Tonal System

Consider these questions while analyzing the tone and atmosphere of a short
story or an excerpt:
1. What specific words and phrases convey the tone and atmosphere?
2. Does the tone vary? In what way?
3. What linguistic means create the tone in the story/excerpt?
4. Is the author’s language designed to appeal to the senses? Give examples to
support your view.
5. What do emotionally coloured words add to the tone and atmosphere of the
story/excerpt?

Home Activity 1:
Atmosphere The aura of mood that surrounds the story. Mood is
established in order to affect the reader emotionally
and psychologically and to provide a feeling for the
narrative.
Tone Literary device that reflects the writer's attitude toward
the subject matter or audience of a literary work.
Prevailing Tone The main writer’s attitude toward the subject matter or
audience
Emotional Overtones Emotional connotations attached to a word beyond its
literal definition or denotation
Tonal System Reflects the changes of the narrator’s attitude to his
subject matter. Consists of: prevailing tone and
emotional overtones.

Home Activity 2:
1)(language style - long sentences, but breaks them up with hyphens, colons, and
semi-colons—keeping the prose rhythmic and moving. )
The Quiet American by Graham Greene – Tragic tone, Anti-War mood, pretty dark
and bleak historical context. Fear, Guilt, Mortality, Religion, Warfare
2) Mistaken Identity by Mark Twain
Mistaken racial identity of materials from the nineteenth, atmosphere of
humiliation, shame, tone - racial inequality, irony
3) The Oval Portrait by Edgar Allan Poe
Beauty and death, immortality, art
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Special attention should be paid to humour and irony. Many theories exist about
what humour is and what social function it serves.
The prevailing types of theories attempting to account for the existence of
humour include psychological theories, the vast majority of which consider
humour-induced behaviour to be very healthy; spiritual theories, which may, for
instance, consider humour to be a "gift from God"; and theories which consider
humour to be an unexplainable mystery, very much like a mystical experience.
A humorous tone is created by an apt usage of deliberate exaggerations
(hyperbole), a round-about way of naming things (periphrasis), unexpected
comparison (simile), jargonisms, dialectal words, words which sound amusing in
the particular situation because they don’t belong in it.

The word ‘irony’ has two main meanings:

· It denotes the technique of implying the opposite of what is actually said, e.g.
the common use of ‘Charming!’ as a response to something unpleasant. It is
especially effective when the writer pretends to admire and respect someone’s
behavior or ideas in order to ridicule them or reveal their vices (verbal irony);
· It reflects some incongruity between what we expect or intend to happen and
what actually does occur, or a situation showing that incongruity: e.g. a man who
never does anything for his children decides to build a cage for their pet hamster,
finishes it to great applause and then steps back on it and crashes it down to
pieces (situational irony)

There exist five kinds of irony. Three kinds of irony have been recognized since
antiquity:
1) socratic irony – a mask of innocence and ignorance adopted to win an
argument;
2) dramatic or tragic irony, a double vision of what is happening in a play or real-
life situation;
3) linguistic irony, a duality of meaning, now the classic form of irony. Building on
the idea of dramatic irony, the Romans concluded that language often carries a
double message, a second often mocking or sardonic meaning running contrary to
the first.
In modern times, two further conceptions have been added:
1) structural irony, a quality that is built into texts, in which the observations of a
naive narrator point up deeper implications of a situation;
2) romantic irony, in which writers conspire with readers to share the double
vision of what is happening in the plot of a novel, film, etc.

These are the major points of similarity and difference between irony and
sarcasm:
1) Both intend to insult, hurt, and ridicule their victims.
2) Both may be uttered or written in a ‘sarcastic’ tone of voice that makes this
intention clear, but
3) Irony always works indirectly through pretence, whereas sarcasm (from Greek
sarkazein, to tear flesh, to gnash the teeth, speak bitterly) attacks openly and goes
straight for the throat.
4) Sarcasm works on a lower intellectual level than irony
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Home Activity 3:

Home Activity 4:
Text A:
1. Question of identity and politeness
2. Tone is ironic, a little bit intimate
3. Effective:
1- Dear thingy . .
2- Most letter writers would bridle at the form 'Dear Persons', for to
address a member of either sex simply as 'Person' is manifestly less
polite than to use the appropriate title (if only one knew what it was).
3- But it is doubtful whether the average managing director, let alone his
or her secretary, when he or she types the letter, is ready for that yet.
 Least effective:
1- chauvinist assumption (usually correct)
2- thus perpetuating the assumption of seniority of man over woman
which it sets out to avoid.
Text B
1.People’s behavior
2.Comic, funny, ironic, sad, condescending, intimate
3.Effective:
- Jason's clenched, tattooed fists demonstrate his mastery of both the
abstract noun and antithesis: 'love' on his right knuckles, 'hate' on his left.
- Jason uses 'the resources of the voice expressively'. He leads a raucous
chorus of 'Here we go, Here we go, Here we go' as the fifth formers charge
into the desk-filled hall for the CSE mockery exams.

Text C:
1. Meaningless
2. Condescending, sad, heavy
3. Effective:
- It does not weigh heavily as we shave in the mornings. It does not get in
the way of the breakfast toast.