A course in practical stylistics

Text 1

STYLISTICS

UNIT 3

Discuss the text in class.

Present a summary of the text

Use the vocabulary practiced in tasks 1 and 3 to make up situations of your own.

Translate the following sentences into Russian. Pay attention to the peculiarities of usage.

Find the Russian equivalents for the following words and phrases. Make up sentences with some of them (5 -7).

Tasks

To see from the examples adduced above; hierarchy; to come across; to consist of; to contain; to connect; to mention; to fulfill; to substitute; in the previous chapter; another reason for; elevation; may seem a rather otiose statement; to be frequently used in class by teachers; basic components; throughout the world; no matter; imprecise and emotive; curious; to crowd; it is commonly accepted that; to be vastly more used nowadays than it was in the past; expansion; apace.

1) It is commonly accepted that ill news comes apace.

2) The happiness of a country consists in the freedom of its citizens.

3) The atlas contains forty maps, including three of Great Britain.

4) Can’t you contain your enthusiasm?

5) Whisky contains a large percentage of alcohol.

6) He couldn’t contain himself for joy. He was so happy that his feelings burst out.

7) The two towns are connected by a railway.

8) He is considered to be well connected because some of his relatives hold important positions in the society.

9) The 9. 00 a m train from London connects with the 12.05 p m train at Crewe, i.e. arrives at Crewe so as to enable passengers to continue their journeys by the 12.05 p m train.

10) He and the Smiths are connected by marriage. But it seems to be absolutely otiose.

3. Explain the meaning of the following words and word-combinations:

multiple sentences; complex sentence; sub­ordinate clauses; a hierarchy of subordinate clauses; compound sentences; coordination; non-finite clauses; verbless clauses; terms.

4. Make your own list of key–units and topical vocabulary

WHAT IS THE ENGLISH WE USE?

The question, used as the title of the present book has been discussed time and again, by leading linguists, but, unfortunately, at long intervals, and apparently without much influence on the actual learning of lan­guages, or the linguistic thinking of modern scholars.

How is this unfavourable state of affairs to be ac­counted for-seeing that the general idea was clearly and conclusively formulated so long ago? As far back as 1899 it had already been made abundantly clear that learning to use proper English requires something (a certain kind of knowledge, or proficiency?) that is not confined to grammar (in the ordinary sense), or orthography, or acquaintance with a reasonable number of words. Texts like the one adduced by Henry Sweet, innumerable other texts which appear not only in manu­als of English, but as books in their own right, as scientific treatises and translations of scientific treatises, are too often flagrantly unacceptable - not only unpleasant to read, but also, very often, difficult to understand.

Although there exists a large number of books on "style", "good English", etc., the foreign learner has never (to our knowledge), been given, actually shown, a text of any length which he could safely "make his own", which he could imitate as a model for his own style of writing and speaking, as an obrazcovoje proizvedenije reči to be assimilated the way Flaubert drank in pages of Napoleon's "Code" before sitting down to work. In other words, where do we - foreign anglicists - go, or what do we turn to, if we are setting out to write and speak English on our subject, that is, to use English for our special professional purposes. Surely not to the many instances of "bad English" collected in most manuals on the sub­ject. We may sound too categorical, but so far n o practical solution has been offered, no way out actually shown.

We do not mean to say, of course, that the question of models, of masters of style to be studied and imitat­ed, had never been asked or answered before. The re- cognition of the undisputed superiority of so many great writers—classics and classical literature—is one of the most general and most firmly established facts. But where do they come in, how, in actual practice, are they made to serve our specific purpose?

This brings us naturally to the more general pro­blem, that is, the scope and aims of philology-the sci­ence (nauka in the Russian tradition) which concerns itself with everything that has ever been written or said. Philology, then, is a science in whose domain are included all imaginable kinds of proizvedenija reči how­ever different, for the humbler, more everyday uses of language are closely connected with the loftier ones: the latter grow out of the former, thrive on them, could not exist without them. It is, therefore, unfortunate that in recent times it should have become customary to keep apart, on the one hand, what is now often called "linguistics", and, on the other, "literary criticism" (literaturovedenije).

It is usually assumed that somewhere (where exact­ly nobody has so far been able to show) there is a line which divides the rest of proizvedenija reci from those which have a specific aesthetic or, as is sometimes said, literary value. But however hard it may be to say what literature is-as distinct from what it is not - we are all convinced that the division is there, that it does exist. In our University curricula this is manifested in the now generally accepted administrat­ive division: philological faculties in this country have been neatly divided into two parts - literaturovedenije and jazykoznanije. But however firmly established, this division is largely artificial, for how can one really know a language—that is, be a linguist in the proper sense of the word-unless one has read widely, has covered a large quantity of literary texts? We cannot expect the student of English at the Philological faculty of a University to confine himself only to trivial every­day proizvedenija reči of the type "What's the time?", "How are you?", let alone those of "The bill is large" or "He filled the chair" kind⁷. Obviously 99% of his-studies are based on the bulky and elusive "something" which carries such a wealth of aesthetic, historical and social values.

