2011 — 2012学年第1学期

研究生课程期末论文

论文题目：Stylistics Analysis of One Poem

学 号：20101630894

姓 名：蔡莉

专业年级：2010级英语笔译

课程名称：英语语言史

任课教师：石小军

完成日期：2011年12月25日

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研究生院培养办制表

Stylistics Analysis of One Poem

Abstract: The poem, as a unique form of literature, provides people with visual beauty, music beauty, symbolic beauty and imaginative beauty. This paper is aimed at studying a short poem called “Come to the Edge” written by Guillaume Appolinaire on the basis of the functional stylistics, analyzing the interpersonal grammatical grammar and its lexical grammar. In addition, a detailed analysis will examine the simple sentences and the semantic significance of these sentences. In the end, the paper will analyze transitivity as well as interpersonal functional and its role to the connotation of this poem.

Key words: functional stylistics, grammatical metaphor, context and interpersonal function

The poem is not only the quintessence of literature, but also the most concise language art. Among various kinds of literature forms, the poem is one literary genre which can prominently represent the value of literature works. The poem, characterized by refined language, rich and profound connotation symbolizes the author’s inner world fraught with his individuality, creation and imagination. In terms of traditional stylistics, its analysis focuses on the phonetics and meter of one poem and examines the stylistic feature by means of analyzing the layout, figure of speech, sentence pattern, punctuations and so on and so forth. However, the functional stylistics put forward by Halliday provides us with a complete and comprehensive stylistic analysis framework. Compared to the traditional stylistics, the functional stylistics is one stylistics theory on the basis of the Halliday’s theories of systemic-functional grammar, which puts emphasis on the correlation between language function and literary studies. In addition, he insisted on taking full advantage of the three meta functions to analyze the version, including ideational function, interpersonal function as well as textual function. The central philosophy of the Halliday’s theories of systemic-functional grammar is the “philosophy of function”, which is aimed at associating the language forms with the situation and the context by means of functional analysis, and explaining the language structure by these three functions. The following poem is written by a French poet named Guillaume Apollinaire. Actually, despite the poem is quite short, it has been quoted by many people throughout the world.

Come to the edge

Come to the edge,

We can’t. It is too high.

Come to the edge.

We can’t. We will fall.

They come to the edge

He pushed them and they flew.

This paper will mainly analyze the text characteristic of this short poem in terms of functional stylistics, including context, lexical sets and grammatical metaphor features, tense, cohesion changes and the meaning of metaphor as well as the transitivity and interpersonal function.

Context

Actually, the language is not only always applied in the situation but also play a role in the situation. The context can be divided into culture context and situation context. The culture context means the social environment of the whole language system. The situation context not only denotes the environment of speaking, including the content of speaking, participants, the channels of speaking and so on, but also denotes the environment of the text. More specifically, the situation context is composed of three parts: field, tenor and mode. In the poem “Come to the Edge”, there are two fields. The first field is about the dialogue of “to the edge”, and the second field is about something happened after“to the edge”. Also, there are two tenors in this poem. The one is the two parties in the dialogue and the other is the two parties involved in the matter. Two modes are spoken language and narrative words respectively. It is due to the fact that one of the functions of the poem is to stimulate people’s emotion by means of imagination, metaphor and intense appealing. Therefore, it is always the case that the poem is fraught with the abstract field and context so as to bring readers into the profound poetic conception and identify with the poet.

Lexical sets and grammatical metaphor features

In the poem, “edge” is a very pivotal word. Although it is a very common noun, it is used as a proper noun. In addition, the efficacy of the metaphor of “edge” is quite obvious. It goes without saying that it will remind people that they will be probably encountered with various kinds of difficulties and challenges in both their work and their lives. However, due to the fact that it is natural that people may feel frustrated and be not willing to face up to the reality in times of hardship or setback. Therefore, “come to the edge” or “No, we will fall” denotes that this kind of attitude is the natural reaction of people when faced with difficulties and challenges. It is often the case that people may be at a loss as to what to do in face of these difficulties and can not make up their minds immediately. “come to the edge” in this poem repeated again and again. This arrangement has profound meaning. It not only intensifies people’s fierce ideological struggle in a dilemma but also symbolize people’s agony and trouble when making their choices. “They came to the edge”/ “He pushed them, and they flew.” These two sentences remind people of the result of their ideological struggle. It seems to me that the poet does not have the heart to let the readers guess the final destiny, and the poet wrote the result of “they flew” without delay. The word “and” as well as the comma in the sentence “He pushed them, and they flew” put emphasize on the compactness of the matters, and then the poet told the readers unexpected result. In addition to relieve the readers, it can be rather impressive to readers and they will undoubtedly reflect on themselves as to how to prepare for the inscrutable future. When it comes to the sentence structure, the poem is made up of several simple sentences. Although there are no more than five words in each sentence, each word can express the main idea of this poem. Therefore, the simple words in the poem convey the profound meaning. Besides, the poet applied the simple sentence to express rich and significant connotation, which makes the readers much easier to have a command of the gist of the poem and have much more imagination space. In the words meaning sense, “edge” and “fall” are fully convey what goal the poet want to achieve. Because people are afraid to fall, they are too scared to come to the “edge”. If they are pushed, it is natural that they will undoubtedly fall. However, the poet used the word “flew”, the readers are quite shocked at the unexpected result: there is another probability when coming to the“edge”. The result will remind the readers that there is always hope in their lives and never lose courage when faced difficulties and challenges.

