Hi, welcome to the course ENGLISH MOVIES:
VIEWING, LISTENING, SPEAKING.
Today, we are going to say something about
the talking strategy in the movie About a Boy.
They are tag questions and syntactic scheme of climax.
A tag question, also known as question tag,
is a mini question added to a declarative sentence,
usually at the end, to engage the listener,
to ask for information,
to verify that something has been understood,
or to confirm that an action has occurred.
Tag questions are quite common in colloquial spoken usage,
and they can be indicators of politeness, emphasis or irony, etc.
A rising tone in tag questions is used
when asking for information or motivating an action, that is,
when certain response is required, while a falling tone is used
when asking for confirmation and emphasizing a statement.
Here are some clause types:
Question tags are not independent clauses,
but they do require a response,
and are highly interactive and often carries a conversation on.
Here's one example from the novel The Z Murders:
It happens when Marcus is bullied by some older boys
and takes shelter at Will's home.
In their talks, Marcus uses several tag questions
not to ask for information or to invite a conversation,
but to emphasize, telling Will what happens to him in his life,
so he uses falling tones in those tag questions.
Here's your assignment.
Derived from the Greek word for "ladder",
just like the steps of a ladder ascending.
Climax is widely used by speakers and writers
to make their speech or writing more effective
and help stirring up feelings and emotions.
Here are examples that contain at least three discrete words
or clauses in order to increase importance,
which qualifies them as examples of climax:
It can sometimes be difficult to tell whether the words,
phrases, or sentences in a sequence actually
have a hierarchy of importance or power,
which makes it difficult to know whether climax is at play.
Some people might argue that government "for the people"
is the most revolutionary idea of the three presented here,
and that therefore this is an example of climax.
However, others might say that
there is no hierarchy between these three ideas,
that they're all equally important,
and that this sequence therefore isn't an example of climax.
Climax is used throughout literature,
from poetry to fiction to nonfiction.
Here are just a few examples.
An example of climax from a poem by Shakespeare,
"The Passionate Pilgrim".
Another example from Martin Luther King Jr.'s famous speech
"I Have a Dream".
There are many reasons
why a writer might want to use climax to organize their ideas:
It's a logical and highly effective
way to organize a sentence or paragraph
if you have a series of ideas to convey
and you want to work your way up to your most powerful ideas.
Let's come back to the movie.
The following is a good illustration of applying climax.
Will refuses to help Marcus who is afraid that
his mother is going to commit suicide again.
Here Will tries to convince Marcus that he cannot help him
and he has no reason to help him
by using the syntactic scheme of climax
to convey his thought clearly and effectively.
Here's your assignment.
This is the end of talking strategy of About a Boy.
Thank you for watching.
Goodbye.