Chapter 9 Language and Literature
There is a
very close relationship between language and literature. The part of
linguistics that studies the language of literature is termed LITERARY
STYLISTICS. It focuses on the study of linguistic features related to literary
style.
9.1 Theoretical background
Our pursuit
of style, the most elusive and fascinating phenomenon, has been enhanced by the
constant studies of generations of scholars, “Style”, the phenomenon, has been
recognized since the days of ancient rhetoric; “stylistic”, the adjective, has
been with us since 1860; “stylistics”, the field, is perhaps the creation of
bibliographers. (Dolores Burton, 1990)
Helmut
Hatzfeld was the first biographer of stylistics and his work in A Critical
Bibliography of the New Stylistics (1953) was continued by Louis Milic’s Style
and stylistics (1967), Richard Bailey and Dolores Burton’ s English
Stylistics (1968) and James Bennett’ s A Bibliography of Stylistics and
Related Criticism (1986).
Until Helmut
Hatzfeld brought out his bibiography the word “stylistics” had not appeared in
the title of any English book about style although “stylistique” had appeared
in French titles, beginning in 1905 with Charles Bally’s Traite de
stylistique francaise. The distinction between the French “stylistique”
(with implications of a system of thought) and the English “stylistics” ( with
the connotation of science) reflects the trends manifested in the grouping of
bibliographies from the more narrowly focused view of stylistics in the 1960s,
when computer science and generative grammar led many to hope for more precise
ways of describing their impressions of style, to Bennett’ s bibliography which
covers books published from 1967 to 1983.
The content
of each preceding bibliography—Hatzfeld, Milic, Baiey and Burton—was driven by
the compilers’ perception of a revolution in the field.Hatzfeld' s first
bibliography (1952) was prompted in part by the “new studies in style
investigation, which were...being produced by scholars like Karl Vossler, Leo
Spitzer, Eugen Lerch, Charles Belly and others”. Milic saw the development of
linguistics as a spur to a growing interest in the study of style. The work of
Bailey and Burton felt a need to find a common thread in a field characterized
by a wide range of theories, methods, disciplines, and languages and described
is as a “shared concern for the language of literature”.
Bennett’ s
work, while sharing with its predecessors a concern for “the theoretical or
practical study of the language of literary works”, recognizes the reformer’ s
zeal in recent developments in the field: “The old, indeed traditional
conviction that literature has a cognitive and communicative function has come
to the fore again and has freed the literary text from its artificial isolation”.
The
preceding discussion and other studies show that the 1960s witnessed the firm
establishment of modern stylistics and ever since then the discipline has been
developing at an enormous speed. As Carter and Simpson (1989) observed, at “the
risk of overgeneralization and oversimplification, we might say that if the
1960s was a decade of formalism in stylistics, the 1970s a decade of
functionalism and the 1980s a decade of discourse stylistics, then the 1990s
could well become the decade in which socio-historical and socio-cultural
stylistic studies are a main preoccupation.”
At the
present, according to Shen (2000), the most recent trends of development in
stylistics are characterized by two major features. First, the socio-historical
and socio-cultural stylistic studies are gaining momentum. Second, there is a
trend of “plural-heads development”,
i.e. different schools of stylistics compete for development and new schools
emerge every now and then .
9.2 Some general features of the literary language
What seems
to distinguish lirerary from non-literary usage may be the extent to which the
phonological, grammatical and semantic features of the language are salient, or
foregrounded in some way. The phonological aspect will be outlined in the next
section. In this section, we shall briefly discuss the grammatical and semantic
aspects.
9.2.1
Foregrounding and grammatical form
Consider the
following examples, both of which describe inner city decay in the U.S. The
first is from the Observer (29 November 1995) :
ex.9-1 The 1960 dream of high rise living soon
turned into a nightmare.
In this
sentence, there is nothing grammatically unusual or “deviant” in the way the
words of the sentence are put together. However, in the following verse from a
poem, the grammatical structure seems to be much more challenging, and makes
more demands on our interpretative processing of these lines:
ex.9-2 Four storeys have no windows left to smash
But in
the fifth a chipped sill buttresses
Mother
and daughter the last mistresses
Of that
black block condemmed to stand, not crash.
The sentence
in line 2 of this verse that starts with But in the fifth is unusual in
that the predicate of the sentence is made up of a sequence of embedded elements,
as we can see if we write them out in a full form: “A chipped sill buttresses
mother and daughter who are the last mistresses of that black block which is
condemned to stand, not crash.” Furthermore, the main verb in this sentence is buttress.
This word can be either a noun or a verb, but we would argue that it is more
likely to occur as a noun in less literary contexes.
In literary
texts, the grammatical system of the language is often exploited, experimented
with, or in Mukarovsky’ s words, made to “deviate from other, more everyday,
forms of language, and as a result creates interesting new patterns in form and
in meaning. One way that this happens is through the use of non-conventional
structures that seem to break the rules of grammar. In the following extract
from Angela Carter’ s novel Wise Children, what is the rule that has
been broken in first sentence?”
ex.9-3
The red-haired woman, smiling, waving to the disappearing shore. She
left the maharajah; she left innumerable other lights o’ passing love in towns
and cities and theatres and railway stations all over the world. But Melchior
she did not leave .
We all know
that English sentences normally consist of a subject and a predicate, and that
the predicate normally contains a verbal group. However, the first sentence
here contains no main finite verb. It looks as though it should be linked to
another clause; therefore it should not occur as an independent unit. Yet here
it does occur on its own.
In this
extract, Carter also uses a marked syntactic structure in the final sentence: But
Melchior she did not leave. This structure is rather more marked than the
more usual word order for English sentences, which is Subject + Verb + Object,
often referred to as SVO. By placing the direct object (Melchior) before
the subject and main verb here ( she did not leave), Carter produces a
stuctural contrast between this and the previous two clauses which reinforces
the contrast in the meaning:
She left the
maharajah
She left
innumerable other lights o’ passing love
Melchior she
did not leave
9.2.2 Literal language and figurative language
The first
meaning for a word that a dictionary definition gives is usuallly its LITERAL
meaning. The literal meaning of the word tree, of example, is “a large
plant”. However, once we start talking about a tree in the context of a
family tree for example, it is no longer a literal tree we are talking
about, but a FIGURATIVE one. The literal use of the word tree refers to
an organism which has bark, branches and leaves. A family tree shares
some of these qualities—graghically, a plan of a family and a representation of
a tree can look similar, and in a way they are both a process of organic
growth, so we use the same term for both. But when we use the term for a plant
it is a literal usage and when we use the term to describe our ancestry, it is
a figurative usage.
