文体学考试大题分析

一．期末考试分析题思路以及材料

The checklist of linguistic and stylistic categories:（看到文章，从这四个方面分析）

A: Lexical categories

B: Grammatical categories

C: Figures of speech

D. Cohesion and context

细则：A: Lexical categories：

1.GENERAL.

Is the vocabulary simple or complex? formal or colloquial? descriptive or evaluative? general or specific?

How far does the writer make use of the emotive and other associations of words, as opposed to their referential meaning?

Does the text contain idiomatic phrases, and if so, with what kind of dialect or register语域are these idioms associated?

Is there any use of rare or specialized vocabulary? Are any particular morphological categories noteworthy (e.g. compound words, words with particular suffixes)?

To what semantic fields. do words belong?

The checklist of lexical categories and their stylistic functions：

1）NOUNS

abstract *（抽象）society/idea, or concrete（具体）house/cat?

What kinds of abstract nouns occur

events：war/eruption,

perceptions：understanding/consciousness,

processes：development,

moral：virtue

social：responsibility,

qualities：bravery

What use is made of proper names? Are there any collective nouns people/staff?

2）Adjective

referring to what attribute?

Physical：woolen

psychological ：joyful

Visual：hilly square/snowy

Auditory：bubbling/sizzling

sensory：slippery/smooth

Color：dark/red

referential：big dog/white house

Emotive：exited/happy

Evaluative：good/fat/ bad/lazy

Gradable：young/tall/useful

or non-gradable：atomic/British?

Attributive：an utter fool

or predicative he is ashore ?

Restrictive the exact answer?

Intensifying the simple truth /

a complete victory/a slight effort?

stative tall/long

or dynamic abusive/ambitious?

3)Verbs

Are they stative cost/believe/remain, or dynamic walk/arrive?

Do they refer to movements climb/jump/slide, physical acts spread/smell/taste/laugh, or speech acts persuade/decline/beg, psychological states or activities think/feel/imagine/know/love. or perceptions see/hear/feel?

Are they transitive shut the door, intransitive the door shuts, or linking be/sound/seem/taste/ smell?

Are they factive know/regret/forget/remember or non-factive believe/assume/consider/suppose/ think/ imagine?

4)Adverbs

5)What semantic functions do they perform?

Manner anxiously/ carefully/ loudly/ willingly?

place away/along/across/upstairs/elsewhere?

direction backwards/forward/up/down/in/out?

time ago/already/finally/shortly/immediately?

degree almost/completely/partly/deeply/much?

Are there any significant use of sentence adverbs?

1) adjuncts like happily, proudly, now, outside?

2) conjuncts like so, therefore, however?

3) disjuncts like certainly, obviously, frankly?

B: Grammatical categories

1. SENTENCE TYPES

Does the author use only statements (declarative sentences), or does he also use questions, commands, exclamations. or minor sentence types (such as sentences with no verb)?

If these other types are used, what is their function?

2.SENTENCE COMPLEXITY.

Do sentences on the whole have a simple or a complex structure?

What is the average sentence length (in number of words)?

What is the ratio of dependent to independent clauses?

Does complexity vary strikingly from one sentence to another?

Is complexity mainly due to (i) coordination, (ii) subordination, (iii) parataxis (juxtaposition of clauses or other equivalent structures)?

In what parts of a sentence does complexity tend to occur?

For instance, is there any notable occurrence of anticipatory structure (e.g. of complex subjects preceding the verbs, of dependent clauses preceding the subject of a main clause)?

3 CLAUSE TYPES

What types of dependent clause are favored: relative clauses, adverbial clauses, different types of nominal clauses (that—clauses, wh—clauses, etc)?

Are reduced or non-finite clauses commonly used, and if so, of what type are they (infinitive clauses, —ing clauses, —ed clauses, verbless clauses)?

.4.CLAUSE STRUCTURE.

Is there anything significant about clause elements (eg frequency of objects, complements, adverbials; of transitive or intransitive verb constructions)?

