Осознанное чтение тексты и задания = Mindful Reading texts and tasks. Учебное пособие = Textbook-1

PART 2. FUNCTIONAL STYLISTICS: NON-FICTION

expanding the headline, both summarizes and begins to tell the story. The distinctive features of reporting manifest themselves in the answers to ‘what-where-when’ questions. The news report represents the impersonal monologue with the sources of information cited which adds to the objectivity of the material. The last paragraph of the article, or the background, is not directly connected with its contents; it serves to give additional information on the presented mediatopic.

V.Characterize the addressee of the text

The text is intended for a wide audience of readers; its value is determined by the novelty of the message as well as the factor of human interest.

VI. Describe the style-forming features of the text

The news article is characterized by precision and clarity. It produces an impression of being fact-based and impersonal. The structure of the text is logical and conventional; it follows the standard composition of a news report. The text is devoid of emotiveness and expressiveness, which contributes to its objective tone.

VII. Characterize the linguistic features of the text, its lexical and syntactical peculiarities

Facts and figures provided make the article sound documental and relevant. The words are used in their logical / direct meanings; they are stylistically neutral, their choice is predetermined by the mediatopic (mummy, archaeologists, excavation, remains). The sentences are complete and moderately long, which guarantees the informative value of the material. Complex sentences with a developed system of clauses are used, sentences with the direct word order prevail. Quotations indicate the source of information (said archaeologist Pieter Van Dalen Luna on Friday), which is a typical feature of news reporting. The paragraphs consist of 1-2 sentences, it is a slight deviation from a popular ‘one sentence – one paragraph’ pattern which aims to facilitate the process of reading.

VIII. Characterize the figure of the author and identify peculiarities of his / her individual style

The authorship of the published material is not indicated; the name of the news provider – Reuters – is given instead. Hence,

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being ‘an information product’, this media text lacks individuality of expression.

Text 2.17

12 camels disqualified from Saudi beauty contest in ‘Botox’ row

Twelve animals disqualified from country’s annual show after receiving injections to improve their pout

Matthew Weaver | 24 January 2018

Twelve camels have been disqualified from Saudi Arabia’s annual camel beauty contest after receiving botulinum toxin injections to make their pouts look more alluring.

Saudi authorities have raised the profile of the King Abdulaziz camel festival by relocating it from the desert to the outskirts of the capital, Riyadh.

This year’s event has been mired in scandal after the lure of $31.8m (£22.6m) in prize money tempted some owners to cheat.

The key attributes in camel beauty are considered to be delicate ears and fulsome snouts. But there are strict rules against the use of drugs in the lips, or shaved or clipped body parts.

This year, a dozen camels were banned after a vet was caught performing plastic surgery on them. Camels were also given Botoxtype injections at his clinic, according to Saudi media.

“They use Botox for the lips, the nose, the upper lips, the lower lips and even the jaw,” Ali al-Mazrouei, the son of an Emirati camel breeder, told the UAE daily the National.

“It makes the head more inflated so when the camel comes it’s like, ‘Oh, look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose.’”

After the banning decision, the chief judge of the show, Fawzan alMadi, told Reuters: “The camel is a symbol of Saudi Arabia. We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.”

The month-long festival is the biggest in the Gulf and involves up 30,000 camels.

(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/24/saudi-camel-beauty- contest-judges-get--hump-botox-cheats)

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Tasks

1.Identify the subject matter of the article.

2.What media genre does it represent: news / views / features / advertisements? How can you prove it?

3.What is the key function of the article? How does the function shape the choice of the language?

4.Is the authorship indicated? Is the personality of the author reflected in the article?

5.Enumerate at least 5 style-forming features of the text.

6.Comment on the headline of the article: what grammatical and lexical peculiarities can you trace? What are the functions of the headline? Do you find it effective?

7.Is the composition of the article typical of the texts of this kind?