Another word
for the figurative use of language is TROPE, which refers to language used in a
figurative way for a rhetorical purpose. For example,
ex. 9-4 Friends, Romans and Contrymen, lend me your
ears …
This is from
Mark Antony’ s speech in Shakespeare’ s Julius Caesar. Here lend me
your ears is a trope, used figuratively for rhetorical ends in order to
make more impact than a literal variation such as listen to me for a moment .We
do not interpret the line literally as a wish to borrow the flesh-and-blood
ears of the audience, but as a figurative request for attention. Tropes occur
frequently in language use and there are manty different forms of tropes. In this
chapter , we only have space to give some of them very breif accounts.
Simile A SIMILE is
way of comparing one thing with another, of explaning what one thing is like by
showing how it is similar to anther thing , and it explicitly signals itself in
a text, with the words as or like. The phrase as cold as ice is
a common simile; the concept of coldness is explained in terms of an actual
concrete object. The word as signals that the trope is a simile. For
example, the first line of the following stanza by Robert Burns is a simile.
ex .9-5 O, my luve is like a red, red rose,
That’ s
newly sprung in June;
O, my
luve is like the melodie
That’ s
sweetly play’ d in tune.
To
communicate his feelings, the poet invites the reader to perceive in his sweet
heart some of the properties of a rose. Properties that may include are beauty,
freshness, scentedness, specialness and rarity.
Metaphor The above process
of transferring qualities from one thing to another is fundamentally how
another type of trope, metaphor, works too. There is a formal difference
however, in that the words like or as do not appear. A METAPHOR,
like a simile, also makes a comparison between two unlike elements; but unlike
a simile, this comparison is implied rather than stated. Compare the following
two examples.
ex.9-6 The world is like a stage. (simile)
ex.9-7 All the word’ s a stage,
And
all the men and women merely players;
They
have their exits and their entrances.
And one man in his time plays
many parts,
His acts
being seven ages... (metaphor)
(Shakespeare)
We can see
that because metaphors are not explicitly signaled, they are more difficult to
identify.
Metonymy Like metaphor,
metonymy is also a figurative use of language. As metaphor means the
transport of ideas in Greek, METONYMY means a change of name. For
example, in the following lines by J. Shirley, metonymy is used four times:
ex. 9-8 There is no amour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings;
Sceptre
and Crown
Must
tumble down
And in
the dust be equal made
With the
poor crooked Scythe and Spade.
Here Sceptre
and Crown represent kings and queens, while Scythe and Spade
represent ordinary peasants and workers .
Synecdoche A further kind of
figurative language is SYNECDOCHE, which is usually classed as a type of
metonymy. Synecdoche refers to using the name of part of an object to talk
about the whole thing, and vice versa. For example, hands in They
were short of hands at harvest time means workers, labourers or helpers.
The
figurative use of language has the effect of making the concepts under
discussion tamer, more domestic, more acceptable. Readers can be presented with
a picture of the world form which much of the uncertainty, the fuzziness, the
ambiguity has been wiped out. And some linguists argue that much of our
perception of the world and ourselves is shaped by figurative uses of language.
9.2.3 The analysis of literary language
We can
approach literary texes in various ways. Depending on the kind of text we are
dealing with and the aim of analysis, some of the following procedures may be
of help in analysing the grammatical structure and meaning of the text.
—Where there seems to be foregrounding on the
level of lexis, you can use morphological analysis to look at new combinations
of words.
—Where there is foregrounding on the level
of word order and syntax, you can use your knowledge of word classes (i.e.
nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.) to analyse unusual or “marked” combinations.
—On the grammatical level, you can analyse
the structure of sentences or look for combinations and patterns in the use of
different types of word groups, nominal and verbal groups which may contribute
to a more literary usage of language.
—In all cases, you should find that being
aware of the systems of the language, make it possible for you to identify the
more “deviant”, “marked” or literary structures, from more “everyday” ,
non-literary usage of language, and thus be able to say more about the
structural patterning in a text.
—If you are not sure where to start on a
text, you might try rewriting it. By comparing the differences between the
original text and your rewitten version, you should be able to comment on the
degree of formality or informality of the original ( i.e. its register), and
its effect on the reader. Rewriting a text is also a very good way to identify
other significant features in the original.
—What structural aspects of the meaning are
being exploited, if any? For exanple, are overlaps in word meaning, or lexical
gaps, being explored? Is the text using opposites or oxymorons, or hyponyms and
superordinates in a playful or unusual way?
—How
significant is the context of the text to your understanding of it? Might
readers with different background knowledge from yours form a different
interpretation?
—Does the literal meaning of a particular
word or phrase apply here? If not, you are dealing with figurative language.
Check for similes, metaphors, metonymy and synecdoche. What is the function of
the figurative use of language? It might be to make the abstract seem concrete;
to make the mysterious or frightening seem safe, ordinary and domestic, or to
make the day-to-day seem wonderful and unusual.
9.3 The language
in poetry
9.3.1 Sound patterning
Most people
are familiar with the idea of RHYME in poetry, indeed for some, this is what
defines poetry. END RHYME ( i. e. rhyme at the end of lines, cVC) is very
common in some poetic styles, and particularly in children’ s poetry:
ex. 9-9 Little Bo-peep
Has lost her
sheep
And
doesn’ t know where to find them
Leave
them alone
And
they will come home
Waggling their tails behing them
The following lines from Shakespeare also rhyme:
ex.9-10 Fair is foul and foul is fair
Hover
through wind and murky air
Songs often rhyme as well:
ex.9-11 Hark!The herald angels sing
Glory
to the newborn King!
These are all
examples of end rhyme, where the last word of a line has the same final sounds
as the last word of another line, sometimes immediately above or below,
sometimes one or more lines away. However, not all poetry has to have end rhyme;
these lines by Marge Piercy for example do not:
ex.9-12 Long burned hair brushes
Across
my face its spider
Silk. I
smell lavender,
Cinnamon: my mother’ s clothes.
By repeating
sounds in words like this, poets can build up very intricate patterns. Those
who are interested in the rhyme schemes of English may read further from the
bibliography at the end of the chapter, e.g. Thornborrow and Wareing
(1998/2000) or elsewhere.
