ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ АГЕНТСТВО ПО ОБРАЗОВАНИЮ
ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ
УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ
ВЫСШЕГО ПРОФЕССИОНАЛЬНОГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ
«ВОРОНЕЖСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ
УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»
УЧЕБНО-МЕТОДИЧЕСКОЕ ПОСОБИЕ
ПО АНАЛИТИЧЕСКОМУ ЧТЕНИЮ
Часть 1
Учебное пособие для вузов
Издательско-полиграфический центр
Воронежского государственного университета
2009
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CONTENTS
Preface ................................................................................................................. 4
Commentary of a text:
Recommended steps in text analysis................................................................... 5
Articles for analysis
1. Fairer deal for working fathers urged.............................................................. 11
2. Some mothers make you feel a bit of a lose ................................................... 15
3. Mother knows better........................................................................................ 19
4. Young, pregnant and deluded.......................................................................... 22
5. The stuffing is knocked out of us if cuddly toys go AWOL........................... 27
6. What happened to the Britain I loved?............................................................ 30
7. Vote with your feet.......................................................................................... 38
8. Pasting over the past........................................................................................ 39
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The exposition usually contains the setting of the scene (i.e. the time and
place of the action) and some preliminary information about the topic and
subject of the story, its main characters etc. By nature it is a static part of the
story and contains no action.
The plot consists of a series of episodes relating to the development of the
central conflict of the story. It usually starts with the so-called narrative hook,
which introduces the conflict and begins the dynamic (sometimes, dramatic, and
in that case we may call it suspense) action aiming at the ultimate resolution of
the conflict. The highest point in the development of the plot is called the
climax. The series of events preceding the climax is usually termed, rising
action, whereas post-climax events are falling action coming to a resolution (or
dénouement). When all the action is over, the author may supply some extra
information about the following events, the after-life of the story characters etc.
Similarly to the exposition, this part of the story is static rather than dynamic,
and is called the epilogue. It should be noted, that the above-described three-part
structure is by no means the universal type, which can be applied to all existing
fiction texts. The composition of a story is a matter of the personal choice of the
author, who may decide to end the story just at the point of its climax, or, start it
in the middle of the action, or introduce chronological steps back in the action.
A special feature of the story composition is a framed story, or a story-within-astory.
In such stories, the theme and the main conflict are developed within the
'inner story', related by one of the characters of the 'outer story' (or a frame).
The verbal composition concerns the modes of presenting the story.
Narration moves the plot and can be presented from different points of view:
the first person, the third person, a limited third person (the story is presented
through the limited perspective of one of the characters), a shifting point of
view; there can also be the author-observer (observing the characters' actions
but not penetrating in their thoughts and feelings), as opposed to the omniscient
author (knowing all about the characters' inner life, their past and sometimes
even the future). These points of view are important in the process of conveying
the author's attitudes and ideas to the reader, creating a certain tone or
atmosphere in the story.
Description usually has emotional-evaluative implications depending on
the choice of vocabulary and imagery. Characters’ speech exists in emotive
prose in the form of a monologue/inner monologue, dialogue. Besides there
can be digressions (the author's remarks breaking the narration and containing
some personal reflections concerning the story, its theme, problems, setting or
characters)
Another aspect of a story is represented by characters
Useful tips:
Since all fiction stories include some action (which makes it different
from other types of texts, e.g. essays), they necessarily have a character, or,
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more frequently, several characters to perform this action. Traditionally, all
characters are divided into principal (or main) and secondary ones. Those, who
form the focus of the author's (and, hence, the reader's) attention, and take an
active part in the central conflict of the story are the main characters, others
serve as the background for the portrayal of the main characters and their
conflict. If there is only one main character in the story, he is sometimes called
the protagonist, his main opponent in the conflict would be then the antagonist.
Also, in literary criticism there are further terms to describe different types of
characters: static vs. dynamic (the former stay virtually the same as regards their
traits of character, values, attitudes etc, whereas the latter undergo some serious
changes in the course of the story events) and also round vs. flat (the former are
drawn in detail, including the characteristic of their inner selves, the latter are
more or less schematic). The analysis of the characters should include (if the text
supplies the necessary details, or, at least implies them) their physical
description, social background, some distinctive traits of their character, their
typical ideas, attitudes, manner of speech (which can be very characteristic and
suggestive), actions, relations with other characters and their role in the central
conflict, and, finally, the author’s attitude towards them (whether it is directly
revealed or implied implicitly).
Step 1в
The next part of the analysis deals with the stylistic features of the text. It
focuses on the language register, or combination of different registers (formal,
semi-formal, neutral, semi-informal, informal; high-flown, poetic, casual,
colloquial etc.) employed by the author, on syntactic peculiarities of the text
(types of sentences prevailing, rhetoric questions, elliptical or inverted phrases,
parallel constructions), special choice of the vocabulary (terms, dialectisms,
slang etc.), stylistic tropes (see a short description of some of them below), and
the general tone or atmosphere of the text (serious, light, elevated, solemn,
ironical, humorous, gloomy and so forth). The thorough analysis of these
features will enable you to define the author's position, his/her attitude towards
the subject of the story and its problems, towards the characters and their
actions, and finally to understand properly the author's message, the main idea
of the story. Sometimes these attitudes and the message are expressed openly
and directly (usually in the beginning or the end of the story), but more often
than not it is revealed indirectly in the whole complex of linguistic and styli
peculiarities of the text, in the author's characteristics of the characters, in the
atmosphere created by the author in the story. Hence, the analysis of stylistic
features of the story has a principal importance for the proper understanding of
its message.
stic
Step 2a
What messages does the system of images convey?
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Useful tips:
The system of images includes both macro and micro images. Macro
images are those that develop within the whole book or within a considerable
part of it: characters’ images, the image of nature, the image of war etc. Micro
images exist within a sentence or a paragraph. The images are created with the
help of stylistic devices.
Metaphor (метафора)
is based on transference of names based on the associated
likeness between two objects, on the similarity of one feature common to two
different entities, on possessing one common characteristic, on linguistic
semantic nearness, on a common component in their semantic structures. The
expressiveness is promoted by the implicit simultaneous presence of images of
both objects – the one which is actually named and the one which supplies its
own “legal” name, while each one enters a phrase in the complexity of its other
characteristics.
The wider is the gap between the associated objects the more striking and
unexpected – the more expressive – is the metaphor.
Personification (олицетворение или персонификация)
a that involves likeness between inanimate and animate
objects.
Metonymy (метонимия)
of names based on contiguity (nearness), on extralinguistic,
actually existing relations between the phenomena (objects), denoted by the words,
on common grounds of existence in reality but different semantic (V.A.K.) is based
on a different type of relation between the dictionary and s, a
relation based not on identification, but on some kind of association connecting the
two concepts which these meanings represent (I.R.G.)
Pun, paronomasia, play on words (парономасия, игра слов)
simultaneous realisation of two s through
a) misinterpretation of one speaker’s utterance by the other, which results
in his remark dealing with a different meaning of the misinterpreted word or its
homonym,
b) speaker’s intended violation of the listener’s expectation
Epithet (эпитет)
a based on the interplay of emotive and in an attributive word, phrase or even sentence, used to characterise
and object and pointing out to the reader, and frequently imposing on him, some
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