12. ENEMY OF THE PEOPLE
Radio 2
Johnnie Walker, the DJ fined £ 2,000 last week for possessing cocaine, was suitably contrite as Radio 2 opened its arms to welcome him back to work. "I'm extremely sorry for all the embarrassment I've caused my family, friends and the BBC," he said.
Embarrassment? My dear old chap, this is absolutely the best thing to have happened to Radio 2's image in years.
There has only been one other significant drags scandal involving a Radio 2 presenter. One day in 1993, Alan Freeman accidentally took an overdose of his arthritis pills. Luckily, there was no lasting damage done to Freeman, but for Radio 2 it was touch and go.
Arthritis pills? This was not the image that the station had been assiduously nurturing. For years, Radio 2 has been struggling to cast off the impression that it thinks hip is something that you can have replaced on the NHS at some point in your late seventies.
This struggle has not been a success. To many listeners, it is the station to which people turn when they start taking an interest in golf, Sanatogen and comfortable cardigans.
It is a reliable friend to lean on when you hear yourself say: "Radio 4 is all very well, but why does everything have to be so brash and loud?".
So for Radio 2 to have a chap on the staff who's had a brush with cocaine and wild living was a lucky bonus. For a short time, Radio 2 producers could turn up at nightclub doors without being sniggered at. (S.T.)
13. ME IMPERTURBE
Me imperturbe, standing at ease in Nature,
Master of all or mistress of all, aplomb in the midst of
Irrational things,
Imbued as they, passive, receptive, silent as they,
Finding my occupation, poverty, notoriety, foibles, crimes
Less important than I thought,
Me toward the Mexican sea, or in the Mannahatta or the
Tennessee, or far north or inland,
A river man, or a man of the woods or of any farm-life of
These States or of the coast, or the lakes of Kanada,
Me wherever my life is lived, О to be self-balanced for
Contingencies,
To confront night, storms, hunger, ridicule, accidents,
Rebuffs, as the trees and animals do. (W.W.)
14. TOBACCO CAN HELP STOP THE HAIR LOSS FROM CANCER DRUGS
TOBACCO plants could be the key to allowing chemotherapy patients to keep their hair, writes Roger Dobson.
Biotechnologists have succeeded in getting the transgenic plants to grow an antibody that neutralises the hair-loss effects of the toxic chemicals used in cancer-fighting chemotherapy.
When a solution of the antibodies is rubbed into the hair and scalp before anti-cancer treatment begins, it protects and preserves the hair follicles from the aggressive toxins in the drug treatment. ( S. T.)
15. In most countries, foreign languages have traditionally been taught for a small number of hours per week, but for several years on end. Modern thought on this matter suggests that telescoping language courses brings a number of unexpected advantages. Thus it seems that a course of 500 hours spread over five years is much less effective than the same course spread over one year, while if it were concentrated into six months it might produce outstanding results. One crucial factor here is the reduction in opportunities for forgetting; however, quite apart from the difficulty of making the time in school time-tables when some other subject would inevitably have to be reduced, there is a limit to the intensity of language teaching which individuals can tolerate over a protracted period. It is clear that such a limit exists; it is not known in detail how the limit varies for different individuals, nor for different age-groups, and research into these factors is urgently needed. At any rate, a larger total number of hours per week and a tendency towards more frequent teaching periods are the two aspects of intensity which are at present being tried out in many places, with generally encouraging results. (P.St.)
16.US FIRM QUITS BISCUIT RACE
THE US venture capital firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst, which bought Hillsdown Holdings this year, has ruled out a bid for United Biscuits.
Hicks Muse, which owns the Peak Freans brand, was previously a hot favourite in the City to bid for UB, whose products include McVitie's, Penguin, Jaffa Cakes, KP, Skips and Phileas Fogg.
UB, which is expected to command a price tag of about $l.2 billion, admitted last week it had received an approach that might lead to an offer.
However, Hicks Muse's departure leaves just four serious bidders for some or all of UB.
They are two venture capitalists - Kohlberg Kravis Roberts and CVC Capital Partners - as well as Nabisco, America's leading biscuits firm, and Danone, the French food group that owns Jacob's cream crackers and HP sauce. (S.T.)
17. Between my finger and my thumb The squat pen rests; snug as a gun. Under my window, a clean rasping sound When the spade sinks into gravelly ground: My father, digging, I look down.
Till his straining rump among the flowerbeds Bends low, comes up twenty years away Stooping in rhythm through potato drills Where he was digging.
The coarse boot nestled on the lug, the shaft
Against the inside knee was levered firmly.
