A MODEL VERSION OF TEXT ANALYSIS: THE EXTRACT FROM CHAPTER 8, "TO SIR, WITH LOVE"
BY E. R. BRAITHWAITE
Предлагаемый ниже материал содержит лингвостилистический анализ одной из глав романа Э. Брейтуэйта «Учителю с любовью»1. Хотя столь подробный, комплексный анализ рассчитан на преподавателей вузов, полагаем, что он может быть использован и в средней школе, в классах филологического
профиля.
Narrating or narration are terms denoting the act of telling a story, which takes place in a narrative or text [5, 468]. Traditionally, a distinction has been made between factual and literary narrative [4, 814]. The text in question is an example of prose fiction, one subtype of literary narration. Narration implies the existence of the narrator, i.e. a fictional person or consciousness, who narrates all or part of a text. Thus the study of narratives includes not only questions of tense (order, duration, frequency) but also the manner of narration and point of view, the identity of the narrator, the real or implied audience or narratees and their relationship to the action.
The discussion of a narrative often involves the use of the term implied author, i.e. the hypothetical possessor of the set of attitudes and beliefs implied by a text as a whole and distinguished from the "real" or biographical author. The distinction is necessary because a text may imply a set of beliefs (and perhaps a personality) which the author does not actually possess, and because differ-
1 Braithwaite E. R. To Sir, With Love. London: Heinemann, 1981. P. 63-69. (См. Приложение к статье)
-е-
-Q-
ent texts by the same author may imply different social, moral, and aesthetic values. Implied reader is the term coined by analogy with the term implied author. It refers to the sort of reader that a novel (or some other text) seems to expect or demand. There are a number of related terms, including the ideal reader, the intended reader etc.
The character within a narrative whose point of view orients the narrative perspective has recently been termed the focal character. This term is more precise than 'main character' since the point of view or focus of the narration can and often does shift from one character to another, especially in twentieth-century fiction. Where there is a focal character, his or her sense impressions and/or perceptions are what the narrative presents to the reader. The focal character is distinguished from the narrator, since the latter may be a different person. Internal focalization views the events through the mind of a particular focal character, external focalization follows the experiences of a character without revealing his or her thoughts. Non-focalized narration is told by an impersonal narrator.
A narrator may be a character within a story, who then tells the story. This is the case with the extract under analysis. On the one hand, the first two paragraphs of the extract seem to differ from the remaining eight because they do not contain any explicit reference to the narrator or the 'I' of the story. The first sentence of Paragraph 1 looks like a perfect example of non-focalized narration. On the other hand, the reader learns what kind of narrative to expect from the title of the novel - "To Sir, With Love". The implied reader in this case is expected to belong to a group of readers who are speakers of British English. The noun "Sir" is used in spoken BrE by children at school as a way of addressing or talking about a male teacher [6]. Thus after reading the title the reader is assumed to be prepared for a novel about the experiences of a British schoolteacher. This assumption is confirmed by the fact that most of the tense forms used throughout the extract are those of the Past Indefinite (Past Simple) characteristic of all kinds of narrative. Besides, the construction would + Infinitive without the particle 'to' is often used to talk about regular past activities [2, 235]. The use of the phrasal verb 'to look back' (meaning 'to remember') at the begin-
ning of Paragraph 6 confirms the impression that the 'I' of the story and the biographical author largely overlap.
Paragraphs 1 and 2, however, contain no direct evidence of this; it is through the language means and stylistic devices or tropes that the reader is enabled to conclude that the events are presented as viewed by the young black teacher. The only person directly referred to is the school headmaster. The reader might think that it is he who tells the story, but the narrator refers to him in the 3rd person as the 'Old Man', 'he' and 'Mr. Florian'. The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. defines the contextual meaning of the fixed phrase 'old man' as: 1...h. A person set in authority over others: ... a superintendent or senior official; a 'boss' [8]. The phrase itself, the title 'Mr.' before the surname 'Florian', and the fact that both words in the phrase as well as the word 'headmaster' are capitalized, suggest that the headmaster is not the narrator, and that the focal character must be a younger member of the school's teaching staff, a person subordinated to Mr. Florian, the headmaster.
