文体学论文

Stylistic Analysis of An Extract of

Conversation

Introduction

Conversation is the most commonly used kind of language. Therefore , it is especially a variety familiar to the majority of English -speaking people . This variety is used in everyone’s daily life . And it has its own distinct stylistic features . Stylistics is a branch of linguistics which studies style in a scientific and systematic way concerning the manners/linguistic features of different varieties of language at different levels.

Causal style is the language used for situations in which no social barriers are felt by the participants. It is the language used among intimate friends, acquaintances, insiders, and people with shared knowledge. In casual visits ,chance meetings ,casual talks, or letters between friends this style is often found . Colloquial words, clipped words, clipped words, phrasal verbs, blend words are often used. Sentences are usually short, elliptical, with a lot of contractions. And the tone tends to be friendly and informal.

This passage possesses almost all characteristics of conversation. It could be an appropriate material for stylistic analysis. This is a conversation between two housewives who are in the same age range and have known each other for some time. The occasion is that B was invited to A’s house for an evening chat over coffee.

1.At the phonological level

Phonology refers to speech sounds in a language .Here the main focus put on elision, pause, and normal non-fluency.

1.1 Elision

Elision is one of the distinct phonological style markers in conversation, which is frequently used by the speakers involved .In real conversation, what people concern most is whether the information has been conveyed, instead of catching every word clearly. And some functional words are pronounced in a low voice or even elided by the speakers. In conversation, people usually speak naturally fast, and because of the fast tempo, two words

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are pronounced as one word. Therefore, the frequent use of contractions can be found. In this extract, there are numerous contractions, such as I’m, I’ve, I’ll, I’d, it’s, you’re, couldn’t, hasn’t, that’s etc. all these contractions makes the conversation sound natural. This skill is either an important signal in spontaneous conversation. B:I’ve warmed up B:It’s just that I’m

B:I’d left my coat in my locker and I just could’t ......

Those elision can perfectly indicate the informality of the conversation as well as intimate relationships between A and B.

1.2Pause

Pause refers to the brief interruption of the articulatory process between consecutive linguistic units. Pause can also be seen as a signal of ending a thought unit. In English, there are voiced pauses, and silent pauses. In this extract, both kinds of pauses can be frequently found. For example: A:You got a /cold //

B:/No/just a/bit sniffy/cos I’m -I/am cold /and I’ll be all right once I’ve warmed up//-do I look as though I’ve got a cold//

The pause aim to arouse the people’ attention A: no I/ thought you sounded as if you were// B:/M/

The pause aim to express talker’s uncertain attitude and cause suspense

1.3stress

Stress refers to the prominence of sounds. It is the result of extract force used in pronouncing particular word or syllable. It is a very important way of expressing different feeling or implying different meaning in oral communication. It has the following functions: to show emphasis, surprise, anger, doubt, horror, excitement and to distinguish meaning of identical words or phrases. For example: A:you got a COLD

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B:No, just a bit SNIFFY

In this sentence, the speakers stress the word ”cold”, ”sniffy” which indicates the speakers emphasis.

B:you are KNITTING? what are you KNITTING. That’s not a tiny GARment. A:No

In this sentence, ”knitting” is stressed, which indicates the speaker’s surprise or doubt. B stresses the word of “knitting” at twice, to emphasize, which expresses that B is to feel doubt about A. To her surprised, she does not think that A should have knitted the garment.

2.At the Lexical Level

Lexis refers to the choice of words and expressions, and here, we will focus our attention on the used of colloquial words, intensifiers, and verb phrases.

2.1Use of colloquial words

Regarding it is an extract of daily conversation, there’s no denying the fact that colloquial words can be often used.

Since it is a casual conversation, it is normal and natural to see so many colloquial words, such as yeah, got, just, ’cos, etc. These words can express the speaker’s attitude, surprise, worried, or some other feelings. Colloquial words are also the signal of informality.

2.2 Use of VPs

Verb phrases are frequently used in conversation. Conversation is a kind of informal variety. Thus hard verbs are rarely used by speakers in everyday talks. In this fragment, there are only 1 hard word. It takes up a very slim percentage of the total number of words( 304)

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Table 1: accessibility

Total number of hard words 1 Fog index Total number of words 304 Total number of sentences 52 2.52 Average length of sentences 6 Percentage of hard words in total words 0.3% In the above table, we can see that the percentage of hard words in the conversation is approximately 0.3%. And the fog index is 2.52, much lower than 10- the average number of all varieties. So we can say that this conversation is easy to understand.

