英语文体学Chapter3 Varieties of Language PPT课件
(最新整理)Stylistics(英语文体学)
II. What is style?
style as rhetoric — Gorgias（风格即 修辞）;
style as form — Aristotle（风格即形 式）;
style as eloquence — Cicero (风格即 雄辩术);
proper words in proper places —
2021/7/26
15
Langue(语言)(Longman Dictionary P382)
The French word for “language”. The
term was used by the linguist Saussure
to mean the system of a language, that is the arrangement of sounds and
interpretation of the text; or in order to
relate literary effects to linguistic
‘causes’ where these are felt to be
relevant…. Stylisticians want to avoid
situationally-distinctive uses of
language, with particular reference to
literary language, and tries to establish
principles capable of accounting for the
saying the right thing in the most effective way — Enkvist（以最有效 的方式讲恰当的事情） ;
文体学 Varieties
Southern American
South Central, Southern, Appalachian
Chinese：
Cantonese 方言
4) Social Dialect
a) Socialeconomic Status Varieties; b) Ethnic Varieties; c) Gender Varieties; d) Age Varieties
Lead in
Policeman: What’s your name, boy? Black psychiatrist: Dr Poussaint. I am a physician. Policeman: What’s your first name, boy? Black psychiatrist: Alvin
Also
General American (Standard American)
Pacific NW, Pacific SW, Central, North Central
Eastern American
New England, New York City, MidAtlantic, Western Pennsylvania
Classification 1 User: historical varieties, regional dialect, social dialect Use: legal, journalistic, business, scientific, literary Social relations: medium—oral/ written and status/ attitude Quirk et al (Grammar of Contemporary English, 1972: 14): The fact that…the “Common Core” dominates all the varieties means that, however esoteric or remote a variety may be, it has running through it a set of grammatical and other characteristics that are present in all others. It is presumably this fact that justifies the application of the name “English”.
英语文体学 PPT
General stylistics
Some Senses of style
1) A man's style is his mind's voice. (Ralph Waldo Emerson)
2) Proper words in proper places makes the true definition of a style. (Jonathan Swift)
Introduction to Stylistics
I. Introduction
What is stylistics? Modern Stylistics:
General Stylistics, Literary Stylistics
The Scope of Studies
Literary stylistics: concentrating on the unique features of various literary works, such as poem, novel, prose, drama…
Some Senses of style
5) Style is a shell surrounding a preexisting core of thought. It is regarded as an addition to a central core of thought or expression. (Nils Erik Enkvist)）
英语教材 应用文体学-Chapter III 文体学 (3)
•
The vast majority of synonyms are relative synonyms. When we talk about synonyms, generally we refer to relative synonyms: two or more words of the same language and of the same grammatical category having the same essential or generic meaning and differ only in connotation, application, or idiomatic use: two or more words having essentially identi•
Anger(a common word), rage(great anger), fury(greatest anger), indignation and wrath are different in degree of intensity: To fly into a rage The insolence（傲慢；无礼） of the waiters drove him into a rage, and he flung his plate to the floor and stalked out of the restaurant. Mad with fury, John pounded his fists on the wall and beat his breast. Indignation denotes anger based on a moral condemnation of something felt to be wrong and unfair:
英语文体学ppt-Varieties in relation to attitude
politeness
Politeness refers to
How languages expressed the social distance between the speakers and their different role-relationships;
How face-work,that is,the attempt to establish,maintain,and save face during conversation,is carried out in a speech community
The consultative style
①Excuse me, how can I get to the nearest metro station?
②A: What can I do for you? B: I’d like to buy some primary taste yogurt .
In English,degrees of politeness are indicated by intonation patterns address forms and some other markers. A rising tone or a falling-rising tone used in commands,invitations,greetings or farewells,often indicates politeness. Excuse me? Thank you! It is very kind of you!
Chapter 6
Varieties in relation to attitude
Degrees of formality
文体学Varieties of language部分
Individual dialect --- Idiolect
A specific person will display his or her own features of speech or writing habits.
The traits of speech or writing often point to a person’s individuality which leads to a person’s style.
VARIETIES OF LANGUAGE
语言变体
Outline
Two kinds of varieties Dialects Registers The mutual dependence between register
and dialect The social meaning of language varieties
The choice is determined by the convention that a certain kind of language is appropriate to a certain use.
The occasion can be classified along three dimensions, each presenting an aspect of the situation and the part played by the language in them.
and they yield two main kinds of situational varieties: dialectal and diatypic.
DIALECTAL VARIETIES commonly called DIALECTs are language variations that are
文体学 3(9-22)
Examples
• Round the rock runs the river. • Sharper/garter, plain/ plate • Feat/beat/sweet
Supra-segmental features
Super-segmentals (prosodic features) are stylistically significant in the following aspects: Stress rhythm intonation Pitch height and pitch range Pause Tempo
Chapter 3 Linguistic Description
3.1 Levels of language 3.2 Stylistics features 3.3 Procedure of linguistic description
The relation between three aspects in a speech event and the levels of language • Substance the level of phonology/graphology • Form the level of lexis and grammar • Situation the level of semantics, the contextual relations between situation and form
Onomatopoeia
eg: The clock ticked away the minutes. She clapped the book shut. The actress was hissed off the stage. AVSEQ02.DAT
英语文体学课本1-2
Table of Contents1 The Concern of Stylistics1.1. Stylistics1.2. Language1.3. Aspects of the Speech Event1.4. Language Varieties and Function1.5. Style1.6. The Study of Style1.7. The Concern of Stylistic Study1.8. Stylistics and Other Spheres of Study2 The Need for Stylistic Study2.1. Stylistic Study Helps Cultivate a Sense of Appropriateness2.2. Stylistic Study Sharpens the Understanding and Appreciation of Literary Works2.3. Stylistic Study Helps Achieve Adaptation in Translation3 Varieties of Language3.1. Two Kinds of Varieties3.2. Dialects3.3. Registers3.4. The Mutual Dependence Between Register and Dialect3.5. The Social Meaning of Language Varieties4 Linguistic Description4.1. The Aims of Stylistics in Linguistic Description4.2. Levels of Language4.3. Stylistic Features4.4. Procedure of Linguistic Description4.5. The Practical Description and Analysis in This Book5 Formal vs Informal Language5.1.The Interpersonal Function of Language5.2. Degrees of Formality5.3. Functional Tenor and Degrees of Formality5.4. Martin Joos' Classification5.5. Speech Situation and Formality5.6. Formality and Linguistic Features5.7. Sets of Co-occurring Features5.8. Involved vs Informational Texts5.9. Tenors, Field, and Mode6 Spoken vs Written Language6.1. Striking Differences6.2. Stylistic Differences6.3. Examples of Contrast6.4. More Delicate Distinctions Amongst Modes of Discourse6.5. Mode, Field, and Tenors7 The English of Conversation7.1. Necessity of Studying Speech7.2. Necessity of Studying Conversation7.3. Object of Study7.4. An Adapted Way of Transcription7.5. A Sample Text of Casual Conversation7.6. General Features7.7. Stylist Features in Terms of Levels of Language7.8. Summary7.9. Other Kinds of Conversation8 The English of Pubic Speech8.1. Scope of Public Speech8.2. A Sample of Text for Analysis8.3. General Features of Public Speech8.4. Stylistic Features of Public Speech9 The English of Advertising9.1. Advertising English as a Variety9.2. Newspaper Advertising9.3. Radio Advertising9.4. Television Advertising10 The English of News Reporting10.1. The English of New Reporting as a Variety10.2. Two Samples Texts for Analysis10.3. General Features of Newspaper Reporting10.4. Stylistic Features of Newpaper Reporting10.5. Stylistic Features of Radio and Television News11 The English of Science and Techology11.1. The Scope of the English of Science and Technology 11.2. Sample Texts for Analysis11.3. General Features of EST11.4. Stylistic Features of EST11.5. Features of Spoken EST12 The English of Legal Documents12.1. The English of Legal Documents as a Variety12.2. Sample Texts for Analysis12.3. Stylistic Features of Legal English13 The English of Literature (1) --General Remarks13.1. Literature as Language Art13.2. Literary Language and Ordinary Language13.3. Literary Language as a Variety14 The English of Literature (2) --The Language of Fiction 14.1. Manipulation of Semantic Roles14.2. Creation of Images and Symbols14.3. Preference in Diction14.4. Artistic Manipulation of Sentence Variety and Rhythm14.5. Employment of Various Points of View14.6. The Subtle Workings of Authorial Tones14.7. Various Ways of Presenting Speech and Thought15 The English of Literature (3) --The Language of Drama15.1. Manipulation of the Naturalness of Characters' Speech15.2. Exploitation of Different Speech Act, Turn-taking and Politeness Patterns15.3. Use of Assumptions, Presuppositions and Conversational Implicature16 The English of Literature (4) --The Language of Poetry16.1. Various Devices for Compression16.2. Extreme Care in Word Choice16.3. Free Arrangement of Word Order16.4. Lexical and Syntactical Repetition16.5. Full Manipulation of Sound Effects16.6. The Manipulation of Sight16.7. Analysis of Poems at All LevelsGlossary1. The Concern of Stylistics1.1 StylisticsWhat is stylistics?Simply defined, STYLISTICS is a discipline that studies the ways in which language is used; it is a discipline that studies the styles of language in use.This definition, however, needs elucidation.The stylistics we are discussing here is MODERN STYLISTICS, a discipline that applies concepts and techniques of modern linguistics to the study of styles of language use. It has two subdivisions: GENERAL STYLISTICS and LITERARY STYLISTICS, with the latter concentrating solely on unique features of various literary works, and the former on the general features of various types of language use. 'Stylistics', in this book, is general stylistics: one that studies the stylistic features of the main varieties of language, covering the functional varieties from the dimension of fields of discourse (different social activities), formal vs informal varieties from the dimension of tenors of discourse (different addresser-addressee relationships), and the spoken vs written varieties from the dimension of modes of discourse (different mediums). Meanwhile, general stylistics covers the various genres of literature (fiction, drama, poetry) in its study. But it focuses on the interpretation of the overall characteristics of respective genres, with selected extracts of literary texts as samples.If we say that literary stylistics also discusses the overall linguistic features of the various genres of literature, then the scope of general stylistics and the scope of literary stylistics are only partly overlapping, as is shown in the following figure:ModernStylisticsGe neral StylisticsLite rary StylisticsVar iety FeaturesGenreFeaturesLiterary TextStyleGeneral stylistics, as a discipline, needs to make clear a whole set of related terms and terminology and answer questions like: What is language? What is language variety? What is style? What are stylistic features? etc.1.2 LanguageFirst, we need to clarify our views on language. We must be clear about what language is, or how we should look at language.There are many definitions of language, or many ways of looking at it. Modern linguistics which began with Saussure's lectures on general linguistics in 1906-11 regards language as a system of signs. Meanwhile, American structuralism represented by Bloomfield regards language as a unified structure, a collection of habits. From the late 1950s on, the fact that 'man talks' and the implications of this human capacity have been at the centre of investigation in the linguistic sciences. The transformational-generative (TG) linguists headed by Noam Chomsky have beenconcerned with the innate and infinite capacity of the human mind. This approach sees language as a system of innate rules (Chomsky, 1957). The approach advocated by the systemic-functional linguists headed by M. A. K. Halliday sees language as a 'social semiotic', as an instrument used to perform various functions in social interaction. This approach holds that in many crucial respects, what is more important is not so much that 'man talks' as that 'men talk'; that is, that language is essentially a social activity (Halliday, 1978).The philosophical view of LANGUAGE or A LANGUAGE is related of the actual occurrence of language in society--what are called language activities. People accomplish a great deal not only through physical acts such as cooking, eating, bicycling, running a machine, cleaning, but also by verbal acts of all types: conversation, telephone calls, job application letters, notes scribbled to a roommate, etc. All utterances (whether a word, a sentence, or several sentences) can be thought of as goal-directed actions. (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1969) Such actions as carried out through language are SPEECH ACTs. Social activities in which language (either spoken or written) plays an important role such as conversation, discussion, lecture, etc are SPEECH EVENTs.Most of these events are sequential and transitory (that is, they occur in sequence and can not last for a long time). It is difficult to examine them at the time of their occurrence. So we have to record the events. Any such record, whether recalled through memory, or committed to a tape, or written down on paper, or printed in a book, of a speech event, is known as a TEXT.Language is often compared to a CODE, a system of signals or symbols used for sending a MESSAGE, a piece of information. In any act of verbal communication (both spoken and written, primarily spoken), language has been regarded as a system for translating meanings in the ADDRESSER's (the speaker's/writer's) mind into sounds/letters, ie ENCODING (meaning-to-sound/letter), or conversely, for translating sounds/letters into meanings in the ADDRESSEE's (the hearer's/ reader's) mind, ie DECODING (sound/letter-to-meaning), with lexis and grammar as the formal code mediating between meaning and sound/letter.But we must keep in mind that, unlike other signalling codes, language code does not operate in a fixed way- it is open-ended in that it permits generation of new meanings and new forms (such as metaphorical meanings, and neologisms); ie it is in a way creatively extendible.Text, then, is verbal communication (either spoken or written) seen as a message coded in a linear pattern of sound waves, or in a linear sequence of visible marks on paper.1.3 Aspects of the Speech EventLanguage is transmitted, patterned, and embedded in the human social experience. So it is both possible and useful to discern three crucial aspects of a speech event--the substantial, the formal, and the situational. (see Gregory and Carroll, 1978) Language is transmitted by means of audible sound waves in the air or visible marks on a surface. These sounds or marks are the SUBSTANCE of the speech events. The audible sounds or visible marks are not jumbled together--rather, they are arranged in a conventionally orderly way, displaying meaningful patterns in their internal relations. These meaningful internal patterns are the FORM of the speech event. Language activities do not occur in isolation from other human activities. They take place in relevant extratextual circumstances, linguistic and non-linguistic. These relevant extratextual circumstances are the SITUATION * of the speech event. Any speech event is part of a situation, and so has a relationship with that situation. Indeed, it is this contextual relationship between thesubstance and form of a speech event on the one hand and the situation in which it occurs on the other, which gives what is normally called 'meaning' to utterances. In other words, context determines meaning of features in situations.