Introduction to Stylistics - The Best

8/3/2019 Introduction to Stylistics - The Best

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Introduction to Stylistics

A linguistic approach

to literary understanding

Zhang Huahong

School of Foreign Studies


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Preliminary

Considerations

1. The significance of the study2. The suggested way of study

3. Means of course evaluation4. Teaching and learning focus


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The significance of the course

1.Arts as means of human expression

2.Literature as a mirror of society

3.Language as a mirror of thought

4.Language as a carrier of culture

5.Style as a means of expressing thoughts and feelings of the author


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Suggested Format of Course Paper

I. AbstractII. Key words

III. Body1. Brief account of the author

2. Brief account of the essay3. Major theme of the essay4. Linguistic presentation of the themea. Lexical features

b. Syntactic featuresc. Phonological featuresd. Semantic features/figures of speech

5. ConclusionIV. Reference


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1.What is stylistics?

1) D. Crystal: Linguistics is the

academic discipline that studies

language scientifically, and

stylistics, as a part of this

discipline, studies certain aspects

of language variation.

Investigating English Style


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2)G. N. Leech: Stylistics is a linguistic

approach to literature, explaining the

relation between language and

artistic function, with motivating

questions such as why and howmore than what.

Style in Fiction

A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry


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3)W. V. Peer: Stylistics is developedfrom Russian Formalism via

Prague Structuralism, following

the concept ofestrangement

-

deviation from normal usages.

Stylistics and Psychology


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4)Halliday: Linguistics is not and will

never be the whole of literary analysis,and only the literary analystnot the

linguistcan determine the place of

linguistics in literary studies. But if a

text is to be described at all, then it

should be described properly, by the

theories and methods developed in

linguistics, whose task is precisely toshow how language works.

Descriptive Linguistics in Literary Studies


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5)H. G. Widdowson: Stylistics involves both literary

criticism and linguistics, as its morphological

making suggests: the style component relating

it to the former and the istics component to the

latter. Stylistics is a means of relating disciplines

and subjects, as shown in the following diagram:

Disciplines: linguistics literary criticism

Stylistics

Subjects:

(English) language (English) literature

Style and the Teaching of literature


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6)H. H. Zhang: Stylistics is an intensive study

of literary text on an advanced level, by

making out the particular effect of theparticular choice of language in literary

communication.

2. What is style?According to Thomas S. Kane in Writing

Prose: Style is a pattern of linguistic

features distinguishing one piece of writingfrom another, or one category of writings

from another. Therefore,


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1)Style includes the writers way of

thinking about his subject and his

characteristic way of presenting it for a

particular reader and purpose.

2)Style results from linguistic choices,which effectively express the writers

unique thought and feeling.

3)Style is a means of discovery for bothwriter and reader.


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4)Style sharpens expressive meaning as

well as referential meaning, intensifyingthe tone of writing, making prose more

persuasive.

5)Style is not mere ornament; rather itconveys important subtleties of meaning

and evaluation, which define the nature of

the writer, his basic attitudes, hispresuppositions, his moral stance, and his

relation to his subject and his reader.


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According to David Crystal in

Investigating English Style: There are four commonly occurring

senses of the term STYLE:

1)the language habits of one person:Shakespeare, James Joyce, Hemingway

UNIQUENESS.

2) the language habits shared by agroup at one time: the Augustan poets,

the Old English heroicpoetry.


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3) say the right thing in the most effectivewaygood manners: clearorrefined style.

4) evaluation and description of literature inliterary criticism or appreciation: goodeffectivebeautifulwriting.

According to G. N. Leech in Style in Fiction, there are some controversial views of style:

1).Dualism: between form and meaning styleas choices ofManner rather than Matter, ofExpression rather than Content; as a way ofwriting or a mode of expression originatesfrom Aristotles literary theory.


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Style as the dress of thought, claimed byRenaissance and rationalism, makes it some

kind ofadornment of thought or meaning.The Aesthetics of form (parallelism,alliteration) tends to attract the readersattention more than the meaning does, as

seen in poetic lines.

Style as manner of expression, as RichardOhman put it, A style is a way of writing

in which the words on the page might havebeen different, or differently arranged,without a corresponding difference insubstance.


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2).Monism: It is like body and soul: form and

content to me are one (Flaubert Dec. 12,1857)originates from Platos literary theory.

As argued by David Lodge, in Language ofFiction (1966), it is impossible

to paraphrase literary writing;

to translate a literary work;

to divorce the general appreciation of a literarywork from the appreciation of its style, for theinevitable loss of the hidden, metaphoricalmeaning.


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3).Pluralism: analyzing style in terms of

functions, characterized by Hallidays threemajor functions ofideational, interpersonal

and textual....

3.What is the main purpose of stylistics? 1)to analyze language habits----to identify,

from the general mass, those features restricted

to certain kinds of social context 2)to explain why such features have been used

as opposed to others


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3)to classify these features into categoriesbased upon a view of their function in thesocial context

By features we mean particular choice ofwords, sequence of words, or way of utterance,

so-called stylistically distinctive features

4.How is stylistics related to psychology?

Writing is an imitation of human thought 1)the function of punctuation --- segmentat-

ion ---room for feedback


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(6a)NextWEEK Im starting a job in

LONDON.

(6b)NextWEEK Im starting a JOB in

LONDON.


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(7a)NextMONDAY Im spending the day

in LONDON.

(7b)NextMONDAY Im spending the

DAY in LONDON.


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The organization of written language into

graphic units is rather similar. The contrast

between (6a) and (6b) can be captured inwriting by the use of an extra punctuation

mark:

(8a)Next week, Im starting a job in London.(8b)Nextweek, Im starting a jobin London.

But because graphic units tend to be longer

than tone units, (8b) seems unusually emphatic,and perhaps the normal written rendering

would have no internal punctuation at all: .


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(8c)Next week, Im starting a job in London.

However, the same general principles of

segmentation apply to both speech and writing.Note the absurdity of

(9):Next Monday, Im spending the dayinLondon.

2)the significance of sentence length

---force/weight3)periodic structure

---producing tension and suspense


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(1)The truth is that they have suffered throughnegligence.

(2)Thatthey have suffered through negligence isthe truth.

(3)Sophia sailed into the room with her eyesablaze.

(4)With her eyes ablaze, Sophia sailed into theroom. Parenthetical dependent constituentsbelong to the anticipatory category:

(5)Sophia, with her eyes ablaze, sailed into theroom.


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4)loose structure---producing relaxation and

comfort

(1)This morning I was troubled with my LordHinchingbrokes sending to borrow $200 of me;

but I did answer that I had none, nor could

borrow any; for I am resolved I will not beundone for any body, though I would do much

for my lord Sandwich, for it is to answer a bill

of exchange of his; and I perceive he has madeuse of all other means in the world to do it, but

I am resolved to serve him, but not ruin myself.


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To sum up, periodic structure and loose

structure are two poles between which styles

of sentence structure can vary. Looking backover the history of English prose, we can say

that the most neutral style of writing is one that

combines both anticipatory and trailingelements, and thus achieves a balance between

art and nature.

5)the last is the most important for written

language---end-focus/climax principle:


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Governed by end-weight principle, we will

prefer It is advisable for us to be able to tell

documentary English from spoken English.

to To be able to tell documentary English

from spoken English is advisable for us.

Instead of That he was prepared to go to such

lengths astounded me.

we choose to writeI was astounded that he was

prepared to go to such lengths.


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Governed by end-focus principle, the nucleartones neutral position is at the end of the tone

unit, especially on the last lexical item, orcontent word:

(1a) She completely DENIED it.

(1b)She denied itCOMPLETELY.

(2a)Hes gradually IMPROVING.

(2b)Hes improving GRADUALLY.

