Autobiography studying
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sort he is, everyone who has to his credit what are or really great achievements, if he cares for truth and goodness, ought to write the story of his own life in his own hand; but no one should venture on such a splendid undertaking before he is over forty. These criteria for autobiography generally persisted until recent times, and most serious autobiographies of the next three hundred years conformed to them. 18th-century autobiographies in English include those of Edward Gibbon and Benjamin Franklin. Autobiographical works are by nature subjective. The inability-or unwillingness-of the author to accurately recall memories has in certain cases resulted in misleading or incorrect information. Some sociologists and psychologists have noted that autobiography offers the author the ability to recreate history. In the eighteenth century, autobiography was one of the highest forms of literary art. Fiction was deemed unworthy, while narration of facts was aesthetically and philosophically pleasing. This prevailing convention overwhelmed fiction to such a degree that many novelists passed their works off as non-fiction, sometimes by creating prefaces written by supposedly real characters, who vouched for the authenticity of the story. Whether readers really believed in the truth of these stories is hard to say. Autobiography-can be used in the preparation of the psychological characteristics of the worker, the study of his life and personality traits: the style of presentation, the emphasis on various aspects of life, helping to judge the various psychological characteristics of the man. These are all the extra-linguistic features, which influence the genre of autobiography. The main advantage of the autobiography are the basic facts of labor and social activities, allowing to present and assess the human way of life that is often used in the selection of personnel. Benjamin Franklins Autobiography is one of the best examples of the autobiographical genre. Franklins book defines itself as an autobiography in its title. Traditionally, an autobiography can be basically defined as a connected narrative in which an individual tells his or her life story. The autobiography is a connected narrative, and Franklin is using it to tell his life story. Hes not messing with his audience or changing up the genre - his books not radical in that way at all. Instead, hes helping to set the standard of what an autobiography is, can, or should be, rather than subverting that standard. The term autobiography is quite generic in nature and several great personalities have written great books as a collection of their personal experiences. wordsly, there are several authors and personalities who have written small essays and short stories to narrate some important experiences in their lives. Some people have also written their autobiography to serve some purpose, such as political propaganda or to narrate an account of some incidence or event. All in all to sum up, the good thing about an autobiography is that we get to know about the writers emotions and thoughts quite easily. The following are three classifications of autobiographies:
.The first category is basically of a sequential collection of memories of the writer since his childhood. Such autobiographies are the most common ones. Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin or Charles Chaplin is an excellent example of such an autobiography.
.The second category is the type of autobiography, which is just a collection of memories that revolve around one phenomenon, incidence or event. In such an autobiography, the writer focuses on the event or incidence that took place in his life.
.The third category offers the reader a short story from one of the writers experiences. Such an autobiographical short story is basically, spanned over a couple of hours. Such a short story is sometimes also known as an autobiographical account or short story. In the three mentioned categories the first category can be commented to be a true autobiography. most unique example of autobiographical book is the autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. The practical part of this thesis paper is taken out of this autobiographical work. The analyses of linguistic and extra-linguistic features are mainly taken from B. Franklins autobiography.
CHAPTER 2: LINGUISTIC AND EXTRA-LINGUISTIC FEATRUES OF THE AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL GENRE
is a genre in which the use of linguistic and extra-linguistic features can be equally observed. This chapter will focus on the theoretical dimensions of the research and looks at how linguistic and extra-linguistic features of autobiography are defined. The first section of this chapter will give a brief overview of the research on linguistic and extra-linguistic features, whereas the second one will assess and analyze the linguistic and extra-linguistic features in Benjamin Franklins autobiography. various points in the autobiography the narrator refers to persons, places and times by means of words and phrases, like I, my, this city, and past tenses of verbs, for example told, lived. In a face-to-face conversation these terms will be easily understood, but in autobiography things are different. Certainly, readers know the textual or semantic meaning of these words, but they do not know their situational or pragmatic meaning. This is because they cannot see the people referred to by I, my in the flesh, nor check the times in the relations to the verb tenses. However, prompted by their experience of the real world, readers will understand these linguistic expressions as representations of the people, places and times in the story, and will treat them as cues to imagine themselves as participating in the situation of the autobiographical world. begin with, let us to start by considering the linguistic features in autobiographical genre, which are as follows: the category of modality (subjective), the category of retrospection, the first point of view, past perfect, past indefinite, the future in the past tense, and the use of modal verbs. first point of view is a point in which an I or we serves as the narrator. The narrator may be a minor character, observing the action, as in autobiography of Benjamin Franklin. While first person point of view can allow a reader to feel very close to a specific characters point of view, it also limits the reader to that one perspective. The reader can only know what this character knows. first point of view is the perspective from which an autobiography is written. Since autobiographies are written on the themes that touch upon the writers personal experience and life events, they are told from the first point of view, consequently the use of the I, we pronouns are very actual to and peculiar of this genre. past indefinite tense denotes an action or happenings that took place in the past, that is to say in autobiography the author very often mentions an action, subjects, phenomena that took place in the past; for example, - They got an English Bible, it was fastened opened with tapes under and with the cover of a joint-stool. (B. Franklin; 3) past perfect tense is used side by side with other past tenses (Simple past, past progressive, past perfect progressive) when the writer of the autobiography refers to his /her past experience. It is used in story-telling, biography, autobiography, reports, eye-witnessing accounts, etc. and is especially useful for establishing the sequence of events. in the past is used to express an action in the past, the author had planned to undertake in future. It goes without saying that the autobiography is in the past tense form, and all the future actions, planned or unplanned are also used in the past tense forms.linguistic feature of the autobiographical genre is the frequent use of the modal verbs, which shows the writers attitude towards his message. In the English language, a modal verb is an auxiliary verb, which can be used to change the modality of the sentence. The modal verbs are used in the past tense forms in autobiography, depending on the meaning they indicate. Some of them are:
Could indicates possibility or ability in the past. Could speculates about future possibilities.modals should/ought to indicate an obligation; for example, - My early readiness in learning to read, and the opinion of all his friends, that I should certainly make a good scholar.
Would introduces habitual actions in the past. Its used frequently in autobiographical genre. Would explains an action as a result of a supposed or real condition. next linguistic features are the textual categories, which are peculiar of this genre. Equally relevant to the issue are the questions of text analysis and its categories. It should be mentioned that the most characteristic of this genre is the category of retrospection.is a grammatical category of the autobiography. Retrospection within the process of its realization reactualizes certain parts of the autobiography. Actually, any text is based upon retrospection. While reading an autobiography the reader keeps in mind various portions of information, presented in the text, and from time to time he has to recall them to be able to understand and realize the certain development of the events. This process is purposive and is created by the author of the autobiography, as it is his will to force the reader to recall the facts which are to be actualized.we should point out that the communicative process is the attitude of the author of the utterance towards whatever is presented in his/her speech. This speech- creative process is termed as the category of modality. The subjective modality may be textual. In autobiography we can meet a lot of supraphrasal units which indicate a modal meaning. Since autobiography is a work about the narrators self, no other textual category, like modality can be of that frequent use. With the help of different expr