*Situation, as the non-linguistic setting or environment surrounding language use, can clearly influence linguistic behaviour. It is frequently synonymous with context, a conceptual abstraction from all possible situations, and its collocates -- context of situation, especially, context of utterance. The abstracted context, composed partly of the probable co-text, partly of the probable situation of each item, establishes the meaningfulness of the formal items in the language.1.4 Language Varieties and FunctionAs mentioned just now, when language is used, it is always used in a context. What is said and how it is said is often subject to a variety of circumstances. In other words, speech events differ in different situations, ie between different persons, at different times, in different places, for different purposes, through different media, and amidst different social environments. We often adjust our language according to the nature of the context of situation. Some situations seem to depend generally and fairly consistently on a regular set of linguistic features; as a result, there have appeared different types of a language which are called V ARIETIES OF LANGUAGE. So far as the English language is concerned, there are different 'Englishes' to fit different situations: for instance, Old/Modern English, British/American English, Black English, legal English, scientific English, liturgical English, advertising English, formal/ informal English, spoken/written English, etc. There is actually no such thing as a homogeneous English language.In all these varieties, language performs various communicative roles, ie FUNCTIONs. For example, language is used (functions) to communicate ideas, to express attitudes, and so on. The roles that language plays are ever changing and the number of the roles can be numerous. There have been many attempts to categorize these roles into a few major functions. The IDEATIONAL or REFERENTIAL function serves for expressing the speaker's/writer's experience of the real world, including the inner world of his/her own consciousness. The INTERPERSONAL or EXPRESSIVE/SOCIAL function serves to establish and maintain social relations, for the expression of social roles, and also for getting things done by means of interaction between one person and another. The TEXTUAL function provides means for making links within the text itself and with features of its immediate situation. (For detailed discussion see Buhler, 1934; Halliday, 1971.)The three functions represent three coexisting ways in which language has to be adapted to its users' communicative needs. First, it has to convey a message about' reality', about the world of experience, from speaker/writer to hearer/reader. Secondly, it must fit appropriately into a speech situation, fulfilling the particular social designs that speaker/writer has upon hearer/reader. Thirdly, it must be well constructed as an utterance or text, so as to serve the decoding needs of hearer/reader.These functions and the needs they serve are interrelated: success in interpersonal or expressive/social communication depends in part on success in transmitting a message, which in turn depends in part on success in terms of text production.Different types of language have relations with predominant functions, eg advertising with persuasion, TV commentary with information, address terms with social roles. Literary texts can be regarded as a type of language which performs a distinct social function -- an aesthetic orpoetic function.The functions are not mutually exclusive: an utterance may well have more than one function.1.5 StyleNow we come to the question of style.The word STYLE has been used in many ways:Style may refer to a person's distinctive language habits, or the set of individual characteristics of language use, as 'Shakespeare's style', 'Miltonic style', 'Johnsonese', or 'the style of James Joyce'. Buffon's ' Le style, c'est l'homme même', has contributed to the vogue of this definition. Often, it concentrates on a person's particularly singular or original features of speaking or writing. Hence at the extreme end style may refer to a writer's deviations from a relatively normal use of language.Style may refer to a set of collective characteristics of language use, ie language habits shared by a group of people at a given time, as 'Elizabethan style', in a given place, as 'Yankee humour', amidst a given occasion, as 'the style of public speaking', for a literary genre, as ‘ballad style', etc. Here the concentration is not on the individuality of the speaker or writer, but on their similarities in a given situation.Style may refer to the effectiveness of a mode of expression, which is implied in the definition of style as 'saying the right thing in the most effective way' or 'good manners', as a 'clear' or 'refined' style advocated in most books of composition.Style may refer solely to a characteristic of 'good' or 'beautiful' literary writings. This is the wide-spread use of style among literary critics, as 'grand style', 'ornate style', 'lucid style', 'plain style', etc, given to literary works.Of the above four senses of style, the first two (especially the second) come nearest to our definition of style. To be exact, we shall regard STYLE as the language habits of a person or group of persons in a given situation. As different situations tend to yield different varieties of a language which, in turn, display different linguistic features, so STYLE may be seen as the various characteristic uses of language that a person or group of persons make in various social contexts.Here we can use Ferdinand de Saussure's distinction between langue and parole. Langue is the system of rules common to speakers of a particular language (such as English), ie the general mass of linguistic features common to a language as used on every conceivable occasion. Parole is the particular uses of this system, or selections from this system, that a person or group of persons will make on this or that occasion. Style, then, belongs to parole. It consists in choices from the total linguistic repertoire of a particular language.All linguistic choices are meaningful, and all linguistic choices are stylistic. Even choices which are dearly dictated by subject matter are part of style. In our discussion, however, stylistic choice is limited to those aspects of linguistic choice which concern alternative ways of rendering the same subject matter, or those forms of language which can be seen as equivalent in terms of 'referential reality' they describe, or, in other words, the 'synonymous expressions' in transmitting the same 'message'.We are interested in the way in which choices of codes are adapted to communicative functions for advertising, news reporting, science thesis, ere including the aesthetic function forliterature. Hence the occurrence of different functional styles and of the various styles of literature.When we look at style in a text, we are not likely to be struck by local or individual choices in isolation, but rather at a pattern of choices. If, for instance, a text shows a repeated preference for passive structures over active structures, we are likely to consider this preference a feature of style. But local or specific features may also be noteworthy features of style if they form a significant relationship with other features in a coherent (consistent) pattern of choice. Consistency in preference is naturally reduced to 'frequency': To find out what is distinctive about the style of a text, we just measure the frequency of the features it contains. The more we wish to substantiate what we say about style, the more we will need to point to the linguistic evidence of texts; and linguistic evidence has to be couched in terms of numerical frequency.Yet it is worth our note that a feature which occurs more rarely than usual is just as much a part of the statistical pattern as one which occurs more often than usual; and it is also a significant aspect of our sense of style. (see 4.4)1.6 The Study of StyleSome scholars call the object of stylistics simply style, without further qualifications. Indeed, the study of style in western countries has been undertaken for more than two thousand years. The doctrine of 'decorum' or fittingness of style has passed down from the rhetoricians of Ancient Greece and Rome , who applied it first to oratory and then to written language. Up till the late 19th century, style studies had always been closely integrated with the art of writing and the evaluation of literary works. In fact, traditional approaches to language laid such heavy store by the quality of written language that 'good style' or sometimes simply 'style' was used as a description of writing that was praiseworthy, skilful or elegant.At the turn of the century, Ferdinand de Saussure, in his Geneva lectures of 1906-11, Cours de linguistique generale (1916), attacked the 19th century philologists for their 'diachronic' or historical study of language (ie looking at language as it changes through time), and for their interest in prescribing normal or 'correct' usage modelled on 'classic' literary writings. His influence was so strong that, after him, the professional study of language soon veered away from the historical concern of philology towards linguistics, which claimed to be heavily descriptive and to describe a given language 'synchronically' (ie synchronic study: looking at language as it exists at a given time). Saussure, with his insistence on the primacy of everyday speech, was little interested in the written language and even less in the literary. He viewed literary language as special uses of language which were comparatively unimportant in the study of language as a whole. His pupil, Charles Bally, who began the systematic study of what we now call 'stylistics', again gave scant attention to literature. American linguist Leonard Bloomfield held much the similar view. This is only too natural, for, at the turn of the century, new linguistics was yet fighting for its autonomy and needed to emphasize its difference from traditional language studies. It was not until the fifties that there appeared a sway from this position.Noam Chomsky's Syntactic Structures (1957) revived interest in what had once looked a discredited concern with 'correctness' in speech and with an inherited system of rules. Chomsky believes that the human mind must be constituted at birth to receive certain patterns of language; otherwise it would be very hard to explain how infants learn their mother tongue so quickly and with little effort. So it may not have been absurd of the European Renaissance to have interested itself in the prospect of a universal grammar underlying all human languages. Chomsky destroyedthe dominance of structuralism and encouraged a new tolerance of historical grammar. And in doing this he initiated a new interest in literature among professional linguists and the prospect of co-operation between criticism and the professional study of language.By the 1950s most of the early anxieties on the part of linguists had become unnecessary. The tools of linguistics could be used in related disciplines without the danger of reducing linguistics itself to a mere technology or a service station. On the contrary, by the time they came back to literary language, linguists had been armed to the teeth – with fresh insights and new theories as well as a formidable technical vocabulary. This time they would study style in a much more detailed and systematic way. They would not study literature to the exclusion of other varieties of language. Rather they would approach literature as a complex of varieties of language in use and point to the aesthetic function of literary language.The 1960s saw the flourishing of modern stylistics: Two landmark volumes of papers presented respectively to the Indiana Style Conference in 1958 ( Style in language , MIT Press) and to the Bellagio Style Conference in 1969 ( Literary Style: a Symposium , OUP) came into being. Monographs such as Linguistics and Style (Enkvist et al, 1964) and Investigating English Style (Crystal and Davy, 1969), A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry (Leech, 1969) appeared. New courses on style were offered in colleges and universities. Textbooks concerning spoken varieties of English (some with accompanying records or tapes) such as Varieties of Spoken Englis h (Dickinson and Mackin, 1969), Scientifically Speaking (Brookes, 1971) were published. Grammars, as A Grammar of Contemporary English (Quirk et al, 1972) widened their scope to include in their study 'sentence connection', 'focus', 'theme', 'emphasis', and 'varieties of English and classes of English'. Dictionaries began to give labels (eg. fml, colloquial, slang, etc) to words and phrases of stylistic colouring.From the 1960s onward, application of various linguistic models such as transformational-generative linguistics, systemic-functional linguistics, speech-act theory, discourse analysis etc in stylistic analysis has been gaining momentum in the past decades of years.1.7 The Concern of Stylistic StudyHaving discussed what language is and the sense of style, we are now in a position to come to a more refined definition of stylistics: It is a discipline that studies the sum of stylistic features characteristic of the different varieties of language.Stylistic study concerns itself with the situational features that influence variations in language use, the criterion for the classification of language variety, and the description and interpretation of the linguistic features and functions of the main varieties (both literary and non-literary) of a language-- in this book, of the Modern English language.As an independent discipline, stylistics offers a comparatively more complete theoretical framework and a more rigorous procedure of linguistic description, so that learners will have a systematic knowledge of the features of different varieties of language, make appropriate use of language in their communication, familiarize themselves with the stylistic features of the different genres of literature, and deepen their understanding and appreciation of literary works. Besides, stylistics offers useful ideas on translation and language teaching.1.8 Stylistics and Other Spheres of StudyA formerly very much borderline discipline, stylistics takes roots in the soil of modern linguistics, using models and methods of linguistic description in the stylistic analysis of texts. Stylistics also absorbs nourishment from literary theories, and so is closely related to them.Similar to modern linguistics, stylistics lays stress on the study of language functions and the different structures dictated by these functions. But linguistics stresses the description of linguistic structures while stylistics on the stylistic effects of different language structures.Stylistics is the continuation and development of rhetoric. However, discarding the traditional practices of rhetoric to establish norms for people to model on, stylistics turns to the presentation of the functional features of language, --- it is descriptive, not prescriptive. It does not aim at a so-called 'refined' style of writing, but at a manner 'appropriate' to the situation.Stylistics supplies literary criticism with a brand-new approach. Since the beginning of the 20th century the linguistic turn in literary criticism has enabled the scientific school of literary theorists such as Russian formalism, New Criticism, Structuralism, etc to place language in the central position of their theories. With a whole set of meta-language renewed by modern linguistics and modern literary theory-- deviation, prominence, function, situational factors, narrative points of view, modes of presenting speech, etc, and with the multi-level structural approach, stylistics has pushed the linguistic turn to its extreme. Making literary research still more scientific and more accurate, it broadens the vision of literary criticism.Study Questions1) Consult at least five books on stylistics, note down the definitions of stylistics that they give, and discuss the similarities and differences among the definitions.2) Compare the definitions of language put forward by different schools of linguistics. Tell what view or views of language is or are suited to stylistics, and why.3) What aspects are there in a speech event?4) Different scholars classify the function of language into different major types. Compare them, and comment on the saying: The functions of language are mutually exclusive.5) Comment on the different senses of style.6) The goal of most stylistic study is simply to describe the formal features of texts for their own sake. What do you think of this statement?7) Discuss the relationship between stylistics and rhetoric, and tell how stylistics broadens the vision of literary criticism.。
英语文体学-Chapter-3-Varieties-of-LanguagePPT课件
Modern Eng. (1500~now)— W. Shakespeare; Samuel Johnson
.
