МИНИСТЕРСТВО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ И НАУКИ РФ
ФЕДЕРАЛЬНОЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННОЕ
БЮДЖЕТНОЕ ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНОЕ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЕ
ВЫСШЕГО ОБРАЗОВАНИЯ
«ВОРОНЕЖСКИЙ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННЫЙ
УНИВЕРСИТЕТ»
ТЕОРИЯ ДИСКУРСА И ТЕКСТА:
СБОРНИК ЗАДАНИЙ
Учебное пособие
Составители:
Д. А. Холина,
О. В. Спиридовский
Воронеж
Издательский дом ВГУ
2016
Стр.1
ОТ АВТОРОВ
Данное пособие представляет собой сборник текстов для практических
занятий по дисциплине «Теория дискурса и текста», в рамках которых студентам
предлагается освоить методику предпереводческого анализа текста
с позиций теории дискурса. Изначально курс, как и сама методика, были
разработаны доктором филол. наук, профессором Вячеславом Борисовичем
Кашкиным («Введение в теорию дискурса и текста», 2010), им же был подобран
ряд материалов для анализа. В основе данной методики лежит принцип
взаимной дополнительности текстовых и экстралингвистических факторов,
рассматриваемых в их взаимодействии. К первой группе факторов
относятся прежде всего способы обеспечения внутренней грамматической
связности текста, выделяемые по формальным языковым основаниям. Ко
второй группе принадлежат фоновые знания об обсуждаемой в тексте проблеме,
дискурсивные характеристики автора и получателей текста, время и
место создания и прочтения текста, знание свойств рассматриваемого культурного
феномена.
Мы расширили и дополнили спектр текстов для рассмотрения, а также
предложили свою сокращенную версию схемы, по которой студентам предстоит
обсуждать текст на английском языке на занятии в группе, опираясь на
проделанную дома аналитическую работу. В отдельных случаях предусматривается
также индивидуальный анализ соответствующего раздела пособия,
предполагающий обязательное комплексное изучение лингвистических и
экстралингвистических свойств, формирующих итоговый результат – текст.
Сборник текстов предполагает работу с англоязычными материалами разнообразных
стилей и жанров, относящимися к различным тематикам и социальным
сферам дискурса.
Пособие рассчитано на один учебный семестр и содержит 15 разделов,
совпадающих с числом анализируемых текстов, а также приложение, включающее
глоссарий полезных терминов по изучаемой дисциплине на русском
и английском языках. В сборник текстов также внесена схема анализа фрагмента
текста/дискурса, предложенная доктором филол. наук, профессором
В. Б. Кашкиным, в полном и сокращенном виде.
3
Стр.3
TEXT 1B
Questions for discussion. How does Seth Shostak answer the question asked
in the title? Is it a “yes” or a “no”? Are his ideas similar or different from what
you’ve already read? (Text 1A). If yes, in what way? Find examples to justify your
opinion.
Analyse the following text using the model on page 31. Pay attention to anaphoric
and cataphoric reference, as well as deixis.
Is there other intelligent life in the Universe?
Dear Arnold Wolfendale
28th April 2000
1. You do me a disservice. You don’t believe the intelligent extraterrestrials
are out there, and yet you think that I and my colleagues should continue to bang
away searching for them – not so much because we might succeed, but because
we could stumble upon some intriguing spin-off. This is like encouraging James
Cook to sail to the South Pacific by appealing to his possible contribution to ship
design.
2. You begin with the currently accepted view that planets capable of incubating
life are probably common. I agree, of course. Indeed, estimates of the numbers
of planets which populate our galaxy is usually tallied in tens of billions. You then
concede that biology will likely spring up on many of these other worlds; once
more, I concur. But you then argue (along with Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee
in their recent book Rare Earth) that while life may be commonplace, intelligent
life – the kind which could make its presence known via radio signals hurled
across the vast spaces between the stars – is rare, and possibly absent altogether. In
this view, we inhabit an enormous galactic zoo populated by lesser creatures. Humans,
you suggest, are the smartest things in the Milky Way. This is a nice point
of view, at least for humans. But given the enormity of the Universe, and the lesson
against cosmic hubris first taught by Copernicus, we should be suspicious of
this proposition.
3. You offer two reasons why we should not expect extraterrestrial companions.
The first is that the slow progression from simple to sentient life will often
be stopped in its evolutionary tracks. Intelligence on Earth was slow in coming.
It has been 3.6 billion years since life arose on our planet, and 600 m years since
the Cambrian explosion of complex, multicellular creatures. This long R&D phase
before nature produced humans does suggest that the whole process is vulnerable
to even a rare catastrophe. But one didn’t happen here – and Earth is not likely to
be an astronomical rarity.
