Language Through Literature: An Introduction (Interface)

, and
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resources - resources which are governed by their own specific sets of rules and conventions. In short, graphemes s~mplydo not exhibit an exact one-to-one co-respondence with phonemes. For instance. the grapheme in English may yield two different pronnnc~ations depending on the word in which it occurs: in 'clue' zt is IU but in ?nice' it corresponds to IS/.Conversely, the phoneme lzi can be represented not only by the grapheme in a word like 'size', but also by the grapheme <s> in 'rire'. A related theorelical point concerns the manner in wh~ch phonemes and graphemes are prod~~ced. The grapheme, for instance, can be written rn a host of different typefaces and fonts snch as <e>, or. These individual realisations of a single grapheme are normally called allcgrapitr. Although they all exhibit variation, they are still representative of a generzd category; transitions between one and the other will not therefore a..ter the meaning of the word in which they occur. The same could not be said of variation between. say, <s>, and . The 'allo-' prin:iple also applies to the spoken system of language. A phoneme like / i may be pronounced in a host of d i e r e n t ways depending on a rangi: of contextual factors, of which the most important are the social and geographical origins of the speaker. To return to an earlier exi~mple,the acoustic quality of the It/ in 'bit' will vary depending on whether it is spoken with, say, the Cockney accent of London, the 'Sconse' accent of Merseyside or the accent of English spoken tn Scnth Afnca. In the first varlety, the It/ is not produced as a familiar 't sound as such, but rather as a glottal stop. In the second vanety, th.: ltl would be accompanied by a considerable amount of hreathinesj - indeed, the resulting word would sound almost like 'hiss'. The South African It/ would be proo r hreathinejs at all, contributing to what is duced with no asp~ratior~ often perceived as the 'iiry' quality which distinguishes this accent of English. These three variant pronunc~ationsof /t/ are referred to as allophones of Itl.They tire, furthermore, only three of possibly dozens of allophon~cvariants of this phoneme. Despite this variation m the l is produced, however, none of the variants actual ways in which V is sufficient ro alter the meaning of :he word in which they occur. Allophones, just like their allograph counterparts, are not distinct units of meaning.' Aside from the theoretical parallels between the systems of speech and writing, there are substant~alpoints of departure between the two modes. This divergence normally reflects the different

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functions which the two modes serve. Wntmg, for instance, permits contextual displacement where writer and reader can be separated in time and space. Spoken language, on the other hand, is normally channelled through a physical context which IS shared between speaker and hearer. Where writing is characterised by permanence, speech is ephemeral. Features of one system, moreover, may have no direct counterpart in the other. For example, the written mode contains a set of logograms - graphemes like <&> and c@> - wh~ch 'stand for' other words. Strictly speaking, logograms have no spoken form: the '&' symbol cannot be read aloud without pnor conversion to the word 'and'. The stylistrc exploitation of the system of graphology is often considered the preserve of poets rather than novelists. Indeed, the stylistic effects created with~nthe genre of writing known as 'concrete poetry' rely almost excltlsively on manipulation of the visual medium of language. Nevertheless, wrlters of prose fiction have, in pnnciple, those same techniques at their disposal, and as early as the e~ghteenth century the novelist Laurence Steme, author of Trmram Shandy, was exploring the potential of the wntten system to the full. For a more recent example of graphological innovation ~n the context of prose fictlon, consider the opening of the second chapter of Samuel Beckett's novel Murpny (1938).2 This sequence is devoted to the introduction of the character CeBa, a prostitute, who a to feature as Murphy's confidante throughout the story. Until this polnt in the novel, the text has been written entirely within conventional. left to right, connected prose: Age Head Eyes Complexion Hair Feotures Neck Upper Arm Foreorm Wrist Bust Waist

Un~mportont Small and Round Green White Yellow Mobile

13%" 11" 9%" 6" 34"

27"

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Here, details of the new character are presented not in fully grammatical sentences but in a format which is reminiscent of official documents like passports. lo keeping with the discourse type which it echoes, fixed categones are listed in the left-hand column while specific. Individual characteristics are provided in the right. It is worth considering how a more conventional introduction to Ceiia mlght look:

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Celia's green eyes were set in her small and round heod. Her

complexion wos white, her holr yellow The columnar format adopted in the Beckett also restricts the elaboration of physlcal characteristics: none of the adjectives used is modified with intensifiers like 'rather' ('rattier white') or 'quite' ('qulre small and round'). Of course. the usefuhess of the details which are provided is highly questionable. Where age, for instance, is arguably one of the most Important pieces of information required on such documentation, forearm size is most certainly not. The criterion for describing someone's features is normally 'distinguishability; not 'mobility'. It could be added that this type of graphological dewation subverts textual norms on two planes. First. 11 constitutes a break with the canonical prose format which represents the norm for the novel as a whole. Second. ~tsubverts an extraneous regster, 'officialese', by appropriating it and then recontextualising it into the context of prose fiction. The linguistic system of graphology interacts in subtle and sophisticated ways with the cognitive systems of lnfomatlon processing and worklng memory. Graphology, in other words, exerts a psycholinguistic influence on the reading process. Much of the activity of reading relies on informed guesswork; efficient readers do not read words. they read meantngs (Smith 1973: 188). Children. in fact, often develop thls skill instinctively. They qu~cklylearn not to linger over every individual word, but learn instead to search for grammaticality, to form hypotheses -in short, to read for sense. Thrs psycholinguistic 'guessing game' relies on the scanning of vlsual information to produce coherent readings. while sunultaneously suppressing ambiguous readings. However, in those genres of wrjting that exploit ihe resources of language - of which literature ts a pre-emment example - this visual medium provides an excellent opportunity for controlled and motivated ambiguity. Before we

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examine some examples from literary texts. it is worth undertaking a couple of bnef experiments in order to illustrate more clearly the psycholingu~sticpotential of the visual medium of language. The fust experiment will requue a little piece of paper or card and a commitment from yon 1101 to turn over the page, or read the next paragraph on this page until instructed to do so! What you will find overleaf is a single sentence which is built up through the progresswe accumulation of units. The first word, 'Businessmen'. occurs on a line of its own: the next line adds on the second word, the next line the third and so on. This pattern IS conilnued until the sentence is complete. As you read throughit. note your impressions of how the sentence develops as a unit of meaning and how your process of reading employs hypothesis formaboo and re-formation. Now read the sentence one word at a time, uslng your piece of paper or card to blot out the lines below. The interpretative strategies which this example warrants should illustrate how reading is often a process of conceptuai reorlentation and revision. Our search for 'sense' depends on the interpretation of chunks of language as coherent units of meaning, and frequently this means taking psycholing~listic'short cuts'. These short cuts. w l c h are normally referred to as percepnlai srralegies, are an Integral part of the reading process. They involve forming hypotheses about linguistic units in order to reduce ambiguity, as well as discarding other hypotheses in the light of new information. For instance, the strategies used to process the sentence overleaf will require progressive revislon as each new element is added on. The thlrd line is the first which 'looks' like a coherent unit of meanlng and would yield a satisfactory (if sexist!) interpretation. This hypothesis has to be revised, however, when in the fourth line it becomes clear that 'like' is to be interpreted as a comparative item and not as a finite verb. Readers may have exper~encedfurther reonentations at the fifth line ('Businessmen like secretaries are difficult') where a reading is suggested along the lines that both types of people tend to he recalcitrant or tetchy. However, the subsequent text reveals that this reading too has to be jettisoned. Thus, processing the sentence rests on a stnng of interpretations which are progressively revlsed until the guessing game is over. One of the consequences of the lnteractlon between vlsual ~nformationand cognitive processing IS that it often Interferes with a reader's intuitive judgments about the grammaticality of a particular

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FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

Bus~nessmen Businessmen like Businessmen like secretaries Businessmen like secretorit.'s are Businessmen like secretaries are difficult Bus~nessmenlike secretorias are difficult to Bus~nessmenlike secretorles ore difficult fo fool

sentence. Perceptual stratcgzes can, in other words, often lead to maanalysis and misinterpretation. Here a a good example of a sentence whlch would pose such a problem:

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The hain leh ot midni~thtcrashed.

It is likely that this sentence would he jnclged ungrammatical by many readers and would simply be interpreied as a clumsily expressed attempt at 'Thetraln left al: midnight and crashed' or 'The train which inspection will reveal left at midnight crashed.' Yet a more th~~rough that there is, in fact, nothing ill-formed a m u t this example at all. This is best explained by invoking a sentencf with a superficially parallel structure. Consider the following, which should cause no problems:

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The baby obanaoned a t midnight :ried

Thls parallel structure will help 'disambiguate' our problematic example. What has happened in (1) is that the intuitively coherent grammatical unit ('The train left at midmght') has interfered with our perception of the sentence as a whole. In the second example, however, the superficially similar sequence ('fie baby abandoned at midnight') creates no such obstacle - ~tsimp..ycannot be interpreted as a complete grammatical unit. This second :sequence thus reinforms our interpretation of the parallel construction in the first so that it can now be successfully reinte~pretedalong .:he lines of 'The train which was left (i.e. m a siding, in a tunnel) at midnight crashed.' The point is that it is tM perceptual strategy - the ;:rammatical short cut which is so central to the act of reading - that t~iggersthe misanalysis in the first place.

Informal experiments like these can highlight the ways in which vlsual information is encoded and retrieved. They also illustrate the linguistic complexity of the written system. Indeed, one of the benefits of graphological innovation in general is that stylistic effects can be created on more than one level. Where a line ending in poetry may, for instance, suggest a pause, it may also function as a subtle conceptual break with other grammatical structures. An excellent illustration of this aspect of the visual medium of language is offered by Roger Fowler (1986: 45) in his discussion of William Carlos ~illiams'spoem 'The Right of Way'. Fowler is particularly interested in the line boundanes in the last of the following three stanzas: Why bother where I went for I went sp~nningon the four wheels of my car along the wet rood until i saw a girl with one leg over the rail of a balcony The structure of the final stanza creates a striking linguistic rrompe I'oeil. The reader first assumes that the penultimate line refers to an amputee, only to have the missing leg 'restored' in the final line. These two potential readings, Fowler argues, are contradictory: the penultimate line suggests pathos, violence, the grotesque, whereas the girl on the balcony implies relaxation and confidence. The result is a visual ambiguity where, although the second of the two projected readings is preferred, the impression left by the first never completely disappears. Nianipnlation of the visual system of language e not the exclusive preserve of literary commnnlcation. Indeed, graphological exploitation is a resource which is available to other genres of discourse. There 1s not the space here to develop this point in detail. but a brief illustration from advertising language should none the less prove useful. The extract below is part of an advertisement which ran regularly in the weeWy magazine TV Times. The product advertised is a beverage called 'Cranberry Classic'. The pictorial detail which forms the backcloth to this wltten text comprises a tranquil village cricket game, set in the late afternoon and photographed in warm and

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sumptuous colours. The message supenmposed on to this salubrious scene takes the following format:

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A l l THE JUICE GOODNESS OF FRUIT. YET THERE'S NOTHING TRADITIONAL ABOUT IT CRANBERRY CLASSIC IS THE JUICE DRINK THAT GIVES YOU BOTH GOODNESS AND A N EXCITING, DRY. REFRESHING TASTE. The layout of the text is a crucial determinant of the interpretative path it encourages. Although the product is a 'jmce dnnk' - the maln ingredients of which are normally sugar, water and fruit flavouring one might have assumed that the text actually advertises 'fru~tjurce'. The graphological presentation of the first sentence is especially telling in this respect. Significantly, the sentence IS split into the two sequences ALL THE JUICE and GOODNESS O F FRUIT. serving to create two information units within a single grammatical structure. The placement of these units on separate tines suggests that the product is 'all juice'. so to speak, while at the same time it emphasises the 'goodness' that fruit contams. Reassembling the sentence offers a very different message:'

This section introduces some of the basic prmciples relating to the study of words and vocabulary. The general term which is normally reserved for the 'pool' of words which form the basis of any language is the lencon. Like most technical terms in lingu~st~cs, this one is derlved from Classical Greek: from [exis 'word' Into laikon 'inventory of words'. In most surveys of the English lexicon, it is normal practice to adhere to an important bas~cdistinction between two different types of words. These are known as conrenr words and grarnniaricai words. This distincuon is based not only on what particular words mean but also according to what their function is within a sentence. Here is a simple - if unimaginative - example of a sentence whlch contains both content and grammatical words:

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The cot sot on the mat

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CRANBERRY CLASSIC IS THE JUICE DRINK and, not~ceably,this sequence IS followed quickly by echoes of the 'goodness' theme which opened the extract. The manner by whch a text presents information can often be distinguished from the content of that mformation. As far as one can

tell. there is nothing factually untrue or inaccurate about the claims made on behalf of the product. What is at issue here is the technique by which copywriters shape messages m strategically motivated ways. Some elements are played down while others are foregrounded. The v~sualorgamsation of the text, in particular. serves to manipulate perceptual strategies, creatlng cognitive maps whlch influence the way we process and assimilate information. Ttus section has explored the system of graphology and assessed the creatlve potentla1 which it offers wnters. For the moment, we will leave graphology, in order to introduce some new concepts in language. However, we will return to it later where it will be integrated with the framework of morphology which forms the focus of attention in the next section.

2.3 Morphemes and words

A l l THE JUICE GOODNESS OF FRUIT Here the product emerges more as an approxlmatlon to juice: as a beverage which exhibits some of the characterrstiu of juse. Only later ln the adverusement a thls aspect of the product divulged:

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1 !

Content words, as the term indicates, are those whlch carry substantial mealung and in this sentence they are 'cat'. 'sat' and 'mat'. The function of content words is to name the many objects, qualities, actions and events which are manifest in everyday life. Not surprisingly, thw class of words is enormous, with new content words being added to the language all the time. The addenda of any recent dictionary, with everything from computer-age 'megabyte' to populist 'bonk', illustrates how the lexicon is being expanded to

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FROM S HAPES TO WORDS

account for new developments in a hcet of soclal and technologlcal domains. Nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are the parts of speech wh~chtypically contributi: to the class cf content words. Grammatical words, on the other hand, are rea1i:;ed by parts of speech such as articles ('the', 'a'), ptepositions ('in', 'by'), pronouns ('1'. 'you', 'she') and modal verbs ('would', 'do', 'may'). One of the most Important functions of these items is tc~bind content words together to form coherent, grammatical units. Grammatical words thus provide the structural foundations upon which the building blocks of the lexicon the content words - can l e assembled. Unlike content words. grammatical words form a closed system: they comprise a small and stable class. It IS rare in any language for new grammatical words to be invented or borrowed from another language. Indeed, the last significant change that affeced this part of the English language happened when the Anglo-Sxxon and Old None pronoun systems partially merged after the Viking invasions of the eighth and ninth centuries. Another criterion which distinguishes the two classes of words 1s relatlve length. Grammatical words tend to be short: they are normally of one syllable and many are represented in spelling by less than three graphemes .'I( 'he', 'do'. 'on'. 'or'). Content words are longer and, with the exception of 'ox' and American English's 'ax', are spelt with a minimum of three graphemes. This cnterion of length can also be extended to ihe production of the two sets of words in connected speech. Here grammatical words are often unstressed or generally de-emphasised in pronunciation. For instance, the modal verb 'would' and the negative particle 'not' can both be contracted to shortened forms: 'He'd hate it': 'She isn't there.' Furthermore. in some vaneties of writing, grammatical words may he deleted from sentences altogether, on the proviso, of course, that their baslc sense can still be inferred m the context. Headlines in newspapers are prlme candidates for tha, as the following example from the Independent on Srmday3should demonstrate:

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Collapse of holiday glont feared t>ytrove1 tndustry Those grammatical words which are 'expendable' have been removed. Yet it 1s eisy to constnlct a versaon with all the deleted items reinserted: 'Ttie collapse of a holiday :rant is feared by the travel industry.' Notice, howeve,., that 'of ant1 'by' need to he retamed m

the headline as their removal would lead to ambiguity. Thls type of linguistic reduction is normally displayed by writing varieties which are constrained by space or where economy of language is at a premium. In addition to newspaper headlines, it a not surprising therefore to find such reduction in the linguisticstyle of telegrams and small advertisements. This division between grammatical and content words discussed thus far only partly explains the way in which the lexicon of English is structured. Leaving aside grammatical words for the moment. we need to look more closely at content words. Consider the following set of straightforward content words: happy; walk: horse: like Now consider the following set: unhappy; walked: horses: likable Although the second set is clearly not the same as the first, we would still not want to argue that it comprises 'different' words. Rather, it could be proposed that the items in the second list are systematicaUy related to equivalent Items in the first. What separates the two are the little particles nesting within the words in the second set. These particles ( un-, -ed, -s. -able) have an important grammatical functlon which in many respects resembles the function of the grammatical words discussed above. However, unlike grammatical words, these particles cannot stand alone. They need instead to be bound on to the stem of the content words. What this reveals is that words may be broken down into still smaller units: 'unhappy', for example, may be subdivided into 'un-' and 'happy' The two segments whlch make s are referred to as morphemes. This technical term, with up t h ~ word its predictable Greek etymology, derives from morphe meaning 'form', with the current linguistic term morphology now standing for the 'study of forms'. Returning to the two sets of examples. it can now be proposed that all of the items in the second set of examples contain two morphemes, though each, of course. still constitutes only a,single word. The particles 'un-', '-ed'. '-s' and $-able' we can label bound morphemes in so far as they must be bound to some other unit. The remainder of each word is called the root morpheme. These root

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morphemes are principally derived from content words: they are thus responsible for carrying the bulk of the meaning of the word in which they occur. Although bound morphemes can operate only in conjunction with other elements. root morphemes may stand alone. Indeed. this capacity is illustrated by the first iist of words, wh~chis comprised solely of 'free-standing' root morphemes. These morphologically simple words, which contam only a slngle root morpheme. may be compared to morphologically complex words which contain at least one free morpheme and any number of bound morphemes. Thus, a word like 'desire' may be defined as a root morpheme constituting a single word. 'Desirable', by contrast, is complex. combining a root morpheme with the bound morpheme '-ablep.More complex again is 'undesirability' which comprises one root and three bound morphemes: un +desire + able + ity. Notice also how. in complex words of this sort, the spelling of the root may be altered to conform to the hound morphemes around it. Thus, 'des~re'becomes 'desir-'. while 'beauty' will be transformed into 'heautl-' in the formation of 'beautiful' and of the mcreasingly common complex 'heaut~cian'. Bound morphemes may be subdivided in terms of the way they conjoin with other morphemes. Operating on the general principle that it is a particle which 'fixes' on to another element. the general term reserved for any type of hound morpheme is a&. The position of a bound morpheme in relat~onto the root leads to finer distinctions. Bound morphemes placed m front of the root are referred to as prefrres: those placed ajier the root as su&es. Take, for mstance. the root 'moral'. Although this may stand alone, it also permits extensive affixation through prefixes and suffixes. The prefixes which are available are 'a-' and 'im-' denving 'amoral' and 'immoral'. Suffixes include '-~ty', '-ly' and '-ist' der~vmgrespectively 'morality', 'morally. and 'moralist'. The last of these actually permits further suffixation with '-ic' as m 'moralistic'. Other common prefixes in English are: 'dis-' as m 'disrespect'. 'un-' as ~n 'unreal'. 'bl-' as in 'bifocal' and 'pre-' as in the word 'prefix' itself. Other common suffixes are: '-ness' ('kindness'), '-ment' ('judgment'), ;-s' ('looks') and '-est' ('fastest'). Brief mention needs to be made of a third type of affix. In some languages of the world, though not in English, bound morphemes may be inserted into root morphemes. Such affixes are referred to as ir~Fres.In Bontoc. a language spoken in the Philippmes, the word for

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'strong' is 'fikas'. If Bontoc speakers want to say 'to be strong' they simply insert the particie '-urn-' into the stem of the word deriv~ng 'fumikas'. Similar conversions can be performed on 'kilad' ('red') to y~eld 'kumilad' ('to be red') and 'fusul' ('enemy') to produce 'fumusul' ('to be an enemy'). Latin also permlts a degree of infixing. The root of the word for 'break' is 'rup-', the antecedent of modem English 'rupture'. The formation of the present tense '1 break' requires the infixation of a nasal consonant to form 'rumpo'. Although not a feature of English morphology, infixing none the less provides some potential for ~nnovationin language. Traugott and Pratt (1980: 90) offer the colloquiaf 'fan-dam-tastic' as an example of creative infixing. They also cite e e cummings's 'manunkind', which can be mterpreted as the infixing of 'mankind' with '-un-', The stylistic effect created by this complex, they suggest, n one by which the concept 'man'. m a generic sense, is portrayed simultaneously as not only unkind but also without true kin. Classifying affixes into the11 respective subcategories is one means of dealing with bound morphemes. There is another method. by which they may be classified not in terms of the11 positions m a word hut in terms of the operations they perform on that word. Some morphemes alter the meamng of the word in wkch they occur, some change it to a new word-class while others are simply needed to mamtain the grammatlcality of the sentence ~nwhich the word occurs. To return to some of the earlier examples, the 'un-' morpheme when prefixed on to 'happy' clearly denves the new meanmg of 'not happy', while 'a-' in front of 'moral' produces 'without morals'. The primary function of other types of bound morpheme 1s to alter the word-class of the root on to wh~chthey are fixed. The addition of '-ness' to 'kind'. for example. will produce a noun from an adjective. By the same token. '-ment' when added to 'judge' will convert a verb Into a noun, while '-fur when joined to 'beauty' will derive an adjective from a noun. Morphemes which perform either funct~on- that is to say, alter the meaning or the word-class of the root to which they are s does not attached - are called denvat~onalmorphemes. T h ~ category however account for all of the hound morphemes that have been discussed in this section. The addition of the suffix '-s' to the verb 'look' alters neither its word-class nor its mearung. 'Looks' is still a verb and it doesn't really differ in sense from 'look'. All that the '-s' particle does is to ensure grammatical agreement with another element in the sentence. More specifically, it signals third person

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FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

singular agreement with an antecedent noun. as in 'She looks' or 'John looks'. The same principle applies to the plural morpheme '-s* ('cats and dogs'), the bound morpht:me '-ed' which indicates past tense ('John walked'), and the suffu: '-3' which signals possession ('Mary's tale,': 'John's car'). These morphemes operate as grammatical SigIIpOsb, providin;: information on how the unit to which they are attached relates to other unlts m ihe same grammatical envlronment. Such morphemes are called inflectronal morphemes, or simply rnjiections. Unlike denvationai morphemes. inflections do not alter the meaning or the piirt of speech of the word in which they occur. They are requlrernents of syntax, relating units to each other and Indicating stmcnu:il relations vrithm sentences. Derivational morphemes on the other hand have t h e capacity to alter the meaning potential of a word. in s p t e of the fact that they cannot stand on their own. Here is a short summary of the pr~ncipaldifferences between ~nflectionaland derivational morphemes:

Root morohemelcontent word table; Mary: happy; fate

at!% [none &Iin English1

Derrvatronal morphemes 1 They change either the word-class or the meanlng of the root to which they are attached. 2 They may be prefixes or suffixes, e.]:.dis +respect +ful. 3 They typically occur before any ir~flectlonsm a sequence, e.g. moral + rst + s. Inflect~onalmorplremes 1 They do not change the meanin: or word-class of a word, e.g. amve, arrives and amved are ail verbs. 2 They typically indicate syntactic relations between different words in a sentence. 3 They typically occur at the end of a word, after any derivational morphemes, e.g. moral + ist + s. 4 They are only ever sni6xes. This might now be ;mappropriat*: stage at which to pause and review all of the materiai covered so f.nin this section. In order to give a clearer picture o:!' how the numerous categories and suhcategories interlock. Figure 2.1 is a sixnple schema which plots the relationshipof morphemas to words, a ~ distinguishes d the different types of affix found in English.

Non-root moroheme

m n walks;Ma@: retaken

RQtk ahappy;denvationall [always &?respect; stake

Der~vationalmomheme respectful: moral@; likable

FIGURE 2.1 The system of morphology In order to illustrate how thls model may be applied to actual stretches of language, we may perform a short analysls of the follow~ngmade-up sentence: d

Mary's tale of unhappiness disheartened her friends

The tirst step would be to Isolate the root morphemes In the sentence. These tend to be e~therfree-standing content words or Items whlch have formed morphologcal complexes wlth hound morphemes. Here rs the sentence agam, t h ~ stlme wjth root morphemes hghlighted:

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4(0) Mary's tole of unhappiness disheartened her friends Thls IS what it iooks like with grammatical words mdicated: 4(bl Mary's tole of unhappiness disheortened h e r friends and now with derlvatlonal morphemes htghlighted: 4 [ c l Mow's tole of unhoppiness disheortened her friends and finally, with ~ntlectionalmorphemes showmg: 4(dl Mory's tole of unhappiness disheortened her friends In this way the morphological elements whrch make up the sentence can be sifted out and classified systematically. One of the things that should have emerged from the foregoing survey of the lencon is the degree of soplsticatlon and productivity of the morphological system of English. There exlsts m English a vanety of devices for the formation and derivation of new words. This offers users of the language numerous resources for innovation and creativity. The system is thus continually enriched and modified m order to meet the needs of speakers and writers, and. while some elements become obsolescent, so other new ones are created. An intngulng consequence of this process is the way ~n whlch asymmetnes and gaps develop m the lexlcon. Occasionally morpholog~cal complexes survive into Modem English, while, bizarrely, the root morphemes from wh~chthey are derived do not. Take for instance Modern English's 'uncouth' and 'unkempt'. The posltive terms upon which these words are built are 'couth' and 'kempt' and both are well attested m earlier forms of English. The first. a past tense form of Old English cunnan, onginally meant 'to he able to, to know how to'; Yet only the negatlve denvation survives. Similarly, 'kempt' appears In Chaucer as in 'He kempte his Iokkes'.' (i.e. 'he combed his locks') but again only the prefixed version has been retamed. Part of the explanation for this 1s that the marked forms achieve speclai prominence: 'uncouth' and 'unkempt' represent departures from a norm. someth~ngwhch seems worthy of speclal mention, whereas the root forms which constitute that norm represent the commonplace. Even though the unmarked root forms have since disappeared, speakers are

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senslttve to the asymmetry which results: hence, an undergraduate's recent jocular remark 'He's very couth, you know.' The same humorous turn is also evident m the Mock Turtle's colnage of 'uglification' m Lewls Carroll's Alice's Adverzrures zrz Wonderlarid. When pressed by Alice on the validity of the word, the Gryphon supports the Mock Turtle's lex~calinnovation with inexorable lingulstlc reasonmg: 'Never heard of uglifyingl' it exclaimed. 'You know whot to beoutib is. I suppose?' 'Yes,' soid Alice doubtfully: 'it means to make onvfhing - pretier.' 'Well then,' the Gryphon went on. 'if you don't know what to uglify is you ore o s~mpleton.'~

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Morphological asymmetry creates other types of gap m the lex~con.It is a feature of many words that they exlst only in their root forms, res~stingmorpholog~caidevelopment. Thus, where 'clean' and 'happy' may be prefixed by 'nn-', the roots 'dirty' and 'sad' cannot. This restrict~onIS what permits the experimentation in the following line from e e cummings which IS discussed by Traugott and Pratt (1980: 33). The last word in the sequence is relevant here: [love] IS most mod and moonly and less it shall unbe When prefixed on to verbs like 'do', 'locki and 'screw', the morpheme 'un-' has a reversatwe function. It encourages a reading along the lines of 'reverse the actlon of the process expressed by the root'. Yet here cummmgs forms a complex with the verh 'to be', a verh whch resists prefixrng of this sort, creat~nga new type of sense. Although 'unbe' shares some of the quality of parallel expresstons like 'die' or 'not be'. 11also suggests a process of reversal from a state of berng to a state of not belng which the other items do not. Gaps in the lexicon are also responsible for the process of innovation known as back-formatron. The standard procedure for denving new words IS for the root to precede the complex: 'write', for example, will convert naturally to 'writer' just as 'read' yields 'reader'. In back-formation, however. the complex form actually precedes the more s~mpleform. The verb 'beg' is a prime illustration of

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

this process. Historically, it did not, :as mght be imagmed, produce the root for 'beggar': rather, it was ;actually derived from 'beggar', What appears to have happened is that 'beggar' has been interpreted as 'agentive' in the sense of 'someone aho begs', whereas the genuine etymological origin of the word is 'beghard', a name for a medieval brotherhood. This re-interpretation rtr misanalysis - whatever one chooses to call it - resul1:s in the alignr~entof 'beg' with other regular verb-noun paradigms like 'read/reatler' and 'wntei writer'. Backformation in English .-. - is ilso resoonsible for the derivation of the verh 'burgle' from the noun 'burglar' as well as the verb 'diagnose' from the noun 'diagnosis'. In fact, new verbs enter the lex~conall the tlme through this process: witness recent addihons like 'giftwrap', 'peddle', 'enthuse', 'gatecrash' - all of which lave been derived from noun complexes. Back-format~onis also widely employed in the format~on of nonce-words (words made un 'for the nonce'. for use at a snecific r-----moment) wh~chdo not take hold in the lexicon but none the less provide an outlet for humour and wit in everyday interact~on.It can thus account for a recent remark by z therapist friend who said she was going out to 'therap' someone. or a former colleague who, when informed about a particiilar student's r,ulnerahility, replied 'Yes, you could easily vul him'! area of the E.nglish lexicon is its capacity to Another product~v~: form new words by con~blnmgtwo or more root morphemes. The words derived from this highly flexible process are known as compounds. T h ~ capacity s for compoundirg can be attributed m part to the German~corigins of English. lnde.:d, some words which survlve from Old English were originally com.?ounds even though the roots which formed the compound have t,een lost. Our modem word 'nightingale' is histoncaliy derived from a compound of niht 'night' and galan 'to sing' prodrtcmg the rather charming 'night-singer'. All sorts of permutations a r possible m the formation of compounds. with the major word c1a:;ses able to enter into combinations with a wide range of other item?. Table 2.1 is a matrix which illustrates the compounding possibilitiej of Modem Ilnglish. For example, the first element of the word 'hovercraft' is a vt:rb and the second a noun. In the compound 'bitterswet:t' both elements are adjectives. The principle of compounding lends ~tselfwell to creativity 1x1 language. Just look at the way it IS employed in the follow~ng paragraph from the 'Proteus' episode of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922)? ~

Airs romped around him, nipping and eager otrs. They ore coming, woves. The whitemaned seahones, chomp~ng, brrghtwindbridled, the steeds of Manonoon.

