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Файл:From a word to an idea. Part 1. Учебное пособие
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Paragraph building in the style of official documents is mainly governed by
the conventional forms of documents (Charters, pacts, diplomatic documents,
business letters, legal documents, etc.) Here paragraphs may embody a number of
parallel clauses, which for the sake of the wholeness of the entire document are
made formally subordinate, whereas in reality they are independent items [8].
E.g.: “Accordingly, our respective Governments, through representatives
assembled in the city of San Francisco, who have exhibited their full powers found
to be in good in due form, have agreed to the present Charter of the United Nations
and do hereby establish an international organization to be known as the United
Nations”.
Paragraph structure in the belles-lettres and publicist styles is strongly
affected by the purport of the author. The writer introduces details, illustrations,
comparisons, contrasts; he looks at the topic from different angles [8].
E.g.: It poured with rain the day I left. But I was filled with excitement, a
strange exuberant sense of taking wing. I didn't know where I was going, but I knew
what I needed. I needed a new land, a new race, a new language; and, although I
couldn't have put it into words then, I needed a new mystery. (Fowles)
This paragraph is taken from the novel ‘”The Magus” written by John Fowles.
It describes the emotional state of the main character when he was leaving the
school where he had taught children for one term. The main idea of this paragraph is
to intensify the emotional state – the desire of the main character to resign from the
school and the monotony and boredom of a school life.
3. Text types
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Writing is done for a number of different purposes and for different
audiences. These different forms of writing are often known as text types. Linguists
distinguish two main text types: factual and literary texts.
Factual texts inform, instruct or persuade by giving facts and information.
Literary texts entertain or elicit an emotional response by using language to create
mental images.
There are several types of factual texts:
1) factual description which describes a place or thing using facts (e.g.
landscape descriptions);
2) factual recount which retells events which have already happened in
time order (e.g. historical report);
3) information report which purpose is to classify, to describe and give
factual information about people, animals, things or phenomena (e.g. facts about
whales);
4) procedure which gives instructions on how to make or to do something
(recipes, instructions);
5) procedural recount which purpose is to tell how something was made or
done in time order and with accuracy (e.g. documentary, retelling a science
experiment);
6) persuasive texts that give a point of view (e.g. a team’s argument for a
debate).
Literary texts are divided into:
1) literary descriptions which describe people, characters, places, events
and things in an imaginative way (e.g. a description of a character or setting within a
story);
2) literary recounts which purpose is to retell events from novels, plays,
films and personal experiences to entertain others (e.g. a humorous and creatively
interpreted recount of an ordinary incident that actually took place);
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3) personal responses which give a personal opinion on a novel, play or
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film, referring to parts within the passage (e.g. Describe why you do not like this
story);
4) reviews which summarize, analyze and assess the appeal of a novel,
play or film to a broader audience (e.g. commentary on a film, play or book);
5) narratives which are aimed at telling a story using a series of events
(e.g. fairy tales, fables, plays, science fiction).
4. Text categories
Text is not a chaotic conglomeration of linguistic units but an organized
system which is characterized by specific features also known as text categories:
1) structural subdivision;
2) cohesion;
3) coherence;
4) informative character;
5) integrity and completeness;
6) modality.
All these categories are interrelated and interdependent. Text is a rather
complicated phenomenon that hasn’t lost the interest of linguists who use various
approaches to study it. Thus they single out different number of text categories1.
a) Speaking about its structural subdivision we can mention that a text can
be divided into smaller units: parts, chapters, paragraphs. On the one hand each has
its own subject of discussion; on the other hand these units are interrelated as they
transmit the author’s idea.
and pragmatic orientation will be discussed in unit 3.
In this unit we will limit our discussion only to four of them. Such categories as modality
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In many cases the interpretation of an extract from the text may differ from
interpretation of the whole text, as the text itself suits as a kind of context for
revealing the main idea.
b) Thus we say that coherence and cohesion are the basic differential
features (categories) of the text.
Cohesion is a formal unity of structural parts of the text, coherence is a
semantic unity. In most cases these categories come together as coherence is based
on cohesion.
Michael Halliday, an English linguist, singles out several categories of the
cohesion. It may be expressed through:
reference;
substitution;
ellipsis;
conjunctions;
lexical repetition [8].
Cohesion expresses the continuity existing between parts of the text; it is
expressed partly through grammar, partly through the vocabulary.
E.g. “John sat down to rest at the foot of a huge beech-tree. Now he was so
tired that he soon fell asleep; a leaf fell on him, and then another, and then another,
and before long he was covered with leaves, yellow, golden and brown”.
Reference: In the extract given above the noun “leaf” is connected with the
beech-tree. The two are not clearly identical in reference, since tree and leaf are not
synonyms, but the interpretation of leaf depends on beech-tree. We know that the
leaf was the beech-leaf.
