通常我們在評價一篇漢語文章“有文采”時，指的是其遣詞造句出色。那么，英文的文采如何體現(xiàn)呢？與中文類似，英文的文采可以通過兩個方面體現(xiàn)，一個是用詞，另一個是修辭。下面小編會通過一些具體的例子來做說明。

1.用詞

唐朝詩人賈島因為斟酌“鳥宿池邊樹，僧敲月下門”究竟應該用“推”還是用“敲”而碰巧遇到韓愈，于是有“推敲”的典故。這說明好作品是一個字斟句酌的過程，有時候用好一個詞就能起到畫龍點睛的效果，英文中也有很多這樣的例子，比如：

In nature, though, diamonds are unremarkable. They are simplycrystals of carbon, albeit crystals of a type that needs a fair amount ofpressure to form. And carbon is the fourth-most abundant element in theuniverse. For that reason, diamonds are thought to be the commonest gemstoneson Earth. Elsewhere in the cosmos, as demonstrated in a paper just published inNature Astronomy, they are probably available in embarrassing abundance.

上面這段文字的背景是：鉆石因為稀缺而價格高昂，但在宇宙中組成鉆石的物質(zhì)其實并不稀缺。《自然天文學》雜志上面最新發(fā)表的論文顯示，鉆石這種物質(zhì)在宇宙其他地方很常見，有多常見呢？原文的說法是：they areprobably available in embarrassing abundance 翻遍世界上所有詞典，恐怕沒有任何一本會告訴你abundance可以用embarrassing來修飾，但embarrassing在這里如神來之筆，它很好地說明了鉆石的數(shù)量之多：已經(jīng)多到令人尷尬的程度了。

還有另外一個例子：

After passing Titan, Cassini will dive back towards Saturn, butthis time, it will not return. On September 15th, at about 1pm London time, itwill kiss the outer edges ofSaturn’s atmosphere and begin to tumble, losing contact with Earth.

卡西尼探測器在通過土星的衛(wèi)星泰坦之后將會墜入土星，對于重返土星這一過程，作者用了一個詞：kiss，kiss在這里并不是“親吻”的意思，而是指“輕觸，輕拂”。這一詞很形象地說明了卡西尼輕輕掠過土星外層大氣的場景。

2.修辭

英文中用到的修辭手法主要有這幾種：排比、對仗、重復、押韻、比喻、引用等。

（1）排比

排比將結(jié)構(gòu)相同或相似的語言單位平行并列，達到對稱的形式美。這種手法在演講中很常見，比如著名的GettysburgAddress:

But, in a larger sense, wecannot dedicate-- we cannotconsecrate-- we cannot hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, haveconsecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

上面的句子連用三個we cannot來增強語氣，讀起來很有感染力。

又比如馬丁路德金的演講I have a dream:

I have a dreamthat one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaningof its creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men arecreated equal."

I have a dreamthat one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slavesand the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at thetable of brotherhood.

I have a dreamthat one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering withthe heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will betransformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

馬丁路德金在演講中用了一系列I have a dream來說明自己對種族平等的希望，表達效果很震撼，類似的例子還有奧巴馬在2008年獲勝演講時用的六個 ”Yes we can.”

（2）對仗

對仗的手法與對比類似，只不過它是用意義相反的語言單位來形成強烈的對比感。比如阿姆斯特朗在登月時說的一句話：That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind. 其中就用到了對仗的手法。

最近我在《衛(wèi)報》上讀到一篇文章：How technologydisrupted the truth，作者在文中表達了對互聯(lián)網(wǎng)技術(shù)加劇人們認知差距的擔憂，其中出現(xiàn)一組句子在對仗的運用上爐火純青：

Now, we are caught in a series of confusing battles betweenopposing forces: between truth and falsehood, fact and rumour, kindness andcruelty; between the few and the many, the connected and the alienated; betweenthe open platform of the web as its architects envisioned it and the gatedenclosures of Facebook and other social networks; between an informed publicand a misguided mob.

這一系列對比句寫得如行云流水，讀起來本身就是一種享受。作者也通過這一組句子很好地說明目前互聯(lián)網(wǎng)上這兩股勢力的隔閡之深。

（3）重復

重復手法則是通過對某個單詞或短語的重復來起到強調(diào)的作用，比如《經(jīng)濟學人》的前主編JohnMicklethwait在他的離任告別文章The case forliberal optimism里面寫過一個句子：

But for the things this newspaper cares about, the past nineyears have been a battle, one that has left me in a state of paranoid optimism. Paranoia because so much remains underthreat; optimism because, for themost part, the creed this newspaper lives by is strong enough to survive.

作者提到自己處于一種“既恐懼又樂觀”的狀態(tài)：恐懼是因為雜志的很多理念都遭到攻擊，樂觀是因為雜志賴以為生的信條足夠強大，能夠繼續(xù)生存下去。如果你試著把這個句子讀上幾遍，你會發(fā)現(xiàn)paranoid和optimism這兩個單詞重復得恰到好處。如果我們把句子改寫成：

But for the things this newspaper cares about, the past nineyears have been a battle, one that has left me in a state of paranoid optimism.On the one hand, so much remains under threat; on the other hand, for the mostpart, the creed this newspaper lives by is strong enough to survive.