He rooted out tall tops, buried the bright edge deep
To scatter new potatoes that we picked
Loving their cool hardness in our hands.
My God, the old man could handle a spade. Just like his old man. (S.H.)
18. PREPARING A BUSINESS PLAN
A business plan is essential to the start-up, growth and modification of any business whether it be a small private farm or a large state farm or an agricultural processing facility. The business plan specifically defines the business. It identifies and clarifies goals and provides the direction for their achievement.
A well developed plan will serve three primary functions. First, it will act as a feasibility study. Writing the plan forces the business owner or director to translate ideas into black and white allowing substantiation and evaluation of the assumptions upon which the plan is based. It helps to determine the need for, and proper allocation of resources and, by allowing the owner to look for weak spots and vulnerabilities, helps reduce the risk of unforeseen complications.
Second, the plan will serve as a management tool. It provides a guide for implementation and standards against which to evaluate performance. Properly utilised, it can help alert the owner/manager to potential problems before they become detrimental, and potential opportunities before they are missed.
Third, the plan is the tool for obtaining financing for the business. Whether seeking bank financing, private domestic or foreign investors, government financing or venture capital, a detailed, well-drafted plan is necessary. (Wt.)
19.
United States Department of Agriculture
Commercial Agriculture Development Project 2
Luctukiv Pereulok Maliv, Ukraine 25002 Tel/Fax: (380-02) 42-80-80 E-mail: eller@te.net.ua
March 2, 2000
Harry Mead, USAID
19 Rubyy Val St.254 Kyi'v, Ukraine
Dear Mr. Walters,
I have discussed the issue of using funds allocated for wages, transportation, technical assistance, and other expenditures in the KNO Project for larger capital purchases for the four cooperatives with you and Ken Boyle and I am seeking formal approval to do this. I have also discussed this idea with the boards of the four cooperatives and they have agreed that this would be a better way to use the funds in the budget.
Artsis is working on a deal with Monsanto for no-till planting equipment. I agreed to make the down payment for that deal, which is $10,000.00. We have been working on this for a long time (it seems like forever) with CNFA and Monsanto. The payment has already been made to Monsanto.
I have already purchased seed treating equipment and two tractors for Ivanov Coop. They got the equipment from bankrupt collectives and got a very good deal on all of it. The seed treating equipment was still in crates and was purchased from Germany two years ago for $27,000.00. We got it all for $7,000.00. The Ivanov Coop will specialize in hailing, storing and selling seed. They got the two tractors from a bankrupt collective in Ivanovka for $3,000.00 and will provide a plowing service for their members this year.
Sincerely,
John Wales USDA/CADP Odessa
1. What types of language communication do you know?
2. What are the main characteristics of oral speech?
3. Enumerate functional styles of contemporary English.
4. What do you know about the scientific style?
5. Characterize the official style.
6. Discuss the peculiarities of the newspaper style.
7. What are the main features of the publicist style?
8. What is the status of the belles-lettres style among other functional styles?
9. What dichotomies between the types and the forms of language communication do you know? Do they correlate?
10. Can you think of any intermediate styles, boasting of qualities of two or even more "regular" styles?
* * *
Now, after you had learnt the intricacies of stylistic functioning of language units of different linguistic levels, we can try and analyze their convergence, which enhances and strengthens the given information and - still more important - creates the new, additional meaning of the message.
Starting on the road of stylistic analysis you should keep in mind at least three basic essentials:
1. Read the passage given for analysis to the end.
2. Be sure you understand not only its general content but every single word and construction, too.
3. Paying due respect to linguistic intuition which is an indispensable part of all linguistic work, be sure to look for the source of your "feeling of the text" in the material reality of the latter.
1. My dad had a small insurance agency in Newport. He had moved there because his sister had married old Newport money and was a big wheel in the Preservation Society. At fifteen I'm an orphan, and Vic moves in. "From now on you'll do as I tell you," he says. It impressed me. Vic had never really shown any muscle before. (N.T.)
The first person singular pronouns indicate that we deal either with the entrusted narrative or with the personage's uttered monologue.
The communicative situation is highly informal. The vocabulary includes not only standard colloquial words and expressions such as "dad", "to show muscle" (which is based on metonymy), the intensifying "really'', but also the substandard metaphor - "a big wheel". The latter also indicates the lack of respect of the speaker towards his aunt, which is further sustained by his metonymical qualification of her husband ("old Newport money").
The syntax, too, participates in conveying the atmosphere of colloquial informality - sentences are predominantly short. Structures are either simple or, even when consisting of two clauses, offer the least complicated cases of subordination.