Are there any unusual orderings (initial adverbials, fronting of object or complement, etc)? Do special kinds of clause construction occur? (Such as those with preparatory it or there)?

5 NOUN PHRASES

Are they relatively simple or complex?

Where does the complexity lie (in pre-modification by adjectives, nouns, etc, or in post-modification by prepositional phrases, relative clauses, etc)?

Note occurrence of listings (eg sequences of adjectives), coordination, or apposition.

6. VERB PHRASES.

Are there any significant departures from the use of the simple past tense?

For example, notice occurrences and the functions of the present tense; of the progressive aspect (eg was lying); of the perfective aspect (eg has/had appeared);modal auxiliaries (eg can, must, would).

7 OTHER PHRASE TYPES.

Is there anything to be said about other phrase types: prepositional phrases, adverb phrases adjective phrases?

8 WORD CLASSES.

Having already considered major or lexical word classes, we may here consider minor word classes (‘function words’):

prepositions, conjunctions, pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries, interjections.

Are particular words of these types used for particular effect (eg the definite or indefinite article; first person pronouns I, we, etc; demonstratives such as this and that; negative words such as not, nothing, no) ?

9 GENERAL.

Note here whether any general types of grammatical construction are used to special effect e.g. comparative or superlative constructions; coordinative or listing constructions; parenthetical. constructions; appended or interpolated structures such as occur in casual speech.

Do lists and co-ordinations (e.g. lists of nouns) tend to occur with two, three or more than three members?

C: Figures of speech

Here we consider the incidence of features which are fore-grounded by virtue of departing in some way from general norms of communication by means of the language code;

for example, exploitation of regularities of formal patterning, or of deviations from the

linguistic code. For identifying such features, the traditional figures of speech (schemes and tropes) are often useful categories.

1 GRAMMATICAL AND LEXICAL SCHEMES. (这一部分会和稍后说的第四部分略有重合）

Are there any cases of formal and structural repetition (anaphora, parallelism, etc) or of mirror—image patterns (chiasmus)?

Is the rhetorical effect of these one of antithesis, reinforcement, climax, anticlimax, etc.?

2 PHONOLOGICAL SCHEMES.

Are there any phonological patterns of rhyme, alliteration, assonance, etc?

Are there any salient rhythmical patterns?

Do vowel and consonant sounds pattern or cluster in particular ways?

How do these phonological features interact with meaning?

3 TROPES修辞.

Are there any obvious violations of, or departures from the linguistic code?

For example, are there any neologisms (such as Americanly)?

deviant lexical collocations (such as portentous怪异的infants)?

semantic, syntactic, phonological, or graphological deviations?

Such deviations will often be the clue to special interpretations associated with traditional figures of speech such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche, paradox, irony.

If such tropes occur, what kind of special interpretation is involved (eg metaphor can be classified as personifying, animizing, concretizing, synaesthetic, etc)?

D: Context and cohesion

Under COHESION衔接ways in which one part of a text is linked to another are considered: for example, the ways in which sentences are connected.

This is the internal organization of the text.

Under CONTEXT we consider the external relations of a text or a part of a text, seeing it as a discourse presupposing a social relation between its participants (author and reader; character and character, etc), and a sharing by participants of knowledge and assumptions.

I.COHESION.

Does the text contain logical or other links between sentences (eg coordinating conjunctions, or linking adverbials)?

Or does it tend to rely on implicit connections of meaning?

What sort of use is made of cross—reference by pronouns (she, it, they, etc)? by substitute forms (do, so, etc), or ellipsis?

Alternatively, is any use made of elegant variation —the avoidance of repetition by the substitution of a descriptive phrase

(as, for example, ‘the old lawyer’or ‘her uncle’may substitute for the rep-etition of an earlier ‘Mr. Jones’)?

Are meaning connections reinforced by repetition of words and phrases or by repeatedly using words from the same semantic field?

2.CONTEXT.

