Лингвистический анализ текста

2) Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. (Bacon)

3)The doctor was an affable local practitioner with white hair, … ‘We all want a little patching and repairing from time to time,’ he chirped.

(Kipling)

Metaphors can be divided into genuine and trite (dead). Thus, metaphors, which are almost absolutely unexpected and unpredictable, are genuine ones, whereas those that are common in speech and therefore are sometimes even fixed in dictionaries as expressive means of language are trite ones. For instance, the metaphor ‘an iron curtain’ used to be very striking and truly genuine at the time of Winston Churchill, but has long since become trite.

CHECK 3

A.Are the metaphors in check 2 genuine or trite?

B.Look up the words and expressions in italics in the dictionary in order to check whether the metaphors they express are genuine or trite, name the tenor, vehicle and ground for comparison:

1)Only briefly did I pay heed to the warning bell that rang sharply in my mind.

You’re fooling with Aitken’s wife, I told myself… You could regret it the rest of your life. (Chase)

2)If Aitken found out about us the New York job would go up in smoke. (Chase)

3)“I suppose,” said Suzanne doubtfully, “that we’re not barking up the wrong tree?..” (Christie)

4)Pat and I were chewing the rag about it when the telephone bell on Pat’s desk

5)He felt the first watery eggs of sweat moistening the palms of his hands. (Sansom)

7)At the last moment before the windy collapse of the day, I myself took the road down. (Hawkes)

8)“How about playing the game with the cards face up,” Bolan suggested.

(Pendelton)

9)We need you so much here. It’s a dear old town, but it’s a rough diamond, and

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Some once-genuine metaphors have become part and parcel of modern language (especially of its colloquial layer). The classic example of a metaphor’s turning into an idiom is ‘a green-eyed monster’ used by William Shakespeare in relation to Othello. Now it is applied to any jealous person. The sentences below contain trite metaphors, many of which are, in fact, frequently-used idioms.

CHECK 4

Write down the theme that the vehicles in each set of metaphors share. Translate the sentences into Russian substituting the original images with those existing in corresponding Russian phraseological units.

1)a A wave of emotion spread throughout the country on the news of her death.

bWe were met by a sea of facts.

cPerhaps the tide has turned for our economy.

2)a He’s now at a crossroads in his life.

bSuccessful businesswoman and company owner, she’s in the fast lane now.

cI wish he would stop going from one dead-end job to the next.

3)a I think his attitude stems from the 1980s.

bBut juvenile rebellion has its seeds in the sixties.

cI reckon our present-day youth culture has its roots in the fifties.

4)a Alternative medicine is a flourishing business.

bMy young nephew is a budding pianist.

cOur next-door neighbour daughter is really blossoming at secondary school.

5)a It would be easier if the boss didn’t always want to be at the hub of things.

bWe need to get to the heart of the matter.

cIt’s time we reduced the size of our core staff.

6)a If only he’d see the light and get a haircut!

bThe tragic news cast a shadow over the evening’s events.

cAfter years of recession, there’s light at the end of the tunnel.

7)a She’s been floating on air since her engagement.

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bI’d be over the moon if I scored one goal, let alone three.

cShe’ll be in the seventh heaven if she’s passed.

8)a If you play your cards right, you can end up Area Manager.

bI’d rather you didn’t show our hand yet; let’s keep them guessing.

cWe’ve got one last ace up our sleeve.

9)a He’s rarely out of the spotlight nowadays.

bKeep scoring goals; there are some good young players waiting in the wings.

cYou never know what’s happening behind the scenes in politics.

By its structure a metaphor can be simple (one-step) or sustained (prolonged, extended, a chain of metaphors). A simple metaphor consists of one word or wordgroup whereas a prolonged one is sustained by some additional images. For example, let us consider the afore-mentioned verse from Macbeth where, in fact, we deal with two extended metaphors:

Life’s but a walking shadow; a poor player

That struts and frets his hour upon the stage,

And then is heard no more: it is a tale

Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

Signifying nothing…

A sustained metaphor may consist of trite metaphors (idioms) expressing or implying a certain logical development of ideas, and yet the objects mentioned in each of them pertain to different semantic spheres, due to which the links of the chain seem disconnected with one another. The general impression is incongruous, clumsy and comical. This phenomenon – a harsh metaphor involving the use of a word beyond its strict sphere or incongruence of the parts of a sustained metaphor – is called catachresis (or mixed metaphors).

e.g. I listen vainly, but with thirsty ear (Mac Arthur, Farewell Address)

CHECK 5

Analyse the following cases, distinguishing sustained metaphors from catachreses. Using your dictionary, name the idioms making up the parts of the catachresis:

1) “This is a day of your golden opportunity, Sarge. Don’t let it turn to brass.”