The difference this makes is brought out if weimagine (1a) and (1b) as answers to thefollowing questions respectively:


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(3a)Did Joan admit the offence? No,

(3b)Did Joan deny the offence? Yes,

End-focus has important implications in syntax,where the ordering of the elements of themessage is largely determined. It can, forexample, influence the choice between activeand passive sentences:

(4a)John wrote the whole BOOK.

(4b) The whole book was written by JOHN.

In other words, the reader naturally looks fornew information at the end of the graphic unit.


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This conclusion can be tried out on the following:

(5a) Instead of morphine, the patient was given

opium.

(5b)Instead of morphine, opium was given to the

patient.

The principle of end-focus predicts that the

reader will find (5a) a happier sentence than

(5b)


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6)the first is the most important for spokenlanguage

A speaker is rarely able to plan the whole ofhis utterance in advance, so he tends to beginwith the thing which is uppermost in his mind.This first is most important principle accounts

for some syntactic inversions and dislocationscharacteristic of ordinary speech:

That dinner you cooked last nightI really

enjoyed it;

Got a cold have you?;

Relaxation you call it!


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The same factor accounts for frequentdisregard in spoken English of the end-focus

principle: for example, the last sentence quotedwould be pronounced:

RELAXATIONyou call it!

7)simple and complex sentences

We can make the general point that complexsentences are to be preferred if the aim of the

writer is to present us with a complex structureof ideas, a complex reading experience.


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The complex form gives and withholds

information, subordinates some ideas to other

more important, coordinates those of equalweight, and ties into a neat package as many

suggestions, modifiers, and asides as the mind

can attend to in one stretch.

A succession ofsimple sentences, on the other hand, leaves

only sequence to play with. Compare the

following:


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(1a) Jim threw the ball. The ball broke awindow. The noise attracted the owners

attention. The owner scolded Jim.(1b) Throwing the ball, Jim broke a window.The noise attracted the attention of the owner,who scolded him.

(1c) When Jim threw the ball and broke thewindow, he was scolded by the owner, whoseattention was attracted by the noise.

Obviously, (1a) represents a nave narrativestyle with no indication of the relationshipbetween events, or their relative importance.


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There are occasions, however, where simple

sentences are just what is needed:

(2a) She saw there an object. That object wasthe gallows. She was afraid of the gallows.

(Joseph Conrad, The Secret Agent, Ch 12)

These three sentences occur at the climacticpoint in the novel where Mrs. Verloc realizes

the full consequence of her action in

murdering her husband. The dramatic force ofthis step-by-step revelation would be

dissipated in a complex sentence such as :


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She saw there an object she was afraid ofthe gallows or The object she saw therethe

gallows

frightened her

Contrast the very different effect of:

(3) The tireless resilient voice that had justlobbed this singular remark over the BellaVista bar window-sil into the square was,though its owner remained unseen,unmistakable and achingly familiar as the

spacious flower-boxed balconied hotel itself,and as unreal, Yvonne thought. (MalcolmLowry, Under the Volcano, Ch 2)


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Here we are presented with a more difficultand adventurous reading experience than the

three simple sentences of (2a). We also have asequence of impressions, but they areintegrated in a single complex awareness of anumber of things which must be going on in

the mind of Yvonne, beginning with the voice(the immediate object of perception), movingon to the attendant circumstances of thatperception (expressed in subordinate clauses),then to the impression the voice made (un-

mistakablefamiliarunreal),


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and finally to the perceiver herself, Yvonne.

The two passages contrast in ordering: (2a)

working from the person (She) to the percept(the gallows), and (3) working from the

percept (thevoice) to person (Yvonne).

But this is incidental to the contrast betweensimplicity and complexity: the difference

between experiencing events one by one, and

experiencing them as an articulate andcomplex whole.


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8)coordination and subordination

The major devices for linking ideas together

into a complex sentence are coordination andsubordination. Coordination gives clauses (and

other units) equal syntactic status, whereas

subordination places one clause in a dependentstatus, as part of the main clause.

Subordination is thus a syntactic form of

salience, since the effect of making a clausesubordinate is to background it:


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to demote the phenomenon it describes into asubservient circumstance which cannot be

understood except in terms of its part in themain clause. Often a subordinate clause is lesssalient in the sense of expressing informationwhich is at least partially known or

presupposed in advance. In the followingsentence, for instance,

When Jim threw the ball and broke the window,

he was scolded by the owner, whose attentionwas attracted by the noise.


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The effect of placing two events in asubordinate clause (When Jim threw the ball

and broke the window) is to imply that thehearer already knows something about them. A

similar effect would be created by the relativeclause The ball which Jim threw. We thus

may enunciate a general principle ofsubordination (which is not without itsexceptions):

If A is subordinate to B, then A is thecircumstantial background against which B ishighlighted.


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It is one of the more routine virtues of prose-

writing that a writer brings about, bycoordination and subordination, an appropriatesalience and back-grounding of parts of thesentence. But as with other rhetorical

principles, this principle of subordination maybe violated:

Curleys fist was swinging when Lennie

reached for it.(John Steinbeck, Of Mice and Men, Ch 3)


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On the face of it, Steinbeck would have donebetter to write something like:

As Curleys fist was swinging, Lennie reached

for it.

But what he did write fits in very well with hisoverall strategy in the novel, that of absolvingLennie of responsibility for his actions. Bydowngrading Lennies part in the fight, hemakes it seem an inadvertent and blameless

reaction to Curleys onslaught.A more complex example of a similar kind isthis:


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The system worked just fine for everybody,especially for Doc. Daneeka, who found

himself with all the time he needed to watchold Majorde Coverley pitching horseshoesin his private horseshoe-pitching pit, stillwearing the transparent eye patch Doc.Daneeka had fashioned for him from the stripof celluloid stolen from Majors orderly roomwindow months before when majorde

Coverley had returned from Rome with aninjured cornea after renting two apartmentsthere for the officers and enlisted men to useon their rest leaves. (Joseph Heller, Catch 22)


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There seems to be something rather perverse

about the structure of this sentence: the

elements which we feel deserve to be in theforeground are subordinated, and therefore

backgrounded. The sentence begins with the

subject, verb and complement of the mainclause, and then nose-dives into a chain-like

structure of subordinate clauses (especially

non-finite clauses), each dependent on its

predecessor.


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The syntactic chaining expresses a chain of

bizarre relationships between one character

and another, in keeping with the eccentricdesign of this novel, in which characters and

events are linked through apparently irrational

peculiarities of behavior.

5.What is involved in the methodology of the

study?

1)linguistic description


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1)linguistic description.

2)stylistic analysis

so as to minimize the intuitive element incriteria of analysis:

a. comparison and contrast in the observation oflinguistic description of a literary text

b. quantitative study of frequency and dis-tribution

c. linguistic deviation from the norm---

foreground as against the background ---prominence


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6.What are the preliminary conditions for the

study of stylistics?

1)awareness of prescriptive grammar

2)strong sense of English rhetoric

3)basic knowledge of phonetics, phonology,

lexicology, syntax, graphology and semantics

4)understanding of literature as the three

dimensional rather than two dimensional


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How is stylistics applied to the teaching ofEnglish?

1.lexical level: paraphrase2.syntactic level: structural transformation

3.adverbial mobility

4.sentence type5.sentence complexity

6.sentence length

7.theme and form8.the nature of literary stylistics as applied

linguistics


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LINGUISTIC DESCRIPTION

Frequency and distribution of linguistic

features for quantitative analysis is the focus ofour interest in linguistic observation.

1.What are the supposed levels of analysis?

1)phonetic and graphicformer--the study of the characteristics and

potential utility of human vocal noise

Latter--the study of written or printed shapes ofhuman vocal noise.

Stress is laid on the physical characteristics ofthe language.