Does the writer address the reader directly, or through the words or thoughts of some fictional character?

What linguistic clues (first-person pronouns I, me, my, mine) are there of the

addresser-addressee relationship?

What attitude does the author imply towards his subject?

If a character’s words or thoughts are represented, is this done by direct quotation: direct speech), or by some other method (eg indirect speech. free indirect speech)?

Are there significant changes of style according to who is supposedly speaking or thinking the words on the page?

以下这篇是老师给的一个例子：（咱们可以当作模版来用，但如果题目不一样，照上面）

题目：From Joseph Conrad, The Secret Sharer

On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned for ever by some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach(1). To the left a group of barren islets, suggesting ruins of stone walls, towers, and blockhouses, had its foundations set in a blue sea that itself looked solid, so still and stable did it lie below my feet; even the track of light from the westering, sun shone smoothly, without that animated glitter which tells of an imper-ceptible ripple(2). And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at the tug which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor half brown, half blue under the enormous dome of the sky(3). Corresponding in their insignificance to the islets of the sea, two small clumps of trees, one on each side of the only fault in the impeccable joint, marked the mouth of the river Meinam we had just left on the first preparatory stage of our homeward journey; and, far back on the inland level, a larger and loftier mass, the grove surrounding the great Paknam pagoda, was the only thing on which the eye could rest from the vain task of exploring the monotonous sweep of the horizon(4). Here and there gleams as of a few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings of the great river; and on the nearest of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor(5). My eye followed the light cloud of her smoke, now here, now there, above the plain, according to the devious curves of the stream, but always fainter and farther away, till I lost it at last behind the miter-shaped hill of the great pagodas(6). And then I was left alone. with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam.

Analysis：1.Lexical features

nouns

1)almost half the concrete nouns refer to things which divide the field of vision into geographical areas: domain, ocean, islets, sea, shore, sky, river, earth and so on.

2)abstract lovative nouns, indicating geometrical features: lines, division, end, track, head, line, edge, joint and so on.

All these nouns refer to objects of vision.

General：an account of the relation between the visual world and its observer, who tries to comprehend and interpret it.

the word "eye" is used repetedly in abstract nouns implying perception (aspect, sign, glitter, ripple, glance)

and verbs like see, mark and look

Therefore, the passage is not only with objects of perception, but with the process of perceiving them.

The writer avoids using verbs with a human agent, the "eye" instead as if had a will of its own. This evokes the feeling that the narrator is detached and powerless in the face of this immensity.

The adjectives express strangeness or lack of definition, like half-submerged, mysterious, incomprehensible, unmarked.

These all suggest a congruity between the eye which things are "imperceptible" and the mind to which things are "incomprehensible".

2.Grammatical features

Sentence length：in words: 66-59-61-88-61-44-18

Only after we have felt the isolation of the speaker in all its details and have seen the last vestige of human life disappear over the horizon, that we can understand the force of the simple statement.

Sentence structure imitates the movement from the observer's eye towards the distance. Sentences tend to end in a evocation of vastness and remoteness, as the eye reaches its limit of vision.

Prepositions：Unusually large number of prepositions (9), particularly those of place and direction.

The role of "of" is to relate two noun expressions together, and the former always an abstract noun and collecve noun,"a group of barren islets","two small clumps of trees".

This suggests that perception and cognition go hand in hand.

3.Figures of speech：Simile，metaphor

4.cohesion and context：No conspicuous use of logical and referential links.Most sentences begin with a reference to the first-person narrator. In the final sentence attention is abruptly brought back from the remote horizon to the observer himself.

二．其它题使用材料

（1）修辞手法有以下10种：

1. Simile 明喻

1). as…..as

as white as a sheet /snow; as bold/brave as a lion

as cool as a cucumber; as free as a bird

as hungry as a hunter/hawk/bear/wolf

as happy as a prince

Jim looks like his brother Bill. (not simile)

Jim and Bill are as alike as two peas in a pod. (simile)

As innocent as a baby; as light as a feather

As poor as a church mouse; as stubborn as a mule

As quick as a lightning/a flash

Hurry up! You walk as slow a snail.