Text 2.18

Beyond the Text: Matching

1)convoluted

2)deity

3)tо get the ball rolling

4)to reckon

5)eloquence

6)ancestors

7)to worship

a)a god or a supernatural being

b)twisted, complex, difficult to understand

c)the quality of delivering a forceful and persuasive speech

d)to have a strong feeling of admiration and respect

e)to calculate an amount

f)to make something begin

g)people from whom you are descended

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Why Wednesday? The days of the week have a convoluted religious heritage

The Romans may have got the ball rolling with their seven-day week, but weekday names in English owe as much to Anglo-Saxon gods

Margaret Clunies Ross for the Conversation | Tue 2 Jan ‘18 00.38 GMT

The origins of our days of the week lie with the Romans. The Romans named their days of the week after the planets, which in turn were named after the Roman gods:

•dies Solis “the day of the sun (then considered a planet)”

•dies Lunae “the day of the moon”

•dies Martis, “the day of Mars”

•dies Mercurii, “the day of Mercury”

•dies Iovis, “the day of Jupiter”

•dies Veneris, “the day of Venus”

•dies Saturni, “the day of Saturn”

When the Germanic-speaking peoples of western Europe adopted the seven-day week, which was probably in the early centuries of the Christian era, they named their days after those of their own gods who were closest in attributes and character to the Roman deities.

It was one of those peoples, the Anglo-Saxons, that brought their gods and language (what would become English) to the British Isles during the fifth and sixth centuries AD.

In English, Saturday, Sunday and Monday are named for Saturn, the sun and moon respectively, following the Latin.

The remaining four days (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday) are named for gods that the Anglo-Saxons probably worshipped before they migrated to England and during the short time before they converted to Christianity after that.

Tuesday is named for the god Tiw, about whom relatively little is known. Tiw was probably associated with warfare, just like the Roman god Mars.

Wednesday is named for the god Woden, who is paralleled with the Roman god Mercury, probably because both gods shared attributes of eloquence, the ability to travel, and the guardianship of the dead.

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Thursday is Thunor’s day, or, to give the word its Old English form, Thunresdæg “the day of Thunder”. This sits beside the Latin dies Iovis, the day of Jove or Jupiter. Both of these gods are associated with thunder in their respective mythologies.

You may recognise a similarity here with the name of the famous Norse god Thor. This may be more than coincidence. Vikings arrived in England in the ninth century, bringing their own very similar gods with them. Anglo-Saxons were already Christian by this time, but may have recognised the similarity between the name of their ancestors’ deity Thunor and the Norse god. We don’t know, but the word Thor does appear in written texts from the period.

Friday is the only weekday named for a female deity, Frig, who is hardly mentioned anywhere else in early English. The name does appear, however, as a common noun meaning “love, affection” in poetry. That is why Frig was chosen to pair with the Roman deity Venus, who was likewise associated with love and sex, and was commemorated in the Latin name for Friday.

Of gods and weekdays

The concept of the week, that is, a cycle of seven numbered or named days with one of them (usually Sunday or Monday) fixed as the first, was originally probably associated with the Jewish calendar. This was complicated by the fact that early medieval Europe inherited its idea of the week from imperial Rome, via the Christian church.

In early Christianity the reckoning of time was crucial to the proper celebration of the church’s feast days and holidays, especially the variable feast of Easter.

We find day names similar to English in related European languages, like Dutch, German, and all the Scandinavian or Norse languages. Gods with comparable names, like Tyr, Othinn, Thor and Frigg, were certainly known to the Scandinavians and gave their names to weekdays in Scandinavian languages (compare Modern Danish tisdag, onsdag, torsdag, fredag).

The Latin names for the days of the week, and the Roman gods for which they were named, still live on in all the European Romance languages, like French, Spanish and Italian. Think of French lundi,

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mardi, mercredi, jeudi and vendredi, for example, and you will find the Latin Luna, Mars, Mercurius, Iovis and Venus hidden behind them.