9.3.2 Different forms of sound patterning
The following
poetical lines from Christopher Marlowe’ s “The Passionate Shepherd to His
Love” can serve to identify several different kinds of sound patterning.
ex.
9-13 Come live with me and be my love
And we
will all the pleasures prove
Rhyme me-be love-prove
/mi:/-/bi:/ /1Λv/-pruv/
We have
discussed rhyme in some detail. The me-be rhyme is internal rhyme,
rather than end rhyme.The words love and prove would probably
have been pronounced with the same vowel sound by Marlowe, and would have been
a rhyme then, although to us they sound like a half-rhyme today, or consonance.
Alliteration me-my pleasures-prove
/mi:/-/maI/ /'pleЗәz/
-/pruv/
The initial consonants are
identical in ALLITERATION (Cvc). As you can see, pleasures and prove, though
both start with /p/ , have diffterent consonant clusters: /pl/ and /pr/.
Therefore they are not completely alliterative.
Assonance live-with-will come-love
/lIv/-/wI?/-/wIl/ /kΛm/-/lΛv/
ASSONANCE
describes syllables with a common vowel (cVc).
Consonance will-all
/wIl/-/?:l/
Syllables ending with the same consonants
(cvC) are described as having CONSONANCE.
Reverse
rhyme with-will
/wI?/-/wIl/
REVERSE RHYME
descirbes syllables sharing the vowel and initial consonant, CVc, rather than
the vowel and the final consonant as is the case in rhyme.
Pararhyme live-love
/lφv/-/lΛv/
Where two
syllables have the same initial and final consonants, but different vowels
(CvC), they PARARHYME.
Repetition Although there are no example in the lines
from “The Passionate Shepherd”, it is of course possible to have a complete
match of CVC, for example “the sea, the sea”. This is called REPETITION.
9.3.3
Stress and metrical patterning
In English
words of two syllables, one is usually uttered slightly louder, higher, held
for slightly longer, or otherwise uttered slightly more forcefully than the
other syllable in the same word, when the word is said in normal circumstances.
This syllable is called the STRESSEN syllable. For example, in the word kitten,
kit is the stressed syllable, while ten is the UNSTRESSED
syllable. In addition to stress within an individual word, when we put words
together in utterances we stress some more strongly than others. Where someone
puts the stress depends partly on what they think is the most important
information in their utterance, and partly on the inherent stresse in the
words.
Poetry
can exploit the way we use stress when we speak to create rhythms. When stress
is organized to form regular rhythms, the term used for it is METRE.
Traditionally, to work out the metre of a poem, first of all you need to
work out the number of syllables in each line, as in this example from the play
Romeo and Juliet by Shakespeare:
ex.9-14 For saints have hands
that pilgrims’ hands do touch
There
are ten syllables in this line and the bold ones are the stressed syllables. (
The stressed syllables may be different according to different understandings
of the line.) A ten-syllable line like this, which has stress on alternate
syllables and starts with an unstressed syllable, is a very specific and
popular form in English poetry known as IAMBIC PENTAMETRE. Iambic refers to the
pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables: an unstressed syllable followed
by a stressed one is an IAMB.
An
iamb is an example of a unit of metre. Units of metre are called FEET, and
these are combinations of stressed and unstressed syllables which can be
repeated in a poem. The term PENTAMETRE refers to the number of feet in the
line. The line from Romeo and Juliet is in pentametre because it
contains five feet: pent comes from the Greek word for five. The
names of the different types of feet most frequently found in English poetry
are as follows:
Iamb An IAMBIC foot
contains two syllables, an unstressed syllable followed by a stressed one ( The
stressed syllables are written in bold letters):
ex.9-15 and palm to palm
is holy palmer’ s kiss
Trochee A TROCHAIC foot contains two syllables as
well, but in this case, the stressed syllable comes first, followed by an
unstressed syllable:
ex.9-16 Willows whiten
aspens quiver
Anapest An ANAPESTIC foot consists of three
syllables; two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed one:
ex.9-17 Without cause be
he pleased, without cause be he cross
Dactyl A DACTYLIC foot is similar to an anapest,
except reversed—a stressed syllable is followed by two unstressed ones:
ex.9-18 One for the master,
and one for the dame
Spondee A SPONDAIC foot consists of two stressed
syllables; line of poetry rarely consist only of spondees:
ex.9-19 and a black-/Back gull
bent like an iron bar slowly.
Pyrrhic A PYRRHIC foot conisist of two unstressed
syllables, as like an in ex.9-18.
We
said above that a line that contains five iambs is in iambic PENTAMETRE.
Similarly, lines that contain two feet (of any kind) are described as DIMETRE,
those with three feet as TRIMTRE, and those containing four feet are described
as being in TETRAMETRE. Lines with six feet are HEXAMETRE, with seven are
HEPTAMETRE, and with eight are OCTAMETRE
( the first part of each term relates the Greek word for the appropriate
number).
9.3.4 Concentional forms of metre and
sound
At
different times, different patterns of metre and sound have developed and
become accepted as ways of structuring poems. These conventional structures
often have names, and if you are analyzing poems, it is advisable to be
familiar with the more frequent conventions that poets use. Some conventional
forms of metre and sound are as follows.
Couplets COUPLETS are tow lines of verse, usually
connected by a rhyme. Here is an extract from “The Mad Mother” by Wordsworth:
ex.9-20 Her eyes are wild, her
head is bare,
The sun has burnt her coal-black hair,
Her eye-brows have a rusty stain,
And she came from far over the main.
Quatrains Stanzas of four lines, known as QUATRINS, are
very common in English poetry. Oliver Goldsmith’ s “When Lovely Woman Stoops to
Folly” written in 1766, is in quatrains.
Ex.9-21 When lovely women stoops
to folly,
And finds too late that men
betray,
What charm can soothe her melancholy,
What art can wash her guilt
away?
The only art her guilt to cover,
To hide her shame from every
eye,
To give repentance to her lover,
And wring his bosom—is to die.
Blank
verse BLANK
VERSE consists of lines in iambic pentametre which do not rhyme. These are very
common in English literature. Ex. 9-22 is from Robert Browning’ s poem “Andrea
del Sarto” (1855) :
ex.9-22 But do not let us quarrel
any more,
No my Lucrezia; bear with me for once;
Sit down and all shall happen as you wish.
You turn yours face, but does it bring your heart?
Many other verse forms appear quite regularly in English poetry, e.g. sonnet,
free verse, limericks, and so on. A very good summary is given by
Jon Stallworthy in an essay on versification in The Norton Anthology of
poetry.