In Paragraph 1 the young teacher's mind seems to be focussed on the school and the headmaster's way of running it. The reader notices that the term 'Weekly Review' is capitalized and it is referred to as 'one of the Old Man's pet schemes'. The entry on the adjective 'pet' in LDOCE shows that this emotive word can be used to express both strong liking and irony: 1. pet theory/project/subject a plan, idea, or subject that you particularly like or are interested in 2 pet hate ЛгЕ..something that you strongly dislike because it always annoys you. The noun 'pet' has a cross-reference to the phrase teacher's pet informal a child who everyone thinks is the teacher's favourite student and is therefore disliked by the other students. The phrase 'would brook no interference' consists of the modal verb would describing (sometimes critically) someone's characteristic behaviour, and the verb 'brook' which LDOCE treats as brook2 v not brook sth/ brook no sth formal not to allow or accept something. Why are the words 'headmaster', 'old man', and 'weekly review' capitalized in the text? What is the young teacher's attitude to the headmaster's scheme?
From the quotation marks opening and closing Paragraph 2, and the words 'Mr. Florian said' it is clear that this is the headmaster's direct speech. But if we look closely
-Q-
at Paragraph 1, we become aware that syntactically there is a change in the third sentence: the narrator starts using repetition or reiteration - 'in his own (words)', 'in his own (way)'; the link-verb 'was' is followed by four indefinite infinitives in the function of a predicative (fourfold repetition), which in their turn have three indirect noun objects (triple repetition). Other examples of lexical and grammatical reiteration are: 'was free to' paralleled by 'was safe from'; ' No one and nothing was (sacred)...'; the pronoun 'any' ('with any person, subject or method', 'from any form of reprisal'). The question is: who in this situation is likely to repeat things in this way and why?
The above-mentioned use of the modal 'would' is echoed by those in Paragraph 2: 'If a child wants, he will.', 'If we are careless, they will.', 'You will (discover.)', '.the sensible teacher will.'. In all these cases, besides futurity, the meaning of the verb 'will' is that of inevitability or something naturally expected; it conveys the headmaster's confidence in his 'schemes'. Here we should perhaps pause again and ask ourselves: Whose point of view do the last two sentences of Paragraph 1 suggest? Whose speech - the young teacher's or the headmaster's - is represented by these sentences? What is the implication of the repetition 'in his own (words)', 'in his own (way)'? Why is there such insistence on 'each child' being 'free to comment, to criticize, to agree or disagree'? Why are the nouns 'person, subject or method' qualified by the pronoun 'any'? What does the narrator mean by the epithet 'sacred'? State which of the following definitions in LDOCE fits the context: sacred 1 connected with a god or religion 2 greatly respected, or believed to be holy 3 extremely important to you, especially in a way that other people think is silly or annoying.
Who do you think the headmaster is speaking to and in what situation? Choose a label for the following vocabulary (informal, formal, common core or neutral, slang): be of advantage to, take pains to do sth, set sth down, in terms of, follow and observe one's progress in sth, (be) reasonably (fair), (be) pointless (to do sth). Can you rephrase or give synonyms of these vocabulary units? What special field or subject do they belong to? What are the contextual meanings of the
dead or conventional metaphors 'take pains (to do sth)' and 'get close to sb'? Why does the headmaster qualify what he is saying with the pronouns 'both' ('pupil and teacher'), 'some' ('take some pains', 'in some way'), the adverb 'reasonably' ('fair')? What does the headmaster mean by the epithet 'sensible' ('teacher')?
Read the title of the novel and Paragraphs 3-10 of the extract carefully. Does the title agree with their content? In what context or situation is the title likely to be used? Choose the right answer: a) a game b) an inscription on a tombstone c) a formula ending a letter d) an inscription in a book or on a card enclosed with a gift from the students to their teacher on graduation day. Does the title suggest that finally the teacher was able to establish a productive and friendly relationship with the class or is it to be understood as bitterly ironic?
In Paragraph 3 the narrator becomes explicit for the first time, that is, he refers to himself using the first person singular pronoun 'I'. The very first sentence of the passage shows why Paragraphs 1 and 2 dealt with the weekly review. The 'I' of the story confesses that 'on th
Для дальнейшего прочтения статьи необходимо приобрести полный текст. Статьи высылаются в формате PDF на указанную при оплате почту. Время доставки составляет менее 10 минут. Стоимость одной статьи — 150 рублей.