7
3.2 Dialects
3.2.3 Regional dialect
Different speech patterns in different places
Accent (伦敦小伙儿模仿全球24种英语口音) English— British Eng.
American Eng. Differences: phonology, graphology,
vocabulary, grammar (p.27-28)
.
8
3.2 Dialects
3.2.4 Social dialect
and dialect
5
Social meaning of language
varieties
.
2
3.1 Two kinds of varieties
Language is used in a context
Language in use is determined by a variety of situations
discourse
.
5
3.2 Dialects
3.2.1 Individual dialect — Idiolect
One’s own features of speech/writing habits Voice quality Pitch & stress patterns Lexical items Grammatical structures ---- xx’s language/style
英语文体学3,4
Chapter 3 Varieties of Language语言变体(varieties of language)可分为两类：一类是方言变体(dialectal varieties), 俗称方言；另一类是话语类变体(diatypic varieties), 亦称语域（register）。
方言是以语言的使用者（users）为基准而区分的语言变体；语域则是按照语言使用者对语言的使用（uses）而区分的语言变体。
因此，方言多与交际者的社会阶层、社会地位、地域、年龄、性别及所处的时代等因素有关，比较稳定；语域则多与交际者所从事的社会活动密切相关。
方言(Dialect):1) 语言使用者的个人特征（individuality）--Idiolect(语言的流利度、清晰度、表达能力大小等。
例：Mr X’s English, Mr Y’s English。
)2) 时代特征（temporal features）--Temporal Dialect3) 地域特征（geographical feature）--Regional Dialect4) 社会特征（social features）--Social DialectSocioeconomic status varieties 社会经济变体Ethnic varieties 种族变体Gender varieties 性别变体Age varieties 年龄变体5) 可理解的程度和范围—Standard Dialect方言(Dialects)具有社会指示功能，方言不仅能体现人物的地域特征，而且能反映出人物的社会地位、文化程度乃至个人性格，这一点在文学作品中最为明显语域(Register)1) Field of Discourse(话语范围/语场)Non-technical fields of discourseTechnical fields of discourse2) Mode of Discourse(话语方式/语式)Speech: conversing, monologuingWriting: texts written to be spoken as if not written/ written to be read3) Tenor of Discourse(话语基调/语基)Personal Tenor(个人基调)Functional Tenor(功能基调)1) Field of Discourse(话语范围/语场)话语范围指的是言语交际过程中发生的事情，进行的活动，论及的事情或表达的经验等，它能体现语言使用者在特定情境语境中所要实现的交际目的和作用。
英语教材应用文体学ChapterIII文体学(3)
• Indignation denotes anger based on a moral condemnation of something felt to be wrong and unfair:
• Small, tiny, diminutive, minute, microscopic and infinitesimal are synonyms, but they denote different degrees of smallness.
• Anger(a common word), rage(great anger), fury(greatest anger), indignation and wrath are different in degree of intensity:
• 2) In affective meaning (emotive or evaluative meaning)
Hale Waihona Puke • statesman/politician thrifty/niggardly bravery/foolhardiness intellectual/egghead
economical/stingy frugal/miserly firm/pigheaded Black/nigger
• Thus we have brotherly and fraternal, buy and purchase, world and universe as doublets, and many others (double scale pattern). The native words are often shorter and less learned; four-letter words are mostly from Anglo-Saxon origin. There are also examples of triplets, one native, one from French and one directly from Latin: kingly, royal and regal (triple scale pattern)
文体学名词解释
1. stylistics: a branch of linguistics which studies style in a scientific and systematic way concerning the manners / linguistic features of different varieties of language at different levels.2. style: Manner indicating prominent linguistic features, devices or patterns, most (or least) frequently occur in a particular text of a particular variety of language.3. register语域:Registers are language variations that are associated with the different use to which they are put. Such varieties do not depend on the people who use the language, but on the occasion when it is used.4. field of discourse: the linguistic reflection of the purposive role of the language user, --the type of social activity the language user is engaged in doing in the situation in which the text has occurred. That is to say, the language the user uses will show what his/her language is 'about', what experience he/she is verbalizing, what is 'going on' in the speech event.5. tenor of discourse: the linguistic reflection of the personal relationships between speaker/writer and hearer/reader—called PERSONAL TENOR(个人基调), and of what the user is trying to do with language for/to his or her addressee (s) -- called FUNCTIONAL TENOR（功能基调）.6. mode of discourse: the linguistic reflection of the relationship that the language user has to the medium of communication.7. foregrounding Foregrounding, giving unusual prominence to one element or property of a text, relative to other less noticeable aspects. According to the theories of Russian Formalism, literary works are special by virtue of the fact that they foreground their own linguistic status, thus drawing attention to how they say something rather than to what they say: poetry …deviates‟ from everyday speech and from prose by using mete r, surprising metaphors, alliteration, and other devices by which its language draws attention to itself.8. deviationDeviation : a variation that deviates from the standard or norm;∙ the breaking of normal rules of linguistic structure;∙violation of the norms;∙Departure from general order9. loose sentence松散句A sentence that completes the main thought well before the end is called loose sentence, which often occurs in conversations or informal writings.10. periodic sentence掉尾句is a sentence which suspends the completion of the main thought until(near) the end.11. Gobbledygook官样文章Bureaucratic writings are often referred to as “gobbledygook” , because they are written in an obscure and complex style, which to some extent may help to impress, to mislead or deceive the public.12. accessibility, Accessibility means whether a piece of language is easy to understand for the addressee. As the language becomes more formal, more impersonal, more specialized in certain subject matter, it tends to become less accessible to the ordinary reader or listener.13. impersonalityImpersonality reflects the extent to which the producer of a text avoids reference to himself/herself or to the reader.14. degrees of formalityFormality refers to the way in which the style or tone of language will vary in appropriateness according to the social context. The degrees of formality are determined by the role relationships, number of hearers, and contexts of situation, such as a public lecture, church service, cocktail party, and so on.15. politenessPoliteness refers to(1) How languages expressed the social distance between the speakers and their different role-relationships;(2) How face-work, that is, the attempt to establish, maintain, and save face during conversation, is carried out in a speech community.16. iamb抑扬格It has a pattern alternating stressed and unstressed syllables beginning with an unstressed syllable.17. trochee扬抑格Trochee or trochaic foot may be described as alternating stressed and unstressed syllables, beginning with a stressed syllable.18.meter 格律 Metre （格律，韵律）refers to an organized pattern of strong and weak syllables.19.Foot （音步）refers to the span of stressed and unstressed syllables that form a rhythmical pattern.20. fog index迷雾指数The fog index is commonly used to confirm that text can be read easily by the intended audience.Fog index = 0.4(L+H)L=the average sentence length in a passageH= the percentage of hard words in the passageTexts for a wide audience generally need a fog index less than 12.Texts requiring near-universal understanding generally need an index less than 8.。
英语文体学教程
Chapter11, what is style in your opinion according to what we have studied in this chapterAnwser1 , from the perspective of the content, the events and activities described ,style is saying different things in different ways ;from the perspective of the ways of expression used ,styled is same thing in different ways; from the perspective of the users of language ,style is different speakers using language in different ways; and from the perspective of the text ,style is the functions of texts for different purposes.Anwser2, the definition of style is the concept of style as choice .this definition can have at least too interpretations .one is that first we have a pre-existing thought ,and then we choice the appropriate type of expression to express it in language. The chosen expression is thestyle .another is that the choice refers to the choice of meaning. The choice of language is at the same time a choice of meaning and a choice of style .2,what is the significance of studying the style of language in learning and teaching EnglishAnwser, the answer is that if we want to use language appropriately in different situations , we need to study style .as foreign language learners, if we disregard the rules of using what variety of language in what occasion , or fail to obey them through ignorance , language can become instead a barrier to successful communication . Therefore its necessary to have a clear awareness of how language should be used in different types of situations especially in unfamiliar situations.3, what factors can result in differences in styleAnswer , 1, the different types of vocabulary create different images of the events in the reader’s mind, so they can result in different ,people living in different p eriods of time in history will also speak differently ,and that will result in a different style.Chapter21, explain the following terms1),foregrounding: the stylistically significant features have to be prominent and motivated ,that is ,foregrounded.2),incongruity: the linguistic features depart from the normal use of language ,breaking the rules grammar ,spelling ,pronunciation.3)deflection : the linguistic features don’t depart from the established grammatical, lexical and logical rules and principles ,but have an unexpected high frequency of occurrence.4),field; its concerned with what is happening ,including the subject matter,the events happenings,going-ons, the content ,etc5)tenor: its concerned with who is taking part in the exchange of meaning ----the relationship between the speaker and the listener ,their relative status,their attitude,and their role relations .6)mode: its concerned with how the interaction is conducted ,that is whether it is written or spoken ,or whether it is expressed by phonic substance or graphic substance.2,question for discussion2)in rhetorical series,the number of items can influence the stylistic to analyze the causes on the basis of social culture.Answer :different numbers of words can produce different stylistic effects in the appropriate contexts. Two items express assertion ,that is ,it is just this ,not that .In appropriate situations three items can produce ethic ,persuasive, and representative effect. Four or more items in a series stress a large number of the concrete things ,and these can produce an imagery in the mind of the reader that the large amount of things constitutes a significant situation in which certain aspect are highlighted. Another function of the rhetorical series is to use concrete items to highlight abstract concepts so that the abstract concept can be expressed in concrete ,lively and vivid way to enhance the aesthetic value of language.3)what factors affect the writer’s selection of words and styleAnswer : five criteria for the selection of words :whether they are familiar or not familiar, whether they are concrete or abstract, whether they are single or more ,whether they are short and simple. Or long. Whether they are Anglo –saxon words or latin words .field ,tenor ,mode affect the writer’s selection of style.4)what is the criterion used to classify wordsAnswer :we can use more systematic way to classify word according to register anddialect .register:field ,tenor , mode .dialect: regional dialect,such as London dialect;social dialect such as dialect of age, race, dialect such as od English .5)through what channels can words be used to achieve transferred meaningAnswer :simile :x is like Y, eg as busy as bee. Metaphor: X is Y ,eg he is a pig.Synecdoche eg many hands represent the people who work with their hands . Metonymy eg purse represent money.Chapter31,explain the following terms1),chiasmus:chiasmus is formed by inverting the word order of the second part of a parallel structure,so it forms a kind of antithetical structure. Eg:let us never negotiate out of fear,but let us never fear to negotiate.2)antistrophe: it is the repetition of the same items but in inverted order ,eg:what’s polly to me,or me to polly3)epizeuxis:it is a continuous repetition for high lighting a particular feature.4)ploce: the repetition is not continuous , but intermittent or dispersed in the text.5)loose sentence: put the major idea first and than the illustration .such a sentence is easy to grasp .6)periodic sentence:a periodic sentence can be used to create suspense,or expectation, thus drawing the listener’s attention to the end of the can be used to produce humorous and emphatic effect .2,question for discussion1),there are many types of syntactic deflection ,but they have one thing in common :recurrence of structures. How is syntactic deflection classifiedAnswer :there are two type of syntactic deflection :the unexpected high frequency of occurrence of a certain type of sentence; and the overregular occurrence of a particular pattern .2)the high frequency of occurrence of long and short sentence can create stylistic effect .apart from the difference in expressive meanings ,what are other characteristics of the two types of sentencesAnswer : long sentences are good to provide the detailed descriptions ,and are good to reveal the mental activities of the speaker .so they are used to produce a vivid, rich, exuberant, luxurious style. Short sentence：can produce direct ,terse ,concise ,clear effect or continuous ,compact ,swift effect ,so that it creates certain atmosphere , and leave a deep impression on the listeners.3) why do writers often violate the rule of grammar What do we cal this violationAnswer: we call this violation syntactic incongruity .the violation of the grammatical rules can be used to produce certain stylistic effects. The so-called ungrammatical sentences are used to represent the different varieties of language according to register and dialect. In literary works, dialectical and personal features of speech are often used to depict the personality of the characters. In poetry, the poet often uses deviant grammatical structures to achieve special effects, makes lines terse and concise, to make it rich in meaning.4)what is the function of rhetorical questionsAnswer: A rhetorical question is to use the form of a question in order to express a strong emotion or to emphasize a particular aspect. The function of inverted sentence is to make a declarative sentence more power ful, to attract the listener’s attention, or to induce others’ sympathy. Arranged in parallelism, rhetorical questions can express strong emotions and increase the persuasive power. A rhetorical question can also introduce the topic of the text.5) In what ways can we use inverted sentences to achieve emphatic effectAnswer: to change the normal word order can be used to produce some emphatic effect. What is put to the initial part of the sentence is usually the focus of information of the clause and also the theme of he clause. So it is highlighted.Chapter41 explain the following termsSynaesthesia: it refers to the fact that sounds s are attributed with certain values or esthetic features. It is very casual, and supported by situational features and meaning.Alliteration: refers to the repetition of the initial sound usually a consonant, or a vowel at first position, in two or more words that occur close together.Assonance: refers to the use of the same or related vowel sounds in successive words. It can create harmonious effect.Consonance: refers to the repetition of the last consonants of the stresses words at the end of the lines.2 questions for discussionWhat are the characteristic of spoken language and written language respectivelyAnswer: spoken language: 1 it can directly be accompanied by other non-linguistic means as the aid; 2 it is generally speaking not as formal as written language; 3 it permits errors in the process of production; 4 it uses a particular grammar, a grammar characteristics of spoken language. 