CLUES ON DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

POINTS OF REFERENCE

1.Reading Advice.

2.Advice on the Stylistic Analysis of Texts.

A.General Considerations.

B.Fiction.

C.Non-Fiction.

3. Assignments and Recommendations to Specimen Texts.

1. Reading Advice

Advice on how to perform Stylistic Analysis and its various models may

be found in the following publications available at the libraries.

1.Arnold I.V., Dyakonova N.Y. Three Centuries of English Prose.

Emotive Prose and Drama. – Leningrad: Prosveshcheniye Publishers, 1967. –

«Comments».

2. Dyakonova N.Y. Three Centuries of English Poetry. Leningrad:

Prosveshcheniye Publishers, 1967. – «Comments».

3. Арнольд И.В. Интерпретация английского художественного

текста. Лекция на английском языке. – Ленинград: Изд.-во ЛГПИ им. А.И.

Герцена, 1983. – 40 с.

4. Байков В.Г. «Рисовые зерна», доминанты или светские

разговоры? (заметки о границах интерпретационного акта) // Нариси

досліджень у галузі гуманітарних наук в педвузі. Збірник наук. та наук.-

метод. праць. – Вип. 2. Том 2. – Горлівка: ГДПІІМ, 1996. – С. 7-25.

5. Borisova L.V. Interpreting Fiction. Prose. – Minsk: Vysheishaya

Shkola, 1987.

6. Galperin I.R. An Essay in Stylistic Analysis. Four Sonnets by

W.Shakespeare and Ch.Dickens’s «A Christmas Carol». – Moscow: Higher

School Publ., 1968.

7.Gilyanova A.G., Ossovskaya M.I. Analytical Reading. – Leningrad:

Prosveshcheniye Publishers, 1978.

8. Иванова Т.П., Брандес О.П. Стилистическая интерпретация текста

(non-literary texts). – М.: Высшая школа, 1991.

9. Khokharina-Semernya L.M. Advanced English. – Kiev: Vyshcha

Shkola Publ., Second Edition, 1973. – P. 182-189. Third Edition, 1983 – P. 183-

190.

10. Kukharenko V.A. A Book of Practice in Stylistics. – Moscow:

Vysshaya Shkola Publishers, 1986. – 144 p. Second Edition Revised. – Vinnytsa:

Nova Knyha, 2000.– 160 p

11.Кухаренко В.А. Практикум по интерпретации текста. – М.:

Просвещение, 1987. – Часть 1. (Emotive Prose).

12.Пелевина Н.Ф. Стилистический анализ художественного текста

(Poetry and prose). – Ленинград, 1980.

13.Prokhorova V.I., Soshalskaya E.G. Oral Practice through Stylistic

Analysis. – Moscow: Vyshaya Shkola Publ., 1979.

14.Смирнова Н.Е., Арасланова Р.Ш. Практикум по аналитическому

чтению. – Минск, 1977.

15.Solovyova N.K., Kortes L.P. Interpretation of English Poetical Texts. –

Minsk: Vysheishaya Shkola Publishers, 1986.

16.Soshalskaya E.G., Prokhorova V.I. Stylistic Ana1ysis. – Moscow:

Higher School Publ., 1976.

17.Sosnovskaya V.B. Analytical Reading. – Moscow: Higher School

Publ., 1974.

18.Методические рекомендации по лингвистическому анализу

художественно-публицистического текста на занятиях аналитического

чтения (для студентов 3 курса), на англ. языке /Сост. Л.И.Сердюкова.—

Горловка: ГГПИИЯ, 1989.—24 с.

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19.Методические указания к лингвостилистическому анализу

английского текста на занятиях аналитического чтения (для студентов 4

курса), на англ. языке /Сост. Л.И.Сердюкова.—Горловка: ГГПИИЯ, 1989.—

23 с.

20. Методические указания к лингвостилистическому анализу

английского текста на занятиях по аналитическому чтению (для студентов 5

курса), на англ. Языке /Сост. В.Г.Байков, Л.И.Сердюкова.—Горловка:

ГГПИИЯ, 1988.—32 с.