句子分分鐘變成四六級作文水平，徹底失去了靈氣。

再舉個例子，寫作社群練習中有這樣一句話：

The vast majority of people would be willing to sacrifice a fewrats in order to gain medical progress,progress that might one day savetheir life or that of a loved-one.

有學生問為什么不直接把句子寫成：

The vast majority of people would be willing to sacrifice a fewrats in order to gain medical progress, which might one day save their life orthat of a loved-one.

這里也跟重復的手法有關(guān)：原句連用兩個progress來強調(diào)這種醫(yī)學進步的重要性，將progress改為which雖然在語法上沒問題，但表達效果會大打折扣。

William Zinsser 在 On WritingWell 的序言中也寫過這樣一段話：

So On Writing Wellwas born, in 1976, and it's now in its thirdgeneration of readers, its sales well above a million. Today I often meet young newspaper reporters whowere given the book by the editor whohired them, just as those editors werefirst given the book by the editor who hired them.I also often meet gray-hairedmatrons who remember being assigned the book in college and not finding it thehorrible medicine they expected. Sometimes they bring that early edition for meto sign, its sentences high-lighted in yellow. They apologize for the mess. I love the mess.

這里作者使用了不少重復單詞和句式，比如 I often meet... were given the book by the editor who hired them... the mess 這些重復使句子讀起來非常有感情且富有節(jié)奏感。

（4）押韻

押韻主要有兩種，頭韻和尾韻，這種手法主要通過讓兩個或兩個以上單詞的首字母（或最后的字母）相同，以賦予語言的節(jié)奏感。舉個例子，奧巴馬在2009年就職演講的第一句就運用了尾韻（同時還使用了排比的手法）：

I stand here today humbledby the task before us, grateful forthe trust you have bestowed, mindfulof the sacrifices borne by our ancestors.

下面這個例子則是壓頭韻和尾韻：

Public resources allocated to the arts create jobs for artistsand others whose livelihood depends on a vibrant, rich culture – just the sortof culture that breeds charitable concern for the hungry, the helpless,and the hapless.

（5）比喻

比喻有明喻、暗喻、提喻和轉(zhuǎn)喻，其中用到比較多的是暗喻。J.K.羅琳在2008年哈佛畢業(yè)演講上就用了很多精彩的暗喻，比如：

I was set free, because my greatest fear had been realised, andI was still alive, and I still had a daughter whom I adored, and I had an oldtypewriter and a big idea. And so rockbottom became the solid foundation on which I rebuilt my life.

將人生的低谷比喻為重建新生活的基石。

Now, I am not going to stand here and tell you that failure isfun. That period of my life was a dark one, and I had no idea that there wasgoing to be what the press has since represented as a kind of fairy taleresolution. I had no idea then how farthe tunnel extended, and for a long time, any lightat the end of it was a hope rather than a reality.

將她在人生低谷時的努力比喻為在黑暗隧道中的摸索。light at theend of the tunnel也是英語中的一個習語，含義是“黑暗盡頭的光明”。

（6）引用

引用這種手法則經(jīng)常出現(xiàn)在文章開頭或結(jié)尾，通過引用名人名言來強化自己的論據(jù)。例如下面這個例子：

“Judge a man byhis questions, rather than his answers,” Voltaire advised. Google has becomeone of the most successful firms in history by heeding that advice. Itevaluates the intention of web-surfers’ queries and returns relevantadvertising alongside search results.

作者在文章開頭引用了伏爾泰的名言，“從一個人提的問題判斷他是一個什么樣的人，而不是從他的回答”，并將這句名言巧妙套用到谷歌上，以此來說明谷歌的搜索業(yè)務之成功。

還有一個例子：

Britain, Napoleon once supposedly scoffed, was “a nation ofshopkeepers”. Nowadays it is a nation of online shoppers. The British do agreater share of their retail spending online than almost anyone.

拿破侖據(jù)說曾嘲諷英國是一個“由小商店店主構(gòu)成的國家”（在拿破侖時代的法國，小商店店主并不是一個受人尊敬的職業(yè)），作者在這里引用了拿破侖的名言，但話鋒一轉(zhuǎn)，指出英國現(xiàn)在其實是一個由網(wǎng)購者組成的國家，以此來說明英國網(wǎng)購行業(yè)的發(fā)展。

上面總結(jié)的這幾種用詞和修辭手法是提升英文文采的常見方式。實際上，這些手法大量出現(xiàn)在外刊和原版書上，平時有大量閱讀習慣的同學應該深有體會。這些用詞和修辭手法也值得我們在寫作中借鑒——我們不應該僅僅滿足于寫出沒有錯誤的英文，還應該去試著寫出漂亮的英文。這是任何一名有追求的英語學習者的基本素養(yǎng)。

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