9.3.5
The peotic functions of sound and metre
Why
do poets use sound and metrical patterning? Some of the reasons given by
Thornborrow and Wareing (1998) can give us an idea of the range of effects
sound and metre can have. Reasons for poets using sound and metrical patterning
include:
(1) For aesthetic pleasure—sound and metrical
patterning are fundamentally pleasing, in the way that music is; most people
enjoy rhythms and repeated sounds. Children in particular seem to like verse
for this reason.
(2) To conform to a convention/style/poetical
form—as with clothes and buildings, poetry has fashions, and different forms of
sound patterning have been popular at different times. The time at which they
were writing has a great influence on why poets selected the forms they did.
(3)
To express or innovate with a form—poets innovate to create new poetic
forms, and also to challenge assumptions about the forms of language which are
considered appropriate to poetry.
(4)
To demonstrate technical skill, and for intellectual pleasure—there is a
kind of satisfaction to be derived from the cleverness of some poems and magic
of form and meaning being perfectly combined. Poets show their skill with words
in the same way as athletes demonstrate their ability to run or leap hurdles.
(5)
For emphasis or contrast—some metrical pattern, such as the “slow spondees”,
or sudden changes in a previously regular pattern, draw your attention to that
place in the poem.
(6)
Onomatopoeia—when the rhythm of a line or its sound imitates the sound
of what is being described, this is known as ONOMATOPOEIA.
9.3.6
How to analyse poetry?
The
following checklist provided by Thornborrow and Wareing (1998) may help to
cover the areas of discussion when analyzing poetry.
(1)
Information about the poem
If
this information is available to you, somewhere in your analysis give the title
of the poem, the name of the poet, the period in which the poem was written,
the genre to which the poem belongs, e.g. lyric, dramatic, epic sonnet, or
satire, etc. You might also mention the topic, e.g. whether it is a love poem,
a war poem or a nature poem.
(2)
The way the poem is structured
These are structural features that you should check for; these may well
be others we have omitted. Don’ t worry if you don’ t find any examples of
reverse rhyme, or a regular metrical pattern in your poem. What matters is that
you looked, so if they had been there, you wouldn’ t have missed them.
You
don’ t need to write about all the headings below. Working through them is the
process of getting to know the poem. After that you can select which are the
interesting features you want to discuss.
—Layout—are the lines grouped into stanzas of equal/unequal lengths*?
—Number of lines.
—Length of lines—count the syllables; are lines of regular syllabic
length?
—Regular metre—which syllables carry stress? Are there an equal number
of unstressed syllables between the stressed ones? How many feet (stressed
syllables) are there in a line? Comment on the type of foot and the number of
feet per line—or say that there is no regular metrical pattern. Finding no
regular metre is not to say that there is no exploitation of metre however. A
poem can be written in free verse and can occasionally use particular metrical
patterns for emphasis, or onomatopoeic effect.
—End
rhymes—plot the and rhyme, if there is any. You could check with a reference
source such as the essay by Jon Stalwartly at the end of the Norton Anthlolgy,
to see if the metre and end rhyme conform to a particular style of poem (e.g. a
ballad or a sonnet).
—Other
forms of sound patterning—assonance, consonance, alliteration, pararhyme,
reverse rhyme, half rhyme, and repetition.
You
may comment on the effect of these forms, using the list of reasons suggested
above for reference. You should also check for literal and figurative uses of
language, interesting uses of syntax, punctuation and register, and for
intertextual allusion.
* The
layout of a poem is particular significant in the intepretation of visual
poetry. The following two examples may provide some impressions of this
feature.
ex. 9-23
seeker of
truth
follow no
path
all paths
lead where
truth is
here
(e. e.
cummings, No. 3 of 73 Poems)
ex. 9-24
Lord,
who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became
Most poore;
With thee
O let me rise
As larks,harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victorise:
Then shall the fall futher the flight in me
(George Herbert,
Easter Wings)
9.4
The language in fiction
9.4.1
Fictional prose and point of view
According
to Mick Short (1996), we need at least three levels of discoures to account for
the language of fictional prose ( i.e. a novel or short story), because there
is a narrator-narratee level intervening between the character-character level
and the author-reader level:
Addresser 1 ——— Message ———
Addressee 1
(Novelist) | (Reader)
Addresser 2 ———Message ———
Addressee 2
(Narrator) | (Narratee)
Addresser 3 ———Message
———Addressee 3
(Character A) | (Character B)
This
diagram only accounts for the novel “in general” in the sense that all three
levels, and all three participants are needed to explain how the novel works as
a form. But any particular novel may neutralise some of the distinctions,
multiply others, or do both at the same time. The fact that there are six
participants in the basic discourse structure for the novel automatically means
that there are more viewpoints to be taken into account in the novel than in
other genres ( e.g. poetry). But the opportunities in particular novels for
multiplying the number of viewpoints to be considered, and related to one
another, are myriad. It is thus hardly surprising that the novel has become the
genre where writers have explored viewpoints extensively.
I-narrators The person
who tells the story may also be a character in the fictional world of the
story, relating the story after the event. In this case the critics call the
narrator a FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR or I-NARRATOR because when the narrator refers
to himself or herself in the story the first person pronoun I is used.
First-person narrators are often said to be “limited” because they don’ t know
all the facts or “unreliable” because they trick the reader by withholding
information or telling untruths. This often happens in murder and mystery
stories.
Third-person
narrators If the narrator is not a character in the fictional
world, he or she is usually called a THIRD-PERSON NARRATOR, because reference
to all the characters in the fictional world of the story will involve the use
of the third-person pronouns, he, she, it or they. This second main type of narrator
is arguably the dominant narrator type.
Schema-oriented
language Viewpoint is also
schema-oriented. It is worth noting that different participants in the same
situation will have different SCHEMAs, related to their different viewpoints.
Hence shopkeepers and their customers will have shop schemas which in many
respects will be mirror images of one another, and the success of shopkeepers
will depend in part on their being able to take into account the schemas and
points of view of their customers.
Besides
indicating viewpoint by choosing what to describe, novelists can also
indicate it by how it is described, particularly through expressions
which are evaluative in nature:
ex. 9-25
She opened the door of her grimy,
branch-line carriage, and began to get
down her
bags. The porter was nowhere, of course, but there was Harry...There,
on the sordid little station under the
furnaces...
