Stylistic-Analysis-of-Gettysburg-Address葛底斯堡文体学分析6页

1、 Stylistic Analysis of Gettysburg AddressAbstract: Public speech is an art. It presents the features of formal written language while exhibiting characteristics of the spoken. Abraham Lincoln, an excellent speaker, addressed this speech on November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This speech,

2、which is very convincing, is considered a classic. This paper analysis the speech from stylistic perspective in four aspects: phonological level, lexical level, syntactical level and semantic level. Through the essay, we can have a better understanding of the public speech.Key Words: Abraham Lincoln

3、, Gettysburg Address, stylistic analysis. IntroductionAs far as the definition of stylistics is concerned different scholars define the branch of study in different ways. Wales defines stylistics simply as “the study of style” (1989:437), while Leech defines stylistics as the “study of the use of la

4、nguage in literature” (1969:1) and considers stylistics a “meeting-ground of linguistics and literary study” (1969:2). Stylistic analysis is generally concerned with the uniqueness of a text; that is, what it is that is peculiar to the uses of language in a literary text for delivering the message.

5、This naturally involves comparisons of the language of the text with that used in conventional types of discourse. Thus, we may conclude that stylistic analysis is an activity that is highly comparative in nature.The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the

6、most well-known speeches in United States history. It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers National Cemetery in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania; four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those

7、 of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. Abraham Lincolns carefully crafted address, secondary to other presentations that day, came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the

8、Declaration of Independence and redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as a new birth of freedom that would bring true equality to all of its citizens, ensure that democracy would remain a viable form of government, and would also create a unified nation in which states

9、rights were no longer dominant. A Stylistic Analysis of the Speech1. At Phonological LevelMany speeches use parallelism and antithesis to make langue be with the rhythm of music. So we cant ignore the phonological features of speeches. This is a political speech with the features of rigorous logic,

10、refined langue, strength and charisma. In the beginning, “Fourscore and seven years ago” replaces eighty-seven years ago is the ingenuity of Lincoln that “fourscore” has two long vowels o: which is resounding and well known by people, and can draw audiences attention effectively. If substitute ei of

11、 eighty-seven with o: of “Fourscore”, it cant reach such an effectiveness as o:. Except this, we can also see amounts of vocabulary with resounding vowels, such as fourscore，now，that nation，any，that nation might live，cannot，tally did，nobly，great，before，God，new birth，of，by，for，perish and so on. All o

12、f the lexis enhance volume and make listeners catch the point of the speech easily. At the transition of speech, improving the intonation of “but” can not only make audiences be more conscious of the oncoming, but also the speaker more impassioned. To rhythm, the speed of speaking is usually within

13、the range of 120 to 150 words per min. A total of 275 words of this speech are finished barely in 3minutes, from which, we can know the speed is medium. It is planed deliberately by Lincoln that what he is facing is a complicated and motley community or group including statesman, military officer, j

14、ournalist and the family of martyr and other grassroots among these people are either lowbrow or highbrow. For persuading them to reach a common target, he has to make sure everyone at presence totally understand the content of his speech. Additionally, he makes use of “pause” skillfully, for instan

15、ce, the “pause” after “now” leads to a thought of current missions and conditions; the “pause” after God make people image what will happen the next moment.2. At Lexical LevelWord is the basic grammar unit. Different styles require using different words. Meanwhile the different stylistic colorings o

16、f the words also determine their different applicable scope. Here we would analyze Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address from two aspects in the lexical level.2.1 DictionIn English, we often call those words containing six or above six letters, or three or above three syllables as BIG WORD. Generally

17、an essay could show its formality by using a certain number of big words. In Lincolns Gettysburg Address, the whole text has 275 words while the number of big words is 57, which make up 21% of the total. However, the proportion of big word in daily language is often less than 20%. So relatively, the

18、 public speeches use more formal words and their word structure is more complex. This shows up in two aspects:Firstly, in public speech, presidents always use formal language. This not only to show stability but also would make the audience feel the speaker is serious in politics. So in Lincolns Get

19、tysburg Address, there are such formal words: “consecrate”, “hallow”, and “perish” and so on.Secondly, as a political speech, abstract words are indispensable. Therefore, we can find “proposition”, “conceived”, “dedicated”, “consecrated”, “devotion” and “freedom” this kind of words. These words whic

20、h may increase the difficulty to understand to some extend can make the speech very formal and compelling.2.2 The use of personIn public speech, the first person is most common. This is because the first person would help speaker to state his viewpoint and strike a chord with his listeners. When del

21、ivering his speech, Lincoln uses various personal pronouns to address the audience.Lincoln uses first person frequently. “We”, “our”, and “us” contribute to involve the audience, making them feel that they are on equal terms with the president. Thus it is easier for the speaker to win the support of

