Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat
On May 13, 1940, newly appointed British Prime Minister Winston Churchill gave his first speech to the British Parliament in which he prepares them for the long battle against German aggression, at a time when the very survival of England was in doubt.
On Friday evening last I received from His Majesty the mission to form a new administration. It was the evident will of Parliament and the nation that this should be conceived on the broadest possible basis and that it should include all parties.
I have already completed the most important part of this task.
A war cabinet has been formed of five members, representing, with the Labour, Opposition, and Liberals, the unity of the nation. It was necessary that this should be done in one single day on account of the extreme urgency and rigor of events. Other key positions were filled yesterday. I am submitting a further list to the king tonight. I hope to complete the appointment of principal ministers during tomorrow.
The appointment of other ministers takes a little longer. I trust when Parliament meets again this part of my task will be completed and that the administration will be complete in all respects. I considered it in the public interest to suggest to the Speaker that the House should be summoned today.
At the end of today’s proceedings, the adjournment of the House will be proposed until May 21 with provision for earlier meeting if need be. Business for that will be notified to MPs at the earliest opportunity.
I now invite the House by a resolution to record its approval of the steps taken and declare its confidence in the new government.
The resolution:
“That this House welcomes the formation of a government representing the united and inflexible resolve of the nation to prosecute the war with Germany to a victorious conclusion.”
To form an administration of this scale and complexity is a serious undertaking in itself. But we are in the preliminary phase of one of the greatest battles in history. We are in action at many other points – in Norway and in Holland – and we have to be prepared in the Mediterranean. The air battle is continuing, and many preparations have to be made here at home.
In this crisis I think I may be pardoned if I do not address the House at any length today, and I hope that any of my friends and colleagues or former colleagues who are affected by the political reconstruction will make all allowances for any lack of ceremony with which it has been necessary to act.
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I say to the House as I said to ministers who have joined his government, I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat. We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind. We have before us many, many months of struggle and suffering.
You ask, what is our policy? I say it is to wage war by land, sea, and air. War with all our might and with all the strength God has given us, and to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark and lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy.
You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word. It is victory. Victory at all costs – Victory in spite of all terrors – Victory, however long and hard the road may be, for without victory there is no survival.
Let that be realized. No survival for the British Empire, no survival for all that the British Empire has stood for, no survival for the urge, the impulse of the ages, that mankind shall move forward toward his goal.
I take up my task in buoyancy and hope. I feel sure that our cause will not be suffered to fail among men.
I feel entitled at this juncture, at this time, to claim the aid of all and to say, “Come then, let us go forward together with our united strength.”
Winston Churchill – May 13, 1940
Questions
1. What major parts can the speech be divided into? What idea is the focus of each part?
Draw the main idea of each paragraph. What key words express it?
How are the paragraphs made coherent?
Sum up your ideas and comment upon the logical arrangement of the speech.
2. What is the general mood of the speech?
How is it changing throughout the speech?
What means are employed by the speaker to create the mood he intends to convey?
Comment on the choice of elevated words and the results they are expected to produce.
3. What creates the emotional impact of the speech?
What stylistic devices contribute to it?
4. Each utterance (which is not quite the same as a sentence) may be viewed as a speech act. Speech acts are classified into different types, but the major types that are usually singled out are:
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- Representatives (acts of stating, asserting, concluding, etc.)
- Directives (acts of ordering, questioning, requesting, etc.)
- Commissives (acts of offering, promising, threatening, etc.)
- Expressives (acts of thanking, apologizing, congratulating, etc.)
- Declarations (acts of christening, firing from employment, declaring war, etc.)
Now look through the oratory above and try to find examples of each type. Comment on the purpose of opting for different types of speech acts and the ways they contribute to achieving the goal of the speech.
5. Comment on the usage of tenses. What is emphasized through such usage?
How is the idea of urgency communicated through the following means:
- modal verbs;
- vocabulary items;
- adverbs of time?
6. What other ideas are revealed through the use of modal verbs?
What modal verbs and modal-like expressions are used while speaking about the following:
- the speaker’s actions;
- his suggestions;
- what he considers as necessary in ensuring victory?
