why did the story-writer name his characters Harry and is Sam Welles? How can you account for it? Comment on the title of the story.

So, as you can see the choice of the names for the personages is by no means accidental. Characters’ names can also become a meaningful vehicle for rendering the author’s ideas, the stylistic device being called antonomasia or “speaking names”.

Antonomasia (Greek antonomasia –“naming instead”) is a trope in which a proper name is used instead of a common noun or vice versa, i.e. a stylistic device, in which the nominal meaning (naming one single individual object) of a proper noun is suppressed by its logical meaning (classifying objects into classes) or the logical meaning acquires the new – nominal – component. There are two types of metaphorical antonomasia possible*.

First, antonomasia can be, in a way, a variety of allusion. It is the use of the name of a historical, or biblical personage applied to a person whose characteristic features resemble those of a well-known original. Thus, a traitor’s name may be referred to as Brutus, a ladies’ man deserves the name of Don Juan.

Second, at the basis of antonomasia there can be a metaphor, i.e. the use of a common noun as a proper name. For instance, Becky Sharp, Lady Snake, Miss Ape, etc. Antonomasia of this kind is created mainly by nouns, more seldom by attributive combinations (as in “Dr. Fresh Air”) or phrases (as in “Mr. What’s-his-name”).

*Note: in lexicology there exists the so-called metonymic antonomasia (for more details on metonymy refer to Part 2 of the unit) which is usually trite and stylistically neutral. It is observed in cases when a personal name stands for something connected with the bearer of that name who once really existed. Study the following examples: He has sold his Vandykes (Hurst) or This is my real Goya (Galsworthy). Some former proper names are now even spelt with a small letter. For example: mackintosh, sandwich, ohm (each originating from a proper name).

Antonomasia is a much-favoured device in the belles-letters style. In an article called What’s in a name? Mr. R. Davis says: “In deciding on names for his characters, an au-

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thor has an unfair advantage over other parents. He knows so much better how his child will turn out”.

PRACTICE

Let’s play a game – What’s in a name? It is based on J. K. Rowling’s books describing Harry Potter’s adventures.

First Level Tasks

1.From the list of the surnames to follow choose the one that suits the family described below. Explain your choice.

At that moment a group of people passed just behind him and he caught a few words of what they were saying.

ʺ– packed with Muggles, of course –ʺ

Harry swung round. The speaker was a plump woman who was talking to four boys, all with flaming red hair. […]

ʺExcuse me,ʺ Harry said to the plump woman.

ʺHello, dear,ʺ she said. ʺFirst time at Hogwarts? Ronʹs new, too.ʺ

She pointed at the last and youngest of her sons. He was tall, thin, and gangling, with freckles, big hands and feet, and a long nose.

2.Now rely on your intuition and decide which families the children with the following names can belong to. For this match the first names on the left and the surnames on the right. Explain your choice.

3.To do this task one needs logic rather than intuition only. Read the excerpts given below substituting the letters with the names from the previous activity. Be ready to defend your hypothesis. The first one has been done for you as

an example.

Example: Mr. and Mrs. X = Mr. and Mrs. Dursleys; Y = Dudley

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A suggested explanation: In the first place Dursley is a small town in Britan (by the way, the people depicted in the book are “perfectly normal” and from the activities they are engaged in one can assume that they should in no way be associated with anything global and capital). Besides, Dursley can be interpreted as consisting of D’ (a French preposition similar to the English ‘of’) and ‘Ursa’ (Major/ Minor), the name of the constellation (Great/ Little Bear). It is interesting that the adjective ‘ursal’ is often used to name a person who resembles a bear, is clumsy and awkward. Is it not possible that the father and the son are mockingly compared with Great and Little Bears? What is more, Dudley is a play on ‘dud’, which is British slang for a ‘boring person’. As for Mrs. Dursley’s first name, which is Petunia, it is meaningful as well. She is named after the flower that symbolizes anger and resentment.

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Mr. and Mrs. X, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. They were the last people you'd expect to be involved in anything strange or mysterious, because they just didn't hold with such nonsense.

Mr. X was the director of a firm called Grunnings, which made drills. He was a big, beefy man with hardly any neck, although he did have a very large mustache. Mrs. X was thin and blonde and had nearly twice the usual amount of neck, which came in very useful as she spent so much of her time craning over garden fences, spying on the neighbors. The X had a small son called Y and in their opinion there was no finer boy anywhere. […]

Y looked a lot like Uncle Vernon (his father). He had a large, pink face, not much neck, small, watery blue eyes and thick, blond hair that lay smoothly on his thick, fat head. Aunt Petunia (his mother) often said that Y looked like a baby angel

– Harry often said that Y looked like a pig in a wig.

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2

The toadless boy was back, but this time he had a girl with him. She was already wearing her new Hogwarts robes.

"Has anyone seen a toad? Neville's lost one," she said. She had a bossy sort of voice, lots of bushy brown hair, and rather large front teeth.

