高级英语写作 Advanced English Writing

1. 高级英语写作Advanced English Writing 主讲教师: 鲁晓霞

2. Chapter 6 Composition Writing

3. Types of Writing Description Narration Argumentation Exposition

4. Objectives: • I. Definition of description • II. Particular devices employed in description ------ careful word choice; sensory details ;figures of speech • Assignment : Review the devices used in description

5. Description Definition: Description is painting a picture in words of a person, place, object, or scene. A description essay is generally developed throughsensory details, or the impression of one’s senses--------sight, hearing, taste, smell and touch. In descriptive writing, we achieve unity by selecting details and arrange them in such a way that they emphasize a single characteristic, aspect, or features of a person, place, object, or scene. This single characteristic, aspect, or feature, which is the central or unifying theme of a description, is called the dominant impression.

6. Description sometimes stand alone; sometimes it enriches other writing. It makes narration and exposition more lively and interesting. Some particular devices that can be employed in description: 3.Figures of speech 2. Sensory details 1.Careful word choice

7. Careful word choice • The right words bring a description to life. Try to include specific nouns and verbs that convey exact meanings, and choose modifiers for maximum impact. • E.g. • 1.The young man walked out of the room. • 2.The child danced out of the room. • 3.The lady sailed out of the room. • 4.The old man staggered out of the room. • 5.The man with a square beard smoked passionately at a big cigar.

8. 6. Before the table sat a man, unlike an ordinary human being. It was askeleton, withtight-drawn skinand ashaggy beard. The color of his face wasyellow; thecheeks were sunken, the back long and narrow, and the hand upon which he leaned his head was solean and skinnythat it was painful to look upon. His hair was already silvering with gray, and no one who glanced at his face would have believed that he was only forty years old. backward

9. Sensory details • Use immediate details of description and relate them to a sensory response-----sight ,sound, taste, touch , or smell. • E.g. • One could hear the teeth chattering when one feels freezing. • When somebody shuffled along the road, his feet made whooshing noises. • Silk may feel smooth . • Road with mud on rainy days may be slippery. • The fragrant smell of fresh grass, the smelly dirty socks, the hot dishes, the sweet ice cream. etc. backward

10. Figures of speech: 1. Simile: A simile is a way of comparing one thing with another, of explaining what one thing is like by showing how it is similar to another thing, and it explicitly signals itself in a text, with the words as or like. E.g. My love is like a red, red rose, that is newly sprung in June. My love is like the melody, that is swiftly played in tune. (by Robert Burns) e.g.Duty is as enduring as life.   She is as crafty as a fox.// He bellowed like a bull. backward

11. 2. Metaphor Metaphor is also comparison, but the comparison is implied, not expressed with the word “as” or “like”. Sometimes it is difficult to identify them. E.g. the brow of a hill, the teeth of a saw, the tongue of a shoes, the eyes of potato, a sea of troubles/ a rain of bullets/ a shower of stones.

12. Metaphors are used not only after verb to be, and not only nouns can be used metaphorically, verbs, adjectives, and adverbs can all be used in a metaphorical way. e.g. Life is a short summer. // All the world is a stage.   The web of our life is mingled yarn.// The curtain of night has fallen. //He is the center of the family. //The boy is his mother’s tail.

13. In order to add vividness to the metaphor, the speaker/writer will use sustained metaphor(持续比喻): to make the figurative language more colorful. e.g. When the new method was introduced, some teachers ,as a friend of mine put it ,climbed on the bandwagon and could not play the instruments.  “play the instruments” is sustained metaphor. In Chinese:这种新方法刚引入，正如我的一位朋友所说，有些老师尽想赶浪头，但有苦于不会使用新方法。） A metaphor or a simile has to be fresh to be effective. But if one has been used frequently over a long period of time, it will become dull and stale, and cease to function as a metaphor or simile. The leg of a table, now is used in literal sense.

14. 3. Metonymy:( 借代) Metonymy is the device in which we name something by one of its attributes. As in crown for king/royal affairs. E.g. He succeeded to the crown. The turf（草皮，赛马场） for horse-racing, the white house for the president/the American government. He laid down the sword and took up the pen.  Her purse would not allow her that luxury.

15. 4. Synecdoche(提喻) Synecdoche(提喻)means using a part for a whole, an individual for class, a material for a thing or the reverse of any of these( a part is substituted for the whole or the whole is substituted for a part) e.g. bread for food, the army for a solider/ copper for penny/ sail for ship/ the smiling year for spring   They were short of hands at the hardest time. Hands: workers, laborers, helpers.  The army will come in a few minutes.  The poor creature could on longer endure her sufferings. Metonymy and synecdocheare similar as both involve substitution. Sometimes they can hardly be distinguished from metaphor, which in a way is also substitution.

16. 5. Analogy: Analogy:a special form of comparison. It is training a striking likeness between unlike things.