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2)phonological and graphological

former--the study of sound system of a given

language

latter--the study of a languages written system,

or orthography

Stress is laid on the contrasts made within thelinguistic systemrepetition of segmental

sounds in a specific distribution, patterns of

rhythm, intonation and other non-segmentalelements, distinctive uses of punctuation,

capitalization, spacing


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3)grammatical and lexical

formerto study the result of the organization

of sounds and letters and to analyze theinternal structure of sentences and the way

they function in sequences.

latter--to study the attributes of single lexicalitems (vocabulary), the choice of specific

lexical items in a text, their distribution in

relation to one another, and their meaning.Form-meaning relationship is under serious

consideration.


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4)semantic

the descriptive study of the linguistic meaning

of a text over and above the meaning of thelexical items taken singly: patterns of thematicdevelopment, the distribution of concepts in atext as a whole, the use of characteristic

figures of speech, semantic correlations.2.How different is the nature of meaning

expressed at the semantic level from that at the

lexical level?Semantic contrasts are less systematic anddefinable, and are all-inclusive.


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Vocabulary contrasts are relativelydiscontinuous, finite, and localized.

3.Why do we separate linguistic description intothe abovementioned four levels?

To focus our attention more closely on aparticular aspect of language organization

4.What are principles of scaling the importanceof stylistic features?

Frequency and uniqueness (or salience) shown

by contrast, which gives rise to quantitativedescription of the given text.


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5.What are the major concerns of grammaticalobservation?

1)inter-sentential relationshipssentence-linking features:

ellipsis, anaphora, the use of concord, lexical

repetition, adverbial contrast, contrastive tone,The most distinctive sentence-linking features:

frequent use or absence of anaphora

the use of specific patterns of paragraphing2)sentence typology and structure

complete sentences:

major sentences (grammatically complete)


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a. simple

b. compound

c. complexd. mixed

minor sentences

(grammatically incomplete; fragments)a. a subordinate structure

b. an element of clause structure

c. a combination of elements of clause structured. a non-finite construction


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3)clause typology and structure

What are the major concerns of distinctive

features at clause level observation?a. the proportion of nouns to verbs

b. the frequency of pronouns as against nominal

groupsc. the frequency of clauses working as comple-

ment

d. the frequency of nominal groups working inclusters

e. the ordering of elements of structure inrelation to one another


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f. the frequency of inversion

g. the frequency of the adverbial occurring

initially, medially, or finallyh. the proportion of adverbials as against other

elements

4)group typology and structureWhat is the advantage of the choice ofnominal groups over verbal groups?

Greater potentiality for modification createsstronger stylistic contrasts in terms ofcomplexity

5)word typology and structure


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STYLISTIC ANALYSIS

Apart from the message being communicated,

what other kind of information does theutterance give us?

1.Does it tell us which specific person used it?(individuality)

2.Does it tell us where in the country he is from?(Regional dialect)

3.Does it tell us which social class he belongs to?

(Class dialect)

4.Does it tell us during which period of Englishhe spoke or wrote it, or how old he was?

(Time)


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5.Does it tell us whether he was speaking orwriting? (Discourse medium)

6.Does it tell us whether the speaking or writingis an end in itself, or a means to a further end?(Simple v complex discourse medium)

7.Does it tell us whether there was only oneparticipant in the utterance, or whether therewas more than one? (Discourse participation)

8.Does it tell us whether the monologue and

dialogue are independent, or are to beconsidered as part of a wider type of discourse?

(Simple v complex discourse participation)

i ll hi h ifi i l


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9.Does it tell us which specific occupationalactivity the user is engaged in? (Province)

10.Does it tell us about the social relationshipexisting between the user and his interlocutors?(Status)

11.Does it tell us about the purpose he had inmind when conveying the message?

(Modality)

12.Does it tell us that the user was being

deliberately idiosyncratic? (Singularity)13.Does it tell us none of these things?

(Common-core)

Deviance: a statistical notion as the difference


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between the normal frequency of a feature, and its

textual frequency.

Prominence: psychological saliency as the

phenomenon of linguistic highlighting, which

provides not only the basis for a readers subjective

recognition of a style but also the condition forrecognition that a style is being used for a particular

literary end.

Literary relevance (foregrounding): artistically


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y g g y

motivated deviation.

Either qualitative deviation from

lexical/grammatical norm

Or quantitative deviation from some expected

frequency.

The consistency and systematic character of


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The consistency and systematic character of

foregrounding work together as the

distinguishing mark of literary language. The three notions of saliency can be placed in

an ordered relation as follow:

(X) literary relevance (foreground)psychological prominence

statistical deviance (Y)

NOTE:X covers Y, and Y can be used tosuggest X, but Y does not necessarily suggest

X.


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Relative (primary) norm: the norm of a

group, of a given writer; legal norm, spoken

norm, written norm; lexical, grammatical,phonological, graphical norm.

Secondary norm: the norm which is odd and

attained by stylistic consistency in a text,which established by deviance from the

primary (relative) norm.

Internal deviation: features of language,within a given text, that depart from the norms

of the text.

i f


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Pervasive features are an essential background,

against which local features (internal deviation)

become contrastively salient.

Variations in style: a multiplicity of styles within

the same work corresponding to the herosdevelopment, as shown in the following paragraphs

from DickensDombey and son.

1.the description of father and son at the lattersbirth, so formal in its rhetorical design, balancing

each element of the father and the son:

Dombey was about Son about


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eight-and-forty eight-and-forty

years of age. minutes.

Dombey was rather bald, Son was rather red,

and very bald, and very red,

and though a handsome though (of course) anwell-made man, undeniably fine infant,

too stern somewhat crushed

and pompous and spottyin appearance, in his general effect,

to be prepossessing. as yet.

On the brow while the countenance


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of Dombey, of Son

Time and his brother was crossed with

Care had set some marks, a thousand little creases,

as on a tree that was to which the same deceitful

come down in good time Time would take delight in

--remorseless twins smoothing out and wearing

they are away with the flat part of

for striding through his scythe, as a preparation

their human forests, of the surface

notching as they go-- for his deeper operations

2.the scene of the son, Pauls death, with simple


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syntax and vocabulary to express the simple images

of the childs mind, intensifying the readers

sympathy: Paul had never risen from his little bed (1). He lay

there, listening to the noises in the street, quite

tranquilly; not caring much how the time went, butwatching it and watching everything about him with

observing eyes (2). When the sunbeams stuck into

his room through the rustling blinds, and quiveredon the opposite wall like golden water, he knew that

evening was coming on, and that the sky was red

and beautiful (3).

As the reflection died away and a gloom went


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As the reflection died away, and a gloom went

creeping up the wall, he watched it deepen,

deepen, deepen into night (4). Then he thoughthow the long streets were dotted with lamps,

and how the peaceful stars were shining

overhead (5). His fancy had a strange

tendency to wander to the river, which he knew

was flowing through the great city; and now he

thought how black it was; and how deep it

would look, reflecting the hosts of starsandmore than all, how steadily it rolled away to

meet the sea (6).

3. in the same chapter, at the point of death, Dickens


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breaks into the declamatory rhetoric for moments of

high dram:

The golden ripple on the wall came back again, andnothing else stirred in the room (1). The old, old

fashion! (2) The fashion that came in with our first

garments, and will last unchanged until our racehas run its course, and the wide firmament is rolled

up like a scroll (3). The old, old fashionDeath! (4)

Oh thank GOD, all who see it, for that older fashionyet, of immortality! (5) And look upon us, angels of

young children, with regards not quite estranged,

when the swift river bears us to the ocean! (6)

A: Lexical categories


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A: Lexical categories 1.GENERAL. Is the vocabulary simple or complex?

formal or colloquial? descriptive or evaluative?general or specific? How far does the writer make

use of the emotive and other associations of words,

as opposed to their referential meaning? Does the

text contain idiomatic phrases, and if so, with what

kind of dialect or register (iii) are these idioms

associated? Is there any use of rare or specialized

vocabulary? Are any particular morphologicalcategories noteworthy (e.g. compound words, words

with particular suffixes)? To what semantic fields.

do words belong?