7. Does the speech sound personal? If so, by what means is the effect achieved?
What image of the speaker as a citizen is created?
Exercise 2
The text below is the Inaugural Address of John F. Kennedy delivered January 20, 1961. Read the text closely and answer the questions that follow.
John Kennedy: Inaugural Address
1. Vice President Johnson, Mr. Speaker, Mr. Chief Justice, President Eisenhower, Vice President Nixon, President Truman, Reverend Clergy, fellow citizens:
2. We observe today not a victory of party but a celebration of freedom, symbolizing an end as well as a beginning, signifying renewal as well as change. For I have sworn before you and Almighty God the same solemn oath out forebears prescribed nearly a century and three-quarters ago.
3. The world is very different now. For man holds in his mortal hands the power to abolish all forms of human poverty and all forms of human life. And yet the same revolutionary beliefs for which our forebears fought are still at issue around the globe – the belief that the rights of man come not from the generosity of the state but from the hand of God.
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4. We dare not forget today that we are the heirs of that first revolution. Let the word go forth from this time and place, to friend and foe alike, that the torch has been passed to a new generation of Americans – born in this century, tempered by war, disciplined by a hard and bitter peace, proud of our ancient heritage – and unwilling to witness or permit the slow undoing of those human rights to which this nation has always been committed, and to which we are committed today at home and around the world.
5. Let every nation know, whether it wishes us well or ill, that we shall pay any price, bear any burden, meet any hardship, support any friend, oppose any foe to assure the survival and the success of liberty.
6. This much we pledge – and more.
7. To those old allies whose cultural and spiritual origins we share, we pledge the loyalty of faithful friends. United there is little we cannot do in a host of cooperative ventures. Divided there is little we can do, for we dare not meet a powerful challenge at odds and split asunder.
8. To those new states whom we welcome to the ranks of the free, we pledge our word that one form of colonial control shall not have passed away merely to be replaced by a far more iron tyranny. We shall not always expect to find them supporting our view. But we shall always hope to find them strongly supporting their own freedom – and to remember that, in the past, those who foolishly sought power by riding the back of the tiger ended up inside.
9. To those people in the huts and villages of half the globe struggling to break the bonds of mass misery, we pledge our best efforts to help them help themselves, for whatever period is required – not because the communists may be doing it, not because we seek their votes, but because it is right.
10. If a free society cannot help the many who are poor, it cannot save the few who are rich.
11. To our sister republics south of our border, we offer a special pledge: to convert our good words into good deeds, in a new alliance for progress, to assist free men and free governments in casting off the chains of poverty. But this peaceful revolution of hope cannot become the prey of hostile powers. Let all our neighbors know that we shall join with them to oppose aggression or subversion anywhere in the Americas.
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12. And let every other power know that this hemisphere intends to remain the master of its own house.
13. To that world assembly of sovereign states, the United Nations, our last best hope in an age where the instruments of war have far outpaced the instruments of peace, we renew our pledge of support to prevent it from becoming merely a forum for invective, to strengthen its shield of the new and the weak, and to enlarge the area in which its writ may run.
14. Finally, to those nations who would make themselves our adversary, we offer not a pledge but a request: that both sides begin anew the quest for peace – before the dark powers of destruction unleashed by science engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction.
15. We dare not tempt them with weakness. For only when our arms are sufficient beyond doubt can we be certain beyond doubt that they will never be employed. But neither can two great and powerful groups of nations take comfort from our present course – both sides overburdened by the cost of modern weapons, both rightly alarmed by the steady spread of the deadly atom, yet both racing to alter that uncertain balance of terror that stays the hand of mankind’s final war. So let us begin anew – remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness, and sincerity is always subject to proof.
16. Let us never negotiate out of fear. But let us never fear to negotiate.
17. Let both sides explore what problems unite us instead of belaboring those problems which divide us.
18. Let both sides, for the first time, formulate serious and precise proposals for the inspection and control of arms, and bring the absolute power to destroy other nations under the absolute control of all nations.
19. Let both sides seek to invoke the wonders of science instead of its terrors. Together let us explore the stars, conquer the deserts, eradicate disease, tap the ocean depths, and encourage the arts and commerce.