The change of tenses registers changes in the chronology of narrated events. Especially conspicuous is the introduction of Present Indefinite (Simple) Tense, which creates the effect of immediacy and nearness of some particular moment, which, in its turn, signifies the importance of this event, thus foregrounding it, bringing it into the limelight - and making it the logical and emotional centre of the discourse.
2. He had heard everything the Boy said however - was waiting for the right moment to wrap up his silence, roll it into a weapon and hit Matty over the head with it. He did so now. (W.G1.)
In this short extract from W. Golding's Darkness Visible the appearance of a person who was an unnoticed witness to a conversation is described. The unexpectedness of his emergence is identified with the blow in the sustained metaphor which consists of three individual verb metaphors showing stages of an aggressive action.
The abrupt change of sentence length and structure contributes to the expressiveness of the passage.
3. And out of the quiet it came to Abramovici that the battle was over, it had left him alive; it had been a battle - a battle! You know where people go out and push little buttons and pull little triggers and figure out targets and aim with the intention to kill, to tear your guts, to blow out уour brains, to put great ragged holes in the body you've been taking care of and feeding and washing all youi life, holes out of which your blood comes pouring, more blood than you ever could wash off, hold back, stop with all the bandages in the world! (St.H.)
Here we deal with the change "of the type of narration: from the author's narrative, starting the paragraph, to represented inner speech of the character. The transition tells on the vocabulary which becomes more colloquial (cf. ''guts") and more emotional (cf. the hyperbole "all the bandages in the world"); on the syntax brimming with parallelisms; on tne punctuation passing on to the emphatic points of exclamation and dashes; on the morphology. "Naive" periphrases are used to describe the act of firing and its deadly effect Third person pronouns give way to the second person ("you", "your") embracing both communicants - the personage (author) and the reader, establishing close links between them, involving the reader into the feelings and sentiments of the character.
Very important is repetition. Besides syntactical repetition (parallelism) mentioned above, pay attention to the repetition of "battle", because it is this word which on one hand, actually marks the shift from one type of narration to another (the first "battle" bringing in the author's voice, the last two - that of Abramovici). On the other hand, the repetition creates continuity and cohesion and allows the two voices merge, making the transition smooth and almost imperceptible.
4. "This is Willie Stark, gents. From up home at Mason City. Me and Willie was in school together. Yeah, and Willie, he was a bookworm, and he was teacher's pet. Wuzn't you, Willie?" And Alex nudged the teacher's pet in the ribs. (R.W.)
Alex's little speech gives a fair characteristic of the speaker. The substandard "gents", colloquial "me", irregularities of grammar ("me and Willie was"), pronunciation (graphon "wuzn't"), syntax ("Willie, he was"), abundance of set phrases ("he was a bookworm", "he was a teacher's pet", "from up home") - all this shows the low educational and cultural level of the speaker.
It is very important that such a man introduces the beginning politician to his future voters and followers. In this way R. P. Warren stresses the gap between the aspiring and ambitious, but very common and run-of-the-mill young man starting on his political career, and the false and ruthless experienced politician in the end of this road.
Note the author's ironic attitude towards the young Stark which is seen from the periphrastic nomination of the protagonist ("teacher's pet") in the author's final remark.
5. From that day on, thundering trains loomed in his dreams - hurtling, sleek, black monsters whose stack pipes belched gobs of serpentine smoke, whose seething fireboxes coughed out clouds of pink sparks, whose pushing pistons sprayed jets of hissing steam - panting trains that roared yammeringly over farflung, gleaming rails only to come to limp and convulsive halts - long, fearful trains that were hauled brutally forward by red-eyed locomotives that you loved watching as they (and you trembling) crashed past (and you longing to run but finding your feet strangely glued to the ground). (Wr.)
This paragraph from Richard Wright is a description into which the character's voice is gradually introduced first through the second person pronoun "you", later also graphically and syntactically - through the so-called embedded sentences, which explicitly describe the personage's emotions.
The paragraph is dominated by the sustained metaphor "trains" = "monsters". Each clause of this long (the length of this one sentence, constituting a whole paragraph, is over 90 words) structure contains its own verb-metaphors "belched", "coughed out", "sprayed", etc., metaphorical epithets contributing to the image of the monster -"thundering", "hurtling", "seething", "pushing", "hissing", etc. Their participial form also helps to convey the effect of dynamic motion. The latter is inseparable from the deafening noise, and besides "roared", "thundering", "hissing", there is onomatopoeic "yammeringly".