I

TABLE 2.1 Matrix of compounding possibilities First element

~~~

Verb Noun Adjectrve Grammatical word

Second element Verb

Noun

Adjective

Grammatical word

st~rfry sightsee deepfry offload

hovercraft bullshit goldfish outdoors

holdall seasick bittersweet overdue

takeaway handout blackout without

~

Two roots make up 'whitemaned', while there are three in 'bnghtwmdbridled'. Compounding of this sort offers the potentla1 to create rich densities of meaning, with individual content words compressed Into multiple conceptual clusters. Notice also how in the environment of references to 'steeds', '-bridled' '-maned' and 'Mananaan' (a Celtic god of the sea), even an established English compound like 'seahorse' can acquire new significance. Before closing the more theoretical part of this chapter, it is worth considering a few more types of word formatton. Leaving aside the stra~ghtfonvardborrowing of foreign words, here is a checklist of a few of the other commod word-formation processes in English, along with definitions and illustrat~ons: Type

Definition

Examples

blend

A fusion of two root morphemes, where only parts of the words are joined and the remainder deleted

'breathalyser' (breath 'Chunnel' (Channel + tunnel); 'smog' (smoke + fog)

clippmg Where a word of two or more syllables 1s shortened, without a change m meanmg or function

i analyser);

.pram' (perambulator); 'flu' (influenza); 'exam' (exammahon); 'fridge' (refrigerator)

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

acronym

1

Words formed with the initial letters of a phrase

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

'nylon' (New York + London): 'WaaP (Women's Auxiliary Air Force); 'AIDS' (Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome)

This survey of word-formation concludes the introduction to the lexicon of English. The task now will be to investigate the ways m which the materlal assembled m this and the prev~oussectlon can be used m textual analysis.

2.4.1 Using linguistic models for stylistic anaiysis This is the first part of the practicai component of the chapter. in this subsection, an analysis will be provided of a poem by the American modernist poet e e cummings; m the next, the analysis is developed further into a workshop activity. A few short examples of cumm~ngs's poetry have already been used as illustrations in the previous section. Thls should have offered a foretaste of how productive the language of this writer 1s for graphological and morphological analysis. In this subsection, a more sustained analysis of a complete text will be undertaken. One toplc that will nor recelve a great deal of attention here is the general question of the literary 'ment' of cumrmngs's work. This is sunply not the place to provide a detailed evaluation of cummings's s contribution to American literature, or to offer a case for h ~ inclusion withln or exclusion from the canon of 'great' literature. These issues are best left to the students of cummings, who, it must be added. are thoroughly divided both on the quality of his poetry and its relationship to the literary canon. Fnedman, for example, while acknowledging the 'aura of inadequacy' which attaches to cummings's reputation, none the less maintains that he is 'one of the great creators of our tlme' (Friedman 1972: xi). Comparably ambivalent statements have been offered on the literary genre to which the cummings oeuvre should belong: classifications range from 'nihilist' to 'romantic anarchist' (Wegner 1965: 63). Whatever position one takes on canonical or genenc issues, the linguistic expenmentatlon which much of cummmgs's work displays a welt suited to the type of linguistic frameworks assembled over the last two sections.

The text chosen for analysis is one of the many short untitled poems in the volume 95 Poems whlch cummings published in 1958. In the volume's consecutive sequence of ninety-five poems. it is numbered 55 and its first line is 'you no',' There is no motivation behlnd this choice other than that it appears to lend itself to the type of stylistic exercise in which we are engaged. It certainly hasn't received much attention from the critical establishment: my scan of the major studies of cummings revealed not a single reference to this poem. Although no single text IS likely to display the full range of graphological and morphological devices identified in sections 2.2 and 2.3, thls one should none the less offer a locus for exploring many such techniques. Set in rules overleaf, then, is poem number '55'. A cursory inspection of this text should prompt connections with the material presented in the previous two sections. In linguistic terms, the poem explolts the interactlon between the written system of language, principles of word-formation and psycholinguistic perceptual strategies. Deployed throughout the text are devices which manipulate the visual medium of language, devices which are supplemented with deviations from standard word-formation. This combrnation of visual tricks and striking morphological structure can be vlewed as a product of the complex intersection of the graphological and morphological systems. Beginning with graphology, we can now investigate more systematically the ways in which these effects are created. The poem bears all the characteristlu of the cummings stylistic blueprint. Typical of hrs work is the 'deformation' of standard orthography, layout and punctuation. Perhaps the best known of these techniques is the use of lower case for items which would normally be printed in upper case, such as the first word of a line or the personal pronoun 'I' -not to mention the spelling of the poet's own name. By contrast, when upper case ISused, it is used in the most unlikely of environments: in thls text it is restricted exclusively to comparative and superlative terms ('Less'; 'Most'; 'More'). These terms thus become foregrounded in a text where lower case is the norm. Other significant graphological devices include the logogram '&'. This feature was discussed early m section 2.2. where it was pointed out how this and related symbols are situated at the extreme of the wntten system of language. These symbols have no direct spoken counterpart; rather they need to be 'translated' into words. In this instance, then, the logogram <&> will 'stand for' the word 'and'.

--

FROM S H A P E S TO WORDS

you no

I

FROM S H A P E S TO WORDS

The use of the logogram is supplemented by the extensive use of parenthesis, often with both types of symbol tled together so closely that they are adjoinmg. Thls creates patterns like that at line 6:

lice nobod Y wonts Less(not to men

body wonts Most

butiing it mildly much)

be be cause ever

Where logograms and parenthesis are used to close up elements within a line, the line layout itself serves to break up linguistic elements. Each single line of text is followed by a two-line space, whrch is in turn followed by a cluster of three lmes of text. Thrs cluster IS followed by another two-line space before the whole pattern begins again. The shortness of each individual line makes the text almost columnar in format. In fact, apart from the final line (which will be discussed later), no line contains more than five syllables, and the average for the text as a whole comes out at around two syllables per line. All of these graphological features intersect subtly with patterns at the level of morphology, so it is impossible to explore the stylistic effects of any one level in isolation. Operating in tandem with graphological design, for instance, is a morphological technique which exploits the principles of word-formation. Line endings are used to produce morphological breaks, and these breaks subvert the reading process by forcing a senes of perceptual 'double-takes'. The specific strategies which engender this linguistic 'backtracking' can be grouped into four types of morphological device. The &st of these is where a word a simply broken into two parts, with neither of these parts resembling an item which could make sense on its own. Put another way, the two resulting segments do not resemble free morphemes. Here is an example of this type of breakage, with the word 'nobody' becoming:

wants more

I&more &

still More) whot th,?

--

hell ore we all mo~tic~ons?

46

Thls type of breakage is the most lingu~sticallyunproductive of the four in that neither 'nobod' nor 'y' resembles any other meaningful unlts in the lexrcon. The same cannot he said, however, of the remaming three types of morphologrcal expenmentatron in the poem. Ail three of these strategres are based on the pnnclple that parts of some words happen purely by chance to resemble other root morphemes.

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

The first strategy involves maktng a split in a word so that the first s 'notice' is element looks like a free morpheme. Through t h ~ process, carved up into 'no' and 't~ce'(lines 1-21? with only the first element form~nga 'real' word. In this instance. tt produces the negattve marker 'no', a grammatical word. Similarly, 'mentton' becomes 'men' and 'tton' (lines 5-6) and while 'men' resembles an actual content word in the Iexlcon, 'tion' has no such counterpart. The cruc~alpoint 1s that none of the words so broken up 1s actually a morpholog~cal complex tn the first place. None of them contains more than one morpheme. The particle '-tion' is not a suffix of 'men' and 'men-' is certainly not a prefix of 'tion'. Rather, the cummings techntque 1s built on analogy: words are fragmented as if they were genuine morphological complexes. Moreover. the distance which 1s placed between these fragments contributes further to the illus~onthat they can be Interpreted as Independent units. Consider, for example, the manner in whtch 'nottce' and 'mentton' are split:

between the two elements stmply ensures that the cognltlve volre face IS all the easter to brlng off. Interestmgly, the same tactlc is employed on the rematntng example from thts category of morpholog~calbreakage. The ~nterpretatlonof 'ever' at tine 16 needs to be re-asstmilated to 'everybody' when 'ybody' appears after a two-line separation: be be cause ever

The third type of morpholog~cal breakage IS effectively a reversal of the second. In tlus category it is the second and not the first part of the split whtch resembles a free morpheme. The only exponent of thts type tn the text occurs at lines 7-8:

you no &i

fice nobod y wonts

Less(not to men

Unlike the strategy employed for the hreak-up of 'nobody', a two-line space IS used here for both of these splits. Placlng a substantial gap between these segments helps to tngger the type of linguistic trompes l'oeil and perceptual tncks whlch were discussed in section 2.2. Because the reading process is predicated upon the retrieval of coherence and grammaticality, there is a tendency to search out chunks which look like complete units of meanmg. The appearance of 'men' at the end of the fifth iine looks precisely like one such unit. However, the later addition of 'tion' requires a revtsion of the original hypothes~s,and the insertion of a relatively substantla1 gap

ob serve no Here the second part is the one whtch has the same shape as another Item m the lextcon. But agatn the break 1s 'false' tn that -ob' 1s not a bound morpheme whtch can he prefuted on to root morphemes. Like all the other types. thts type of break creates only the illusion of a genutne morpholog~calsplit. The fourth and final type IS somewhat more soplust~cated. T h ~ 1s s where a split a placed so that the resulttng components bot/~ resemble complete words tn the lexlcon. A sustatned pattern of thls type b e ~ n at s line 13: may

The grammatical words. 'maybe' and 'because', are each broken up Into segments. These segments are not constituent morphemes

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

because both words comprise only a slngle morpheme. Rather, the split is manipulated so that each par1 resembles another morpheme. Thus. 'maybe' yields tlie modal auxiliary 'may' and the verb 'be', while 'because' produc(:s 'be' and th~:content word 'cause'. Even a word like 'nobody', which had previc.usly been subjected to the first type of breakage at lines 3-4, can be broken m a way that produces other morphemes. So. 2.1 lines 8-9, it now produces 'no' and 'body' The different types of morphological device employed throughout the poem can be captured quite: neatly by means of a matrix like Table 2.2.Thls demonstrates the field of possible lexical p e n u t a tions. ranging from the breaking of a word into two meaningless chunks to the production of two elements which are the same as other free morphemes in the lexicon.

TABLE 2.2 Morphological devices in poem '55' First portproddces 'fiee' morpheme

Secona pnrtprodrrces 'free'morpheme

Example m text

x x

'nobod' + 'y' 'men' + 'tion' 'ob' + 'serve' 'be' + 'cause'

\I

i

Of course. as ha:; been pointed out, all this morphoiogrcal experimentation a buill. on an analol:y with genulne morphological complexes. All of'the examples covered so far - with the possible exception 'nobody' - have been dividsd into 'false' constituents. For instance. whereas a word like 'becllm' genuinely comprises the bound morpheme 'be' and the rocot 'calm', the word 'because' exhibits no such parallel structure. Similarly, while the root 'observe' may be prefixed and suffixed to creale 'unobserved', the root itself cannot be subdivided into more minlmal forms. The same principle extends, for that matter. to the root 'riotse'. It is this type of 'breakage by analogyi whlch fi~rmsthe stylirtlc cornerstone of the text and creates the perceptual 11:-orientations which permeate the poem. Before assessing the implicatiot~sof these techniques, a bnef word is necessary on tlie last line ol the poem. In many respects. this line carries a great deal of stylistic weight as it breaks many of the textual patterns established prior to this point. Its relative length. for one thing, sets it apart from the cther lines of the poem. It also

displays a degree of grammatical wellformedness not shared by the s coherence foregrounds it in a remainder of the text: mdeed. ~ t very text where linguistic fragmentation has become the norm. Moreover, where the grammatical mood of the entire poem up to this point has been declarative (the i o n standardly used for maklng statements), it switches twice in the space of the final seven words. The sequence 'what the hell' is erclan~afive,while the final clause 'are we all morticians?' is mterrogntwe. The poem thereby concludes with a grammatical structure used to ask a (perhaps rhetorical) question. The final word of this sequence - itself the longest word of the entlre poem - produces what might be best described as a 'morphologlcal pun'. In American English the word 'morticiani performs the same function as British English's 'undertaker'. In terms of morphology, the American English version is built From the Romance-language root 'mort-' and the derivational morpheme '-ician', to form a complex which means something along the lines of 'practitioner of death'. In fact, the word 'beauticlan' discussed in section 2.3 is constructed on a similar principle. However, given the environment in which it occurs in the text. 'morticrau' acquires new significance. In the three-line cluster which precedes the last line. the comparator 'more' is repeated three times. ultimately receiving the large case which is reserved for only a very few words in the poem.This lingulstrc context projects a second reading for 'mortician': one whereby it may be interpreted as a complex derived from the items 'more' and 'tician'. The literal meaning of this complex would be someone who practises the concept 'more', or to push the pun a little further, a 'tician' of 'moreness'. As to the thematic significance of thrs complex. it plays presumably on the opposition between 'more' and 'less' upon which the bulk of the meaning of the text rests. The constant play on these opposlng values, heightened through the use of upper case and culminating in the pun of the finai line, constitutes a fairly direct critique of acquisitiveness, consumerism and avarice. Readers interested in extending the scope of this critique may wish to argue, on the basls of their analysis, that there are still greater significances embedded within the text. It may perhaps be interpreted as a covert attack on western capitalism, a disguised call for responsible citizens to reduce therr living standards, or, slmply, as an impassioned plea to everyone to cease to be 'ticians' of 'more'. So far in the analysis, quite a lot of attentton has been paid to the formal properties of the morphological and graphological devlces

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

of the poem. But what can be said about thejirncrron of these dev~ces and how dependent upon them is the meaning which is projected by text? One Important consequence of the intersection between these unusual patterns of graphology and morphology is the effect it has on the reading process. A type of 'game' developed, in which two readmg strategies are brought into competition with one another. The first of these is the familiar line-by-tme readmg strategy, where the eye makes gradual progress vertically down the page. However, thls strategy 1s challenged by the morpholog~calfragmentation noted above where vertical processing is disrupted, and where instead a lund of 'horizontal' processing is encouraged. On thls horizontal axis. lines may be interpreted individually as little isolated statements. Because of the boundaries strategically placed around them. sequences like 'not to men' at line 5 look at first glance like selfcontmed unlts of meaning. Further progression down the vertlcal axrs will lead to the reconstruction of 'ment~on'horn 'men', and so the horizontal reading will eventually be overridden. Of course, thls reading game is completely invalidated if any attempt is made to read the poem aloud - such IingulsUc expenmentauon is almost entlrely dependent on the visual system of language. To that extent. it is 'poetry of the eye' and not 'poetry of the voice', with cummings hunself reputedly remarking that his work was meant to be seen and not heard (Dumas 1974: 72). In order to give some idea of how dependent the text is on its graphology, readers may care to try to read the poem aloud for themselves. You will, I unagine, he faced with two mutually exclusibe options. The first of these would be to attempt it by preserving the horuontal axis at the expense of the vertical. Llne endings could he interpreted as pauses and so each line would be read In isolation, with no attempt to reconstruct the text on the verucal axis. This would sound extremely odd and be vutually unintelligible to any audience who did not have the written verslon in front of them. Moreover problems of pronunciat~onare likely to be encountered with sequences like 'uon least)&? and 'ybody'. In adoptlng the second reading option, the text could be reassembled so that the dismptlons were removed and be read as if none of the graphological and morphological devices existed. But effectively (re)punctuatmg the poem defeats entirely the purpose and funct~onof its original stylistlc itructure. More importantly, this (refpunctuation of the text would bnng it close to standard punctuauon and orthography, producing the followmg less than exhilarating aphonsm:

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

You notice nobody wants less (nof to mention leostj, and I observe nobody wonts most (not. pulling it mildly, much). Moybe because everybody wants more ond more and still more. What the hell! Are we all morticians?

A less than profound critique perhaps of the soc~almores whlch underpin western culture. If anything, such a reconstruction reveals the amount of stylistic currency that can be gamed by the exploitation of language's v~sualmedium. Now stripped of its key linguistic devices. the text becomes, literally, prosaic, and the message which 11 projects IS rendered bland and unimagmative. Once the trlcks of the eye are removed, the poem's dependency on the stylistlcs of the written mode - perhaps at the expense of everything else is revealed. The rendering down of a 'deformed' text into a more prosalc version is a practlce which can be extended product~velyin a number of different directions. It facilitates, for example, a klnd of stylistlc reversal, enabling the conversion of straghtfonvard texts into defamiliarised ones. In other words. if a list of suitable morpholog~cal and graphological operations can be collated, then thrs list can form the stylistic bluepnnt for creative and amusing 'deformations' of language's written mode. The next subsect~onwill outline a practical language-based activity whlch is based precisely on this prrnclple and which is designed to enrich knowledge about the morphology and graphology of English further.

-

2.4.2 Extending the analysis: a workshop It m~ghtbe useful to beg~nthls subsection by summarrsing the stylistic strategies which were teased out in the course of the analysts in the prevlous subsection. Isolating an inventory of key linguist~c devices allows us to explore the ways in which these operations may he performed on other texts. Here then is the basic stylistic 'blueprint' for the cummlngs text. set out in the form of a list of morpholog~caland graphological axioms:

O M SHAPES TO WORDS

i

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

Strategy I Disrupt predictable patterns of l a ~ g eand small case, plac~ngheavy emphasls on the use of small case in unusual envrronments. Straregy 2 Deploy extensrvely fi:atures that a-e exclusive to language's wntten mode. making parttcular use of logograms and parenthetical symbols. Strategy 3 Break up lines of ccennected pros.: to form shorter, grammatically mcomplete segments arrange thes~:segments m a columnar format. Srralegy 4 Split up words Into smaller particle:;. These particles may be anything from two 'meanmglcss' segments to two particles which resemble genuine words in the lexicon. Dev~atlonin language remalnj devlant for only a linnted penod of tlme, and when disruptive patterns become established tn the text they begin to assume a kmd of noirn of the11 own. Once thls 'norm of oddity' 1s establislied. the way IS prepared for a further type of stylisuc exploitat~on.Strategy 5 subverts those very patterns whlch were strik~ngin the first place: Srrategy 5 Break any of the patterns established through the use of Strategies 1-4. For example: (a 8 use upper case where the text has established a dominant pattern of small case; ( b ) Increase line length or word length m the environment of shorter lines or words; (c) change the grammattcat mood if a particular tvpe has become the textual norm (e.g. declarative to mterrogattve).

P

Once a stylistic blueprint has been abstracted from the analysls In thls manner. it can be re-shaped into a set of creative and practical exercises. Here, for example. is a simple workshop actlvlty that I designed for use in my undergraduate English language classes. The activity permits experimentation within the parameters of the blueprint derived from the stylistic analysis. Thls one is designed to supplement the anal:& of cummings's poem 55, although it can easily be adjusted to account for virtually any other text in the cummlngs oeuvre.

Readers may he interested to know what to expect in terms of the outcome of such an exercise, so here are the results of a partlcularly successful session with a small group of second-year British undergraduates taking a lauguage-based option in 1991. Of the eight short texts elicited through Activity 1, the following was selected for graphological and morphological embellishment. It is the musing of one participant on the important question of leather jackets and gravlty: My leother flying jacket cannot fly. Neither con ptanos fly and they ore quite heavy. So how the hell does a lumbo let fly? The group then embarked on Activity 2, applylng the set of strategies 1 to 5 identified above. The result is given in the ruled text overleaf. Hopefully the broad principles which underpin the transformation of the text should be clear by now, so a detailed explanation of how the 'poem' was produced will not he necessary. Instead, a few general comments on the manner by which the blueprint has been ~mplementedshould help. Predictably, extensive use is made of lower case where upper case is expected. However, this pattern IS itself subverted when upper case is deployed in unexpected environments (see 'Ry' and 'Jack' in lines 1and 2). Features of the written mode of language, such as logograms and parenthetical symbols, proliferate in the text (e.g. lines 6 and 10). Sentences are broken up so that a columnar format is produced, while words are split so that a range of new forms emerges. Some lexical splits produce acceptable units, such

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

my leolher Fly ing Jock et con not Fly

11up later. So taken was he wlth the product that he actually offered st to a umverssty literary magazme whereupon it was promptly published! To my knowledge (and perhaps thankfully, gsven its ongms) the true provenance of the 'poem' has never been divulged.

2.5 Summary

n (either con Pio? no1 s Fly &the y'ore . . . quit. eh? eovy So Ho W. T. he hell1 do es o lurnb? O. jet1 Fly

'B

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

as the bteak-up of 'piano' at lines 7-8 into the proper name 'Pia' and the negative partscle 'no'. Other splits produce meaningless particles. like k g ' , 'et', and 'n' at lines 2. 3 and 5 respectively. These lexscal breaks often create linguistic rrompes l'oeil, where the lnitial interpretations have to be revssed in the light of later tea. The seemingly independent unit 'quit' at line 12, for instance, needs to be assimilated to 'quite' in the light of subsequent segments. By the same token, the first line ('my leather Fly'), which has the appearance of a conceptually complete unit, needs to be revrsed progressively in the light of the next two lines. Perceptual strategies are thus manspulated in a manner similar to the technique exploited in the original cummings poem. By way of a footnote. it is worth commenting on the fate of the 'deformed' 'text which was produced m the course of the present workshop. The student who was responsible for the orrgsnal composition made a note of the group's embellished versson and then typed

As is conssstent with the general rationale of the book, this chapter has sought to integrate linguistic theory and practice, offenng a selection of critical tools whsch can he employed in textual analys~s. In sectsons 2.2 and 2.3, a model for the analysls of graphology and morphology was developed. This framework was then applied to a short e e cummsngs poem in section 2.4. Appended to thss analysis was a proposed workshop m stylistic,, the object of which was to develop a fuller understanding of the theoretical model. When desigmng the linguistic model, it seemed good sense to make st as powerful as possible so that it would be able to handle graphological and morphological devices beyond those realised sn a single short poem. Certainly, no one text will he likely to realise every possible permutation, so it is best to be prepared for other types of Innovation. Furthermore, there are a number of types of morphological and lexical deviation which, although not exhibsted by poem 55. occur repeatedly in the cummings 'corpus'. A glance through collectsons of hls work reveals a number of recumng stylistic formulae, all of which can he comfortably accommodated withn the present model. An especially common strategy is the idiosyncratic use of denvauonal morphemes to derive unusual. 'nonce' complexes. The prefix 'un', for example. 1s regularly comblned with normally incompatible roots to form complexes like 'unstrength and 'unhe' (see section 2.3). Suffixes, if anything, are even more widely exploited by cummmgs. Commonly occurring bound morphemes like 'ish'. 'ness' and 'ly' are tacked on to roots with whch they would never normally conjoin, yielding constructions l i e 'neverBh', 'muchness' and 'happeningly'. This process may even be duplicated within ssngle stems: 'silverlyness' mcorporates not one but two suffures ('ly' and 'ness'). An extension of thss tactic is the use of grading suffixes along with roots which would not normally permit gradation. Thus, nougradable terms l i e 'last' and 'chief receive the superlatsve 'est' suffix to produce 'lastest' and 'chsefest'. Even if the root is gradable, the 'err

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WIORDS

suffix is often preferred when the strict~reof grammaticality demands the intensifier 'more'. On this pattern, the adjective 'beautiful' will not become 'more beautiful' but rather 'beiiutifuler'. The compounding of one or more root morphemes is also common, resulting in constructions l i e 'yellowgreen' and 'mostpeople'. Finally, new forms are also created by analogy with the process of back-formation (see section 2.3), with new verbal forms being derived from related nouns. This explains the conversion of 'Septembe::' Into a verbal particle in the sequence 'septembering arms of year extend'. The central aim of the chapter has been to use textual analysis as a means of obtaining insights into a complex feature of English language. Of necessity, literary-criticai responses to aspects of cummings's work have been. largely overlooked. Now that cummings's style has been examined in detail and oiher texts have been generated on the basis of h ~ stylistic s profile, readers may be interested in what the cntics have made of cummmgs's e:cperimentation with language. The many essays on thm: style of curnmings offer little agreement on the function of the linguistic techniques which have become his stock-in-trade. With pa~ticularregard to the dev~cesidentified in the course of our own analysis, critical commentary has been diverse to the point of absurdity.The use of parenthesis has probably received more attention than all the other Imtten mode markers which cummings employs, and has also been subject to most diffuse and inconsistent interpretahons. Kidder (1979: 13-14), while presenting a set of rules on how to 'read' cummmgj, offers the following straightforward piece of a'dvlce: 'Treat pare~ithesiscarefully . . .On some occasions.. .we must ignore the parentheses.' No less obscure is Baum's (1972: 112) claim that parenthesis suggests 'the s~multaneousness of imagery' and highlights cumnnngs's 'extreme honesty as a poet'. The extensive deployment of lower case has also become the sub~ectof much comment, with a great deal of interest in the small case personal pronoun 'i'. Watson (1972: 40) points out that 'the little naked swaggenng "i" asserts its reference to one real and s~nglebeing', while Baum (1972: 115, contends that 'By rejecting the pronoun "I" Cummings [SIC]assumes a casual humility' which 'dissociates the author from the speaker cf the poem'. Much discussion has centred on cummings's prolific use of logograms, which are often referred to by the critics ;is typographs or, erroneously, as ideograms. T o Wegner (1965: 157) they are s~mply'amoment of coalesced awareness', but to Dumas (1974: 72) they r:onstrtute 'a means by which

j ! I

j I

! !

1

nature's dynamic process may be glimpsed, and the glimpse be passed on to the reader. who may thereby achieve transcendental v~s~on'. Readers may assess for themselves the validity of these interpretations, but on this evidence, it would appear that cumm~ngs's experimentation with language generates a great deal of interpretal shows just how tive 'space'. The diversity of c r ~ t ~ c acommentary variable mterpretations can be. It also problematises the methods by wh~chcritics evaluate lnnovatlon and creativity in language. While the remit of t h ~ schapter has simply been to provide a systematic introducr~onto graphology and morphology, at least foundations will have been laid for a method of critical interpretation - a method which is, moreover, predicated upon a thorough workmg knowledge of how linguistic systems operate in the context of modernist poetry.

Suggestions for further reading

Readers who w~shto lnvestlgate further the lingu~stictopics covered m t h ~ chapter s should find the followng matenal useful. Fromkm and Rodman (1978: 138-59) offer a useful and accessible introduct~onto bas~cmorphology, while a more techn~caland advanced study of the subject can be found in Matthews (1974). Two books specifically on wnting systems are Sampson (1985) and Coulmas (1989). A comprehens~vesurvey of word-formation m English IS Adams (1973).

Stylistic applications An extremely good stylistic application of both morphology and graphology 1s provided by Traugott and Pratt (1980: Chapters 2 and* 3). In addition to the specific references cited over the course of the chapter, stylist~cexplorations of this aspect of the language system include: Leech (1969: 39-44), on 'deviation' in poetic language: Carter (1989)- on stylistics and 'concrete poetry'; Van Peer (1993), on graphology and concrete poetry. Van Peer has also wntten a stylistic analysis of e e cummings's poem 'yes is a pleasant country' (1987). He uses a cognitive model of language to investigate the relationship between reading strategies and literary comprehension.

Chapter

3

meanings: an introduction to lexical semantics 0

*

*

3.1

Introduction

62

3.2

Words and mennings

64

3.3

Words and combinations

77

3.4

Techniques for stylistic analysis

84

3.4.1 Cioze procedure and stylistic analysls

85

3.4.2 Muftlple cholce text and stylistrc analysls

93

3.5

Summary

96

Suggestions for further rending

98

-

1

WORDS AND MEANINGS

#

! i

i 3.1 Introduction

1 j

That famous philosopiier of language, Humpty Dumpty, has t h ~ s to say on the meaning of words: "'When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone. "it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor les:;."'I Were Dumpty's princ~ple to gain un~versalacceptance amongt language-users. the outcome would be linguist~canarchy. As speal:ers would cease to be accouutable for anything t h q said, so a potentially infinite number of meanlngs could be mapped on to an:<s~ngleword they uttered. The linguistic 'contract' that governs everyday interaction would s~mpfy break down and any r8:cognisahle s).stem of verbal communlcatlon instantly evaporate. For example, rsaders of this hook may have happily assumed that they were reatling an introduction to English language. Yet were its author to invoke the Dumpty pnnciple, all sorts of meanings could be ascribed to it on a whim: it could become, variously, a discussion ,of hee-keepin:, a treattse on the life cycle of the mackerel, a discourse on medie~.alhygiene and so on. Outside the interactive world of Alice's Wor.derland, the Dumpty princ~ple does not, of course. obtarn, and intrrlocutors can rest assured that there 1s at least some inyeractive consc:nsus about what a word means. Although never absolute or immutable. words routinely designate specific objects, processes and concepts. and these designations form part of the very bedrock of coherent human commun~cation. Explaining precis~:ly what. and how, a word means will be the maln alm of t h ~ chapter. s There will fi>llowan outline of the princ~pal types of lexical meanliig m English. as well as an account of the ways in whiah word-meanmgs interact with one another. Poetry will, again, form the nucleus: for much of the discussion of this aspect of the language system. although it will be stressed throughout that creatlve or striking patterns of meaning are a feature of many types of discourse.

-

i!

It has never been easy to attach an exhausuve, self-contained meaning to a word which will account sufficiently for its use in all contexts. Decisions about where exactly to place a boundary on meantng have exercised linguists and philosophers a great deal; indeed. even the meaning of the concept 'meaning' has itself come under scrutiny in the relevant literature. The task of specifying what a word means is influenced by at least four key factors. F i s t of all. meanings shift over time, which is why dictionary-makers often have difficulty keep~ngup with the meaning of a word in its current usage. A case in point is the word ctrauvm~r.Whereas its 'official' meaning designates someone who is distrustful of foreigners. it rarely means anything other than 'sexist' when applied in popular usage. A second factor is that the meaning of a particular word may vary in relation to the context in wh~chit is used. Take, for example, the word terrific. Like chauv~nrsr.this term has undergone a change over time: in this instance, the original meaning of 'instilllig terror' has been replaced by its current funct~onas an expression of high approbation. Yet even in current use, the term displays considerable diversity of meaning. Where it is wholly positlve under one set of conditions ('That film was absolutely rerrific!') the very opposlte will he intended by its use in a context like: 'Terrijc! You've just erased all my data from the computer!' A third factor affecting word-meaning arises from the cross-cultural differences that may pertain between users of the same language. For instance, if you are deemed polit~callyliberal in the United Kingdom you can a t least consider yourself a tolerant individual: yet to be called so in North Amer~cacarries with it no such guarantee of integrity. The fourth and final factor concerns the many pairs of words in English which display seemingly identical meanings. For instance, while brotherly and fraternal purportedly 'mean' the same thing, their privileges of occurrence - as well as the varylng degrees of formality which each conveys - are tn no way identical. It is factors such as these whlch have polansed debate about word-meaning Into two main schools of thought. One school argues for a strictly context-free theory of meaning which is divorced from actual usage: the other for a contextually informed model which examines words in their natural environments of use. In view of our stylistic emphasis, both approaches will need to be represented if our basic schema IS to provide a workable and coherent account of

WORDS AND MEANINGS

I I

WORDS AND MEANINGS

1

words and the11 meanings. This chapter therefore tnes to establish a model that accounts for core meanings but which still grants usage and context a say. The first step towards this double goal IS taken in the next section, where a survey of the principal types of word meaning in English is undertaken. The perspective widens in section 3.3 as attention turns to the types of meaning patterns that are created when words combine with other words. Section 3.4 proposes a set of techniques for stylistic analysis and applies a selection of these techniques to literary texts. The concluding section. section 3.5, suggests a set of extensions to the analyses and assesses the theoretical implications of semantically orientated studies of wordmeaning.

1

i

/

! i

2 3

a red herrlng it's raining cats and dogs

4

to go for o song

6

to give up the ghost

These constructions (and many others like them in English) express meanings which cannot be directly accessed from the sum of their constituent words. Rather, interpretation rests on the understanding that idioms are fixed expressions and that, moreover, rigid constraints govern the manner by which their component words are selected and combined. Idioms cannot therefore be rearranged grammatically or embellished with other compatible items. If they are, the results are distinctly odd:

3.2 Words and meanings Semar~ncsis the study of meamng. The study of meanlng encornpasses unlts of language which vary m size. from parts of words and sounds nght up to whole ciauses and sentences. The basic unit of analysis ~n semantics is the seme and t h s term is often appended as a suffix to other structural terms to indicate which precise unit is being described. Morpheme, grapheme and phoneme, as we saw in the previous chapter, are units which are thus derived. The term lexical semanrics is specifically reserved for the study of wordmeaning, while the term for a unit of meantng in lexical semantics IS [creme. Before embarlng on a survey of lexical semantics, an Important caveat needs to be heeded and it IS this: there IS nor aibvays a one-to-one correspondence between iexemes and words. Thls unfortunate asymmetry arises largely because of the special case of idiom and related constructions in Eng1ish.l An idiom may compnse many words, but it realises just one lexeme. Take, for instance, the following colloquial expression:

which corresponds roughly to the single umt of meaning 'died'. The same p ~ c i p l is e at work in this next set of idiom:

3[01 it's raining dogs and cots 3(b] it's pourlng cots and dogs 3(c\ it's rainlng poodles ond ginger toms Furthermore, idioms are normally language-specific and will collapse if translated literally into another language. As a brief test of this thesis, you could attempt to translate the examples above into any other language with which you are familiar. Here. for instance, are some over-literal conversions into French: i

1 [a) II a donne un coup d e pied dons le seau 2(a) un horeng rouge

1

he kicked the bucket

1

3(d) il pleut les chats et les chiens 4(a1 aller pour une chonson

Even though bucker and kick would constitute two lexemes in most contexts, their individual meanings are nullified within the restricted semantic doman of this idiom. In other words, it is not the Individual component words of (1) hut the entire sequence 'kicked the bucketi

5(o) malode comme un perroquet

6(ai obandonner le phantom I

WORDS AND MEANINGS

This 'franglais' illustrates well the patent nonsense - if not the humour! -that results from the 1itt:ral translation of idioms from one language into another. Most traditional accounts of lexical semantics distinguish between the sense of a word and the referent of a word. Sense is the essential property or 'core' meanirg which a word exhibits irrespective of its context of use. For example, the word dog will encompass all members of this <:lass of canint: animal. Furthermore, the sense expressed by the terra will carry eriough essence of 'dogness' to differentiate it from. say, words for non-canine animals like cat, irorse or pig. By contrast. the referent of a word 1s the actrial enttty picked out or identified in a context of use. Thus, when the owner of a pet says 7