20. Let both sides unite to heed, in all corners of the earth, the command of Isaiah – to “undo the heavy burdens … [and] let the oppressed go free.”
21. And if a beachhead of cooperation may push back the jungle of suspicion, let both sides join in creating a new endeavor – not a new balance of power, but a new world of law – where the strong are just, and the weak secure, and the peace preserved. All this will not be finished in the first one hundred days. Nor will it be finished in the first one thousand days: nor in the life of this Administration: nor even perhaps in our lifetime on this planet. But let us begin.
22. In your hands, my fellow citizens, more than mine, will rest the final success or failure of our course. Since this country was founded, each generation of Americans has been sounded to give testimony to its national loyalty. The graves of young Americans who answered the call to service surround the globe.
23. Now the trumpet summons us again – not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need – not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle, year in and year out, rejoicing in hope, patient in tribulation, a struggle against the common enemies of man: tyranny, poverty, disease, and war itself.
24. Can we forge against these enemies a grand and noble alliance, North and South, East and West, that can assure a more fruitful life for all mankind? Will you join in that historic effort?
25. In the long history of the world, only a few generations have been granted the role of defending freedom in its hour of maximum danger. I do not shrink from this responsibility – I welcome it. I do not believe that any of us would exchange places with any other people or any other generation. The energy, the faith, the devotion which we bring to this endeavor will light our country and all who serve it. And the glow from that fire can truly light the world.
26. And so, my fellow Americans, ask not what your country can do for you; ask what you can do for your country.
27. My fellow citizens of the world, ask not what America will do for you, but what together we can do for the freedom of man.
28. Finally, whether you are citizens of America or citizens of the world, ask of us here the same high standards of strength and sacrifice which we ask of you. With a good conscience our only sure reward, with history the final judge of our deeds, let us go forth to lead the land we love, asking His blessing and His help, but knowing that here on earth God’s work must truly be our own.
Questions:
1. What is the message of the speech? Is the message conveyed explicitly or implicitly?
2. Explain what is meant in the text by the following words and expressions. (Use the context these words occur in to comment on their meaning and nuances of it):
- The heirs of that first revolution
- Tempered by war
- To be committed to smth
- To pledge the loyalty
- Casting off the chains of poverty
- Its writ may run
- Overburdened by
- Is subject to proof
- To belabor smth
- To be embattled
- To shrink from responsibility
3. Look through the text and comment on its structure. Divide the text into structurally complete parts and substantiate the principles of your subdivision. Make sure to mention the following:
(a) the introduction, the body and the conclusion;
(b) the shifts in the subtopic throughout the speech;
(c) the flow of ideas, the emphasis on some of them and how it influences the structure (logical emphasis within the parts).
4. What means of cohesion are used in the speech?
5. Comment on the register of the words used in the speech: account for the use of formal (bookish, archaic, poetic) and informal words (if any). Sum up your ideas.
6. Analyze the text from the point of view of stylistic devices and expressive means employed to make the speech more vivid and eloquent. Comment on the ideas they express and pragmatic effect they produce. (Account for different cases of gradation and antithesis in particular).
7. What expressive means and/or stylistic devices dominate in the speech?
8. What kind of appeal to the audience prevails: logical or emotional?
9. Comment on the instances of creating the atmosphere of tension in the speech. Could this atmosphere be characterized as constant, increasing, decreasing or fluctuating?
Exercise 3.
The text below is Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech given by William Faulkner December 10, 1950 in Stockholm, Sweden. The speech is generally characterized in the following quotation: “All his life William Faulkner had avoided speeches, and insisted that he not be taken as a man of letters. ‘I’m just a farmer who likes to tell stories,’ he once said. Because of his known aversion to making formal pronouncements, there was much interest, when he traveled to receive the prize on December 10, 1950, in what he would say in the speech that custom obliged him to deliver. Faulkner evidently wanted to set right the misinterpretation of his own work as pessimistic. But beyond that, he recognized that, as the first American novelist to receive the prize since the end of World War II, he had a special obligation to take the changed situation of the writer, and of man, into account.” (Richard Ellmann). Read the speech and prepare a complex stylistic analysis of the text according to the items of the plan given after the text.
