EXAMINATION FOR THE DEGREE OF BACHELOR OF ARTS
ALT 300: STYLISTICS AND LITERARY TECHNIQUES
1. “Stylistic analysis is more than a linguistic description of a text. It involved textual
analysis also”. Using suitable illustrations from a texts studied in this course, explain this
statement.
2. Using suitable literary illustrations, comment on the debate of whether form and content are
inseparable or are two different aspects of a literary text.
3. Identify and explain how at least four types of semantic deviation contribute to characterization
in any two texts studied in this unit.
4. Explain with apt illustrations, how cohesion can be created in a literary text.
5. Discuss the connection between rhetoric, linguistics and stylistics demonstrating your
understanding of each of these three terms, citing relevant examples from texts studied in this
course to illustrate your response.
6. Attempt a stylistic analysis of the passage below
James Baldwin’s “Go Tell it to the Mountain”
The only white people who came to our house were welfare workers and bill collectors.
It was almost always my mother who dealt with them, for my father’s temper, which
was at the mercy of his pride, was never to be trusted. It was clear that he felt their very
presence in his home to be a violation: this was conveyed by his carriage, almost
ludicrously stiff, and by his voice, harsh and vindictively polite. When I was around nine
or ten I wrote a play which was directed by a young, white schoolteacher, a woman,
who then took an interest in me, and gave me books to read and, in order to
corroborate my theatrical bent, decided to take me to see what she somewhat tactlessly
referred to as “real” plays. Theatre-going was forbidden in our house, but, with the
really cruel intuitiveness of a child, I suspected that the color of this woman’s skin would
carry the day for me. When, at school, she suggested to take me to the theatre, I did
not, as I might have done if she had been a Negro, find a way of discouraging her, but
agreed that she would pick me up at my house one evening. I then, very cleverly, left all
the rest to my mother, who suggested to my father, as I knew she would, that it would
not be very nice to let such a kind woman make the trip for nothing. Also, since it was a
schoolteacher, I imagine that my mother countered the idea of sin with the idea of
“education”, which word, even with my father, carried a kind of bitter weight.
Before the teacher came my father took me aside to ask why she was coming,
what interest she could possibly have in our house, in a boy like me. I said I didn’t know
ALT 300: STYLISTICS AND LITERARY TECHNIQUES
1. “Stylistic analysis is more than a linguistic description of a text. It involved textual
analysis also”. Using suitable illustrations from a texts studied in this course, explain this
statement.
2. Using suitable literary illustrations, comment on the debate of whether form and content are
inseparable or are two different aspects of a literary text.
3. Identify and explain how at least four types of semantic deviation contribute to characterization
in any two texts studied in this unit.
4. Explain with apt illustrations, how cohesion can be created in a literary text.
5. Discuss the connection between rhetoric, linguistics and stylistics demonstrating your
understanding of each of these three terms, citing relevant examples from texts studied in this
course to illustrate your response.
6. Attempt a stylistic analysis of the passage below
James Baldwin’s “Go Tell it to the Mountain”
The only white people who came to our house were welfare workers and bill collectors.
It was almost always my mother who dealt with them, for my father’s temper, which
was at the mercy of his pride, was never to be trusted. It was clear that he felt their very
presence in his home to be a violation: this was conveyed by his carriage, almost
ludicrously stiff, and by his voice, harsh and vindictively polite. When I was around nine
or ten I wrote a play which was directed by a young, white schoolteacher, a woman,
who then took an interest in me, and gave me books to read and, in order to
corroborate my theatrical bent, decided to take me to see what she somewhat tactlessly
referred to as “real” plays. Theatre-going was forbidden in our house, but, with the
really cruel intuitiveness of a child, I suspected that the color of this woman’s skin would
carry the day for me. When, at school, she suggested to take me to the theatre, I did
not, as I might have done if she had been a Negro, find a way of discouraging her, but
agreed that she would pick me up at my house one evening. I then, very cleverly, left all
the rest to my mother, who suggested to my father, as I knew she would, that it would
not be very nice to let such a kind woman make the trip for nothing. Also, since it was a
schoolteacher, I imagine that my mother countered the idea of sin with the idea of
“education”, which word, even with my father, carried a kind of bitter weight.
Before the teacher came my father took me aside to ask why she was coming,
what interest she could possibly have in our house, in a boy like me. I said I didn’t know
