Text Analysis

By: Sharon White
Submitted: 2007-01-17 16:27:00
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The language of the text belongs to the emotive prose. It is written in an Old English language. An extract from the Bible gives the directions to live one’s life.

There are three types of word meaning that can be distinguished. From the given text such words as charity, faith, knowledge, glass belong to the group of words of logical meaning. Words of emotive meaning are sounding brass, tinkling cymbal, childish things. And words of a nominal meaning are angel, mountains in the text.

The words of grammatical meaning are shall, am known, could.

Words child, man belong to the group of neutral words. Such word as a prophecy can be referred to the group of terms. As it was noted the text is written in Old English language and there are words that were used then. They belong to the group of obsolescent words and are in the stage of gradually passing out of general use. In the given text these words are verbs with the ending –(e)th instead of –(e)s: doth, seeketh, believeth, abideth, endureth, rejoiceth, thinketh. There are no barbarisms or foreignisms in the text.

There is an example of indirect onomatopoeia in the text. For instance, “And though I have the gift of prophecy, and understand all mysteries, and all knowledge; and though I have all faith, so that I could remove mountains, and have not charity, I am nothing. And though I bestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to be burned, and have no charity, it profiteth me nothing.” This combination of sounds aims to make the sound of the utterance an echo of its sense. It is sometimes called “echo-writing”.

The example of the metaphor is “Charity never faileth: but whether there be prophecies, they shall fail; whether there be tongues, they shall cease.” There are also epithets in the text. They are excellent way, sounding brass, tinkling cymbal, childish things etc.

An example of simile in the given text is “become as sounding brass”, “I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.”

There is also an example of hyperbole in the text. It is “I speak with the tongues of men and of angels”, “I could remove mountains”.

The word “charity” in the given text is an excellent example of repetition. As for enumeration one can find it in the text as well, for example: “And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity.”

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