Examples of Assonance

The r ai n in Sp ai n stays m ai nly in the pl ai ns. (a)

- Alan Jay Lerner, "The Rain in Spain"/ George Bernard Shaw, "My Fair Lady"

H ar den not your h ear ts, but he ar his word.(a)

- Hebrew:3:15

S ea son of m i sts and mellow fruitfulness. (e)

- Keats, "To Autumn"

That solit u de which s ui ts abstr us er m us ings. (u)

- Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "Frost At Midnight"

That d o lphin-t o rn, that g o ng-t o rmented sea." (o)

- W.B. Yeats, "Byzantium"

"The b ow s glided d ow n, and the c oa st" (o)

- Dylan Thomas, "Ballad of the Long-Legged Bait"

"As I was going to St. I ves, I met a man with seven w iv es..." (i)

- Nursery rhyme, "As I was going to St Ive"

"I f ee l the n ee d, the n ee d for sp ee d." (e)

- Tom Cruise and Anthony Edwards, "Top Gun"

"Every t i me I wr i te a rh y me, these people think it's a cr i me" (i)

- Eminem, "Criminal"

"It b ea ts... as it sw ee ps... as it cl ea ns!" (e)

- "Hoover vacuum cleaners", 1950s advertisement

"If I bl ea t when I sp ea k it's b e cause I just got... fl ee ced." (e)

- Al Swearengen, "Deadwood"

28.How do we call the omition of a word necessary for the complete syntactical construction of a sentence, but not necessary for understanding.

Ellipsis

The deliberate omission of one or more words in the sentence for definite stylistic purpose is called the stylistic device of ellipsis.

The omission of some parts of the sentence is an ordinary and typical feature of the oral type of speech. In belle-letters style the peculiarities of the structure of the oral type of speech are partially reflected in the speech of characters (for example, the informal and careless character of speech).

Some parts of the sentence may be omitted due to the excitement of the speaker.

The stylistic device of ellipsis is sometimes used in the author’s narration but more frequently it is used in represented speech.

The stylistic device of ellipsis used in represented inner speech creates a stylistic effect of the natural abruptness and the fragmentary character of the process of thinking.

It is difficult to draw a line of demarcation between elliptical sentences and one-member sentences.

One-member sentences may be used to heighten the emotional tension of the narration or to single out the character’s or the author’s attitude towards what is happening.

e.g. A dark gentleman… A very bad manner. In the last degree constrained, reserved, diffident, troubled.

29.What is drama?

Drama as poetry Stylistic analysis of dramatic texts has tended to follow one of the three approaches. The first of these is to treat an extract of the text as a poem--as we have already done in Section 9.3. Since sound and metre are as relevant in many dramatic texts as they are in poetry, everything to do with metre, sound patterning, syntax and figurative language already discussed in the previous sections might be appropriate areas to analyse.

Drama as fiction Secondly, the play can be analysed for character and plot, treating it more or less like fiction. The two components of plot and character clearly are as significant in dramatic texts as in fiction, so this is an obviously relevant way to proceed; some of the approaches described in the previous section can be used to do this.

Drama however differs fundamentally from fiction in that it usually lacks a narrative voice, and this absence can make a novel difficult to dramatize successfully. One of the recognized problems in dramatizing Jane Austen’ s Pride and Prejudice, as was done by BBC in 1995, is that the ironic narrative voice offers a different perspective on characters and events from the one the characters in the novel necessarily perceive or comment on. Thus the information and the attitude conveyed in the narrative voice must be translated into other aspects of the dramatization.

There are ways, in drama, of attempting to deal with the function of the narrative voice. A chorus, as was used in Greek Tragedy, has also been used in plays by T.S. Eliot (The Cocktail Party, for example), and can give another perspective on the actions of the characters or plot development. Dylan Thomas used a narrative voice reading over the play in Under Milkwood, and Dennis Potter, in the television play The Singing Detective, uses a voice-over technique. Information about the plot and character is sometimes given through explicit interjection by the playwright in the text of the play, as stage instructions.

Drama as conversation We have said that stylistics has approached the texts of plays as if they were poetry, and as if they were a kind of fiction. This does not really account for aspects of drama that different from poetry and different from fiction, the qualities that make it a genre in its own right. One crucial aspect in which drama differs from poetry and fiction is in its emphasis on verbal interaction, and the way relationships between people are constructed and negotiated through what they say. This is where linguistics really comes into own, since there is an enormous amount of work on what people do when they talk, and on how communication and misconmmnication occur. Linguistics, and techniques of discourse analysis in particular, can help us analyse the exchanges between characters, in order to:

a) understand the text better;

b) understand how conversation works;

c) appreciate better the skill a playwright has demonstrated in the way they have written the speeches of their characters;

d) see things in the text that other forms of analysis might have allowed us to miss.

30.What is Oratory?

Oratorical style is the oral subdivision of the publicistic style.

Direct contact with the listeners permits the combination of the syntactical, lexical and phonetic peculiarities of both the written and spoken varieties of language. Certain typical features of the spoken variety of speech present in this style are: direct address to the audience (ladies and gentlemen, honorable member(s), the use of the 2^nd person pronoun you, etc.), sometimes constractions (I’ll, won’t, haven’t, isn’t and others) and the use of colloquial words.

The stylistic devices employed in oratorical style are determined by the conditions of communication. Repetition can be regarded as the most typical stylistic device of English oratorical style. Almost any piece of oratory will have parallel constructions, antithesis, suspense, climax, rhetorical questions and questions-in-the-narrative.

31.Name the 4 sub styles of The Style of Official Documents

Official documents are written in a formal, “cold” or matter-of-fact style of speech. The style of official documents, or ‘officialese’ as it is sometimes called, is not homogeneous and is represented by the following sub-styles, or varieties:

1. the language of business documents,
2. the language of legal documents,
3. the language of diplomacy,
4. the language of military documents.

Like other styles of language, this style has a definite communicative aim and accordingly has its own system of interrelated language and stylistic means. The main aim of this type of communication is to state the conditions binding two parties in an undertaking. These parties may be:

a) the state and the citizen, or citizen and citizen (jurisdiction);
b) a society and its members (statute or ordinance);
c) two or more enterprises or bodies (business correspondence or contracts);
d) two or more governments (pacts, treaties);
e) a person in authority and a subordinate (orders, regulations, authoritative directions);
f) the board or presidium and the assembly or general meeting (procedures acts, minutes), etc.

32.What is the aim of the Language of military documents

33.What is the origin of the word “Stylistics”?

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