Tense, cohesion changes and the meaning of metaphor

The poem conveys our different kinds of struggling life experiences by only six simple sentences, and its connotation heavily depends on the tense, cohesion changes and the meaning of metaphor in this poem. The poet repeatedly wrote “come to the edge”, which is just a simple imperative sentence. However, the form and content of dialogue can bring the reader into a either concrete or abstract situation. Due to the fact that the situation can fully reveal people’s weakness or shortcomings, the readers will respond instinctively “No, we will fall”. In addition to that, the repeated use of this sentence can make the readers reflect on their contradictions. The last two sentences are quite surprising. It can depict a both breathtaking and inspiring picture, which make the readers who are involved in the resist mentality are enlightened all of a sudden and have confident in them. In terms of the tense, the present tense and the future tense in this poem can not only embody the people’s common mentality when faced with fierce ideological struggle but also denote the dilemma in their lives. The past tense in the last two sentences convincingly illustrate that “come to the edge”not necessarily means you will absolutely fall, perhaps it will create the more positive outcome. On the whole, the poem begins with the present tense and the future tense which embodies people’s contradiction and end up with the past tense which embodies the solution of contradiction. In an abstract sense, this arrangement of the tense can embody people’s happy mood after conquer the insurmountable challenges. In term of the cohesion, the subject changes, so the cohesion changes too. It should be pointed out that the pronouns in the poem do not refer in particular to one people or one thing. Firstly, the subject of the imperative sentence“come to the edge” is not clear, which even can be the god or the destiny. Secondly, the subject“we”and “they” do not specially refer to some people, which can be comprehended as some readers who can identify with the poet or the readers themselves. In addition, the repeat use of the word“edge” make the meaning of the sentence more obscure. However, they can stand for the same meaning in an abstract sense, that is, they represent some choices awash with challenges or difficulties. So we can conclude that the pronouns in the poem have the symbolic grammatical metaphor, which can be close to the readers who have different kinds of life experience and feel the same way with the poet.

Transitivity and the interpersonal function

Transitivity is a semantic system, which is used for dividing what people see or what people do in the reality into several processes. The paper will mainly talk about the material process of the poem. “Come to the edge” is a material process without the target. Because this sentence is a simple sentence with little information, the readers can hardly make a guess about the result of “come to the edge” and they will think the result should “fall” off the “edge”. Similarly, the sentence “They come to the edge” is also a material process without the target. The readers can get little information form it and difficult to predict what will happen on earth. The sentence “He pushed them” is a process with one target in the poem. The readers are eager to know what will happen after coming to the“edge”. The sentence“and they flew”bring the readers inspiring outcome and give them much more imagination space. Notably, each sentence in the poem is a material process and give the readers some inspiration, that is to say people should take actions and stand up to the difficult situation. When it comes to interpersonal function, it mainly conclude two systems: mood system and modality system. The interpersonal function means the participation function. The speaker are involved in one situation context to instill his ideas to the listeners and convey the speaker’s deduction and attitude for the purpose of having an influence on the listeners’ behaviors. The poem, as a genre expressing feelings, should fully display the interpersonal function of poem. In the poem, the sentences“Come to the edge./ No, we will fall” not only can be comprehended the common dialogue, but also the fierce inner struggle of people. The sentence“He pushed him, and they flew”in the poem seems as if the subject“He” is the dominator, but after “they flew”, “they” becomes the dominator of their own behaviors. The six simple sentences in the poem take advantage of the two identities of insiders and outsiders to make the readers face up to the struggle, begin their new life after experiencing frustration and always have confidence in themselves.

Conclusion

There is no doubt that the unfailing charm one poem brings to the reader is closely associated with the content and expression of one poem. The paper is aimed at analyzing the poem“Come to the edge” from the perspective of context, lexical sets and grammatical metaphor features, tense, cohesion changes and the meaning of metaphor, transitivity and the interpersonal function on the basis of the theories of functional stylistics. It not only illustrates the correlation between language and theme, but also denotes the role of the functional stylistics in appreciation of literary works and genre analysis.

Reference

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英语语言史论文