Lexical Field analysis. Explanatory Notes

LFA is based mainly on the approach of I. V. Arnold and includes some elements of Stylistic of Decoding. It concentrates on practical, detailed study of texts or their parts, sometimes being unaware of the author’s personality and the author’s individual style. Somewhat seemingly mechanical technique of stylistic analysis does not in the least exclude intuition and personal judgment of the student, and makes this type of analysis – as any – very subjective. Much depends on the thesaurus, degree/level of one’s knowledge of the language and literature, one’s aesthetic preferences (but this is true for any type of analysis).

This type of analysis may be used in any text, but best suited to it (in our opinion) would be 1) heterogeneous texts with numerous short paragraphs which will hardly be good for paragraph analysis; 2) comparatively short linguistically complicated texts offering lots of ideas; 3) poetic samples (preferred by I. V. Arnold); 4) essays or epistolary texts lacking a discernable plot.

A possible plan of discussion will be:

1) a summary with its usual constituents, but with an emphasis not only on the gist but on the idea of the text which student will prove in the process of the analysis;

2) an approximate/subjective innumerating of the most obvious themes/lexical fields;

3) establishing their hierarchy (principal, interdependent, background) – in the process of the analysis these suppositions prompted by intuition, may undergo some changes.

The analysis begins with the best represented LF, including the greatest number of lexical units (LU), connected directly (derivatives, synonyms, antonyms) and through associations (constant and casual). It is recommended to mark – for oneself – the number of LU, but offer to your listenes not more than three or four.

One should dwell on the predominant evaluative, emotive and stylistic connotations of the LF in general paying attention to the contextually acquired evaluative and emotive connotations. LU’s falling out of the general picture should be commented on separately.

To avoid a mechanical innumeration of facts special attention should be paid to the following: each statement should be followed by the student assessing its significance for a more propound understanding of the text in general and the before mentioned (in the summary) idea in particular.

The next step is stating the means of foregrounding of the theme (strong position, semantic repetition, contrast – on the level of denotations and connotations, – convergence, defeated expectancy etc). The means of foregrounding should be juxtaposed with those of related LFs: the more means of foregrounding, the greater is the significance of the LF for understanding of the text.

The conclusion should contain confirming or alterating the preliminary supposition, the final variant of the ided and the gist is given.

P.S. The so-called background theme is usually charactereged by the neutrality of evaluative and emotive connotations.

Conclusion

After the discussion of the principle theme of the text one may say that it convincingly confirms the suppositions about the authoress: she is not a young person, she is inclined for philosophical generalizations. They are reflected in the digression which might be considered the idea of the text.

A PRIVATE VIEW (by Anita Brookner)

London, 1994

George Bland, in the sun, reflected that now was the moment to take stock. Nice, a town which he had not visited since his first holiday abroad, some forty years earlier, spread its noise and its light and its air about him, making him feel cautious; he was not up to this, he reckoned, having become unused to leisure. He had been here for four days and had found nothing to do, although there was much to occupy his thoughts, most of them, indeed all of them, proving unwelcome. Nice had been an unwise choice, though in truth hardly a choice at all; it had been more of a flight from those same thoughts, which faithfully continued to attend him here. He had sought a restorative, conventional enough, after the death of an old friend, Michael Putnam, who had inconveniently succumbed to cancer just when they were enabled, by process of evolution, or by that of virtue rewarded, more prosaically by the fact of their simultaneous retirement, to take their ease, to explore the world together, as had been their intention. They had waited for too long, and the result was this hiatus, and the reflection that time and patience may bring poor rewards, that time itself, if not confronted at the appropriate juncture, can play sly tricks, and, more significantly, that those who do not act are not infrequently acted upon.

His friend Putnam, whom he sorely missed, had left him a quite respectable sum of money, which, added to his own capital, made of him a fairly wealthy man. The irony of this did not escape him, for he had started out poor, and poverty was imprinted on his mind and no doubt in his heart. If he were spending freely now it was in an effort to get rid of some of his money and in so doing to allay the pain of Putnam's death. Yet the incongruity displeased him. Seated in an expensive restaurant - as it might be Le Chantecler – all he could remember was his last sight of Putnam, skeletal hand clutching the latest of a series of Get Well cards from former colleagues, great eyes turning to the window in shock and doubt, then turning back to his friend with a look that was timid, wistful, almost eager, for he had trusted in life right up to the end. That the look had to be met, sustained; this was not easy. In lime it had proved almost unbearable, but the effort was made, day after day, until, at the end of a mere three weeks, the eyes had closed forever.

Bland was shaken by his death, had sought comfort in late out-of-season sunshine, which now struck him as garish. No one, he thought, could understand their friendship, as they themselves had understood it. Both unmarried, they somehow did not impress the outside world as lovers, yet their closeness was remarked upon, puzzled over. In fact, what they had in common was their origin in shabby beginnings and their slow upward rise to middle-class affluence. This was their gleeful rueful secret. Lunching together on a Sunday at the club, or at one of the better London hotels, they might test each other with a brand name with which to conjure the past. Both appreciated sweet food and strong tea. Both, before making a purchase, had the same instinctive reaction: Is this allowed?

Sharing the past, any past, but particularly their own, made it more comfortable. Now that he was alone Bland found the present irksome, shot through with a sadness he had not previously suspected. And this was not merely the sadness of Putnam's death, for that was more properly grief, but a sadness for the life they had lived through together, keeping up each other's spirits, applauding in each other the middle-class virtues which, to their surprise, had come to them quite naturally, so that from an initial bedrock of misgiving and suspicion had flowered charity and judicious
benevolence and a hard-won fair-mindedness. He had loved Putnam; now that Putnam was dead, he, George Bland, felt half dead himself.

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