1 think I'll toke the dog for a vralk

it is clearly not an abstract, general class of animals, hut a part~cnlar, unique and individual dog to which ::he refers. Therefore, while sense captures the ways meantngs are organised and structured within a language; reference accounts for the 'real-world' objects, concepts and processes that exht outside the anguage system. One of the primary tasks of t~aditionaldictionaries' n to capture the generic, all-encompassing lproperties of words of different senses. A dictionary dafinition will therefore seek to explain what a word denotes regardless of the context in wh~chit occurs. While this concept of denotation takes us part of the way, clearly it still does not provide an exhaqstive description cf what a word 'means'. As we noted in the ~ntroduct!on to this chrtpter, the sense of a word may shift over time, so dictionaries can never be looked upon as repositories of stable, immiitable word n e a ~ n g s .Equally importantly, there is often attached to a word a set of resonances which are very difficult to accommodate Into a desciption of its sense. These resonances form a kind of i:onnotationai aura around a word, gtving it a layer of affective, associative meaning which is quite distinct from the layer of core meaning which we have called denotation. This second, associative layer is nom~allytermed connotation. The distinction between con.?oratron and denota1;on can perhaps he best apprer:iated when i: a exam~nedin tandem with another feature of lexlcal semantics. 'This feature is the principle of synonymy m language. Synonyms are simply words which denote the same thing. For instance, mercriry and qrircksilver clearly denote

WORDS AND MEANINGS

i !

j iI

I I

i I

!

the same substance, movie andfilm the same object, hide and conceal the same type of activity. The appearance of pairs of synonyms in a particuiar language is normally a result of lexical borrowing from other ianguages. As a Germanic language whlch has borrowed extensively from Romance ianguages, it is no surprise then that English is rich in synonyms. Here is a selection of pairs of English synonyms with the respective languages of ongin indicated: Germanic sweat buy climb fr~endly get whore

Romance perspiration purchase ascend amicable obtain prostitute

Even triple synonyms can be found: Germanic kingly

Latin regal

French royal

The two Romance terms in this trtplet reflect different periods m the historical development of English, with regal borrowed from the Latin of the first millennium and royal from the French of the postNorman-conquest period. blow. the s~gnificantthing about synonymy, when superimposed on to our earlier distinction between denotation and connotation, is that while the words may 'mean the same thtng' in the strictest sense. they may cany markedly different affective resonances. In other words, synonyms may share denotation hut exhibit different cortnorations. Moreover, the choice of a particular term is often subject to the constraints of register (see section 1.3). so the switch from one member of a pair of synonyms to another can mark a concomitant and stgnificant shift in tone. The rule of thumb is that the Romancederived items convey greater formality and the native Germanic items greater informality. In discourse, whereas Latinate derivations may help engender a more lofty or elevated tone, Germanic terms tend to have a more prosatc or 'down to-earth feel. It is no coicidence, for example, that everyday words describing parts of the humail body are Germanic in origin; just as it is no coincidence that

WORDS AND MEANlNGS

WORDS AND MEANINGS

~n the substantially more formal reglster of a medical encyclopaedia these terms are replaced by thew Latrnate counterparts. In t h ~ set s of examples it snould be clear whlch members of each palr are Germamc and whlch Latmate: skull th~gh belly kneecop

cranium femur stomach patello

The convergence of reglster with iextcal choice means that terms are selected In accordance with discourse context. Consequently, speakers and writers always run the risk of drawlng on an Informal Item when a more specialist or auspic~ousterm 1s expected, or conversely, of using an overly formal item when a less 'wordy' form is required. Consider for a moment the following tr~pletof synonyms. ranked m order of descending formality: expecrorafe,spit, gob. Now in the context of an encounter with your dentist, any lnstructlons regarding oral evacuation would presumably be couched in the mediai term:

8

Pleose spif into the basin.

The nusmatches accrumg from the use of the other two terms ln the same context would either be absurdly pompous:

9

Please expecforofe into the bosin.

or irreverently familiar:

10 Please gob into the basin. For an attested example of a mlsmatch between register and lexical choice. consider example (11). It e a notice from an Austrian hotel catering speclaUy for skiers. Notice how the Latinate selections are particularly inappropriate, signalling a formality way in excess of that demanded by the context: 11

Not to perambulate the corridor in the hours of repose in the boots of ascension.

In summary. tt can be said that synonyms are words whlch share the same sense and w l c n denote the same thmg. However. connotattonal differences mean that most synonyms are not mutually interchangeable and that theu use IS closely assoc~atedwlth regtster and discourse context. Pure synonyms, whlch exhibtt perfect congruence of denotat~onand connotation, are therefore rare. Nevertheless, the prlnclple of synonymy offers a useful bluepnnt for expla~nlngthe general prox~m~ty of meaning that exlsts between many words m a language." The next stage of our survey of lexical semantlu focuses on words whlch have more than one meaning. Two types of process are responsible for producrng words with multiple senses. The first type is easily illustrated when we look at a word like bank. In current usage, this word has two prinnpal senses: 11can denote either the side of a rrver or a financial mstltutlon. The htstorical provenance of thls double meanrng can be explaned in the followlng way. Two separate words found their way into English from diflerent source languages. The first of these was bank, of a river, from a probable Scandinavian origm: the second bank, In the financial sense, from Old French. This process, where different words converge into the same form while presemng their original meanings, IS known as homonynty and the words involved are referred to as hon~onyms.Here are some more English homonyms: eor mail sage seal grove

(i] of corn: (ii) of a person (i] armour: [ii] postal service (i) wise: (iiJ culinary herb [i] marine mommal: (ii) tnsulation or fastening (i] burial area: [ii) serious or we~ghty

As it results from the distillat~onof different words into the same shape, homonymy is a rather chance process. None the less, dictionanes will still attempt to provide separate entries for homonyms, highlightlng theu status as genuinely distinct words. The second process responsible for produc~ngmultlple meamng is when the semantic scope of a single word is extended. Unlike homonymy, the meaning of an individual word radiates outwards from a single source, with its sense undergoing a kind of metaphorical extension. In spite of the semantic divergence whlch results from this process, the relationship between the senses can still often be

W O R D S A N D MEANINGS

WORDS A N D MEANINGS

inferred. This principle of extension is known as polysemy and a word whose semantic range has widened in this way is referred to as polysemous. Here is e selection of ~:xamples: fllghf

neck score eye

dr~p

(i) 01 btrd: (iil of c dart or orrow: (iii] oct of escoptng (i) of bottle; (ii] of body; (iii) of guitar C ; of contest (i) of ~ U S I (ii] (i) of body; (ii) of iieedle [i) of wofer; (iil weedy person

When the connections between the differentsenses of a word are more opaque, it is !;ometimes dilEcult to differentiate between homonymy or polysemy, and so sclving the semantic riddle often requires a good etymological dictiotiary. Consider, for instance, the two principal senses of the wordsole, where one designates the bottom of a shoe and the other a species of fish. On the face of it, the word or poly:;emous. It is actually the latter. could either be homor~ym~c because the word stems from the La~:insource word sotea meaning a sandal o r Rat shoe, and has since been extended metaphorically beyond its onginal application to fotmvear. (A moment's reRection on the anatomical stru1:ture of the hh in question should reveal the connection!) A trickier task again would he sorting out the pairporr (harbour) and port (102-tSed wine). 3 n first glance. these two look distinct enough m sense to be homon:fms: that 1s to say, two separate words which happen to have the same shape. However, the second term has developed because it refers to a drink from Oporto, a city so named because it is itself a harbour. So a brief etymological search reveals that what looked initially like distinct homonyms are, in fact, extenstons of asingle, polysemous wormi. Figure 3.1 is a summary01 the semantic pathways whicn lead to polyremy and homonymy. Polysemy and honionymy facilitate creativity in many types of discourse. The figure of speech with which they are most commonly associated, given their potential for word-play, is the pun. Literary discourse. which places ;:reat emphasis on controlled and motivated ambiguity, is an obvious site for such linguistic experimentation. Nevertheless, puns are a feature of mciny other everyday discourses. perhaps the most notahk: of which is advertising langnage. In designing messages about products, advertising copywriters draw heavily on puns to produce the linguistic 'jingles' which are at once striking and

meaning I (of shoe1 polysemous word (sorer meaning 2 (spectes of fish1

word 'I herb) Homonvm

FIGURE 3.1

memorable. Here are two short illustrat~onsof how this techn~queis employed. The first 1s taken from an advertisement for a 'power' shower-untt, and the second from an advertisement for a particular brand of bathroom sealant The second text also carnes the logo of a seal (of the ammate variety!) balancing a ball on its head: 12 You'll feel a drip under onyth~ngelse1 13 See how well our seols perform!

The words which acttvate the puns here are 'drip' and 'seals', creatlng plays on meaning which are polysemous and homonymic respectively. In anticipation of these examples, both items were included in the lists of homonyms and polysemous words provided earlier so they can be checked there. Puns may be intenttonal or accidental. In the next example, a it is not clear whether the headline from an Irish newspape~.~ homonymy exhibited by 'grave' is consciously exploited or whether it IS iust one of those semantic coincidences which people are apt to call -- , 'Freudian slips':

WORDS AND MEANINGS

WORDS AND MEANINGS 14 DUBLfN HAS GRAVE CEMmRY PROBLEM

The next pax of rather hapless examples6 will conclude our survey of polysemy and homonymy. The first 1s a not~ceto the clientele of a Mexican hotel, while the second adveruses donkey rides in Thailand. That any semant~cplay 1s mtenuonal :n either case is unlikely in the extreme:

15 The manager has personally passed oll the water served here. 16 Would you like to ride on your own oss? Next up in our survey of lexical semanucs is the ~mportant principle of 'oppos~teness' in language. Semant~coppositeness is called antonymy, and pars of words that have opposite senses are referred to as antonyms. However. antonymy is a rather broad. catch-all category which embraces at least three distmct subtypes of semant~copposition. The first, complementary opposition, is the most strictly 'logical' of all lexical antonymy. If one member of a pair of complementary opposites is true, then the other must, by unputation. be false. Cancelling one term will, in other words, automatically guarantee the truth of the other. For example, in the complementary par:

o young old b ~ g o smoll wide o narrow good o bod

I

I 1

I

I 1

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1! i

present

o

absenl

!

! only one of the two terms can be a valid representation of a particular state of affairs. So, if you are present, you cannot be absent: conversely, if you are absent, then you cannot be present. The same principle underpins all of this next hatch of complementary opposites: asleep o awoke married o unmorried legal o illegal olive o dead Gradable antonyms, wluch ennce a different type of antonymy, are part~duiarlycommon 1n English. These opposites are so named because they can he plotted dong a graded scale according to varying degrees of the property or quality they specify. For example:

A useful test for gradahle antonyms a to see if they can be modified with adverbs like very, q~citeor rather. as in 'very old', 'rather wide', 'quite good' and so on. As the qualities designated by gradable antonyms are relat~verather than absolute. it is sometimes possible to embed pairs of gradable antonyms inside other pairs. Thus: cold

hot worm

o

cool

In keepmg with other sorts of lexical m e a m g , context will be an ~mportantdeterminant on the interpretation of gradable antonyms. Given that sue, quality and proportion are all relat~ve,no permanent or fixed value can be attached to any term on the graded scale. In other words, the denotation of concepts like hot and cold, big and small. may shift depending on the nature of the non-linguistic referents which they describe. A cool oven, for instance, will be much warmer than a hot day; just as the biggest mouse will still be very much smaller than the smallest elephant. The third subtype of lexical antonymy is relatror~alopposition. Relat~nnalopposition is perhaps best conceived of as an alliance of 'converseness' rather than of true 'oppositeness'. Here are some examples: give buy teacher parent below

o o o o o

recelve sell pupil child above

The distribution of relational opposites is often determ~nedby the type of sentence hwhich they occur. For example, if give appears in a sequence like 'Fatima gave chocolates to Ihrahim', then its opposite can be used when the sequence is reversed: 'Ibrahim received chocolates from Fatima.' Similarly, if Maria IS Juan's teacher. then Juan is Maria's pupil, or, if the painting 1s above the fireplace. then the fireplace is below the painting.

WORDS A N D MEANINGS

WORDS A N D M E A N I N G S

Earlier in this section, mention was made of the elusiveness of 'pure' synonymy. In inany respects, those same reservations can he expressed about antonymy. Contel:tual factors exercise a powerful influence on the assor:iative and aflective values that attach to each member of a pair of antonyms. One especially sensitive aspect of lexical antonymy, which has come under the scrutiny of fem~nist lmguists, concems p a w of gender-differentiated opposites such as: bachelor governor master potron

o o o o

spinster governess misfress motron

It is significant that the female memlrer of each pair displays a degree of negativity which is not camed by the more positive male term. This gender-determined asymmetry is kntlwn as semantic derogation and it anses when a word acquires pejorative or inimical connotations simply by dint of its exclusively femrle reference. Deborah Cameron elaborates: 'Whereas the male terms connote power, status, freedom and independence, the female. which inmany casesused to be parallel. now connote triviality, dependence, negativity and sex' (1985: 77). Clearly, semantic change doesn't happen in a cultural vacuum. Feminist linguists argue that the semantic derogation of words for women reveals just as much about the history of patriarchy as it does about the history of language. The final type of word meaninj: to be examined in this section concerns classes of items which are semantically compatible. This type of sense relation is known as h:~ponymyand differs principally from synonymy in thai it invokes the concept of 'inclusion' rather than 'sameness' of me,ming. Hyponfmy explains how the sense of one item can sometimes be inc11cde.i in the sense of another. For instance, the itemflower includes other classes of items such as trclip. rose and daffodil. Hourever, the tenn flower can itself be included within the sense of a higher, more general term likeplant. The semant s categories in hyponymy are defined as follows: the included. more specific terms are hyponyms (literall:/, terms that are 'under' something else), while the eocompassmg, higher terms are srcperordinotes (literally, terns that are 'over' or 'ab~~ve' something else). Hyponyms and superordinates tan be set out systematically on a semantic scale. Figure 3.2 illustrateshow a term like dog enters into

a semantlc relationship with other related terms. Any lower term on the scale is a hyponym and any upper term a superordinate. This means that dog fulfils the two functions simultaneously, being both a hyponyni of canine and a superordinate of poodle and sponiel. Lower terms are always instances of terms higher up; indeed, part of the semantic specification of a term depends upon whichever higher terms can enclose it. The scale also indicates how a lower term entails a higher term. so that the relationship between poodle and dog can be expressed with the proposition: aNpoodles are dogs. However, as dog is a superordinate of poodle, then the reverse propos~tiondoes not hold. Consequently, it is no! true that ON dogs are poodles. CANINE

I WOLF

I

1

(others)

II

I

I

I

POODLE

SPANIEL

TOY

(othersl

I

I GIANT

I

FOX

(others1

COCKER

SPRINGER

(others)

FIGURE 3.2 As always, it is important to stress how context shapes the way language is used. Semantic scales offer an illuminating explanation of how and why speakers make strategic use of particular Lexical items in particular circumstances. Their semantically inclustve nature means that hyponyms and superordinates can be used for a variety of interactive purposes. Clearly, appropriateness to discourse context will be a determining factor. For instance, if someone asks 'What's that?' at a dog show, the reply 'A dog' will not suffice. In order to match the degree of detail which the context demands, much greater lexicnl spec$city7 1s required. The reply would therefore need to be something of the order 'An Irish Water Spaniel' or 'A King Charles V Spaniel', both of which contain hyponyms significantly lower on

¶

WORDS AND MEANINGS

the scale for dog. Other factors influence the way hyponyms and superordinates are chosen from semantic scales. Lexical specificity is an important strategy-framing device and often shapes the pragmatic force of an utterance. In the following exchange, notice how speaker B is deliberately under-specific:

17 A: Whot have you got in that case? B: A musical instrument. B's reply clearly incorporates a term whch 1s markedly less specific than is demanded in the context. And even though it stilt answers the question truthfully, this under-specification reveals much about the speaker's artrrude to the speech situation itself, It suggests ~n thls instance that some secrecy is to be attached to the contents of the case, o r alternatively, that this is a toplc of conversation which should not be pursued. Here are two more examples where superordinates are exploited in a similar way:

18 A: Where ore you going? 0: Out. 19

A: What did you buy in town? B: A garment.

Agam. by offermg less than is anttcipated by the question, the replies convey a certam 'standoffishness' or mteractlve reticence! Here now are some examples which, for the sake of contrast. make explicit use of lexlcal over-specificanon:

20 Siobhbn let me drive her new 7leries BMW. 21

1 play o '59 Stratocoster with Seymour Duncan humbuckers.

Where 'car' and 'guitar' would probably suffice for most contexts of (20) and (21) respect~vely,the utterances here draw on markedly over-specific hyponyms. This serves to emphasise any included feature or edtra quality that is nnported by the hyponym.Thesemantrc content of (211 may therefore be designed to convey expertlse or specialist knowledge, while (20) may be seek~ngto foreground the

WORDS AND MEANINGS

speclal quality of 'BMWness' which differentiates it from ordinary cars. Whatever the intended goals of these particular utterances, they illustrate clearly how extra 'pragmatic' meanings can be attached to words simply through their natural contexts of use. This secuon has focused on the principal categones and typologies of meaning in lexical semantics. By concentrating on the meatungs that mltere in words. we have to some extent neglected the types of meanlng that denve when words are comblned with one another. As a counterbalance to thls section. then, the next part of our survey will suggest a framework for the analysis of the more complex meanings that are produced when words are combined with other words.

3.3 Words and combinations One of the traditional ways of explaining how words combme into patterns is by involng the concepts of 'choice' and ' c h u . These concepts are normally represented diagrammatically as two intersecting axes, as in Rgure 3.3. The syntagmatlc ax= shows how words combme and which sort of structural relationships link them. The paradigmatic axis explains how certain words in the lexlcon can be selected at particular pomts along the chain and why others would be inappropriate. The syntagmahc axis thus fonns a suuctural frame which Informs the selectional possibilities offered by the paradigmatic axis. By the same token, the paradigmatic axls offers a pool of potential lexical entries for each slot along the syntagmatic axis. A t a more conceptual level, syntagmatic relations between words are of the order: a and b and c and d; and paradigmatic relations of the order: a o r b o r c o r d. The followiog simple phrase, from which the fmai item has been removed, wilt provide our first illustration of how the two axes function:

22

my sunburnt -

F i t of all, a structural frame is established by the syntagmatlc combtnatlon of 'my' and 'sunburnt'. T h ~ sconfiguration sets up strong predictions about the nature of the next lexlcal item that can be selected on the paradigmatic axs. In t h ~ sinstance, the frame

WORDS AND MEANINGS

WORDS AND MEANINGS

i k

, cholce: the paradiomatic =is

I FIGURE 3.3 Choice and chain anticipatesan anatomical noun. More specifically, it requires a noun which denotes a part of the body that can be exposed to the sun. The pool of selections available on the: paradigmatic axis is therefore likely to be restricted to the folloulrig set of entries: 2210) my sunburnt fi~ce crrms Pose Ittgs There is an oft-quoted adage in anguage study which goes: 'You know a word by the company it keep^.'^ Translated into semantic description, this axiom suggests that :I significant chunk of the meaning of a word will be denved from the syntagmatrc relationships into which it conventioirally enters. As example (22) illustrates, a full semantic profile of 'sunburnt' wiU clei.rly require some account of the types of lexemes with which it regularly combines. This principle of lexical combination is known as collocar~on. Collocation refers broadly to the grammalical combination of lexemes. while the term collocare is used to describe any word which exhibits a standard pattern of co-occurrence with another word. Given that the syntagmatic axls Sets up strong structural constraints, collocates are often easily predicted. Yon may verify this for yourself by completing the following sequences:

2 3 These

-ore addled.

-

24

Here comes a boycoloured

25

Throw out that ronc~d-

26

it's a particuloriy ferocious pride of

-

Suitable collocates for 'addled'. 'bay-coloured'. 'rancid' and 'pride' would he 'eggs'. 'horse', 'butterlbacon' and 'lions' respectively. These potential selections from the paradigmatic axis underline the predictive power of the structural frame, show~nghow items in a syntagmatic chain generate strong expectations about the sorts of items that will follow. The principle of collocat~onhelps explain why words occur m the sequences they do. Yet equally importantly, this principle has the capacity to deal with what happens when words do not occur in familiar combinations and when lexical predictions are not fulfilled. To illustrate this, we will need to re-introduce example (221. However, the phrase is now reproduced within its original context, wh~ch is the ninth line of the first-sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney's poem sequence Asrrophil and Stella (c~rca1S82):i0 22[b) Some fresh ond fruitful showers upon my sunburnt bran None of the standard collocates suggested above are realised here; instead, an unlikely collocation is produced which does not meet the predictions of the structural frame. The combination of the semantically disparate items 'sunburnt' and 'brain' creates what is known as a collocariorial claslt. If ever there was a profoundly stmple linguistic technique wh~chhas enormous and far-reaching stylist~cpotential, d is the collocational clash. This type of semantic mismatch underpins many of the creative turns of language which are traditionally referred to as metaphors, images or figures of speech. Moreover. as it is built on the juxtaposition of lexemes with incompatible or contradictory senses, the collocational clash also forms the semantic core of the classical rhetorical trope called oxymoron. Clearly, poetry offers a rich locus for the exploitation of collocational clashes. In (22h), for example, there are two within the space of a single line: 'sunburnt brain' and 'fruitful showers'. Yet clashes figure in genres other than poetry and are. perhaps surprisingly, a commonplace of

WORDS AND MEANIN

IRDS A N D M E A N I N G S

many types of everyday discourse. In order to demonstrate thrs, I WIII rntroduce and develop a short stylistic exercrse. Thrs exercise, called 'shunting' (for reasons that will become apparent soon), offers a useful tool for studymg language patterns on a number of different levels. (See also sectlon 5.2 below.) The first stage rn the exercrse a to devrse a set of strarghtfonvard syntagmatrc combrnations. These combmatlons should contarn two elements each: a + b. Here rs a set of nme unremarkable syntagms: sfone masons sod dreom shredding machine tonger~nep ~ p s purple roses s~ckjoke killing fields soh roin unhyg~en~c cafe Some readers may have already spotted the deliberate 'plants' in this collectron, but we shall proceed with the exercise none the less. The next Stage rnvotves taking the b elements of each parr and shuntrng them randomy around the set. Whatever new a + b patnngs result from the shunt, there are likely to be collocattonal clashes. Here are SIX new possible configuratrons exhibrting unlikely or rmprobable pamngs: stone roses purple roin

sod cof6 killing ioke

soh machine tangerine dream

In fact. these six clashes all turn out to be well-attested constructions m English. They are all either names of popular rock and pop groups (e.g. 'Stone Roses'. 'Tangerine Dream') or the names of album or song titles (e.g. 'Purple Rain' by Prince). What the shunt has unveiled is a formula that is used-perhapssubconsciously - by many musicrans when they attempt to create striking and memorable monickers for theu bands. Given the ephemeral and transient nature of the rock and pop genre, the need to make a lasting psychological impact is all the more pressing. Startling combinations of lexemes clearly possess greater mnemonzc (memory-makrng) potential than typical collocations, so it is not surprising that the collocational clash has become the preferred stylistic strategy of many rock and pop artists. As our collocational shunt has not yet been completed. here are three suggested pairings uslng the items which remain unaccounted for. Any student readers, with mussal aspuatrons and whose band has still to be christened, are welcome to use them:

The Shredding Fields The Unhygienic Pips The Sick Masons A similar shunting exercise can easily be performed on the set ('23-61 above, yielding some further intriguing clashes. The crucial point to remember is that while the individual component words would rarely pass muster on the11 own, when they are forced to keep company with unfamiliar partners the results are often notably blzarre. Agarn. aspiring rockers may draw on thls collection as they feel fit: 23[01

[the] roncid lions

24(0)

[the] boycoloured bocon

25[0)

[the] addled horse

26bl

[the] pride of eggs

We shall look shortly at the ways m whlch thls essentially simple principie informs linguistic creativity in poetry. Before doing so, we shall close this section by examining one of the pmcipal methods used for recognising and accounting for collocational clashes. The suestlon that will be addressed is: what is there in a word that tells us about the company it keeps? One -..-of the first attempts by linguists to explain semantic compatibility (and by imputation. semantic incompatibility) between lexemes is known as componential analysis." This type of analysis ~nvolvesthe sifting out of the subcomponents of meaning that make up the overall sense of a lexical item. For example, a componential analysis of a lexeme like boar will consist of a series of smaller, parucularistic descriptions about what sort of entity it is. Boor supports the following descriptions: rt is a prg; it is an nduR; it is male. The formal method for breaking down lexemes into constituent components is to lay them out systematically using plus and minus symbols for each attribute. Hence: ~

boot[+ animate]; [+ porcine]; [+ odultl; [- immaturel; [+ mole]; [- female] The more components there are in the description, then the greater the likelihood that there will be some redundancy between them. If

X

WORDS AND MEANINGS

1

the attribute [+ porcine] is invoked, the quality of animacy will be presupposed and so the component [+ animate] need no longer be included in the list of attributes. Sinilarly, as the component [+male] presupposes the contponent [- female], then the second piece of information can he deleted. One o f the maln benefits of the componential method for stvtistic purpose:~is that it can isolate the specific semantic features that activate colh~cationalclashes. For example, rn the combination

As a handy means of explainrng how parts of words exercise constraints on collocation. componential analysis is certainly useful as far as 11goes. However, sceptrcs (and there are many) have argued that the theory srmply doesn't go far enough. Since its Initial development, a substantial amount of criticrsm has been directed towards different aspects of the model. For a start. its early practitioners had an analytic habit which did little to win favour with fem~nrst linguists. Thls was the11 predilection for describ~nglexemes like womon, wife or grrl with the component '[-male]'. A typical breakdown of example (30), for instance, would have been:

pregnant boar ~tIS the rncompatibilitv between the component [+ male1 for boor and the component [+ fernale] for pregnant that produces the anomaly. Othercomponents, such as [+ adult] 31[+porcine], are not responsible for this partrcular mlsmatcb. Howevsr, rn a sequence like pregnont prglet

/

i

i ! !

!

~t will Indeed be the cnterlon [+ adidt] I [-adult] whlch tnggers the clash. In dealing wlth i comblnatlon like pregnont table isolatton of the higker-order components [a anrmate] and [- anlmate] should be enough to e:iplarn the anamaly. Here now are some fuller sequences containrng collocational ciashes. The slgnificaet semantlc cmponents of the mismatched Items are displayed next to each example:

27 The concept crustled the bouldt!r concept [+ obstroct] boulder [+ concrete1 28 1 drank my comp~rter drank [+ liqurd] computer [- liquid] 29 Thts bochelor IS a good husband bochelor [- marrled] husbond [+ marr~ed]

30 That woman 1s the father of hvc boys

womon [+ femole] father [- female]

WORDS AND MEANINGS

i

i

father: wornon:

[+ male] [- mole]

Concepts like 'female' and 'femmme' were consistently downgraded to the attribute 'absence of maleness' rather than ascribed any posltlve quality of their own. However. in my opinion this sexist practlce is largely a fault of the shortsightedness of the analysts, rather than. as has been suggested by some feminists, an lnbuilt sexist principle within the system of language itself.12 Another problem concerns the hrghly selective manner by which sample items are chosen in componential analysis. The types of lexical item which lend themselves well to thrs sort of semantic breakdown tend to exhibit stable, generic properties withrn clearly defined semantlc scales (see section 3.2 above]. Items denotlng members of the animal kingdom have proved especially popular because they can often be differentiated through convenient superordinates, such as bovine, porcine or human, which pick out the genus to which the terns belong. iexemes denoting abstract~ons,such as beanry, tr~rtlr or fare are largely avoided. It would indeed be difficult to account for the opposrtlon between antonyms like rrurlt and falsity with~nthe componential framework. All that really can be done a to prelix each term with a minus symbol and use it as a semantic component of its antonym: truth: [- false] falsily: [- true] and this IS certarnly an arid and c~rcularbreakdown.

WORDS A N D M E A N I N G S

Finally, components describing relative dimensions and degrees. whicb would be needed to distinguish between many semantically proximate lexical items, are difficult to accommodate satisfactorily into the model. To differentlate between, say, srone and boulder - both of whlch are [+ solid] and [+ mineral] - i t would have to be specified tbat boulder is [+ large] and stone [- large]. Yet if pebble were to be brought into the reckoning, it would now be stone that would assume the [+ large] component m order to distingu~shit from the new term. Measurements of dimension and degree are relative and are calculated along varying parameters, which simply makes tbem difficult to assimilate into a semanuc model of this sort. Although componential analysis remains useful as a general explanatory tool, the reasons given above suggest that it is nowhere near a fail-safe method for predicting collocations. Collocation is a Probabilistic phenomenon: ~tIS a question of whether this or tbat item IS more likely to occur than another. It is no surprise, then, that a ngid semantic model will have difficulty formalising a principle tbat is more a tendency m language-use than an unflinching structural of language. However, it's not that we don't have very strong expectations about what word follows what in language. We do. And as the next section demonstrates, there are a number of literary-stylist~c techntques available for exploring our intuitions and expectations about the company a word keeps.

3.4 Techniques for stylistic analysis An Important feature of modem stylisties is the way in whicb it employs pedagogical techniques commonly used in the fields of applied linguistics and English language teachmg. It has imported a variety of such techniques m recent yean, including two popular methods for examining collocation and lexical semantics. These are cloze [sic] procedure and multiple chorce rexr. The two pracuces rnvolve the blanking-out of items in a syntagmatic chain and asking for students' (or informants') predichons about which sorts of entnes could 6U that particular grammatical context. Although there are localised methodological differences between tbem, ctoze procedure and multiple cho~cetext are both designed to explore the rich interface between what acrua[ly occurs in a text and the expectations that people have about what should occur in a text.

WORDS A N D MEANINGS

3.4.1 Cloze procedure a n d stylistic analysis Cloze procedure (or doze tesr) n the delet~onof partlcuiar words m a sequence wlth a vlew to eliclt~ngpredictrons about appropnate paradigmatic entr~es.Thls relatively stralghtfonvard technique bas In fact already been used m thls chapter. In the prevlous SeCtlon, examples 22 to 26 were all presented lmualiy m a cloze format, whlch helped to focus and develop subsequent discussion of collocational patterns. There are three princ~palways of using cloze test. The first, and perhaps most obvlous, way is as a language teaching tool. Gloze has proved especially popular in the EFL context where it serves as a useful vocabulary testrng device. Because it attempts to impart knowledge about which lex~calitems are appropriate to whlch grammatical context, this, of all its applications, is the one that comes closest to getting students to fill in the'right' term for the structural slot. To thls extent, cloze test is able to shed a great deal of light on the concept of the lexical set. A lexical set is a bundle of semantlcauy compatible items which are closely linked to a specific topic or register. Although synonyms (and near synonyms) are obvious candidates for inclusion in lexlcal sets, the concept extends much more widely to encompass clusters of key words which correlate generally with a particular field of discourse. The words Byzatztium,pora,poppy disk and popcorn do not, for example. form a lexical set. The word goalkeeper, header, offside, ball and defender clearly do, as they all relate to the discourse of soccer. A cloze test sequence like

31

The defender heoded the

-

can therefore consolidate awareness of this regtster. Here. the blanked-out term belongs to a lexical set already clearly signalled by a syntagmatic chain comprising other members of the same set. Cloze procedure can also be used as a tool for lingtllstlc research. By askinginformants to predict lexical collocations and then collating thelr patterns of response, Important information can be gleaned about the grammar and vocabulary of a language. Cmc~ally. this rnformat~onis not the sole product of the analyst's own (often unreliablej intu~t~ons. but is mstead denved from an attested colpus of 'real' language. In this type of research, no prior assUmptlOns are made about 'right' and 'wrong' answers to the cloze test; rather, it IS

--

--

WORDS A N D MEANINGS

WORDS AND MEANINGS the answers themselves which form the quantitative basis for explaining which item:; collocate with which. r present purposes, there is Thud. and most importantly f . ~ our the stylistic applicatiorl of cloze prot:edure. In this context, cloze is a productiveway of exploring the territory between what we expect to see in a text and what a wnter does in a text. It also creates a new focus for interpretation, because it :ommits students to providing a partial analysis of the .:ext m advanc? of actually seeing the complete version. In stylistic applications, cloze is most certainly not used as a test of language skills. On the contrary, it simply asks informants for their intuitions about a text - intuitions which can't realistically he considered 'right' or 'vrrong'. One final comment on the app1:cations of cloze test is necessary before weembark on tlie stylistic analysis that will occupy the remlnder of this subsection. In common with other stylistic technioues. cloze is not entirely t h ~ exclusive preserve of the language class or of academic linguistics. It enjoys a wider non-academic circulation than might at first appear. The popular s;%tiricalprogramme called H~~~ I Go1 News For You enjoys a regular prime-time slot on BBC television. The P r w a m m e is organised loosely along the lines of a one stage of which i n ~ ~ l v the e s completion of what amounts to a cloze test. Topical newspaper headlinc:~,with an item blanked out. are presented to a panel of participant:;. A flurry of guesses follows, with answers frcm the surrea. to the irreverent. F O ~the most part, anything birr the correct answers offered. Here is a selection of examples from the programme whose topicality has not been entirely lost. A selection of 'guesses' is prov:ded below each example with the actual deletion, which is eventually provided by the q u u s host. underlined:

(ii) RULE BOOK [iii) SOCIAL ENGINEERING

34

NUMBER OF SEXUAL PARTNERS LINKED TO (i) EACH OTHER [ii) MOBILITY AND CASH

-

35 BBC LOSES 60 MILLION IN -[i) ALL NIGHT POKER GAME [iil CASH BUNGLE

36

I i !

!

PRIME MINISTER PROMISES FRESH [i) AIR [ii) HALIBUT [iii) ULSTER INITIATIVE

-

,qthough points are notionally awarded for guessing the fight collocate, the real contest 1s to see who can offer the wittiest
~~~~

32

QUEEN MOTHER COMBINES KOYAL DUTIES WITH LOVE OF [i) CHAMPAGNE AND RAFFLIS FAGS [ii) SUPERNINTENDO (iii)RENAISSANCE SPANISH CHURCH MUSIC (iv) HORSES ANC ENTERTAINIIS

33

YARD'S NEW CHIEF URGES PCLICE TO ABANDON

-

[i) HOPE

Dolour

I lhave known the ~nexorablesadness of -, The title 'Dolour' establishes a semantic framework which is reinforced by its synonym, 'sadness', in the opening line. One would assume therefore that this structural frame will exercise strong constraints on the sorts of words that could complete the line. And judging by the consistency of response in seminars where I have elicited suggestions, this assumption does indeed appear to he valid. Suggested entries for the blanked-out item routinely converge on the following types of terms: death; life: love; parting; dying: leaving. These Items all refer to aspects of human existence which may be associated (in obviously varying degrees) with feelings of sadness or unhappiness. All the more effectne, then, is the cognitive jolt delivered when the acrirnl entry in the first line is revealed:

WORDS A N D M E A N I N G S

WORDS A N D M E A N I N G S

I hove known the inexoroble sadness of pencils, The m~smatchbetween 'sadness' and 'pencils' constitutes a collocational clash on any semantic parameter. Ascribed to inanunate objects ('pencils') is a quality whlch is normally attributed to human emotional experience. A componential analysis of the two lexemes 'sadness' and 'pencils' would uncover a bundle of semantic features that could explain the clash systematically. In fact, any one of the following set of contrasts would be enough to activate it: [+I- anhnate]; [+I- human]; [+I- concrete]; [+I- abstract] or [+I- sensate]. The clash 1s accentuated further at the level of vocabulary and register. The tone established by the Latlnate leas of 'Dolour' and 'inexorable' is portentous and grandiose, but when the lexeme 'pencils' suddenly mtrudes, it switches abruptly to the prosaic and commonplace. After having reinstated the missig term from the k t , here IS the second line with its deletion: Neat in their boxes, o

f pad and paperweight.