5 homophones can be used for special stylistic effects, such as pun; 6 some implications are best represented by special sound features; 7 sound feature can represent the feature of regional dialect or social dialect.Written language:1 as written language communication is usually not a direct one, but is delayed in time and at different places, the writer generally has time to get well prepared and revise the text before he sends it out to the reader;2 as space is limited, it has special grammatical features so as to put more meaning in it .there are many nominalizations to make sentences into groups;3 written language is often used in a more formal situation; 4 as time is enough, it is usually written in a more detailed and logical way;5 as written language is more purposeful, and for a single specific goal, it is usually more constant and developed around a single subject.How many sound patterns do we have What special stylistic effects can be achieved by themAnswer: these sound patterns include alliteration which can create harmony, connection and achieve special stylistic effects, assonance which can create harmonious effect, and consonanceWhat factors can influence graphological prominence .Answer: there are three distinctive factors that can produce graphological prominence: marking, spacing and sequence. Marking refers to the use of written symbols to convey information; space is spacing arrangement departing from this normal way of spacing can be used to achieve stylistic effects.4 In modern English, punctuation marks are patterned and standardized. How can we use punctuation marks for special stylistic purposeAnswer: period typically occurs at the end of a declarative sentence. If period occurs in unexpected high frequency of occurrence, it often means that the text mainly functions to provide information; comma is used to mark the unit larger than a word, however, in Charles Dickens’ Dombey and Son, comma is used to indicate syllables; exclamation marks can be use d to carry emotional coloring, a mark of expressing special feelings; parentheses are used for further explanation; the ellipsis of punctuation marks produces an illogical and non-sequential image.Chapter71 explain the following terms1）Guide: guide is the further explanation of the headline, it consists of six elements; location, character, event, mode, time, and cause.2）Nominalization: refers to a grammatical phenomenon in which the meaning which is normally expressed by a clause is here expressed by a phrase, so clause nominalization is normal. It is contracted.3）The highlighting method: from the productive point of view, the columnist can publish the whole story, or he can cut off some parts from the end. He can even cut off the main body.4）Meaning contraction: using the smallest form to get the most meaning.5）Journalese words: as new report requires the speaker to use the least form to get the most meaning, and it has to be fresh and attractive, so the words in news report is short and new.2 questions for discussion1) What are semantic features of news reportAnswer:1 In terms of ideational meaning, apart from the semantic field of news report, it covers virtually all areas of meaning systems ;2 in terms of interpersonal meaning, it stresses objectivity;3 in terms of textual meaning, it has the feature of meaning contraction.3) Most of the headlines are elliptical sentences. Tell in what way ellipsis is best achieve in news report.Answer: most of the headlines are elliptical sentences. What is omitted is: (a) subject-predicate (b) predicate (c) link verb or auxiliary verb4) How is meaning contraction of news report embodied in grammarAnswer: one feature of news report is meaning contraction, that is using the smallest form to get the most meaning .its grammatical feature are as follows:(1) the nominalization of the processes (2)big noun phrases and complex modifications (3)as some of the pre-modifiers come from a separate clause, it is highly contracted .5）The concreteness contraction of news report is in contradiction to meaning contraction. Tell how this contradiction is revolved in news report.Answer: besides its authenticity and objectivity, news report should also emphasize concreteness and detailedness. Therefore, the writer often gives background information and details by using parenthesis. By doing so, the writer can provide concrete and detailed information and save space as well.6）What graphological means are used in news report Analyze what effects are achieved by graphological means.Answer: grphological means are made in the typesetting, for example, headlines can be arranged in such ways: 1 flush-left(it is made into a square) 2dropped-line(the length of the line is the same, but dropped in a bit each time) 3 short line followed by a long tome 4 along line followed by a short line 5 concave form 6 convex form . They can increase esthetic value and become more attractive.7）What are lexical features of news report Why are many nonce words used in news reportAnswer: lexical feature: 1 short and new-fashioned such a “crisis” in “the UN faces crisis of credibility”. 2 short journalese phrase such as “key issue” in “jobless will be the key issue in 1993”. 3nonce words, often blends such as Euromarket=Europe an market.8）Why is there so much use of direct speech in news reportAnswer: the use of direct speech can enhance the credibility of news report. The directly quoted speech can be regarded as basis of facts.9）What prominent devices are used in headlines in news reportAnswer: alliteration allusion suspense etc.Chapter6Explain the following terms1）time non-fluency :pauses in inappropriate positions within a phrase or groups position ,the use of um or er to delay the time ,the repetition of some expressions ,such as be said be said be said.,2）Quality non-fluency: often the speaker cannot find the appropriate words to express himself, and he is striving for words, so he uses many inexact expressions and even wrong expressions or wrong pronunciations to express himself.3） Adjacency pair: most of the sentences are declarative and interrogative sentences as they are mostly made up of questions and answers.4） Slot filling words: slot filling words are used to fill in the pauses when the speaker strives for meaning as words, or when he or she strives to be politeness or lessen the degree of imprudence.2 question for discussion1）What are the characteristics of conversation from the perspective of semantics, grammar, vocabulary and phonologyAnswer :semantic features:(1)the inexplicitness of meaning (2)the randomness of subject matter, and a general lack of planning (3)the lack of fluency Grammatical features :(1)sentence complexity (2)verbal phrases(3)nominal phrases(4)the types of sentences (5)quoted elements. Lexical feature:(1)most of the words are short and simple Anglo-Saxon ones, (2)the choice of words is limited in scope or range (3)slang and colloquial words, taboo words ,exclamatory words are frequently used (4)some slot filling words ,such as you know ,I mean,etc.(5)use exaggerated words and expressions. Phonological features :(1)use more contractions for the unimportant information (2)the often try to express themselves in spite of the fact that the other is speaking (3)there are many emphatic ways of speech ,such as stress .2）How do you account for the inexplicitness of language in daily conversationAnswer: the inexplicitness of meanings manifested in the following aspects: (1)lots of exophoric expression such as “this “is the t endency (2)there are missing links between the utterances(3) alot of background information missing.(4)many inexact expressions using general words for particular concepts(5)many incomplete expressions.3）What are the features spontaneous commentary from the perspective of semantics, grammar, vocabulary and phonologyAnswer: from the perspective of semantic features, if the listeners could also see the event while the commentary is delivered, there will be a lot of meaning implied or simply presupposed; butin a commentary without visual support on the part of the listeners, the commentator has to provide all the necessary information. In terms of syntactic structure, the sentences and the clauses are usually short as the commentator has no time to give detailed description of the event, and the sentences contain fewer words than usual. From the perspective of lexical features, the words are mostly simple in structure, they are short and simple; they are mostly composed of verbs, and proper names; there might be specialized terms depending on the subject matter of the commentary. From the perspective of phonological features, it is very fast and fluent, but he has to pronounce every word clearly and loudly.4）What are the features of text structure of public speechAnswer: It consist of the following element :(1)a short introduction to the main issue or issues concerned (2)the declaration of one’s attitude and position in the matter (3)the listing, reasoning, and explaining (4)conclusion5）How is it that in public speech there is much use of noun phrases with post modificationAnswer: there are few pre-modifiers, but more post-modifiers such as “of phrase” and “which clauses” to give detailed and accurate description.Chapter81 explain the following termsLearned words: learned words are words that borrowed from Latin, Greek and French.Clichés: are words or expressions which have lost their originality or effectiveness because they have been used too often.Semantic features: correctness and completeness; conciseness and clearness; consideration and courtesy.Grammatical features: sentences structure; uses of voices; uses of affirmative sentences; inverted sentencesLexical features: concrete and natural words; technical terms and abbreviations; brief and common word s; avoid clichés (except business contracts)3 questions for discussion1）Why should business English be correct and completeAnswer: the content of business English should be correct and completely. First, the conveyed information should be correct; sometimes a small mistake would cause a great loss in a deal and even affect business relations between two parties. Second, the conveyed information should be complete. For example, if we order some commodities, we should state names of commodities, delivery dates, consignees, methods of payment, etc.2）In business English sometimes active voice is used, and sometimespassive voice is preferred. Point out what stylistic features can be achieved through using voices.Answer: In business English, both active voice and passive voice can be used, but there is a tendency towards preference of active voice in today’s business communication. Active voice is shorter in form and economic in words compared with passive voice. Thus active voice is more effective in stylistic effect than passive voice; besides, active voice can make style more familiar and less formal. But in some cases, passive voice is necessary. When we discuss something negative, we should avoid blaming the other party directly, in addition, passive voice canmake business English style more formal, and the conveyed information more objective.3）Why should business letters be written in a way of consideration and courtesyAnswer: In business communication, in order to make it more efficient, we should be considerate of others and polite to others. “You- Attitude” is very important principle in business communication, that is, we should think ourselves back into the shoes of others so as to cooperate sincerely.4）The use of technical terms and abbreviations is one stylistic feature of business English. State the reason of this phenomenon.Answer: using technical terms and abbreviations can avoid long and tedious explanation, which is one lexical feature of business English. Such as L/C----letter of credit5）Why should we avoid clichés in business EnglishAnswer: clichés are words or expressions which have lost their originality or effectiveness because they have been used too often. In old-fashioned business English there are a large number of clichés, which should be avoid in present-day business communication.Chapter91, explain the following terms2) Redundancy: in order to avoid opaqueness and ambiguity, it has express clearly what everyone knows and takes for granted. This makes the legal language redundant clumsy and hard to understand.3) Common words: many of the legal words come from ordinary language with the common core features especially those high-frequency words, such as prepositions, conjunctions, articles, etc.4) specialized words: specialized words are necessary for two important aspects of legal language. The first is that for the field of law itself, and the second is that for many non-legal field concerned with legal affairs. There are two sources of specialized legal words: common words endowed with legal meanings and archaic words.2, question for discussionWhy is legal English syntactically complexAnswer: syntactic Complexity: as its main function is to ensure preciseness and accuracy and block any leakage, the draftsmen of legal documents have to be very carful and scrupulous, and the legal texts have to be able to stand the text of time .therefore legal language is rich in modifications, circumlocutions, and complex logic relations.2）Legal English is very conservative in form. Explain it from a historical perspective.Answer: conservativeness: as the legal language is produced by careful phrasing and tested over a long time, nobody dares to alter the structure of legal English, so that its structures become old-fashioned and archaic. The representative legal language in such a way is English legal language.3) What is the reason that there are many legal words of French sourceAnswer: because after the Norman Conquest, French because the official language used for all state affairs including law in Great Britain. That is why many French loan words were found in law afterwards.4) What are the lexical features of legal EnglishAnswer: legal vocabulary mainly comes from French. (2) Legal words can be divided into following three types: 1, common words2, specialized words3, Multi-register words.。
文体学 Varieties.ppt
as significant for people in deciding whether they
and others belong to a particular class.
b) Ethnic Varieties
Hispanic English
Affected by first language
the language of Shakespeare)
Authoritarian English (1650-1800)
Mature Modern English (1800-1920)
Late Modern English (1920-present)
3) Regional Dialect BrE / AmE (PP. 27-28) AmE
Differences between male and female
speech (Ten features of women's
language use)(Lakoff,1975):
1. hedge (sort of, kind of);
2. use (super) polite forms, indirect (would you please?