In this
passage from D. H. Lawrence’ s Fanny and Annie, the value-laden
adjectives grimy and sordid in grimy, branch-line
carriage and sordid little station under the furnaces help mark the
description of Morley railway station as being from the viewpoint of Fanny, who
clearly disapproves.
Given vs New
information At the beginning of a story, we should thus be able to
predict that narrative reference to everything in the fiction except items
generally assumed by everyone in our culture (e.g. the sun) must be new, and
hence should display indefinite reference. This is what happens, for example,
at the beginning of Thomas Hardy’ s The Mayor of Casterbidge.
ex. 9-26
One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached
one third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were
approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot.
The first
mention of the man (and by implication the woman ) and the child
have indefinite reference ( a young man and woman, a child ) because we
have not met them before. As a consequence,
we tend to get a distanced “bird’ s-eye view” of the characters. The
nineteenth century has definite reference because Hardy can assume that his
readers will already know what the phrase refers to. But note that even in this
straightforward description, the village of Weydon-Piors gets definite reference
for its first mention, encouraging us to pretend to ourselves that we are
already familiar with it. Hardy is thus “positioning” his readers as people who
are familiar to some extent with the village (and hence the area) but not the
characters.
Deixis Because DEIXIS is speaker-related it can
easily be used to indicate particular, and changing, viewpoint. In the
following example from The Secret Agent, we see Mrs. Verloc’ s actions
from Mr. Verloc’ s viewpoint:
ex.9-27
Mr Verloc heard the creaky plank in the floor and was content. He
waited.
Mrs.
Verloc was coming.
In addition
to the perception and cognition verbs heard and waited and the
indication of his inner mental state ( was content ) we can see that
Mrs. Verloc’ s movement towards her husband is viewed from Mr. Verloc’ s
position (coming). The fact that the events are only seen from Mr.
Verloc’ s viewpoint is strategically important at this point in the novel. He
does not realise that his wife is about to kill him.
9.4.2 Speech and thouht presentation
(1) Speech
presentation
According to
Short (1996), the speech presentation continuum may have the following
possibilities:
1) Direct
Speech (DS)
2) Indirect
Speech (IS)
3) Narrator’ s
Representation of Speech Acts (NRSA)
4) Narrator’ s
Representation of Speech (NRS)
Moreover, with
the DIRECT SPEECH (DS) we have what the character said in its fullest form, and
as We move from 1) to 4) the speech contribution of the character becomes more
and more muted.
There is, one
further category which can occur, which is an amalgam of DS and INDIRECT SPEECH
(IS) features and is called FREE INDIRECT SPEECH (FIS). It comes between DS and
IS on the speech presentation cline:
NRS NRSA
IS FIS DS
The following
example from Charles Dickens’ s The Old Curiosity Shop can be used to
illustrate most types of speech representations.
ex. 9-28
(1) He thanked
her many times, and said that the old dame who usually did such offices for him
had gone to nurse the little scholar whom he had told her of. (2) The child
asked how he was, and hoped he was better.
(3) “No,”
rejoined the schoolmaster, shaking his head sorrowfully, “No better. (4) They
even say he is worse.”
The
schoolmaster’ s words in quotation marks serve as an example of DS. Typical IS
can be seen in sentence (2): The child asked how he was ... It gives us
the propositional content of what the child said, but not the words she used to
utter the content. But in He thanked her many times ... at the beginning
of (1) we do not even know what statements the schoolmaster made, let alone
what words he uttered to make those statements. All we know is that he
repeatedly used the speech act of thanking. As a consequence, this part of the
passage can be seen as a summary of a longer piece of discourse, and is
therefore even more backgrounded than an IS representation would be. Mick Short
called this minimalist kind of presentation the NRSA. Another possibility of
speech presentation which is more minimalist than NRSA, namely a sentence which
merely tells us that speech occurred, and which does not even specify the
speech act(s) involved, e.g. We talked for hours. This is called NRS.
The FIS
usually occurs in a form which appears at first sight to be IS but also has DS
feature. The clearest example of FIS in this passage is the second half of
sentence (2): ... and hoped he was better. ( The first half of the
sentence The child asked how he was ... is clearly IS, giving the
propositional conent of the utterance but not the words used. ) Although it is
certainly not DS, it does have some of the flavour of the words which the child
used. The reason for this is that althought it is coordinated to the IS of the
first part of the sentence (which leads us to expect it will have the smile
status), it omits the reporting clause, which can be easily deduced from the
context. A more explicit version of it would be ... and said that she hoped
he was better.
Thought
presentation The categories used by novelists to represent the
thoughts of their characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a
speech.
ex.9-29
a. He spent
the day thinking. ( Narrator’ s Representation of Thought: NRT)
b. She considered his unpounctuality.
(Narrator’ s Representation of Thought Acts: NRTA)
c. She
thought that he would be late. (Indirect Thought: IT)
d. He was
bound to be late! (Free Indirect Thought: FIT)
e. “He will
be late”, she thought. (Direct Thought: DT)
As the effects
associated with NRT, NRTA or IT are roughly the same as those associated with
speech presentation, we only talk about two types of thought reprsentation
here, i.e. DT and FIT.
Direct
thought DT tends to be used for
presenting conscious, deliberative thought.
In the following example from Dickens’ The old Curiosity Shop,
Dick Swiveller, who has been dangerously ill for some weeks, has just regained
consciousness:
ex.9-30
“I’ m dreaming,” thought Richard, “that’ s clear. When I went to bed, my hands
were not made of egg shells; and now I can almost see through’ em. If this is
not a dream, I have woke up by mistake in an Arabian Night, instead of a London
one. But I have no doubt I’ m asleep. Not the least.”
Here the
small servant had another rough.
“Very remarkable!” thought Mr.
Swiveller. “I never dreamt such a real cough as that before. I don’ t know,
indeed, that I ever dreamt either a cough or a sneeze. Perhaps it’ s part of
the philosophy of dreams that one never does. There’ s another—and another—I
say, —I’ m dreaming rather fast! “
The humour
of the account comes from the fact that Mr. Swiveller thinks that he is
dreaming but we know that he is thinking rather deliberately as he comes out of
his coma. His rather fast dreaming is merely everyday realily impinging
on his consciousness, as the intervening sentence of narration makes clear.
DT has the same
linguistic form as the soliloquy in drama, which is notoriously ambiguous as to
whether the character involved is thinking aloud or talking to the audience. In
the novel there is no audience to talk to, and so thought presentation must be
DT’s, sole purpose. However, DT is quite often used to represent imaginary
conversations which characters have with themselves or others, which is
presumably why it so often has the flavour of conscious thinking.