Unlike those offered for l i e 1, the predictions offered here display much less consensus. Some participants admit to experiencing difficulty in finding selections that are compatible with both 'pad' and 'paperwe~ght'. Consequently, the sorts of entries suggested are diverse and often lack a common semantic link: desk (sic); piles; box: worksfation; cousins. However. the responses of other part~cipantsto the task are rather mtriguing. Many seem to be influenced by the jolt delivered by the earlier line, and so predict the followmg types of terms: pain: loneliness; misery; depressron: boredom. It is as if the cloze test has been 'infected' by the first line and the clash has now become part of a new cognitive model that informs our readmg of subsequent lines. This reading is further impelled by the parallel grammatical structure that links the two lines. The first line sets up a syntagmatic structure of the order:

I have known the inexoroble x of y in t h ~ ssyntagm, x represents a term from the paradigm of words describing human emot~on.They element is amemberof the paradigm of words refening to, well, office equipment. And as the second line exhib~tsthe same 'x of y' pattern. then there is every good reason that

the clash be sustamed, a hunch which rs indeed borne out when the o n g i a l item is reinstated: Neat in their boxes, dolour of pad ond paperweight, By the t h ~ r dline, t h ~ s'framework of mcompatibility' 1s firmly rooted in the cloze test, to the extent that now some particlpants actually claim to find the task stra~ghtfonvard: All the

oi manila iolders and mucilage,

The deleted item, predicted with uncanny precision in students' responses, is 'misery', Here. it is not just the general lexical set of terms denot~ngunhappiness that is picked out, but this very lexeme whlch IS often identified. It IS easy to see why. For a start, the 'x of y' syntagm is sustained, suggesting that the clash between paradigmatic entries be snstatned also. Another significant factor 1s the sound structure of the l i e , which provides further cohesion along the syntagmatic axls. The first consonants of the words 'manila' and 'nrucilage' form an alliterative /ml sequence, which appears to mfluence selecttons from the paradigmatic axis. Even though the level of awareness at which this sound pattern is perceived may vary, the preferred entry by many is still 'misery'. It is noticeable also that. m entries suggested for the previous line, the lexeme porn was suggested by two particlpants on the grounds that it 'just sounded better', Although no further explanation was forthcoming in this session, the prediction may have been influenced by the consonantal /p/ pattern evident m 'pad and paperweight'. In fact, the realised term turns out to be a repeat of the title, so the /p/ pattern is not sustained. Nevertheless. the 'wrong' entnes show just how sophisticated is our awareness of different layers of linguistic patterning in a text. In ~s case. the alliterative lexeme offered by particlpants proved perhaps to be a little more 'poetic' than the lexeme actually used by the poet! Here are the next three lines of texti presented in cioze format:

-~n immoculote places. lonely reception room. lavatory, switchboard The unalterable -of basin and pitcher, The framework of incompatibility generated by the clashes in the

WORDS AND MEANINGS

WORDS AND MEANINGS

I

prevrous three lines now governs firmly the processrng of the text. Predictrons seldom cievrate from a narrow set of synonyms or proxrmate synonyms desctibing negattvc o r unpleasant human experience. And again they pros: to be accurate: the first term is 'desolatron'and the second, whrch exhibrts anotter phonologrcal correspondence, 'oathos'. The'primary semantrc stra1eg.y employed rn the poem has now been identified and, l~opefully,the basrc principle of the exercrse will have been grasped. Suffice it to r.ay, the clash engendered by the collocatron of semantrcally incompatible lexemes is camed through the remainder of poem. As there i:i no real need to demonstrate the cloze test further, the rest of the poem is produced in pnstine form: Rituol of multigroph, popercl~p,commo, Endless duplica ton of lives and oblects. And I have seen dust from the walls of ~nstltutions, Finer thon flour. olive, more clangerous than silica, Sift. almost ~nv~:.ible, through long afternoons of tedium. Dropprng a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows, Glazrng the pale hair. the du3licate grey standard faces. Before we move on to consider the general significance of the exercrse, rt is worth making a cauple of observatrons about this last section of the poem. First of all. the 'x of y' formula becomes progressively more condensed over the last few lines of the poem until ultimately the 'incompatibles' .3re distilled into the single phrase 'the duplicate grey standard faces'. Second, and as this final phrase suggests, there rs a gradual shift front abstract facets of human experience to more palpable aspects of humanity. This shift is encoded rn terms like 'nails', 'eyebrows', 'hair' and 'faces'. However, it is only a fragmentary hnmanrty which is depicted: words for parts of the body eclipse holistic terms :such as 'people'. 'women' or 'men'. And there IS. moreover, a h.ailty and powerlessness in the physiologrcal mrnutiae conveyed by words like 'nails', 'hart' and 'eyebrows'. This is not the first time that we have wtnessed a devlant o r strihnglingnrstrcstructure becornin@established as a kind of 'norm' in a text. In the previous chapter, it was shown how repeated graphological and morphological breakage n an e e cummings poem created its own regular design for that poerri. In this section, it is a sustarned pattern of collocationsl clashes which establishes the internal stylistic

1

fabnc of the text. Roethke rncorporates two semantrcally disparate lexical sets into a single syntagmatic combination. One set comprises Items typically found in an office environment, such as pad, paperweigtrr, mucilage and paper-clip, whereas the other consists of synonyms (or near synonyms) for the experience of unhappiness, and includes misery, sadness, desolarion and tedium. However, having identified the technique employed, the next step is to assess how it influences and shapes the reading and interpretation of the text. Collocational clashes allow semantic disparates to be brought into grammatrcal proximrty with one another, so the projection of the human on to the inanimate can be crystallised into a srngle compact image m the poem. The stylistrc merger of the living and the lifeless serves presumably as an indictment of the dehumanisation engendered by institutional bureaucracy. However, the merger also functions as a conceptual short-cut. It bypasses the intermediary connectrons wbrchwould beneeded tolink twosuchdisparate phenomena: namely, that w a r l n g in institutions is stultifying and depressmg, and that this condition is made manifest in the very paraphernalia that characterises the workplace. Instead, the clash permits humanity and insensate objects to be distilled together into animage whichis both compressed and minimal. The question of precisely how readers tease out coherence from such semantically anomalous language will be addressed later in section 3.5. This application of cloze test lends itself well to follow-up activities. Because it unveils the basic stylistic formulae whrch underpm a text, the exercise can be readily transferred to creative and compositidnal work. As was pointed out in subsection 2.4.2, stylistic analysis often yields a repticable 'blueprint' which allows for the development of expenmental materral within those same lingurstic parameters. Reduced to its most basic ingredients, the formula of 'Dolour' could be characterised as 'structural frame + lexical incompatibility', This formula can be replicated in follow-up exercises which are not only entertaining in themselves but whrch can also offer valuable extra insrghts into synonymy, lexical sets and the principle of collocation. Here, for example, 1s a short 'recipe' for collocational expenmentation centred on the poem we have just studied. It is built on the structural frame of 'Dolour', retaining the 'x of y' syntagm, but uses a different set of lexical entries from those identified dunng the cloze test.

WORDS AND MEANINGS

WORDS AND MEANINGS

3.4.2 Multiple choice text and stylistic analysis

1 Alter the I

I

I

Here for cxnmplc, is a sclcctioi~ottcqi~snssociatcd tile register of cookcry: irm o v e t ~ . ' r ~ r i c r o ikenric, ~ ~ ~ ~pol, ~e, port, ktlife, fork, slropn, irirllc, 'ski1lul;fisli-slice, ronrrcr, ble,ttler, ~vorkfol~ Sclcct an item frWl encl1 lcxiull sct "!id, using str\icttlrill frame of 'Dolour', colnbine tlle111g r n h n ~ a t i ~{fl ~posiible, ~; crcnte some sound corrcspo~@cncebctwccn tlm, tm~ns.?'jliS be acllievcd simply by inatclling'up ollitcrativccollsonnllls thus: 'bliss of 61cnder';,'joy of jubs'; '/un of forks', .

.

To close this snbsect~on,here is a bnef sample of the sort of text which results from the practical actlvlty outlined above:

of its imoortant features. together with an explanation of when it is likelv to offer a productive alternative to cloze. Multiple cho~cetext is of particular benefit when there is an abundance of available paradigmatic entries for a glven slot. It closes down the range of interpretative possibilities, allowing attention to be centred on the specific aspects of the lexicon which are the focus of study. Like cloze test, multiple choice text can be used to investigate vutuaUy all of the topics in lexical semantics introduced in the course of this chapter. ~ oonly t is it a handy tool for invtsrigatlng synonymy, collocation and lexical spccific~ty.~t is also a useful apparatus for the relationship between lens and register. In this latter application, groups of semant~callyrelated terms can be drawn up for slot along the cham. Example 37 is a syntagm from each an Item has been deleted and below it are listea four choices. ~~t~~~ how fixed exprcss~onssuch as idioms and euphemisms may be included in the list of lexical cntnes.

37 We regret lo rnforrn you lhot your great aunt has lust Cho~ces: died passed owoy kicked the bucket expired

Pleasure

I hove known the inexorable fun of forks: Neat in their drawers, pleasure of pot and pon, All the satisfaction of soucepon and spoon. EloUon on immoculofe kitchen worktops.

While all four entnes denote the same thing, there are clearly significant connotational and associative differences between them. Consequently, some terms are more appropriate than others to this type of communicative context. Whereas the first two choices on the list would be likely candidates for mclusion, the second two most certainly would not as they are manifestly at odds with the register evoked by the syntagm. Know~ngwhen to use one term and not the other is an indispensable communicative skill which, while often taken for granted by native speakers, is the bane of many non-native

WORDS AND MEANINGS

speakers. This type of exercise is one way of assessrng the appropriateness of semantically compatible Items to a particular grammatrcal context and of differentiating between synonyms according to the constraints of register. Multiple choice text (as wo:ll as cloze test) can also be used for investigating a particular f e ~ t u r eof vocabulary which has not been covered thus far in this chapter. It can help to identify core vocabulary. Core w#>rdsin a lang~ageare those which have especially wide distribution and usage. Thc:y have an extensive collocational range, being able to combine syntagmatically with many other words. Take for example the following lexical set wh~chcompnses four closely related lexemes: fat. obese, ovenuc!ig/rr,plump. Although broadly synonymous, in no way are these words distributed equally in the lexicon. However, a common error in language-learning IS the assumption that they are distributed equally. Because it places them against different syntagms, multiple choice text car! highlight the varying collocational possibilities of thes: synonyms, thereby testing for therr respective degrees of 'coreness' in the languase. In the four examples that follow. a 'd'symbol beside 3 term mdicatas collocational acceptability; an ;x' collocational unaccr:ptability:

38

39

-

per:ion fat 4 plump 4 obese 4 overweight 4

- chicken

fat 4 plump -1 obese x overwe~ghtx

40

solary fat 4 plump x ($1 obese x qverweight x

41

chance fat 4

i

WORDS AND MEANINGS plump x obese x overweight

x

With its extensive collocational range, far is clearly the most 'core' of the four terms, whereas obese and ovewerght, with their more restricted range, are the least 'core' of the set. There is not the space to undertake a detailed demonstration of the stylistic potential of multiple choice text, so to end this subsection a brief iliustration only will be offered. Like cloze test. this semantic framework foregrounds the use of lexis as a stylistic strategy. A poet whose use of language generally, and whose use of vocabulary in partlcular. has been an Important focus of attention In modem stylistics is W. H. Auden. Here is the openrng stanza of his well-known elegy 'In Memory of W. B. Yeats' (19391:14 He disappeared in the dead of winter: The brooks were frozen. the arrports almost deserted. And snow disfigured the sfotues; The mercury sank in the mouh of the dy~ngday. What Instruments we have agree The day of his death was a dork cold day. Even though title of the poem signals a sombre, funereal theme that will shape and influence subsequent reading of the text, the manner by which thls elegiac content is embodied in lexical choices is striking. A lexical paradigm built around the second structural slot in the first line, whrch might contain the core word 'died' and its euphemistic synonym 'pass away', would test the expectations established by the discourse context. The realised term. 'disappeared'. is startling, although, significantly, explicrt semantic reference to death a trausposed to a later positron along the syntagmatic axis ('dead of winter'). Similarly, whereas 'brooks' in the first half of line 2 arguably sets up a pastoral framework of interpretation, the appearance of 'airports' in the second half of the line is incongruous and unexpectedly prosarc. Noticeably, where commonplace or formulaic expressions mlght be anticipated in the discourse context, subtle twists of perception are created when an unexpected term is realised. For rnstance, in line 5 it IS not, as one might expect. 'sources' or 'authorities' who 'agree', but 'instruments'. Auden's lexical strategies, here as in much of his

WORDS AND MEANINGS

9

work, do not consist ~n the deployment of the sort of wholesale semantic violations that were seen earlier in this chapter; rather, they operate more as understated deflections from probabilistic collocational patterns. Carter (1982b: 41-2) talks of Auden's capacity to develop a kind of lexical 'code' in his poetry: a distinctive poetic style comprising words wh~chare convent~onalin themselves but which are foregrounded through deviations from internal contextual norms. T h ~ vocabulary, s Carter contmues, draws attention to itself as lexis and poetlc convention, so much so that the 'lexis itself becomes an important part of the subject matter',

3.5 Summary For the purposes of studying lexical semantics, the practical actlvxties outlined in the previous section are qutte flexible and can be tailored to suit specific teachmg and learmng goals. For example, we conducted our cloze procedure analysis of 'Dolour' on a 'line by line' basis. T h ~ sseemed an appropriate method for assessing how a sequence of discourse informs and affects our reading of subsequent sequences. However, the cloze test format can be much more expanslve: whole stanzas or even whole texts. with their blanked-out slots, can be examined in one go. This larger-scale format can also be used in the application of multiple cho~cetext to h~ghlighthow strands of meanmg operate across larger chunks of text. Whatever the precise style of their implementation, both techn~queshelp to scotch the myth that there is such a thing as a 'literary lexis' (see section 1.3, above), empbasising instead that the real stylistic issue is to do with the company a word keeps. It is often the SexIIanhc space that lies between words, rather than the properties that inhere in the words themselves, which forms the core of verbal imagery in poetry. The analys~scarried out in section 3.4 also rases important issues to do with grammat~caltheory. It has particularly significant repercussions for those theories of grammar which have at their core the distmction between semanhcally acceptable and semantically anomalous constructions m a language. The Transformational-Generat~ve model, for mstance, is des~gnedto explain, amongst other thmgs, how speakers know the difference between a permissible 'string' of words and an impermissible one. Yet in the course of our study of 'Dolour', it qu~cklybecame clear that not only were participants in semmars

! I

WORDS AND MEANINGS good at ass~milatingand understanding anomalous strings, but that they were even able to predict anomalous stnngs. How IS it then that we can process such apparently opaque language? One solut~onto the problem has been proposed by the lingu~st 3. P. Thome in a well-known article entitled 'Generative Grammar and Stylist~cAnalys~s'(1981). Thorne's art& is worth reading for several reasons. He carries out a stylistic analysis of 'Dolour'. although the Transformat~onalGenerative model he uses IS theoret~callyvery much at odds with my own approach. This offers the opportunity for some prnducttve debate between our two pos~tions.Thome's main argument is that 'deviant' structures m poetry, such as the collocational clashes evident In 'Dolour', can be explained by develop~nga 'grammar' For the text. This new 'grammar' will accommodate the dev~antstructures in the poem, so the reader's task of processing semant~callyanomalous combmations becomes akin to learning a new language. Thorne presents his 'grammar-of-the-poem' theory thus: Beh~ndthe ~ d e aof constructing what IS ~neffect a grammar for the poem lies the idea that what the poet has done 1s to create a new language (or d~alect)and that the task that faces the reader IS in some ways like that of learrung a new language (or dialect) ...For these poets the polnt of creatlng a new language, therefore, seems to be that n enables them tosay not only th~ngsthat can be said in Standard English. but ~na different way, but also thmgs that cannot he said m Standard English at all - though they can be understood only by someone who understands Standard English. (1981: 50-1) The 'grammar-of-the-poem' theory is certamly a challenging one, but in my opinlon it is Bawed in several respects. For one thing, to say that collocational clashes are a 'new' language is to nullify the11 stylistic effect totally. Deviant patterns function at an intralinguistic level: their impact results from thew ~nterplaywith other elements inside a particular language. If indeed they constituted a 'new' language. then describing them would be much the same as accountmg for the formal differences between, say, French and English. Other parts of Thorne's analogy with language learning are problematic. Learners new to a language obv~ouslytry to acqulre strings of words that are 'normal' in

WORDS A N D MEANINGS that particular language. It is only the experienced users of that language who can be expected to make sense out of anomalous or irregular patterns. Furthermore. if deviant comhinat~onscreate a new language in which !:he striking hecomes the norm, then presumably this new language is itself susceptible to the son of defamiliarising operation that generated it in the first place. Would the result of this operation he yet another new language or would it simply constitute a return to the 'normal' code from which we started? Clearly a lot more mvestigation needs to be done before we have an adequate model of how readers make sense of the coinplex and anomalous language that characterises much?oetry. And such a model would be just as much a theory of reading literature as it would a theory of grammar.

Suggestions for ,Further reading Lexical semantics Useful mtroductioirs to lexical semantics (which also cover the debates between different approaches to the top&) are: Carter (1987); Hurford and Heasley (1583); Palmer (1982): Crystal (1987: 102-7). These hook:; are generally accessible and offer fuller accounts than ts possible here. For extra reading on Iencal semant~cssee: Fromkm and Rodrrtan (1988: 205-50); Jackson (1988); Cruse (1986). More advanced surveys of broader Issues in semantlu can he found m the following bocks: Lyons (19'77); Leech (1981); Kempson (1977).

Lexical semantics a n d stylistic analysis There are a number of useful books and articles which use lexical semantics for stylistic analysis. 1'-eech (1969) is the first standard textbook to be written on the stylistics of poetry. A more recent contribution to the field is Verdonk (:.993), which is a collection of essays aimed a t the non-q~ecialist.The zeneral stylistics of naming in rock and pop is covered m Wales (1952). Nash (1985) and Chiaro (1992) are two books on the language of humour which contain entertainmg sections on puns, c1;ishes and p1a)s on word-meantng. Ronald Carter has written a number of studies of W. H. Auden's poetry from a stylistic perspecuve. For his discussion of Auden's poem 'Mundus et

WORDS A N D MEANINGS Infans' usmg cloze procedure. see Carter (1981 and 1987: 193-207). An analys~sof the poem 'Oxford', usmg similar semantlc techn~ques can he found m Carter (1982h). For a general discuss~onof cloze procedure and multrple chorce text m a stylist~ccontext see Van Peer (1989). Van Peer has also wntten a more speclalist monograph on stylist~uand psychology m which many of the techniques suggested ~nt h ~ chapter s are used (Van Peer 1986).

Pi

Chapter

4

Exploring narrative I

swle: pafierns of

1

cohesion in a shor* story

I

4.1

Introduction

102

Practicnl activity: reconstructing a short story

103

Resuits and discussion

105

4.3.1 General patterns of response

106

4.3.2 An idealised narrative

110

4.3.3 The orig~nalversion

112

4.4

115

* 4.2 4.3

*

Extendihg the nnniysis

4.4.1 Cohesion

115

4.4.2 Natural narrative

116

4.5

Prncticnl nclivity: creative writing

120

4.6

Summary

126

Suggestions for further rending

126

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE

/1 4.1 Introduction In keeping with the general one?tatlon of the book, this chapter illustrates how literature can be used as a p a n t of entry lnto the study of English language. Here the fo:us of attention will be on prose fictlon and the features of language that will be introduced and explored are cohesit~nand narrative. The structure of this chapter. however, differs from that of the previous two in one key respect. Whereas the practice up to now ha:; been to discuss toplcs in language before the development of practical exercises, this chapter by contrast takes a direct route to the text and expands upon topics in language ofrer the main practical actlvitles have been undertaken. The chapter is r.tructured as 6~11ows.In the next section, readers will be invited fo tak:e part in a practical workshop achvity whrch is based upon a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway. A jumbled version of the story is presented from which readers will be asked to assemble a coherent and well-formed narrative. In section 4.3, the responses d groups of students who have camed out the same activity will be reviewed and 1 heir (re)constructions will eventually be compared with the origins1 Hemingway version. In a more technical way, section 4.3 will also be concerned with exploring the patterns of cohesion. in the narratives developed by the students. From their collectecl versions of the story, an idealised narrative will be constructed wluch will then form the basis of comparison with the original Hemingway verslon. Ir, the fourth section of the chapter, the analysis of cohe:;ion will be supplemented with a discussion of natural nnrrative. A number of extensions to the maln study are developed ~n sectlon 4.5, including: some suggestions as to how the kind of activity outlined here might he integrated with creative writing. Finally, somt: concluding n:marks are offered on the ways in which idditional linguistic frameworks may be brought into play in the study of narrativ~:.

j

4.2 Practical activity: reconstructing a short story The Hemlngway text selected for reconstruction is one of the many short vignettes peppered throughout the I n Our Time collect~on. These vignettes are untitled, are seldom over one hundred and firty words long and are often simply wedged between the more substantial short storm m the collection. They are distinct from the longer stories not only m terms of content, but in graphotogy also: most are italicised, wh~chseparates them visually from the other material around them. Given that the object of the exercise is to foreground the linguistic devices which bind stor~estogether, I began by dismantling the text entirely. Both the sue and overall structure of the text helped enormously here, in that the story compnses only eleven sentences totalling 130 words. I (literally) cut up a photocopy of the story Into 11s consiituent sentences and shuffled the eleven pieces of paper. The pieces of paper (containmag a single sentence each) were then drawn in random sequence and every sentence was assigned a letter from the consecutive sequence a, b, c.. . . up to k. The sequence of sentences is now completely haphazard; even if any particular combination happened to match the origlnal it will have been entireiy due to chance. The sequence which emerged from this dismantling process is reproduced within the ruled text. Before that, there is a set of instructions on how to 're-assemble' the text which readers might care to follow. In fact, if time and facilities permit, it would be a good idea to photocopy the next page, cut it up and then experiment by laying out and rearranging the eleven sentences on a worktop. Better still if you can confer with colleagues or peers about whrch sequence is best. For the moment, the orig~nalHemingway version will he withheld until we have had tlme to explore fully the sorts of reconstructions that are produced under such cucumstances. Here now are your mstructions:

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE

101

All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut.

[bl When they fired the first volley he wos sitting down in the wale1 wittr his head on his knees. [cl There were pools of water in the courtyard.

(dl They tried fo hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a

4.3 Results and discussion

puddle of water. [e) One of the ministers was sick with typhoid.

If)

Two soldiers corried him

downstairs ond out into the rain.

(g) There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard.

(h) Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up.

(i)

They shot the six cabinet ministers at half past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital.

[j)

It rained hord.

(kl The other five stood very quietly against the woll.

Readers by now should have developed theu own versions of the narrative and have formed some opinion as to why they prefer the sequence they do. Unfortunately, the communicat~ve dynamics of prmt media are such that I am unable to see what you have done or to discuss with you your partlcuiar versions! Perhaps the next best thmg, then, is to look at what others have done using the same materials. What follow next are the results of an undergraduate semlnar based on the same activlty. This was a largish seminar group, comprising twenty-e~ghtstudents, so rather than being asked to produce ~ndividualresponses, participants were asked to work in six groups comprismg four or five members aplece. The results obtained from the seminar activlty are summarked m Table 4.1. Readers can now check across the table to see if their own versions generally square with (or are even identical to) any of the sequences proposed by the six groups. One of the advantages of a quantitat~vesummary of this sort is that it is possible to view at a glance a collected set of responses. These responses are based specifically upon nat~vespeakers' intuitions about what constitutes a wellformed, coherent narrative. We can gain msrghts into not only the sorts of patterns which recur but also the variety of responses which is reflected across the six groups. The summary also creates a kind of 'consensus' response against which readers can check the11 own versions. And, of course, all of this will provide an illuminating point of contrast with the original Hemingway version when it appears later

¶

i'

E X P L O R I N G N A R R A T I V E STYLE

TABLE 4.1 Results oi.workshow octivitv sentence Group Sentence

(if

(a) (9) (a) (a) (b)

in the section. For the moment, however. it will be useful to reflect upon and discuss thr: general p a t t m s that have emerged from the students' responses.

4.3.1 General patterns 01: response It 1s noticeable that only two of the available eleven sentences were selected as viable openings to the story. Of these two, sentence (i) was favoured: They shot the six cabinet ministers at holf post six in the morning agoinst the woll of o hospital. The justification offered by the groups who chose (i) as the crucial opening sentence wore interesting: and merit some consideration. The underlying moti~ationbehind this selection was that of all the sentences this was the one which provided the neatest summary of the entlrestory. No other sentence encapsulated the point of the story in as 'snappy' (sic) a way. The precise linguistic justification offered IU support ot' thn centred primarily on two features of the sentence. First, the noun phrase 'the six cabinet ministers' is the most elaborated of all the references to the ministers, and would naturally be expected to precede subsequent, more reduced forms. For instance, the appearance of the ~lartitiveexpression 'one of the ministers' later in tho narrative pn:supposes an earlier reference to the group of ministerr as a whole. Second, and more significantly, this

I

I 1

E X P L O R I N G N A R R A T I V E STYLE

is one of only two sentences in the story which contain an indefinite article: 'a hospital'. This is a linguistic feature whlch IS often used to introduce a new entity into the text, with subsequent references adopting the definite article 'the'. (See, for example. the reference to 'the hospital' in sentence (a).) In spite of this justification, however. some groups still expressed misgivings about the selection of (i) as an opening. One feature which perturbed a number of partic~pants was the use of 'They' without an antecedent. Now, in terms of the cohesion model mentioned in section 4.1, the pronoun 'they' is normally used anaphoncally (Halliday and Hasan 1976: 14). That is to say, it usually refers 'backwards', anaphora being the type of cohesive relation which polnts to some earlier, fuller reference in the text. By contrast, in the present example, the pronoun is used caraphorically; it points forward to a reference or references in a subsequent portion of text. In this respect, the 'They' can be said to form a cataphoric link with the references to 'the soldiers' and 'the officer' later in the narrative. On balance, however. it was generally agreed that this feature did not warrant the de-selection of (i) as the best possible opening to the story. Indeed, a number of students suggested that this type of cataphoric reference was a common enough characteristic of the openings of literary texts. The two groups who chose sentence 0) for their opening took a somewhat different approach. They argued that a short 'scenesetting' sentence like 'It rained hard' was a more appropriate begrnning to the story. Moreover, they had no problems in explaining away any unusual cataphoric references as the 'It' m the sentence n simply a dummy sub~ect,an item which has no reference value and is purely a formal requirement of the grammar of English. One of the more striking aspects of the table of results is the way in which it highlights certain configurations of sentences which are almost invariable across all groups. Particularly noteworthy is the following sequence of sentences proposed by five of the six groups: (el (f)

One oi the rntnisters wos slck with typhoid. Two soldiers carried him downstoirs ond out into the rain

The justification for this configuration rested on both the formal aspects of the language system and on the background assumptions of the participants themselves. First of all, the pronoun 'him' in ( f ) provides a clear anaphonc link to the antecedent phrase 'one of the

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE ministers'. Second, further coherence 1screated through the suggestion of causality: the minlster is ill so he has to be carried. T h s 'commonsense' interpretation prompted a number of illuminating comments on the general lack of causality in Hemingway's style. Formal links between propositions, such as if, so and fherefore, tend to be uncommon and, consequently, 'cause and effect' and'logtcal' relationsh~ps often have to be constructed by readers. The agreement reached over the sequence of sentences (hi and (bl also warrants some comment. Four groups proposed the followtng pattern, remarkably, at identical polnts in the narrative: Finolly the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying fo make him stand up. [b) When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on his knees. [h)

The reasons put forward in support of this pattern were interestmg. In addition to the cohesion created through the use of the auaphonc pronouns 'they', 'he' and 'his'. all groups pointed out that extra cohesion was created by the juxtaposit~onof the opposttes 'stand up' and 'sitting down'. This cohesion through antonyms (see section 3.2) is identified by Halliday and Hasan as one of the main types of lexlcal cohesion in English. Another area of cross-group similarity is the sequencing of sentences (i), (el and (kt. Although the exact posttlon of these sentences in the narrative vaned, and the sentences were interrupted by other elements, the preclse sequence was, with only one exceptton. invariable. Only Group 5 did not propose the follow~ngpattern: [i)

[ej [k]

They shot the six cabinet ministers at half past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. [. . .) One of the ministers was sick with typhoid (. . .) The other five stood very quietly against the wall [. .)

