Lesson Five

TEXT ANALYSIS

What is text analysis?

• Text analysis is designed to analyse text and draw conclusions as to the linguistic and stylistic structures of a given text.

Language Functions

• Expressive (eg. literature)

• Informative (eg journalism)

• Performative (eg. advertising)– Phatic (Good morning)– Metalinguistic (adverbs, nouns)– Poetic (poetry)

NON-CASUAL LANGUAGE

• PhonologicalSyntactic EQUIVALENCESemantic

Phonological Equivalence

• Alliteration– assonance– consonance

• Rhyme

• Rhythm

• Volume

• Tempo

examples

“Piled up passions on a Saturday night”

“Pride and Prejudice”

“Sense and Sensibility”

“I like Ike”

example

• An arrogant gray parrot and his arrogant mate listened, one African afternoon, in disdain and derision, to the lovemaking of a lover and his lass, who happened to be hippopotamuses.

Syntactic equivalence

• Equivalence of grammatical form:

• Clause length

• Syllable length

• Repetition of form

examples

• Beating London congestion – taking to the river.

• To find out what we can do for you, just call us. Or visit us the next time you’re in Switzerland.

• It beats as it sweeps as it cleans.

Semantic equivalence

• Cohesion and Coherence– repetititon

– synonymy

– hyponymy

– figures of speech

– metaphor/simile

– semantic field

– plays on words

– etc.

examples

• Mr. Bush…the President…the leader of the White House

• It’s a hard day’s night. I’ve been working like a dog.

• How to ruin the economy!

Charles Dickens ‘Bleak House’

• Fog everywhere. Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying empty on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships…

more Dickens

• It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.

• The Pickwick Papers

• Nicholas Nickleby

Donleavy

• He was born in Paris in a big white house on a little square off Avenue Koch. Of a mother blonde and beautiful and a father quiet and rich.

Adrian Mole• My father, Stick Insect and Maxwell House saw me off

at the station. My father didn’t mind a bit that I chose to go to Scotland instead of Skegness. In fact he looked dead cheerful. The train journey was terrible…

• My mother and creep Lucas met me at Sheffield. My mother looked dead thin and has started dressing in clothes that are too young for her. Lucas creep was wearing jeans! His belly was hanging over his belt. I pretended to sleep until we got to Scotland

• Lucas mauled my mother about whilst he was driving.

Forty-Niners• A generation ago, London subways bore the graffitti

‘Clapton is God’, as a sort of ultimate, inarticulate tribute to that rock guitarist’s transcendent riffs. A generation before that, jazz buffs paid the same homage to Charlie Parker, muttering ‘Bird is God’. Now, it is Jerry Rice. After the San Francisco Forty-niners edged the Cincinnati Bengals, 20-16, on a heart-stopping Super Bowl on Sunday night, the wide receiver for the 49ers accepted his trophy as the game’s ‘Most valuable player’ and a 49ers fan who had sneaked into the ceremony yelled ‘Rice is God’.

Forty-Niners (2)• In one of the best finishes to one of the best Super

Bowls, Rice was the best player. He had more yardage from scrimmage (220) than anyone.

• “I did OK… I was real lucky”, Rice said. “I don’t talk a game.,I just play it”.

• And how.• The way Rice moves while the ball is in the air, gliding

like a hawk on an air current, and what he does after he grabs that ball, changing direction as suddenly as a snake in water, takes the breath from those who watch him and steals the heart from those who try to defend him.

Essere di paese

L’infanzia ha avuto per me due fasi importanti, ma delle quali ho un ricordo tutto di riporto. Personalmente non ho l’impressione di averle mai vissute, se non per sentito dire. I due periodi sono la morte di mio padre e la ‘profuganza’.

Della ‘profuganza’ come la chiamava mia madre, ho vaghi ricordi.

Essere di paese - comment

• Context of situation – village life, which has many common characteristics, though Friuli has a historico-sociological specificity.

• Essere di paese/Coming from the Country• L’infanzia/My childhood• Se non per sentito dire/if not through

hearsay• ‘Profuganza’/‘refugeehood’

Essere di paese 2

• I miei fratelli erano ormai grandi. Paolo era sempre sotto le armi, in Marina, ma nello stesso tempo aveva fatto la maturità scientifica e si era iscritto al Politecnico di Milano in ingegneria meccanica. Mario finiva ragioneria a Udine e Berto faceva le medie a Tolmezzo.

• La donna che è rimasta importante nel mio ricordo è la Cristina, detta Cristinon per la sua esagerata grassezza.

Essere di paese 2 . comment

• sotto le armi/in uniform• in Marina/in the navy• Cristinon/Tubby• Aveva fatto la maturità scientifica/had finished

secondary school (specific to generic) oppure passed his final exams at the technical school

• Ragioneria/commercial school• Le medie/junior high (school)

Essere di paese/Coming from the Country

My childhood consisted of two important phases, of which I have only an indirect memory. Personally I don’t feel that I have experienced them, if not through hearsay. The two periods are the death of my father and our ‘refugeehood’.

Of the ‘refugeehood’ as my mother called it, I have only vague memories.

Essere di paese/Coming from the Country 2

• My brothers were by now grown up. Paolo was still in uniform, in the navy, but he had simultaneously passed his final exams at the Technical School and hade gone to Milan Polytehnic to study mechanical engineering. Mario was finishing commercial school in Udine and Berto was in junior high school in Tolmezzo.

• The woman who has remained important in my memory is Cristina, known as Tubby because of her ample figure.