21. Yefimov L.P., Yasinetskaya E.A. Practical Stylistics of English.—

Vinnyts‘a: Nova Knyha, 2004.—P. 174—176.= Єфімов Л.П., Ясінецька О.А.

Стидістика англійської мови і дискурсивний аналіз.—Вінниця: Нова Книга,

2004.—С. 174—176.

22. Zoz O.A. Literary Discourse and Stylistics. A Guide to Stylistic

Analysis of Literary Texts = Зоз О.А. Літературна комунікація і

стилістика. Практикум зі стилістичного аналізу текстів.—Горлівка:

ГДПІІМ, 2002.—64с.

2.Advice on the Stylistic Analysis of Discourse

A. GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS

Stylistics is interested in many types, genres and styles of discourse

(spoken or written speech events) – from applications for a job to Shakespearean

sonnets, from the blabber of a drunken vagabond in the gutter to royal speeches in

British Parliament. In this respect, any subjective preferences are absolutely out

of the question. Analyzing a newspaper article or a legal document stylistically

may be no less interesting and instructive than criticizing a work of fiction,

modern or classical. Moreover: years of practical experience in teaching Stylistics

show that the philologically minded students much oftener misunderstand non-

fictional than fictional texts, and understanding is the ultimate goal of both

Stylistic Analysis and Text Interpretation (for the time being, we shall leave the

fine points of distinguishing between these disciplines aside).

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Now, there are two kinds of understanding: silent and worded. Uncle

Vasya – and we will use that nickname for an ordinary reader who is not a

Philologist – does not need verbally expressed understanding of what he is

reading, whereas a student of Philology does, for it is their duty to teach Uncle

Vasya how to understand texts silently. The difference between Uncle Vasya-as-

Reader and a Philologist-as-Analyst or Critic is like the difference between an

ordinary car driver and an engineer who knows the principles of the car engine’s

work. You don’t have to be an engineer to drive your car decently enough, do

you? You must only know which button to push when and which pedal to press in

what traffic situations. Yet if you want to learn to drive your car decently enough,

you’d rather turn for help to an engineer. Uncle Vasya need not be interested in

Stylistics or Text Interpretation, but a Student of Philology must, because s/he

must use them as an instrument to teach Vasya some decent reading. That is why

Stylistics and particularly Text Interpretation are sometimes called “Worded

Reflexion” (“вимовлена рефлексія”). “Reflection” (or “reflexion”) is a

psychological term meaning an ability to ask oneself questions about what is not

quite clear.

Consequently, understanding depends much on putting questions to

oneself as well as to others. Unfortunately, during the 70 years long rule of the

“sovok Pedagogy”, the healthy desire for asking questions has been knocked out

of the pupils’ heads. These backward practices, though now abandoned nearly

one student generation ago, sometimes persist both in schooling and University

Education. The hardest thing is to change one’s long formed mentality, though

now that a new generation schooled in the New Ukraine has come to the fore, the

situation seems to have somewhat improved. They say that once “the leader of

the World Proletariat” remarked that one fool may ask so many questions a dozen

wise men could not possibly answer. Yet, this is certainly not the case: “Ilyich”,

being an intellectual himself, did not like intellectuals and called them “shit”

because they are most of all inclined to reflection, and reflection is something that

the Proletariat must shake away, as it will distract their attention from the

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“revolutionary struggle”. They must first strike, and then, time permitting, think,

which is not absolutely necessary.

Suchlike philosophy was not only false, but dangerous. As a matter of

fact, fools usually keep silent. Some of them because their complex of inferiority

makes them fearful lest, by asking, they should reveal their stupidity. Others –

because they think they know everything, and that makes them happy (“happy”,

by the way, is semantically associated with “silly”: the Old English “sælig”

means “happy”). Both types of fools are very dangerous because those fearful

very quickly develop their inferiority complex into the superiority one (as was the

way to Fascism), and those «happy», if they are put to rule the country, would

bring it to ruination. It very much looks like the same thing happening now to

some of this country’s MP’s.