4. Certainly there have been mass extinctions, the most famous being the destruction
of three-fourths of all species – most notably the dinosaurs – 65m years
6
Стр.6
ago. This disaster was probably caused by a rock from space – an asteroid or comet
– about 10 km in size. But neither this nor any of the other calamities to befall
our planet (including at least one period of global glaciation) have succeeded in
terminating biology. The chain of life has snaked unbroken through every disaster
for over 3.5 billion years.
5. Life is durable. And, as you say, we should probably thank Jupiter for keeping
the inner solar system relatively free of large comets (although Jupiter also
pulls some of these missiles our way). But there is no reason to think that large
planets able to deflect lethal rubble from the cradles of life are scarce. Indeed,
planet-hunters have found that at least 3 per cent of Sun-like stars have Jupiterlike
planets.
6. Your second argument is that aliens should be in the neighbourhood – driven
to colonisation by imploding stars – but they are not. This argument, as you
know, dates from a remark by the physicist Enrico Fermi in 1950. Indeed, it provoked
a cottage industry of research intended to explain how aliens might be plentiful,
but poor travellers. Many of these explanations are reasonable. For example,
Frank Drake has noted the daunting cost of interstellar travel and concluded that
few civilisations would do it, thus limiting the number of colonies. Others have
pointed out that colonisation efforts always run out of steam. Even insects which
specialise in “colonising” vegetation by chewing it full of holes don’t devour the
entire forest.
7. In other words, it could be that the lack of apparent alien presence in our
neighbourhood tells us nothing. After all, homo sapiens has been wandering the
globe for 100,000 years and yet there are still places where I can go and be out of
sight of all humans and their artefacts. Within 200 kms of my home is barren desert,
devoid of any sign of the hundreds of millions of people who populate the continent.
A native of Nevada might logically – but incorrectly – infer that his family
was the lone clot of humans in America. You are like this putative Nevada native.
8. It was not long ago – a matter of decades – that the existence of life elsewhere
was considered a radical idea among astronomers. Nearby planets seemed
brutally inhospitable, and the complexity of life suggested that even a simple bacterium
was an improbable project that nature would seldom complete. But you
now admit that biology may not be such a rare phenomenon after all. I would suggest
that evolution to intelligence is a far less daunting proposition than creating
the initial living cells. And if the first has taken place on a huge scale, then the second
will often occur.
Yours,
Seth Shostak
7
Стр.7
TEXT 2
Questions for discussion. What do you know about Rod Liddle (the author
of the article below) and The Spectator? Using the information from the Internet,
try to predict what the article is going to be about.
What is the author’s attitude to the problem of “hobbit racism”? How do you
find the tone of the article? Is it serious? Justify your viewpoint.
Analyse the following text using the model on page 31. Pay special attention
to the lexical and grammatical means of expressing modality as well as to the stylistic
devices and expressive means.
What is the racial composition of a hobbit?
1. What colour are hobbits, do you suppose? When I read J.R.R. Tolkien’s
book, as a child, I gathered that they were very short, hirsute, quite swarthy and
fairly stupid — so probably Portuguese, or at a pinch Galician. They didn’t seem
to be, from the descriptions of their behaviour and living arrangements, quite —
you know — white. Nearly white, maybe, but not quite. Proper white people, I
thought, are taller than hobbits, less hysterical and tend not to live underground.
But this was back in the days before I had heard of John Bercow. Also, proper
white people had electricity, cars and supermarkets. One’s views change markedly
over the years. Back then, I assumed that hobbits were Latins, or perhaps even
Romanian, a Slavic-Latin mélange. There is something grim and Slavic about a
hobbit, in my opinion, and it is easy to imagine Middle Earth as being a bit like
Moldova.
2. This is an important issue because a British woman of Pakistani descent,
one Naz Humphreys, was recently turned down for the role of a hobbit in Peter
Jackson’s new film of the book, which is being shot in New Zealand right now.
Naz — a ‘social researcher’, wouldn’t you guess — apparently queued for three
hours for the chance to play a supporting hobbit, an also-ran hobbit, but was told
to clear off because she was a darkie. Apparently the casting man said: ‘We’re
looking for light-skinned people. I’m not trying to be, whatever. It’s just the brief.
You’ve got to look like a hobbit.’
3. Ah, but whose version, whose conception, of a hobbit? They are, after all,
fictional creatures. So far as I remember, J.R.R. Tolkien never suggested they
should all look like members of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement. Maybe he
just assumed that everyone would assume that’s how they’d look, like smaller,
hairier, versions of Eugene Terreblanche.
4. Anyway, this story, which was reported in all of our newspapers, has kept
me cackling with delight throughout the deep chill of this early winter. Ms Humphreys
has gone nuclear, whining about how ‘in 2010’ people who want to be hobbits
can be discriminated against on account of their skin colour. It goes without
8
Стр.8
saying that as a result of the furore the casting agent has been unceremoniously
sacked by Sir Peter Jackson. There is no crime greater than racism, even if it is
not really racism as many would understand the term. If only the casting people
had been a little more diplomatic and suggested to Naz that maybe she try out as
a goblin or a warg instead. But then I suppose that might have made things even
worse, as the goblins and wargs are baddies. As a child, though, I always assumed
the goblins were African, probably Somali. But that’s down to the racism which
lurks deep inside of me, inside of all of us, in a very real sense.
