Functional Styles. Афанасьева Н.Р - 35 стр.

                                           • language is stylized:            Earth,
                                           colloquial speech approxi-         the third planet in distance
                                           mates real conversation but        outward from the Sun.
                                           still strives to retain the mo-
                                           dus of literary English (unless    It is the only planetary body in the solar system that has conditions
                                           the author aims to character-      suitable for life, at least as known to modern science.
                                           ize the personage through his
                                           language)                                Basic planetary data.
Language of Drama




                                           • redundancy of information              The mean distance of the Earth from the Sun is about 49,573,000
                                           caused by the necessity to        km (92,960,000 miles). The planet orbits the Sun at a speed of 29.8 km
                                           amplify the utterance for the     (18.5 miles) per second, making one complete revolution in 365.25
                                           sake of the audience (wide        days. As it revolves around the Sun, the Earth spins on its axis and
                                           use of repetition)
                                                                             rotates completely once every 23 hours 56 minutes 4 seconds.
                                           • simplified syntax, curtail-
                                                                                    The fifth largest planet of the solar system, the Earth has an
                                           ment of utterances although
                                           not so extensive as in natural    equatorial circumference of 40,076 km (24,902 miles), an equatorial
                                           dialogue                          radius of 6,378 km (3,963 miles), a polar radius of 6,357 km (3,950
                                           • the utterances are much         miles), and a mean radius of 6,371 km (3,960 miles). The planet's total
                                           longer than in natural conver-    surface area is roughly 509,600,000 square km (197,000,000 square
                                           sation                            miles), of which about 29 percent, or 148,000,000 square km
                                           • monological character of        (57,000,000 square miles), is land. The balance of the surface is cov-
                                           dialogue                          ered by the oceans and smaller seas. The Earth has a mass of 5.976
                                                                             10{sup 27} grams (or roughly 6 10{sup 21} metric tons) and a mean
                    PRACTICE                                                 density of 5.517 grams per cubic cm (0.2 pound per cubic inch).
                                                                                    The Earth has a single natural satellite, the Moon. The latter or-
                    PART I                                                   bits the planet at a mean distance of slightly more than 384,400 km
       You are surely aware of the fact that although any work of            (238,870 miles).
imaginative literature is a product of the author’s imagination, it is
always based upon objective reality, for there is no source that feeds              Hydrosphere
one’s imagination other than reality. A literary work is thus a fragment            The Earth is the only planet known to have liquid water. To-
of objective reality arranged in accordance with the vision of the au-       gether with ice, the liquid water constitutes the hydrosphere. Seawater
                                                                             makes up more than 98 percent of the total mass of the hydrosphere
thor and permeated with his idea of the world.
                                                                             and covers about 71 percent of the Earth's surface. Significantly, sea-
                                                                             water constituted the environment of the earliest terrestrial life forms.
       1. Below you will find two descriptions of one and the same
                                                                             The rest of the hydrosphere consists of fresh water, occurring princi-
phenomenon the basic difference between them being the fact that             pally in lakes, streams (including rivers), and glaciers.
the first one is an entry from Britannica, the other – a literary inter-            Copyright (c) 1996 Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc. All Rights Re-
pretation of almost the same data. Read them both and say which of           served
the two texts makes a more interesting reading. Why?
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