Language Functions in Literature

Topic 3 Reading Exercises from:
Copi, Irving M. Introduction to Logic, 14th Edition. Routledge.
3.1 INSTRUCTIONS
Which of the various functions of language are exemplified by each of the following passages?
PROBLEMS
1. Check the box on line 6a unless your parent (or someone else) can claim you as a dependent on his or her tax return.
—U.S. Internal Revenue Service, "Instructions," Form 1040, 2006
Directive
 
2. 'Twas brillig, and the slithy tovesDid gyre and gimble in the wabe;All mimsy were the borogoves,And the mome raths outgrabe.
—Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass, 1871
Expressive
3. What traveler among the ruins of Carthage, of Palmyra, Persepolis, or Rome, has not been stimulated to reflections on the transiency of kingdoms and men, and to sadness at the thought of a vigorous and rich life now departed …?
—G. W. F. Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of History, 1823
Expressive
4. Moving due south from the center of Detroit, the first foreign country one encounters is not Cuba, nor is it Honduras or Nicaragua or any other Latin American nation; it is Canada.
Informative
5. I was a child, and she was a child,In this kingdom by the sea,But we loved with a love that was more than love—I and my Annabel Lee—
—Edgar Allan Poe, "Annabel Lee," 1849
Expressive
INSTRUCTIONS
What language functions are most probably intended to be served by each of the following passages?
PROBLEMS
1. There is no caste here. Our Constitution is color-blind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful.
—Justice John Harlan, dissenting in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537, 1896
Expressive
2. Judges do not know how to rehabilitate criminals—because no one knows.
—Andrew Von Hirsch, Doing Justice—The Choice of Punishment (New York: Hill & Wang, 1976)
Informative
3. When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization.
—Daniel Webster, "On Agriculture," 1840
Informative
4. The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.
—Edmund Burke, letter to William Smith, 1795
Expressive
5. They have no lawyers among them, for they consider them as a sort of people whose profession it is to disguise matters.
—Sir Thomas More, Utopia, 1516
Informative
3.3 INSTRUCTIONS & PROBLEM
Identify three disagreements in a current political or social controversy that are of the three types described in this section: one that is genuine, one that is merely verbal, and one that is apparently verbal but really genuine. Explain the disagreements in each case.
Genuine
1.The controversy that the water dam alters the rotation of the earth. There are several studies that say dams alter the rotation of the earth.
Merely Verbal
2. The controversy that all rapist should be punished death penalty, that all who are proven guilty of rape should be punished with the death penalty, and other say that they should be imprisoned for life.<...