Assignments for stylistic analysis. 1. Say what can be considered the subject matter of the extract.

1. Say what can be considered the subject matter of the extract.

2. What tone prevails in the piece?

3. Analyse the syntactic and compositional arrangement of the three utterances within the extract.

4. What are the stylistic functions of simile and detachment in the second sentence? What effect is produced by the second instance of simile contain­ing allusion?

5. Point out all cases of alliteration observed in the text and analyse whether they serve any pragmatic function.

6. Characterise the types and stylistic functions of all metaphoric ex­pressions used in the extract. What image is created by their means?

Item 3

It was a town of red brick, or of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it; but as matters stood it was a town of unnat­ural red and black like the painted face of a savage. It was a town of machin­ery and tall chimneys, out of which interminable serpents of smoke trailed themselves for ever and ever, and never got uncoiled. It had a black canal in it, and a river that ran purple with ill-smelling dye, and vast piles of buildings full of windows where there was a rattling and a trembling all day long, and where the piston of the steam-engine worked monotonously up and down like the head of an elephant in a state of melancholy madness.

From Charles Dickens' Hard Times