 |
|
Bilgewater: Lexis
Task B - our answer
Mapping out semantic fields in a passage is as much an art as a science.
In part it depends on the level of generality you decide to work at. So
don't expect to have exactly the same analysis as us. But comparing what
you found with what we found should nonetheless be instructive.
We think the significant semantic fields are:
|
UNIVERSITY (including interviews):
e.g. 'interview', 'college', 'Principal', 'scholarship', 'Cambridge'
|
|
INDOOR SURROUNDINGS: e.g. 'chair',
'window', 'cigarette box', 'decanter', 'bookcase'
|
|
OUTDOOR SURROUNDINGS: e.g. 'raining',
'mist', 'river', 'fountain', 'gateway', 'court-yard'
|
|
BODY PARTS: e.g. 'hair', 'legs', 'hand',
'lips', 'waist', 'lips', 'fingers'
|
|
PERCEPTION AND COGNITION: e.g. 'wondering',
'watchful', 'considered', 'survey', 'respect', 'intelligence', 'pigeonholing',
'thought'
|
|
EMOTION: e.g. 'carping', 'snappish',
'harsh', 'mad', 'love', 'suicide', 'cried', 'clung', 'emotion',
'human'
|
The first three of these semantic fields are predictable enough, given
the situation described. You would expect to find out about the university
and its context, both indoors and outdoors. But the presence of the other
semantic fields needs explanation, which in turn helps us to begin to
characterise what is going on in the passage.
Why the concentration on body parts? This suggests how hyper-aware the
candidate (from whose perspective we see the scene) is, and once we have
seen this hyper-sensitivity in relation to body parts, we can see that
it extends to various details of the indoor surroundings (e.g. 'cigarette
box', 'decanter'), which are strictly irrelevant to the outcome of the
interviews.
The lexis to do with perception and cognition is also fairly predictable,
given the interview situation and the hyper-aware state of the candidate.
But the set of words indicating strong emotion is much more surprising.
Interviews are usually situations where you try to suppress emotional
response, after all. The emotion words seem to be connected mainly with
negative impressions on the part of the candidate in relation to those
who interview her. Many of them describe their interviewing style. But
there is also a set of emotion words related to sexual passion, in the
section where she is represented as wondering about whether her academic
interviewers have passionate sex lives. The candidate is clearly in favour
of such passion, and she doubts whether her interviewers have experienced
it.
|