Free
indirect thought In the following brief
example of FIT from Julian
Barnes’ A History of the World in
10(1/ 2) Chapters,
Colonel Fergusson is lying on his deathbed, annoyed with his daughter, who is
reading a religious pamphlet while waiting for him to die. The Colonel, an
atheist, is annoyed because he cannot comprehend his daughter’ s belief in God:
ex.9-31
It was a provocation, that’ s what it
was, thought the Colonel. Here he was on his deathbed, preparing for oblivion,
and she sits over there reading Parson Noah’ s latest pamphlet.
The reported
clauses in the first sentence and the first half of the second sentence are in
FIT. They contain a mixture of Direct and Indirect features, as we can show by
“translating” them first into IT and than into DT:
1)
The Colonel thought that it was a provocation that while he was on his
deathbed, preparing for oblivion, she was reading Parson Noah’ s latest pamphlet.
(IT)
2)
“It is a provocation, that’ s what it is,” thought the Colonel. “I’ m on
my deathbed, preparing for oblivion and she sits over there reading Parson
Noah’ s latest pamphlet.” (DT)
In this
example we can see the typical effect of FIT. We feel close to the character,
almost inside his head as he thinks, and sympathise with his viewpoint, This
“close” effect is more or less the opposite of effect of FIS, which makes us
feel distanced from the character is often a vehicle for irony.
How is it that FIS and FIT have such
markedly different effects? One reason is that although DS can reasonably be
assumed to be the norm for speech presentation, it is much more difficult to
hold the same view for DT. The thoughts of others, unlike their speech, are
never directly accessible to us. We can only infer what people might be
thinking from their speech, actions, facial expression and so on. It is thus
much more plausible to think of IT as our norm for thought presentation. In this ease, the use of FIT constitutes a
move away from the norm towards the character end of the scale, whereas FIS
constitutes a move in the opposite direction.
Stream of
consiousness writing The term STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS was originally coined by
the philosopher William James in his Principle of Psychology (1890) to
describe the free association of ideas and impressions in the mind. It was
later applied to the writing of William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf
and others experimenting early in the 20th century with the
novelistic portrayal of the free flow of thought. Note, however, that the
majority of thought presentation in novels is not stream of consciousness
writing. The examples we have discussed above are not stream of consciousness
writing because they are too orderly to constitute the free association of
ideas. Perhaps the most famous piece of stream of consciousness writing is that
associated with Leopold Bloom in Joyce’ s Ulysses. Here he is in a
restaurant thinking about oysters:
ex. 9-32
Filthy shells. Devil to open them too.
Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and Red bank oysters.
Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. (sic)He was in the Red bank this
morning. Was he oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh in bed. No.
June has no ar (sic) no oysters. But there are people like tainted game.
Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty years old, blue
and grain again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside.
Idea for a poison mystery.
This cognitive meandering is all in the most free version of DT.
It is also characterised by a highly elliptical sentence structure, with as
many grammatical words as possible being removed consistently allowing the
reader to be able to infer what is going on. The language is not very cohesive,
and breaks the Gricean maxims of Quantity and Manner. But we must assume that
apparently unreasonahle writing behaviour is related to a relevant authorial
purpose. It is the assumption that Joyce is really cooperating with us at a
deeper level, even tbough he is apparently making our reading difficult, that
leads us to conclude that he is trying to evoke a mind working associatively.
9.4.3
Prose style
Authorial
style When
people talk of style, they usually mean AUTHORIAL STYLE. This refers to the
“world view” kind of authorial style. In other words a way of writing which
recognisably belongs to a particular writer, say Jane Austen or Ernest
Hemingway. This way of writing distinguishes one author’ s writing from that of
others, and is felt to be recognisable across a range of texts written by the
same writer, even though those writings are bound to vary as a consequence of
being about different topics, describing
different things, having different purposes and so on. It is this ability to
perceive authorial style in the writings of a particular author that enables us
to write pastiches and parodies.
Text style TEXT STYLE looks
closely at how linguistic choices help to construct textual meaning, just as
authors can be said to have style, so can text. Critics can talk of the style
of Middlemarch, or even parts of it, as well as the style of George
Eliot. When the style of texts or extract from texts is examined, we are even
more centrally concerned with meaning than with the world view version of
authorial style discussed above, and so when we examine text style we will need
to examine linguistic choices which are intrinsically connected with meaning
and effect on the reader. All of the areas we have looked at so far in this
book could be relevant to the meaning of a particular text and its style; as
can areas like lexieal and grammatical patterning. Even the positioning of
something as apparently insignificant as a comma, for example, can sometimes be
very important in interpretative terms.
9.4.4
How to analyse the language of fiction?
The language
features we should examine to elucidate the style of a text or a corpus of an
author’ s writing may include the following aspects:
—patterns of
lexis (vocabulary)
—patterns of
grammatical orgnization;
—patterns of
textual organization (how the units of textual organization, from sentences to
paragraphs and beyond, are arranged);
—foregrounded
features, including figures of speech;
—whether any
patterns of style variation can be discerned;
—discoursal
patterning of various kinds, like turn-taking or patterns of inferencing;
—patterns of viewpoint manipulation, including speech and thought
presentation.
9.5
The language in drama
A
play exists in two way—on the page, and on the stage. This presents something
of a dilemma for the literary critic, since the two manifestations are quite
different and need different analytical approaches. When stylistics has focused
on drama, it has almost invariably been concerned with the text on the page,
rather than the performance on the stage. The text, after all, is static and
unchanging. The stylistician may easily turn back the pages to a previous
scene, and make comparison between speeches in different parts of the play, or
even reach for another book, and make comparisons between different plays. The
live performance of a play, on the other hand, is transient. A speech only
partially heard through inattention cannot be heard again on that occasion. However,
this is not to say that performance can never be analysed, particularly now we
have access to recorded performance. Our interest in this book, nevertheless,
is in the language of the play on the page.
9.5.1 How should we analyse drama?
Drama
as poetry Stylistic analysis of dramatic texts has tended to follow
one of the three approaches. The first of these is to treat an extract of the
text as a poem--as we have already done in Section 9.3. Since sound and metre are as relevant in many
dramatic texts as they are in poetry, everything to do with metre, sound
patterning, syntax and figurative language already discussed in the previous
sections might be appropriate areas to analyse.