The checklist of le ical categories and


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The checklist of lexical categories and

their stylistic functions respectively-----

a.Nouns-abstract society/idea, or concretehouse/cat? What kinds of abstract nouns

occur (referring to events war/eruption,perceptions understanding/consciousness,processes development, moral virtue or

social responsibility, qualities bravery)?What use is made of proper names? Are

there any collective nouns people/staff?


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b.Adjective-referring to what attribute?physical woolen, psychological joyful, visual

hilly square/snowy, auditory bubbling/sizzling,sensory slippery/smooth, color dark/red,referential big dog/white house, emotive

exited/happy, evaluative good/fat/ bad/lazy?gradable young/tall/useful or non-gradableatomic/British? attributive an utter fool or

predicative he is ashore ? restrictive theexact answer? intensifying the simple truth/acomplete victory/a slight effort? stativetall/longor dynamicabusive/ambitious?


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c.VerbsAre they stative cost/believe/remain, ordynamic walk/arrive? Do they refer to

movements climb/jump/slide, physical actsspread/smell/taste/laugh, or speech actspersuade/decline/beg, psychological states or

activities think/feel/imagine/know/love. orperceptions see/hear/feel? Are they transitiveshut the door, intransitive the door shuts, or

linkingbe/sound/seem/taste/smell?Are they factiveknow/regret/forget/rememberornon-factivebelieve/assume/consider/suppose/

think/imagine?

d Ad b h t ti f ti d th


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d.Adverbswhat semantic functions do theyperform?

Manner anxiously/ carefully/ loudly/ willingly?place away/along/across/upstairs/elsewhere?direction backwards/forward/up/down/in/out?

time ago/already/finally/shortly/immediately?degree almost/completely/partly/deeply/much?Are there any significant use of sentence

adverbs?1) adjuncts likehappily,proudly,now,outside?2) conjuncts like so, therefore, however?3) disjuncts likecertainly,obviously,frankly?

B: Grammatical categories


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I SENTENCE TYPES. Does the author use onlystatements (declarative sentences), or does he also

use questions, commands, exclamations. or minorsentence types such as sentences with no verb)? Ifthese other types are used, what is their function?

SENTENCE COMPLEXITY. Do sentences on thewhole have a simple or a complex structure? What isthe average sentence length (in number of words)?What is the ratio of dependent to independent

clauses complexity vary strikingly from onesentence to another? Is complexity mainly due to (i)coordination, (ii) subordination, (iii) parataxis(juxtaposition of clauses or other equivalent

structures)?

In what parts of a sentence does complexitytend to occ r? For instance is there an


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tend to occur? For instance, is there anynotable occurrence of anticipatory structure

(e.g. of complex subjects preceding the verbs,of dependent clauses preceding the subject of amain clause)?

3 CLAUSE TYPES. What types of dependent

clause are favored:relative clauses, adverbialclauses, different types of nominal clauses(thatclauses, whclauses, etc)? Arereduced or non-finite clauses commonly used,and if so, of what type are they (infinitiveclauses, ing clauses, ed clauses, verblessclauses)?

4 CLAUSE STRUCTURE. Is there anything

i ifi b l l f f


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significant about clause elements (eg frequency of

objects, complements, adverbials; of transitive or

intransitive verb constructions)? Are there anyunusual orderings (initial adverbials, fronting of

object or complement, etc)? Do special kinds of

clause construction occur? (Such as those withpreparatory itor there)?

5 NOUN PHRASES. Are they relatively simple or

complex? Where does the complexity lie (in pre-modification by adjectives, nouns, etc, or in post-

modification by prepositional phrases, relative

clauses, etc)? Note occurrence of listings (eg

6 VERB PHRASES. Are there any significant

d f h f h i l ? F


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departures from the use of the simple past tense? For

example, notice occurrences and the functions of the

present tense; of the progressive aspect (eg waslying); of the perfective aspect (eg has/had

appeared);modal auxiliaries (eg can, must, would).

7 OTHER PHRASE TYPES. Is there anything tobe said about other phrase types: prepositional

phrases, adverb phrases adjective phrases?

8 WORD CLASSES. Having already consideredmajor or lexical word classes, we may here consider

minor word classes (functionwords): prepositions,

conjunctions, pronouns, determiners, auxiliaries,

Are particular words of these types used forparticular effect (eg the definite or indefinite article;


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particular effect (eg the definite or indefinite article;first person pronouns I, we, etc; demonstratives such

as this and that; negative words such as not, nothing,no) ?

9 GENERAL. Note here whether any general typesof grammatical construction are used to special

effect e.g. comparative or superlative constructions;coordinative or listing constructions; parenthetical.constructions; appended or interpolated structuressuch as occur in casual speech. Do lists and co-ordinations (e.g. lists of nouns) tend to occur withtwo, three or more than three members?

C: Figures of speech etc


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C: Figures of speech, etc

Here we consider the incidence of features

which are fore-grounded by virtue of departingin some way from general norms of

communication by means of the language code;

for example, exploitation of regularities offormal patterning, or of deviations from the

linguistic code. For identifying such features,

the traditional figures of speech (schemes and

tropes) are often useful categories.

1 GRAMMATICAL AND LEXICAL SCHEMES.

A h f f l d l


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Are there any cases of formal and structural

repetition (anaphora, parallelism, etc) or of mirror

image patterns (chiasmus)? Is the rhetorical effect ofthese one of antithesis, reinforcement, climax,

anticlimax, etc

2 PHONOLOGICAL SCHEMES. Are there anyphonological patterns of rhyme ...alliteration,

assonance, etc? Are there any salient rhythmical

patterns? Do vowel and consonant sounds pattern orcluster in particular ways? How do these

phonological features interact with meaning?

3 TROPES. Are there any obvious violations of, ordepartures from the linguistic code? For example


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departures from the linguistic code? For example,are there any neologisms (such as Americanly)?

deviant lexical collocations (such as portentousinfants)? semantic, syntactic, phonological, orgraphological deviations?

Such deviations will often be the clue to special

interpretations associated with traditional figures ofspeech such as metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche,paradox, irony. If such tropes occur, what kind ofspecial interpretation is involved (eg metaphor canbe classified as personifying, animizing,concretizing, synaesthetic, etc)?

Because of its close connection with metaphor,simile may also be considered here Does the text


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simile may also be considered here. Does the textcontain any similes, or similar constructions (eg as

if constructions)? What dissimilar semantic fieldsare related through simile?

D: Context and cohesion

Finally, we take a preliminary look at features whichwill be more fully dealt with in the following. UnderCOHESION ways in which one part of a text islinked to another are considered: for example, the

wan which sentences are connected. This is theinternal organization of the text. Under CONTEXTwe consider the external relations of a text or a partof a text, seeing it as a discourse presupposing a

social relation between its participants (author and

reader; character and character, etc), and a sharingby participants of knowledge and assumptions


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by participants of knowledge and assumptions.

I.COHESION. Does the text contain logical or other

links between sentences (eg coordinatingconjunctions, or linking adverbials)? Or does it tendto rely on implicit connections of meaning?

What sort of use is made of crossreference bypronouns (she, it, they, etc)? by substitute forms (do,so, etc), or ellipsis? Alternatively, is any use madeof elegant variationthe avoidance of repetition

by the substitution of a descriptive phrase (as, forexample, the old lawyer or her uncle maysubstitute for the repetition of an earlier Mr. Jones)Are meaning connections reinforced by repetition of

words and phrases or by repeatedly

using words from the same semantic field?


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2.CONTEXT. Does the writer address the reader

directly, or through the words or thoughts of some

fictional character? What linguistic clues (first-person pronouns I, me, my, mine) are there of the

addresser-addressee relationship? What attitude does

the author imply towards his subject? If acharacters words or thoughts are represented, is this

done by direct quotation: direct speech), or by some

other method (eg indirect speech. free indirectspeech)? Are there significant changes of style

according to who is supposedly speaking or thinking

the words on the page?

