English Rhetoric 英语修辞.doc

English Rhetoric 英语修辞“Rhetoric is the art of using language effectively.” from Modern Rhetoric by Brooks and Warren. Differences between grammar and rhetoric:“Grammar maps out the possible; rhetoric narrows the possible down to the desirable and effective.” By Francis Christensen“Grammar is the law of language, considered as language; rhetoric is the art of language, considered as thought. Grammar tells what is correct; rhetoric tells what is effective and pleasing.” By 伍海伦Figures of speech 修辞格Figures of speech are forms of expression that depart from normal word or sentence order or from the common literal meanings of words, for the purpose of achieving a special effect.In everyday speech and writing and in literature the chief functions of figures of speech are probably to embellish, to emphasize or to clarify. They are used to give tone or atmosphere to discourse, to provide vivid example, to stimulate thought by startling the reader or listener, to give life to inanimate objects, to amuse, or to ornament.Simile明喻: a figure that involves an expressed comparison, almost always introduced by the word “like” or “as”. The two things compared must be dissimilar and the basis of resemblance is usually an abstract quality.Examples:A. Like soft, watery lightning went the wandering snake at the crowd. (D.H. Lawrence)B. He bellowed like a bull seeking combat.More examples:a. Who is to blame but her tyrant of a father?b. He had no more idea of money than a cow.c. Love and cough cannot be hid.Metaphor 暗喻：the substitution of one thing for another, or the identification of two things from different ranges of thought. It is often loosely defined as “an implied comparison,” “a simile without like or as. Metaphor is considered by many the most important and basic poetic figure and also the commonest and the most beautiful.Examples:A. Snow clothes the ground.B. Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested. (Bacon)C. This is not the time to throw up the sponge, when the enemy, already weakened and divided, are on the run to a new defensive position. (mixed metaphor; a mixture of prize-ring and battlefield)Personification (拟人) ：a figure that endows objects, animals, ideas, or abstractions with human form, character, or sensibility. There are three chief kinds of personifications:Examples:A. That produced by the use of adjectives. The blushing rose; the thirsty groundB. That produced by the use of verbs. The kettle sings; the waves dancedC. That produced by the use of nouns. The smiles of spring; the whisper of leavesZoosemy（拟物）：opposite to personification is zoosemy in which names of animals are metaphorically used to denote human qualities, as in “Youre shedding crocodile tears”, which means “Youre shedding insincere tears”.Examples:A. “A lucky dog you are!” exclaimed Jim.B. Terribly hungry, the man wolfed down all the cakes.C. Children are flowers of our country.Antithesis（平行对照）：the setting of contrasting phrases opposite each other for emphasis. In true antithesis the opposition between the elements is manifested through parallel grammatical structure.Examples:A. The quest for righteousness is Oriental, the quest for knowledge, Occidental. (Sir William Osler)B. A friend exaggerates a mans virtues, an enemy his crimes.C. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich. (John F. Kennedy)Onomatopoeia（拟声）：the use of words that, when pronounced, suggest their meaning, such as hiss or buzz. In poetry it involves suiting sound to sense and thereby creating verses that carry their meaning in their sound.Examples:a) The stream flows through the woods.b) The stream is murmuring through the woods.Daisy started laughing. Daisy started giggling.The door was pushed open. The door crashed open.Heavy raindrops fell on the tent. Heavy raindrops began pitter-pattering on the tent.Onomatopoeic words are those that are formed by directly imitating sounds, including those produced by metals (clang, clank, clash, ding-dong, jangle, tick-tack, ting, tinkle, etc.), those produced by water or other liquids (bubble, drip-drop, sizz, sizzle, splash, splish-splosh, etc.), those produced by various animals (coo, hiss, moo, miao, screech, etc.), those produced by human beings (chatter, chuckle, grumble, grunt, gurgle, mumble, murmur, shriek, smack, sneeze, snigger, snort, sputter, whisper, whoop, etc.),etc.Metonymy转喻；借代: the substitution of