17. e.g. Electricity transferred from one place to another in much the same manner as water. A water pipe performs the same function as a length of wire. The pipe carries water to its point of use in the same manner as wire carries electricity to its point of use. A blown fuse（保险丝） results from the same thing as a burst water pipe. Both give out due to extreme pressure applied to the walls of the carrier. A switch is to electricity what a faucet （水龙头）is to water. Both of them control the flow of the substance. Since electricity and water have some common properties, understanding the job of the plumber will help understanding the work of the electrician.

18. Analogies are especially helpful in explaining abstract ideas in like things, for they relate ideas of that cannot be experienced through the sense of sight, smell, hearing, touch, or taste, to a sense experience, thus making the ideas easy to understand.

19. e.g. Some old people are oppressed by the fear of death. The best way to overcome it ––so at least it seems to me—is to make your interests gradually wider and more impersonal, until bit by bit the walls of the ego recede（远去，退去）, and your life becomes increasingly merged in the universal life. An individual human existence should be like a river—small at first, narrowly contained within its banks, and rushing passionately past rocks and over waterfalls. Gradually the river grows wider, the banks recede, the waters flow more quietly and in the end, without any visible break, they become merged in the sea, and painlessly lose their individual being. The man who, in old age, can see his life in this way, will not suffer from the fear of death, since the things he cares for will continue…

20. 6. Personification: Personification is to make non-life thing act like human beings. E.g. The house stands still in the rain.  This time fate was smiling to him. The old tree had seen the great changes and the hardships and happiness the Browns experienced.  Thunder roared and a pouring rain started. The storm was raging and an angry sea was continuously tossing their boat.

21. 7. Euphemism: Euphemism:it is the substitution of mild or vague expression for a harsh or unpleasant one. Our attitudes towards some things may be so strong that we are reluctant to refer to them directly . e.g. fat----on the heavy side. crippled ----- physically handicapped  to die----to pass away, to leave us; one’s heart stop beating; be no more   lie---be economical with the truth.

22. drunk---tired and emotional • old people---- senior citizens • lavatory—bathroom, men’s ( women’s) room , • restroom or washroom • invasion----military action. • driving inhabitants away----- pacification. • concentration camps----strategic hamlets (small village) • dustman-----sanitary engineer,

23. graveyard---memory garden , butcher---meat technologist skinny----slim, We see it is obvious that those euphemisms used by ordinary people are meant to suffer harsh reality, but those used by politicians may aim at deceiving the public.

24. 8.Overstatement and understatement: Overstatement and understatement:in overstatement the diction exaggerates /play up the magnitude or the value of the subject, and in understatement the words play down the magnitude or value of the subject. Overstatement is also called hyperbole

25. Both aim at the same effect: to make the statement or description impressive and interesting. • e.g. She is dying to know what job has been assigned her. • It took a few dollars to build this indoor swimming pool. • His friends praised his daughter’s performances to the skies.

26. 9. Transferred epithet (移位修饰) Transferred epithet (移位修饰)an epithet is an adjective or description phrase that serves to characterize somebody or something. A transferred epithet is one that is shifted from the noun it logically modifies to a word associated with the noun.

27. E.g. When one says that he has had busiest day, one is such a figure of speech. For it is a person, not the day, that is busy. • My teacher put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. • She was so worried about her son that she spent several sleepless nights. • The secretary kept a respectful distance from his boss when they were walking in the corridor. • His unfriendly tongue surprised her. • He said “yes” to the question in an unthinking moment.

28. 10. Oxymoron:   In oxymoron apparently contradictory terms are combined to produce a special effect.  e.g. The coach had to be cruel to be kind to his trainees.  It was a miserable merry Christmas. She is reading a long-awaited letter with tearful smile.  When the news of the failure came, all his friends said that it was a victorious defeat.

29. 11.Alliteration: It refers to the appearance of the same initial consonant sound in two or more words, such as “proud as a peacock”（骄傲如孔雀），as blind as a bat (有眼无珠). Alliteration is often used in poetry to give emphasis to words that are related in meaning: spring, the sweet spring is the year’s king. Idioms neck or nothing (挺而足险) as large as life (千真万确) rough and ready (粗糙但尚能用) sink or swim( 沉浮全凭自己，不论好歹) hum and haw （支支吾吾）

30. 12. End rime It refers to the appearance of the same end sound including vowel or consonant sound in two or more words, such as “No pains , no gains.” End rime is used in poetry to achieve musical effect and pleasing to hear. e.g 白日依山尽，黄河入海流，欲穷千里目，更上一层楼。 East or west, home is best. The fewer his years, the fewer his tears.

31. 13.Irony It is the use of words which are clearly opposite to what is meant, in order to achieve a special effect. Suppose you planned an outing on a certain day, expecting it to be fine; but when the day came it was raining heavily. If you said: “what fine weather for an outing!” you were speaking ironically. Well, the figurative use of language has the effect of making the concepts under discussion tamer, more domestic, more acceptable. Readers can be presented with picture of the world from which much of the uncertainty, the fuzziness, the ambiguity has been wiped out.