Graphic. Punctuation
Phonetic Stylistic Devices
English Vocabulary
Lexical Stylistic Devices
Syntactical Stylistic Devices
Decoding Stylistics
Biographies
Guidelines
Analysis
Texts
Decoding Stylistics
Practice Section
Define the type of Foregrounding:
1. There is a convergence of expressive means in the passage below. Try to identify separate devices that contribute to the poetic description of a beautiful young girl: types of repetition, metaphor, sustained metaphor, catachresis, alliteration, inversion, coupling, semantic field:
On her face was that tender look of sleep, which a nodding flower has when it is full out. Like a mysterious early flower, she was fall out, like a snowdrop which spreads its three white wings in a flight into the waking sleep of its brief blossoming. The waking sleep of her full-opened virginity, entranced like a snowdrop in the sunshine, was upon her. (Lawrence)
2. How is the effect of defeated expectancy achieved in the examples below? What are the specific devices employed in each case?
Celestine finally turned on the bench and put her hand over Dot’s.
–Honey, she said, would it kill you to say ‘yes’?
–Yes, said Dot. (Erdrich)
St. Valentine’s Day, I remembered, anniversary for lovers and massacre. (Shaw)
I think that, if anything, sports are rather worse than concerts, said Mr. Prendergast. They at least happen indoors. (Waugh)
...the Indian burial mound this town is named for contain the things that each Indian used in their lives. People have found stone grinders, hunting arrows and jewelry of colored bones. So I think it’s no use. Even buried, our things survive. (Erdrich)
–Would this be of any use? Asked Philbrick, producing an enormous service revolver. Only take care, it’s loaded.
–The very thing, said the Doctor. Only fire into the ground, mind. We must do everything we can to avoid an accident. Do you always carry that about with you?
–Only when I’m wearing my diamonds, said Philbrick. (Waugh)
When we visited Athens, we saw the Apocalypse. (Maleska)
Texans, quite apart from being tall and lean, turned out to be short and stout, hospitable, stingy to a degree, generous to a fault, even-tempered, cantankerous, doleful, and happy as the day is long. (Atkinson)
3. Explain how the principle of coupling can be used in analyzing the following passages. What types of coupling can you identify here?
Feeding animals while men and women starve, he said bitterly. It was a topic; a topic dry, scentless and colourless as a pressed flower, a topic on which in the school debating society one had despaired of finding anything new to say. (Waugh)
You asked me what I had doing this time. What I have doing is wine. With the way the world’s drinking these days, being in wine is like having a license to steal. (Shaw)
4. In many cases coupling relies a lot on semantic fields analysis. Show how these principles interact in the following passage.
The truth is that motor-cars offer a very happy illustration of the metaphysical distinction between ‘being’ and ‘becoming’.
Some cars, mere vehicles, with no purpose above bare locomotion; mechanical drudges... have definite ‘being’ just as much as their occupants. They are bought all screwed up and numbered and painted, and there they stay through various declensions of ownership, brightened now and then with a lick of paint... but still maintaining their essential identity to the scrap heap.
Not so the real cars, that become masters of men; those vital creations of metal who exist solely for their own propulsion through space, for whom their drivers are as important as the stenographer to a stockbroker. These are in perpetual flux; a vortex of combining and disintegrating units, like the confluence of traffic where many roads meet. (Waugh)
5. Working in groups of two or three try to define the themes of the following text with a description of a thunderstorm. Let each group arrange the vocabulary of the passage into semantically related fields, for example: storm sounds, shapes, colors, supernatural forces, etc.
We... looked out the mucking hole to where a tower of lightning stood. It was a broad round shaft like a great radiant auger, boring into m cloud and mud at once. Burning. Transparent. And inside this cylinder f of white-purple light swam shoals of creatures we could never have" imagined. Shapes filmy and iridescent and veined like dragonfly wings erranded between the earth and heavens. They were moving to a music I we couldn’t hear, the thunder blotting it out for us. Or maybe the cannonade of thunder was music for them, but measure that we couldn’t understand.
We didn’t know what they were.
They were storm angels. Or maybe they were natural creatures whose natural element was storm, as the sea is natural to the squid and shark. We couldn’t make out their whole shapes. Were they mermaids or tigers? Were they clothed in shining linen or in flashing armor? We saw what we thought we saw, whatever they were, whatever they were in process of becoming.
This tower of energies went away then, and there was another thrust of lightning just outside the wall. It was a less impressive display, just an ordinary lightning stroke, but it lifted the three of us thrashing in midair for a long moment, then dropped us breathless and sightless on the damp ground. (Chappell)
6. Comment on the type of deviation in the following semi-marked structures.
Did you ever see a dream walking? (Cheever)
I think cards are divine, particularly the kings. Such naughty old faces! (Waugh)
Ask Pamela; she’s so brave and manly. (Waugh)
It was Granny whom she came to detest with all her soul... her Yvette really hated, with that pure, sheer hatred which is almost a joy. (Lawrence)
...everyone who spoke, it seemed, was but biding his time to shout the old village street refrain which had haunted him all his life, «Nigger!– Nigger!–White Nigger!» (Dunbar-Nelson)
