An analysis of discourse

13届英师1班 潘瑶 20132988

The part was selected from The Autobiography by Benjamin Franklin. It’s

about one of his son who died out of the smallpox in 1736.According to the

selected paragraph, we can appreciate the beauty of Franklin’s works.

It’s easy to find that the key word in the selection is “regret” which is

repeated for several times. At the same time, some adjectives and adverbs are

used to describe it, for example, “long”, “bitterly”, “still” and “never”, which

showhow deep regretful the author was. There’re also some pronouns, such as “I”

and “my”, make the content more objective and some exact numbers which

make the work more correct, such as “1736” and “4”. Besides that, the stative

verbs contained in the paragraph, “regret” and “forgive”, tell the readers that the

influence of his son’s death would last forever. And the part has many capitals

which is significantly special and these capitals make readers pay attention to

the important words. All of the key word, stative verbs and capitals decide the

part’s tone which is unhappy.

In addition to the words of this part, the sentences are very superior. Firstly,

Franklin used several compound sentences to express the unhappy and grieved

emotion. Together with somesimple sentences, the paragraph has a lot of ups

and downs. And in the passive sentence, the last sentence, we can feel that the

author emphasized “the safer” and tried to avoid mentioning the sad incident.

In the paragraph, the usage of two kinds of rhetoric devices in the discourse

modifies the content. The first one is repetition of the word “regret” and the second one is hyperbole with the word “never”. These devices stress the

unhappiness and regret of Franklin.

This discourse is one section of the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin

who is the prototype of the American Dream. In the book, not only can we enjoy

and appreciate the beauty of his book but also we can learn the virtues from

Franklin.