Chapter 4 Levels of style:


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Chapter 4 Levels of style:

How does language serve as an analogy of

human perception of the objective world? Written language serves as the graphic

analogy go the process of human perception.

Simple words and simple structures serve asa reflection of simple mental activities.

The operation of language as a coding

system can be seen as follows:

SPOKEN LANGUAGE


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speaker semantic level hearer

encodes syntactic level decodes

phonological

level

WRITTERN LANGUAGE

writer semantic level reader

encodes syntactic level decodes graphological

level

MODEL OF REALITY MODEL OF REALITY


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message message

writer semantic level semantic level reader

encodes syntactic level syntactic level decodes

graphological graphological

level level

text

SPOKEN LANGUAGE WRITTERN LANGUAGE


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speaker semantic level hearer writer semantic level reader

encodes syntactic level decodes encodes syntactic level decodes

phonological graphological

level level


message message

writer semantic level semantic level reader

encodes syntactic level syntactic level decodes graphological graphological

level level

text

F th t Th di t d h t


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From the sentence, The discreet door shut

with a click, we can find the variations of:

A. The semantic level

The discreet door shut with a bang.

The discreet door closed with a click.

There was a click as the discreet door shut.

The discreet door was shut with a click.

The door discreetly shut with a click.

B. The syntactic level: the arrangement of theordering of parts of speech truly reflects the


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ordering of parts of speech truly reflects thesequence of the happening of the event in the

mind of the writer as well as the reader.6. Thediscreet door shut with a click.

7. With a click the discreet door shut.

8. The discreet door clicked shut.

C. The graphological level: punctuation is thevisual analogy of the phonological effects createdby the speaker in leaving room for the listeners

participation. 9. The discreet door shutwith a click.

10. With a click, the discreet door shut.

Levels and functions(A) Plurality of coding levels (B) Plurality of functions


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(A) Plurality of coding levels (B) Plurality of functions

Semantic Ideational

Syntactic Interpersonal

Graphological Textual

Deviation is the quantitative foregrounding of aprominent pattern of choices within the code that

shades into the qualitative foregrounding whichchanges the code itself. This includes the schemes,which are structural patterns, and tropes, which areviolations of meanings, such the effect of

metaphor. Look at the fantasy created in thefollowing, a description of Titus Groanschildhood as heir to the phantasmagorical mansion

of Gormenghast: Who are the characters? (1) And what has he [Titus]

learned of them and of his home since far day when


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learned of them and of his home since far day whenhe was born to the Countess of Groan in a room

alive with birds? (2) He has learned an alphabet of arch and aisle: thelanguage of dim stairs and moth-hung rafters (3).Great halls are his dim playgrounds: his fields are

quadrangles: his trees are pillars (4). And he haslearned that there are always eyes (5). Eyes thatwatch (6). Feet that follow, and hands to hold himwhen he struggles, to lift him when he falls (7).Upon his feet again he stares unsmiling (8). Tallfigures elbow (9). Some in jewellery; some in rags(10).

The characters (11). The quick and the dead (12). The shapes, thevoices that throng his mind for there are days


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voices that throng his mind, for there are days

when the living have no substance and the dead

are active (13).To emphasize the poetic style of the passage, let

us observe that the schematic patterning is

extensive on the phonological as well as on thesyntactic level with a rhythmic regularity which

enables it to be written out and scanned as poetry

in a quasi-blank-verse meter:He has learned an alphabet of arch and aisle:

The language of dim stairs and moth-hung rafters.

Great halls are his dim playgrounds: his fields Are quadrangles: his trees are pillars


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Are quadrangles: his trees are pillars.

And he has learned that there are always eyes.

Eyes that watch. Feet that follow, And hands to hold him when he struggles,

To lift him when he falls.

Upon his feet again he stares unsmiling. Tall figures elbow. Some in jewellery; some in rags.

The characters. The quick and the dead. The shapes,

The voices that throng his mind, for there are days When the living have no substance and the dead

Are active.

In the following chapters of PART II, we shallaim to give an account of the relation between


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aim to give an account of the relation between

stylistic choice and significance within a

functional framework.. While chapter 5 servesas a introduction, chapters 6, 7, and 8 form the

nucleus of our investigation of aspects of style:

Chapter 6: Work as MESSAGE (ideational function)

Chapter 7: Work as TEXT

(textual function)

Chapter 8: Work as DISCOURSE

(interpersonal function)

Chapter 5 Language and the fictional world The language of literature cannot be understood


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The language of literature cannot be understoodwithout a proper appreciation of how ordinary

language works and the acceptance of untruth is thehallmark of literature. The fictional nature of fictionwriting is a special case of the ordinary referential,truth-reporting function of language.

Realism: There is no such thing as a completelyrealistic piece of fiction, for whenever a writer useslanguage, he seizes on some features of reality

which are crucial for his purpose and disregardsothers as does a photographer. Look at the followingdescription of an event which might have beendescribed by another writer in the use of the verb

hear: Bach? said Lord Edward in a whisper. Pongileonis blowing and the scraping of the

anonymous fiddlers had shaken the air in the great


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an ny s f dd s ad s a n a n g ahall, had set the glass of the windows looking on toit vibrating; and this in turn had shaken the air inLord Edwards apartment on the further side. Theshaking air rattled Lord Edwards membranetympani the interlocked malleus, incus and stirrup

bones were in motion so as to agitate the membraneof the oval window and raise an infinitesimal stormin the fluid of the labyrinth. The hairy endings of theauditory nerve shuddered like weeds in a rough sea;

a vast number of obscure miracles were performedin the brain, and Lord Edward ecstaticallywhispered Bach!He smiled with pleasure, his eyes

lit up The eccentric effect of this description brings

home very clearly the point that realism is a


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y y prelative concept; relative to the purpose of thewriter and the effect on the reader.

Existing shared knowledge of the realitycounts in the understanding that in fiction.

Language is a vehicle for abstraction anddifferentiation, serving symbolism throughspecification of detail. The following

newspaper report, in its narrative function,comes a step closer to fictional discourse; onecould imagine it being the basis for a shortstory:

A French Foreign Legion deserter in Northern


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g g

Corsica shot dead a West German tourist and

critically injured his wife. He then kidnappedtheir daughter and another girl, but freed them

unharmed, and killed himself when surrounded

by policeReuter.

Verisimilitude: specifically detailed concretion

of reality which is closely connected with another

aspect of realism, credibility: a fiction tends to

be credible to the extent that it overlaps with our

real model of reality.

The combination ofverisimilitude and credibilityis a stock-in-trade of mainstream realistic fiction-


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writing; but it is not to be dismissed as having noartistic function. A writer quest for authenticitymay be taken to painstaking extremes, as whenJoyce, working on Ulysses, wrote to his aunt inDublin:

Is it possible for an ordinary person to climb overthe area railings of no. 7 Eccles St, either from thepath or the steps, lower himself down from thelowest part of the railings till his feet are within 2feet or 3 of the ground and drop unhurt? I saw itdone myself but by a man of rather athletic build. Irequire this information in detail in order to

determine the wording of a paragraph But there occasions where verisimilitude and

credibility work in opposite directions as shown in


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y ppGullivers Travels, IV.1 :

I left my poor wife big with child, and accepted anadvantageous offer made me, to be captain of theAdventure, a stout merchantman, of 350 tons Weset sail from Portsmouth upon the 2nd day of August

1710; on the 14th we met with Captain Pocock, ofBristol, at Teneriffe, who was going to the Bay ofCampechy, to cut logwood.

The seemingly unbelievable factuality takes placeagainst the background of the believable setting of aship log, which is an instance, at the level of thefictional world, of the artistic device of foreground-

ing through defeated expectancy. As an author is at liberty to deliberately keep whatinformation he wishes in his fictional creation, a


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,reader has to guess what is implies in the fiction.