* Margaret Clunies Ross is emeritus professor of English language and early English literature at the University of Sydney

(https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jan/02/why-wednesday-the-days-of-the- week-have-a-convoluted-religious-heritage)

Beyond the Text: Cultural aspect

What do you know about the etymology of the names of weekdays in the Russian language? In other languages?

Tasks

1.What is the subject matter of the article?

2.What media genre does it belong to: news / views / features / advertisements? What makes you think so?

3.Can you identify the function(s) of the article?

4.Is the authorship indicated? How is the personality of the author reflected in the text?

5.Can you explain the use of personal pronouns in the article? What do they add to the text?

6.Explain the use of modal verbs in the article.

7.Consider the headline and the subhead in terms of the vocabulary used. Do you think the choice of ‘Wednesday’ is accidental?

Text 2.19

People flocked to language apps during the pandemic – but how much can they actually teach you?

The first of a series on how digital technologies shape our thoughts, emotions and interior lives

Shelley Hepworth | 31 December 2021

In March 2020, as the Covid pandemic took hold, the language learning app Duolingo reported double its usual number of sign-ups. Stuck inside under lockdown orders, people had time on their hands and were looking for ways to occupy it.

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PART 2. FUNCTIONAL STYLISTICS: NON-FICTION

It wasn’t long before I joined its 500 million users in an attempt to recapture the feeling of learning Portuguese during three months spent in Brazil several years ago: that heady thrill of realizing I had conveyed the meaning I meant to, the strange alchemy of suddenly understanding what people around me were saying. Could an app give me that?

Ninety days, hundreds of new words and plenty of lessons, “crowns” and “streaks” later, it didn’t feel like it. Was the app teaching me anything at all?

Entering 2022 with renewed enthusiasm to learn the language, I decided to see what the experts say. Ingrid Piller, a linguistics expert at Macquarie University, says the process of picking up a new language can feel mysterious because there are several elements going on at the same time.

These can be divided into the linguistic and the social. On the linguistic side, you must learn new words, grammatical structures and pronunciation. If you are taking up a language as an intellectual exercise, or so you know how to order a meal on a trip to Paris, apps are really useful.

But if you want to converse and impart meaning, then that’s where things get difficult. “Language is about interacting with other people, it’s not something we do alone,” Piller says.

“The really big challenge of language learning is actually for our minds to bring all these elements together creatively and make decisions [in the moment]: how do I pronounce this? What kind of words do I choose? And how do I put these together in a grammatically correct sentence, or in larger chunks that produce conversations?”

An app can help you with the linguistic, but not the social. And because apps such as Duolingo borrow elements from gaming, they are pretty good at teaching you those building blocks. During lockdown, I spent about 15 minutes a day doing lessons and quizzes, and perfecting my pronunciation of my favorite phrase in Portuguese, “a gente” (we) – it just sounds good!

But the more you want to learn, the more diverse your language learning should be, Piller says. You might take classes, watch videos and read Twitter in the other language, while keeping the app as a useful tool on the side.

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“You get achievement points for logging in every day and unlocking the next level.Some apps do this better than others,but the gamification element is really important in keeping people glued to screen,” Piller says. Using the app regularly will give you better results than doing a 20-hour language course over a semester, but then nothing for three months. It’s all about consistency.

But the dopamine hit I got from the gaming elements in the app wasn’t the same as the thrill I got from booking a table in a restaurant over the phone in Portuguese. There is something vulnerable about learning a language; you have to overcome your fear of sounding stupid. And that’s where true achievement lies – in taking a risk to connect and being understood.

An app has none of that social peril – it’s safe, and therefore slightly empty.

“We come to think about all kinds of achievement in this metricized way,” Piller says. “[Apps] give us a metric sense of achievement, but it’s a quantity without a quality.”

