Лингвистический анализ текста

CHECK 2

Compare the statements given below. Tell similes from logical comparisons:

Are the similes in CHECK 2 genuine or trite?

PRACTICE

1.Here you will find some more ready-made similes. Restore them as the words underlined are in the wrong sentences. Find the correct sentence for each one.

d)As cool as a bat, the robber asked for all the money in the bank!

e)I didn’t have any problems with the test. It was as easy as houses.

h)Little Sarah looked as pretty as a cucumber in her new dress.

i)Take this medicine, and in a few days you’ll be as right as nails.

j)Don’t be frightened of being on this plane. It’s as safe as a bird.

r)The bed was as hard as a bone and I couldn’t sleep.

s)She told the teacher, as bold as iron, that his lessons were boring.

t)When she was told obscene things her face became as red as brass.

u)He never says a thing; he’s as quiet as a door-nail.

v)She ran off with my money; I felt as sick as a judge.

w)The fish was bad and I was as sick as a beetroot.

y)She knew the answer as quick as a rake.

z)After our search, suddenly David turned up as large as rain!

*Note: special care should be taken while using the expressions marked with asterisks as they can be taken as derogative and thus offensive.

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2.Complete this simile crossword puzzle. Fill in the answers, as in the example. If you need help apply to English Vocabulary in Use (Michael McCarthy and Felicity O’Dell, Unit 80).

e.g. Buy this dress, it fits you like a _____. glove

ACROSS:

•She goes around like a _____ (1) in a China shop.

•He eats like a _____ (5) and drinks like a _____ (3).

•Be careful the boss doesn’t see you; she has eyes like a _____ (4).

•My plan worked like a _____ (7), and the problem was soon solved.

•I feel great now. I slept like a _____ (8).

DOWN:

•The boss is like a _____ (1) with a sore head today. [in a very bad temper]

•Sorry, I forgot to ring him again. I’ve got a brain / head like a _____ (2)!

•Criticising the government in his presence is like a red _____ (6) to a bull.

4.

6.

7.

8.

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3. Find similes in sonnet 130 by William Shakespeare and comment on the imagery system and tonality of the poem.

My mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun;

Coral is far more red than her lips' red;

If snow be white, why then her breasts are dun;

If hairs be wires, black wires grow on her head.

I have seen roses damasked, red and white,

But no such roses see I in her cheeks;

And in some perfumes is there more delight

Than in the breath that from my mistress reeks.

I love to hear her speak, yet well I know

That music hath a far more pleasing sound;

I grant I never saw a goddess go;

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Synecdoche is a trope consisting in the usage of a part to signify the whole, or the genus – the species, and vice versa.

As well as metonymy, synecdoche can be trite (as in All hands on deck! and The army included two hundred horse and three hundred foot), and genuine. Study the example of the latter:

‘She saw around her, clustered about the white tables, multitudes of violently red lips, powdered cheeks, cold, hard eyes, self-possessing arrogant faces, and insolent bosoms.’ (Bennett)

What picture does the author create? How can people depicted in such a manner be characterised?

CHECK

1. Study the following examples of metonymy identifying the type of metonymical transfer:

2)The leaves dropped off his imaginary crown of laurel, he turned to the gate,

3)Give every man thine ear and few thy voice. (Слушай каждого, а говори с немногими). (Shakespeare)

4)‘Good morning, sir.’ Authority has suddenly changed into subservience. – ‘I hear you had some trouble with the turnstiles this morning,’ said Evelyn benevolently. – ‘Trouble, sir? Turnstiles?’ replied subservience, as if quite at a loss, to understand the sinister allusion. ‘They’ve told you wrong…’ subservience sprang round the corner. (Bennett)

6)We smiled at each other, but we didn’t speak because there were ears all

around us. (Chase)

7)‘Save your breath,’ I said. ‘I know exactly what you have been thinking.’

(Chase)

8)Except for a lack of youth, the guests had no common theme, they seemed

10)The man looked a rather old forty-five, for he was already going grey.

(Prichard)

12)‘Did he say where he was going?’ – ‘No. He paid his rent and beat it. You

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13)There was something so agreeable in being so intimate with such a waistcoat; in being on such off-hand terms so soon with such a pair of whiskers

14)‘Well, Mr. Weller, says the gentl’mn, you’re a very good whip, and can do

15)Miss Tox’s hand trembled as she slipped it through Mr. Dombey’s arm, and

felt herself escorted up the steps, preceded by a cocked hat and a Babylonian collar. (Dickens)

16)She wanted to have a lot of children, and she was glad that things were that way, that the Church approved. Then the little girl died. Nancy broke with Rome the day her baby died. It was a secret break, but no Catholic breaks with Rome casually. (O’Hara)

17)“You have nobody to blame but yourself.” – “The saddest words of tongue or pen.” (I. Shaw)

18)Then they came in. Two of them, a man with long fair moustaches and a silent dark man… Definitely, the moustache and I had nothing in common.

(Lessing)

19)… Ralph could make out a familiar rhythm. – “Kill the beast! Cut his

2.Read the following examples of synecdoche and distribute them into one of the columns according to the kind of substitution. Give necessary commentary as in the example.