From what has been said above it follows that these two extremes are

super-human or morbid. Understanding or knowing everything is supernatural. It

is perhaps the privilege of a superb Entity (God, or Absolute Idea). But

understanding or knowing nothing is altogether inhuman or pathological, for

every moment of our existence we know that there is something we do not

understand, and something that we do. To learn more than I know, I ask

questions, and answering them (or trying to answer them), I am making a slow,

but sure progress. Partial understanding is the normal condition of a mentally

healthy person (so far, we leave the complicated problem of the difference

between knowledge and understanding aside). A mentally healthy person will

always know what it is exactly s/he does not understand: the ability to formulate

what I do not understand is a step forward to understanding what I want to. But

understanding with the help of stylistic analysis is different for fiction and non-

fiction texts (belletristic and non-belletristic Styles).

B.FICTION

Fiction is distinguished from Non-fiction by its being non-fact, or, better

to say, a fact of Verbal Art. Yet Art is not reality itself, it is an artistic

interpretation of reality. That is why what makes up the novelty and genuineness

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of a literary work is not the reality that it interprets, but its interpretation.

Dissertations written on the same topic (as Scientific Style texts) will not pass,

because their novelty is their topics. Yet novels written on the same topic will,

because their novelty is their interpretation of the topic. There is A.S.Pushkin’s

Don Juan in “Stone Guest” and G.G.Byron’s in “Don Juan”. Being “variations on

the topic”, they are quite different works of art each with its own philosophy and

interpretation of their hero.

There are certain topics that remain eternal. For instance, volumes had

been written about love long before “Romeo and Juliet” and are being written

after it. But each new work of literature on this topic, if it is really talented as

every genuine artwork ought to be, is usually consumed by the reading public

with unabated interest and aesthetic satisfaction.

To better understand the nature of Fiction-as-Style in comparison with

Non-Fiction, it is worthwhile considering them in the light of truth criteria. For

Non-Fiction, the truth criterion is that of Formal Logic according to which the

truth is what correlates with the existing state of affairs, while what does not is

false. Hence, in terms of Logic, Fiction is a pack of lies. To make a lie look true,

the liar should make his opponent believe it, and to make him believe it, he must

use certain rhetorical tricks, such as sustaining the lies by some false facts and/or

figures, introducing certain details or rhetorical figures of speech, tropes and

other stylistic devices to sound convincing and to manipulate, thereby, the minds

of the readers (listeners) in his interests. Indeed, this kind of “dirty language

games” is daily played by the mass media and advertisement. Any idea of

“objectivity” regarding the press and the advertisement is a fake for those

suffering from the childish naivety complex.

In other words, a militant Logician will claim that Literature, to make the

reader believe in its realistic background, or “verisimilitude”, will use the same

language tricks. At first glance, this kind of reasoning might seem valid in the

sense that, indeed, the entire stylistic machinery of a Fiction text is centered on

making the reader believe the story told. Adding to his argumentation, the

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Logician will perhaps remind us that Fiction writers themselves, from time to

time, admit the falsity of the stories they tell their readers by making statements

like “all the facts related in this story and the personages acting in it have

nothing to do with the real state of affairs”, and so on. But the Logician will

overlook the fact that suchlike statements, which are explicit markers of Fiction,

produce the effect contrary to their purpose, which is a very good proof that the

logical criterion of truth is not applicable to Verbal Art. In it, this criterion is

contrary to Logic. It is based on how well the writer manages to create the effect

of verisimilitude. The artistic truth is the truth of generalizations, typifications,

selections, overstatements (exaggerations) or understatements (diminutions) so

that its effect on the addressee may be stronger than the effect of reality itself and

make the reader throw out some of his adrenalin into his blood.

Since any work of Fiction is genuine, unprecedented and creative, since

it is strongly marked by its author’s individuality, there can be no standardized,

stereotypical scheme of its analysis. It will very much depend on the individuality

of the author, on the one hand, and on the individuality of the reader on the other.

Nevertheless, there certainly exists some general principle serving as a starting

device which puts this scheme into action. This principle is “Foregrounding”.

