Part of the intricacy of co-ordination in using language lies, as we saw in the previous chapter, in the different constraints operating in speech and writing. But, as we know well, the constrains do not fall neatly into a twofold division, ‘speaking’ versus ‘writing’. The stylistic range of English is wide and ultimately the gradations are infinite. When we are putting words together, we have to e that they are congruous with the expectations at some point on this scale and that they are arranged according to the conventions of collocation and grammar-with the reference to the same point on the scale.电话卡如何注销
漫画女头像It may em paradoxical to lay such stress on being conventional in the u of English when we may well fell that the big prizes to go to people who are so unconventional in their English. It is by no means certain that the big prize are so awarded, but whatever our opinion of this, there ems to be a general agreement that cries of ‘look, mother: no hands!’ are especially unimpressive when we have still not properly mastered the art of cycling in the conventions manner. Before trying to write like Gertrude Stein, we have to school ourlves to obrve and to u English within the strictest conventions – and we have support in this from the words of Mr Robert gravees6 quoted in the last chapter.
Without a norm, it is difficult to recognize or practice originality. You may have sampled a variety of ice-cream which has little bits of crystallized ginger in it, and you may have come across it being marketed with the rather fetching gimmick, ‘freezing hot ice-cream’. Here is a ca where a departure from conventional collocation is very effective. The title of noel coward’s play, bitter sweet, is a better known example, and most of us have at some time been amus by hoary witticisms like ‘the hand that rocked the cradle has kicked the bucket’. In all the examples, we are recognize that ‘bitter’ and ‘sweet’ are mutually exclusive and not normally collocable that the junction of them can be effective,. The effectiveness of ‘freezing hot ice-cream’ depends on the tension that is t up between this and the normal collocations of ‘freezing’ and ‘hot’(such as ‘freezing cold’ and ‘boiling hot’).
The order of events in our strategy, then, must be first to obrve the conventional arrangements and the points to which they belong in the stylistic range: again, it is necessary to insist on the central importance of keeping in line with actual usage. We obrve that if people we expect begin a letter ‘dear Mr. Jones’, they will clo it with ‘yo
urs sincerely’, but that if they begin a letter with ‘dear sir’, they will end with ‘your faithfully’. Experienced and well-educated people will not mix the formulas-and they tend to think poor of tho who do. And, of cour, it is not merely the beginnings and endings that are not mixed: the type of the grammatical construction and lection of words- the whole style- will tend to be different (and consistently so) in the type of letter.
写给老师的一段话It is true that many enlightened business firms have now give up the sillier, stiffer formalities that u to spoil commercial letter(expressions like ‘further to yours of the 23幼儿园班级计划>天秤女和双子男rd ult’): but a shapely n of formality remains. The letter to or form a business firm or government department will now say (after the ‘dear sir’) something like ‘In reply to you letter of 23rd 农业谚语有哪些June’ it will not begin with the informal and impreci words, ‘thank you for your recent letter’, which are more suitable for one beginning with ‘dear Mr. Jones’. Needless to say, they are other expressions that are appropriate to other types of letters on the scale which runs from distant formality (especially in dealing with an organization, when personalities matter are kept in the background) to the completely familiar and intim
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ate (where personalities matter as much as anything): ‘my dear frank, it was awfully nice to get your note the other day.’ In each ca, the experienced letter-writter adopts a style fitted to the degree of formality that his letter requires and maintains that style consistently throughout. He will not say, ‘my regards to your wife’ in a dear sir letter, and he will not end with ‘cheerio for now’ in a dear Mr. Jones letter.
This must take us back to what was said in the previous chapter about expected collocations. Frequent and thoroughly expected collations (like ‘freezing cold’) are most apt to strike us as clichés when they are ud on occasions which lead us to expect relatively high precision and low redundancy. As so often in mattes of language, it is not usually a question of whether a given expression out of context is or is not a cliché. If we are strolling during an interval at the theatre and our companion says, ‘I admired Pinter’s incredible insight in the act’, we may not feel any of that constitutes reaction to a cliché. Indeed, we can imagine many informal contexts of situation in which ‘incredible insight’, so far from being a cliché, might sound rather high-flown and technical: everything depends on what is expected at particular points in the stylistic range. But if ‘incredible in
sight’ is acceptable when ud in criticism that is spoken on an informal occasion, it do not mean that the words are equally acceptable in the written criticism of a formal kind.
All too frequently we tend to pick up the collocations of the most commonly heard criticism and then to u them indiscriminately, without realizing how empty they em in a tting where precision is expected. In a t of essays written by an undergraduate class recently, it appeared that the following are among the commonest collocations which must be branded as cliché in rious commentary on literature;
Lofty flights of imagination; inimitable narrative technique; organic unity; consummate skill; consummate art; heights of majesty; heights of tragedy; inherent atmosphere聆听幸福; esntial atmosphere; inherent appeal; esntial appeal; esntial characteristics.
And this is to ignore expressions which descend from the hackneyed to the tautologous, like ‘basic fundamentals’! We must develop the critical awareness to recognize that such expressions, which may impress the inexperienced, are largely automatic, neither reflecting any precision in our judgment as we write them nor conveying any preci infor
mation to the reader. The reader may in fact conclude that the writer is incapable of judgment and is trying to deceive with a show of verbiage: a conclusion which may well be completely just in many cas. The u of cliché in essay-writing is often accompanied by a woolliness of expression which confirm the impression that no hard thinking has ever take place: ‘his ver is packed with special meaning’; ‘his poems have a character all their own’; ‘he paints the very body and soul of English industrial life’; ‘he decorative imagery always follow a structural line ’. do the reflect laziness or the will to deceive.
