The English Text Analysis

In process of analyzing the text ‘The English’ I found that there are six paragraphs and in each paragraph there are approximately four sentences. Vocabulary of this text is simple without difficult words like scientific terminology etc. , in addition it is also descriptive, so author describes how immigrants from overseas have settled in different parts of England and had formed their communities.

Simple and descriptive vocabulary makes text more understandable to people. Author use in the text specialized vocabulary, lexical words in the text refer to geographical discipline (immigrants, north, east, west and south, London region etc. “The Greater London region is roughly a cicle, extending twenty to thirty miles from central London in the north and east, and thirty to forty miles in the west and south. ”). Also in the text I found some compound words such as overseas and commonwealth.

Text ‘The English’ consists of verbs, nouns and adverbs. Firstly I would like to consider the usage of nouns in this text. I think that author mostly used abstract nouns – language, accent, pride, dialects, behavior, life (An abstract noun means something that we cannot taste, touch, smell or see, for example “As the English are such a mixed people, local customs and accents in England vary a great deal and local pride is still strong in some parts of the country. )- all of them we can refer to moral qualities. I detected there few collective nouns- communities, cosmopolitan city, school, which means that author keep in mind group of people, a special class composed of members (“They still speak their own languages or dialects, but their children grow up speaking English exactly like the children with from they go to school. ”) . Also there are proper names in the text, for example Ian Macdonald, Leonard, Herbert Perkins.

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Adjectives in the text are not frequent and mostly they refer to visual and evaluative attributes (“The Williams, The Macdonalds, The Townsends and Herbert Perkins have all made their homes in London which is now a great cosmopolitan city. ” ; “Yet one of the strongest and more usual accents is to be found in the East End of London, the home of the cockneys. ”) Author used restrictive adjective clause (“A cockney is very different from most people’s idea of a typical Englishman. ), so the adjective restricts the information and as we can see the restrictive element is not set off with commas. Also adjectives in this text are mostly gradable, for example “strong” and “different”, we can grade these adjectives like rather different, very different or extremely different, author used one of them in the sentence “A cockney is very different from most people’s idea of a typical Englishman. ” . The author uses that kind of adjectives to show us big difference between cockney and typical Englishman, to transmit the idea of paragraph or of whole text.

Author use adjectives mostly before noun (“As the English are such a mixed people, local customs and accents in England vary a great deal and local pride is still strong in some parts of the country. ”) Verbs in this text, such as moved, has been added, made, settled, formed, speak and grow up, carry an important part of meaning. Without these verbs the person who read the text would be confused because of misunderstanding. Verbs in the text make a bit clear the main idea, verbs are dynamic (referring to actions, events), for example “Many immigrants from overseas have settled there and have formed their own communities.

They still speak their own languages or dialects, but their children grow up speaking English exactly like the children with whom they go to school. ” We can clearly see that verbs from the example refer to speech acts and movements. The adverbs are not frequent, I have found only eleven adverbs the text: since, still, only, always, exactly, less, roughly, far, rarely, really, more. (“The Greater London Region is roughly a circle, extending twenty to thirty miles from central London in the north and east, and thirty to forty miles in the west and south. ; “Some people travel to work in London from as far as eighty miles away. ”) Adverbs ‘always’ and ‘rarely’ are the adverbs of frequency (“This is why Hampshire accents are now so rarely heard. ”) ; ‘since’ the adverb of purpose, ‘really’ is the adverb of degree and ‘still’ the adverb of time (“They still speak their languages or dialects, but their children grow up speaking English…”)I have noted an interesting thing that the author did not use conjuncts such as ‘so’, ‘however’ and disjuncts like ‘obviously’, ‘frankly’.

Maybe that’s why transition from one paragraph to other is so sharp and paragraphs are bad connected among themselves. Sentences on the whole have a simple structure (“Some people travel to work in London from as far as eighty miles away. ”), but there are also complex sentences (“Not only have Welsh, Scottish, and Irish people made their homes in England, but also Jews, Russians, Germans – people from almost every country Europe – as well as many West Indians, Indians and others from the commonwealth. ”). Author mostly uses declarative sentences with no commands and exclamations.

Author did not use rhetorical questions and even usual questions, only statements, that’s why the main idea is weakly perceptible. The average sentence length is approximately 25 words. The sentences are mixed, that mean that there are different tenses in the text, for example present perfect continuous (“Since 1066 the blood of many other races has been added to the original English mixture. ”), present simple (“Many people now live in south and south-east England and commute to their places of work in London. ), present perfect (“The Williams, The Macdonalds, The Townsends, and Herbert Perkins have all made their homes in London which is now a great cosmopolitan city. ) . What is more, I found an example of detached construction in the sentence (“Not only have Welsh, Scottish, and Irish people made their homes in England, but also Jews, Russians, Germans – people from almost every country in Europe – as well many West Indians, Indians, and others from the commonwealth. ”) There are no modal verbs in the text.

The author gives us objective information with positive qualities that mean that author provides information in this way to make a good impression on readers, like in this sentence (“London is the largest city in Europe after Paris, but it’s population has shrunk from 8 million in 1939 to less than 7 million in 1988. ”), the main idea of the sentence is that population of London has shrunk, but author “leave” this information on the background and to make better inspiration about London as main information he wrote that London is the largest city in Europe after Paris, not that London in the second largest city in Europe after Paris.

As I have already sad that the text has formal vocabulary and lexical words in the text refer to geographical discipline, but we cannot refer it to scientific texts because scientific text needs terminology, but there we cannot see terminology at all, so this is publicistic text which may appear in the newspapers and magazines. There is no addressing to the reader, no personal pronouns like ‘me’, ‘you’ etc. , no directives, no rhetorical questions, however there is impersonalization.

All in all I think that the main idea of the text is that nowadays it is difficult to find a typical, pureblooded Englishman because the centuries ago the blood of other races has been added to the original English mixture. But in this text is very difficult to ‘catch’ the main idea because each paragraph has they own idea and paragraphs are bad connected among themselves, also because there are lack of rhetorical questions, lack of adverbs and adjectives and interactivity, all these would make the text vivid and more understandable. To prove this I took the last sentence from the 5th paragraph (“Some people travel to work in London from as far as eighty miles away. ”) and the first sentence from the 6th (“This is why Hampshire accents are now so rarely heard”) as we can see there is no straight connection between the 5ht and the 6th paragraph. The main idea is developed trough the names of nationalities, trough the verbs ‘settled’, ‘made’, ‘formed’ etc. trough the dates and statistician. I also noted that the topic ‘The English’ partly does not conforms to the text. The topic does not reflect the meaning of the text. The reader may think that text is about the pure Englishmen, about their habits and lifestyle but not about the immigrants who become to inhabit The British Isles few centuries ago and how their inhabitation affects nowadays situation.

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