6. use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation (including ungrammatical forms, like between you and I [standard syntax = between you and me]);
7. are poor at recounting jokes ;
Also
General American (Standard American)
西南大学《英语文体学引论》复习思考题及答案
西南大学《英语文体学引论》复习思考题及答案(0099) 《英语文体学引论》复习思考题I. Explain in brief the following terms. (10 points; in test it contains 10 terms)1. stylistics2. style3. dialect4. morpheme5. phoneme6. language7. register 8. acoustic phonetics 9. auditory phonetics10. syllable 11. general stylistics 12. literary stylistics13. form 14. content 15. phonological analysis16. lexical analysis 17. syntactical analysis 18. discoursal analysis19. paralinguistic features 20. social dialect 21. taboo22. whispery voice 23. breathy voice 24. creaky voice25. falsetto 26. common core words 27. technical words28. standard words 29. non- standard words 30. spoken words31. literary words 32. extension 33. specialization34. elevation 35. degradation 36. metaphor37. litotes 38. irony 39. compound sentence40. periodic sentence 41. loose sentence 42. elliptical sentence43. inverted sentence 44. antithesis 45. parallelism46. repetition 47. deviation 48. cataphora49. progressive conjunction 50. field of discourseII. Answer the following questions. (50 points; in test itcontains 5 questions)1. What is the relationship between form and content?2. What are the differences between language and speech?3. What is the methodology of stylistic analysis? What are the levels of stylistic analysis?4. Define paralinguistic features. What are they?5. What are the three ways of studying the sound of language?6. What are the four typical meters in English poetry?7. What is the relationship between sound and meaning?8. What is the relationship between style and the choice of words, according to thestylisticians?9. How many kinds of word meanings may be classified? And what are they?10. What are the three basic components of the English vocabulary?11. Functionally speaking, what are the four types of English sentences?12. What are the conjunctions used in combining English sentences?13. What are the gestures may be used in a casual conversation?14. What are the three types of substitution? Can you give some examples?15. What is the relationship between dialect and register?16. Name at least five kinds of figures of speech in English.17. Can you give some examples of rhetorical questions?18. What are the stylistic features of the Bible?19. What are the five kinds of reference in the English language?20. What are the three factors of register?21. Give examples to illustrate power relationship and solidarity relationship.22. What are the non-linguistic features of casual conversation?23. What are the linguistic features of the language of news reporting?24 .What are the linguistic features of the language of advertisement?25. What is the relationship between literary language and ordinary language?III. Stylistic analysis (20 points):1. Explain the connotative meaning of the italicized words or expressions in the followingsentences (12 points; in test it may or may not appear; it contains 3 words or expressions):.1) Don’t trust her; she is a snake i n the grass.2) The enemy will attack us tomorrow morning, but we are still not well prepared. TheDa mocles’ sword is hanging over us.3) We have to consult him, you know, he is the real Titan in our class.4) News from Pentagon today says …5) She knows nothing about the cruelty of the world. She isa lily.6) Hamlet, according to some psycho-analysis theory, is a character who has theOedipus complex.7) He is a wolf in sheep’s clothing. Don’t believe what he says.8) The doctor told him it is not cancer, however, it is only a white lie.9) He is always ready to help people when they are in need. He’s a real Robin Hood.10) Their policy is all sticks and no carrots.11) 0China never stands on the side of Chauvinism.12) Children are flowers of our country.2. What possible social relationships exist between the participants in the followingsentences? (12 points; in test it may or may not appear)1) Excuse me, could you tell me the right time, please?2) What time is it, please?3) What’ the time?3. Indicate what kind of figures of speech is used in the following examples? (8 points; intest it may or may not appear; it contains 2 items)The young hunter was as strong as a lion.Life is but a brief candle.from the cradle to the graveMany hands make light work.She’s as old as a mountain.A victorious defeatHe is a fool. He never knows where his personal interest lies. His whole heart is concerned about the interest of other people.Belinda smiled, and all the world was gay.The drunkard loves his bottle better than his wife.My love is a red, red rose.4. Try to analyze the following sentence and point out its stylistic value (12 points; it mayor may not appear in test; if it appears, it contains onesentence)1) It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a fortunemust be in want of a wife. (J. Austin. Pride and Prejudice)2) I came, I saw, I conquered. (Julius Caesar)3) O, my luve is like a red, red roseThat’s newly sprung in June;O, my luve is like the melodieTha t’s sweetly play’d in tune.(Robert Burns, A Red, Red Rose)4) A grief ago (Dylan Thomas)5) “Don’t be such a harsh parent, father!”“Don’t father me!”(0099) 《英语文体学引论》复习思考题答案I. Explain in brief the following terms (10 points; in test it contains 10 terms):1. stylistics: the study or the investigation of style.2. style: the linguistic habit of a particular person(s) or characteristic of typical situations.3. dialect: a subtype of language which may be determined by geographical locality orparticular social groupings.4. morpheme: the smallest unit in a language that carries meaning.5. phoneme: the smallest sound unit in a specific language capable of semantic distinction.6. language: a system of arbitrary vocal symbols used for human communication.7. register: language determined by situation.8. acoustic phonetics: a branch of phonetics dealing with thephysical properties of thespeech sounds of a language.9. auditory phonetics: the study of how the sound of speech is received by the hearer.10. syllable: a vowel sound either with or without a consonant or consonants in clusters.11. general stylistics:the investigation of the linguistic features of all kinds of language use.12. literary stylistics: the study of the linguistic features of literature in particular, such asthose of poetry, novels and dramas.13. form: the particular way of expressing the message.14. content: the message or information or the communicative value that is encoded orloaded in a linguistic expression.15. phonological analysis: it is chiefly concerned about the sound patterns of a piece ofliterature, especially those of poetry.16. lexical analysis: it is chiefly concerned about the internal structure and the stylisticcoloring and the semantic relationship of the words in the text.17. syntactical analysis: it is chiefly concerned about how the words in a text are puttogether to produce meaning and other kinds of message.18. discoursal analysis: it is concerned about how sentences are joined together to produce acohesive and coherent text.19. paralinguistic features: the vocal effects caused by different shaping of the vocal cordsand openings20. social dialect: it is determined by the social groupings that a person belongs to.21. taboo: words forbidden to be used in public because of their being dirty or offensive22. whispery voice: utterance without any vocal cord vibration at all. Emphasizing contrast.23. breathy voice: utterance where there is too much breath for the needs of the articulation.24. creaky voice: a slow crackle of vocal cord vibrations at a low pitch, like a stick being runalong a fence.25. falsetto: a switch of the voice from one vocal register toa higher one; usually found onlyin males.26. common core words: refer to those words used in everyday life.27. technical words: refer to those words used in special professions.28. standard words: words that are used in the standard dialect.29. non-standard words: words labeled as slangs, vulgarisms and colloquialisms in thedictionary. the cultural and social implications of a word simile: a comparison between two things with emphasis on the similarity or likeness between them30. spoken words: words that most often used in face-to- face, casual and everydayconversations.31. literary words: words used in formal writings or literature.32. extension: a specific word comes to mean a general idea.33. specialization: the change of the word meaning may move in the opposite direction, aword with general reference is narrowed to a specific reference.34. elevation: words of derogatory association become words of favorable association.35. degradation: neutral words or words of favorable association degenerated intoderogatory words.36. metaphor: a covert comparison37. litotes: understatement38. irony: a figure of speech that takes the form of saying or implying the opposite of whatone feels to be the case39. compound sentence: a sentence made up of two or more simple sentences, joinedtogether by conjunctions or punctuations40. periodic sentence: one that is not grammatically complete until the end is reached41. loose sentence: one that may be brought to a grammatical close before the end is reached42. elliptical sentence: one in which either the subject or the predicate or part of thepredicate is missing43. inverted sentence: one in which the subject position is filled by other sentence elements44. antithesis: a figure of speech in the formula of X conj. Y with a contrast between them45. parallelism: a rhetorical device in which two or more thantwo similar syntacticstructures with different words are placed side by side46. repetition: a rhetorical device in which identical words are used but not necessarily inidentical position47. deviation: violation of standard use of the language48. cataphora: If the referred item comes after the referring item in a text, then it is a case ofcataphora.49. progressive conjunction: one sentence that joined by the use of conjunctive words ofaddition or progression50. field of discourse: the topic under discussion or the nature of the activity in whichlanguage is involvedII. Answer the following questions (50 points; in test it contains 5 questions):1. What is the relationship between form and content?One way of talking about style is to make a distinction between form and content.Content is the message or information or the communicative value that is encoded or loaded in a linguistic expression. Form is the particular way of expressing the message.The form is the style which may be different from case to case although the meaning may remain the same. For example, the Chinese term 开始may be expressed indifferent English words, such as start, begin and commence, but each suggests a different style.2. What are the differences between language and speech?Another way of talking about style is to make a distinctionbetween language and speech, which may be translated in Chinese as 语言and 言语. This distinction was first proposed by Saussure, the founder of the modern linguistics. According to Saussure, there are four major differences between language and speech.A. Language is abstract whereas speech is concrete. Language is abstract in the sensethat it has only psychological instead of physical existence. Language is notsomething that you can bring to the classroom and examine under the microscope,not something you can hear, see, smell , touch or taste. Speech is concrete in thesense that it has physical properties. Either can be heard in the spoken form or seenin the written form.B. Language is potential whereas speech is actual. Language is potential in the sensethat it is a kind of can-mean system, while speech is something that has an actualmeaning.C. Language is code whereas speech is message(语言是一个代码系统，言语才是信息). Language is a set of symbols that can be used to transmit information. Speechis the actual use of the language in an act of communication in a particular situationfor a particular purpose. It carries a real message.D. Language is stable and systematic whereas speech is subject to personal andsituational constraint. For example, the word book in the English language alwaysrefers to some printed matter. But in speech it may be used to refer to anything thatthe speaker wants to refer to by the use of it as long as it is understandable. Thecommon example is the sentence: He is a walking dictionary(a kind of book)meaning that he is very knowledgeable.3. What is the methodology of stylistic analysis? What are the levels of stylistic analysis?The major methodology for stylistic analysis is linguistic analysis. It tries to be objective or scientific in its analysis. According to the advocates of this methodology, anyone using this methodology to analyze a given text of literature will reach roughly the same conclusion.Levels of analysisSince stylistic analysis is a kind of linguistic analysis, naturally, how many levels of structure we have in a language correspondingly how many levels of structure at which we may do stylistic analysis.1) PhonologicalPhonological analysis is chiefly concerned about the sound patterns of a piece of literature, especially those of poetry.2) LexicalLexical analysis is chiefly concerned about the internal structure and the stylistic coloring and the semantic relationship of the words in the text.3) SyntacticalSyntactical analysis is chiefly concerned about how the wordsin a text are put together to produce meaning and other kinds of message.4) DiscoursalDiscoursal analysis is concerned about how sentences are joined together to producea cohesive and coherent text.4. Define paralinguistic features. What are they?Definition: the vocal effects caused by different shaping of the vocal cords and openings.Kinds and the corresponding stylistic effects.1) Whispery voice: utterance without any vocal cord vibration at all. Emphasizingcontrast.2) Breathy voice: utterance where there is too much breath for the needs of thearticulation, the effect being one of mild ‘puffing and blowing’. Expressing surprise and astonishment.3) Creaky voice: a slow crackle of vocal cord vibrations at a low pitch, like a stickbeing run along a fence.4) Falsetto: a switch of the voice from one vocal register to a higher one; usually foundonly in males.5. What are the three ways of studying the sound of language?A. articulatory phoneticsThe study of the sounds of a language with special attention to the speaker: the movement of the lungs, vocal cords, tongue, the lips and other organs which produce and control the noisy outward breathing.B. acoustic phoneticsThe study of the physical properties of the sound waves in the air when being transmitted from the speaker to the hearer.C. auditory phoneticsThe study of how the sound of speech is received by the hearer6. What are the four typical meters in English poetry?In English poetry, stress is usually used in the realization of meter. The followings arethe four most typical meters.1) Iamb: Iamb is a metric foot consisting of an unstressed syllable followed by astressed syllable.2) Trochee: Trochee is a metric foot consisting of a stressed syllable followed by anunstressed syllable.3) Anapest: Anapest is a metric foot composed of two unstressed syllables followed byone stressed one.4) Dactyl: Dactyl is a metric foot composed of one stressed syllable followed by twounstressed ones7. What is the relationship between sound and meaning?According to Saussure, the relationship between sound and meaning is arbitrary in the sense that why a certain meaning takes a particular sound has no reason and it is completely accident. But in literature, the writers always try to arrange the words in sucha way as to make the