Formal Language Features

Question 1

Parallelism
eg. “our fellow citizens, our way of life, our very freedom”

Answer 1

• often combined with listing
• layering, packaging and creating mirrored structures builds cohesion

Question 2

Antithesis
eg. “Terrorist attacks can shake the foundation of our biggest buildings, but they cannot touch the foundation of America”

Answer 2

syntactically (antithesis) can/cannot
semantically (antonymy) shake/touch

Question 3

Listing
eg. “disbelief, terrible sadness and a quiet unyielding anger”

Answer 3

• links ideas and context with a semantic thread
• packaging and layering to build impact and momentum

Question 4

Passive voice
eg. “Thousand of lives were suddenly ended by evil, despicable acts of terror”

Answer 4

• creates a focus on the grammatical subject
• use depends on motivations and decisions of writer/speaker

Question 5

Nominalisation
eg. “The implementation of our government’s emergency response plan”

Answer 5

• changes the tone of the sentence
• creates lexical and syntactic density (noun phrases are built within clauses)
• human agent removed: abstract, objective

Question 6

Information flow (discourse due to contribution to cohesion)

Answer 6

• sentence organistion: what users want to highlight
• neutral syntax: SVO
• marked syntax: unusual in some way
  ->stylistic effect: emphasis, foreground, focus, nuance

Question 7

Clefting (It-cleft and What-cleft)

Answer 7

It-cleft: Dummy subject + V + S + relative pronoun + clause
- eg. Alice kicked the winning goal (simple)
It was Alice who kicked the winning goal (complex)
It was the winning goal that Alice kicked (complex)

What-cleft: What + subject noun clause + V + NP (complement)
- eg. I really want answers (simple)
What I really want are answers (complex)

Question 8

End focus (relates to end weight)

Answer 8

• places material with higher communicative value at the end (grammatically complicated/heavily modified structures
• prominence and suspense created
• eg. “She depended for inspiration on the presence of her books”
  as opposed to:
  “She depended on her books for inspiration”

Question 9

Existential sentence (example of end weight)

Answer 9

• there/it dummy subject (empty - only serving grammatical function)
• reserves new information for the end of the sentence
• eg. “There are many endangered species in Australia”
• controls where the reader focuses
  -> isolates idea: worldly, objective, authoritative, indisputable

Question 10

Front focus (FIPV) - fronting

Answer 10

• highlights the beginning of the sentence
• lends greater prominence for elements which are typically later
• sets up situational context by foregrounding
  
  • intial focus, understanding
• eg. “If unwell, people must stay at home unless seeking medical care”
  
  • conditional subordinate clause fronted to highlight condition

Question 11

Front focus (FIPV) - inversion

Answer 11

• adverbial phrases often fronted to set the scene
  
  • eg. “Later that day, his arrogance would seal his fate”
  • dramatic effect, more literary in style
• inversion of S and V (marked syntax)
  
  • eg. “Numerous are those who…”
  • literary and poetic t/f formal due to marked syntax

Question 12

Front focus (FIPV) - passive voice

Answer 12

• common Standard syntax (SVO) = active
• passive (stilll Standard) “reverses” -> SV(A)
  
  • meaning doesn’t shift but focus does - depends on intentions of writer/speaker

Question 13

Semantic features

Answer 13

• denotation
• connotation
• figurative language
  
  • metaphor
  • simile
  • personification
  • hyperbole
  • oxymoron