The relatlve rigidity of thts pattern can be explained by reference to the cohesive chams which develop through tt. As was pointed out above. the partltrve expression 'One of the minrsters' is t ~ e dto the lnihal reference in (i). The cohesion between (e) and (k) is even more rigid, with the expression 'the other five' undergoing ellipsrs. This cohesive device IS a type of 'substitution by zero', where one or more

i

EXPLORING N A R R A T I V E STYLE items may be deleted but may stiU be tnferred from the lingutstic context. For instance. In the second clause of the following sentence both the verb 'scored' and the noun 'goals' have been ellipted, yet are presupposed through reference to the &st clause:

I

1 I i

i

i i

:

1

Everton scored three goals ond Liverpool hvo Return~ngto the text, it is clear that the 'other five' IS only mean~ngfulthrough reference to sentences (e) and (i), thus developmg strong anaphoric links between this particular group of sentences. The cohesive cilaut which emerges might he formulated as in Figure 4.i. The cham is further strengthened by the presence of other cohes~velinks such as repetitran: in t h s instance, the phrase 'the wall' occurs in both (i) and (k).

(i)

1 the six cabinet

ministers

I

/

(anaphorlcreference1

/

(anaphoric elitpslsl

FIGURE 4.1 The one group who placed (i) after (e) and (1;) (see Group 4 above) had specific reasons for dolng so, although they felt unhappy about the overall structure of theu narrattve. Thetr dec~slonfor plactng (if towards the end of the narrative will be dealt with later. m subsection 4.4.2.

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE It is interesting also that olly one group chose to conclude the narrative with a seatence whlch [:ontams a clear 'signpost' in the form of the initial adverb 'finally', Group 6, then, took 'finally' to mean precisely that, yet the other five groups were dissatisfied with the sense of incompleteness which final (h) would generate.

4.3.2 An idwlised narrative It was anticipated 8.t the outset that the results of the workshop would produce an 'ideali:;ed' narrative based on the majority preferences displayed in each of the eleven sentence columns. This would produce a sample narrative derived from the collected responses which could then be contrasted with the origlnal version. Unfortunately, given the set of results obtainec genuine abstraction of this sort 1s difficult: some preferences are evenly distributed over a number of columns whilst otlier columns :yield no statistically significant set of preferences. Nevertheless, it is still possible to select a sample narrative representing the most 'typical' narrative produced by all the groups. In this respect, the nanative of group 2 is appropriate as their choices are most widely shered by other groups. The complete narrative proposed by this group is as follows, with letters retained for ease of reference. hut with thr: gaps between the sentences closed up in order to render the sequence 'storylike'.

[i) They shot the six cabinet mini:ters at half past six in the morning against the wall of a hospital. [i) It rained hard. (el One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. (fj TWO soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. [dl They h.ied to hold him up agarnst the wall but he sat down in a puddla of woter. [g) There were wet deod leaves on the paving of the courmrd. [k) The ccher five stood very quietly ogainst the wall. [h) Finally the officer tolcl the soldiers it wos no good trying to make him stand up. [b) When t h q fired the first volley he was sitting down in the woter with his head on his knees. [c) There were pools of water jn ihe courtyard. (01 All the shutters of the hospitol were nailed shut.

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE A significant feature of this narrative as a whole is the division between what mlght be loosely termed descrrptive and actional frames. The group who produced this version attempted to create a balance between, on the one hand. the central actron of the shooting, and. on the other, the more 'static' descriptions of the rain, the hospital and the courtyard. To thls end, the descriptive sentences such as (i), (g) and (c) were quite consciously woven around the central narrative events realised chiefly by sentences (0,(d), (k), (h) and (bi. Like many other groups, this group felt that the narrative which resulted from this strategy was 'smoother'. more balanced and more neatly structured. Another important feature of this narrative which also reached a wide measure of agreement is thenarrowlngof focuscreated through the placement of sentences (j), (g) and (c). Almost invariably, sentence (i)precedes both (c) and (g), the most common configuration across all groups being: hard I.. .I There were pools of water in the courtyard 1. . .I (cJ There were wet deod leoves on the paving of the courtyard (gj

(il It rained

I., .!

The justification offered for the sequence is illuminating. Group 2 argued, for instance, that this configuration is not only cohesively linked by a broad lexical set including the items 'rained'. 'water' and 'wet', but it e also linked in terms of an Implicit cause and effect relations hi^ between the propositions expressed by each sentence. On the basis of largely commonsense reasoning, the following argument could be proposed, where the second and third sentences are predicated by the first: It rained and so here were pools of woter ond so there were wet dead leoves Agam, it should be stressed that the relationship between the propositions is implicit, the absence of formal connectives forcing readers to infer cause-and-effect relations. Whilst a number of groups had (if adjacent to ertlier (c) or (g), there was a tendency to seek maximum separation between (c) and

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE (g). Group 2's justification for this was echoed unanmously: (cj and (g) were felt to be too repetitive to be placed side by side. For one thing, both are existential sentences beginning with the dummy subject 'there': for another, both contain virtuaUy identical sentenceh a l prepositional phrases ('in the courtyard'. 'of the courtyard'). In short, the very similarity in suucture of the two sentences makes their proximity to one another feel 'unnatural'. Another common pattern reflected in the Group 2 narrative is the tendency to make sentence (a) the ending of the story. Again, the justification for this is interesting as it draws on both structural and thematic evidence. First of all, sentence (a) is part of the descriptive Game which is woven around the actional Game, providing a particularly apposite ending with its echo of 'the hospital' referred to in the openmg sentence (a cohesive tie of repetition, if one recalls). The thematic evidence concerns the 'allusion' created by the phrase 'nailed shut'. This group, and indeed the others who chose an (a) ending, argued that this developed an image of a coffin being nailed shut. thereby providing a symbolic analogue to the death of the cabinet ministers. This decision to adopt an 'emblematic' reading is especially telling, as this particular sentence never provoked such an interpretation in tutorials which used the unaltered, original version. Comparable identifications of an image of death in other parts of the descriptive frame (for example, in the reference to the 'dead' leaves in sentence (g)), which were not made in previous tutonals, were also made lnthe course of the present exercise. Of course the absence of any such response to this sentence in the origmal version mght have been due in part to its location in the story. However, if t h ~ and s other related pomts are to be developed more fully, it is to the original we must now turn. In the follomng subsection, therefore, the 'real' version will be produced and discussed.

4.3.3 The original version Here. at last. IS the ongtnal Hemingway vignette:

li) The~.shotthe six cobinet rninrsters ot half post six in the mornrng against Ihe woll of a hospifol. [cl There were pools of woter i n the courtyard. (g] There were wet dead leoves on the paving of the courtprd.

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE

(i)It wined

hord. [a) All the shutters of the hospitol were noiled shut. [el One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. [f) Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain. [dl They tried io hold him up ogornst the woll but he sot down in a puddle of woter. [k) The other five stood ver, quietly ogainst the woll. [h) Finally the officer lold the soldiers it was no good trying to make him stand up. (bl When they fired the first ~olleyhe wos sifting down in the woter with his heod on his knees.!

Dealing Erstly with the similarities between this and the student reconstructions, it IS noticeable that the preferred opening is vindicated: sentence (i) is indeed the first sentence of the story. [The reasons why (i) was considered most appropnate need not be re-introduced here.) The agreement reached over the (h)-(b) and (e)-(D pairs is also borne out by the original.Noticeably, however, both sequences are part of the actional frame, and there is a strong sense of a temporal progression from the first element of the pair to the second. It would be diicult to produce a coherent pattern by reversing these sentences. Beyond this, there are few similarities between the original and the reconstructions. There are a number of substantial differences between the texts, many of which are highly illuminating. There is broad disagreement on the distribution of the actional and descriptive Games, for example. In the Hemingway versron, these frames are separated into two blocks which, if we leave aside the opening sentence, c o m p h e five sentences of description followed by five sentences of action. These are not at all mtenvoven in the style of most of the reconstructions. Moreover, although the (h)-(h) configuration is widespread in the reconstructions, no group even contemplated this as an appropriate ending to the story. When confronted with the actual ending, all the groups were surprised. and many felt that (b) rendered the story incomplete, or, at least. indeterminate. Even more surprise was expressed at the sequencing of sentences in tbe descripnve frame of the story. Contrary to the mtuinons of the participants, the anticipated (i),(c), (g) is dispreferred in favour of the following: [c) There were pools of water in the courtyard.

--

~ . ~ . ..

~

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE

LORING NARRATIVE STYLE

(g] There were wet deod leaves on the poving oi the courtyard. if rained hord.

(il

4.4 Extending the analysis 4.4.1 Cohesion

The focalisation created through this pattern a almost the reverse of that expected, with a narrowing to the detail of the 'leaves' in the second sentence, follo~vedby an abrupt transition outwards to a general statement about the rain in the last sentence. Furthermore, the cause-and-effect relationship whxh forms the bass of most of the students' predictloris is actually reversed to an effect-and-cause relationship. Another ':onsequence of this pattern 1s that (c) and (g) are now side by slcle - a configuration which was ruled out by every group. Many felt that combining (c) and (g) in this way was repetitive and clumsy, almost becoming, to use Leech and Short's term. over-cohesive (19111: 252). More will be said on the discrepancles between the workshop and Hemingway versions in the follow~ngsection, where some further explanations will be ofkred as to wh!. such dissimilarities occur. But one thing that the intmductlon of the original verslon should have highlighted 1s how a bn:ak-up and subsequent reconstruction of the text is possible in the &::t place. There IS a marked lack of formal connectives between the sentences of the text, allowing considerable manipulation of their sequencing to take place without much disruption to the overall mecuing of the :.tory. This, in turn. leads to a clearer picture of the technique sor21ewould say lack of technique - of the author. There is little, if any, authorial commentary on the events of the story. just as there 1s little signposting as to how one event precipitates another. It is not made explicit either how one element in the descriplive frame is supposed to interconnect with another. One general outcome of the comparison between the original and reconstructions is that it xought out the very blandness and the almost self-con:;cious 'flatnes!;' of Hemingway's style. Moreover, the linguistic arialysls undertaken during the comparison provided concrete support for these observations. Indeed, many of the groups actually felt that thew own efforts were 'neater', more 'polished' and had mc.re all-round 'literary merit'. This in Itself provides some considerable insight illto what students of literature regard as :literary2 at least in terms of the kinds of structures which they expect literary texts to exhibit.

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In the course of the analysis and discussion of the previous section, a number of key terms hmm Halliday and Hasan's model of col~eslon were introduced. Although this was done m an ad hoc and somewhat piecemeal fashion. it was intended to mirror the direction taken by the workshop itself. In other words, linguistic terminology was not introduced prior to the comparative analysis, but was ~nsteadallowed to unfold during the course of the analysis. Among the specific terms ~ntroduced were the notions of anaphora and camaphora. Anaphor~creferences, which 'point back' to earlier references ln the text, provide one means of deveiop~ng coherence in a narrative. In relation to this, a number of cohesive chains have been identified in the analysis, the most significant of which are the progressions of phrases relating to the cabinet mlnlsters and the soldiers. By contrast, a more striking pattern of cataphora is established early on with the pronominally reduced form 'they' used to refer to the soldiers. The pronoun here therefore 'pohts forwards' to subsequent elaboration in the form of full noun phrases such as 'two soldiers'. 'the officer' and 'the soldiers'. Coheslon through arlronynty IS also created in the text through the juxtaposition of the verb phrases 'stand up' and 'sltting down' in adjacent sentences (hi and (h). The first of these phrases is also a repetition of 'stood' in the sentence immediately preceding (kf. However, these largely straightforward patterns of cohesion were offset by a number of 'anomalies' in the original. The 'overcohesiveness' In adjacent sentences (c) and (g) was commented on partlculariy, with workshop participants expressing dissat~sfaction at the repet~tivenessof the 'there were.. . ' construction and the similarity of the phrases 'in the courtyard' and 'of the courtyard'. Also noted was the general absence of connectivity between the sentences in the story. A wide vanety of devices are available in English for developing thls type of cohesion, including addirrve ('and'), adversatrve ('but') and causal ('so') conjunctions. However, only one explicit s~gnalis provided tn the form of 'finally' (sentence (h)) and yet. ironically, the sentence which it governs does not constitute the last of the story. Indeed, much of the benefit of t h ~ stype of comparative stylistics is that it foregrounds the discrepancies

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1

between the students' and the onglnal versions, thereby htghiighting the peculiar charactenstla of the latter.

4.4.2

Noturai narrative

Part of the point of an exercise such as this is that it can be supplemented with a variety of additional linguistic models which enable the analysis to he developed in a number of different directions. One such model, which would not only provide an lnslghtful analysls of the story in its own terms but would also help clarify some of the reconstructions discussed eariier. is the framework of natural narrative proposed by the soctolinguist William Lahov. Although this IS not the place to undertake a detailed tntroduction to the model, a brtef sketch will none the less prove useful. Labov defines a natural narrative as a method of recapitulating past experience by matchlng a sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which (it is implied) actually occurred. A mnimal narrative can be defined as a sequence of two clauses whtch are temporally ordered: that is. a change in their order will result in a change in the temporal sequence of the original semantic lnterpretatlon (Lahov 1972: 359-60). From the dozens of stones collected. Labov proposes the following narrative categones: Category Abstract

Ortenlatlon

E X P L O R I N G N A R R A T I V E STYLE

I

Frtncrton Signals that a story is about to begrn and draws attention from the listener; grves some idea what the story is golng to be about.

Form Normally a short summanslng statement. provided before the narratlve commences.

Helps the listener to identify the time, place, persons, actlvlty and situation (i.e. the 'who. what, when, where' of the story).

Often characterlsed by pnst conlinuous verb forms and adverbs of tlme. manner and place.

Complicatlng The core narratlve category Realised by narrattve actlon providing the .what happened' clauses whlch are element of a story. temporally ordered and normally have a verb m the simple past.

Resolution

Recapltulates the final events of a story (i.e. the 'what finally happened' element).

Compnses the last of the narratlve clauses which began the Complicating actlon.

Evaluation

Functions to make the point of the story clear, to ward off responses such as .so what?'

Marked by a number of different lingutstlc forms. Includes: evaluative commentary; embedded speech; comparisons with unrealised events; departures from bas~c narratlve grammar (such as modnls, negatlves. intensifiers and explirntives).

Coda

Signals that a story has ended; bnngs listener back to the polnt at which he or she entered narratlve.

No specific tingulsuc features, although frequently a generalised statement which is tlmeless m character.

With the exception of Evaluation, the categories listed above are arranged in the sequence tn which they would occur in a typical oral narrative. Evaluation is situated outside the central pattern and can be Inserted at virtually any stage during a narrative. A hlly formed narrative realises all six categories, although many narratives may lack one or more components. The Labovian model can be used to explore further the similarities and differences between the idealired and ongmal versions. In this regard, perhaps the most significant point of agreement between the two versions is the correct selection of sentence (ij by the students as an openmg: They shot the SIX cabinet mlnlsters at half past SIX in the morning against the wall of o hospital.

EXPLORING NARRATIVE S'IYLE

Interestingly, this sentence, in the context of the story as a whole. satisfies the cntena for a well-formed Abstract. It provides a short summary of the main event of ihe story, although in itself does not constitute a narrative. There was also substantial cross-group agreement on the se.,ection of this feature, with most groups arguing that the ~summarist:og'nature of this sentence made it a strong candidate for an opening to the !.tory. The one group who placed (i) towards the end of their story did so for reasons which will he discussed shortly. A major pattern of disagreement centres on the distribution of what were loosely termed the descripr~veand actional frames of the story. Hopefully, it stiould be clear from the foregoing that these two Informal categories rnay be now aligned with the natural narrative categories of Orientation and C'omplicattng action respectively. Orientation provides the all-importmt background detail which helps the listenerlreader identify the 'who, what, when and where' of the story. It IS realised by sentences such as the following: (c) There were pools of woter in the courtyard. (9) There were wet dead leaves (In the paving of the courbord (el One of the rnlnliters was slck with typhoid. By contrast, the Compiicating actlon of the story is realised pnmarily through those sentences whtch have an actronal verh in the simple past. These core nairative clause:; are represented by sentences (0 and (d) in the followmg sequence from the onginal version: (e)

If) (dl

One of the rnlntsters was sick with typho~d. Two soldiers car:ted hlrn dowristatrs and out Into the ram. They fried to hokf him up agatist the wall but he sat down in a puddle of water.

Much wider agreement was reachcd on such patterns, where the sentences are temporally ordered and where a change in their sequence would result in a change in the Interpretation of the chronology of the story. Furthermon:, a reversal of (0and (d) above would be difficult to justify on the ~ o u n d of s coherence. Where the idealised and original versions diverge most noticeably is in the way in which the descriptive (Orientation] frame is deployed. Whereas 11: is scattered throughout the idealised version.

I

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE in the ongrnai verslon rt is confined to the first half of the story. In fact, the original version is virtually split evenly into two blocks of Orientation and Complicating action. The idealised version, by contrast, is peppered with sentences of Onentat~onwhich break up what would otherwise be almost continuous Complicating action. (Consider, for example, the (d)-(g)-(k) and (h)-(b)-(c) patterns.) Students' reactions to the pattern of the onginal version were interesting: they argued that it felt too 'top-heavy', too 'symmetrical' and was on the whole rather unsubtle. In support of thetr own mixed pattern, they contended that a more balanced narrative emerged. with the transitions between Complicating action and Orientahon creating a more 'engaging' and 'dialogs' (src) story. This last point ieadsusdirectly to thequestlon of the problemat~c ending to the story. It may be recalled that no group contemplated placing the following sentence at the end:

!

(bl When they fired the first volley he was silting down in the water with his head on his knees. From an analytlc point of view, this sentence raises a number of issues. For one thing, it tends to cut across the distinctions between narrative categories established in this section. It satisfies to some extent the criteria for the recognition of Complicating Action: it has an act~onalverh in the simple past ('fired') and generally has a 'what happened' rather than 'who, what, where' feei to it. Yet a couple of features in the sentence push it towards orientation: 11 contalns an explicit temporal signal in the form of 'when' and, more significantly, contains a past continuous verb phrase ('he was sitting'). Both features are more characteristic of orientation sections of naturai narratives. Thxs categorical indetemrnacy is what many groups felt renders the story itself indeterminate. It possesses no clear Coda, no signal that the events of the narrative are over and the narrator is, so to speak, giving up the Boor. Group 5 felt, for example, that sentence (i), the opening of the orlginal and idealised versions, accomplished this much more effectively - which IS why they placed it near the end in their version. Certainly, all of the groups were unhappy with (b) as an ending and no group placed it more than three sentences from the end. Instead, more 'symbolic' Codas were preferred, such as (j) ('It rarned hard.'), (g) ('There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard') and, most popularly, (a) ('All the shutters of the hospital

EXPLORING NARRATIVE S T Y L E were nailed shut'). The first of these was chosen because it 1s by far the shortest sentence of the story, whilst the remamng two contain. respectively, explic~tand symbolic allusions to death. All of these choices, it was felt, not only avoided the sense of incompleteness generated by (b) but also rounded the story off more neatly with a short descriptive statement devoid of any actional context. Much more could be said of the implicahons of a natural narrative analysis here. The lack of Evaluation m the story, for example. has not beeu touched upon. To do so would in turn lead to questions of authorial modality, mind-style and point of view and such questions really deserve fuller treatment elsewhe~e.~ One consequence of Hermngway's non-evaluahve techmque is the notable absence in the story of any rhetorical 'colour', There are no stylistic flourishes, such as departures from the baslc syntax through the use of modals. questions and negatives. Indeed, one mght wonder how the same basic story fine would look if supplemented with those evaluative devices. Would rewrites, rather than reconstructions, reveal more about what participants informally termed the 'flatness' of Hemmgway's style? It is to issues such as this that the following short section wiU be addressed.

would have followed these events closely. Three months after the s probably bas~ngit on a newspaper executions, he wrote h ~ vignette. account he read in the Paris edition of the New York Tribune (Baker 1969: 108: Reynolds 1972: 821. The full text of the story, ~ncludiuga short preliminary editorial, Is reproduced in full withtu the ruled text.

I

iI t

Uncensored Account Brought From Athens Propped Up in Line

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Dead Man Was

GOUNARIS NERVED BY DRUG Ex-Premier. Dy~ngFrom Illness, Wos Artificially Stimulated to Stand LONDON, Dec. 20 The Daily Express published the first detailed occount of the recent executions of the Greek ex.Min~sterssupplied by its correspondent who was lately i n Athens.

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.

4.5 Practical activity: creative writing Up to now, mformat~onon the b~ographicaland literary-cntical context of the ,story under analysis has beeu quite consc~ously withheld from the study. T h ~ has s not been done in the interests of achieving a restrictively formalist or text-immanent reading of the story, nor 1s it suggested that contextual detail does not have a part to play in a multidimensional, lnterpretatlve process. On the contrary, 11has been done simply because, as a language-orientated activ~ty, the concern with linguistic form and function has been uppermost. As a preparatory stage in the development of the 'sub-exercise' which fottows, however. we shall find it necessary to introduce precisely such contextual detail. The actual htstoncal event portrayed m the vignette is the execution of six Greek cabinet ministers, including the ex-premier, ~n Athens in 1922. The executions took place after Greece's unsuccessful campaign against Turkey. Hemingway had previously covered the war for the Toronto Star and. although based in Pans at the time,

ATROCITIES MARKED GREEK EXECUTIONS OF FORMER LEADERS

! i

! L

! I !

I

.

,

,

. , .

. .

.

.

,

,

M. Gounaris. an ex-Premier, wos in a hospital in a very critic01 condition. About 11 a.m. he was taken out on a stretcher, placed in o motor van and driven to o ploce about one and o half miles outside of the city. He was left lying on his stretcher in a dving condition while the car went back to fetch five others from the prlson where they had oll been confined in a single room. To begtn the horrors of thot morning it wos discovered by the guards thot one of the five hod died in the van on the woy out from heort failure. On the arrival of the von Gounor~swas lifted out of the stretcher to stand up and face a firing party. It was then found that this wretched man, who, ofter oll, had been a figure in the recent history of Europe. wos unabie to stand at all. He wos thereupon given sufficient inlections of strychnine to strengthen the action of his heort to enable him to stond up in front of the firing porty. The man who hod died on the woy out was p p p e d up beside him - o ghastly line of four live men, one holf olive and one dead man.

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They were then asked Gounarts. the dead man ond all - if they hod onything to soy, an appalling Instonce of mockery. No reply wos

E X P L O R I N G N A R R A T I V E STYLE

E X P L O R I N G N A R R A T I V E STYLE

mode. but M. Boltouns took out his monocle, polished it and put it bock ogoin. Generol Hodjonestis cclmly lit o clgorette. The order to fire was given. The moment the prismers fell the firing poriy rushed forward ond emptied ;heir revolvers into the corpses. Including that of the mon who had died on the woy from the prlson. The bodies were then thrown into a lorry and tol:en to o public cemetev just outside of the city ond were thrown out casuolly in o heop in the mud which covered the g r o t ~ n d . ~

The compositional difference:; between Hemingway's short story and its source rtatenal needed only be sketched here. Most noticeable perhaps is that the dead minister of the newspaper account is removed completely, thereby chanr:.elling attention towards the sick mlnrster in the vignettt:. Indeed, it s~ouldhe difficult to cover both a sick man and a dying man in so short a space. The time of the execution is also alterec!. being brought forward to a time traditionally associated with 'dawn' :xecutions. Extrapolating from a reference to 'a heap in the mud' In the last sentence. Hemingway foregrounds the inclement weather through a series ol references to rain and wet conditions. The location IS also altered with the executions conveniently taking place just outside the hospital, as opposed to one and a half miles away. Again, thi:; allows for h~rthereconomy of descnption. Interesting also are the allusions by 1.lemingway to the 'nailed shut' windows of the hospital which, whilst provoking particular comment in the workshop discussion, are on th: basis of this evidence entirely fictitious. Although the ~ u t a p o s ~ t l oofn short story and source matenal would provide in itself E. useful frameluork for an informal discussion of composition and technique, the activity proposed here involves developing a story based on the newspaper account. 1 designed the following protocol for utie as a variation on the central workshop plan (introduced in section 4.2) and have found that it works particularly effectively with participcmts who want to develop t h e ~ compositional r and creative skills in El~glishlanguage. It basically involves writing a short story using only the newspaper account, without any pnor access to Hemingway's !;tory. (Of cou::se, the stories collected in this way can later be compared with the IIemingway vignette.) Reading through the protocol, you might care to imagine what sort of story you would produce on the basis of these directives.

I Having paid close attention to Hemingway's vignette, we are probably stylisticaUy 'disaffected' by now. and will be difficult to read the newspaper account without being influenced by his narrative. However. on those occasions where I have elicited stories through the protocol and where the workshop participants have bad no prior awareness of the Hemingway text. the results are both striking and extremely insightful. For a start, most of the elicited narratives are written 1x1 the first person. This technique often presents a highly personalised view of events, mediating them through the consciousness of a character who partic~patesin the story. Here is one such version produced by a group of students who

E X P L O R I N G N A R R A T I V E STYLE

E X P L O R I N G N A R R A T I V E STYLE

had not read Hemmgway's story before they embarked on the creative writing protocol:

It wos sometime lost December - I can't recall exoctly. All I con remember a that the ormy colled me lust before lunchtime to p~ck someone up. I wos to go to the hospitol. It turned out to be someone tmportont who wos in bod shope. I wondered what the hell they wonfed to d o with him. My instructions were to pick up five other guys ond to drive them one ond a holf miles outside the city. When I dropped them off, I reolised one of them wos dead. Maybe o heori O W O C ~ .Fortunately, someone wos there fo give the g u y on the stretcher o booster. Thonk God it worked1 He stood up. The guy who seemed to be in chorge asked the six of them if they needed onyfhing. But before they could onswer they were shot

I

Many narrative devices are employed here whrch are thoroughly at odds with those used by H e m g w a y . For mstance. a consequence of the first person narrative framework is that many events are reported through verbs which empbasise the narrator's mental cognitron and perception: 'I can't recall': 'I can remember': 'I wondered'; 'I reaiised'. This type of verbal process. 11was noted, was conspsuously~absent from Hemingway's thud-penon narratrve framework. The students' narrative is also embellished with explicit modality. Modality is language which expresses a speaker's or wrtter's opinion about the validity of what they say and which indicates whether they are certain or doubtful about the truth of the claims they make. White non-existent in Hermngway, modal dev~ces are clearly present here: 'I can't recall exactly': 'Maybe a heart attack'; 'the guy who seemed to be in charge'. A related narrative feature of the student text is the use of interpolations, asides and exclamations whch signal the narrator's reactton to the events of the story as they unfold: 'what the hell'; 'Fortunately': 'Thank God'. In terms of Labov's natural narrative model introduced in subsection 4.4 2, the students' story exhibits marked narrative Evaluatron, conslstlng mainly of explanations of how one event in the story precrpitates another: 'they called m e . . . to pick someone up': 'I was to go to the

i iI 1 I

1

hospital': 'My instructions were to pick up five other guys.' This IS supplemented by the use of a specific subtype of Evaluation known as an explicative, m which a post /roc explanation of a particular narrat~veevent IS offered when d becomes available later in the story: 'It turned out to be someone important.. . ' All of these evaluative devices serve to establish a chain of cause-and-effect relationshrps which were so markedly absent from the H e m g w a y story. With reference to another category of the natural narrative model. Onentation, the students' version extrapolates from details in the newspaper account in order to locate the beginning of the narrative withln a specific temporal framework: 'last December': 'before lunchtime'. Whereas these references to time are removed completely by Hemngway, references to physical location and the weather are. conversely, embellished substant~aUyin his vignette. Finally, the last clause of the students' version ('they were shot dead'), which is in the slmple past tense. is much more in keeplng with the criterion for a narrative Coda than the equivalent clause in Hemrngway ('he was s~ttingdown in the water.. . 7. The openendness engendered by the past continuous stands in sharp contrast to the sense of finality and closure produced by the simple past. Thrs is not to say that there are no points of stylistic similarity between the two stones. In the students' version, for example, no characters are named - a rare characteristic indeed of the narratives elicited through thts exercise. Similarly, there is a certain indefinrteness about the students' story, conveyed primarily through repeated references to 'sometime' and 'someone', which again resembles Hemmgway's technique. Nevertheless, irrespective of the precise degree of similanty between the Hemingway and workshop texts. this activrty Invanably generates enough material to form the bas~s for productive companson and it can always be used to locate and identify different features of language m narrative texts, whether they be modality, cohes~onor natural narraave. Finally, it is worth notrng that the students who created the present workshop narratlve were quite startled when they came to read the Hemingway text - a response perhaps not often ev~ncedin semlnars on this writer's short stones. In fact, I have had the feeliog ever srnce that they much preferred therr own version to that of one of the reputed greats of American fiction1

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STY1.E

EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE

4.6 Summary The frameworks of cotlesion and narural narrative are only two of many linguistic models which may be ,~roughtinto play in the analysis of texts. What makes tt.ese two fram~:workspartlcularly appropriate for our present purposes. however. i:i their shared emphasis on the 'surface' features of the text. In other words, the models of cohesion and natural narrative offer clear indices of stylistic formulae which can easily be 'read off agalnst expli-it markers in a story. Not all interpretations are as readily accessed, however, and there are other. more abstract layers of ~larrativecommunication exhibited by stories. For instance, in the review of the mam workshop activlty (section 4.3), it was noted how students made comments on the covert and symbolic allusions to death in the story. These inferences are not predicated on overt 'surface' clues m the text; rather, they are meanlngs which need to be actively rnapped on to the text. Indeed, readers may have made: similar m€er~:ncesin thelr own reconstructions of the story. The type of mearing fabrlc engendered by this interpretative process is often referrerl to as coherence. Although an emphasis on coherence rather than cohesion would have shifted the scope of this chapter into quite a dif'erent area. it underscores the fact that texts are organ~sedsimultaneously on a number of different linguistic leveis. In fact, the analysis olnarrative texts may be undertaken from a whole host of linguistic perspectives: it has been the concern here to suggest but two of the range of possible models available for this type of language study.

Suggestions for further reading Cohesion a n d natural narrative The model of cohesion presented in thls chapter is developed largely from that of Hatliday and Hasan (1975), although see also Halliday (1994). The model of t~aturnlnarrative 1s adapted from William Labov's work on urban vernacular. .% partlcularly comprehens~ve version of the model can be found in Labov (1972). Toolan (1988: chapter 5) provldes a clear account of the key stages m the development of Labov's framework.

Both cohesion and narrative have received extensive and detailed treatment by stylisticians over the years. From the pool of important work on narrative structure is Carter (1984) which proposes a framework for the analysis of narrat~veopenings. Carter partly bases his model on sets of responses by informants to disarranged sentences. and thus must be acknowledged as a study whlch prefigures the type of actlvity undertaken here. Slylistlc work whlch draws more centrally on the Labovian natural narrative model includes Simpson (1987) which concentrates on a sectlon from Hemingway's The Old Man and the Sea. Haynes (1989) illustrates pnssim the stylistic potential of the Halliday and Hasan model, whilst Fowler (1986: 53-68) provides a compact summary of the cohesion model as well as an analysis of Kurt Vonnegut Jnr's Cot's Cradle from thls perspective. Finally, Simpson and Montgomery (1995) develop a broad-based model of narrative which they use to explore a variety of stylistic features in the prose and film versxons of Bernard MacLaverty's novel Cal. The related study of coherence in narrative has been informed by relevant stylistic work on, for example, discourse structure (Hoey 1989) and plot structure (Stubhs 1982). The second of these offers a semantic analysis of plot, and constitutes a useful supplement to the present study in so far as it focuses on Car in the Rarn, another Hemingway short story. Because of its focus on the inferencing strategies used to derive readings from a text, a study of narrative coherence may also encompass research in text-linguistics and artificial intelligence. Agam, the potential of these two approaches has been amply explored by stylisticians, samples of wh~chare: de Beaugrande (1987); Van Peer (1987); Wertb (1994).