Those wanting to remind themselves of what Foregrounding is, are please

referred to [3, 6 –14]. Foregrounding is such an organization of text which makes

the reader involuntarily focus his attention on certain fragments making them

significant. Structurally, Foregrounding presents a system of stylistic means

which are united for their specific function and closely interrelated. As a rule, the

types of Foregrounding are said to be Strong Position, Coupling, Defeated

Expectancy, Convergence, and Salient Feature, although this list may well be

continued.

In addition to what the students may find about Foregrounding in the

textbooks, particularly by I.V.Arnold who always uses this notion in her concept

of Decoder Stylistics, the following points must be stressed.

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a) Foregrounding is aimed at awakening the reader’s reflection, that is at

making him ask questions.

b) The Salient Feature (dominant) is, strictly speaking, not simply one of

the types of Foregrounding. It is any of its types which has become actualized. In

other words, any of the types listed above may be promoted to the Salient Feature

if it is actualized, that is given additional significance to.

c) Since different readers have different personal qualities (age, gender,

professional distinctions, distinctions of their personal experience and level of

education etc.), in analyzing a text, they may proceed from their own Salient

Feature(s) which they think most significant in the text. Beginning their scheme

of analysis from various Salient Features, they eventually come to some

“common denominator” at the end, because different Salient Features are

logically connected.

d) Salient Features may be of two types: perceptive and cognitive.

Perceptive ones are those that have been listed by I.V.Arnold (see the reference

above). Cognitive ones are rather not “Foregrounding”, but “Backgrounding”.

They are those fragments of the text which seem to the reader to be not well

understandable. For each individual reader that fragment is most important

which s/he does not very well understand and which provokes most of the

questions. This fragment should be the beginning and the end of the scheme of

analysis (see [4]).

e) In a Fiction text, Perceptive and Cognitive Salient Features (SF) are

linked up by two different types of information. According to I.R.Galperin1, one

type of information answers the question what is told in the story and is called

“content-factual information”. The other one answers the question why it is told,

and is called “content-conceptual information”. The first type of information is

the surface layer of the story and is explicit, while the second type is deep and

should be revealed by the reader’s mental effort. Respectively, the Perceptive SF

is associated with the content-factual information, and the Cognitive SF is

1 1 Гальперин И.Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. – М.: Наука, 1981.

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associated with content-conceptual information. To illustrate the situation, let us

consider a couple of anecdotes. First, because any anecdote is a comical “micro-

story”, and therefore may be quite faithfully referred to a fictional genre.

Secondly, the brevity of the genre makes them easily retold avoiding references

to the literature of “big genres” that might not be known to the student and

illustrating things without lengthy explanations.

One was picked up from a former Soviet newspaper many years ago.

Rendered in English, it reads like this: “Two tractor drivers, returning late at

night from a concert hall, started to discuss Musorgsky, and eventually found

themselves in the gutter”.

First of all, it is essential to note that this joke would not be

understandable to a foreigner who does not know what most of “Sovok” tractor

drivers were (and many of them, by tradition, still are) like. The information

about the fact is associated with the so-called “background knowledge”

(nationally and culturally specific phenomena) and shows that nearly every work

of Fiction as an event of nationally specific culture is based on this kind of

knowledge, which adds to the difficulty of understanding.

Secondly, the effect of this joke is based on the type of Foregrounding

called “Defeated Expectancy”. Our background knowledge about Soviet and

many Post-Soviet tractor drivers makes us be taken by surprise that one

occasionally may find, among the tractor drivers, highly intelligent people

interested in classical music.

Thirdly, it is evident that such an interpretation is primitive. The so-

called “Defeated Expectancy” is only an external form to emphasize the norm in

an ironic key: “concert hall” is a pub, “discussing Musorgsky” is a drunken

scuffle, and falling into the gutter is the evident result. The general conclusion is

that “Defeated Expectancy” is the content-factual information, while the ironic

tone is the content-conceptual information.