patterns of sound to directly suggest the meaning.8. What is the relationship between style and the choice ofwords, according to thestylisticians?The stylisticians’ attitude: they lay emphasis on the adaptability to the sit uation.Standard, non-standard, black, dialectal, slang, archaisms are equally good in their expressiveness. There is no distinction of one being superior and other being inferior.9. How many kinds of word meanings may be classified? And what are they?According to the linguists, a word has various kinds of meaning. The first kind of meaning is denotative meaning.1) Denotative (概念意义)The kind of meaning we can get from the dictionary. It can also be termed as dictionary meaning, conceptual meaning, logical meaning and referential meaning.This is the most basic meaning that we understand a word has.2) Stylistic = social (社会意义)The kind of meaning associated with a particular social situation in which a particular word is often used. e.g begin, start, commence3) Affective meaning(情感意义)It is the emotional, attitudinal and evaluative coloring of a word. e.g. cunning and clever. Both mean the skillful handling of a delicate or difficult situation. But they reveal different attitudes and evaluation of the speaker.4) Collocative (搭配意义)Some words may have the same dictionary meaning, but they collocate withdifferent words, as shown by the pair or synonyms of prettyand handsome.5) Connotative (内涵意义)the cultural and social implications of a word.10. What are the three basic components of the English vocabulary?The three basic components of the English vocabularyA Anglo-Saxona. Members of the familyb. Parts of the bodyc. Natured. Timee. One-syllabled verbsB Frencha. Government and Lawb. Army and military activitiesc. Religiond. CostumesC Latina. Medicineb. Lawc. Theologyd. Sciencee. Literature11. Functionally speaking, what are the four types of English sentences?1) Declarative 2) Interrogative3) Exclamatory 4) Imperative12. What are the conjunctions used in combining English sentences?1) Progressive conjunction (推进性连接): by the use ofconjunctive words of additionor progression, such as and, furthermore, moreover, etc.2) Contrastive conjunction (对照性连接): by the use of conjunctive words of contrastor transition, such as but, whereas, while, on the contrary, on the other hand, etc.3) Temporal conjunction (时间性连接): by the use of conjunctive words of temporalsequence, such as then, later, afterwards, at last, or finally, etc13. What are the gestures may be used in a casual conversation?Facial expressions, eye-contact, body positions, distance, physical touch, soundmodification, clothing, and environment14. What are the three types of substitution? Can you give some examples?A. Nominal substitution (名词性替代)1) The meaning of one/ones e.g. You bought a red pencil, I’d like a blue one.2) The use of the “same”Example:A: I want a cup of teaB: The same.3) T he use of “kind, sort”. e.g. American food is not t he same as the English kind.B. Verbal substitution (动词性替代)Do you like Chinese food?Yes, I do.He likes Chinese food. So do I.C. Clausal substitution (分句性替代)1) The use of “so” “not”Example: A: Do you think he will come tomorrow?B: Yes, I think so./ No, I think not.2) LimitationClausal substitution applies only to sentences, where the predicate verb of amain clause is one of the following verbs:believe, be afraid, expect, fear, hope, imagine, say, tell, think, suppose.15. What is the relationship between dialect and register?Another way of talking about style, is to make a distinction between dialects and registers.A: Speaker orientedDialects are speaker oriented. What kind of speaker speaks what kind of dialect.Dialects may be regional or social. Regional dialect (地域方言)is determined by the geographical locality the speaker lives in. The social dialect is determined by the social groupings that a person belongs to.B: Situation orientedRegister is situational oriented. Register is the language determined by situation, and because of this we have such registers as formal English, informal English, classroom English, legal English, etc.16. Name at least five kinds of figures of speech in English.Simile, metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, irony, overstatement, etc.17. Can you give some examples of rhetorical questions?Idea: a rhetorical question is one which does not really need an answer, or the answer is obviousExamples:Is that a reason for despair?Can any one doubt the wisdom of this action?Is no one going to defend me?What difference does it make then?18. What are the stylistic features of the Bible?1. 1. Biblical simplicity2. Full of balanced sentences3. The use of concrete words4. Short paragraphs5. Heavy use of and to begin a new paragraph6. Syntactical features1) simple and complete sentences2) the use of old forms of personal pronouns3) the second personal pronoun take the verb of –est as in shouldest,gavest,etc.,and the third person doth and hath which are absent in other styles of writing4) negation takes the form of“verb+not” without the use of auxiliaries19. What are the five kinds of reference in the English language?According to relative positions of the referring item and the referred item, reference may be classified into the following kinds.1) Anaphora(后照应)In a case of reference, if the referred item (a word or a phrase) come before the referring item in a text, then it is a case of anaphora.Example: Mr. Wang is an engineer, he graduated from Beijing University.2) Cataphora(前照应)On the other hand, if the referred item comes after the referring item in a text, then it is a case of cataphora. As in the example:I was introduced to them; it was John Leathwall and his wife.3) Exophora(外照应)If the interpretation of an item in a text depends on something in the immediate environment, then it is a case of exophora.Example: Did the gardener water those plants?4) Paraphora(平行照应)An item which refers to something in another text.Example: He is the Shylock Holmes in our class.5) Homophora(自照应)When the class is composed of only one member, then any mention of it is a case of homophora.Example: The moon moves around the earth.20. What are the three factors of register?1) Field of discourse —the topic under discussion or the nature of the activity inwhich language is involved.2) Tenor of discourse —the kind of social relationships between the participants in aconversation.3) Mode of discourse —the medium along which the message is being transmitted.21. Give examples to illustrate power relationship and solidarity relationship.Power relationship is a kind of vertical relationship in the sense that the two participants in the conversation hold unequalauthority. For example, the relations between boss and employee, or between parents and children, or between teacher and students.Solidarity relationship is a horizontal relationship in that participants in a conversation hold equal authority. For example, the relations between playmates, classmates, friends, etc.22. What are the non-linguistic features of casual conversation?1) Unpreparedness or low degree of preparedness2) Frequent change of roles3) Monitoring4) Simultaneity in space and time5) Topic drifting6) Channel limitation7) Gestures23. What are the linguistic features of the language of news reporting?In news reporting one can find some characteristics in syntax, lexis, and textual structure.A. SyntaxThere is a heavy use of complex sentences and a heavy use of non-finite verb phrases. The subjects of sentences are usually very complicated. Compared with the verb phrases in the previous discussed varieties, the composition of the verb phrases in newspaper reporting is even simpler, mainly simple present or past tense. The structure of the noun phrases in news reporting is very complicated. There is a remarkable increase in the number of modifiers for an average sentence in the variety of newspaper reporting. And the modifiers themselves tend to be more complicatedly structured.B. LexisThere is rare use of pronouns, but by contrast, there is a remarkable increase of the use of proper nouns. The degree of complication in the aspect of word structure is about the same as that in public speech. Both in terms of the number of letters in an average word and the number of morphemes in an average word. Although the word structure in the style of newspaper reporting tends to be complicated, it is ever ready to use short instead of big word wherever possible, especially in headlines.Compound words are used frequently. Moreover, non phrases which actually express actions or state and heavily used, and they are derived from verb phrases in order to make the sentences more compact and save space without lowering the amount of information conveyed.C. Textual structureIn textual structure, one of the most outstanding characteristic is straightforwardness.24. What are the linguistic features of the language of advertisement?A. Syntax:In terms of syntax, the language of advertisement is simple in structure for easy understanding, and colloquial in style for familiarity, intimacy and solidarity. There is a higher frequency of imperative and interrogatives. As to structure, according to statistics, we have the lowest rate of occurrence of passive in comedies, the second lowest is in ads. There is also a heavy use of pre-modifiers, possessive’s, comparative and superlative adjectivesB. Lexis:There is a heavy use of compounds. Simple, short, innerstructure and a high percentage of active, affirmative, commendatory and large quantities of proper names could be found in the vocabulary of advertisement.C. Rhetorical devices:One can easily find a lot of parallelism, reiteration and alliteration.25. What is the relationship between literary language and ordinary language?1) The kind of language people use in daily conversation is the ultimate source of thelanguage of literature.2) Ordinary language follows the norm of convention, and the purpose is to beunderstood fully.3) Literary language is not the mechanical copy of ordinary language, but refined andprocessed.4) Literary language has some linguistic deviation.III. Stylistic analysis (20 points):1. Explain the connotative meaning of the italicized words or expressions in the followingsentences (12 points; in test it may or may not appear; it contains 3 words or expressions):1) Don’t trust her; she is a snake in the grass.Snake is a kind of animal, because of prejudice and cultural conventions now oftenused to refer to a person who is cunning and untrustworthy2) The enemy will attack us tomorrow morning, but we are still not well prepared. TheDamocles’ sword is hanging over us.Damocles’ sword is an allusion to Greek mythology. Damocles was invited to abanquet in the court. In the midst of the entertainment, Damocles looked up and sawsuspended above his head by a single thread a naked sword. By extension, it comesto mean an immediate danger.3) We have to consult him, you know, he is the real Titan in our class.Titan is a name used to refer to a class of gods huge in physical size. By extension,it comes to mean a person of great strength or influence.4) News from Pentagon today says …Pentagon is a huge building in Washington in which the U.S. Department ofDefense exercises its functions, now often used to refer to the ministry itself5) She knows nothing about the cruelty of the world. She isa lily.Lily is a flower and by cultural conventions a symbol of purity and innocence in thewest.6) Hamlet, according to some psycho-analysis theory, is a character who has theOedipus complex.According to psycho-analysis theory, Oedipus complex refers to the sexual love ofan infant for the parent of the opposite sex, with jealousy of the other parent, oftenin an unconscious way. In this play, Hamlet is believed to have。
英语文体学课本3-4
3 Varieties of Language3.1 Two Kinds of VarietiesWe have pointed out that when language is used, it is always used in a context. What gets said and how it gets said is always dictated by a variety of situations. Some situations seem to depend generally and fairly consistently on some regular sets of language features, so that distinctive varieties of language occur. These sets of features are historically formed and are changing overtime; but they remain relatively stable at a certain period of history governing people's language activity. As a study of the linguistic features that characterize the main varieties of a language, stylistics needs to define its variety categories. Since the 196o's, hopefully, studies in this area have made considerable progress. Modern linguistics has worked out a system of variety categories to help isolate these consistent relationships between particular features of language, and the particular situations in which they might possibly occur (see Gregory and Carroll, 1978).The constant features of the situational circumstances of speech events that can be consistently related to variations in language use fall into two main groups: one group relates to the relatively permanent characteristics of the user in speech events, the other relates to the user's use of language in such events; and they yield two main kinds of situational varieties: dialectal and diatypic.DIALECTAL V ARIETIES, commonly called DIALECTs, are language varieties that are associated with different users of the language. As users in a society can be defined in terms of their individual, temporal, regional, and social affiliations, and their range of intelligibility, there are individual, temporal, regional, social and standard varieties respectively. These are relatively permanent features of the language user in a speech event.DIATYPIC V ARIETIES, commonly called REGISTERs, are language variations that are associated with the different use to which they are put. Such varieties do not depend on the people who use the language, but on the occasion when it is used. Different types of language are selected as appropriate to different types of occasion. The choice is determined by the convention that a certain kind of language is appropriate to a certain use. The occasions can be classified along three dimensions, each presenting an aspect of the situation and the part played by the language in them. In this way, registers may be distinguished according to field of discourse, mode of discourse and tenor of discourse.3.2 Dialects3. 2. 1 Individual Dialect-- IdiolectA specific person will display his or her own features of speech or writing habits. This is readily shown in the fact that most of us can recognize our friends by the sound of their voice or the look of their handwriting. Each speaker or writer will have his or her own particular voice quality, pitch and stress patterns, favorite lexical items, and even grammatical structures. These traits of speech or writing often point to a person's individuality which leads to a person's style. Terms like 'Conrad's language', 'Hemingway's language' indicate just this type of variety. We call it INDIVIDUAL DIALECT or IDIOLECT.3.2.2 Temporal DialectLanguage changes over time, and so description of the language at a given point of time islikely to give rise to a historical variety. In the English language, for instance, there are Old English, Middle English, Elizabethan English and Modem English. A variety which correlates with the various periods of the development of language is called TEMPORAL DIALECT.Some of the striking differences between Old, Middle and Modern English can be seen from3.2.3 Regional DialectLanguage varies from region to region. Owing to the physical boundaries of oceans and mountains, people who live in different places tend to develop different speech patterns. So far as the English speaking world is concerned, there are British English, American English, Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English, Canadian English, and other international varieties. There are also regional varieties within Great Britain and the United States , such as cockney in Britain , North Midland dialect in USA , etc. A variety like this we call REGIONAL DIALECT. The lay term for it is ACCENT, as a dialect is often associated with a particular accent.In spite of the fact that with the ever intensifying intercommunication between countries and the resulting closing up of the two major international varieties of English, the most striking difference between British English and American English is still found in terms of2) graphology; eg3.2. 