The Category of Implication

1. Formulate the conceptual information of the text.

2. Into what and how many conceptual cores can the artistic message of the extract be compressed? Justify your opinion.

3. In what emotional key is the extract written?

4. What are, in your opinion, the dominating stylistic devices used in the extract? Which parts of the text are abundant in them? Comment on their stylistic functions.

5. What epithets reveal the author’s perception of the colour in the early morning?

6. What epithets characterize the sea sounds in the early morning? What phonetic stylistic means of natural sound imitation does the author resort to?

7. What stylistic devices and expressive means create the image of wetness accompanying the beginning of the day and what stylistic function do they perform?

8. What stylistic devices and expressive means endow the image of the sea with features of a living being?

9. What poetic visual associations are connected with the description of the sea movement in the darkness?

10. How does the portrayal of the sea changes differ at the beginning and at the end of the description?

11. What fills the description of the flock of sheep with dynamism and vitality?

12. Comment on the description of the shepherd’s appearance and behaviour. Are the poetic details of his attire and appearance suggestive of his personality?

13. Is the stylistic device of metaphor widely used in the passage? What kinds of metaphors do we observe and what implications do they create? Take into account various metaphorical images rendered not only through the stylistic device of metaphor as such but through simile, personification, metaphorical epithet, as well.

13a. What metaphorical images can be treated as the integrating images of the description?

14. With the help of which stylistic device(s) is the gradual disappearance of mist depicted? What adds to the vivid and picturesque portrayal of the final stage of this phenomenon?

15. Find instances where the author makes the reader look at the nature and hear it with her own eyes.

16. What stylistically relevant means in the dog’s portrayal endow it with qualities typical of a human being?

17. How is the idea of the dog’s being old strengthened? Do you feel a ring of humour in the description of the dog’s behaviour?

18. With the help of what stylistic device(s) is the eucalyptus tree depicted?

19. How does the syntax of the extract affect the expressivity of the description? Comment on the following stylistically relevant language means and their stylistic function.

· syntactic parallelism

· alternation of simple and composite sentences (in the first paragraph)

· different homogeneous parts of a sentence

· asyndeton, syndeton

· rhetorical questions

· inverted word-order and unusual (emphatic) word-order

· the use of dashes

20. What imparts the description in the first logical part a certain rhythm?

21. What syntactic means contribute to the detailed description of the natural surrounding in the second physical paragraph?

22. And now that you have examined the stylistic devices and expressive means employed in the extract as a whole, dwell on the most conspicuous of them and comment on the author’s implications in each conceptual core.