Drama
as fiction Secondly, the play can be analysed for character and
plot, treating it more or less like fiction. The two components of plot and
character clearly are as significant in dramatic texts as in fiction, so this
is an obviously relevant way to proceed; some of the approaches described in
the previous section can be used to do this.
Drama however differs fundamentally from fiction in that it usually
lacks a narrative voice, and this absence can make a novel difficult to
dramatize successfully. One of the recognized problems in dramatizing Jane
Austen’ s Pride and Prpjudice, as was done by BBC in 1995, is that the
ironic narrative voice offers a different perspective on characters and events
from the one the characters in the novel necessarily perceive or comment on.
Thus the information and the attitude conveyed in the narrative voice must be
translated into other aspects of the dramatization.
There are ways, in drama, of attempting to deal with the function of the
narrative voice. A chorus, as was used in Greek Tragedy, has also been used in
plays by T.S. Eliot ( The Cocktail Party, for example), and can give
another perspective on the actions of the characters or plot development. Dylan
Thomas used a narrative voice reading over the play in Under Milkwood,
and Dennis Potter, in the television play The Singing Detective, uses a
voice-over technique. Information about the plot and character is sometimes
given through explicit interjectiom by the playwright in the text of the play,
as stage instructions.
Drama
as conversation We have said that stylistics has appreached the texts of
plays as if they were poetry, and as if they were a kind of fiction. This does
not really account for aspects of drama that different from poetry and
different from fiction, the qualities that make it a genre in its own right. One
crucial aspect in which drama differs from poetry and fiction is in its
emphasis on verbal interaction, and the way relationships between people are
constructed and negotiated through what they say. This is where linguistics
really comes into own, since there is an enormous amount of work on what people
do when they talk, and on how communication and misconmmnication occur.
Linguistics, and techniques of discourse analysis in particular, can help us
analyse the exchanges between characters, in order to:
a) understand
the text better;
b) understand
how conversation works;
c) appreciate better the skill a playwright
has demonstrated in the way they have written the speeches of their characters;
d) see things
in the text that other forms of analysis might have allowed us to miss.
There are many
different aspects of language me (especially the differences between speech and
writing) which playwrights can draw upon as a remurce. In this book we can only
choose a limited number of them for discussion.
9.5.2 Analysing dramatic language
In this
section we look at the speech in dramatic texts and show how analytic
techniques which linguists have applied to naturally occurring conversations
can be applied to dialogues in plays to explore the interaction between
character.
(1) Turn
quantity and length How much a
character talks can be indicative either of their relative importance in the
play, or of how important they appear to think they are. Generally, central
characters have longer and more speeches than minor characters. However,
Bennison (1993: 82-4) argues that as Anderson in Tom Stopperd' s play Professional
Foul, develops as a main character, he has fewer long speeches—indicative
of his increased ability to listen to others.
(2) Exchange
sequence Attempts have been made to
catalogue many of the patterns of exchanges which are considered appropriate by
speakers of English, (e. g. the two-part
exchanges such as greeting-greeting, question-answer, request-response and
invitation-acceptance/ refusal), but as there is so much scope for variation in
context this is really a fruitless task. However, the model of exchange
structure can be useful when analysing a dramatic dialogue which doesn't seem
to conform to the expected pattern of exchange. Harold Pinter’ s plays for
example, are famous for the very strange dialogues between charters, where
these expected patterns do not occur. The extract below from A Night Out. The characters, Albert and a Girl, are in the
Girl’ s flat, where she has brought him back with her after picking him up on
the street.
ex. 9-33
(His hand
screws the cigarette. He lets it fall on the carpet.)
GIRL (outraged): What do you think you’
re doing? (She stares at him.) Pick it up! Pick that up, I tell you! It’ s my
carpet! (She lunged towards it. ) It’ s not my carpet, they’ ll make me pay—
(His hand
closes upon hers as she reaches for it. )
GIRL: What are you doing? Let go.
Treating my place like a pigsty... Let me go. You’ re burning my carpet!
ALBERT (quietly, intensely): Sit down.
GIRL: How
dare you?
ALBERT:
Shut up. Sit down.
GIRL: What
are you doing?
ALBERT:
Don’ t scream. I'm wanting you ....
GIRL: What
are you going to do?
ALBERT: (seizing the clock from the
mantelpiece): DON’ T MUCK ME ABOUT!
This
dialogue does not “fit” our model of exchange structure in several
respects.First, Albert does not respond to the girl’ s exclamations about the
dropped cigarette, and her commands to pick it up. Second, she asks him a
series of questions ( How data you ? ,
What are you doing ? , and What are you going to do ? ), none of which he gives a direct answer
to. Ignoring her questions and commands is one way he demonstrates the unequal
distribution of power between them, which culminates in his threat of physical
violence.
(3)
Production errors Sometimes a writer will deliberately use forms such as
hesitation to convey something about the character-that they are distracted,
for example, or uncertain or shy, or confused, embarrassed. In this example
from Professional Foul, the
character Anderson meets one of his
footballing heroes and offers advice on the opposition in a forthcoming match,
a situation in which he demonstrates signs of embarrassment shown in bold:
ex.9-34
ANDERSON: I’ ve seen him twice. In the
UFA Cup a few seasons ago... I happened to be in Berlin for the Heel
Colloquium, er, bunfight ... (in a rush) I realize it’ s none of
my business—I mean you may think I’ m an absolute ass, but-(pause)
Look, if Hahas takes that corner he’ s going to make it short—almost
certainly-...
(4) The
cooperative principle The
philosopher Grice (1975) developed the theory of a cooperative principle, which
he asserted people used to make sense of their conversations by enabling them
to distinguish between SENTENCE-MEANING and UTTERANCE MEANING, i. e. between
what a sentence “means” (out of context) and what the speaker “means” when they
say that sentence (in a particular context). The latter meaning can be inferred
by the hearer, as participants in conversations expect each other to do certain
things, in other words, their talk is governed by the cooperative principle,
which is made up of four conversational maxims, i.e. the maxims of quantity,
quality, manner and relevance. Grice suggested that people actually break these
maxims quite often when they talk—for example, in another extract from Pinter’
s A Night Out, Albert apparently flouts the maxim of relevance when he
responds to the Girl’ s questions:
Ex. 9-35
GIRL: And
what film are you making at the moment?
ALBERT: I’ m
on holiday.
GIRL.: Where
do you work?
ALBERT: I’
m freelance.
