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 Ling 131: Language & Style
 

Topic 1 (session B) - Levels of language: Linguistic levels, style & meaning > Style meaning & choice in poems

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Session Overview
Levels of language & pop group names
Style, meaning & choice in poems
Anthem for doomed youth
Topic 1 tool summary
 
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Style, meaning & choice in poems

Below is a poem by Stephen Crane More about Stephen Crane, but with a choice of three possible alternatives in four places in the poem. Preferably working with some other students, your task is:

  • to work out, in each of the four places, which choice that you think Crane actually made, and

  • to work out why you think your choice is preferable, taking into account the effects at different linguistic levels that one choice or another has in relation to the rest of the poem.

It is important that you work carefully at what you think the best choices are, and why, as you will then get more out of comparing our view with yours, and so learn more.

After you have made your choices you can submit your answer and find out what choices Crane made and why we think he made the choices he did.

I stood  

on
upon
in

  a high  

place
mountain
hill


And saw, below, many devils

Running, leaping

And

living
indulging
carousing

  in sin.

One looked up, grinning,

And said

"Comrade! Brother!"
"Join us!"
"Help me!"

Stephen Crane

 

The above task is adapted from Faulstich's cloze-version presentation of Crane's poem as reported in an article by Willie van Peer (see below for reference details).

 

References

Faulstich, W (1976) 'Die relevanz der cloze-procedure als methods wissenschaftlicher text-untersuchung', in Lili. Aeitschrift fur Literatur- wisssenschaft und Linguistik, 6, 81-95. van Peer, W (1988) 'How to do things with texts: Towards a pragmatic foundation for the teaching of texts', in Short, M (ed) Reading, Analysing and Teaching Literature, 267-297.

In our next section, we take a look at some of the language level changes that Wilfred Owen made to his final draft of 'Anthem for Doomed Youth', and the effects he achieved.

 

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