III.a. Make up a list of literary learned words selected from the following

1. Absent, he was still unescapably with her, like a guilty conscience. Her solitudes were endless meditations on the theme of him. Sometimes the longing for his tangible presence was too achingly painful to be borne. Disobeying all his injunctions, breaking all her promises, she would drive off in search of him. Once, at about midnight, Tonino was called down from his room at the hotel by a message that a lady wanted to speak to him. He found her sitting in the car. "But I couldn't help it, I simply couldn't help it," she cried, to excuse herself and to mollify his anger. Tonino refused to be Propitiated. Coming like this in the middle of the night! It was madness, it was scandalous!..

(From Brief Candles by A. Huxley)

2. To one who has been long in city pent,

‘Tis very sweet to look into the fair

And open face of heaven, — to breathe a prayer

Full in the smile of the blue firmament.

Who is more happy, when, with heart's content,

Fatigued he sinks into some pleasant lair

Of wavy grass, and reads a debonair

And gentle tale of love and languishment?

(J. Keats)

B. Make up a list of learned words used in the extract from the work written by P. G. Wodehouse (page 30). Point out the lines in which the incongruity of formal and informal elements used together produces a humorous effect.

IV. Read the following jokes. Look up the italicized words in the dictionary (unless you know their meanings) and prove that they are professional terms. State to which sphere of human activity they belong. On what is the humour based in each of the jokes?

1. A sailor was called into the witness-box to give evidence.

"Well, sir," said the lawyer, "do you know the plaintiff and defendant?”

"I don't know the drift of them words," answered the sailor.

"What! Not know the meaning of "plaintiff" and "defendant?" continued the lawyer. "A pretty fellow you to come here as a witness! Can you tell me where on board the ship the man struck the other?"

"Abaft the binnacle," said the sailor.

"Abaft the binnacle?" said the lawyer. "What do you mean by that?"

"A pretty fellow you," responded the sailor, "to come here as a lawyer, and don't know what "abaft the binnacle" means!"

2. "Where did the car hit him?" asked the coroner.

"At the junction of the dorsal and cervical vertebrae," replied the medical witness.

The burly foreman rose from his seat.

"Man and boy, I've lived in these parts for fifty years," he protested ponderously, "and I have never heard of the place."

3. The doctor's new secretary, a conscientious girl, was puzzled by an entry in the doctor's notes on an emergency case: "Shot in the lumbar region," it read. After a moment she brightened and, in the interest of clarity, typed into the record: "Shot in the woods".

V. Revise your lists of formal and informal words and the examples given in Ch. 1 and 2, and compose the following brief situations. Your style should suit both the subject and the situation.

a. A short formal letter to a Mrs. Gray, a distant acquaintance, in which you tell her that you cannot accept her invitation to a party. Explain the reason.

b. An informal letter on the same subject to an intimate friend.

c. A conversation between two students discussing a party they both attended and the friends they met there.

d. A similar conversation between two much older, very prim and proper ladies.

e. A short review on a theatrical production or film.

f. A discussion between two teenagers about the same play or film.