文体学 英语诗歌的用词特点及分析

1. use waste words and uncommon words

Some english words used by the ancients has already been eliminated by the times become waste words (archaic or less common words) in daily life and prose, But very common in poetry。That may be the antique words can trigger the emotions of poets. Perhaps it may looks elegant by using these ancient words to attract the attention of readers.

Mainly poetry focus more on the subaudition of words, the era of change do not pay attention to the spoken text.

Examples:

nouns Swine ----- pig swain ----- farmer Spouse ------ wife pronouns thou -----you Thy -----your mine ------my adjectives lowly ----humble mute ----- silent fond ----- foolish

verbs quit ------live wax ------- grow quoth -------said adverbs hapty ------perhaps oft ------ often full -------very Example：

It is an ancient mariner,

And he stoppeth one of three.

"By thy long gray bread and glittering eye," Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?

…

He holds him with his skinny hand, "There was a ship," quoth he. he Rime of the Ancient Mariner

by Samuel Taylor Coleridge

"Hold off !" unhand me, "gray-beard loon! "

Eftsoons his hand dropt me.

2. Omission of the words

In English poetry , in the premise of not ruin the express of the meaning , and meet the requirement of the metrical, some kind of words should be omitted.

Omit the definite article.

Eg. creeping like（a）snail unwillingly to the school

Omit the noun and pronoun.

Eg. （he）who steals my purse steals trash

Omit the finite words.

Eg . happy is the man, whose wish and care.

Omit the prefix

Eg. despair and anguish fled （from）the struggling soul

Omit the relative pronoun.

Eg. It is the distance （that）lends enchantment to the view

Omit the auxiliary verb

Eg. I speak not = I do not speak

Omit the predicate verb

Eg. Mean though i am ，i (am ) not wholly so.

e proper words to express proper meaning.

An accomplished poet, always try to avoid using outdated

vocabulary . Some poets even use two unrelated words to indicating some kind of profound significance.

For example, in Milton's Lycidas ''Blind mouth " refers to that priest who are eager to enter the church under the propel of interests.In fact, ''blind" and "mouth" are two totally unrelated objectives, but he should combine them together naturally and it reach the effect of peculiar.

The use of simple word can pit one against ten

A piece of good poem must use as far as possible with the most concise words to express its meaning. A poet who is good at using words not only can make use of vocabulary to reduce the poetry of words, and can greatly enhance their expressive and appealing.

Example one：

Robot frost's poetry The Span of Life only has 2 lines with totally 16 words, but it shows precisely the principle of rise and fall of the life.

The Span of Life

The dog barks backward without getting up

I can remember when he was a pup

Example two：

In 1931 , Mr. Pond worked at the subway of Lond . In the crowds he saw some beautiful face, some were elegant women ,some were beautiful girls, and some lovely little girls. At first time ,he use 130 line to describe the beautiful scenery, but he find that the 130 lines could not express his