The second one is a Russian anecdote more popular in our days, and has

many different versions, though it originates from the former Soviet background

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as well. It pokes fun at xenophobia, which shows to greater or smaller extent in

almost every nation of the world, and satirizes black racism, so that Moscow

skin-heads might appreciate it best of all because in The States it is now a thing

of the past. Its idea is that all Afro-Americans are savages who live in the trees:

“A hot summer afternoon in a village … A black fellow who looks very sick as if

he had just been vomiting is leaning against a tree. An old collective-farmer is

passing by and asks the man, ‘You okay?’ ‘Oh no’, the poor guy answers. ‘Take

you home?’ the old man suggests sympathetically. ‘Oh yeah, do please’. ‘Okay,

lemme help you up’”.

A question arises, then, how we pass from one type of information to the

other. In trying to answer it, we observe that the above story of the tractor drivers,

for instance, when considered at the level of content-factual information, does not

motivate its ending. We cannot see quite clearly why “discussing composers”

should end up in the gutter, which urges us to settling the problem by rising to the

next level of conceptual information. The story of the Sick Black testifies to the

same effect: the absurdity of the farmer’s way of offering help to the man

provokes the question answering which is readily suggested by the level of

conceptual information. In other words, the motivation clash between the two

types of information signalizes, with a high degree of certainty, the need of

passing on to a higher level of interpretation.

Concluding this section, we must stress that a reduction of content-

conceptual information in a literary work to its content-factual information is a

frequent mistake of the ordinary reader that reveals a very low level or reading

culture. One of the important didactic tasks of the Philologist is to teach Uncle

Vasya not to make such deplorable mistakes, because this kind of a reduction

makes the masterpieces of Literature look commonplace and silly, it testifies to

the fact that they have been misunderstood.

C.NON-FICTION

In Non-Belletristic Styles there is no content-conceptual information, or

better to say, their content-conceptual information coincides with the content-

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factual one. Besides, there is no textual Foregrounding there, there is only

metatextual one as in expressions of the kind of it must be noted that…, one

should take into account the fact that…etc., etc. Being cliché-like and occurring

with highly predictable regularity, such expressions have very little effect if any,

and may easily put a student reading his or her textbook after dinner to sleep.

The stylistic apparatus of texts belonging to such styles is primarily

argumentative, not aesthetic. All these features make it possible to state that the

author’s individuality in such texts is very much reduced to standard level in the

sense that the stylistic norm of this or that text imposes great limitations on the

manifestation of the author’s personality, although it does not disappear

altogether. More or less free in this respect is perhaps Publicist Style, that is why

it may be situated closest to Fiction so far as the influence on the reader is

concerned.

The highly standardized nature of non-belletristic texts makes it possible

to apply a standard procedure of their analysis, according to the standard schema.

It consists in the level by-level systemic description of distinctive features

(graphical, morphemic, lexical, syntactic etc.) for the purpose of defining the

Functional Style (FS) the text belongs to.

There may be two approaches to this procedure: inductive and deductive

(from particular to the generic and the other way round). In other words, we are

allowed either to proceed from the features to the Style or from the Style to its

features and then see if the features singled out correlate with our hypothesis

concerning the FS of the text. This latter approach is made most of all accepted

for a number of practical and theoretical reasons.

The interest and the complexity of analyzing non-fictional texts lie in the

study of correlations between the distinctive and the optional (peripheral)

features. It is also centered on the cases of the so-called “stylistic transposition”

when texts stylistically imitate one another. But, again, the extent of such an

imitation will depend on the FS considered.

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3. Assignments and Recommendation to Specimen Texts

For this seminar we recommend the students to choose for the analysis

two texts from [10]. First Edition: Text 7, P.115 – 116, and Text 28, P.134 –135.

Second Edition: Text 9, P.125 – 126, and Text 32, P.151 –153. Below questions

are suggested and some background clues to help the procedure.

TEXT 7, P. 115 – 116 (TEXT 9, P. 125 – 126)

The text is a letter written in mid-eighteenth century by the famous author

of the first real English Dictionary, Samuel Jonson, published in 1755.