Albert’ s
replies do not directly answer the Girl’s questions—he does not tell her what
film he is working on nor where he works. However, most people would probably
make sense of this exchange by assuming that the answers were relevant to the
questions at an underlying level. This would result in the response I’m on
holiday being undertood to mean “I’ m not making a film at the moment
because I’m on holiday”, and the response to the second question meaning “I
don’ t have one single place I can identify, because being freelance, I work
all over the place.”
(5) Status
marked through language Many of the properties oflanguage discussed
above can be used to signal the relative status, and changes in status, of
characters. In particular, language can be used to signal to what extent the
relationship between a speaker and an addremee is based on a social power
difference, and to what extent it is based on solidarity. How people addrexs
one another usually signals where they perceive themselves to be socially in
relation to their addressee: their equal, or their social inferior or superior.
A considerable amount of our language use is grounded in thee perceptions.
Playwrights
can indicate to an audience this kind of information about the relationship
belween characters through ways they address one another on stage. For example,
the so-called tu/vous distinction which existed in Elizabethan English,
and which still exists in many languages, but which has been lost in modern
English, is often used by Shakespeare to indicate relationships between
characters. The form thou in Early Modem English, the second person singular
pronoun (i.e. for addressing one person) equivalent to the French form tu,
was used to signal either intimacy or that the speaker was of higher social
status than the addressee. The form you in Early Modern English was
equivalent to the Modem French form vous; it was used for the second
person plural (i. e. for addressing two or more people), but was aim used for
the second person singular as a polite form used to mark social distance or
coldness and/or respect. The thou fern was already beginning to die out when
Shakespeare was writing, but nevertheless, there are scenes in his plays where
the characters switch between the use of you and thou, indicating
the fluctuation in their relationships, from intimacy to distance, from respect
to contempt. For example, in the extract below from Shakespeare’ s play As
You Like It, analysed by Calvo(1994), the cousins Celia and Rosahnd differ
in their use of pronouns to one another. Celia, who has been irritated by
remarks Rosalind, madly in love with Orlando, has made about women, and by her
general self absorption, uses tile distant and polite form you.
Rosalind, completely wrapped up in her own emotions, apparently oblivious to
Celia’ s annoyance and to the fact that Celia may feel rejected by Rosalind’ s
obsession with Orlando, uses the intimate thou from in response.
Ex. 9-36
Celia: You have simply misused our sex
with your love prate. We must have your doublet and hose plucked over your
head, and sbow the world what the bird hath done to her own nest.
Rosalind: O coz, coz, coz, my pretty
little coz, that thou didst know how many fathoms deep I am in love! But it
cannot be sounded. My affection hath nan unknown bottom, like the Bay of
Portugal.
Celia: Or
rather bonomless, that as fast as you pour affection in. it runs out.
Rosalind: No. That same wicked bastard
of Venus, that was begot of thought, conceived of spleen and born of madness,
that blind rascally boy that abuses everyone’ s eyes because his own are out,
let him be judge how deep I am in love. I’ ll tell the Aliena, I cannot be out
of sight of Orlando. I’ ll go find a shadow and sigh till he come.
Celia: And
I’ ll sleep.
Withoul
knowledge of the tu / vous distinction and what it can signal about social
and permnal relationships, we would lose some of the significance of this
scene.
(6) Regisler REGISTER is the term used in linguistics to
describe the relationship between a particular style of language and its
context of use. As language users, we can recognize a wide range of styles even
though we might not be able to actively produce them. An example of a
linguistic register is legal discourse—we recognize a legal document when we
see one, but lawyers are generally the only people who are trained to produce
them using appropriate linguistic choices. In Shakespeare’ s A Midsummer
Night’ s Dream, social order, and the importance of acting appropriately
for your station in life are very important themes. Characters in the play
include fairies, nobility and ordinary working people, and the different social
status of each group.
is marked through their different style of language.
(7) Speech
and silence-female characters in plays There
is evidence that men tend to talk more than women in mixed sex conversations
(Spender, 1990). It is suggested that the reason why it is accepted that women
are the talkative sex is that the amount they talk is net compared with the
amount that men talk, but with silence. In fact silence is the preferred state
for women in a patriarchal society. There is certainly some support for this
hypothesis at least in the British dramatic heritage: some of Shakespeare’ s
characters notably regard silence in women as a virtue. In The Taming of the
shrew for exampie, as Kathefina, the “shrew” of the title, is reviled for
being outspoken, her sister Bianca is praised for her silence:
Ex. 9-37
Tranio: That
wench is stark mad or wonderful forward.
Lucentio: But in the other’ s silence do
I see Maid’ s mild behaviour and
sobriety.
9.5.3 How to analyse dramatic texts?
Walter Nash
(1989) suggests that dramatic texts can be analysed in a series of stages,
starting with the most basic and least controversial, and working up to the
most sophisticated and debatable. If you are required to analyse a dramatic
text, you may find it useful to refer to thee guidelines. The stages he
outlines are as follows:
—Paraphrase
the text—i. e. put it into your own words
This can be quite a crude approach, but it
ensures that your basic understanding of the text is sound. It is a chance to
check any unfamiliar words or grammatiral constructions. It also allows you to
check how each of the characters contributes to the plot of the play. Although
your paraphrase should be as close to the content of the original as possible,
there may be still some room for ambiguities or different inter pretations. As
far as possible, you should note these, perhaps by indicaring the various
possible interpretations in different paraphrases.
—Write a
eommentary on the text This is where
you interpret what significance of the extract you are analysing is in the
context ofm the play as a whole: how does it contribute to the development of
the plot and the evolution of the characters? This is also a chance to check
any literary allusions and ambiguities which give the text more than one
possible reading.
—Select a
theoretical approach, perhaps from those discussed above This will be a narrower process, where
you consider the text from a specific point of view, applying one theoretical
model of the way language and communicatmn work. This needs to be very thorough
and detailed, and it is more likely to be debatable whether the appreach you
have selected is appropriate. Applying a theoretical model to the text may leave
you feeling that you have learnt very little that is new, or that you have
learnt a great deal--it is far more “chancey” than either the paraphrase or the
commentary in terms of what you get out of it.
Further Reading
Bradford, R. 1997. Stylistics. Routledge.
Brumfit, C. J. and R. A. Carter. 1986/1997/2000. Literature
and Language. Oxford University Press and Shanghai Foreign Languages
Education Press.
Carter, R. and P. Simpson, Eds. 1989. Language,
Discourse and Literature: An lntroductory Reader in Discourse Stylistics.
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