At the same time if the literary critic does not study the original texts, if he hopes to get away with (the usually imperfect) translations which are assumed to help him to understand the ideas or ideals contained in them, or the social background of this or that writer -and nothing else-he cannot be regarded as a philolog­ist in the proper sense of the word. A literary critic's work is worth-while only if he has studied a fond the language of the original literary sources.

A philologist, then, must be able to understand every variety of text in the chosen language and be able to place it within the overall thesaurus of existing proiz­vedenija reči. At the same time, he must have a very clear idea of the kind of English he has decided lo­use in his own speech and writing. In other words, the philologist must know exactly what it is he is expect­ed to imitate, what kind or variety of the language he should endeavour to produce when "performing" orally or in writing.

The aim and purpose of the present manual is to provide concrete material-texts and explanations-which should enable the learner to know what it is he (or she) must regard as the model, the obrazec to be fol­lowed as closely as possible when using English profes­sionally. Although we are mainly concerned with the English philologist (or anglicist) it could well be as­sumed that the same kind of language should be re­commended for scientific disquisition in general.

We have spoken of "scientific disquisition in gene­ral" because in Russian we do not call the Humanities "arts"-with good reason, of course, because all of the intellectual pursuits at, for example, the Moscow Uni­versity are based on scientific principles and methods. But as far as using language is concerned, especially a foreign language, there is a world of difference between those who specialize in the Humanities­
(the philologists in particular) and those whose
subject belongs to the natural—let alone the "technical"
-sciences: it has been conclusively shown again and
again that the English foreigners "use for science" at international conferences, etc., is mostly what Professor
Quirk calls "Restricted English". However widely spread, RE is certainly not acceptable as far as the anglicist is concerned. The chemist or the mathematician can let his verbal language go
very far down because in his case the passing on of
intellective information depends mainly on slides, diagrams, and other semiotic devices which to him are
more exact and important than words. Not so with the
philologist. In the case of the foreign anglicist the
"minimization" can go no further than the EWU (The
English We Use) - the kind of English we are setting
out to describe and explain in the present book.

A very important point to be made (with the foreign anglicist in mind) is that the EWU is “the langu­age we speak wit h”-to be kept distinct from the languages (the registers or styles) the anglicist must know how to speak about, for there is nothing in English literary tradition that he is not expected to be able to understand, appreciate, and enjoy. He must begin by making quite sure he can use the EWU both in speech and writing to the best advantage. But even in his “active”, his own oral and written speech, he should always hope to rise above it and acquire, later on, individual refinements of style.

To reiterate: the technical student often stops at RE (Restricted English). For him the EWU level of "performance" is the utmost achievement. For the foreign anglicist it is the lowest rung on the ladder. But he will not be able to place his foot firmly even on this unless he clearly understands the difference between “the English he speaks with” and “the English he speaks about” from the very beginning.

Although in all linguistic description it is traditional to begin with the sounds, we shall have very little to say on the subject. In this book we are concerned with the choice and arrangement (or is it “dispo­sition”?) of words - not with the more abstract rules of Syntax or variations in Morphology, and certainly not with the different kinds of sounds different native speakers of English naturally produce.

As far as grammar is concerned, the rules are few and easily accessible: the grammar of even the most difficult language can be fully mastered in no more than six months, according to Henry Sweet, whereas it takes a lifetime to become proficient in the choice and arrangement of words.

For pronunciation-we could do no better than refer the reader to Dr. R. A. Close: RP (Received Pronuncia­tion) is the pronunciation we use and teach because "... it has become, and is being, adopted by an in­creasingly large number of people for whom English is a mother tongue and even for whom it is a second language; because RP is so widely useful, and because it has been so thoroughly described and standardized, it is a very suitable dialect to choose for the purpose of teaching the language".

If we were now to return to Sweet's original il­lustration of the problem, we could easily assume that all we need is doing away with “translationese”-in spite of the fact that for years people had been led to believe that “formal” translation was the only possible approach to foreign language acquisition. As a result “translationese”-“… a banal and artificial form of lan­guage”, which “... fails utterly to do justice to the rich resources of the receptor language” had come into being. To combat the tendency, the translators had to be taught the “dynamic” approach. Unless one learns to translate “dynamically”, one fails to do justice to the rich resources of the receptor language. In this manual we are not concerned with fiction or imaginative writing; our practical problem is scien­tific English in the broadest sense of the word that is, the English we use when we lecture, write books and articles, take part in international conferences, etc. In all those activities we use English cross-culturally: speaking English (instead of using our own language) is something unnatural, something that requires a spe­cial effort, it is an exercise in meaning equivalence across cultures.

Дата добавления: 2014-12-27