William Faulkner: Nobel Prize Acceptance Speech
I feel that this award was not made to me as a man but to my work – a life’s work in the agony and sweat of the human spirit, not for glory and least of all for profit, but to create out of the materials of the human spirit something which did not exist before. So this award is only mine in trust. It will not be difficult to find a dedication for the money part of it commensurate for the purpose and significance of its origin. But I would like to do the same with the acclaim too, by using this moment as a pinnacle from which I might be listened to by the young men and women already dedicated to the same anguish and travail, among whom is already that one who will some day stand here where I am standing.
Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it. There are no longer problems of the spirit. There is only the question: when will I be blown up? Because of this, the young man or woman writing today has forgotten the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself which alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat.
He must learn them again. He must teach himself that the basest of all things is to be afraid; and, teaching himself that, forget it forever, leaving no room in his workshop for anything but the old verities and truths of the heart, the old universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed – love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice. Until he does so he labors under a curse. He writes not of love but of lust, of defeats in which nobody loses anything of value, of victories without hope and worst of all without pity or compassion. His griefs grieve on no universal bones, leaving no scars. He writes not of the heart but of the glands.
Until he relearns these things he will write as though he stood among and watched the end of man. I decline to accept the end of man. It is easy enough to say that man is immortal simply because he will endure, that when the last ding-dong of doom has changed and faded from the last worthless rock hanging tideless in the last red and dying evening, that even then there will still be one more sound: that of his puny inexhaustible voice, still talking. I refuse to accept this. I believe that man will not merely endure: he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance. The poet’s, the writer’s, duty is to write about these things. It is his privilege to help man endure by lifting his heart, by reminding him of the courage and honor and hope and pride and compassion and pity and sacrifice which have been the glory of his past. The poet’s voice need not be the record of man, it can be one of the props, the pillars to help him endure and prevail.
Plan for a complex stylistic analysis
1. The context of the text: historical and cultural background in which the text was produced.
2. The theme and content of the text.
3. The main idea of the text, or the message conveyed by the author.
4. The tone and modality of the text.
5. The compositional arrangement of the text and the main means of cohesion.
6. Stylistic aspects of the vocabulary of the text.
7. The use of figurative language in the text. The main effects that expressive means and stylistic devices create.
8. Concluding remarks on the author’s individual style.
REFERENCES
1. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Современный английский язык: Учебник для вузов. 8-е изд. М.: Флинта: Наука, 2006.
2. Гальперин И.Р. Очерки по стилистике английского языка. М.: Изд-во л-ры на иностр. яз., 1958.
3. Гальперин И.Р. Текст как объект лингвистического исследования. М.: Наука, 1981.
4. Знаменская Т.А. Стилистика английского языка. Основы курса / Stylistics of the English Language/ Fundamentals of the Course. М.: Едиториал УРСС, 2002.
5. Иванова Т.П., Брандес О.П. Стилистическая интерпретация текста. Пособие по английскому языку: Для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. М: Высш. шк., 1991.
6. Кухаренко В.А. Интерпретация текста. М.: Просвещение, 1988.
7. Кухаренко В.А. Практикум по стилистике английского языка / Seminars in Stylistics: Учеб. пособие. М.: Флинта: Наука, 2009.
8. Нелюбин Л.Л. Лингвостилистика современного английского языка: Учеб. пособие. 5-е изд. М.: Флинта: Наука, 2008.
9. Разинкина Н.М. Стилистика английской научной речи. Элементы эмоционально-субъективной оценки. М.: Наука, 1972.
10. Разинкина Н.М. Функциональная стилистика (на материале английского и русского языков). М.: Высш. шк., 1989.
11. Скребнев Ю.М. Основы стилистики английского языка: Учебник для ин-тов и фак. иностр. яз. 2-е изд. М.: Астрель: АСТ, 2003.
12. Швейцер А.Д. Контрастивная стилистика: Газ.-публ. стиль в англ. и рус. яз. / РАН. Ин-т языкознания. М.: Наука, 1993.
13. Crystal D. Cambridge Encyclopedia of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.
14. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. 2nd ed. Moscow: Higher School, 1977.
15. Kukharenko V. A. Seminars in Style. Moscow: Higher School, 1971.
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