22、 the listeners, who immediately feel close to the speaker when hearing the expression “we” or “our”. Lincoln involves all the audience and makes them feel that they are the ones whom he is speaking to. In this speech, he changes personal pronoun from time to time. By the conversion of personal prono

23、uns, he manages to make the speech flexible and rousing.3. At Syntactical LevelGenerally speaking, sentence is often seemed as the orderly arrangement of words. Based on the above analyses, we can deduce that Lincolns speech has its own feature in syntactical level. 3.1 The sentence structureThe len

24、gth of sentence depends on the style type of the text. In Lincolns speech, there are 10 sentences, 275 words. Among them, there is no sentence that include 1-9 words; 3 sentences that include 10-19 words, accounting for 30%; 6 sentences that include 20-29 words, accounting for 60%; 1 sentence that i

25、ncludes 83 words, accounting for 10%. The data shows that Lincoln prefers to use short and long sentences in his speech. Short sentence can not only make his speech more vivid and exciting, but also make his expression more powerful. Meanwhile, long sentence can express ideas more clearly. Thus Linc

26、olns alternate use of the short and long sentences make his speech sounds neither too single nor too rigmarole.3.2 The sentence typeIn this speech, composite sentences are very common, while simple sentences just account for a little part. Lincoln rarely uses “s” structure. Instead, he applied “of”,

27、 that and “who” to put the modifier part behind. By using postposition structure, he makes the content more precise and adds a sense of elegance and gravity to the speech.Besides, all the sentences in the speech are statements without a few questions. Because the aim of speech is to deliver the mass

28、age of “the lament to the sacrificed soldiers”, he utilizes affirmative tone to emphasize his and American peoples feelings. The application of command also helps to enhance the interaction of the addresser and the addresses.4. At Semantic LevelFor any style of text, its very important to beautify t

29、he language and the use of rhetorical devices is one of the most effective ways to do this. For public speech, strong infection and agitation are necessary and important. Especially in public speech, the aim of the speaker is to win support and trust, so they have to use rhetorical devices to gain d

30、esired results. Here in Abraham Lincolns Gettysburg Address, there are also many rhetorical devices.4.1 RepetitionThroughout the speech, Lincoln repeats words and sentence. This is a very outstanding feature in this speech called repetition. It belongs to the stylistic device of syntactic over-regul

31、arity. The term repetition is restricted to mean the case of exact copying of a certain previous unit in a text such as a word, phrase or even a sentence (Leech, 1969), because all the over-regular features in literature are in some sense repetitious. Used in speech, repetition not only makes it eas

32、y for the audience to follow what the speaker is saying, but also gives a strong rhythmic quality to the speech and makes it more memorable.Lincoln repeats some words in his speech, such as “dedicate”, “here”, “nation”, “great”, “shall”, “people” and so on. Besides, he also uses the repetition struc

33、ture of sentences, such as “It is for us, the living, rather to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced”, “It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us”. This repetition helps to achieve the function of coh

34、erence in discourse and the function of reinforcement in mood and emotion, expressing the speakers strong emotion of longing for freedom and justice.4.2 ParallelismParallelism is another syntactic over-regularity. It means exact repetition in equivalent positions. It differs from simple repetition i

35、n that the identity does not extend to absolute duplication, it “requires some variable feature of the pattern-some contrasting elements which are parallel with respect to their position in the pattern” (Leech, 1969:66). To put it simply, parallelism means the balancing of sentence elements that are

36、 grammatically equal. To take them parallel, balance nouns with nouns, verbs with verbs, prepositional phrases with prepositional phrases, clauses with clauses, and so forth.In his speech, Lincoln uses parallelism to create a strong rhythm to help the audience line up his ideas. Here are two example

37、s:(1)We can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, and we can not hallow this ground.(2)The government of the people, by the people and for the people shall not perish from the earth.4.3 MetaphorMetaphor refers to the use of words to indicate something different from their literal meaning. Metaphor ha

38、s traditionally been viewed as the most important form of figurative language use, and is usually seen as reaching its most sophisticated forms in literary or poetic language. Metaphors allow us to understand one domain of experience in terms of another. For instance, “our fathers brought forth on t

39、his continent new nation，conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal” This metaphor depicts the born of baby instead of the formation of country, insinuating that this country is with life like human beings and now it is just a child being in growth and learn

40、ing. And it needs protection either.4.4 ClimaxClimax means when we arrange the clauses of a sentence, we should based on some principle such as ascending to achieve forcefulness. It shows the feature of the foregrounding of public speech. According to climax, we should use appropriate words to give an increasing layer in semantics to win a b