B2U6 Text A Analysis

An expert on the English language is supposed to know well about rhetorical devices in English. Robert MacNeil, the author of Text A, does not disappoint us.

The title, The Glorious Messiness of English, offers a good example of oxymoron (矛盾修辞法). An oxymoron puts two contradictory terms together to puzzle the reader, luring him / her to pause and explore why. “Glorious” is a commendatory term, while “messiness” is derogatory. Why do they stand next to each other? Then, as the reader reads on, he / she will find out that the title is actually a thesis statement: Yes, English is messy, but the messiness reflects some commendable qualities of English, such as tolerance, the love of freedom, and the respect for others’ rights. At this point the reader cannot but admire the author’s ingenuity.

Robert MacNeil employs many metaphors, such as core of English (Para. 4), a common parent language (Para. 8), another flood of new vocabulary (Para. 14), the special preserve of grammarians (Para. 19). In Para. 18 there is an instance of sustained metaphor: the cultural soil, the first shoots sprang up, … grew stronger, build fences around their language. In this case the English language is compared to plants, and the various cultures influencing it are compared to the soil, while users of English are compared to gardeners.

We can also find parallelism in the quote from Winston Churchill: “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills. We shall never surrender.”

There is personification in the sentence “Translations of Greek and Roman classics were poured onto the printed page …”

There is metonymy (转喻) in the sentence “The country now had three languages: French for the nobles, Latin for the churches and English for the common people.” Here the word “churches” stands for religious institutions and those who are involved in religious practices.