Substitution: the proper noun “John” used in the first sentence is substituted
by pronouns “he”, “him” in the second one.
Ellipsis: “and then another” is supposed to be understood as “and then another
leaf fell upon him”.
Conjunctions: “and” unites the homogeneous members.
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Lexical repetition: leaf – leaves; and then another (repeated twice).
Cohesion is common for all texts, “it makes a text a text”.
Here is the list of the most important cohesive devices in English:
A: definite reference:
1) personal pronouns;
2) the definite article;
3) deictics: this, that, these, those, etc;
4) implied deictics: same, different, other, else, such, etc;
5) substitution: pro-forms such as one, ones, do and so;
6) ellipsis: omission or deletion of the elements;
7) formal repetition of words, morphemes, phrases, etc;
8) elegant variation: use of an alternative expression;
B: linkage:
1) coordinating conjunctions: and, or, but, both … and, neither … nor, etc;
2) linking adverbials: for, so, yet, however, therefore, meanwhile, for
example, etc [8].
So text is a communicative unit that consists of a sequence of utterances
(supra-phrasal unities) interconnected semantically, syntactically (structurally) and
pragmatically. That means that it is characterized by semantic and structural
completeness, by the author’s attitude and by his pragmatic intention.
5. Title of a text
The title is the first sign of a literary work. It is an obligatory part of a story
and it has a fixed location in it. The title can be interpreted prospectively,
introspectively and retrospectively. While being interpreted prospectively the title
hints at the contents of a story, what it is about. While reading a story we try to
understand the meaning of the title introspectively and a prospective interpretation
changes. After reading the story we come back to the title and interpret it
retrospectively and we understand it much better or even change the first opinion.
Any title passes two stages – concretization and generalization.
Concretization means that the title stands for something definite in a story. E.g.
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Aitmatov’s white ship (белый пароход) stands for a definite dream of one boy, but
after reading the novel we understand that it reveals a general dream of something
beautiful and something that might have been. Thus the title becomes not concrete
but general.
6. The object and the aim of interpretation
Literature is a medium for transmitting aesthetic information. To be operative,
it must, like any other kind of communication, involve not only the addresser (the
author) but also the addressee (the reader). Indeed, a literary work is always written
for an audience, whether the author admits it or not. When an author sets out to
write, he is urged on by a desire to impart his vision of the world, his attitude
towards it, to someone, i.e. tо an addressee (a reader). His attitude may be quite
obviously expressed, or, on the contrary, be presented in a seemingly impersonal
way. An author may have, each time, a particular kind of reader in mind. But he will
always write for a reader whom he expects to share his attitude, imbibe it and adopt
it as his own. A truly talented work of imaginative literature always affects the
reader, reaches his intellect and emotions, in a way moulding both. In this lies the
social import of the literary work, its educational value. The more talented the work,
the greater is its appeal and, as a result, the greater is its social and educational value
and significance.
Thus, the literary text (work) is an act of communication of the author with
the reader. But the existence of the relationship: the author — the literary work —
the reader should not automatically give grounds for an assumption that what the
author has conveyed in the work passes on to the reader naturally and easily. In
other words, the reading of the work does not necessarily result in the reader's direct
perception of what the author has conveyed.
The complexity of the literary work, since it is an involved interrelation of the
objective and the subjective, the real and the imagined, the direct and the implied,
makes the perception of it a creative effort. He, who penetrates into the subtleties of
the literary work, is sharing the author's aesthetic world. He becomes a sort of a cocreator, a fact, which alone makes reading an aesthetic pleasure. While, on the other
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a literary work
the author’s reality
the author’s reality,
reconstructed by the reader
hand, one who does not see the involved nature of the literary work tends to
oversimplify it. It is oversimplification when one sees only the surface (plot) level
of the book, the literary characters and conflicts as life individuals engaged in life
conflicts. It is needless to point out that in the latter case the reader has not profited
by the book as he might have done [4].
The main aim of the reader is to reconstruct (to decode) a maximum of the
author’s ideas and thoughts. This process can be shown by the following scheme:
An ideal result is that they should be identical. In fact, it’s difficult to make
them purely identical, because a literary work on its way to the reader encounters
quite a number of hindrances of all sorts—social, historical, temporal, cultural and
so on. Many of these differences between the author and his reader are inevitable.
Readers and authors may be separated by historical epochs, social conventions,
religious and political views, cultural and national traditions. Moreover, even if the
author and the reader belong to the same society no reader can completely identify
himself with the author emotionally, intellectually or aesthetically. Apart from these
objective and personal factors we cannot disregard the complexity of certain works
of art. Many of them are quite sophisticated in form and content. Some are full of
implications that create more than one semantic plane and may contain
understatements, semantic accretion, or open-ended composition that makes the
reader doubt about the outcome. Others require of the reader a wide educational
thesaurus and knowledge of history, philosophy, mythology or religion [4].