2). Like/as

My heart is like a singing bird

whose nest is in a watered shoot.

我的心像只鸣啼的小鸟

在柔润的技条上筑着巢

Wit without learning is like a tree without fruit.

有天资而无学识，好比树木不结果实。

Her happiness vanished like the morning dew.

I wandered lonely as a cloud.

Beauty is as summer fruits, which are easy to corrupt and cannot last.

3). As if (as though)

It rained as if the flood-gates of Heaven were opened, and it lighted awfully.

He was a beautiful horse that looked as though he had come out of a painting by Velasquez.

4). Liken…to…

Doctors usually liken the heart to a pump.

Life has often been likened to a journey.

5). Compare…to…

Shakespeare compared the world to a stage.

Life is poetically compared to the morning dew

6). The way (in which)

I should smell it the way a cat smells a mouse.

7). Might as well…as

You might as well throw your money into the ditch as give it to him.

8). A is to B what C is to D

Wit and humor are to conversation what salt is to food. (What salt is to food, that wit and humor are to conversation.)

What lungs are to the body, what parks are to the city.

9) No more…than

He had no more idea of money than a cow.

10). A and B

Love and cough cannot be hid.

A word and a stone let go cannot be recalled.

Fish and visitors stink in three days.

Truth and roses have thorns about them.

Old friends and old wine are best.

11). to eat like a horse—狼吞虎咽

to drink like a fish—牛饮

like a drowned rat—像落汤鸡一样

like a peacock among sparrows—鹤立鸡群

like a hen on a hot girdle—像热锅上的蚂蚁

as drunk as a rat—烂醉如泥

as merry as a cricket—快乐得像百灵鸟

as poor as a church mouse—一贫如洗

as thin as a lath—骨瘦如柴

as close as an oyster—守口如瓶

as stupid as a goose—愚蠢如猪

12).verbs and verbal phrases

crawl like a snail; drink like a fish

run like a hare; speak like a book

sleep like a top/log

They spent money like water.

He is pitiless as steel, cold as frost.

When in a fury, she is more savage than a tigress.

Her face resembled a silver moon.

She is as thin as a rake

2.Metaphor 暗喻:

1). 喻体直陈式

A book that is shut is but a block.

College is a comma of a sentence of life.

Age is my alarm o'clock.

A carpet of green grass cornered the slopes of the mountain.

She was an angel of my life.

2). 喻体半隐式

We bubbled over with questions.

The corridor was flooded with boys and girls.

Don't monkey with the TV set.

He doesn't have an idea of his own. He just parrots what other people say.

A heavy silence blanketed the room.

They stormed the speaker with questions.

3). 喻体全隐式

Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed and some few to be chewed and digested.

His present hunger awoke and gnawed at him.

Also he had money in his pocket, and as in the old days when a pay day, he made the money fly.

4) Idioms:Teach a fish to swim—班门弄斧feather one's nest—中饱私囊

beard the lion in his den—虎口拔牙add insult to injury—雪上加霜

cast pearl before swine—对牛弹琴hold the candle to the devil—助纣为虐

cry up wine and sell vinegar—挂羊头，卖狗肉fish in the air—水中捞月

lock the stable door after the horse is stolen 亡羊补牢

kill two birds with one stone—一箭双雕set a fox to keep one's geese—引狼入室

let sleeping dogs lie—不要打草惊蛇kick against pricks—以卵击石

hold the wolf by the ears/take the bull by the horns—骑虎难下

a flash in the pan—昙花一现

sit on two chairs/stand between two boats/ride two horses at the same time－脚踩两只船

3. Personification拟人:Flowers peeped out from among the leaves.

The buffalo comes down to the bank and subsides with a groan of satisfaction into the mud.

I watched the moonlight dancing on the ripples of the lake.

The fields breathes sweet, the daisies kiss our feet.