Real speech and fictional speech: Language is usedto imitate, rather than simply to report, what is goingon in the fictional world, and therefore, fictionalspeech may aspire to a special kind of realism, a

special kind of authenticity, in representing the kindof language which a reader can recognize as beingcharacteristic of a particular situation.

Normal non-fluency: hesitation pauses, false startsand syntactic anomalies are features of being non-fluent in the sense of lacking an ideal delivery, andyet normal in the sense of occurring habitually in

speech, as illustrated in the following conversation:

A: Weve got theseexercises and youve got totake the er butt and erm hold point it away up


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take the er butt and erm hold point it away up

there and of course (laughter) our aim used to

shut it up and down it came.B: Well Ier joined for thesereasons and plus the

er driving you get taught youre taught to drive.

C: Well erm also my father says I need a bit ofdiscipline you know.

A: Doesnt(matter what you do)

B: (You wont get any) there (honestly its justterrific)

C: (No thats why Im joining) to make him think.

Im ettin disci line

A: Oh its great fun there isnt it? B: Oh but wait have you been on a erm drilling


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B: Oh but wait have you been on a erm drillingyet?

C: No. B: You just wait.

Features ofnon-fluency occur whenever our

planning falls behind our delivery, and syntactically,conversation tends towards coordination rather thansubordination of clauses, for coordination simplifiesthe planning of sentence structure. However, the

author of a literary fiction does not aim at acompletely realistic representation of the features ofordinary conversation, as shown in the followingpassage, with no cases ofnormal non-fluency,

from D. H. Lawrences short story The Horse-Dealers Daughter, when Mabel and her brother


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Dealer s Daughter, when Mabel and her brother

must leave their home because of the collapse of the

horse-dealing business started by their father: Have you had a letter from Lucy? Fred Henry

asked his sister. (1)

Last week, came the neutral reply. (2) And what does she say? (3)

There was no answer. (4)

Does she ask you to go and stop there? persisted

Fred Henry. (5)

She says I can if I like. (6)

Well, then, youd better. (7) Tell her youll comeon Monday. (8)


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y ( )

This was received in silence. (9)

Thats what youll do then, is it? said FredHenry, in some exasperation. (10)

But she made no answer. (11)

The undercurrent of this dialogue is a conflict ofwill between the rough and overbearing man andthe proud and determined girl.

As features of non-fluency are normally

overlooked by participants in real lifeconversation, they can be omitted from fictionalconversation without impairing the realistic effect.

However, when features of non-fluency do occur infiction, they tend to have a communicative purpose,


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fiction, they tend to have a communicative purpose,

as illustrated in Kingsley AmissLucky Jim, when

Welch, the bumbling history professor, with anunusual vigor, tries to defuse a quarrel between his

objectionable son Bertrand and Jim Dixon who has

committed the social mistake of taking Bertrandspresent girl friend for his previous one:

Im terribly sorry if Ive made a mistake, but I was

under the impression that Miss Loosmore here had

something to do with

He turned to Margaret for aid, but before she could

speak Welch, of all people, had come in loudly with:

Poor old Dixon, ma-ha-ha, must have beenconfusing thisthis young lady with Sonia


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confusing thisthis young lady with Sonia

Loosmore, a friend of Bertrands who let us all

down rather badly some time ago. I think Bertrandmust have thought you weretwitting him or

something, Dixon; ba-ha-ha.

Well, if hed taken the trouble to be introduced,this wouldnt have happened, Bertrand said, still

flushed. instead of which, he

Dont worry about it, Mr. Dixon. The girl cut in.It was only a silly little misunderstanding. I can

quite see how it happened. My names Christine

Callaghan. Altogether different, you see.

Well, Imthanks very much for taking it like that.

I b t it ll I


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Im very sorry about it, really I am.

As fictional dialogue imitates the very thing itconsists of language, the hesitations, interruptions

and false start in the above conversation truly

represent the characters reactions to an

embarrassing situation.

Dialect: the particular set of linguistic features

shared by a subset of the speech community, and

Idiolect:the linguistic thumbprint of a particular

person, are most noticeable on the graphological

level for an author to adopt the goal of authenticity,

in which the true picture of life is represented byseemingly ungrammatical and non-standard


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language, as illustrated in the following:

1.And how longhev this news about me beenknowed. Pason Tringham?

2.Tak these intuh tmaister, lad, he said. un bidetheare;Aws gangup tuh my awn rahm.

3.Is this place of abomination consecrated ground?

I dont know nothink ofconsequentialground,says Jo, still starting

Is it blessed? Im blestif I know, says Jo, staring more than

ever; but I shouldnt think itwarnt. Blest?

repeats Jo something troubled in his mind

Itant done it much good if it is.Blest? Ishould think it was totheredmyself. But I


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dont know nothink!

As idiolect can be an expression of character,speech is a revealing indicator of character sothat a common resort of novelists is toimaginary speech, as a way of conveying the

hidden intention of a persons behavior, asshown in the following part of Smollettsportrait of Sir Giles Squirrel:

The baronets disposition seemed to be cast inthe true English mould. He was sour, silentand contemptuous; his very looks indicated aconsciousness of superior wealth, and he

never opened his mouth except to make some

dry, sarcastic, national reflectionIn a word,though his tongue was silent on the subject, his


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whole demeanor was continually saying,You areall a pack of poor, lousy rascals, who have a designupon my purse:tis true, I could buy your wholegeneration; but, I wont be bubbled, dye see; I amaware of your flattery, and upon my guard against

all your knavish pranks; and I come into yourcompany for my own amusement only.

[Tobias Smollett, The Adventures of FerdinandCount Fathom, Ch 22]

Similarly, observable reality is symbolic of deeperrealities of mood and spirit, as seen in the followingdescription of Josiah Bounderbys appearance with

the style of speaking:

A man made out of a coarse material, whichseemed to have been stretched to make so


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much of him. A man with a great puffed headand forehead, swelled veins in his temples, andsuch a strained skin to his face that it seemedto hold his eyes open, and lift his eyebrows up.A man with a pervading appearance on him of

being inflated like a balloon, and ready to start.A man who could never sufficiently vaunthimself a self-made man. A man who wasalways proclaiming, through that brassy

speaking-trumpet of a voice of his, his oldignorance and his old poverty.

[Charles Dickens,Hard Times, Part I, Ch 4]

When the brassy speaking-trumpet speaks, itcomes out with:


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Tell Josiah Bounderby of Coketown, of your

district schools and your model schools, andyour training schools, and your whole kettle-of-fish of schools; and Josiah Bounderby ofCoketown, tells you plainly, all right, all

correct,he hadnt such advantages His habit of referring to himself in the third

person as Josiah Bounderby of Coketown is

an indicator of his inflated self-esteem, and thestretching of coarse material seems an exactmetaphor not only for his appearance, but forthe huffing-and-puffing manner of his speech

with repetitive bursts

The rendering of the fiction

Fictional point of view: from the view point of a


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Fictional point of view: from the view point of a

fictional character.

Authorial point of view: from the view point of the

author.

In the following passage from Bennetts Clayhanger,

we have a clear impression of seeing things fromEdwins point of view:

Edwin went to the doorway of the drawing-room

and stood there. Clara, in her Sunday bonnet, wasseated at the ancient piano; it had always been she

who had played the accompaniments. Maggie,

nursing one of the babies sat on another chair and

leaned towards the page in order to make out thewords. She had half-forgotten the words, and Clara

l h d h


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was no longer at ease in the piano part, and theirvoices were shaky and unruly, and the piano itselfwas exceedingly bad. A very indifferent performanceof indifferent music! And yet it touched Edwin. Hecould not deny that by its beauty and by the

sentiment of old times it touched him. He moved alittle forward in the doorway. Clara glanced at him,and winked. Now he could see his father. Dariuswas standing at some distance behind his daughters

and his grandchild, and staring at them. And thetears rained down from his red eyes, and then hisemotion overcame him and he blubbered, just as theduet finished.

