6月4日的新SAT考试即将来临，正在备考新SAT考试的同学们是否已经准备好了呢?为了帮助同学们在开始考试之前有一个很清楚的写作方法。下面
反讽( irony) 是一种十分常见的语言现象。据统计，在流行的电视访谈节目中，平均半小时出现 4 例反讽;如每天看两小时电视，一年可听到 5800 例;此外，在英美文学作品中，平均每4 页就有一例反讽。反讽也是新SAT写作中的阅读文本常使用的一种修辞技巧。由于在叙述情节事件、塑造人物形象、显示作者的情感态度上, 反讽具有意婉旨微而又深刻有力、耐人寻味的特点，所以我们在新SAT的分析性写作中，可以经常看到这种修辞方式的使用。
下面我们将以 “Beyond Vietnam---A Time to Break Silence”的第二段为例，分析反讽的作用。
Adapted from Martin Luther King Jr., “Beyond Vietnam---A Time to Break Silence.” The speech was delivered at Riverside Church in New York City on April 4, 1967.
Paragraph 2:
Perhaps a more tragic recognition of reality took place when it became clear to me that the war was doing far more than devastating the hopes of the poor at home. It was sending their sons and their brothers and their husbands to fight and to die in extraordinarily high proportion relative to the rest of the population. We were taking the black young men who had been crippled by our society and sending them eight thousand miles away to guarantee Georgia and East Harlem. And so we have been repeatedly faced with the cruel irony of watching Negro and white boys on TV screens as they kill and die together for a nation that has been unable to seat them together in the same schools. And so we watch them in brutal solidarity burning the huts of a poor village, but we realize that they would hardly live on the same block in Chicago. I could not be silent in the face of such cruel manipulation of the poor.
在这一段中，作者使用了两处反讽，那么我们可以在文本旁边的空白处做好标注，方便后面的写作(标注该元素具体是什么，以及简单标注其作用。)
Here he lays out the “cruel irony” of the next sentence with the geographical juxtaposition of Southeast Asia with the U.S. areas of Georgia and East Harlem, with which his audience might identify. Young black men are traveling to an alien land to fight for liberties they are denied at home. They are “crippled” before they enter the battlefield.
Again the two races have found a bond, but unlike the “shining moment” of the poverty program, the language here is stark and horrifying. They now “kill and die together” and join “in brutal solidarity” in carrying out atrocities.
在做好相关批注后，我们可以将这两个相同的分析元素irony放在一段进行合并分析。段落的开始我们首先要呈现一个有效的分论点(陈述这一段主要分析的元素是什么?它的主要作用是什么?)。
如：Martin Luther King Jr. uses strong and meaningful irony to reason as to why the government is fighting an unjust war.
在写完分论点后，我们需要呈现出具体的支撑性细节，可以运用改写总结引用等方式指出作者在阅读文本中使用的内容，这一部分的写作将直接与reading部分的评分相关。如：
His first irony is that in Vietnam they are fighting for guaranteed liberties for others when in their own home there is still a large portion of the population that does not have these liberties. Also, without any reservation, King points to the cruel irony that the Negro and white boys die together in unity for an unstable notion whereas they cannot even sit in the same classroom back home.
最后，我们需要对其内容进行分析，并详细指出它们在引出下文、增强说服力、支撑观点、引发作者的思考与情感等方面的作用，这一部分的写作将直接与analysis部分的评分相关。如：
This is a powerful ironic reasoning to support his argument because it makes the readers in America really think about how the country can go to war to solve a problem that they cannot solve by simply manipulating the poor.
此处，马丁路德金反战的坚定跃然纸上。就像这样，反讽的功能, 在于可以避免作者以过于武断、直接的方式，把自己的态度和观点强加给读者, 反而，可以以一种曲径通幽、暗香浮动的方式，更为智慧地将作者的态度隐含于曲折的陈述中，让读者心领神会。
当任何指斥的言词都不足以把愤怒之情表达的畅淋漓时，便化为反语成了讽刺。反语的讽刺，较之直言指责更为有力，表达的厌恶之情更为强烈。对于新SAT写作中阅读文本的各种修辞格，同学们不应只作简单的辨认，而应进行分类探析和赏析，去发现、领略修辞之美及其所蕴含的深刻内涵和意境，不断提升自己的独立思考的精神和分析欣赏的能力。
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