Just as social media apps provide a vehicle for connection, but not connection itself, the magic of language learning happens in the world, not on the screen. And it is a kind of magic. While I was in Brazil, I met a guy who told me he and his girlfriend would sometimes go on dates where they only conversed in English. He said it felt like they were different people discovering each other anew.

It’s a comforting thought at a time when travelling overseas is so difficult – the idea that our worlds are created through language, and with a new language we can recreate our familiar worlds afresh.

(https://www.theguardian.com/technology/commentisfree/2022/jan/01/ people-flocked-to-language-apps-during-the-pandemic-but-how-much- can-they-actually-teach-you)

Tasks

1.Outline the contents of the article.

2.What do you think about the author’s aim in writing the article?

3.Can you identify the media genre of the article? Does it belong to news / views / features / adds?

4.How is the personality of the author expressed in the article? How does it affect the tone of the text?

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5.Can you identify the peculiarities of the author’s style? Comment on the language of the article.

6.Who might be interested in reading the article? Was it of interest to you? What do you think of the issue discussed in the article, specifically, about the role of language apps in learning a language?

Text 2.20

‘Just wanted to get on TV’: Twist after $1billion ‘lotto winner’s’ celebration

Millions of people who watched a woman’s reaction to winning California’s billion dollar jackpot will be surprised by the latest update.

Staff writers | July, 25, 2023

The woman who appeared on TV claiming to be California’s billiondollar Powerball winner was a fake who “just wanted to get on the news”, according to a source.

Footage of the woman walking into the Las Palmitas Mini Mart — a small convenience store in east LA that sold the winning ticket — went viral after it appeared on local news channel KTLA on Thursday night. In the clip, the woman was stormed by reporters as she entered the store and asked whether she was the winner.

She broke down in tears and managed a quick nod, before thanking God and her fellow patrons and sprinting off down the street. “Honey, I can’t. I’m scared right now, I’m so scared,” she said before breaking from the crowd.

The footage was shared on Twitter, where it was viewed more than five million times and many congratulated the woman on her win — but it seems it was not real. The true winner of the $1.08 billion (A$1.59 billion) fortune is yet to come forward, according to Sarai Palacios, the granddaughter of Nabor Herrera, who owns the convenience store.

“She didn’t win. I’m not sure why she did that. I guess she just wanted to be on TV,” Ms Palacios told the Daily Mail. “We don’t know who the winner is yet. They still haven’t come forward.”

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The huge jackpot means Ms Palacios’s family is set to receive a $1 million windfall of its own as a reward for selling the winning ticket. Her grandfather plans to spend the cash on a luxury holiday and a college fund, Ms Palacios said. Though the real owner of the billiondollar ticket is yet to come forward, they will eventually have to do so. Californian law mandates that the names of lottery winners be released publicly, though no other identifying information is required to be shared.

The California Lottery quickly shut down any speculation as to the winner’s identity. “Anybody claiming to be the winner isn’t valid until we say it is,” spokesperson Carolyn Becker said at a press conference outside the convenience store on Thursday morning. Last week, it was revealed a single ticket had won the huge Powerball jackpot after weeks of frenzied ticket-buying.

The jackpot had last been won on April 19 and, after 38 consecutive draws without a winner, climbed to a staggering $1.08 billion (A$1.59 billion). It comes after fellow Californian Edwin Castro became the richest winner in Powerball history, cleaning up a staggering US$2 billion (A$3 billion) last year and making him an overnight billionaire.

(https://www.news.com.au/finance/money/wealth/just-wanted-to-get-on- tv-twist-after-1billion-lotto-winners-celebration/news-story/8dcde7de280 4a9760fbf4bb7d045d9bc)

Tasks

1.What newsworthy event is reported in the article?

2.Comment on the language means used in the headline and the subhead, are they in line with their functions?

3.Characterize the linguistic features of the article.

4.How can you explain the use of emotionally coloured vocabulary in the text of the news item?

5.What topic / problem could this article illustrate if you chose it for group discussion?

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