Yearning, Earning, Learning

Sometimes stirred by social concern, sometimes driven by economic need, successive British governments have tried many ways to give deprived children a better education. None, so far, has worked. Year after year, money has been wasted, latent talent squandered. It is time to try an approach that usually works with grown-ups: bribery.

No one seriously disputes the costs of educational failure. Economists stress
that brain has overtaken brawn as a source of economic growth, while massed
bands of sociologists point out that failure in school leads to poverty and vice versa
the so-called cycle of deprivation. Politicians invent buzz-words for their attempts
to break this cycle. In the 1960s it was "integration" and "expansion": the grammar
schools were abolished and the universities expanded, in the hope that working-
class children would flourish in the comprehensives and crowd onto the campuses.
Then, in 1970s, "targeting" came into vogue: money was concentrated on inner-city
schools in the hope that spending more would produce better results. The 1980s
brought in the fashion for "vocational education".

And all for what? Britain's inner-city comprehensives are as dismal as were the old inner-city secondary moderns; universities are still dominated by the middle classes; educational priority areas continue to churn out illiterate children. The chances of a working-class child going to university are little better now than in the 1920s while the hard core of disaffected pupils in the worst schools goes on growing.

Past attempts to free poor children from the deprivation cycle have always involved spending more on the producers of education. This may be the reason for their failure. Decent teachers and sensible curricula may be necessary for turning out educated children, but they are not sufficient. The larger problem is getting children to consume the stuff.

The working-class truant may not realize it, but his problem is the high discount rate that ho applies to the deferred benefits of education. The present value of future economic rewards from passing exams looks too small to persuade him to spend another boring day taking his classes seriously, Surveys show that, among deprived families, both children and parents regard education as an alien experience, unconnected with their personal lives and irrelevant to their economic futures. In effect, the higher a child's discount rate, the more ho needs immediate inducements as a counter-measure.

A middle class child, balancing homework against fun, has many more reminders of the prospect of high future earnings. If he is falling behind, his parents are quick to offer bribes. Bicycles and foreign holidays are standard payoffs for doing well at school. The promise of a cur has been known to work wonders with even the most air-headed offsprings. All these rewards lead him to have a lower discount rate.

Inner-city schools should be encouraged to imitate such middle-class habits. They would have a budget (courtesy, perhaps, of local employers) to bribe pupils to exploit their underused brains. Everyone who reached a certain weekly standard would be given, say, L10 a week, so none would have to be left out in the race to enrich themselves. The prizes for good marks in exams, or a place at university, would be much bigger. The results just might be astonishing.

Recommended Literature

1. Минаева Л.В. (ред.) Преподавание английского языка для специальных целей: Теория и практика. МГУ, М., 1998.

2. Akhmanova Olga, Idzelis Rolandas. What is the English we use? Moscow University Press, M., 1978.

3. Akhmanova Olga, Perekalskaja Tatjana. Optimisation of the Linguistic Message. Moscow University Press, M., 1974.

STYLISTICS

Lecture

1. Definition of stylistics. Connotation as the key concept of linguostylistics. The notions of emotiveness and expressiveness. Inherent and adherent connotations.

2. The concept of style. Individual style. Functional style. Classification of functional styles.

3. Tropes. Hyperbole. Euphemism. Irony. Metaphor. Metonymy. Synecdoche. Personification. Antonomasia.

4. Figures of speech. Phonetic figures of speech (alliteration, assonance, anaphora, paronomasia). Semantic figures of speech (puns, zeugma, antithesis, climax, anticlimax, repetition, simile, oxymoron). Syntactic figures of speech (parallel constructions, rhetorical questions, inversion, litotes).

Seminar

Topics for Presentations:

1. Three levels of linguostylistic analysis: semantic, metasemiotic, metametasemiotic.

2. Stylistic classification of the English vocabulary.

3. Figures of speech (рhonetic, syntactic, semantic).

4. Main functional styles and the distinctive features of their substyles.

Test Questions

1. What does stylistics study?

2. Give the definition of the term “connotation”. What three concepts are implied in it?

3. What are the types of connotations? Give examples.

4. What is style? How does individual style differ from style in general?

5. What are the two interdependent tasks of stylistics?