Where Angels Fear to Tread (E. M.

Forster)

1. What type of text is it? Explain your answer.

This is a dialogic text. In the passage, Spiriodione and Gino are having a conversation about
some past events and their thoughts and the style used is direct speech, which is made clear by
the use of inverted commas, the original words as they were uttered and the introductory phrases
independent from real speech.

2. Can you describe the characters from a semantic point of view?

We can say that the characters are learned people as they use vocabulary that doesn’t belong to
the day-to-day language register. This is also supported by the fact that they also speak in other
languages and in the use of such devices as irony.

3. What are Gino and Spiridione talking about?

They are talking about women, the characteristics and virtues an ideal woman should possess,
and exposing their opinions about how relationships between men and women develop.

4. What type of conversation are the characters involved in according to the grammatical and
semantic characteristics of the text?
This is an informal conversation as regards the topic and the casual manner in which it is
treated, but at the same time the vocabulary and grammatical structures used are not careless
but elaborated.

5. Does this text respect Grice’s maxims of conversation?. Explain your answer.
Grice’s maxims of conversation are relevance, quality, quantity and manner, and they are
comprised in what he calls “cooperative principle”. The participants must repect these maxims to
maintain effective communication and the floating of any of them will create misfits in the
interaction exchange.

The conversation in the passage is highly dynamic, there are comments about many different
things. This makes us conclude that both characters have a thorough knowledge about each
other. This is the reason why the maxims are flouted in the conversation, though this flouting does
not affect the efficiency of communication. For instance, the maxim of relevance is breached
when Gino asks Spiridione if he gains much beyond his pay when they are talking about
something which is not strictly connected with the on-going conversation.

As regards quantity, this is flouted on many ocassions, as the language used is excessive and
rhetorical. Thoughts are expressed using more words than the really necessary ones. For
instance, Gino goes too far into explaining that he feels sorry for the incident with Philip.

In order to provide another example, manner is floated when they are using foreign words, which
Spiridione even needs to explain for his friend to understand.
Inglés Secundaria ©MAGISTER Solución Práctico Literatura Febrero 2010

6. Explain the following words or expressions:

a) To be in high spirits: to be in a good mood, to feel happy.
b) Horse-play: friendly exchange of jokes.
c) To dab at: softly tapping on something.
d) Haughtiness: excessive pride, feeling of superiority.

7. Can you find any repetitions in the dialogue? What type are they?
We can mainly find the repetition of syntactic structures. These repetitions are called isotaxies.
Some examples are:

“She is rich, she is generous, she is affable, she addresses her inferiors without haughtiness”

“The person who understands that at first sight, who never irritates us, who never bores, to whom
we can pour forth every thought and wish…”

8. Can you provide any examples of endophora and exophora in the text?
The text is full of examples of endophora, mainly anaphora (reference to the preceding text). The
use of the pronouns “he, she, it” anaphorically is continuous to refer to the girl Gino likes, Philip
or even to refer to both Gino and Spiriodione we find the use of “you”.

Cataphora (reference to the following text) is seen when Gino says “It sometimes happens that
such things are recollected longest”. In this sentence “it” refers to “such things are recollected
longest”, thus anticipating its meaning.

Finally, we also find the use of exophora (reference to an element which is not linguistic) in the
use of the word “here” in the sentence “She, too, was English, the companion of my wife here”.
“Here” refers to the Italy, that is where they are living.