Samuel Jonson (1709 – 1784) was educated in Litchfield and in Pembroke

College. Poverty prevented him from getting a degree. In 1735 he set up his own

school, but in 1737 set off with his disciple David Garric for London, where he

planned to live by writing. Jonson was not only an outstanding Lexicographer of

his time (he had been working at his dictionary for nine years), but also a writer

and a poet, and a brilliant publicist. He wrote a number of satirical verses and was

the author of many publicist works. He was also a literary critic who made us

better understand Shakespeare. Several moralizing essays were also published by

him. But his Dictionary remained the gem of his creative legacy. Before the

emergence of «Webster», it remained unrivalled and even now presents certain

philological value. In his life as a personality he knew many famous public

figures of his day, but the people around complained that he was sometimes

rough in his manners, though very clever. Although he was morally and

physically healthy, after the publication of the Dictionary he turned very

melancholy. For need of society, he started to collect «lame ducks» at his club –

people of all walks of life but unlucky in some way or another.

After the publication of the Dictionary his position temporarily improved,

but life had always treated him hard, especially after the death of his wife. All

these circumstances, perhaps, explain his melancholy frame of mind.

Jonson’s letter is addressed to Philip Dormer Stanhope, known as The

Fourth Earl of Chesterfield (1694 – 1773), or Lord Chesterfield. Lord

Chesterfield had gone in History as an English Statesman of some distinction, and

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excellent letter-writer with a style marked for its elegance. In his lifetime he held

various diplomatic and political posts, sponsoring also many cultural and artistic

projects. Lord Chesterfield was famous for his «Letters» to his natural son Philip

Stanhope. In those letters he gave Philip many a comprehensive and shrewd

counsel on worldly poise and manners with grace and ease so typical of his style.

Jonson’s Dictionary was among the projects Lord Chesterfield was supposed to

sponsor. The fact that Sam Jonson wrote a letter to Lord Chesterfield repudiating

his tardy patronage of the Dictionary has been entered in the encyclopaedias.

Thus the background of the letter becomes clear to us, which explains much

about its stylistic features. Considering the above information, please try to

answer these questions.

1. Name the formal features of letter writing standard that are present in this

document. Name the typical clichés and the conventional formulae of

etiquette used in letter writing as seen in this text. Have the features changed

much within the last two hundred and fifty years?

2. Speak about the choice of words in the letter. Name the obsolescent ones, if

any. Find an obsolescent syntactic structure.

3. What is the nature of Sam’s complaints and what does he accuse his

addressee of?

4. Why does the tone of the letter seem too much affected?

5. Find cases of irony in the text and explain its use.

6. Describe the Syntax of the letter considering the dominant sentence

structures and the mean sentence length (divide the number of words in the

text by the number of sentences).

7. What can you say about the logical structure of the paragraphs in the letter?

How are the key sentences situated in relation to the rest of them in the

paragraphs (beginning, middle, end or framing?). Is this structure regularly

repeated or not? What is the dominant logical structure of the paragraphs

with regard to the arrangement of postulatory, argumentative and

formulative sentences?

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8. Find the sarcastic passages in the text and explain their presence there.

9. Find cases of Epithet, Simile, Oxymoron and Allusion. Explain their

stylistic-rhetorical function.

10.Considering the features singled out, define the Functional Style of the letter.

11.Mind the fact that the letter was published and belongs to the genre of the so

called “open letters”.

TEXT 28, P. 134 – 135 (TEXT 32, P. 151 – 153)

1. What is the occasion for this “assembly” of the Forsytes? Who are the

participants of the situation?

2. Which is (or are) the Salient Feature(s) for you in the text? Why do you

think is stylistic inversion used in the opening sentence of the passage?

3. How is, in your opinion, the Thematic Network arranged in the text?

4. Explain the role of Zoosemy in the text.

5. Explain the role of the Stock Exchange simile.

6. How is the Forsytean ideal of a bridegroom described in the passage?

7. What is your understanding of the sentence, mentioning Bosinney’s hat?

Find the episode in the Novel (“The Man of Property”) in which his hat is

first mentioned and on what occasion?

8. Discuss all the nicknames given to Bosinney in the passage and explain the

reason why. How many of them are there? How often is his name

mentioned?

9. Give examples of speech characterization in the passage.

10.What stylistic means are employed by the author in the description of “a tall

woman with a beautiful figure” and who is she?

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