Questions for English Stylistics
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
What does general stylistics study? Why should we learn stylistics?
What are the three steps of stylistic analysis? What are the functions of stress? Give examples.
In what varieties of English the exclamation mark is most or least frequent? Why?
6. Explain the functions of long and short paragraphs, and indicate in what varieties
of English short/long paragraphs are most frequently found.
7. Give examples to illustrate the differences in pronunciation between standard
British and American English.
8. Give examples to illustrate the spelling differences between British and American
English.
9. Which of the two terms, American English and the American language, is more
appropriate, and why?
10. What are the main differences between spoken English and written English? 11. What is the danger if you use too much formal language in your daily
conversation?
12. Can you use some colloquial words in writing? If so, what kind of writing should
it be?
13. What factors affect the degrees of formality? 14. What is the effect of impersonal language?
15. Label the following sentences according to the five degrees of formality:
Would you be so good? Your silence is requested. Do shut up! Quiet, please. Put a sock in it!
16. Are you speaking differently from or the same from your parents? Give examples
to illustrate your points.
17. How did African American English come into being? 18. Give examples of taboo and euphemisms.
19. What are the basic stylistic features of conversation at the lexical level? 20. What are the basic stylistic features of conversation at the semantic level?
21. What are the most noticeable features of the vocabulary of casual conversation? 22. How many types of public speeches are there? 23. How do you make an effective public speech?
24. What are the general stylistic features of public speeches? 25. What are the general stylistic features of news reports?
26. What are the general stylistic features and function of newspaper headlines? 27. What types of variety may possibly co-occur with journalistic language? Why?
28. What is the function of advertising language?
29. How many parts does an advertisement usually consist of? And what are the
functions of each part?
30. Find some interesting advertisements from the Internet and present them to the
class with you own explanations. 31. What is generally required of EST? Why?
32. Tell how and why EST prefers impersonal sentence patterns? 33. Why are the present tense and passive voice often used in EST?
34. Why do we say that legal English appears extremely conservative and even odd
in form? What archaic words are often found in legal documents? 35. What punctuation marks occur the least frequently in legal documents? 36. What is your favorite type of novel? Why?
37. What are the general stylistic features of the language of a novel? 38. What is the difference between poetry and prose? 39. What are the commonly found stanzas in English? 40. How does a poem appeal aesthetically to the reader?
41. What is the function of lexical repetition? And what is the function of syntactical
repetition?
42. What effects are achieved through the manipulation of sounds?
43. EST and Legal English are two widely different varieties, but there seem to exist
some common features in style. Point them out.
44. Comment on how the author’s selection of details of description and choice of
words contributed to the atmosphere of the novel.
“The Bottoms” succeeded to “Hell Row.” Hell Row was a block of thatched, bulging cottages that stood by the brookside on Greenhill lane. There lived the colliers who worked in the little gin-pits two fields away. The brook ran under the alder trees, scarcely soiled by these small mines, whose coal was drawn to the surface by donkeys that plodded wearily in a circle round a gin, and all over the countryside were these same pits, some of which had been worked in the time of Charles II, the few colliers and the donkeys burrowing down like ants into the earth, making queer mounds and little black places among the corn-fields and the meadow. And the cottages of these coalminers, in blocks and pairs here and there, together with odd farms and homes of the stockingers, straying over the parish, formed the village of Bestwood.
Then, some sixty years ago, a sudden change took place. The gin-pits were elbowed aside by the large mines of the financiers. The coal and iron field of Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire was discovered. Carston, Waite and Co. appeared. Amid excitement, Lord Palmerston formally opened the company’s first mine at Spinney Park, on the edge of Sherwood Forest. D. H. Lawrence: Sons and Lovers
45. Analyze the metrics of the following poem by W. B Yeats:
When you are old and gray and full of sleep, And nodding by the fires, take down this book, And slowly read, and dream of the soft look Your eyes had once, and of their shadows deep; How many loved your moments of glad grace, And loved your beauty with love false and true, But one man loved the pilgrim soul in you, And loved the sorrows of your changing face;