关于丘吉尔二战时期就职演讲的修辞赏析

关于丘吉尔二战时期就职演讲的修辞赏析 Appreciation of Rhetorical Devices on Winston Churchill’s Inauguration Speech Abstract:The speech given by Winston Churchill is one of the most famous ones in the history of speech. The paper analyzes the use of those rhetorical devices of the speech which have powerful persuasiveness profound meaning and strong feeling. These figures of speech include parallelism, repetition, alliteration, hyperbole expression. Key words: rhetorical devices of speech, technique, effect The Speech on Churchill’s inauguration was written and broadcasted when Churchill became Britain prime minister, at that time, the Nazi German attacked London crazily. In this speech, many figurative devices were applied in order to achieve the special effect of stirring the audience's imagination, emphasizing the meaning of his words, and creating the best sense of hearing. The analysis has focused on the use of those rhetorical devices and the appreciation of the specific effect produced by such usage. There is the most fantastic part of the speech. I say to the House as I said to Ministers who have joined this 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 our aim I can answer in one word is, 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. In these paragraphs, Churchill used many rhetorical devices, such as metaphor, parallelism and hyperbole; some of them were used at the same time. By this way the speech gave out its most powerful influence on the audience. As fallows, there are some exactly examples to analyzes rhetorical devices functions. Parallelism: It is the rhetorical principle that sentence elements having the same grammatical function should be put in the same grammatical form. Two or more elements, e.g.words, phrases or clauses, that have the same form are to be arranged together to form a parallel structure. In this speech, the statement have the similar feature, recurrent syntactical similarities introduced for rhetorical effort, by this way, it can make the statement more strong to audience. There are two examples in the speech that shows us the good use of parallelism. 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. After listened to this passionate statement, every audient’ heart must have been filled with faith and courage to face the responsibility and challenge that Nazi German put on the British people’ shoulder. Metaphor: a rhetorical devices used to describe something else, in a way that is different from its normal use, in order to show that the two things have the same qualities and to make the description more powerful. Example; I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears and sweat. Churchill used “blood, toil, tears and sweat” to stands for the great efforts of British people. It also showed the determination of Churchill to lead the people all to fight against the evil Nazi German, no matter how much pain it would take; he would sacrifice everything to achieve the victory, even his valuable life, because compared with freedom, life is so mild. Questioning and hyperbole; 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 our aim I can answer in one word is, 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. These two paragraphs, using questioning at the beginning made the listeners to think, and aroused their strong emotion to protect their mother country. It also used hyperbole to let the people known how fierce and cruel their enemies were; encouraged those to fight to death to make their own country would not be treaded by the Nazi. At last, Churchill also cheered people up, make them believed they would beat the Nazi German, because they stood the side of right, and The God would bless them until the success. So the speech doesn’t only have a political value, but also has a literature value. Today when we look back, this speech becomes the most successful speech in the history. We even can say this speech have big influence on the world war two, we also admire the successful application of rhetorical use on speech. Reference: 1温斯顿?丘吉尔， 永不服输 世界知识出版社;第一版(2009年1月1日) 2陆国强. 现代英语词汇学(新版). 上海:上海外语教育出版社1999。 3王守元. 英语文体学要略. 山东:山东大学出版社，2000。 4霍恩比 牛津高阶英汉双解词典 第七版 牛津大学出版社 2009年6月 5 Webster New Collegiate Dictionary 1997