(Pendelton)

2)

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4)“For somewhere,” said Poirot to himself, indulging in an absolute riot of mixed metaphors, “there is in the hay a needle, and among the sleeping dogs there is one on whom I shall put my foot, and by shooting the arrow into the air, one

PRACTICE

1.Nothing but the ability to read metaphors will allow you to solve the riddle the following poem presents. The poem was written by Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963), a US poet, whose career was cut short by her suicide at the age of thirty.

Metaphors

Like its first metaphor, this poem is a riddle to be solved by identifying the literal terms of its metaphors. After you have identified the speaker (“riddle”, “elephant”, “house”, “melon”, “stage”, “cow”), identify the literal meaning of the related metaphors (“syllables”, “tendrils”, “fruit”, “ivory”, “timbers”, “loaf”, “yeasty rising”, “money”, “purse”, “train”). How is line 8 supposed to be interpreted?

How does the form of the poem relate to its content?

2.Read this quotation from an essay by John Fowles and express your opinion on the novelist’s viewpoint.

“One cannot describe reality; only give metaphors that indicate it. All human modes of description (photographic, mathematical, and the rest, as well as literary) are metaphorical. Even the most precise scientific description of an object or movement is a tissue of metaphors.”

Think of three metaphors that can give an idea of our contemporary reality.

So much attention has been paid to metaphor as its importance in rhetoric can hardly be overestimated. Not only it is one of the most frequently used stylistic devices, it also plays essential role in building many other tropes that rename objects on the basis of similarity. The following scheme presents other stylistic lexical devices that belong to the so-called metaphorical group:

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Metaphorical Group

Note: the simile, in fact, is a lexico-syntactical stylistic device.

1.Read the following poem and compose a title for it.

She sweeps with many-colored brooms,

And leaves the shreds behind;

Oh, housewife in the evening west,

Come back and dust the pond!

You dropped a purple raveling in,

You dropped an amber thread;

And now you’ve littered all the East

With duds of emerald!

And still she plies her spotted brooms,

And still the aprons fly,

Till brooms fade softly into stars –

And then I come away.

Emily Dickinson

2.Comment on the effect it gains through the author’s usage of a sustained metaphor. What does this metaphor differ in from those studied above? What does “she” correspond to?

Personification is a variety of metaphor. Personification is the presentation of inanimate objects as if they were human beings or animals, i.e. attributing human properties or some features typical of animals to lifeless objects – mostly to abstract notions, such as thoughts, actions, intentions, emotions, seasons of the year, elements, etc.

Go over the lead-in poem and say what emotions and qualities are ascribed to the dawn.

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• I can't get the fuel pump back on because these

gears are being uncooperative.

•The ship began to creak and protest as it struggled against the rising sea.

•We bought this house instead of the one on Maple because this one is friendlier.

•This coffee is strong enough to get up and walk away.

•The angry clouds in the hateful sky cruelly spat down on the poor man who had forgotten his umbrella.

•After two hours of political platitudes, everyone grew bored. The delegates were bored; the guests were bored; the speaker himself was bored. Even the chairs were bored.

As seen from the examples above, though used mostly in poetry, when applied to prose personification produces either a poetic or humorous effect.

CHECK 2

Read through the list of the personifications given below and say what sort of effect is achieved, either humorous or poetical. Name the things compared. What other stylistic device is personification usually combined with?

1)Besides the kettle was aggravating and obstinate. It wouldn’t allow itself to be adjusted to the top of the bar; it wouldn’t hear of accommodating itself to the knobs of the coal; it would lean forward with a drunken air,

2)In November a cold, unseen stranger, whom the doctors called Pneumo-

nia, stalked about the colony, touching one here and one there with icy fingers. (O. Henry)

3)O, sleep, o gentle sleep,

Nature’s soft nurse, how have I frightened thee, That thou no more wilt weigh my eyelids down,

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5)Your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground. (Genesis 4:10b)

6)Montmorency’s ambition in life is to get in the way and be sworn at. If it can squirm in anywhere where he particularly is not wanted, and be a perfect nuisance, and make people mad, and have things thrown at his head, then he feels his day has not been wasted.