Chapter

5

Dialogue and drama: discoarrse analysis

.

. e

0

8

e

a

5.1

Introduction

130

5.2

Dinlogoe nnd discourse

131

5.3

~ ~ 4 for~ the 1 nnnlysis s of discourse

143

5.3.1 The analysts of discourse Structure

143

5.3.2 Discourse strategy: maxims and relevance

148

5.3.3 Discourse strategy: politeness phenomena

155

5.4

Discourse nndysis nnd drnmn dialogue

.

summnry

164 174

Suggestions for further rending

176

5.5

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

primarily concerned with the meaning of language m context. In keeping with the other chapters of the book, use will be made only of models that represent both a significant theoretical development in language study and a viable and accessible method for stylistic analysis. Section 5.4 is devoted to the analysis of a passage of drama dialogue and it draws on the analytic models assembled in the previous two sections. The text used a Edward Albee's play The Zoo Story. Literary crit~cshabitually categorise this play as 'absurd', although curiously, Albee himself tends not to be classified as a dramatist of the absurd. The analysis will attempt to demonstrate how this sort of play dialogue can offer fruitful insights into aspects of naturally occurring conversation. The final secuon of the chapter draws together some of the strands of the analysis and provides an inventory of important interactive features which can be explored in dramatic dialogue.

IS

5.1 Introduction This chapter explorer, the nature 3f dialogue. It investigates the structure of verbal interaction and assesses some of the strategies that speakers and hearers rise in conversation. Because of this remit, the literary genre that will offer the primary focus of attention in this chapter will be drama. It will be argued, amongst other things, that dramatic dialogue pro.~idesexcellent source material for explaining the basic patterns of everyday conversation. And, odd as it may seem, play dialogue that critics dub 'ahsurdist' is an especially productive tool for foregrounding the routine and commonplace in verbal interaction. In language stud:,, the term r~:servedfor the highest level of linguistic organisation is discourse. Itiscourse refers to the structure and function of language beyond the level of the sentence. The unlts in discourse analysis are therefore n:latively large and are certainly much larger than any of the linguistic units covered so far m t h ~ s book. One of the pnaary emphasss in discourse analysis is on explaining how conversation works. Discourse analysts are interested in how spoken interaction is structun:d and how speakers' conversational contributions arc: connected. Not only will this emphasis be sustained throughout this chapter, but it will be orientated towards two interrelated areas. 12irst,does conversation have a structure and, if so. what sort of stnrcture? Second, what do speakers hope to achieve in interaction and how do t w y set about achieving it? In order to answer these questions, the chapter will be arranged as follows. The next section vlill establish some ground rules for discourse analysts. It will set out tile broad princ:iples of discourse organisat~on in general terms. The focus narrow: considerably in section 5.3, where a phalanx of infli~entialdiscourse models are assembled and evaluated.,These models cover both ihe structure of discourse and the strategies speakers Jse in discourse. The 'strategic' models are drawn from that branch of discourse arialysis called pragmatics, which

5.2 Dialogue and discourse At first glance, conversational interaction appears to be more loosely organised than the other linguistic levels we have studied in this book. For one tning, it is peppered with dysfluencies, non-sequiturs, false starts and hesitations. For another, there is simply no tellmg what exactly someoneengagedin talkisgoing tosay.Nevertheless,although discourse seems more 'fluid' than other linguistic levels, this is not to say that it has no underlying structure. On the contrary, we have very strong expectations about what sliould occur in interaction: questions normally evince answers, requests anticipate reactions while remarks and comments require at least some acknowledgement from other mteractants. Moreover, all these speech activities will be expected to be delivered with adegree of politeness that befits the situation or task in hand, and for a speaker or hearer to dev~atefrom these conventions is to do so at her interactive peril. Conversation. though complex and multifaceted, is still structured. Good evidence of what happens when this structure collapses is provided by conimunrcative breakdowns. Here, for example, is a piece of real conversation between two sisters (A and B). Speaker A a planning to make a telephone call to a relative living atiroad:

1

A: Whot's the code to Los Angeles?

1

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA I

0: Are you hungty? A: What?

A: Come on now, eot up your Crunchy Nut Cornflokes 0: No wont it1 No wont it1

8: What? This 'breach' in the discourse framework was created by speaker B's misinterpretation of A's utterance. Curiously, she thought that A had asked 'Do you want some coleslaw sandwiches?'. and consequently believed her response to have been appropriate in the context. As far as speaker A was concerned. rt clearly wasn't acoherent response and the communrcatlve breakdown. her second utterance precrortates ~... . . Often taken as a benchmark in discourse analysis are the following basic pnnciples of conversational coherence: we have Intuitions about what constitutes well-formed discourse: we rely on speakers and hearers to be generally co-operative m interaction; we assume that what people say to us has some degree of relevance. Like many aspects of language orgarusahon, these pnncrples are best illustrated when we encounter aberrant or ill-formed interactron. The shunting exercise that was developed m Chapter 3 (see sectron 3.3) is a good way of teasing out our expectations about interactive weIlformedness. Comhrnations in discourse operate on a similar principle to grammatical combinations, with the collocorion in lexical semanhcs broadly analogous to the category of exchange in discourse. An exchange is a combination of conversational contributrons on the same topic produced by different speakers. Exchanges commonly (though not necessarily) consist of two parts. Here are four attested exchanges, each cbmprising two structural components:'

A: Hil How's it go~ng? 0: Oh, not so bod. and yourself?

A: Right now, have the bowels been working OK? 8: Mmm . . yeoh . ,

With only decontextualised utterances to go on, our communlcatrve competence is still sophisticated enough to provide us with a lot of information about these exchanges. Not only can we deduce therr probable sources. but we can even make predictions about the status. identrty and power of the partrcipants rnvolved in the dialogue. As it happens, the first exchange is an rnformal openlng to a conversation, the second 1s from a doctor-patient encounter, the third from a politrcal interview and the last From a domestic encounter between an adult and a toddler. Ail four exchanges represent nothing out of the ordinary. However, by simply nudging the second utterances in each exchange into the equivalent positions in the exchange immediately following, the following rather surreal collection m produced: i

i

1

1

!

A: Hil How's it going? 8: No want ill No wont ill

A: Right now, hove the bowels been working OK? 0: Oh, not so bod, ond yourself?

A: What now do you th~nkshould be our reaction to yesterday's mortar o ~ a c kin Saraievo? 8: Mmm . ;

;

A: Come on now, eot up your Crunchy Nut Cornflakes. 0: Well I'm someone who's said that unless we take firm oction then these problems will escalate. I mean, the best ihing you con soy about Bosn~a- and there oren't many good things you con soy - IS tho1 it IS a crlsls that came before Europe was ready.

;

A: What now do you think should be our reaction to yesterday's mortar attack in Saraievo? 8: Well I'm someone who's said that unless we toke firm action then these problems will escalate. I mean. the best thing you can say aboui bosnio - and there oren't many good things you con soy is that it is a crisis tho! come before Europe was ready.

-

It is through the very peculiarity of these shunted exchanges that the commonplace and prosaic in 'normal' discourse is foregrounded. Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the original set with the second highlights the subconscious and perhaps taken-for-granted assumptions that we have about coherence and wellformedness in discourse. It also underscores expectations about the appropnateness of roprc in interaction. For instance, outside a medical context, human bodily emrssions make an unsuitable or at least unlikely toprc of discourse.

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

Explanations for why the shunted exchanges should look so outlandish will unfold over the course 3f the next two sections. For the moment. readers can use their intuitions to tease out the bizarre features of each exchange. Your hunches about why these examples sound weird may be more profound than you think - in fact, you may be taking an i m p l a n t step tcwards defining the 'absurd' as a dramatic genre! How can we account systematically for the routines, patterns and structures that art: the mainsta:r of conversation? The best way to start is by painting a picture of discourse organisation with the widest brush strokes possible. This picture can then be embellished by introducing some specific models for analysing discourse. To begin the 'macro-survey' of general patterns in discourse, rt IS worth re~ntroducrngthe two axes of 1anya::e that were developed early in section 3.3 to account for patterns cbf collocation. These intersecting axes, the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic. also serve as a useful conceptual model for explain~nghow conversatton works. The syntagmatic axis, it may ibe recalled. is the axis of 'chain'. It forms the structural frame along which combir.ations of units are strung. These units are linked in the relationship: 3 and b and c. The paradigmatic axis IS the axis of 'choice'. It accounts for the pool of possible entries for a @ven slot in the !,t~cturalframe and links elements in the relationship: a o r b o r c. When mapped c.n to discourse, these axes realise the twin poles of strc;ure and srrorepy (Figure 5.1). The structural axis is a neat way of conceptualising how discourse units are combined and tiuilt up to form exchanges. Put another way, the struclural axis accolnts for the linear progression of

+ FIGURE 5.1 S f ~ c t u r and e stralegy

!

i I

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

discourse as a sequence of exchanges. We have already seen four exchanges, consishng of two structural elements apiece, in our shunting exercise. Exchanges often take the form of familiar pairings such as 'questions and answers' or 'statements and acknowledgments'. However, exchanges can also encompass non-verbal behavjour. If, for example, a speaker issues a request, then a non-verbal reaction from the hearer is normally warranted. Even though its second part is not a verbal utterance in the shictest sense, this 'request-reaction' sequence none the less constitutes an exchange in discourse. Here now are the three principal types of discourse exchange-questioning. stating, requesting arranged along the syntagmatic axis:

-

2 3

4

A: What's ihe time? & B: Three o'clock. A: That was o great gool. & 8: Yeoh. you bet. A: Open the w~ndow. & 8: [opens the window]

With its focus on strategy, the paradigmatic axis foregrounds the 'tactical' nature of discourse. This axis represents an utterance as a cho~cefrom a pool of available options. Consider again the 'request-react~on' sequence expressed by example (4). While speaker A's utterance is unquestlonabjy efficient and clear as a directive, its forthrightness will he interpreted as peremptory and rude in many contexts. There are other, more subtle ways of getting a hearer to perform the same operation. A stratagem like 'Could you open the window please?' is less direct, though, of course, it is rather more tangential to the task required of the hearer. Even more oblique is a gamb~tlike 'Goodness me, it's hot in here!', which, although subtle, is even further removed from the task required. In Figure 5.2 all three strategies are arranged along the paradigmatic axis. They are ordered according to the degree of directness which they exhibit to the servrce requested. The paradigmatic axis thus forms a strategic continuum ranging lrom 'direct' to 'indirect' along which different types of utterances can be plotted. There is however a crucial third dimension in discourse analysa. The contextual sening of an ~nteractionis both a significant determinant of discourse structure and an Important influence on discourse strategy. Setting is the non-linguistic context which envelops a piece of communication. This does not, however. just mean the physrcal environment of interaction; it also extends to the assumptions and beliefs that people bring to discourse. The setting, moreover, is

i

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

Direct

t I

A: Open the w~ndow

A: Could you open the wtndow? A: Goodness me, it's hot in here

indirect

4

FIGURE 5.2 The strategy mls constantly changing as a dialogue progresses. And this change need not necessarily occur because, say, a bull elephant happens to crash into the room during a conversation. It may simply be that a new framework of shared knowledge develops between interactants as discourse develops. For mstance, if you suddenly blurt out to someone m the course of a conversation that you love them, then clearly a new discourse context is created which will affect profoundly subsequent patterns of interact~on. The importance of setting as a third dimension in discourse can be illustrated with a brief example. Here IS an actual exchange between two speakers which I witnessed a few years ago:

5

A: er . you have to g o to head office . . . please 0: [nods and rises to go]

Even without any descriptton of its setting, it is still possible to work s a 'request-reaction' exchange of the sort we have just out that t h ~ is been discussing. However, this structural descriphon, while straightforward enough, is not espec~allyinteresting in itself. Exploration of the strategy axis reveals more about the exchange. For example, the speaker employs two particles either side of the m a n content-bearing component of the utterance: 'ergand 'please'. Both part~cles,in tandem with the hesitation used around them. rmhgate the overall force of the request function. The Impact of the central sequence of the utterance

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

is also comparably softened. The 'have to' phrase, like its counterpart ;must', operates as a marker of obligaaon. However. unlike 'must'. it expresses oblectlve obligation. In other words, the requirement expressed by 'have to'ispresented as a general rule and not something that can be attributed directly to the speaker.The use of 'must', on the other hand, makes the obligation encoded in the request more like a sltbjecrrve decree that IS passed from speaker to hearer. All of these features combine to push the utterance towards the indirect end of the strategy continuum, reducing the overtly 'command-lie' status of the request more to the status of a 'suggestion'. Yetit is only with an account of thesetting in which this exchange took place that the full picture heglns to emerge. The exchange took place ln a travel agent's shop in Llverpool. Speaker A is a young black manageress who emerges from her own office Into the maln office. The addressee is a white middle-aged male employee who is positioned behtnd a desk and is dealing with customers. Descriptions of discourse setting often help explain the motivation beh~ndlinguistic strategy. Here, the woman is the 'powerful' interactant, at least in terms of institutionally sanctioned employment practices. Nevertheless. in spite of her status. she treads a cautious interactive path. In designing her utterance, she avoids the hlgher risk ploys from further up thestrategy continuum, opting instead for an interactive gambit whlch appears less direct and less coercive. This more cautionary strategy may also have been prompted by the fact that she 1s entering the physical 'territory' of her addressee. She leaves her own space, and IS moving towards a stationary interlocutor who is comfortably ensconced behind a desk.The outcome of her gambit e a successful one: she gets someone to do somethingwithout having appeared to have given them an order. However, the exchange as a whole raises a number of issues to do with the complex interact~onbetween language and social roles. Whereas perceived power and status is one determinant of strategy, thls is perhaps counterbalanced in this exchange by a web other soc~al variables such as gender. age and ethnicity. This interrelatedness of discourse strategy and discourse setting will be spotlighted further m the next section when attention is focused on the lingu~sticroutlnes of poliferress. We are now in a position to replace our two dimensional discourse model with a model whlch comprises the three components: structure, strategy and setting. These three 'Ss' can be employed as a handy mnemonic for discourse analysis at its broadest level. Although

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

clearly interrelated, the three parameters enable the analyst to sift out and concentrate upon different aspc:cts of discourse organisation. Figure 5.3 is the revised model which depicts setting as a clrcte embracing the other two axes. Any piece of discourse can he viewed as an intersection of the three Ss. As we saw in the ahunting exercise above. it is often possible to deduce information about the three Ss even with only decontextnalised utterances to go on. Further exoerimentation along these lines can be carried out using setting as a contextual variable. By taking one utterance and offering a selection of different contexts, the manner by which setting acts as a constraint on discourse appropriateness can be highlighted. Here is a short two-part exercise in which readers may care to participate. It involves takin: a decontextualised chunk of language and mapping :it against three possible scenarios. The three scenarios are: Senrng I A chance encounter between two mijdle-aged strangers at a bench m a public park Settrng 2 An e~ght-year-oldchild m conversatian mth her father's adult b e n d whom she has met for tile first time Senrng 3 A doctor engaged

III

FIGURE !i.3 A revised discourse model: the three 'Ss' 7

I I

a c!iagnosa of a patrent's illness

The next stage involves taking the following utterance and assigning it to one of the glven se,tmgs: 6 I've been to the zco. I said. I've been to the zoo. MISTER. I'VE BEEN TO THE 2031 Make a note of your decision about which setting fits the utterance. and if possible, the reascms which led ,1011to make this decision. You could also try to write brief utterances which would fit the remaining two settings. The second part of the exercise i:; as straightforward as the first. It involves matching up vocabulary, iegister and setting. The point t subsection 3.4.1), that can be made here 1s that even a l u ~ c a l s e(see which is much less developed than a fully formed utterance. is often strongly associated with a particular d:scourse setting. Here then is a lexical set which contains some rather grisly terms:

I

1 I

prosthesis lung cancer concer of the mouth doctor jow

Agam, the task is to assign this set to one of the three settings provided. If possible, draw up a lexical set which would be predicted by the remaining two settings. I imagine there will have been little difficulty in aligning the three settmgs with the two pieces of data provided. Given the straightforwardness of the exercise. readers may indeed be wondering where its heuristic value lies. For now, simply make a note of your reactions to the two protocols. We shall have good cause to return to them later. There remains one final matter that needs to be cleared up in this section before we move on to assess more specialised frameworks for discourse analysis. This is to serve partly as a note of cautron and partly as a way of consolidating one or two earlier points. Although they have been touched upon earlier in the book (sectrons 1.3 and 2.4.1). nowhere m this discussion bas there been any mention of the three important grammatical terms imperative, interrogative and declarative. When talking about discourse, we need to he very careful about how these terms are used. This is mainly because they describe the formal make-up of sentences and nor the function of utterances in context. Although they are often erroneously used interchangeably with discourse terms. imperatives, interrogatives and declaratives are

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA

-

Oeciaralive 6 Rolsln has closed the door 9 m e cat Is in the garden. 10 mey can sing well. 11 m e snake ate IL

really types of grammatical mood. Why this confusion is a particular problem in discourse analysis will become clear soon. Before that. a basic description of these three key categories of mood is required (Figure 5.4. see opposite). Imperatives differ principally from the two indicative moods, declarative and interrogative, in that they express no grammatical S ~ b j e ~ t ? F ~ r t h e r mthe ~ r verb e , which fronts imperative constructions is always in its base form and so cannot be marked for tense. (See what happens when you try to convert any of the four imperatives above into a past tense.j Indicatives, on the other hand, contain both subjects and verbs. although they may be further subdivided according to the position of these elements. In declaratives the subject simpiy comes first. In many interrogatives, either aU or part of the verb phrase comes first which is then, in turn. followed by the subject. In the following interrogatives, the verb phrases are indicated by underlining and the subjects by italicisation: 12 13 14

& Ro~sina the door?

is the cat In theyQJSI

the garden? well?

Sometunes a special verb. do, needs to he imported in order for this grammatical operatton to be carried out:

15

the snake

it?

On other occasious, a so-called 'WH-word', like where, why or how, can be mcorporated into the interrogative: 1 6 Where & the caf? This enables the interrogative to he used to prompt a more open kind of response rather than the 'yes' or 'no' that would be elicited by examples (12-15). The three principal moods are commonly associated with particular discourse functions. An interrogative is the form standardly used for asking questions; a declarative is the form standardly used for maklng statements; an imperative is the form standardly used for commands or requests. However, if ever there was a crucial axiom about the interaction of grammar and discourse it is this: there is no necessary correspondence benveen the mood of a senrence and 11s

lnlemgafive 12 Has Rolsln closed the door? 13 1s the cat In the garden? 14 Can they smg well? 15 Did the snake eat It? 16 Where 1s the can

i

imperative 17 Close ihe door 16 LookoUt1 please. 19 Turn on the N, 20 Gel me a drlnk.

FIGURE 5.4 lrnportont types of rnwd in English function 1n discourse. For instance, you can do a lot more with an imperative than just give an order. Here are a few instances of imperatives which are clearly not commands. Notional descriptions of their respective discourse functions are provided beside each example: 21 22 23 24

Have a drlnk. Hove a nice day. Blow me downl Look after yourself.

[offer] [ritualistic porting] [exclamation] [exhortation]

Interrogatives are similarly flexible. Here is a selection of interrogatives of which not one 1s a genume question for information: 2 5 Are you still here? 2 6 Could you poss the salt? 2 7 Will you hove o drlnk? 28 Is the Pope o Catholic?

[command] [polite request1 [offer] [rhetorical question: i.e. no reply elicited]

Finally, the declarative form also has many discoursaf possibilities. For instance. it can function as a command in an utterance like the following:

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

29 Thoi door is still open. In fact, thesame declarative sentenc: cancarry a number of discoursal functions depending on the intonatim (nses or falls in pitch) whrch it exhibits. Consider the following declarative:

3 0 You've hod enodgh coke. If uttered with a rising tone in the context of. say, a polite dinner party, it can function either as an coffer or as a genutne request for information. Yet when uttered wit11 a pronounced falling tone, by a mother to a toddler. then it is clearly a command and it signals to the youngster that she is out of luck! Sometimes, we don't even need to have a recognisable mood at all to get thlngs done in language. Tlie following constructron contains no verbso it is moodless. Nevertheless, its request function would be clear in any context:

31

5.3 Models for the analysis of discourse This section offers a general overview of some of the important developments that have taken place in discourse anaiysis over the last two decades. One of the main purposes of this is to suggest ways tn which discourse models can he productively applied to the analysrs of talk. The overview that follows is organised in accordance with the broad principles of discourse organisation that were established in the previous section, thereby enabling several diverse strands of work to be brought together under a few basic overarching principles. The subsection that follows will focus specifically on discourse structure. The remainder of the sectron will be devoted to discourse strategy. The third parameter on our discourse model. setting, will be integrated where appropnate with those discourse models in whrch it plays a key role.

5.3.1 The analysis of discourse s h c i u r e

The door. pleose.

This 'lack of fit' between form and function is an important strategy-framing device in discourse. The strategy continuum, it may be recalled, runs between the poles direct and rndirect (see Figure 5.2, above). The form-hnctron asymmetry identified here provides a valuable criterion for measuring this continuum systematically. The most direct strategy will he one which draws on the mood type that IS standardly associated with a p;~rticulardiscourse function. For example, a direct request will be cne which employs an imperative construction. as in 'Open the wincow' A less direct utterance will employ an oblique grammatical form, such as the use of an mterrogalive to make a request. T h ~ is s pre8:isely the tactic that is used rn the medial example on the strategy con:inuum: 'Could you open the window?', The most indirect strategy ol all is when an utterance employs not only an oblique fclrm. hut also has no overt semannc link with the ostensible purpose of the exchange Notice how, in the most rndirect request on the continuum, there is no actual mention of the service requested: 'Goodness me, it's hot 1 2 here!' This is a kind of optimal indirectness which IS :so opaque in character that it tests the strategic nature 'of discourse to the limit. Explaining precisely how and why speakers should (choose to behave ID so linguistically emgmatic a fashron will be one ol' the main tasl:s of the next sectron.

One of the most significant advances m the structural analysis of verbal Interaction has been the development over the years of the 'Bimngham model' of spoken discourse. This model is so named because it has been proneered by the English Language Research Unit based at the University of Birmingham. The remit of the early research undertaken by the unit was to design a model of discourse that could account for classroom discourse. The object was therefore to isolate the exchange patterns that typified interaction between teachers and pupils during lessons. It emerged in the course of the research that exchange patterns like the followutg were typical of classroom discourse:

32 Teocher: What's the copitoi of France? Pupil: Teacher:

Paris. Yes. Paris. Thot's r~ghi.

Thrs teaching exchange consists of three basic components: an initiation by the teacher. a response by the pupil and some feedback from the teacher. However, while clearly appropriate in a classroom setting, this three-part pattern is not especially common in much other naturally occurring language. Unless you happen to be running a quiz.

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

DiALOGUE AND DRAMA youdonot normally know in advance the answers to the questions you ask people. If you did, then exchanges like the following would be a perfectly normal part of everyday conversation:

33 A: What's the time?

B: Three o'clock. A: Yes. three o'clock. That's r~ght. The need to account for interaction outside the classroom prompted extensions to the early model, the most substanual of which was Delrdre Burton's study of discourse structure (1980). Burton revised the classroom model to enable it to deal with all sorts of talk and. interestingly, she chose to illustrate many of her revisions by applying them to drama dialogue. Here is a brief summary of some of the significant features of her model. First of all. in keepmg with the structural emphasis of the Birmingham tradition, she places units of discourse in a hierarchical scale. This is the lower part of her scale illustrahng how the exchange is situated above two smaller units of discourse: Exchange

discourse, the smaller particles which make up moves are acts. This narallel with word structure may be extended further by remtroducing root and bound momhemes (see secuon 2.3). Root morphemes are the maincontent-bearmgcomponent of a word andcan oftenstand on their . - own: bound momhemes are clustered around the root and never stand on theu own. Discourse acts can be similarly subdivided: some acts cany the main content of a move and are relativefy freestanding ~n combmation with another more whereas others can onlv. overate . substantial act. Here is a summary of the parallels that have been drawn between discourse and grammar: r----

discourse Exchange Move Act

o o 9

grammar Collocation Word Morpheme

It IS important to stress the centrality of the move as an interactive unit. Moves are often coincidental with a speaker's turn in conversatton and they also mark the transitton points at which other speakers are drawn to respond and react. Of the seven principal moves identified by Burton. the three most Important will suffice for our purposes. These are:

Move

Opefling moves essential tops-carrying items which are recognisably 'new' m terms of the immediately preceding talk

Act

Supporluig nloves occumng after any other type of move and involving Items that concur with the Initiatory moves they are supporting

The scale shows how a lower term is nested inside the structure of a higher term. In other words. exchanges comprise moves, while moves are in turn realised by acts. For the= part, acts have no structure: if they had, then they simply wouldn't be the bottom-most unit on the scale. Like all structurally orientated research into discourse, Burton's model is built by analogy with grammatical structure. In fact, a good way of approaching her model is to see it as a parallel to the way words form structural relationships. If we imagine that moves are equivalent to words, then we can see that, just as words combine into coll&ations. so moves are able to join with other moves to form exchanges. Moreover, as we saw in Chapter 2, words can he subdivided Further into smaller particles called morphemes. In terms of

Challengmng moves functionmg to hold up the progress of a topic or the mtroduction of a topic in some way As the discourse scale suggests, moves can combine with other moves to form exchanges. Here is a .questton-answer' exchange of the sort introduced in sectton 5.2, wtth the move types indicated beside each speaker's contribution:

34 A: Johnl Have you got the time? (Opening move1 0: Four o'clock. [Supporfing move1

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TABLE 5.1 Requesting Exchonge

This single conversati.~natexchange IS clearly made up of two moves: the opening move introduces a new topic and the supporting move maintarns the discourse framework by providing the answer to the question posed. However, it is iml~ortantto note that speaker A's openlng move comprises more t h a : ~just a single act. It begins with the act summons ('John!') which is followed by the more substantial act question. (This pr,~gressionwould be mirrored in word grammar when a bound morplleme is tackell on to the front of a root morpheme.) The supporting move in (24) consists of just a slngle act, an answer. For a breakdown of an attested sequence of discourse, rt is worth looking again at the travel agent exchange discussed in section 5.2:

Opening move

Act

Supporting move

Act

B: [nods and nses to go]

reactron

A:er ... marker you have to go to head office.. . request please prompt

offered In its place. T h s challenge creates a breach In the framework whrch ultrmately leads to the collapse of the exchange as a coherent transfer of informatron between speakers. Thrs IS a structural breakdown of example (1). with an extra column for challenging moves added to the left-hand side of the diagram. Notrce how the column for supportrng moves is empty here (Table 5.2). IS

5

A: B:

er . you have to g o to heod office [nods ond rises to go] ;

;

.

;

. please

It was established earlier that this sequence is a 'request-reaction' exchange. I t consists of two move; whrch are, as is commonly the case, coterminous with each interactant's contribution. The manageress's move consists of three discourse acts. Tbe main content-bearing act is the one that is most central to the coherence of the exchange as a whole: 'you have to go to head office'. However, studded around this act are two subordinate acts: 'el.' and 'please'. These 'bound'acts can be categorised a!;, respectively, a marker (a slgnal that a more substantial act is about to follow) .ind a prompt (a check to ensure that the requesi func!:ron is understood). In order to glve some idea of what a structural analysis of discourse looks like. Table 5.1 is a breakdown of the exchange fotlowiirg the Birmingham framework. It will serve as an illustratlon of the lype of visual layout favoured by this approach. As yet. we have not looked at ;my exchanges whrch contain challenglng moves. As t-~eirlabel suggests, these moves hold up the onward progression of discourse in :;ome way and they occur when an addressee withholds the anticipatec second part of an exchange. For example, answering ;I question wibh another question, rather than providing the anticipated answer, clearly constitutes a challenging move i? discourse. A good illustration of how challengmg moves function in this way can be found in the communicat~vebreakdown exhibited by example (1)which opened section5.2. Where a response would have supporte~ispeaker A's Initial question, another question

TABLE 5.2 Questioning Exchange Challenging move

B: Are you hungry? A: Whar? B: What?

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Act

Opening move

Act

Supporting Act move

A: What's the code to Los Angeles? questlon questlon questlon questlon

Although a key element m the overall organisatron of discourse. discourse structure is not the only element. Structural models tend to explore the surface of discourse, rather than tease out the strategies which operate below the surface. So, while the material presented in this subsection will hopefully have given a flavour of this important branch of discourse analysis, a full-blown applicataon of the Birmingham model to drama dialogue would not be possible in this context. For our purposes, the structural model is usehl as a way of explaining how chunks of discourse are connected. It will not however

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91

explain ivhy people say the things they do. To answer that question we will need to look elsewhere.

inferencing work to unravel the more covert meanlng that the utterance conveys. These covert meanings are referred to as rmpiicatnrer and they are typified by the sorts of utterances which are sttuated at the tndirect end of our strategy continuum (see Figure 5.2 above). Here are some illustrations of how implicatures work. Fust of all, a speaker may choose to flout the maxim of quality by saying something that is manifestly untrue in the context:

5.3.2 Discourse strategy: maxims a n d relevance The philosopher H. Paul Grice published in 1975 an arucle which set the agenda for exploring the strategtes of verbal interaction. His article had an especially important influence on the study of the way speakers use indirectness as a ploy in conversation. His enure thesis rests on a fundamental premise about interactton which he refers to as the co-operanveprmcipie (CP).The CP. whch is mutually understood between interlocutors, is a basic assumption that speakers normally intend to accomplish purposeful and effective communication in conversation. Gnce contends that if speakers wish to observe the CP faithfully they observe four conversauonal rnannrr. These are: The maxim of Quality Make your contribution one that is true and don't say things that are false.

35 A: You've fo~ledyour exom B:

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in

the context

The maxm of Manner Be clear - avoid unnecessary obscunty and ambiguity. Readers may nghtfully be sceptical about the way these highly normative maxims would be implemented in interaction. Conversat~on ISsimply not l i e this. If people behaved in this automaton-like way, conversation would become an over-literal, diuect and unsophisticated routine. However, the fact that speakers do nor always obey maxim m conversation is precisely the essence of Gnce's theory. He argues that many of the uon-literal meanings that accrue from interaction are derived W m deliberate departures from these maxims. Speaken may chose to 'flout' any of the maxims by blatantly departing £tom them. This places the CPinjeopardy hecauseit leaves the listener to dosome

As speaker B's response is unlikely to be a true reflecuon of their state of mind, an implicature can be mferred whereby speaker B's intended meantng IS the opposite of what is literally asserted. This is another quality flout which I witnessed recently:

36 1 like the woy you let the kettle boil dry Agam, it is clear from the context that the intended meaning IS the opposite of what the speaker actually asserts. Other common flouts of the quality maxlm are metaphors, which are often strictly speaking 'untrue' descriptions of states of affairs. Grice's own example here is 'You are the cream m my coffee' (1975: 531, a remark which is literally untrue but which none the less conveys meaning at the level of implicature. Flouts of the quantity maxim normally involve deliberately saying too much or too little. Grice (1975: 52) offers the following example of a reference written for a candidate who has applied for a post m philosophy:

The m m m of Quant~ty Make your contribution as informative as is requued for the current purposes of the exchange - don't say too much or too little. The maxim of Relntlon Say things that are relevant

Terrific1

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37 Deor Sir. Mr. X's command of English is excellent, ond his attendonce at tutorials has been regular, Yours, etc.