Fictional sequencing: the order in which a charactercomes to learn about the components of the fiction


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p

tends to be the psychological sequencing, as

illustrated in the passages above and following: Gabriel had not gone to the door with the others.

He was in the dark part of the hall gazing up the

staircase. A woman was standing near the top of thefirst flight, in the shadow also. He could not see her

face but he could see the terracotta and salmon-pink

panels of her skirt which the shadow made appear

black and white. It was his wife.

Descriptive focus: a description with concentration

on one aspect while ignoring another.

Physical description: focus on physical properties,such as size, shape, color, movement, speed, etc.


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Abstract description: focus on mental and social

properties, abstract concepts. Compare the following:

A man in a gilded headdress walked forward,smiling, and raised his hand to them.

They were greeted by the chief of the tribe.

The chief walked forward and raised his hand ingreeting.

The effect of concentrating on physical descriptionin human matters and refraining from ordinaryworld inferences can be one ofestrangement,

as can be found in Gullivers description of his firstencounter with the Yahoos:


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Their heads and breasts were covered with a thick

hair, some frizzles, and others lank; they had beardslike goats, and a long ridge of hair down their backsand the fore-parts of their legs and feet; but the restof their bodies were bare, so that I might see their

skins, which were of a brown buff color. They hadno tails, and were accustomed to sit as well as to liedown, and often stood on their hind feetThefemales were not so large as the males; they hadlong lank hair on their heads, but none on theirfaces, nor anything more than a sort of down on therest of their bodies. The hair of both sexes was of

several colors brown red black and yellow

In contrast to the above objective physicaldescription, the following subjective sensoryd i ti h it ff ti i t ith i il


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description has its affective impact with simileand metaphor:

A hot burning stinging tingling blow like the loudcrack of a broken stick made his trembling handcrumble togetherlike a leaf in the fire: and at the

sound and the pain scalding tears were driveninto his eyes. His whole body was shaking withfright, his arm was shaking and his crumpledburning livid hand shooklike a loose leaf in theair. A cry sprang to his lips, a prayer to be let off.But though the tears scalded his eyes and hislimbs quivered with pain and fright he held back

the hot tears and the cry that scalded his throat

Chapter 6 ---- Mind style: the way one thinks,views, perceives, understands; the choice of


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views, perceives, understands; the choice ofstructure and lexis reflects the way a writer views

the fictional reality. 1.It was a bright cold day in April, and the clocks

were striking 13.(Oddity from the world we know)

2.Bob Cowleys outstretchedtalons grippedtheblack deep-sounding chords.

(Synaesthesia: sensation produced in part of bodyby stimulus elsewhere.)

To examine the effect of changes in participantrelations closely let us look at the middle clause ofthe following sentence:

3. The reflexes are taking over; the left footcomesdown with firm even pressure on the clutch pedal


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down with firm even pressure on the clutch pedalwhile the right feeds in gas. (automatic)

4. he comes down with his left foot with firm evenpressure (automatic)

5. hepresseshis left footdown with firm even

pressure (non-automatic, conscious)6. hepressesdown with firm even pressure

(non-automatic, unconscious)

7. the left footpressesitselfdown with firm evenpressure (non-automatic, conscious)

8. the left footpresses down with firm evenpressure (non-automatic, unconscious)

The use of a bodily part instead of a person as anactor can play down the blame attributed to a


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character for his actions, as seen in the following:

She screamed then, and Lennies other handclosed over her mouth and nose.

Three normal mind styles:

1. As a matter of fact(direct): with simple lexicaland syntactic structure, like a picture:

His eyes were very dark brown and there was a

hint of brown pigment in his eyeballs. His cheek-bones were high and wide, and strong deep lines

cut down his cheeks, in curves beside his mouth.

His lower lip was long, and since his teeth

d d h li h d h f


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protruded, the lips stretched to cover them, for

this man kept his lips closed. His hands werehard, with broad fingers and nails as thick and

ridged as little clam shells. The space between

thumb and forefinger and the hams of his

hands were shiny with callus.

Compare the preference for state verbs (be)

with the choice of non-factive, psychological

verbs in the following sentence:

His hands lookedhard, with broad fingers and

nails whichseemedas thick as

2. Movement as reaction to the outsideevents(lacking directness): with complex syntax

d di ti fl ti ti l t t d


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and diction reflecting emotional states andfeelings, as found in James Joyces descriptionof Lenehan at the beginning ofTwo Gallants:

The other, who walked on the verge of the pathandwas at times obliged to step on to the road,

owing tohis companions rudeness, wore anamused, listening face. He was squat and ruddy.A yachting cap was shoved far back from hisforehead, and the narrative to which he listened

made constant waves of expressionbreak forthover his face from the corners of his nose andeyes and mouth.

Little jets ofwheezing laughterfollowedoneanother out of hisconvulsedbody. His eyes,twinkling with cunning enjoyment glanced


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twinkling with cunning enjoyment, glancedat every moment towards his companionsface.

Compare the following sentence describingCorley, the other of the two gallants:

He walked with his hands by his sides,holding himself erect and swaying his headfrom side to side.

3. Social relations and quality of character:complexity arising from heavy appositivestructure, as seen Henry James TheBirthplace:

Their friend, Mr. Grant-Jackson, a highlypreponderant pushing person, great in discussionand arrangement abrupt in overture unexpected if


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and arrangement, abrupt in overture, unexpected, ifnot perverse in attitude, and almost equallyacclaimed and objected to in the wide midlandregion to which he had taught, as the phrase was,the size of his foottheir friendhad launched his

bolt quite out of the blue and had thereby so shakenthem as to make them fear almost more than hope.

Some unusual mind styles

1. Pathetic fallacy: attribution of humancharacteristics to inanimate nature, suggesting theelimination of the division between animate manand inanimate nature, thus the harmonious oneness

of man and his environment as found in Hardys

description of Egdon Heath at the beginning ofThe Return of the Native:


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The spot was, indeed,a near relation of night,

and whennight showed itselfan apparenttendency togravitate together could be

perceived in its shades and the scene. The

sombre stretch of rounds and hollows seemed torise andmeet the evening gloom in pure

sympathy,the heath exhaling darkness as

rapidly as the heavens precipitatedit. And so

the obscurity in the air and the obscurity in the

landclosed together in ablack fraternization

towards which eachadvancedhalf-way.

The place became full ofwatchful intentnessnow; for when other thingssank brooding to


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sleep the heath appeared slowly to awake and

listen. Every night its Titanic form seemedtoawait something; butit had waitedthus,

unmoved, during so many centuries, through

the crises of so many things, that it could only

be imaginedto await one last crisisthe final

overthrow.

2. Realignment of a major conceptual boundary,

as seen in William Faulkners short story The

Bear, where proper names are given to the beast,

the man and the mix-blood dog:

There was a man and a dog too this time. Twobeasts, counting Old Ben, the bear, and two men,


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counting Boon Hogganbeck, in whom some of the

same blood ran which ran in Sam Fathers, eventhough Boons was a plebeian strain of it and only

Sam andOld Ben and the mongrelLion were

taintless and incorruptible.

