Sample test 2 Introduction to textual analysis Answer the following questions: 1. What types of stylistics are distinguished? 2. What disciplines is stylistics connected with? 3. What is a norm in linguistics? 4. What is the correlation between an invariant and variants? 5. What types does context fall into? 6. What does the dichotomy of language and speech consist in? 7. Define expressive means of a language. 8. In what way is intensification achieved in expressive means? 9. Enumerate the types of expressive means. 10. What is a stylistic device? 11. Define a functional style. 12. What is Galperin’s classification of functional styles? Do you know any other classification of functional styles of the English language? 13. What substyles do functional styles fall into? 14. What types of meaning are distinguished in linguistics and correspondingly in stylistics? 15. Define the term “polysemanticism”. 16. Give the definition of a sign. 17. What is a word? 18. How do you understand the terms “imagery” and “image”? 19. How do we differentiate between logical, emotive and nominal meanings? 20. What are contextual meanings of a word? 21. What is the correlation between the denotational and the connotational meanings? What are the types of the latter? 22. What strata of the word-stock belong to the standard English vocabulary? 23. What do we include in the literary vocabulary? Characterize each of the groups. 24. How can archaisms be subdivided? 25. What are the stages of a word’s becoming archaic? 26. How do barbarisms differ from foreignisms? 27. What are nonce-words? 28. How does slang differ from jargonisms? 29. What is the difference between jargonisms and professional words? 30. What was the difference in the use of vulgarisms in Shakespearian times and the Enlightenment? Are they often used nowadays?
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Practical tasks 1. Identify the tenor and the vehicle in the following metaphores: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
You are my knight in shining armour You are my sunshine You are a pain in the neck He is the apple of her eye She was my worst nightmare The house will be paradise That pudding was an absolute dream You’re a brick!
2. The poem below by Sylvia Plath is full of explicit metaphors, and also contains some similes. (1) Identify the metaphors, and their ground, tenor and vehicle (2) Identify the similes (these also can be explained in terms of ground, tenor and vehicle). You’re 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.
Clownlike, happiest on your hands, Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled, Gilled like a fish. A common-sense Thumbs-down on the dodo’s mode. Wrapped up in yourself like a spool, Trawling your dark as owls do.
7. Mute as a turnip from the Fourth 8. Of July to All Fools’ Day, 9. high-riser, my little loaf. 10. Vague as a fog and looked for like mail. 11. Farther off than Australia. 12. Bent-backed Atlas, our travelled prawn. 13. Snug as a bug and at home 14. Like a sprat in a pickle jug. 15. A creel of eels all ripples. 16. Jumpy as a Mexican Bean. 17. Right, like a well-done sum. 18. A clean slate, with your own face on.
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3. Which type of metaphor is employed in the poem below? Give reasons/backup for your answer. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes, The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes, Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening, Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains, Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys, Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap, And seeing it was a soft October night, Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
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