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Whereas (37) is clearly under-informative and would indicate tacit disapproval, the reply in the following exchange is clearly overinformative:

38 A: Did John go to the party lost night? 8:

Yes. ond don't let anyone tell you onyihlng different

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA The assumption behind the uptake cd implicatures is that departures from maximal efficiency are strateacally motivated and are not just aberrant or purposeless bits of dis1:ourse. Uptakes depend on the willingness of the addressee to do ::he tnferenclng work necessary, othenvise the utterance may be left looking like a disconnected remark. Here is an attempt at a qusntity flout made by a television sports commentator?

39

b*

I

Well, there are entrances and lliere are entrances, and that was on entrance.

Although this utterance is tautological, it IS nevertheless meaningful at the level of implicature. However, when devoid of the original setting in which it occurred. it does lt,ok cunous. There are two more types of im(>licaturewhich are derived from flouts of the maxims of relation and manner. Flouts of the relation maxtm often take the form of non-aequiturs whlch rely heavily for their uptake on the hearer asseml~ling a meaningful connection between them and the previous utterance. The following exchange occurred during a recsnt telephone conversation between myself (speaker A ) and a colleague (speake: B). We had been talking for a while about a rather tedious adminis~rativematter in which we were both involved:

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40 A: So should we do the tronsiiivity stuff on day one? 8: Mary's. just Eome into ths room with o big plate of supper and switched on th61 telly. Speaker B's utterance zlearly flouts the maxtm of relation. On the assumption that it was not just a disconnected remark and that he was still obeying the CP at some level, I inlerred from this that it was a signal to terminate the conversatton. It is in the nature of implicatures that they cany with them a certain amount of calculated risk. It would have been possible not to have acce:.ed this implicature. So while indirectness is often useful as a politeness tactic (as in (40)), the likelihood of the success of the utterance diminishes in direct proportion to the degree of indirectness (see below. subsectton 5.3.3). Finally, flouting the maxim of manner often involves saying something that is blatantly obscure in the context. Take the following example:

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41

Con you give him his 50-T-T 'cos I'm g o ~ nfor ' o C-IG.

The speaker of this utterance (a smoker) is talklng to another adult in the presence of an astute toddler. Explicit mentlon of both 'bottle' and 'cigarette' is disgutsed to avoid trouble. Gnce's model offers useful guidelines for accounting for the ways in which implications, suggestions and hints function in conversation. Perhaps its greatest benefit lies in its capacity to explain how %on-literal' meantngs in language are passed between interlocutors. Although influenttal for these reasons, it has been criticised for hang a rather informal model. Grice's own illustrations are all carefully contrived to fit his anaiytic modef: as a result there emerge from the theory too few explicit cntena to handle the complexity of naturally occurring language. Ironically, Gnce is regarded as a philosopher of 'natural language', even though he never actually uses attested natural language. There is also some overlap between the maxtms. espec~allyquality and manner. This tn turn throws up another issue about how many maxims there really are. Is four too few or too many? Grtce himself remarks that there is an additional maxim. 'Be polite', which influences all the others (1975: 47). We shall explore further the issue of politeness shortly. To round off this subsection. attention needs to be focused on another important extension to Gnce's theory. This is a model that expands the reiatron maxlm, and although it is not the main analytic apparatus that will he used in section 5.4. it cannot be overlooked if our survey is to be properly informative. Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson have proposed a theory of communication which is based on the concept of 'relevance' (1986). Relevance theory, as it has come to be known, advances a cognitive model of interaction which takes as its point of departure Gnce's maxim of relevance. Like Grice. Sperber and Wilson are not so much Interested m the formal or logtcal meanings of sentences but rather in the types of non-literal inferences and assumptions that speakers and hearers draw in communication. Sperber and Wilson contend ?hat communication is successful not when hearers recognise the 'linguistic meanmg' of an utterance but when hearers infer the speaker's 'meaning' from it (1986: 73). Sperber and Wilson describe communication in terms of two interrelated components: ostensron, which is a speaker's act of showing or making manifest through language; and inferencmng, which is

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what hearers do when they attempt to decode acts of ostenslon in their search for meaning. Together these elements compnse osrenslvernferenr~alcommunication. The next stage in the development of the model involves building m the underlyrng pnnciples which shape and inform ostensiveinferential communication. Commun~cation. Sperber and Wilson argue, is designed to bring about conrerrual effects. However, when they say contextual effects they do not mean adjustments to the physical context of interaction. They mean instead modifications in the store of knowledge between participants in mteractlon. The bringing about of a contextual effect may mean that a commumcator's cognitive doma~nis enriched by: the addition of new informat~on, the strengthening of previously existing knowledge or even the contradiction of previously held assumpoons. Whatever the preclse nature of these contextual effects, they all warrant an adjustment of a commumcator's cognitive framework in some respect. Sperber and Wilson argue that an act of ostensive communlcation automatically commumcates a presumptron of relevance. To understand an utterance 1s to derlve some contextual effect(s) from it: and to derive some contextual effect(s), you have to identify its relevance. The more overt the ostenslve stimulus, then the less the processing effort needed to decode it. When this happens, the st~mulus can he said to carry strong relevance. When the stimulus is less overt. more processing effort is required. Consequently, the ostensive s p a 1 is said to exhibit weak relevance. By now, readers may have quite justifiably formed the impression that relevance theory IS not exactly an amenable, handson framework for the analysis of discourse. No doubt my attempt to explain the theory in four paragraphs will have strengthened this Impression. It is time for an illustration. Imagine that you are dnv~ng along a country road in Ireland. You see. walking beside a river, a man who 1s carrying a fishing rod ~n one hand and a large salmon III the other. This ostenslve stimulusmteracts with other existing assumptions you have to lead you to the inference that he has caught the salmon in the river. The other existingassumptlons that you bring to hear in your processing might be something like the following: salmon are fish whch are found in rivers: fishing rods are implements for gettlng fish out of rivers and so on. As your inference enhances your store of knowledge with new information, it produces a contextual effect. In reach~ngthii contextual effect, you have accessed only the most

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relevant stimuli. In other words, you search for relevance only as far as you need to and once relevance 1sproven, then inferencing is halted. For example. it is still possible that the inference that you have drawn here is not the nght one. The man could he an actor, playing the part of a poacher, on his way to a film set: or perhaps a rather over-zealous partygoer on his way to the local fancy dress ball. However, in costbenefit terms. the aim of interact~onis to derive the greatestsuhstantial contextual effect at the lowest processing cost and the most accessible conclusion in t h ~ scenarlo s will be the one that is most relevant given the available ostenslve stmuli. One of the most significant benefits of relevance theory 1s the way it handles the concept of 'intent~on'in communication. Crucially. ro cornrnuniit is not a speaker's lnrennon but a speaker's ~nrer~rror~ care wh~chunderpins cornmumcation. Making clear your intention to commumcate IS not the same thing as making clear your intention. From a speaker's point of vlew, the ob~ectis to get your hearer to recognise your intent~onto communicate. From a hearer's point of view, the ~ntentionof your interlocutor is simply not recoverable, so what you do is construct an assumption on the basis of the speaker's behav~our(Sperber and Wilson 1986: 65). Agarn we are comlng up a wall of rather abstract theoris~ng whrch can probably be unpacked properly only through an example. The nature of communicative intent~on(and indeed related aspects of relevance theory) can be demonstrated by examining an incident which recently ran in the newspapers in the Republic of Ireland! An eighty-year-old man was taken to court for allegedly driving while under the influence of drink. It transpired dur~ngthe court proceedings that the arresting officer (a member of the 'Gardai'. the Insh police force) had not breathalysed the suspect. The gard explained that he had not taken a breath sample on account of the following remark which was made to h m by the suspect: 42

if on eightweor-old mon had pleur~syof the chest, would you make h~mblow into o breothalyser?

The case agalnst the man was eventually dropped. perhaps not surpr~stngly,for lack of suffic~ent evidence. However, it became clear dur~ngthe proceedings that not only was the defendant haie and hearty, but that he had never had pleunsy of the chest m hls life! His gamhrt ~n (42) would appear therefore to have been a complete

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA

success. The steps which iink (42) to his ultimate acqurttaf can be presented in relevance theoretic tenns: 1 In saying (421 the old man makes an ostensrve stimulus.

2 The gard recognrse:, the old mans lntennon to comrnunlcate. But, crucially, the gard ooes not rewgnise the old man's mnrenrmon. 3 The gard seeks to establish the relevance of the assumptions rn utterance (42).

4 The gard brings to the inferericing process other contextual assumptions (e.g. that the man is old: that pleurisy restricts your breathing etc.) which interact with the assumptions in what the man has said. 5 The outcome of this rnferencing process is to derive a new assumption: that is, to procuce a satisfactory contextual effect. The gard denves an inference which is mosl relevant for hrm in the context: namely, that his int:rlocutor has pleurisy. This contextual effect determines the gard's subsequent actions.

6 Importantly, the gard draws no further inferences: he assumes h a first hypothesis is best and that. In cost-benefit terms, he has denved maxrmum ccmtextual effect from a minrmnm of processrng effort. Of course, the gard has recovered an inappropriate implicature. which ultimately leads to the man's acquittal. He simply nnderestimates the commnnical:ive-cognitive skills of his suspect. What is more. the old man would appear to have been fully aware that the gard would underestimate his skills. Knowing that the gard has a false impression of his cognitive abilities and resources enables the old man to open up to his interlocutor an ,ostensibly neat rnferencing path - a ventable garden path as it turns out! Although the above is no more than a superficial sketch of relevance theory, there :ihould be e n o ~ g hmaterial here to provide an rmportant cognrtive per:ipective on th~:concept of discourse strategy. The relevance theory model has. h~lwever,attracted criticism for being over-formal in approach, for nc,t being developed on the basis of attested examples and for not payirig enough attention to how the social charactenstics oi: speakers and hearers determine strongly patterns of dialogue. Although a col:nitive dimension in discourse

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA

analysrs a invaluable, we will still want a framework that says something about the socral and personal dimensrons of verbal interactlon. It is to sucn a model that we now turn.

1

5.3.3 Discourse strategy: politeness phenomena It is perhaps fitting that the last major theoretical model to be introduced in this book is, in my opinion, one of the most elegant, powerful and convincing linguistic frameworks available to English language study. It is an elegant model in that it sets out a relatively simple rationale for explaining complex linguistic behawour. It is powerful in that it develops a system of universal principles whrch underlie many different languages. And it is convincing m that it is based on strong empirical support derived from substantial crosscultural comparisons between languages. This model IS Penelope Brown and Stephen Levinson's theory of politeness phenomena (1978; 1987). Given its focus on discourse strategy, the politeness model quite naturally has points of overlap with the other pragmatic models introduced in subsection 5.3 2. In common with these other models. the politeness framework seeks to explain the linguistic strategies of verbal interaction. Where the models differ principally, however, is that while those in subsection 5.3.2 are primarily cognitive and phiiosophical in onentation, that of Brown and Levinson is social and anthropological. Furthermore, whereas Grice's maxim of 'relation' provides the point of entry into relevance theory, it is his maxim 'be polite' which informs the Brown and Levinson model. The best place to begin our sketch of the Brown and Levinson model is by seeing how the authors themselves state their position. Here are the rudiments of their theory of politeness: certain precise parallels in language usage m many different languages can be shown to denve from certain assumptions about 'face' - individuals' self-esteem. We phrase this derivation in ierms of three main strategies of politeness, 'positive politeness' (roughly, the expression of solidarity), 'negative politeness' (roughly, the expression of restraint) and 'off-record (politeness)' (roughly, the avoidance of unequivocal impositions), and claim that the uses of each are tied to social determinants,

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

specifically the relationsh~pbetween speaker and addressee and the potentral offensrveness of the message content.. . In the case of ltngfffstfcpragmatfcs a great deal of the nusmatch between what is 'sad' and what is .implicated' can be attributed to politeness. (1987: 2) Although useful as a statement of their maln thesis, their commentary doesnot in itself offer enough usable criterra for the analys~sof politeness.Therefore, whatfoUowsis anaccount of thecentral tenets of their model. As is clear from the quotation. Brown and Levinson build their framework of politeness around the concept of face. Face IS a fundamental aspect of the human psyche. It is primarily a sociological phenomenon which has two interrelated dimensions. These are:

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Positive face This is your w~shto he liked by others; your desue to have your Interests approved of: your desire to have what you like and want shared by others. In short, this is your positwe self-image. Negat~veface This is your wish not to be coerced, ordered or forced into th~ngs;your desire not to be encroached upon or have your actlons ~mpededby others. In short, this IS your bas~cdesire to be free from imposition.

In interaction, there are a host of s~tuationswhere someone's face is likely to be threatened. Trying to get people to do thmgs for you. trying to broach a subject that you know IS touchy or trying to offer a bit of constructive advice: these are all circumstances which threaten some aspect of face. If camed through, these threats become encoded into verbal acts like requests, criticisms, offers, questions and complamts. Any such utterance, which constitutes a threat to face in some way, is called a Face Threatening Act ( m A ) . Domg FTAs is part and parcel of language usage. If it weren't. verbal interaction would become extremely odd, as no one would ever complam. n o one would ever ask a question and n o one would ever ask anyone to do anything. Allowing then that F f A s are a necessaj f e a t u r e of interaction, the next question to be asked is what sort of strategies do people use to perform FTAs? To answer this, let us return for a moment to our discourse strategy schema (Figure 5.2.

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above) wh~chprovided a selection of different tactics for getting someone to open a window.The form 'Goodness me, it's hot in here!' was categorised as maximally indirect. in that it contains no overt semantic link to what is requested and employs a grammatical mood that is tangential to 11s request function. Following the Brown and Levinson taxonomy, this strategy would be classified as off-record. It is so named because it goes, so to speak. 'off-the-record' by avoiding any explic~tmention of the goods or services requested. Basically, an off-record strategy involves dropping a hint. At the opposite extreme on our continuum ties the maximally direct utterance 'Open the window.' This strategy IS clearly onrecord, in so far as it draws explicit attention to and contains a direct semantic link with the service requested. However, it 1s also extremely blunt. It contains no softeners o r mitlgahng elements, offering no redress whatsoever to the hearer. Brown and Levinson describe this unmitigated, direct strategy as having been performed baldly, ~vithoufredress. With the bald. non-redresswe strategy the function of the utterance is clear. unambiguous and concise. In terms of Grice's model (see subsection 5.3.2 above), it follows faithfully all four conversational maxims. In terms of Sperber and Wilson's model, it exhibits strong relevance as it would requlre little processing effort to achieve a satisfactory contextual effect. To get a better understanding of how all of these pragmatic concepts are interconnected, it might he worth aligning Brown and Levmson's two categones diagrammatically with those of Grice and Sperber and Wilson. Figure 5.5 is a modified version of Figure 5.2 with the key concepts of each pragmatic model brought into line with each other. It should be clear that the direct-indirect clue can be plotted against a parallel continuum which goes from unpolife to polite. The strategc value of both the politeness strategies identified so far can be measured m cost-benefit terms. The impolite bald non-redressive strategy has an obvious payofk it is direct and unambiguous. and its function is clear. However. 11 also carries a fau amount of risk: to be so blunt with someone indicates that you do not care about their face. In damaging the face of the interlocutor, the way is opened up for retaliatory face threats or at least a negatlve evaluation of your own behav~our.The polite off-record strategy also has payoffs and nsks. Given that it involves dropping a hint, the unmediate payoff gained from using it is that you are not seen to be coerclng anyone or ~mpedingthem. But thls very indirectness is itself

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA

DIALOGUE AND DRAMA Grice

Sperber 8 Wii:;on

Brown & Levinson

FIGURE 5.5 Aligned pr~igmaticmodels a nsk, as the function of theutteranceisobscnred. Consequently, there is a much greater likelihood that the strategy will fail as you may not be understood And even if you are understood, the interlocutor can use yourindirection asa'get out'by pretendingnot to haveunderstood the request function. We have yet to account for the third strategy which is situated in the middle of Figure 5.2 and which is represented by the utterance 'Could you open the window?' First of all, this FTA is on-record in that it contains clear lexical links ('open': 'wmdow') to the specific service requested. Second, although it tiireatens negative face, it does so indirectly. This deliberate use of indirectness is a means of offermg the hearer some redress. It is an example therefore of neganve politeness, politeness which is specifically designed to preserve or protect the negative face of the interloc~itor.It is motivated by a pnnciple of avoidance: while doing a FTA, r, speaker tries s~multaneously to avoid offending that person. The strategy therefore calls for a dressing up of the speech net in 1inguist:c features which will allay or mitigate the threat to face. There are a number of specific strategjes which are available for doing negative mliteness. Here are some of the most common: 1 Use indirectness: As we have seen from 'Could you close the window?', this strategy is built on a r~ismatchbetween grammatical form and discourse iunction. Non,: the less, the €unction of the utterance will still be conventionally understood, despite this obliqueness. Indeed, only the most p~danticwill 'misunderstand' a routinely polite indirecl:ion like 'Can you pass the salt?'

2 Use hedges: Hedges are the small particles of language which soften the impact of an FTA. They include 'sort of', 'er . . . ', 'by any chance' and 'as it were', Modnl auxiliaries, such as 'could'. 'would' and 'might', are also useful softeners. Hesitation and mumbling (often considered not to be real language at all) can also be used to hedge an FTA.

3 Be pessimistic: This is a curious though pervasive tactic of negative politeness. It basically involves expressing doubt about the chances of your FTA succeeding. It is encoded in expressions like: 'I don't suppose you could give us a lift', 'There's no chance you could babysit next week.' 4 Minimise tne rmpositron: This is suggesting that the FTA is not intrinsically serious and that you're only committing a minor or negligible infringement to someone's face. For example, an ETA like 'Could I borrow a tiny little bit of paper' downplays all aspects of the potential inhingement: the amount of paper you request is minimd and you only want to borrow it, not take it for ever. If your interlocutor interpreted this literally, you would be less than satisfied with the outcome.

5 Indicate deference: This strategy, which is most obvious m overtly polite terms of address such as 'sir' or 'madam', accords social status to your mtedocutor. However, deference can also be communicated if you humble yourself in some way. For example, you can downgrade your own abilities and possessions in remarks like 'I'm not too good at this sort of thing.. . can you help?'; 'Look, I'm really ashamed to have to ask you this - I feel such a pillock.' 6 Apologise: This is perhaps the most obnous candidate for inclusion which, in its most explicit form, simply solicits forgiveness

from your interlocutor ('Please forgjve me': 'sorry': 'excuse me'). However, you can also apologise by referring explicitly to the impingement you're making ('I'd like to ask you a big, big favour') or you can indicate your reluctance to have to bother someone ('I really don't want to intrude but.. . '; 'I hate to have to ask you this . . . '). Alternatively, you can cite the overwhelming reasons that forced you to commit the FTA. a tactic normally interpreted as an 'excuse' ('There just wasn't enough time to do this': 'I'm sorry, but the bus was late.. . '1.

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7 Impersonallse: This means removing references to yourself from the FTA. It is often a feature of offictal correspondence where an FTA is being committed ('It would be desirable if. . . '1. Plural forms can also be used for this function as they remove any mdividuai responsibility for the FTA ('We regret to inform you').

8 Stare [he F7A as a general rule: This allows you to get yourself 'off the hook' by asserting that the conditions that led you to do the FTA are general ones and therefore not directly attributable to you. It 1s charactensed by remarks like 'Look, you're not supposed to smoke in t h s compartment' or 'Textbooks must not be taken into the examinat~on.' 9 Ackno~vledge{liedebt: T h s IS simply a straightfonvard admlsslon 1x1 a FTA that you are indebted to someone ('I'll never be able to repay you': 'I'll be eternally grateful').

It IS worth reviewing briefly the travel agent exchange (example 5, above) in the light of this classification of negatlve politeness. Atten-

tion was given earlier to how the manageress exploits a cluster of limguistic strategies in a single discourse move. These strategies can now be accounted for systematically within the present model. The manageress employs a number of key negative politeness markers in the execution of her request to her interlocutor. She hedges the FTA by hesitating and using the particle 'er'. She uses it~direcrness by employing an oblique grammatical form (a declarative) that is tangential to the kliscourse function. She rmpersonalises the FTA by removing any reference to her own responsibility for producing it. She stales [Ire FTA as a general rule suggesting that the conditions incumbent on her addressee are external ones and not attributable to her. All this is supplemented with the word 'please', which is not only an obvious marker of politeness but also acts as a 'force disambiguator'. It IS often tagged on to an utterance to make sure that its request function will be understood. Up to now, we have considered only threats to negative face and the redressive strateges that are available to speakers when dolng these FTAs. There remains the other side of our persona, positive face. which reflects our basic desire to be approved of by others. As with negative face, there are many linguistic acts which ~ntnnsically damage positive face. Criticisms. reprimands, complaints and accusations are all quite obviously threats to a penon's desire to be liked and

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appreciated. Similarly, the mentlon of irreverent or taboo toplcs that are inappropriate in the context indicates that the speaker has little regard for the hearer's wishes and feelings. On the other hand, there is a great deal of linguistic behaviour which IS des~gnedto attend to positive face, including compliments, expressions of solidarity and general displays of approval of each other's personality. Linguistic behaviour which attends specifically to the hearer's positive face is called positwe polrret~ess.Positive politeness is not avoidance-based like negative politeness, but extends more generally to unsolicited 'polite' behav~our.It n often used to clam common ground between speakers and can take the form of spontaneous compliments and displays of approval. Positive politeness is basically designed to 'oil the wheels' of interaction. Here are some of the more common strategies: 1 Corr~plrn~ertt the hearer: Thrs involves saylng 'mce things' about your hearer. These compliments can be focused on their possessions ('What a lovely vase'), theu appearance ('Nice tie!') or their capacities ('I don't know how you manage to keep your kitchen so clean'). Compliments are often ostentat~ouslyexaggerated ('What an absolutely amazing meal that was!'). 2 Use in-group markers: This tactic is designed to close down the social distance between speakers and to proclaim common identity. Popular in-group markers include: 'mate'. 'pal'. 'luv'. 'guys' and 'dear',

3 Clalni con~niot~ oprnrons and atritudes: This involves seeking agreement with your interlocutor and trying to avoid disagreement. This may be achleved by restr~ctingconversational material to uncontroversial or safe topics. It can also be achieved by focusing on the particular aspects of a topic which are least likely to glve offence. For example, if a friend wearing a gansh, poorly designed jacket asks you if you like their new suit. you can always reply 'Gosh, it fits ever so well.'

4 Hedge your opailons: This means not appearing too dogmatic in your views. The same hedg~ngparticles that have a negative politeness funcuon can double up here as positive politeness markers ('Well. it's sort of a bd of a botcned job, really'). Positive politeness is often used as a supplement to negative politeness. Basically, it provides an excellent opportunity for 'buttenng

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DIALOGUE AND C

somebody up' before you try to get them to do something. In the first of the following two examples from Brown and Levinson (1987: 1031, the utterance is headed by a sequence of positive politeness employing thestrategy 'compliment the hearer'. However, the sting in the tail comes soon after in the form of a negative politeness FTA:

degree of social distance that holds between speakers is also crucial to choice ofstrategy. People whodon't know each other very well behave differently from people who do. Intimates in conversation can relax to soma extent because the risks of damage to face are minimal. Non-lnlimates, where social distance is much greater. can take nosuch chances and so are under greater pressure to select politeness strategies appropriate to the context. There is a further consequence nf Politeness -..thss ....in that social roles are ooen to constant reneaotiation. strategtes can be used in a constitutive manner to close down or to expand the social distance between speakers. We perhaps all have acquaintances who are that little bit too 'pally' or who feign impoliteness through banter toclaimasocialproximity that isn'treally justiiied. We also probably all know people whose linguistic routines resist intimacy or whose politeness strategies are such that they sustain social distance. Politeness strategies do not just reflect existing social roles; they often go a very great way towards constructing new ones. Finally, there is an aspect of interaction which offers an excellent opportunity to study the confluence of the three Ss: setting, structure and strategy. This is the type of linguistic behaviour known as pharic cnmmunron (Laver 1975; 1981). In a structural sense, phatic communion occurs at the margins of interaction: it constitutes the begtnnings and endings of conversations. It normally takes the form of the routine formulae of greeting and parting ('Hi!': 'Good morning'; 'Goodbye'), although significantly, it also consists of stereotypical remarks on topics like the weather. Perhaps nowhere is face more at risk than at this sensitive time, as speakers attempt to manage the transition from silence into conversation. Phatic communion therefore demands placatory language, not only to defuse the potential discomfort of silence but to ensure that only safe, non-threatening conversational topics are broached. This explains why, in phatic utterances, speakers so often search out emotionally uncontrovers~aithemes - even if this reduces them to making supremely obvious or inanely trivial remarks about aspects of their immediate non-linguistic setting. Consider for instance typical phatic remarks l i e 'Great view'. 'About time these trains were cleaned' or 'Rotten weather again'. To put it more systematically, phat~ccommunion draws heavily on the strategies of positive politeness, especially the substrategy which seeks to claim common opinions and attitudes with an interlocutor. It involves seeking agreement and solidarity with the listener, while at the same time trying to avoid face-damaging acts like disagreement, irreverence ~

43

Goodness, you cut your hair How lovely1 come to borrow some flour.

.By the way, I

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In the next example, an FTA is suppiemented with an in-group marker ('mate') which Brown and Levinson (1987: 108) argue is designed to close down the social distance between the interactants: 44

Here mote. I was keeping tho, seat for a fr~endof mlne.

I would like novi to close this subsection by doing a little 'fine tuning' to the politeness model outli~iedabove. There are a number of unportant principles governing the. way speakers select strategies which need to be explained. One ttf these concerns the amount of mitigation which speakers decide to use in a FTA. Generally speaking, the number of mitigating elements is directly proportional to the amount of intended imposition to face. In other words, the greater the threat to face, tht: greater the number of politeness strateges. Hereis a rather odd example where ihe number of negative politeness strategies used dramatically exceeds.that warranted in the context:

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45 I'm sorry to trouble you I know it's an owful trnposition but could I possibly impose on you and osk you if you could tell me what time it is? The oddity of (45) derves from the inismatch between the inordinate amount of politeness markers exhit~itedby the I T A and the actual imposition that it poses to the intedcutor.5 The relativesocir.l powerof intt:rlocutorsisa strongdeterminant of choice of politenejs strategy. hi asymmetrical encounters. the speaker who holds high relative power need fear little threat to their own face &.om their mterlocutor. Consequently, they can afford to use a less polite strategy such as the bald, non-redressive tactic. By contrast, the less powt:riul interactant will need to make use of the more polite strategies, such as negative politeness and off-record. The

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DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA or taboo language. And the need for this lnteracuve harmony is heightened in unequal power encounters or, as we have just seen, between socially distant mterlocutors. Soon, we shall be seeing what happens when thrs and otherconversat~onalroutines are not observed m social interaction.

5.4 Discourse analysis and drama dialogue The profitability of using drama texts for the study of conversation has been stressed earlier in this chapter. However, this is not to say that drama and naturally occurring conversation are identical types of communicat~on.The most obvious difference between the two is that characters in plays are simply not real people in the way that mterlocutors in conversation are. Another difference is that whereas naturally occui-ring conversation is straightforwardly 'face to face', in drama dialogue the channel of communication is more complex. This is because there are two communicative layers a t work in drama discourse (Short 1989b: 149: Elam 1980: 135). On the one hand, there is interaction within a play: this is the character-to-character dialogue which is displayed on stage or in the text. On the other, there is communication between the dramatist and audience or reader. At this lugher level, the playwright becomes a kind of puppeteer who oversees and controls the displayed interaction. In a sense, the messages passed between characters within the play become, at the hrgher cdmmunicative Level. messages obour the play rtself. Nevertheless, this is not to say that the character-to-character level of interaction cannot be subjected to the same analytic procedures as naturally occurring conversation. On the contrary, in the process of textual construction dramahsts (like poets andnovelists) have at their disposal all the codes and resources of language. Their creativity can therefore he fully appreciated only when charted against this substratum of naturally occurring language. Translated specitically to drama dialogue, this means that the analytic tools needed for observing what dramatists do must be able to handle the full panoply of verbal interaction. Aware, then, that it compnses this dual communicative structure, we will now move on to examine a short piece of drama dialogue. The extract in the ruled lines is the opening of Edward Albee's one-scene play The Zoo Story (1960).6 The play e based on a short encounter

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DIALOGUE A N D D R A M A between two middle-aged men in New York's Central Park. The men, Peter and Jerry, are strangers. Peter. who is described in the stage directions as being 'neither handsome nor homely'? wears tweeds and smokes a pipe. Jerry is carelessly dressed and his appearance communicates 'a great weariness'. Peter is seated on a bench reading a book as Jerry enters. Before reading the passage. it would be a good idea if readers were to revrew their responses to the two exercises built around examples ( 6 ) and (7) in section 5.2.

JERRY:

PETER: JERRY:

PETER: JERRY:

PETER: JERRY: PETER: JERRY: PETER: JERRY: PETER: JERRY: PEIER: JERRY:

PETER: JERRY:

PETER: JERRY:

I've been to the zoo. [PETER doesn't notice.] 1 said, I've been to the zoo. MISTER, I'VE BEEN TO THE ZOO1 Hm? . Whof? . I'm sorry, were you talking to me? I went to the zoo, ond then I walked until I came here. Hove I been walking north? [puuledj: North? W h y . . . I . . . I think so. Let me see. ipointing past the audience]: Is thot Fifth Avenue? Why, yes: yes. it is. And what IS that cross street there; thot one, to the right? That? Oh that's Seventy-fourth Street. And the zoo is around Sixvfifih Streek so I've been wolking north. [anxious to get back to his reading]: Yes, it would seem so. Good old north. [lighily, by reflex]: Ha, ho. [oher a slight pause]: But not due north. I . . well no. not due north: but, we . call it north. It's northerly. lwotches a s PmR, anxious to dismiss him. prepares his pipe]: Well. boy; you're not going to get lung cancer. are you? [looks up! a liffle annoyed, then smiles]: No, sir. Not from th~s. No, sir. Whot you'll probably get is concer of the mouth ond then you'll have to weor one oi those thrngs Freud woreofter they took one whole side of his low away. Whot do they call those thlngs? [uncomfortable]: A prosthesis? The very thing1 A prosthesis. You're on educoted man, oren't you? Are you a doctor?

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I reod obout it somewhere: Time mogazlne. [He fwns fo hrs book.] JERRY: Well, Time mo3ozine isn't fc,r blockheads. PETER: NO, I Suppose not. PETER: Oh, no: no.

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two blocks of exchanges. These blocks are collections of exchanges which are broadly related by a common toplc or theme. Such topically related blocks are often referred to as discourse transactions by discourse analysts. The lint topic comprises Jerry's attempt to discover the direction of the zoo and it extends from the opening line to line 19. The second, which occupies the remainder of the passage. is broadly concerned with exploring the clinical consequences of smoking. A key structural feature of the passage is that Jerry is responsible for initiating every slngle exchange: 11is he who makes all the opening moves and controls the topic of discourse. Peter, by contrast, mitiates nothing and a instead charged with the responsibility for supplying follow-ups to Jerry's moves. The bulk of the exchanges are straightforwardly two-part structures. Some are of the 'questioning' type (see subsecnon 5.3.1) where the act question elicits the act response:

thlnk.

I hope readers will forgive me for havlng rather mischievously duped them into participating in a st!'listic experiment. What e more, it will probably he c1e;ir by now thai: the setting exercise and lexical set protocols developeri around exarnples ( 6 ) and (7) were designed in anticipation of this precise piece of dialogue. The point of these protocols was to elicit intuitive pr,:dictions about appropnacy in discourse. These predictions can now be set against the stretch of dialogue above and any disparities bet1ween them explored. Utterance (6) turns out m fact to be Jerry's opening conversational move. However, what is significant here is that in every elicitation I have carned out in workshops and seminars, this utterance is only ever aligned with setting 2. that of young child talking to an adult. Even though one of the remaining settings details specifically an encounter between two strangers at a park bench, this is never entertained as a viable settlng for utter:ince (6). A slrnilar pomt can be made about the appearance in the text of the k:xsal set containing items like 'cancer', 'doctor' and 'prosthesis'. This set is only ever aligned with setting 3, the doctor-patlent context, and IS ruled out as positively ludicrous if applied to the other two scenarios. Moreover, the rather obvious nature of both parts of the exercise (commented upon by many participants!) makes all the more striking the disconrsal twists that occur in the Albee passage. Whai: you expect in discourse is a far and the lack of fit between cry Indeed from what Albee provid~:~, your predictions and thz text itself means that there is a rich stylistic space which can be explored. Basically, and this is a p a n t which will be resumed later, you itave made a reading of the text before you have read the tea. Any of the analytic models assembled in the previous two sections can be hroughl: to bear on txe character-to-character communication exhibited in the extract and each can he directed towards different aspects of the text's organlsallon. Here are some suggestions as to how each model nlay he applied. In terms of its discourse stnichm:, the dialogue is organised into

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PETER:

[pornting post !he audience]: Is that Fifih Avenue? Why, yes: yes, it is.

