英语修辞写作—语法修辞篇 参考材料 Section 5.docx
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1、Section 5 Figurative Use of Words (1)Deviated from Norm,Appropriate in Style (A)I. Key to the Exercise1. What does it mean by deviation in rhetorical operations at the lexical level? Give an example to illustrate it.Find out the answer from the lecture.2. What is a trope?Find out the answer from the
2、 lecture.3. What are the four most fundamental tropes and what are the relationships among them?Find out the answer from the lecture.4. Pick out from the following list of figures that suits each of the following sentences: simile, metaphor, synecdoche, metonymy and antonomasia.1) Though well over 3
3、0, he looks like a child. (Simile)3) The pen is mightier than the sword. (Metaphor)4) All hands on deck are involved in this operation. (Synecdoche)5) Can gray hairs make folly venerable?We await word from the crown. Tm told hes gone so far as to give her a diamond ring. (Metonymy)5. Which figure is
4、 used in each of the following two sentences, metonymy or antonamasia?1) Youre a Benedict Arnold. (Antonomasia)2) We await word from the crown. Im told hes gone so far as to give her a diamond ring. (Metonymy)6. What are the tropes contained in the following two paragraphs?They gradually ascended fo
5、r half-a-mile, and then found themselves at the top of a considerable eminence, where the wood ceased, and the eye was instantly caught by Pemberley House, situated on the opposite side of a valley, into which the road with some abruptness wound. It was a large, handsome stone building, standing wel
6、l on rising ground, and backed by a ridge of high woody hills; and in front, a stream of some natural importance was swelled into greater, but without any artificial appearance. Its banks were neither formal nor falsely adorned. Elizabeth was delighted. She had never seen a place for whichOne of the
7、 many problems in the teaching/leaming of a foreign language is the acquisition of competence in the area of figurative language. All aspects of figurativeness (metaphor, idiomaticity, and semantic extension) seem to present difficulty for learners. The ability to grasp expressions like “She cast a
8、spell over me“ is considered characteristic of advanced stages of language competence. Most textbooks skirt the issue of figurativeness and concentrate on the denotative aspects of language. Although some idiomatic phrases are usually included in first-level coursebooks, they are usually presented a
9、s exceptions to the rule, things to be learned very often as fixed expressions and to be used in specific contextual situations. In later phases, work on figurativeness is suggested through reading and vocabulary building exercises, and students are often referred to specialized learner dictionaries
10、 of idioms, phrasal verbs, etc. It is common that intensive work on the figurative use of language is left to courses on literature, and metaphor especially is tackled through the presentation of literary texts.Literal vs. figurativeUnderlying this common practice in L2 is the long-held philosophica
11、l and linguistic conviction of a strong distinction between the two levels of language: literal and figurative . In the tradition of classical rhetoric, the primary aim of language is considered to be the description of the world, the transparent representation of the facts of reality. Any other usa
12、ge is a departure from the ordinary mode of language. Language which means (or intends to mean) what it says, and which uses words in their “standard sense,“ derived from the common practice of ordinary speakers of the language, is said to be literal. Figurative language is language which doesnt mea
13、n what it says. When Shelley writes in Loves Philosophy :See the mountains kiss high heavenAnd the waves clasp one another;he manipulates language for poetic effects, since mountains do not kiss and waves do not embrace. He transfers the terms of one object to another, by attributing the qualities o
14、f human beings (kissing and embracing) to elements of nature (sea and mountains). Figurative language then is considered to be a principle of poetry, distinct from ordinary language, useful for the purpose of special, ornamental, aesthetic effects. In a certain sense figurative language is seen to d
15、eliberately interfere with the system of literal usage. (See Hawkes 1972.)Rethinking the classical distinctionIt is important for applied linguists, foreign-language teachers, materials writers, etc., to be aware of the fact that recent trends in contemporary linguistics have questioned this premise
16、. Where do we draw the line between literalness and figurativeness in expressions like the following: (see Footnote 1)1. Those are high stakes.2. Hes bluffing.3. Hes holding all the aces.4. The odds are against me.5. Thats the luck of the draw.Example 5 is obviously a very figurative way of speaking
17、. Sentences 1 and 2 would probably be accepted as quasi-Iiteral due to their simple syntactic structure and to their frequency in everyday usage. Sentences 3 and 4 could be judged somewhat in- between. Yet on closer look, all five sentences use idiomatic expressions.The awareness of the necessity to
18、 rethink the classical distinction between the literal and figurative levels of meaning has come from various directions. Many experiments in psychology have demonstrated that the mind activates the same strategies in the processing of both literal and figurative meaning (Ortony 1979). Studies in li
19、nguistics, in psycholinguistics, in philosophy, in semiotics, and in literary semantics have all demonstrated that the understanding of what constitutes figurativeness is extremely complex, leading to the suggestion that the literal and figurative levels of language are far less distinguishable than
20、 previously thought.(See Ortony 1979)The most convincing contribution to this question comes from the area of cognitive linguistics. One of its major theorists, Ronald Langacker, has argued that syntax is not autonomous, that grammar is symbolic in nature, that there is little distinction between gr
21、ammar and lexicon, and that semantic structure is not universal but language specific. One of the questions that stimulated a cognitive approach to language description was the problem of figurativeness. Noting that figurative language is generally ignored in current linguistic theory, Langacker (19
22、87:1) observed:It would be hard to find anything more pervasive andfundamental in language, even (I maintain) in the domain ofgrammatical structure; if figurative language weresystematically eliminated from our data base, little if anydata would remain. We therefore need a way of conceiving anddescr
23、ibing grammatical structure that accommodates figurativelanguage as a natural, expected phenomenon rather than aspecial, problematic one. An adequate conceptual framework forlinguistic analysis should view figurative language not as aproblem but as part of the solution.If we accept this premise, tha
24、t is, if we admit that figurativeness is a natural and common phenomenon in language, then all L2 programs must give ample space to aspects of idiomaticity, polysemy, semantic extension, and the metaphorical traditions and potentialities of the target language.MetaphorsNow, although the theoretical
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