4 Social DialectJust as oceans and mountains separate people and can lead eventually to distinct language habits, so social and political boundaries separate people and can be instrumental in promoting different speechways. A variety associated with certain social group is referred to as SOCIAL DIALECT.The social groups may identify themselves as separate socioeconomic classes or as ethnic groups. And cutting across these social boundaries are differences in the ways of women and men, old and young. Each group tends to have its distinctive ways of speaking. Hence the occurrence of socioeconomic status varieties, ethnic varieties, gender varieties and age varieties.3.2. 4 .1 Socioeconomic status varietiesDifferent socioeconomic status groups tend to show different patterns of speech characteristics. An often quoted example is the well-known case of r -fulness in New York City . New Yorkers sometimes pronounce/r/and sometimes drop it in words like car, fourth, beer, park (when/r / follows a vowel, either at the end of a word or preceding a consonant). Investigation shows that the occurrence of/r/in the pronunciation of these words is anything but random and anything but meaningless.William Labov investigated pronunciations of/r/among employees of three Manhattan department stores of different social rank: Saks Fifth Avenue , an expensive, upper-middle-class store; Macy's, a medium-priced, middle-class store; and S Klein, a discount store patronized principally by working class New Yorkers. He found that at Saks, the highest-ranked of the stores, employees pronounced/r/more often than employees did at S Klein, the lowest-ranked store. At Macy's, the middle-ranked store, employees pronounced an intermediate number of/r/s. This confirmed Labov's hypothesis that members of higher socioeconomic status groups would pronounce/r/more frequently than would individuals from lower socioeconomic classes. The findings help explain the social basis for linguistic variation--even subtle differences in social stratification may be reflected in language use.3.2.4 . 2 Ethnic varietiesEthnic groups tend to develop and maintain distinctive speechways of their own. Hence the rise of ethnic varieties. This is especially true of urban Black Americans in the US who have actually developed a most widespread and familiar ethnic variety of American English—Black English, with its characteristic phonological, morphological, and syntactical features, as well as some vocabulary of its own. It is as rule-governed and systematic, as rich in its communicative expression and adaptability, as other varieties of English.The most striking characteristics of Black English are as follows:l) Phonologically, Black English is most salient in its frequent simplification of consonant clusters as 'des' for desk , 'pass' for passed, and 'wile' for wild . Another salient feature is the frequent deletion of the final stop consonants, pronouncing side like sigh and borrowed likeborrow .2) Black English distinguishes itself in a characteristic use of verb be.' the omission of the contracted form in the present tense ('s), and the use of be to express a habitual state of affairs; as inThat my book (=That's my book).The coffee cold (=The coffee's cold).The coffee be cold there (=The coffee's always cold there).Further, verb be is used to show habitual action; as inDo they be playing all day?(cf Do they play all day? )Yeah, the boys do be messin' around a lot.(cf Yeah, the boys do mess around a lot3) Another distinctive feature of Black English is the use of ‘it is' in the place of 'there is'; as inIs it (=Is there) a Miss Jones in this office?4) A final illustration of the distinctiveness of Black English is the use of multiple-negative constructions:Don't nobody never help me do my work.(cf Nobody ever helps me do my work.).3.9.4 .3 Gender varietiesIn most languages, men and woman do not speak identically. Hence gender varieties occur. In English, for example, female speakers tend to use 'feminine-sounding' words like lovely, darling and cute. Likewise certain four-letter words may surprise us when uttered by a woman. Moreover, women tend to show extra politeness in their speech by leaving a decision open rather than imposing their claims on others. They make frequent use of expressions like 'I'm afraid that...', 'I'm not sure, but...' etc; of tag questions like 'The film is awfully interesting, isn't it?'; and of rising tone for a request, like "Do come and have a look', etc. Men, on the other hand, are usually more certain; decisive in their speech, often free to use strong expressions or rough language. Sometimes their pronunciation is not so clear as women's.3.2.4 . 4 Age varietiesLanguage evolves with age. So a two-year-old child's command of language is far from perfect while a five-year-old in contrast has a much better command. A ten-year-old's command of grammar does not differ significantly from that of adults, though his/her vocabulary is smaller. Children through (and especially in) their teens tend to experiment with vocabulary, using long, 'literary' words more than adults.There are language differences, chiefly in vocabulary, between younger adults and olderadults too. Nowadays some older people still use icebox to refer to what younger generations call fridge , and they use record player for stereo . They might not have adopted words like bad-mouthing or ' dumping on' someone. Younger people tend to pick up newly sprung-up slangy expressions all the time.3. 2. 5 Standard DialectThere remains another type of dialect distinction, the distinction between a standard and a nonstandard dialect. STANDARD DIALECT is the variety of a language based on the speech and writing of educated native speakers of that language which enables speakers of the language throughout the world to communicate intelligibly with each other, respective of their social standing or regional background. A standard variety is generally taught in schools and to non-native speakers when my are learning the language and is used in the news media and described in dictionaries and grammars. So far as the English language is concerned, there are Standard American English and Standard British English, etc. Standard English, however, is sometimes used as cover term for all the national standard varieties of English, which enjoys wide intelligibility throughout the English-speaking world.3.4 Mutual Dependence Between Register and DialectGenerally speaking, a language user, regardless of region, class, ethnic group, or gender, can speak in many registers, since he/she has to shift from one register to another as each situation type is replaced by another. But he/she does not normally speak in dialects of other regions, classes, or ethnic groups, as they are relatively permanent features of a language user, which are rarely manipulable by the user to fit the various contexts. However, as a citizen of a nation, he/she may learn the language habits of another individual, or time, or place, or social class, especially the standard dialect (a prestigious variety of language, serving as a ' model' for various functions), for certain uses. For example, many Chinese merchants in Guangdong province can readily switch between putonghua and Cantonese so as to meet the needs of their customers. In Britain it used to be regarded as a linguistic error to give a radio commentary on cricket in cockney or sing a pop song in Queen's English. Nowadays sports commentators on BBC may speak non-standard dialects; for a football match, a Cockney or Midlands commentator is more likely. In the US , an educated Black man can speak perfect general American; but when he wants to stress his membership in his ethnic group, he will exaggerate the Black English features in his speech. Not to mention those who adopt another dialect or dialects for parody, art, humor, etc. Here, the selection of one dialect rather than another in different situations is related to questions of language use. Likewise a register, especially a highly situation-tied register related to certain groups of people, such as argot, can become entirely unintelligible to other people, and thus acquire the feature of a dialect. So we see the mutual dependence between dialect and register.3.5 The Social Meaning of Language VarietiesWhen we listen to a person speaking, we can often make intelligent guesses about where he or she is from, and perhaps also what his or her socioeconomic status is, or about whether he or she wants to be informal or formal, etc. Even a simple greeting likeHi, how y'all doing?tells a lot about the speaker. We can guess, for instance, the speaker is from the US (as Hi is not often used in Britain ) and probably from the southeast of the country (as is shown by thesecond person y'all ); also the speaker wants to be informal ( Hi as opposed to Hello ). In fact, any text (whether literary or non-literary) is likely to convey many other kinds of information besides the message being communicated, such asl) the period of development of the language in which the speaker/ writer spoke or wrote it (temporal dialect);2) the geographical area he or she is from (regional dialect);3) the social group he or she belongs to (social dialect);4) the range of intelligibility of his or her language (standard or non-standard dialect);5) the activity he or she is engaged in (field);6) the medium he or she is using (mode);7) the social relationship existing between him or her and his or her addressee (s) (personal tenor);8) the intention in his or her mind in conveying the message (functional tenor);9) the distinctive language habits he or she has shown (idiolect).All the above are stylistically significant features of a text in question.Study Questions1) How is it that there are different varieties in a language? What are dialectal varieties, and what are diatypic varieties?2) Can we find any relationship between idiolect and other (ie temporal, regional, social, standard) dialects?3) How are diatypic varieties of a language distinguished?4) What is field of discourse? What are non-technical and technical fields of discourse?5) What is mode of discourse? How is it that there are different modes of discourse in a language?6) What is tenor of discourse? What is personal tenor/functional tenor concerned with?7) How are field, mode, tenors interrelated?8) In what way are register and dialect mutually dependent?4 Linguistic Description4.1 The Aim of Stylistics in Linguistic DescriptionNow that we have the variety categories in mind, we are in a position to specify an ordered approach to their linguistic description. Stylistics, in this respect, aims at providing a methodology of analysis-- a clear technique of description which, ideally, will allow any persons to cope with any text they want to study, a procedure that can ensure that no items of stylistic significance is overlooked. It replaces a sporadic approach with a systematic one and seeks to avoid over-relianceon intuitive ability in stylistic analysis. The ordered approach will be: take the object of study --a text, work through the text carefully, note down its stylistic features, and discuss them in terms of a number of levels of language.4.2 Levels of LanguageWe know already that there are three aspects in a speech event--the substantial, the formal, and the situational. Now we should further know that these aspects of the speech event are relatable to the levels of language and linguistic description. The substantial aspect is related to the level of phonology/graphology, the formal is related to the level of lexis and grammar, and the situational is related to the level of semantics, the contextual relations between situation and form.Language is, as is mentioned in 1.2, often likened to a code. As a code, language is multi-leveled. It is necessary to distinguish three levels of language. In addition to the level of semantics (meaning), there are the levels of lexis and grammar and phonology/graphology, which together form the expression plane of language.4.2.1 The Level of Phonology/Graphology4.2.1 .1 PhonologyThough the human throat can make amazingly numerous noises suggestive of meaning, only some of the sounds are used systematically in a language. PHONOLOGY is the study of the rules for the organization of the sound systems of a language. Phonological level is the expression or realization of language in its spoken form.4.2.1.2 GraphologyGRAPHOLOGY is the study of the writing system of a language. Likewise, out of all the written marks available, each language selects only a few (26 letters for the English alphabet) and the selected marks are used in a limited number of combinations. Graphological level is the expression or realization of language in its written form.4.2.2 The level of Lexis and Grammar4. 2. 2 . 1 Morphology and syntaxGRAMMAR is the central part of a linguistic statement. It studies the structure of units called sentences in a language, and the way these function in sequences. Traditionally, grammar is divided into MORPHOLOGY which studies the internal structure of words (and of the rules governing their formation), and SYNTAX which studies their external relationships in a sentence.4.2.2 .2 LexicologyLEXICOLOGY studies the choice of specific LEXICAL ITEMs (units of vocabulary) in a text, their distribution in relation to one another, and their meanings.4.2.3 The Level of SemanticsSEMANTICs, in this book, studies the overall meaning of a text, the meaning derived not from the formal properties of words and structures but from the way sentences/utterances are used and the way they are related to the context in which they are used/uttered.In what follows, we shall discuss the properties of the English language in terms of the abovelevels.Our division of the levels of language shows that we shall discuss stylistic features in a way that demands relatively not much technical knowledge. So long as users of this book are familiar with some basic concepts transplanted from modern linguistic theories and keep in mind traditional terms in phonology, grammar and rhetoric, they will, we hope, find themselves at home in this book.4.3 Stylistic FeaturesA situational variety of language can be seen as a complex of features describable by reference to a number of contextual categories. The categories, in turn, are defined with reference to sets of linguistic features distinctive of a situation, which operate at some or all of the levels of language. These situationally bound features are stylistically significant features--what we call STYLISTIC FEATUREs. They are a potential of all language levels and units. Just as language is multi-levelled, so style is multi-levelled: Stylistic features can be found at the three distinct semantic, lexico-grammatical, phonological/graphological levels of language. In order to find out all the items of stylistic significance in a text, we can collect data from one level of its language to another.4. 