3. Co-existence of human and divine beings, as in

John Cowper PowyssA Glastonbury Romance:

At the striking of noon on a certain fifth of March,there occurredwithin a causal radius of Brandon

railway station and yet beyond the deepest pools of

emptiness between the uttermost stellar systems

one of those infinitesimal ripples in the creativesilence of the First Cause which always occurwhen an exceptional stir of heightened


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when an exceptional stir of heightenedconsciousness agitates any living organism in thisastronomical universe. Something passed at thatmoment, a wave, a motion, a vibration tootenuous to be called magnetic, too subliminal to

be called spiritual, between the soul of aparticular human being who was emerging froma third-class carriage of the twelve-nineteen trainfrom London andthe divine-diabolic soulof the

First Cause of all life.An extremely unusual mind style, as shownWilliam Faulkners description of a game of golf

in The Sound and the Fury:

Through the fence, between the curling flowerspaces, I could see them hitting (1). They werecoming toward where the flag was and I went along


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coming toward where the flag was and I went alongthe fence (2). Luster was hunting in the grass by theflower tree (3). They took the flag out, and they werehitting (4). Then they put the flag back and they wentto the table, and he hit and the other hit (5). Then

they went on, and I went along the fence (6). Lustercame away from the flower tree and we went alongthe fence and they stopped and we stopped and Ilooked through the fence while Luster was hunting

in the grass (7). Here,caddie.(8) He hit (9). They went away

across the pasture (10). I held to the fence and

watched them going away (11)

Listen at you, now. Luster said (12). Aint yousomething, thirty-three years old, going on thatway (13) After I done went all the way to town to


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way (13). After I done went all the way to town tobuy you that cake (14). Hush up that moaning(15). Aint you going to help me find that quarterso I can go to the show tonight (16).

They were hitting little, across the pasture (17).

I went back along the fence to where the flagwas(18). It flapped on the bright grass and thetrees (19).

Come on, Luster said (20). We done lookedthere (21). They aint no more coming right now(22). Lets go down to the branch and find thatquarter before them niggers finds it.(23)

It was red, flapping on the pasture (24). Thenthere was a bird slanting and tilting on It (25).

L h (26) Th fl fl d h b i h


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Luster threw (26). The flag flapped on the bright

grass and the trees (27). I held to the fence (28). Chapter 7 ---- Distinction between discourse

and text

Discourse: linguistic communication seen as atransaction between speak and hearer, as an

interpersonal activity whose form is determined

by its social purpose. Text: linguistic communication (either spoken or

written) seen as a message code in its auditory or

visual medium of linear sequence.

Linearity of text: speech occurs linearly in time,

and writing occurs linearly in space


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and writing, occurs linearly in space.

ADDRESSER----DISCOURSE----ADDRESSEE initiates by

MESSAGE MESSAGE

encoded decoded

into into

----TEXT----

ICONICITY: the imitation principle in literature;literary expression tends to have not only a


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presentational function (directed towards the

readers role as decoder) but a representationalfunction (miming the meaning that it expresses);language, for all its arbitrariness, is in various waysan iconic mirror of reality. It is in the nature of

literature to exploit these iconic possibilities: tobring about associations between form andmeaning which are ordinarily dormant.

Look at the following description, by Joseph Conradin The Secret Agent, of Mrs. Verlocs murder of herunsuspecting husband, which shows subtle handlingofpsychological time:

He saw partly on the ceiling and partly on the wallthe moving shadow of an arm with a clenched


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hand holding a carving knife. (1) It flickered up

and down (2).Its movements were leisurely (3).They were leisurely enough for Mr. Verloc torecognize the limb and the weapon (4).

They were leisurely enoughfor him to take in thefull meaning of the portent, and to taste the flavorof death rising in his gorge (5). His wife had goneraving madmurdering mad (6). They were

leisurely enough for the first paralyzing effect ofthis discovery to pass away before a resolutedetermination to come out victorious from theghastly struggle with that armed lunatic (7).

They were leisurely enough for Mr. Verloc toelaborate a plan of defense, involving a dash behindthe table and the felling of the woman to the ground


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the table, and the felling of the woman to the groundwith a heavy wooden chair (8). Butthey were notleisurely enough to allow Mr. Verloc the time tomove either hand or foot (9). The knife was alreadyplanted in his breast (10).

The following sentence ofabnormal psychologicalsequencing demonstrates a linguistic techniquesharing something in common with expressionismin art and imagism in poetry:

Through an open window a streak of ruddy sunlightcaresses the rump of a naked lady who reclines calmas a hardboiled egg on a bed of spinach in a gilt-

framed picture behind the bar

Juxtaposition may be iconic in the sense thatwords which are close in the text may evoke an

i i f l t d i th


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impression of closeness or connectedness in the

functionnot only closeness oftime, butpsychological or locative relatedness, as could be

seen in the following sentences:

1. A schooner manned by forty men sailed intoPortsmouth harbor.

2. A schooner sailed into Portsmouth harbor manned

by forty men.3. There were six men at the table in the lunch room

eating fastwith their hats on the backs of their

heads.

4. With their hats on the backs of their heads, therewere six men at the table in the lunch room eating

f t


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fast.

5. There were six men, with their hats on the backsof their heads, at the table in the lunch room

eating fast.

6. He seizedthe nurses hand andshook itshowingall his uneven teeth in a smile.

7. Showing all his uneven teeth in a smile, he seized

the nurses hand and shook it. Syntactic iconicity: iconicity has a power like that

of metaphor: it rests on the intuitive recognition of

similarities between one field of reference (the form

of language) and another; this is iconic on two levels:the syntax dramatizes its own meaning, and thesyntax is an icon of the authors particular skill in


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syntax is an icon of the author s particular skill inthe whole work. The iconic rule of syntax can be

illustrated in the following sentence, in which thesyntactic icon ofdigression it praises at once is aparenthetical constituent:

Forin this longdigression which I was accidentallyled into, as in all mydigressions (one only excepted)there is a masterstroke ofdigressive skill, the meritof which has all along, I fear, been overlooked by

my reader,--not for want of penetration in him,--butbecause tis an excellence seldom looked for, orexpected indeed, in a digression;--and it is this:

That though my digressions are all fair, as you

observe --and that I fly off from what I am about


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observe,--and that I fly off from what I am about,

as far and as often too as any writer in Great

Britain;Yet I constantly take care to order affairs

so that my main business does not stand still in

my absence.

[Lawrence Sterne, Tristram Shandy,. Vol 1, Ch 22]

Chapter 8 Discourse and discourse situation Four levels of discourse


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Addresser1 Addressee1

(Author) Message (Reader)


(Implied author) Message (Implied reader)


(Narrator) Message (Interlocutor)

Addresser4 Addressee4 (Character) Message (Character)

Language is a vehicle of communication; rhetoric

of discourse is the way to carry the message and

literature is a kind of discourse where the writer canassume relatively little about the receiver of his

message or the context in which it will be received


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message or the context in which it will be received.

Implied reader: since the author can assumeknowledge which any particular reader might not

necessarily have, we have to conclude that the

addressee in literary communication is not the reader,

but the mock reader, or what is conventionally

called implied reader; in the interpretation of literary

workreaders existing knowledge from physical and

reading experience counts, including social, moral,cultural, and historical knowledge, as in the case of

the meaning ofdrawers in James JoycesA Portrait

of the Artist as a Young Man Ch 4:

Her long slender bare legs were delicate as a cranesand pure save where an emerald trail of seaweedh d f hi d i lf i h fl h H


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had fashioned itself as a sign upon her flesh. Her

thighs, fuller and soft-hued as ivory, were baredalmost to the hips, where the white fringes of herdrawers were like feathering of soft white down.

The termdrawers, when applied to articles of ladiesclothing, can hardly be used today without elicitinga grin.

Implied author: just as there is an implied reader

between the reader and the work, so there is what hehas called implied author between the author andthe text.

Authors and narrators

I-narrator implies that author and narrator set apart,making the mood personal, subjective and involving

to the reader (telling between I and you)


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to the reader. (telling between I and you )

Third-person-narrator implies that author andnarrator are merged and the narrator seems knowing

everything, making the mood impersonal and

objective. (showing with absence of I and you)Rhetorical questions in the third person narration

imply that both an asker and an addressee have the

power to react and reply, allowing novelists to make

direct addresses to the reader, inviting their judg-

ments; the reader can share the wondering with the

author, as in the following cases:

1.Has Mr. Tulkinghorn been disturbed? His windowsare da

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