the name of one thing for that of another with which it is closely associated.Examples:A. The kettle is boiling. (The water in the kettle is boiling.) B. The pen is stronger than the sword. (Those who use the pen have more influence than those who use the sword.)C. The gray hair should be respected. (The old/aged should be respected.)More examples:John Bull: England/the English peopleUncle Sam: the United States of AmericaDowning Street: the British government/cabinetHollywood: American film-making industryMadison Avenue: American advertising industryThe Pentagon: the U.S. military establishmentWall Street: U.S. financial circlesRomeo: loverHelen: beautiful womanMilton: poet The bar: the legal professionDown under: AustraliaIvan: the Russian peopleSynecdoche提喻: commonly, the naming of a part to mean the whole or vice versa.Examples:A. The famous port used to be a harbor which was crowded with masts. (masts for boats)B. All the plants in the cold country are turning green in this smiling year. (this smiling year for the spring)C. More hands are needed at the moment. (hands for working men)D. We had dinner at ten dollars a head. (a head for each person)Climax层进: arrangement of phrases or sentences in ascending order of importance.Examples:A. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.B. I came, I saw, I conquered.C. The audience smiled, chuckled, and finally howled.Anticlimax渐降: the sudden appearance of an absurd or trivial idea following one or more significant or elevated ideas. Anticlimax is usually comic in effect.Examples:A. The duties of a soldier are to protect his country and peel potatoes.B. And he winked away in silence, while I thought of the Indian poet Valmiki when, in a trance of voluptuous abstraction, he sat under the fig-tree and was slowly eaten of ants. (Edmund Gosse: “A Visit to Walt Whitman”)他（惠特曼）默默地眨着眼睛，那一刻我想到了印度诗人瓦尔米基，沉湎于暇思之中时，他也是枯坐在无花果属下，慢慢悠悠地吃着蚂蚁。（杨岂深译）C. The perfect boyfriend doesnt drink, smoke, cheat or exist. Hyperbole夸张: a conscious exaggeration for the sake of emphasis, not intended to be understood literally.Examples: A. Thank you.Thanks a million. B. They laughed heartily.They almost died laughing. C. When she smiled, other people were all gay. Mary smiled, and all the world was gay. D. Im hungry.Im starving.Alliteration头韵: the use in a phrase or sentence of words beginning with the same letter or sound. Alliteration should be used only when the writer makes a strong emotional response to his subject.Examples:A. We felt strong, smug, secure.B. US trade policy is often viewed as inconsistent, incoherent and incomprehensible to the countries of the origin.Transferred epithet移就修饰；移就: the transference of an adjective to a noun to which it is not wholly appropriate.Examples:A. a dizzy height. (a height that causes people to feel dizzy)B. a sleepless bed. (a bed on which the sleeper has little sleep)C. The big man crashed down on a protesting chair.D. After an unthinking moment, she put her pen into her mouth.E. A sweet voice; an icy lookRhetorical question激问；寓问于答: a question neither requiring nor intended to produce a reply but asked for emphasis. The assumption is that only one answer is possible.Examples:O WindIf Winter comes, can spring be far behind?Paradox反论；逆论: a statement that appears to be logically contradictory and yet may be true, the purpose of which is to provoke fresh thought.Examples:A. A lover of peace emerged as a magnificent leader of war.B. One mans terrorist is another mans freedom.C. In fact, it appears that the teachers of English teach English so poorly largely because they teach grammar so well. (W. Johnson)Allusion 引喻，典故An allusion is a reference to something in history or previous literature. It is like a richly annotative word or a symbol, a means of suggesting far more than it says. Allusion are a means of reinforcing the emotion or the idea of ones own work with the emotion or ideas of another work or occasion. Because they are capable of saying so much in so little, they are extremely useful to the poet for the purpose of heightening vividness and forcefulness. Greek mythology, the Bible, Shakespeare, etc, are rich literature houses of allusions. In everyday speech allusions are often used.e.g. He met his Waterloo in 1940 when the project he heavily invested was collapsed.Waterloo_ the place where Napolean was defeated by the English troops led by Duke Wellington. To meet ones Water