3.1 Stylistic Features at the First LevelThe first level -- phonology/graphology will be discussed under the headings of phonological features and graphological features respectively.4.3.1 .1 Phonological featuresSo far as the sound system of the English language is concerned, we have SEGMENTALs--sounds broken into smallest units, called phonemes, including consonants and vowels, and SUPRA-SEGMENTALs (or PROSODIC FEATUREs) -- sounds that extend over longer stretches of spoken text, co-existing with the segmentals that occupy those stretches; such as syllable stress, rhythm, and intonation.4.3.1 .1.1 Segmental featuresIndividual sounds can be stylistically significant in that:1) Isolated sounds may reflect aspects of reality-- what we call ONOMATOPOEIA or the use of words which 'imitate' natural sounds, like cuckoo for the bird that utters this cry, meow for a cat's cry, moo for sound made by a cow. In sentences likeThe door banged open.banged is used to imitate the noise with the opening of the doorSimilarlyThe actor was hissed off the stage.The clock ticked away the minutes.She clapped the book shut.2) Certain sound clusters may relate to SOUND SYMBOLISM --sounds felt to be in some way appropriate to the meanings expressed. For instance, the initial sl - is often symbolic of'slipperiness' in words likeslide, slide, slither, slush, sluice, sludge, sleak;while- ash suggests violent impact in words likebash, crash, smash and thrash .3) ASSIMILATION (change of one sound into another at word boundaries in connected speech because of the influence of an adjacent sound) and ELISION (omission of sounds as in o'er,4) Repetition of sounds may arouse the addressee's sensitivity to the sound quality of a text, which includes ALLITERATION--repetition of the previous initial consonant; as inR ound the r ock r uns the r iver.ASSONANCE--repetition of the (stressed) vowel but with a different end consonant; as in sh ar per/g ar ter, pl ai n/pl a te; and RHYME--repetition of the vowel with the same end consonant, as in f eat /b eat /sw eet .4.3.1 .1.2 Supra-segmental featuresDistinctive features can mainly be found running over a sequence of sound segments. These features are supra-segmental features. Under this, we shall mainly discuss stress, rhythm and intonation; pitch height and pitch range; pause and tempo.l) STRESS is the prominence (ie the force and intensity of air coming from the lung--loudness) given to one part of a word or longer utterance. Word stress is important in making a difference in meaning in word, compounds and phrases, as'extract ----- ex'tract'convert ------ con'vert'permit ------ per'mit'blackboard ------ black'board'greenhouse ------ green 'house'toy factory ------ toy ‘factor yStress in connected speech is subject to the speaker's will and the meaning he/she wishes to convey, such as the use of contrastive stress which is capable of highlighting any word in a sentence, even a word or part of a word that is not usually stressed.'Phil and 'Becky 'won the 'speech compe 'h ↘tition.'Phil "and ↗Becky? How ↘could she?She 'looked very 'happy at the ↘party.But she seemed ↘unhappy to ↗me.2) RHYTHM is the pattern formed by the stresses perceived as peaks of prominence or beats. In poetics we mark the stressed syllable with '--' and use ' √ ' for the unstressed syllable. Strongly stressed syllables occur at somewhat regular intervals of time, even in speech, eg√ -----√ ---------- √ ------ √ ------ √ --------- √ ----- √ ------ √In Scotland , Wales and Northern England , snow will fall on high ground.In speech there are generally three types of rhythm: (a) a type which quires all or most of the content-words fully stressed and is pronounced in a rather leisurely and deliberate way; as inI 'helped 'drivers to 'start their 'car after it had 'stopped ↘dead.(b) a type which has some content-words unstressed and is pronounced in a rather brisk and lively way; as in‘Would you mind 'calling back ↗later?(c) a type which requires only a few stresses for special prominence so as to convey a particular attitude or emphasis; as inDon't waste 'your time and 'mine by getting me to ↘talk about it.In verse, the regularity of rhythm is hightened:√ -----√ -------√ ---- √ ----- √ ----Around his tomb let Art and Genius weep√ ------ √ -------- √ ------ √ --------- √ ---But hear his death, ye blockhead! hear and sleep-- Johnson, Vanity of Human WishesPronounced regularity of rhythm is sometimes also found in prose works, for expressive or iconic effects. Dickens suggests the regularity of movement of a speeding train in Dombey and Son :Through the hollow, on the height, by the heath, by the orchard, by the park, by the garden, over the canal, across the river, where the sheep are feeding, where the mill is going, where the barge is floating, where the dead are lying, where the factory is smoking, where the stream is running ...3) INTONATION is the distinctive pattern of rise and fall in PITCH--the level of voice, high or low--taking place during connected speech. English is marked off into TONE UNITs- brief stretches usually corresponding to units of information. Each tone unit contains at least one syllable marked for pitch prominence. The syllable on which a change of pitch begins is called TONIC SYLLABLE. The first prominent syllable is the ONSET, commonly preceded by one or more unstressed syllables pronounced on a low pitch. Most significant is the final direction ofpitch movement on the tonic syllable. There are five basic tones in English: fall ( ↘, rise ( ↗), moderate rise, fall-rise ( √ , and rise -fall. Different tones convey different meanings. Take 'Oh' for example: with a moderate rise, it may express initial receipt of information; with a falling pitch, disappointment; with a fast rising pitch, puzzlement; with a fall and then a rise, excitement; with a rise-fall, dismay.For longer tone units, a fall at the end indicates completeness:I'm leaving for Bei'jing the 'day after to ↘morrow.'What's your' ↘name?A rise at the end can indicate that our utterance is non-final or that we are leaving it open and inconclusive, as↗One, ↗two, ↗three, ↗four, ↗five ....'Are you 'leaving the 'day after to ↗morrow?You're 'leaving al ↗ready?Please 'sit ↗down.A moderate rise is used to suggest that there is something more to come, asHe ↗left -- and 'never 'came ↘back.The fall-rise occurs in doubtfully expressing a condition or with initial adverbials, asI'll 'come if I have the √ time.At √ last, they 'made a suc ↘cess.The rise-fall is used to express a (genuine or sarcastic) warmth or a feeling of surprise, asThat's ↘marvellous.He's a complete ↘fool.Likewise, the same sentence would have different implicature if uttered in different tones:You 'mustn't 'give her ↘anything to read.(implied: She should read nothing.)You 'mustn't 'give her √ anything to read.(implied: She should read only those that are good for her.)We rarely speak on one pitch level continuously; that would be monotonous. An overuse of rises will give an unintentional impression of diffidence or complaint, and too many falls can create an unwitting effect of impolite assertiveness.Reading a written text implies selecting the appropriate tone and the most contrastive word. Different selections result in different interpretation. Normally, however, unless a piece of writing is marked for the tonic syllable (by capitalization or italicization in print, or underlining or otherwise in handwriting), or restricted by context, the tonic syllable probably falls on the last。
英语文体学教案
第一章1.1 Definition of StylisticsStylistics has long been considered as a highly significant but very discussible branch of learning. It is concerned with various disciplines such as linguistics, semantics, pragmatics and literature. The word stylistics( ‘styl’ component relates stylistic to literary criticism, and the ‘istics’ component to linguistics). So stylistics is the bridge of linguistics and literature. Stylistics is the study of literary discourse from a linguistic orientation.” (文体学是从语言学的角度研究文学语篇)Stylistics is an interdisciplined branch of learning which studies various differences between formal and informal, between deviant and normal, between magnificent and plain, between professional and popular, between foreign and domestic, between this and that individual.1.2 The Development of StylisticsThe date when stylistics became a field of academic inquiry is difficult to determine. However stylistics is often considered as both an old and a young branch of learning. It is old, because it orig inated from the ancient “rhetoric”. The famous ancient Greek philosophers Socrates, Plato and Aristotle all contributed a lot to this branch of learning. It is young ,because the word “stylistics” first appeared only in 1882, and the first book on stylistics was written by a French scholar Charles Bally in 1902 and was published in 1909: Traite de Stylistique Francaise. This book is often considered as a landmark of modern stylistics. Consequently, a number of more coherent and systematic works of both a theoretical and a practical nature were published in the field.The subject of study in Bally’s time was oral discourse. Bally considered that apart from the denotative meaning expressed by the speaker4, there was usually an “overtone” which indicated differ ent “feelings”, and the task of stylistics was to find out the linguistic devices indicating these feelings.Later , the German scholar L.Spitzer(1887-1960), began to analyze literary works from a stylistic point of view, and therefore, Spitzer if often co nsider4ed as the “father of literary stylistics”.From the beginning of the 1930s to the end of the 1950s stylistics was developing slowly and was only confined to the European continent. From the end of the 1950s to the present time, modern stylistics has reached its prosperity.1.3 Definitions of StyleSo style is an integral part of meaning. It gives us additional information about the speaker’s/writer’s regional and social origin, education, his relationship with the his/her reader, his feelings, emotions or attitudes. Without a sense of style we cannot arrive at a better understanding of an utterance1）.Written---spoken in terms of channel2）The Differences between Formal and Informal Language3）modern----archaic in terms of time4）normal----deviated in terms of degree of novelty5）. common---professional in terms of technique（专业）Homework:1.What’s stylistics?2.What does stylistics study?3.Say something about the development of stylistics.4.Give examples to explain “Proper words in proper places makes the true definition of a style.”5.What does style study?6.Give example to illustrate the differences between spoken-- written,formal–informal, modern–archaic, norm—deviated, common---professional.第二章1. Definition of meanings of meaningAccording to Leech (1974 English linguists), meanings of meaning can be broken into seven kinds:1).Denotative meaningIt refers to literal meaning, refers to diction meaning.(super meaning) 词的概念意义。
文体学第三课PPT课件
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14
e.g. : “It is your boy, my Lord.”
“是伺候你的小伙计， 大人”
“ It is your Lord, my boy”
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5
Contextualization requires proper words in proper situation and the texts of different styles demand different words which in their long time use acquire stylistic coloring.
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Connotation is much more complicated than denotation.
sun------ warm and bright
flower ------ beautiful
Connotation of a word is not fixed , but undergoes changes with the passage of time.
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9
e.g.
Hiroshima My spoon was lifted when the bomb came down That left no face, no hand , no spoon to hold. Two hundred thousand died in my home town. This came to pass before my soup was cold.
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Assignments
1. Dialectal variety vs. Diatypic variety
2. What are some common types of dialectal varieties?
3. What is register? What elements are there in evaluating the register?
3.2 Dialects
3.2.2 Temporal dialect
Varieties correlating with various periods of the development of language
English: Old Eng.(450~1100)— Anglo-Saxon; Beowulf
3.2 Dialects
3.2.5 Standard dialect
Range of intelligibility— standard / non-standard
Standard dialect: based on the language of educated native speakers which enables speakers of the language to communicate intelligibly with each other
Dialectal 方言变体 Diatypic 功能变体
3.1 Two kinds of varieties
Dialectal varieties — dialects
Associated with different users Permanent features in individual, temporal,
situations is related to language use
3.5 The social meaning of language varieties
To convey many other kinds of information besides the message being communicated by analyzing the stylistic features of a text in terms of dialects and registers (p.39)
Spoken: false starts, interruptions, repetitions, grunts, shrieks, er
Written: none of the above, punctuation…
3.3 Registers
3.3.3 Tenor of discourse
Accent (伦敦小伙儿模仿全球24种英语口音) English— British Eng.
American Eng. Differences: phonology, graphology,
vocabulary, grammar (p.27-28)
3.2 Dialects
3.2.4 Social dialect
vocabulary, grammar
3.3 Registers
3.3.2 Mode of discourse
Reflecting the relationship that the language user has to the medium of communication
Speaking vs. writing Features of spoken and written language
5
Social meaning of language
varieties
3.1 Two kinds of varieties
Language is used in a context
Language in use is determined by a variety of situations
A dialect has relatively permanent features A language user may learn the language
habits of another dialect for certain uses The selection of one dialect in different
Occasions to use: taught in schools and to nonnative speakers; news; dictionaries and grammars
3.3 Registers
Fishman: who speaks what language to whom and when
Middle Eng.(1100~1500)— The Canterbury Tales
Modern Eng. (1500~now)— W. Shakespeare; Samuel Johnson
3.2 Dialects
3.2.3 Regional dialect
Different speech patterns in different places
English Stylistics
Chapter 3 Varieties of Language
WANG Yao @ SDUT
Contents
1
Two kinds of varieties
2
Dialects
3
Registers
4 Mutual dependence bet. register
and dialect
Personal tenor—degrees of formality Functional tenor—intention of the user in
using the language
3.3 Registers
3.3.4 The notion of register
Interrelation among field, mode and tenors of discourse
3.3 Registers
3.3.1 Field of discourse
Reflecting the purposive role of language user Social activity the language user is engaged in
doing in the situation in which the text has occurred The language the user uses will show what his/her language is about, what experience he/she is verbalizing, what is going on in the speech event Technical vs non-technical (p.33-34) Non-technical: non-specialist fields, casual Technical: specialist fields, restricted, formal—
Reflecting
the personal relationships between speaker/writer and hearer/reader
What the user is trying to do with language for/to his/her addressee(s)
A variety with certain social group 4 varieties: 1. Socioeconomic status —social class/rank 2. Ethnic varieties —Black Eng.: phonological,
verb, there is, multiple negative constructions 3. Gender varieties —male/female 4. Age varieties —old men/young men
Field is related to mode Mode is related to personal and functional
tenors Configuration of the 3 contextual features (p.37)
Features of registers: phonological, lexical, grammaticaldiscourse3.2 Dialects
3.2.1 Individual dialect — Idiolect
One’s own features of speech/writing habits Voice quality Pitch & stress patterns Lexical items Grammatical structures ---- xx’s language/style
Modern linguistics has worked out a system of variety categories
3.1 Two kinds of varieties
The features of the situational circumstances of speech events that can be consistently related to variations in language use fall into two groups:
Registers: distinctive varieties of language used in different types of situation