To get somebody to stumble over him, and curse him steadily for an hour, is his highest aim and object; and, when he has succeeded in accomplishing this, his conceit becomes quite unbearable.

(Jerome K. Jerome)

7)Autumn comes

And trees are shedding their leaves,

8)In the sunlight – in the daytime, when Nature is alive and busy all around us, we like the open hillsides and the deep woods well enough: but in the night, when our Mother Earth has gone to sleep, and left us

waking, oh! the world seems so lonesome, and we get frightened, like children in a silent house. (Jerome K. Jerome)

9)Wisdom cries aloud in the streets; in the markets she raises her voice . . .

(Proverbs 1:20)

10)Fox-terriers are born with about four times as much original sin in them as other dogs are, and it will take years after years of patient effort on the part of us Christians to bring about any appreciable reformation in the

According to Skrebnev, there are certain formal signals of personification. They are given in the table below:

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*Note:

Sometimes, however, the capital letter has nothing in common with personification, merely performing an emphasizing function:

e.g. It (the wind) seems to chant, in its wild way, of Wrong and Murder done, and false Gods worshipped; in defence of the tables of the Law… (Dickens)

CHECK 3

Scan the cases of personification you came across in the CHECK 3 and name the formal signals that help to distinguish it.

PRACTICE

1.Read the poem “Mirror” by Sylvia Plath. What is achieved by making the mirror the "I" of the poem. What abilities of a human being is it given? What human attributes does it possess?

I am silver and exact.

I have no preconceptions.

Whatever I see I swallow immediately

Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.

I am not cruel, only truthful –

The eye of a little god, four-cornered.

Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.

It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long

I think it is a part of my heart. But it flickers.

Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,

Searching my riches for what she really is.

Then she turns to those liars, the candles of the moon.

I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.

She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.

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I am important to her. She comes and goes.

Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.

In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman

Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

2.Who is the speaker? Why is the mirror chosen to speak about the woman? In what way is it like a lake?

Another stylistic device based on metaphor is allegory.

Allegory (Greek allegoria – “description of one thing under the name of another”) has a two-fold meaning: as a stylistic term, i.e. pertaining to the realm of rhetoric, and as a denomination for a genre in literature and art on the whole (painting, sculpture, dance, etc). It means expressing abstract ideas through concrete pictures, the transfer based on similarity of objects.

One shouldn’t mistake allegory for metaphor and vice versa as the former is generally presented by a more or less complete text, whereas the latter is usually used within a lengthy text in combination with other expressive means. Speaking figuratively, metaphor is usually a brick in the structure of the text, where allegory is the cornerstone, as a rule.

The shortest allegorical texts are represented by proverbs, where we find a precept in visual form. The logical content of the precept is invigorated by the emotive force of the image. Thus the proverb Make hay while the sun shines implies a piece of advice having nothing in common with haymaking or sunshine: ‘Make use of a favourable situation; do not miss an opportunity; do not waste time.’

Note1. One should not confuse proverbs with maxims, i.e. with non-metaphorical precept, such as A friend in need is a friend indeed. This maxim names things directly rather than figuratively. It is understood literally, word-by-word, whereas a proverb can be interpreted just as an inseparable (often idiomatic, see Metaphor above) unit.

CHECK 1

Read the ‘golden-rules’ listed below and distribute them into two columns, one for proverbs, the other for maxims. Two of them can be used both figuratively and literally. Which ones?

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Find their equivalents in the Russian language, if any.

Compare the English precepts with their Russian equivalents. Is the imagery retained in them? Are proverbs based on the same images in the two languages? Comment on the cases when the system of images is unique to each culture.

As you see proverbs are a means of expressing some truth in a figurative way. Some literary genres, fairy tales and fables among them, carry out the same function. Special attention should be paid to the latter. Seemingly simple on the surface, they contain a more serious idea to render, i.e. they always embody a moral truth.

CHECK 3

Have you ever heard the expression ‘the lion’s share’? If yes, in what context was it used? Do you know the origin of this idiom?

Now read the fable by Aesop and retell the factual events of it only, i.e. do not use any emotionally coloured words and give no remarks on the behaviour of the personages at this stage?

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