Stylistic Analysis of Gettysburg Address
Abstract: Public speech is an art. It presents the features of formal written language while exhibiting characteristics of the spoken. Abraham Lincoln, an excellent speaker, addressed this speech on November 19, 1863 in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. This speech, which is very convincing, is considered a classic. This paper analysis the speech from stylistic perspective in four aspects: phonological level, lexical level, syntactical level and semantic level. Through the essay, we can have a better understanding of the public speech.
Key Words: Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg Address, stylistic analysis
Ⅰ. Introduction
As far as the definition of stylistics is concerned different scholars define the branch of study in different ways. Wales defines stylistics simply as “the study of style” (1989:437), while Leech defines stylistics as the “study of the use of language in literature” (1969:1) and considers stylistics a “meeting-ground of linguistics and literary study” (1969:2).
Stylistic analysis is generally concerned with the uniqueness of a text; that is, what it is that is peculiar to the uses of language in a literary text for delivering the message. This naturally involves comparisons of the language of the text with that used in conventional types of discourse. Thus, we may conclude that stylistic analysis is an activity that is highly comparative in nature.
The Gettysburg Address is a speech by U.S. President Abraham Lincoln and is one of the most well-known speeches in United States history. It was delivered by Lincoln during the American Civil War, on the afternoon of Thursday, November 19, 1863, at the dedication of the Soldiers' National Cemetery in Gettysburg,
Pennsylvania; four and a half months after the Union armies defeated those of the Confederacy at the Battle of Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln's carefully crafted address, secondary to other presentations that day, came to be regarded as one of the greatest speeches in American history. In just over two minutes, Lincoln invoked the principles of human equality espoused by the Declaration of Independence and
redefined the Civil War as a struggle not merely for the Union, but as \freedom\would remain a viable form of government, and would also create a unified nation in which states' rights were no longer dominant.
Ⅱ. A Stylistic Analysis of the Speech
1. At Phonological Level
Many speeches use parallelism and antithesis to make langue be with the rhythm of music. So we can’t ignore the phonological features of speeches. This is a political speech with the features of rigorous logic, refined langue, strength and charisma.
In the beginning, “Fourscore and seven years ago” replaces eighty-seven years ago is the ingenuity of Lincoln that “fourscore” has two long vowels [o:] which is resounding and well known by people, and can draw audience’s attention effectively. If substitute [ei] of eighty-seven with [o:] of “Fourscore”, it can’t reach such an effectiveness as [o:]. Except this, we can also see amounts of vocabulary with resounding vowels, such as fourscore，now，that nation，any，that nation might live，cannot，tally did，nobly，great，before，God，new birth，of，by，for，perish and so on. All of the lexis enhance volume and make listeners catch the point of the speech easily. At the transition of speech, improving the intonation of “but” can not only make audiences be more conscious of the oncoming, but also the speaker more impassioned. To rhythm, the speed of speaking is usually within the range of 120 to 150 words per min. A total of 275 words of this speech are finished barely in 3minutes, from which, we can know the speed is medium. It is planed deliberately by Lincoln that what he is facing is a complicated and motley community or group including statesman, military officer, journalist and the family of martyr and other grassroots among these people are either lowbrow or highbrow. For persuading them to reach a common target, he has to make sure everyone at presence totally understand the content of his speech. Additionally, he makes use of “pause” skillfully, for instance, the “pause” after “now” leads to a thought of current missions and conditions; the “pause” after God make people image what will happen the next moment.
2. At Lexical Level
Word is the basic grammar unit. Different styles require using different words. Meanwhile the different stylistic colorings of the words also determine their different applicable scope. Here we would analyze Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address from two aspects in the lexical level.
2.1 Diction
In English, we often call those words containing six or above six letters, or three or above three syllables as BIG WORD. Generally an essay could show its formality by using a certain number of big words. In Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, the whole text has 275 words while the number of big words is 57, which make up 21% of the total. However, the proportion of big word in daily language is often less than 20%.
So relatively, the public speeches use more formal words and their word structure is more complex. This shows up in two aspects:
Firstly, in public speech, presidents always use formal language. This not only to show stability but also would make the audience feel the speaker is serious in politics. So in Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, there are such formal words: “consecrate”, “hallow”, and “perish” and so on.
Secondly, as a political speech, abstract words are indispensable. Therefore, we can find “proposition”, “conceived”, “dedicated”, “consecrated”, “devotion” and “freedom” this kind of words. These words which may increase the difficulty to understand to some extend can make the speech very formal and compelling.
2.2 The use of person In public speech, the first person is most common. This is because the first
person would help speaker to state his viewpoint and strike a chord with his listeners. When delivering his speech, Lincoln uses various personal pronouns to address the audience.
Lincoln uses first person frequently. “We”, “our”, and “us” contribute to involve the audience, making them feel that they are on equal terms with the president. Thus it is easier for the speaker to win the support of the listeners, who immediately feel close to the speaker when hearing the expression “we” or “our”. Lincoln involves all the audience and makes them feel that they are the ones whom he is speaking to. In this speech, he changes personal pronoun from time to time. By the conversion of personal pronouns, he manages to make the speech flexible and rousing.
3. At Syntactical Level
Generally speaking, sentence is often seemed as the orderly arrangement of words. Based on the above analyses, we can deduce that Lincoln’s speech has its own feature in syntactical level.
3.1 The sentence structure
The length of sentence depends on the style type of the text. In Lincoln’s speech, there are 10 sentences, 275 words. Among them, there is no sentence that include 1-9 words; 3 sentences that include 10-19 words, accounting for 30%; 6 sentences that include 20-29 words, accounting for 60%; 1 sentence that includes 83 words, accounting for 10%. The data shows that Lincoln prefers to use short and long sentences in his speech. Short sentence can not only make his speech more vivid and exciting, but also make his expression more powerful. Meanwhile, long sentence can
StylisticAnalysisofGettysburgAddress葛底斯堡文体学分析