*Note: these cases are very close at times to another type of transfer, when a concrete object symbolises an abstract notion. For example, this sentence – Give us this day our daily bread. (Matthew, 6:11) – can be looked at from different angles: bread as a symbol of food, and as just one of the products a person feeds themselves upon, i.e. the ‘species’ is used to represent the ‘genus’.

a)A major lesson people need to learn is that life consists of more things than cars and television sets.

b)If I had some wheels, I'd put on my best threads and ask for Jane's hand in marriage.

c)Okay team. Get those blades back on the ice.

d)His pet purr was home alone and asleep.

e)There sits my animal guarding the door to the henhouse.

f)This program is for the little old lady in Cleveland who cannot afford to pay her heating bill.

g)It is sure hard to earn a dollar these days.

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h)His pet paws and whiskers were home alone and asleep.

i)He hurled the barbed weapon at the whale (= harpoon).

j)If you still do not feel well, you'd better call up a sawbones and have him examine you.

PRACTICE

1.Read the limerick and say what makes the gist of the joke.

There was a young man from the city,

Who saw what he thought was a kitty.

To make sure of that

He gave it a pat.

They buried his clothes – what a pity!

2.Read the nursery rhyme and say what the crown, the lion, and the unicorn stand for.

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Unit 3

Miscellany

There are stylistic devices that can be based both on metaphor and on metonymy. Of them let’s name two: periphrasis and epithet.

Read the following line from a dialogue between two girls and say what epoch it could take place in? Why?

C e c i l y: Do you suggest, Miss Fairfax, that I entrapped Ernest into engagement? How dare you? This is no time for wearing the shallow mask of manners. When I see a spade I call it a spade.

What do you call a spade when you see one? Interpret the proverb and find its equivalent in Russian. What is so shameful in naming the instrument by its true name?

The stylistic device that is in charge of renaming of the kind is called periphrasis.

Periphrasis is a stylistic device that consists in the renaming of an object by a phrase that brings out some particular feature of it. Rendering a purely individual perception of the object the device can be decipherable only in context. If a periphrastic locution is understandable outside the context, it is not a stylistic device but merely a synonymous expression. Such easily decipherable periphrases are also called traditional, dictionary or language periphrases.

e.g. ‘My dear Tina, we have paid our homage to Neptune. He will forgive us if we now turn our backs on him.’

Though this periphrasis is not strikingly genuine, it is still rather difficult to grasp the speaker’s idea. One needs context to perceive that Charles Smithson, the main male character in The French Lieutenant’s Woman by John Fowles, suggests to his companion that they stop gazing at the sea and go back to town.

Writers of past epochs employed periphrasis a great deal, seeing in it a more elegant manner of expression. No wonder, it was one of the most favourite devices of Victorian writers. The same can be attributed to all the educated people of the time, hypocrisy being its distinguishing feature – the thing Oscar Wilde made the object of his ridicule in the play quoted above.

CHECK 1

Read an excerpt from John Fowles’ novel, in which the twentieth century writer employs his artistic licence in order to recreate the atmosphere of the Victorian Golden Age. Therefore, the author endeavoured to imitate its style. Study the itali-

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cized expressions, which are examples of periphrasis. Do you consider them genuine or trite?

“The vicar of Lyme at that time was a comparatively emancipated man theologically, but he also knew very well which side of his pastoral bread was buttered. He suited Lyme, a traditionally Low Church congregation, very well. He had the knack of a certain fervid eloquence in his sermons; and he kept his church free of crucifixes, images, ornaments and all other signs of the Romish cancer. /…/ In the winter (winter also of the forth great cholera onslaught on Victorian Britain) of that previous year Mrs Poulteney had been a little ill, and the vicar had been as frequent a visitor as the doctors who so repeatedly had to assure her that she was suffering from a trivial stomach upset and not the dreaded oriental killer.”

A roundabout way of speaking about common things produces either a humorous effect or contributes to pompous, lofty air. Stylistic periphrasis may be logical and figurative. The logical periphrasis is based on a certain inherent or prominent feature of the object described, as in ‘the dreaded oriental killer’ in the passage above. Figurative periphrasis is based either on metaphor (metaphoric periphrasis) or metonymy (metonymical periphrasis). The other two cases in the extract are examples of the former. As for metonymical periphrasis, it can be found in the sentence below taken from the same book, where the periphrasis is based on the symbolical colours of the two political parties of the UK – Tories and Liberals (as in the old strife of Blues and Yellows).

e.g. … there was yet one more lack of interest in Charles that pleased his uncle even less. Yellow ribbons and daffodils, the insignia of the Liberal Party, were anathema at Winsyatt; the old man was the most azure of Tories…

CHECK 2

Read the following fragments and identify logical and figurative (both metaphoric and metonymical) periphrases, and comment on the effect achieved.

The 'sixties had been indisputably prosperous; an affluence had come to the artisanate and even to the labouring classes that made the possibility of revolution recede, at least in Great Britain, almost out of mind. Needless to say, Charles knew nothing of the beavered German Jew quietly working, as it so happened, that very afternoon in the British Museum library; and whose work in those sombre walls was to bear such bright red fruit. Had you described that fruit, or the subsequent effects of its later indiscriminate consumption, Charles would almost certainly not have believed you — and even though, in only six months from this March of 1867, the first volume of Kapital was to appear in Hamburg.

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