3.At the Syntactic/Grammatical Level

Syntax refers to the rules for ordering words into sentences. In this part, we mostly concentrate on sentence types and voices.

Table 2: sentence types (1)

Sentence length Long sentence 0

According to the above table, it is found that sentences (as far as length and structures are concerned) in this fragments are not complicated to understand. More minor sentences and short sentences are used, which are style markers of informality.

Short sentence 52 Clause structure Major sentence 19 Minor sentence 33 3.1Simple sentence

B:It is a lovely color

A:It is nice

Using the simple sentence can make the conversation better to understand and much like the daily dialogue.

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3.2 Use of active voice

In conversation, speakers usually are the major and active characters. Their words mainly express their own feelings or narrate an event. In this way active voice will be the most suitable voice to achieve such effects. In this conversation, most of sentences are in active voice. And many of them have such beginning “I + verb”. According to this, we can assume in the process of conversation the speaker is usually the most important factor, who will conduct or lead the proceeding of conversation.

4 At the semantic level

Semantics refers to the meaning of words or expressions, and by what means the meaning is conveyed from the addresser to the addressee. Here, the emphasis is around some figures of speech.

The charming of conversation is that it does not really start from anywhere, and no one has any idea where it will go. After all, conversation is not for making a point. Thus, there is normal non-fluency in conversation unlike in writing. Certainly, in this extract, speakers always use the skills of unintended repetition, pauses, and hesitation to help to convey the meanings. Semantically, people prefer to talk about everything as they like. This is because conversation is casual in nature. No one prepare in advance or plan for what to talk about before. What is more, the subjects ranging from the cold, meeting, car, arm to knit, all show their conversation is at random, lacking of planning.

Conclusion

Conversation is actually a distinct variety, whose stylistic features do not lie in

the above analysis only. We have just made a very tough stylistic analysis of the two housewives’ conversation, mainly concentrating on the phonological, lexical, syntactic/ grammatical levels. To sum up, conversation contains many stylistic features. These are some typical and familiar stylistic features.

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References

Crystal, David & Derek Davy. 1969. Investigating English Style. London: Longman Group Ltd.

董启明. 2008. 新编英语文体学教程. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社 胡壮麟. 2001. 语言学教程. 北京：北京大学出版社.

Appendix

A Conversation between Two Housewives

A:You got a /cold //

B:/No/just a/bit sniffy/cos I’m -I/am cold /and I’ll be all right once I’ve warmed up//-do I look as though I’ve got a cold//

The pause aim to arouse the people’attention A: no I/ thought you sounded as if you were// B:/M/

A/ pull your CHAIR UP close if YOU WANT // / it is-* (obscured speech)*/

B */YES/ I’ll be all right in a MINUTE /*/it’s just that I’m A STUpid // I/ had er about five thousand BOOKS/-to/take back to senate HOUSE YESterday //-and I got /all The way through the college/to /where the CAR was/at the/parking Meter at the OTHER end /and/realized

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I’d left my COAT in my /LOCKer /and *just couldn’t* A*/M/*

FACE going / all the way BACK

again/with/this great//you know my/ARMS Where aching / A(M)

B and I thought/ WELL/ I’ll/ get it on TUESDAY/-it’s a bit /SILLY?cos I/NEED it// A /M/ it’s gone/ very COLD?/HASn’t it // B /M/- it’s FREEZING// A/M/* I’m(2 syllables)//*

B* you’re/ KNITTING?//*(laughs quietly for-)/ what are you KNITTING//That’s not a tiny GARment // A /No/ B(Laughs for - )

A/no it’s for ME/ but it’s/ very PLAIN// B it’s a /lovely COLour //- A it / is NICE //

B/YEAH/-I / never di I could /never TAKE to KNITTING/ ex / cept on these / double o needles with STRING // you /KNOW/ That’s MY sort of knitting //* A */YEAH//

B It / GROWS quickly// A/YEAH / I got fed UP //

B /( 3 or 4 syllables) the PROcess though // do you / SEW / I / used to sew a lot (when)* A/NO（I/DON’T）//

B in the / days when I was a human BEing//*

(Crystal & Davy , 1969:97-99)

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