"We've already told him we haven't seen it," said Ron, but the girl wasn't listening, she was looking at the wand in his hand.

"Oh, are you doing magic? Let's see it, then." She sat down. Ron looked taken aback. […]

"Sunshine, daisies, butter mellow, Turn this stupid, fat rat yellow."

He waved his wand, but nothing happened. Scabbers stayed grey and fast asleep. "Are you sure that's a real spell?" said the girl. "Well, it's not very good, is it? I've

tried a few simple spells just for practice and it's all worked for me. Nobody in my family's magic at all, it was ever such a surprise when I got my letter, but I was ever so pleased, of course, I mean, it's the very best school of witchcraft there is, I've heard – I've learned all our course books by heart, of course, I just hope it will be enough – I'm c d by the way, who are you?”

She said all this very fast.

Both of them were thickset and looked extremely mean. Standing on either side of the pale boy, they looked like bodyguards.

"Oh, this is Crabbe and this is Goyle," said the pale boy carelessly, noticing where Harry was looking. "And my name's b, a b."

Ron gave a slight cough, which might have been hiding a snigger. A b looked at him. "Think my name's funny, do you? No need to ask who you are. My father told me all

the Weasleys have red hair, freckles, and more children than they can afford."

He turned back to Harry. "You'll soon find out some wizarding families are much better than others, Potter. You don't want to go making friends with the wrong sort. I can help you there."

He held out his hand to shake Harry's, but Harry didn't take it.

"I think I can tell who the wrong sort are for myself, thanks," he said coolly. A b didn't go red, but a pink tinge appeared in his pale cheeks.

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Second Level Tasks

1.The school of wizardry the children are heading to is called Hogwarts. Try to interpret the name and suggest your way of translating it into Russian.

2.The faculties of the school are known as houses, there being four of them. Below you’ll find their coats-of-arms and titles, as well as some suggested ways of naming them in Russian. Interpret the names. Comment on the Russian variants. Take into account the characteristics given to the houses in the song.

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Third Level Tasks

1.Here is a list of openings at Hogwarts. Professor Albus Dumbldore has to find people to fill the vacancies. On reading the applicants’ CVs and statements of purposes he has compiled a shortlist, which is attached to the first paper.

Make guesses about what the chosen applicants will be in charge of. Remember that you will have to defend your hypothesis.

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Simile (Latin similie "like") is a stylistic device that draws a comparison between two different objects belonging to dissimilar classes yet having something in common. The comparison is made explicit by using some special markers, which makes simile different from metaphor, where affinity is implicit. Simile emphasizes likeness while metaphor may assert or suggest identity. Compare these examples from a Ray Bradbury story:

•The pilot lifted his head, which signalled the lift of the helicopter to swivel and rush away. The white cliffs of Dover vanished. They broke over green meadows so wove back and forth, a giant dragonfly excursioning the stuffs of winter that sleeted their blades.

•And a billion monarch butterflies in June rising up like celebrations tossed on parades to the sea.

What do these two comparisons differ in? What signal indicates simile?

Hence, the general formula for the simile includes the tenor, the vehicle, as well as the element expressing the comparative juxtaposition of the two: X is like Y. That means that the simile is both lexical and syntactical stylistic device, as a definite structure is involved. Like is just one of the words possible to invoke a simile. Here are a few of the possibilities:

But a simile can sometimes be implied, or as it is often called, submerged. In such cases no comparative word is needed. Besides, as well as metaphors, similes can be extended. Study the example to follow:

When I think of the English final exam, I think of dungeons and chains and racks and primal screams.

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CHECK 1

Study the following examples of simile identifying the tenor, vehicle, and ground for comparison as well as the linking word. Find cases of extended similes, if any.

2)The ruby shall be redder than a red rose, and the sapphire shall be as blue as

the great sea. (Wilde)

3)With the quickness of a long cat, she climbed up into the nest of coolbladed foliage. (Lawrence)

4)He reminded James, as he said afterwards, of a hungry cat. (Galsworthy)

5)Huddled in her grey fur against the sofa cushions, she had a strange resemblance to a captive owl. (Galsworthy)

6)Mr. Witte’s method of paying off debts would be a form of feeding a dog

7)It was as though an iron fist had clenched suddenly around Harry’s heart. (J. K. Rowling)

8)Aunt Petunia often said that Dudley looked like a baby angel – Harry often said that Dudley looked like a pig in a wig. (J. K. Rowling)

9)It was a glorious morning, late spring or early summer, as you care to take it, when the dainty sheen of grass and leaf is blushing to a deeper green;

14)It was that moment of the year when the countryside seems to faint from its own loveliness, from the intoxication of its scents and sounds.

(Galsworthy)

What grammatical structures are mostly involved in invoking a simile?

Attention must be focused on the difference between a real simile as an imagecreating device and logical comparison as a mere statement of the identical (similar) features of two objects, possessing no stylistic value.

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