The readers will differ not only from the author but also from each other.
They have a different life experience, educational background, cultural level and
tastes.
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All these factors often make decoding difficult. The message encoded and
sent may differ from the message received after decoding.
So the result may be a failure on either side. The reader may complain that he
couldn't understand what the author wanted to say, while the author may resent
being misinterpreted.
From the reader's point of view the important thing is not what the author
wanted to say but what he managed to convey in the text of his work.
So interpretation is an analysis of aesthetic, semantic and emotional sides of
the text through reconstruction of the author’s vision of the world.
1.1.2 Practical tasks
Task 1. Read the following texts and say what functional style they
represent. Find characteristic features of each functional style in the texts.
Some Notes on Poetry
Taking English Poetry in the common sense of the word as a peculiar form of
the language, we find that it differ from prose mainly in having a regular succession
of accented syllables. In short it possesses metre as its chief characteristic feature.
Every line is divided into so many feet composed of short and long syllables
arranged according to certain laws of prosody. With a regular foot-fall the voice
steps or matches along the line, keeping time like the soldier on drill, or the
musician among his bars. In many languages syllables have a quantity, which makes
them intrinsically long or short; but in English poetry that syllable alone is long on
which an accent falls. Poets, therefore, in the use of that license which they have, or
take sometimes shift an accent to suit their measure. The inversion of the order of
words, within certain limits, is necessary consequence of throwing language into a
metrical form. Poetry, then, differs from prose, in the first place in having metre;
and as a consequence of this, in adopting an unusual arrangement of words and
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phrases... We must have, in addition to the metrical form, the use of uncommon
words and turns of expressions, to lift the language above the level of written prose.
Dependent
STUDENTS who want a bigger say in the running of universities will be
reinforced in their view by the latest effort of the vice-chancellor of Liverpool
University and some other academics.
Today this allegedly wise and learned individual issue, under the patronage of
the Right-Wing Institute оf Economic Affairs is a statement of the "urgency of
establishing an independent university".
By "independent" they mean one which is dependent on finance from rich
private individuals and Big Business, instead of from the Government.
It is a monstrous misuse of the English language to claim that such a
university would be independent. IT would depend entirely on the good will of the
rich, and would find its finances cut off immediately if it displeased them.
Universities already have to rely too much on Big Business sources of
finance, including from US and other firms engaged in war preparations.
Whatever criticisms there may be about the Government's part in their finance
at any rate there is some possibility of democratic control over the public money
allocated to the universities.
There would be none if it all came as a result of board-room decisions.
The Surface Tension of Polymeric Systems
The surface tension of polymer melts can be strongly influenced by the
potential surface activity of the chain ends. While the density of a polymer depends
on its molecular weight, the primary effect on surface tension is not through density
variation but rather due to preferential adsorption or depletion of the ends at the
surface. Koberstein and co-workers have demonstrated this effect with endfunctionalized polydimethylsiloxane. Their pendant drop studies of low-molecularweight polymers having amine-, hydroxyl- or methyl-terminal groups show surface
tensions decreasing, independent of, or increasing with molecular weight due to the
higher, intermediate, or lower surface energies, respectively, of the end groups. The
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end groups also alter the interfacial tension between immiscible polymer blends in a
similar way. The addition of block copolymers to immiscible polymer blends is
analogous to adding a surface active agent to immiscible liquids. The interfacial
tension is reduced by the adsorption of the block copolymer at the interface until it
is saturated.
Finally, similar effects can be seen in miscible polymer blends where the
surface tension correlates with the enrichment of the lower-energy component at the
surface as monitored by x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy.
Task 2. Read the extracts from the texts and say what text type they
belong to.
Extract 1.
1. Preheat the oven to 175 °C. In a medium bowl, whisk together the
flour, baking soda, cinnamon, and salt.
2. Beat together in a mixer the butter and sugars. Beat in the eggs one at a
time. Mix in the vanilla and mashed bananas.
3. Mix in half of the flour mixture, then the sour cream, then the other half
of the flour mixture.
4. Spread batter evenly in a greased 10x15 baking pan. Bake at 175 °C for
20 minutes, or until nicely browned and the surface bounces back when you press it
with your finger. Cool completely before frosting.
5. To make the frosting, mix all of the ingredients together with an electric
mixer. If too stiff to spread, add a teaspoon or two of water. Spread the frosting
evenly over the cake and slice to serve.
Extract 2.
Everyone knows, however, that when a person (even today in our modern
period) observes the City of Jerusalem from the same Mount of Olives from which
Titus viewed the ruined City of Jerusalem, we see in front of us a gigantic walled
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