5. Naz has said that she intends to start a Facebook site entitled ‘Hire Hobbits
of All Colours — Say No to Hobbit Racism’. I think she is being satirical, partly
because she hasn’t actually started up the Facebook site so far as I can see, and
partly because of the knowingly dated and surely self-mocking agitprop tenor of
her title. However, there are plenty of other blog sites and Facebook sites urging
hobbits to keep their, uh, racial purity and telling Naz to get stuffed.
6. People are so quick to rouse themselves to fury these days, both on the right
and on the left. The total (if temporary: watch this space) democracy of the internet
allows people to get very, very angry, very, very quickly indeed. They become
fabulously inflamed, they begin campaigns, they howl at the moon, they demand
retribution. As regards this story I think my favourite, of all of them (and there are
lots), came from the Stormfront website, which is home to Britain’s vibrant and
committed community of neo-Nazi white supremacists. You ought to check it out
if you have a spare moment, not least for the cut-price offer of Viking flags and
patches. On Stormfront, ‘Concerned-Englander’ says: ‘I can’t imagine that fans
will stand for a hobbit that isn’t 100 per cent white.’ And Naiad agrees: ‘If there
are going to be Pakistani hobbits in this film I will not be going to see it.’ So, stuff
that up your pipe, Sir Peter. Then Surreyman comments: ‘It’s a fantasy version of
England in the dark ages, not some multicult wankfest.’ And best of all there’s a bit
of gallows humour from White_Man_Marching: ‘I gather Peter Jackson is making
a remake of Dambusters – I hope it stars only one nigger!’ Lol! I’m, like, LOL!
7. I rang the Equal Opportunities Commission to see where they stood on the
vexed issue of racist hobbits and the woman who answered the phone in their press
office had this tone in her voice which was sort of weary and plaintive and made
me feel sorry for her; she knew it was going to be a long day. They said they’d send
me a legal note about when and why you could, as a film director, demand that no
black people be involved anywhere in your production, but it hasn’t arrived yet,
I’m sorry to say. But I’m pretty sure that by the time you read this the corpse of
Tolkien will have been disinterred and his political and racial views dissected once
again (he was a sort of conservative neo-liberal, so far as I can see) and with any
luck the English Defence League will be dressed up as hobbits, or maybe Gandalfs
or Smaugs on their next demonstration about the regrettable existence of Islam.
9
Стр.9
8. And Lee Jasper or Yasmin Alibhai-Brown will have written something
claiming that historically all hobbits were hobbits of colour and the wargs were
clearly an expression of white colonialist oppression and it is typical of the white
establishment to pervert historical accuracy by suggesting that all hobbits were
crackers when, as everybody knows, they were from Middle Earth which as any
fool knows was populated exclusively by black people. And it will continue to
snow, too, a deep white blanket, beautiful and silent, and there will not be enough
gritters (Written by Rod Liddle).
TEXT 3
Questions for discussion. What is new in Jeffrey Moore’s approach to inducing
chemical reactions?
Analyse the following text using the model on page 31.
Mechanical Force Induces Chemical Reaction
1. Self-strengthening plastics and artificial bone made from synthetic polymer
may be one step closer to reality thanks to a breakthrough in chemistry that allows
mechanical force to induce chemical reactions. Typically, light, heat, electricity
and chemical catalysts are used to activate such reactions. Mechanical force has
rarely been used in the past, and primarily to pull apart long chains of polymers.
2. Now a team led by Jeffrey Moore at the University of Illinois at UrbanaChampaign
in the US have found that by applying ultrasound to a solution of specially
prepared molecules can induce reactions that break apart one atomic bond
at a time. The team attached two polymer strands to a molecule called benzocyclobutene
(BCB) and bombarded the strands with ultrasound. This generated tensile
forces that tugged on the connected molecules and, with the proper amount of
ultrasound force, they were able to stretch it until one of its bonds broke, forcing
the molecule to reform.
‘Fundamental discovery’
3. BCB has two slightly different flavours – called isomers – that usually reform
into different shapes when broken. In their experiment, the researchers were
able to make both isomers produce the same shape, a feat previously unattainable
(see image).
4. “Before, you could not take and pull a molecule in a very specific way,”
says Virgil Percec of the University of Pennsylvania, US. “It’s a very fundamental
discovery. It’s chemistry at its best.”
5. When the BCB bonds are broken, they become unstable and cross-link with
other similarly broken bonds. This leads the researchers to believe they might ultimately
be able to make self-healing materials. Polymer bonds that reform in this
way could perhaps repairs crack or breaks, and might be stronger than those of the
10
Стр.10