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Others are 'stating' exchanges where a statement anticipates the act acknoivledgemenr: JERRY:Well, Time mogozlne isn't for blockheads. PETER: NO, I suppose not.

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There are twomarked exceptions to this pattern of discoursestructure. The first is provided by the faltering opening to the conversation: I've been to the zoo. [PETER doesn'f nofice.] ! soid. I've been to the zoo. MISTER. I'VE BEEN TO THE ZOO1 PETER: Hm? , Whot? . . I'm sorry, were you talking to me?

JERRY:

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Here. Jerry's statement does not recerve the acknowledgement which ~t predicts. Instead. Peter follows it w t h a questton whlch halts momerltarily the progression of the dialogue. As rt constrtutes a 'breach m the discourse framework, Peter's questton 1s therefore a challengmg move. The second exceptzon to the domrnant pattern of discourse structure takes the form of a three-part exchange towards the end of the passage:

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DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA . you'll hove lo weor one of hose things Freud 25 wore ofter they took one whole side of his low owoy. What d o 8 e y call those things? m u : [uncomfortable]: A prosthesis? JERRY: The very thing1 A prosthesis.

JERRY:

:

Jerry's second tum here functions as an evaluation of Peter's response. This sort of three-part exchange structure was discussed earlier in the context of classroom interaction (see subsection 5.3.1). Outside the classroom context. however, its use tends to be restricted to situations such as quizzes (when speakers know the answer to the questions they are asking) or to situations where a speaker who has forgotten some fact asks their interlocutor about it. Whatever its precise nature here. the sense of cross-examination which it engenders clearly does tittle to put Peter at his ease. The onesidedness of the dialogue is further reinforced by the length of speakers' conversational turns. While many of Peter's responses are minimal. Jerry tends to hold the floor for much longer than his interlocutor. Moreover. Jerry repeats hls material and, in his first utterance. even resorts to shouting it at his addressee. Thxs is curious because repetition, when accompanied by an increase in loudness, is often used as an attention-getting device by children. This point is borne out by the consistency of predictions in the setting exercise, where responses consistently assign Jerry's opening Although it is sequence (utterance 6) to chid-adult interacti~n.~ common for children to use the strategy to get attention from adults, its use is plainly socially proscribed m spoken interaction between adults. Many structural features of the passage are clearly shaped by the discourse strategies used, and to this extent. a stylistic analysis would not be complete that did not pay attention to pragmatic features of the text. However, a pragmatic analysis does not mean trying to recover the psychological intenttons of what are, after all, invented fictional characters. Rather, it involves trying to positlon yourself withm the displayed mteraction. What, for example, would you think if you were a witness to thls interaction? What would your response be if someone spoke to you, say, in the manner of Jerry? Or again, whai would your reaction be if a complete stranger you'd just met in a park kept trying to ascertain the direction in which they had been walking? In terms of Grice's theory of maxims, Jerry's

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over-persistence on this 'direction' topic constitutes a flout of the maxim of quannry. He says more than is required for the current purposes of the exchange. His obsessive pursuit of thls information is lexlcalised through abundant repetition of the word 'north' as well as references to street names such as 'Fifth Avenue' and 'Sixty-fifth Street'. However, as was established jn subsection 5.3.2, the entlre rationale behtnd flouting maxims is to generate irnplicatures. The question which is raised here is what sort of implicature could Peter possibly be expected to infer from all this? Again. what would ive make of someone so obsessively concerned with whether they had been walking due north or just northerly? Jerry's communicative goals are far from obvious, and from Peter's perspective, the unease which this induces is clearly signposted m the stage directlons. And no sooner does it seem that Jerry's obsessive questioning is fizzling out, when he launches abmptly Into the second block of exchanges without any clear resolution of the purpose of the fist. Relevance theory offers a framework for assessing discourse strategies which IS compatible in many respects with Grice's theory of maxims and implicature. A guiding principle for exploring relevance in this text would he to ask: why does Jerry say the t l n g s he does? Take his opening sequence. for example. What would one make of a complete stranger announcing out of the blue that he had just been to the zoo? In relevance theoretic terms. Jerry provides an ostensive stimulus which signals his intention to communicate. The addressee's task is to achieve a contextual effect by establishing the relevance of Jerry's act of ostension. Now. the setting in w l c h an interact~ontakes place would normally offer clues about which existing assumptions you could bring to bear in your search for the relevance of an utterance. This can be confirmed by looking back at the protocols for this utterance. There are strong pre-existing assumptions about the type of discourse that occurs in an encounter between two strangers. In fact, when asked to wnte exchanges for this settlng, participants' responses routinely converge on formulaic phrases like 'Nice day' or 'Is this seat taken?' However, none of these assumptions about context help establish the relevance of Jerry's utterance. And as the relevance of the utterance is weak, so the effort needed to process it becomes all the greater. The same principle extends to Jerry's questions about the direction in which he has been walking. To achieve a satisfactory contextual effect, an addressee must establish the relevance of what a speaker says, and in the case of Jerry's

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DIALOGUE AND DRAMA utterances, this is far from easy. So while Jerry's intention to communicate is clear, and the literal meaning of everything he says is clear, the intrigue lies in tryfng to establish the relevance of what he says. Moreover, in view of the context, there is someth~ngdeeply disquieting about not knowing why an interlocutor singlemindedly pursues a topic whose relevance is so difficult to establish. It 1s mteresting that McCarthy (1987: 45) touches upon t h s aspect of the dialogue in his critique of the play, commenting on how Peter finds himself in the prssence of an 'unpredictable and consequently threatening' interlocutsr. The Framework of politeness phenomena, which enables us to explore the intersection of setting, structure and strategy, forms a valuable extra dimension to the analysis. Jerry and Peter's conversation is located at the iriitial phase of interaction - a period. it may be recalled, which cames heightened ps:~chologicalrisk. This is especially so glven that the two interlocutors are strangers and that maximal social distance therefore obtains heween them. As we observed in subsection 5.3.3, this phase of converjatlon calls for linguistic routines which gently massage the transition from silence into mteraction, signalling that the speaaers' intentions are pacific and placatory. These routines ofphaticcomn~unionare, m other words. deslgned specifically to attend to face: they comprise acts ~f face redress; they make use of safe topics of conversaion: they avoid doing intrinsically face damaging acts. Moreover, the onus for Initiating phatic communion often falls on the speaker who is moving in physical space into the territory of their interlocutor. Given these erpectations about language and context, what occurs m the passage e markedly odd, and the protocols, again, are a good way of teasing out this feature of the interaction. An interactive gulf develops between the two interlocutors right from Jerry's first move. Wha follows is an explanation of this conversational schism in terms of po1ii:eness phenoniena. First of all. many ofJerry3sutterances constitute direct threats to the negative face of his interlocutor. 1:n other words, his linguistic acts do nor observe the addressee's basic desire to be free from imposition. In doing these negative FTAs, Jerry makes extensive use of the bald, on-record strategy. This is the strategy that IS sltuated at the direct end of the strategy continuum. It offers no redress to the hearer, and, although clear and unambiguoui, it is also blunt and rude. In the passage, the bald on-record stratep is encoded in direct questions containing no hedges or mtlgation:

Have I been wolking north? (4-51 Is fhat Fiffh Avenue? 171 Whot d o they coll those things? (26-7) The tactlc extends to demands for information whlch is the personal preserve of the mterlocutor: You're an educoted man, oren't you$ Are you a doctor?

(29-30)

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Questions like this constitute a substantial intrusion into the psychological domain of an interlocutor. As a discourse strategy, it cames a great deal of risk. Consequently, its use is often confined to asymmetrical encounters where it is the speaker who wields the greater power and who therefore has less fear of retaliatory face threats from the interlocutor. However, symmetrical encounters, such as that between two strangers, exhibit no perceived power differential, so direct, unmitigated attacks on the hearer's negatlve face are a very risky strategy indeed. hlany of Jerry's utterances also pose a threat to positive face. From his opening outburst onwards, hls linguistic acts offer no redress to his interlocutor's positive self-image and self esteem. He does not hedge his op~nions.nor soften his statements and questions with any of the mitigating particles that are available for doing positive politeness. In view of the setting in which the interaction takes place, the term of address Jerry uses to Peter is markedly over-familiar f'Wel1, boy!'). Amongst other things, this suggests that the social distance between the two speakers Is small, when, rememhenng the context, it is manifestly high. Another striking feature of Jerry's discourse is that he has no qualms whatsoever about uslng acts which intrinsically damage face. It was emphasised throughout the survey of positive politeness, that the use of taboo language or sensitive topics constitute$ an inherently serious threat to a hearer's positive face. For one thing, it signals that the speaker does not care about the hearer's face-wants and feels no compunction to create interactive harmony. And there can hardly be a more alarming or emotionally controversial topic of discourse than discussing the likelihood of an interlocutor's chances of contracting cancer. Even more disturbing is the fact that this t o p ~ cis broached within the first few minutes of a conversation between two total strangers. It is notable that Albee is at pains to

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highlight the discomfort whrch Peter experiences under thls onslaught, carefully monitonng his reactions through stage directions like 'anxious'. 'uncomfortable' and 'annoyed'. Peter's discourse strategies are situated firmly at the opposite end of the politeness continuum from those employed by Jerry. His utterances bear all the hallmarks of the positive politeness strategies characteristic of phatic communion. He qualifies his opinions and is not dogmatic m his views. This is signalled in the text by extensive use of modality, encoded in hedging verbs like 'think'. 'seem' and 'suppose', and is supplemented by the use of hesitation, indicated by three-dot sequences ' . . . '. Here is a sample of Peter's positive politeness strategies: W h y . . I . . . I think so. I . . well no, not due north; it would seem so. No. I suppose not.

(61 (18) (13-14) (341

Elsewhere. Peter apologises to Jerry with 'I'm sorry' (3), an act of negative politeness in which the speaker takes the blame for committing an FTA. He employs the term of address 'No, sir' (23) which suggests decorousness and which forms an interesting counterpoint to Jerry's 'Well, boyi. However, this strategy is immediately thrown back at him as Jerry's next utterance (24) begins with an echoic and possibly sarcastic 'No, sir.' Peter's strategies meet further interactive rebuffs when the sensitive topic of lung cancer is introduced (21-2). Albee's stage directions are rnteresting here: Peter looks up annoyed, but then smiles. The directions may be trying to communicate that the initial irritation Peter experiences at the mention of a taboo subject subsides m the realisation that his interlocutor is, in one respect, offering reassurance. However. the respite is only momentary, as Jerry immediately manoeuvres the topic to cancer of the mouth - a condition from which h a interlocutor will not be immune. Peter's interactrve acquiescence, signalled by his use of positive politeness strategies, is the antithesis of the direct, on-record strategies used by Jerry. This interactive asymmetry is sustained for most of the play, with the reticent Peter becoming ever more exasperated by his interlocutor's doggedly'blunt discourse strateg~es.~ Literary critics have had a lot to say about how the dialogue of T11eZoo Srory represents the discourse of the 'absurd'. In common

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with much criticism of the absurd, particular emphasis is placed on the way Peter and Jerry's interaction exhibits a sense of alienation. crisis and bewilderment, and on how it unveils the isolation of the individual in human society. What is remarkable about thu criticism, however, is the absence of any coherent exptanation of what Albee is actually doing with language in order to create these absurdist themes and motifs. The fact that the play is absurd is tacitly assumed - an assumption which only serves to bypass Albee's particular skill with dialogue. What little critical attenhon there is on Albee's technique tends unfortunately to be rather anodyne. What is more, it is difficult to conceptualise the sort of dialogue that there is in The Zoo Story on the basis of critical commentaries on the play. For mstance. Bigsby (1969: 24) sees the play in terms of a 'breakdown of communicationi between the characters. Well, the very first exchange cited m this chapter (example 1) was a genuine communicative breakdown and the type of discourse structure it displays is far removed indeed from that of The Zoo Srory. To describe the play as a communicative breakdown then is simply msleading. McCarthy (1987: 16-20) talks of the isolation and alienation created through the 'raw violence' of Jerry's language. This suggests that Jeny issues a string of unsophisticated verbal insults, triggenng a proverbial 'slagging match' between the two characters. Again. this is not what happens: Jerry's discourse strategies do much more than simply deliver wholesale abuse and invective. Critical comments such as these, which focus on characterto-character interaction, have an important influence on the sorts of interpretations that are made about the higher communicative level in the play. Impressronishc descriptions of dialogue within the text are somehmes aligned directly with the supposed mind set of the writer. McCarthy, for example, talks of Albee's 'aristocratic' use of language which he says reflects 'the srtuation of the writer' (1987: 81. Similarly, Evans (1977: 199) makes the astonishing clam that Albee's ability to dissect 'sterile usages of speech' can be directly attributed to his 'apparent preoccupation with an inability to beget children.. . as an image of sterile futility', The point a simply this. Behind many cntlcal interpretahons of the absurdism of the play is the taken-for-granted assumption that we all know what absurd dialogue looks like. However. the lack of agreement between the critics shows that we don't. Discourse analysis can at least establish a bamework for the systematic analys~sof character-to-character interaction. This in turn lays the foundations

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

for a coherent, rather than impres.;lon~stic, evaluation of Alhee's dramatic technique. it :a clear from t.le stylistic analysis, for instance. that the dialogue Alhe,: produces is llot nonsensical or inane. On the contrary, his techniqua involves taking some basic, commonplace principles of naturally occurring Conversation and knocking them off kilter. As we have seen, the impact created by exploltmg these conversational routines in this mariner is. well, dramatic. In thls regard, the analysis of Ziscourse has hopefully laid the foundations for a more rigorous appreciation of what Albee IS doing with language. More importantly, given the current task tn hand. it will have helped to highlight the routine and commc~nplacerituals of spoken interaction through observing what happens when they are distorted or subverted.

5.5 Summary Given its scope, and t h ~extensive : array of theories covered, it will be worth drawing together here the material covered over the course of this chapter. The provi!iion of a short inventory of significant stylistic features might also help with practical applications of discourse models. The concept of t h t discourse 'stunt' (section 5.2) offers a useful way in to the analysis of conversational exchanges. It may be recalled r exchanges, anangthat this involves collecting three or f ~ nordinary ing them in sequence and then nudging the second member of each pair along one position. Amongst other things, thls foregrounds the concepts of structure and appropriateness in discourse because, through the shunt, ordiriary exchanges become extraordinary. In view of the material covered since the shunt was undertaken, readers may like to see if they can explain man: systematically the peculiarity of the shunted examples, now that they are in possession of a fuller analytic toolkit. The setting exercise, also introduced in section 5.2, involves aligninga single utterance (and also, if possible, a lexlcal set) with a set of possible contextual scenarios. Ths can act as a valuable precursor to the stylistic exploration of dram;! dialogue. Assuming that the pnmary focus of study is linguistic anrl not literary, then it also makes good sense to concentrate on drama texts which are discoursally striking in some way. Texts which critics hail as 'absurd' are obvious

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

choices, thereby making the work of writers like Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugene Ionesco good candidates for selection. Another of Edward Albee's plays, The Amerrcan Dream, also lends itself well to this sort of applied discourse analysis. Here is an inventory of key aspects of discourse organisatlon. This inventory recasts the matenal covered over the course of the chapter into a checklist of discourse features which can he applied directly to dramatic dialogue. Discourse structure 1 Are discourse exchanges structured in a neat and orderly way, with opening moves followed by supporting moves? If not, are there any challenging moves wh~chfunction to hold up or suspend the discourse framework? If there are challenging moves, do they fonn a pattern? Are they, for example, associated with a particular character in the text? 2 Which character lnltiates the conversational exchanges and whch character responds? Is there a marked asymmetry m patterns of Imtiatlon, such as that identified between Peter and Jerry in The z o o Story? 3 How long are respective speakers' turns? Does one character hold the floor for longer than another? Does one character strike you especially as interactively reticent? Again, recall how the interaction between Peter and Jerry is differentiated in this way.

4 Are there any interruptions in the dialogue? Does the discourse of one character tend to cut across the discourse of another in any way? Discourse srrafegres(maxmzs and relevance1 1 D o characters observe faithfully Gnce's four conversational maxms? Or, m the absence of 'maximal effic~ency',do characters Rout maxlms? Are there flouts of any one maxtm in particular? 2 Are the implicatures generated by maxlm Routs accessible? Or, for example, do characters speak 'in riddles' all the time? 3 In terms of denvlng satisfactory contextual effects. 1s it easy to establish the relevance of what characters say to each other? If not, does what characters say require substanoal processing effort? And

3

DIALOGUE A N D DRAMA

if so, what are the tnteractlve consequences of these utterances whtch carry weak relevance? (Recall, for example, the problems that were tnvolved in assigntng relevance to what Jerry says.) Diwoiirse srrategies (politeness phenomena) I Are characters differentiated through them use of politeness strategies? 2 What are the perceived social relationships between characters? For Instance, is a clear power differential or high soctal distance signalled m the text? How are these soclal relationships encoded into discourse strategies? Is any use made, for example, of the bald on-record strategy? If so, under what conditions? Is it attributable to a perceived power differential or to a suggested social inttmacy between speakers? Are any strategies used which appear to conflict with assumed soclal roles? Is, say, the bald on-record strategy used when the soclal distance between the speakers is too great to warrant it normally? 3 In Face-Threatening Acts. is the number of mitigating features used in the utterance in line with the actual tmposition caused to the interlocutor? Or are they mtsmatched tn some way?

'A

Thts Inventory can be m o d i e d and reshaped to have more general relevance or can be adjusted to accommodate different types of spoken interaction. It has been the central a m of this chapter to illustrate how the stylisttc analysls of drama dialogue can cast light on the organlsatlon of naturally occurring conversatton. Significantly, tt 1s the somettmes absurd or surreal patterns exhihtted by drama dialogue whlch offer the opportuntty for explonng the commonplace and routme patterns that often pass unnoticed in everyday conversatton.

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Short (1989bj. The same wnter also offers a useful later survey (1994). Herman (1996) a a suhstanhal applicahon of a range of techniques m discourse analysls to drama dialogue.

The Birmingham tradition of discourse analysis The matn lnsptratlon for much work tn the Birmingham tradihon IS Sinclatr and Coulthard (1975). Relevant work from the 1980s tncludes Burton (1982) and Coulthard and Montgomery (1981). The traditton has continued Into the 1990s with the publicatton of Coulthard (1992). The chapter by Francts and Hunston (1992) In thts collectton IS a 'state of the art' verslon of the structural model outlined m ttus chapter. In addition to Burton's semtnal study (1980), stylisttc analyses wtuch employ the structural discourse model and whtch are worth reading are Toolan (1987) and (1989). I

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Pragmatics Useful lntroducttons to pragmatrcs are Grundy (1995) and Blakemore (1992). The second of these offers an extremely clear tntroduction to relevance theory (1992: 24-38). Pilkington (19901 undertakes a relevance theorettc analysis of metaphor while Toolan (1992) offers a sustained critique of Sperber and Wilson's theory. Jucker (1988) offers a survey of the connections between relevance theory and Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness phenomena. Simpson (1989) explores absurdism and politeness tn dramatic dialogue. Additional reading

Suggestions for further reading General discourse analysis Standard mtroducttons to discourse analysls Include Coulthard (1977); Stubbs (1983); Brown and Yule (1983); Levlnson (1983). An Important overview of the stylistic potential of discourse analysis is

Over the last few years, there has been a steady output of material on discourse and drama m the journal Language and Literature. Moreover, much of this work draws on models of pragmatics and discourse analysls that I have not been able to cover in this chapter. Particularly useful is: Calvo (1992) on Shakespeare's As You Like It; Bennison (1993) on Tom Stoppard's Professional Foul: Lowe (19941 on Arthur Miller's The Crucible. Two other Important references, m

D J A l O G U E A N D DRAMA

which developments in critical theorv add an extra dimension to the analysis of drama di;alogue, are Birch (1991) and Elam (1980: 135-297).

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Emphasising the value of literature in the study of language has been the theoretical cornerstone that supports this book. The focus has been not s o much on the tmportance of language to literary study but rather on the importance of literature tn language study. Given thts emphasis, I hope that not too many readers have been alarmed that the sanctity of the pristine literary text has been violated, and that the works of canontcal writers have been mauled, pummelled, dismantled and re-assembled in language exercises and workshops. The primary alm has simply been to explain lingu~sticstructure and function. This is not to suggest, however, that what we have done has no relevance to critical reading. On the contrary, all the chapters of the book have attempted to underscore the value that stylistic analysis has for critical interpretation. As far as a holistic and comprehensive survey of English language goes. this is, of course, nowhere near the full picture. All that a short ~ntroductorytextbook like this can offer is a point of access into the study of the language - a full-blown account of all its structures and functions is simply not possible. Other key areas of language, into which literature would offer useful access, are phoneti- and phonology. These topics, touched

AFTERWORD

upon in Chapter 2, are concerned with the sounds of language, and stylisticians have demonstrated the value of poetry, in particular, as a way in to this branch of language study. Another complex and substantial area of language organisation is g r m a r , which would probably ment an entire textbook to itself. Moreover. the coalescence of grammar, phonetics and phonology - along with vocabulary offers access to the study of accent and dialed. Poetry, prose and drama written in regional or non-standard English not only offer valuable source material for this type of applied language study but also raise attendant issues to do with cultural, social and ethnic identities among speakers of English. Perhaps the greatest challenge in the study of English language is how to understand and explain its most basic structures and its most prosaic, day-to-day functions. It is hard to develop a conscious awareness of what we routinely take for granted about language. At the start of this book, I pointed out that one of the primary goals of stylistics - the linguistic analysis of literary discourse - is to get at the heart of everyday language. I hope that I have demonstrated to some degree, over the hook, that the very act of explaining how and why something is linguistically striking goes a long way towards illuminating the ordinary and the commonplace in language.

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Teache~s'appendix

T Introduction p. 22 The technique of re-regislrnlion (introduced by Carter and Nash 1983: 129) is the stock device used by 'Merseybeat' poet Adrian Henn in his poem 'Bomb Commerciais'. The poem is built on a ventahle mosaic of different voices, registers and narrative styles which include 'officialese', advertising discourse and conversational narrative. Although not discussed here, t b s poem lends itself well to the sort of practical stylistic analys~s undertaken m the courseof the chapter. Dorothy Parker's short poem. 'One Perfect Rose' also works well in this type of application. The poem is written largely in the form of a traditional lyrical ballad, focusing on the traditional romantic red rose. yet with the appearance in its final stages of words like 'limousine' it exhibits a marked switch in register.

2 from shapes to words p. 30 I have found that this linguistic 'conundrum', which is taken from Smith and Wilson (1979: 41), serves a useful teaching device. It works particularly

TEACHERS' APPENDIX

TEACHERS' A P P E N D I X

effectively if presented as an isolated sentence on an overhead projector. After students have offered their opimons about its coherence. it can he disamkiguated by aciding the parallel constructions one a t a hme.

p. 44 The study of the rexicon has pr~hahlybeen plagued more than any other area of linguistics by a proliferation of technical terms. Often linguists have good reason for introducing terms of theu own and in many case:; the new tenns are used in slightly different senses from estahlishe,i terms. Non,: of this helps the reader who approaches the discipline for the fint time, however. and the imtation that might he fell when confrcnting this intimidating array is quite understandable. Nor does it help the teacher who needs to disseminate to pupils zind students zi workable and straightforward set of clearly defined terms. Wherever it has been feasible in t h ~ s chapter, I have tried to reshict the ntimber of terms used, and to use them as consistently as possible. For the benefit of those teachers who wish to develop t h ~ stcip~c,here is a checklist of some of the overlapping and alternative terminology that they are likely to encounter in the relevant literature: Term rised m this cizaprer grammatical word content word root morpheme

'

denvat~onalmorpheme inflection(al morpheme)

Orher available terms foim word full word lexical word stem ha:;e op:rand lexical formative content morpheme de:ivational formative fur~ctionmorpheme 1nf.ectional formative

p. 54 A hnef word to taachen who may w~shto adapt this workshop plan to their own reqtiirements. I Lave found over the years that Activity 1 is best undertaken by all the individuals making up a workshop or class. However, reshic:ions of time normally make it good practice to work in groups for the remaining activities, and to concentrate on a few rather than all of the short texts produced by

the group as a whole. Any remaining 'untransformed' texts could he written up as exercises by participants after the workshop. Activity 3 can he carried out by placing a sample of the transpositions on OHP transparencies and then asking all of the groups for their comments. A useful suhactivlty is to swap the transpositions between groups. getting one group to comment on another's efforts. The students who participated in the present version of the workshop were in the second year of their single honours degree programme in English language and literature at Liverpool University. All had taken, in the previous year, an introductory course in English language which comprised three principal components: basic grammatical description; phonetics and phonology; the history of the English language. The present session was a two-hour seminar in stylistics, the first part of which was a broad survey of the material covered in sections 2.2 and 2.3, the second a set of practical activities using the guidelines set out in section 2.4. Given that the time available was restricted, only one of the eight short texts elicited in this session was transposed. I have in general been able to use this set of activities with groups who have very different language requirements and linguistic abilities. This includes students of EFL.

p. 56 One of the benefits of this activity is that it can he built up around a few stylistic devices and that, furthermore, these devices are pre-programmable. This ensures that the transposition exercise does not become a linguistic 'free for all' but instead works within a set of tightly defined stylistic boundaries. As the end product reveals, the results of the transposition can he quite striking. Moreover, the transformed text will he even more eye-catching if it is assembled using a typeface such as that provided by a computer screen. Although such facilities were not available during the present session, the final text still looked quite startling even though it was handwritten with a marker on a large whdeboard.

3 Words and meanings p. 75 The semantic entailment scale is one means of capturing diagraimatically the nature of semantic mcluslon and compatibility between classes of words. The Venn diagram can also he used for this

TEACHERS' A P P E N D I X

TEACHERS' APPENDIX

purpose, and teachers may prefer to adopt this type of schema. Here is part of the entailment scale for dog, presented here m the Venn

diagram format:

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p. 80 Collocational clashes in the rock and pop arena are certainiy easy to find - indeed. the shelves of music shops are bedecked with countless examples designatmg groups, albums and song titles. However, the nature of the genre a such that they can drop in and out of vogue almost by the week. Here are more names of hands. whch are at least relatively topical at the time of going to press. Students and pupils will have no trouble ~nenriching this list. Psychedelic Furs Spondou Bollel Soup Dragons That Petrol Emotion Wishbone Ash Prefob Sprout The New Fost Automatic Daffodils

Upholstered Eldorados Vo~ceof the Beehive Aztec Comero lnspiral Carpets Velvet Underground lc~cleWorks

p. 87 Teachers may be interested to know why I chose thls particular poem. I have found not only that it lends itself well to cloze test (there are many poems that do) but that it is short enough to be easily managed m the classroom context. Each line may be mtroduced ~n

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turn either by overhead transparency or by transcnption on to a whiteboard or blackboard. In this way, the entire text can be built up cumuiatively and predicuons about the lexical gaps m each line can be sought in turn. The suggestions used in this chapter were collected ~nformallyin the course of a semmar with a small group of third-year students in 1993. The five students who comprised the group were all taking an option in stylistics as part of their joint honours degree at Queen's University, Belfast. Although in thew final year, none of the students had a particularly specidised knowledge of English language. Before then, all had taken courses in Engiish literature as well as courses from the other disciplines in their respective joint degrees, such as hntory, French and polittcs. During the course of the seminar, suggestions were elicited and noted down. Students sometimes made more than one guess for a particular slot, in which case all responses were recorded. Occasionally, the same suggestion was made by different students, and where this impacts on the exercise. it is highlighted in the main part of the chapter. I have used this text in different pedagogical contexts and found that there n stilt a broad consensus of agreement about suggested entries to the cloze test. In the course of an introductory lecture on stytistics to year 1 students, I use it to elicit suggestions 'from the floor' as it were. Aside from the productive interactive function it has in thrs setting, it also provides a useful tool for Iughtighting basic semantic constraints on lexical combmation.

p. 94 The eiic~tat~ou of core words (or 'nuclear vocabulary', as it is sometimes known) using multiple cho~cetext has proved a popular devlce in EFL feaching. One reason for thls is that core words often form commonly occurring idiomatic or metaphorical wnstructions m English. (See Stuhbs (1986: 99-115) and Carter (1987: 33-46) for a fuller account.)

p. 96 For copyright reasons, it has not been possible to reproduce in multiple choice format any part of Auden's 'In Memory of W. B. Yeats', so unfortunately readers will need to track this poem down for themselves. Listed below are some four-term paradigms which can be applied to five suggested blanked out slots in the opening stanza of the poem. Each set contains the onginal term along with three other items which are compatible with the grammatical context of the delet~on:

TEACHERS' APPENDIX

TEACHERS' APPENDIX Porodigmotic chorces for stonzo I: line: 1 2 3 passed owoy forests covered disappeared fomyards disligured a~.ports odc~rned died exp~red motorways fell upon

4 mercury sun roln chill

5 ocademlcs outhorities sources instruments

Different sorts of issues can 6- developed through the exercise. For a start, attention can be focused upon the reiatronship of words to context. Set 1, with its euphemistic constructions, raises attendant issues concerning appropnatenest and register. The relationship between lexis and grnmmar can also he explored. The line from which the item in list 2 has been deleted, for instance, contains a parallel structure of the ordt?r 'the xs were frozen, the ys [were] almost deserted'. This exerts a strong inlluence on the selection of the y element. And of course, the semantic gap between what is antlclpated and what actually oc4:urs in a text can throw light on the process of literary composition. Here are suggested multiple choice paradigms for the next three stanzas of the same poem, presented again in the format of multiple choice text.The deleted terms,as wrUas theselectionsofferedforeach entry, are only suggestions and nee11not be taken as a rigid formula. I have found that these lists work wcll In seminars, hut they can easily be adapted to deal with all sorts of issues in lexical semantics. Porodigms for Stonzo 11: line 2: 3: streams fojhionable wolves dilopldoted lmoges nice yokels mieresting

5 personality td2ntify deoth work

Porodigms for Sto~izo111:

2

4

5

6

clerics rumours doctors tranquillisers

squores depths wrndmills bi~s

suburbs bsdroom hospital pc~etry

lost ohocked upset become

Porodigms for Stonzo IV: 1 3 4 famous lifesiyle honour scohered croft conduct forgotten profession conscience unlcnown wood proctice

6 guts souls semantics lond

i t is worth adding that, prior to thecloze procedure and multiple choice act~vities,I had used 'straight' versions of the Roethke and Auden poems in seminars to little effect. 'Dolour' proved especially unsuccessful. It seemed that the full version of the poem closed off many of the potentially illuminating interpretations and readings that accrue from the progressive build-up of the text. Another reason for the relative effectiveness of the cloze test approach may have been that it commits students to making a semantic descnptron of the text before they try to interpret it. In other words, it e their criterion of semantic appropriateness that helps establish the rnterpretative tramlines upon which a reading of the text can be developed. Moreover, the disparity between collocational predictions and collocational realisations throws into sharper relief the process of textual composition.

p. 99 It is also worth detailing an article which explores the concept of oxymoron from a semantic perspective. Shen (1987) uses both componential analysis and the concept of the semantic scaie to investigate this figure of speech. He argues that there are two main types of oxymoron: the direct (e.g. 'the silence sounds') and the indirect (e.g. 'the silence whistles'). The diierence is that in the first type the two opposites are at equivalent points on their respective semantic scales, whereas in the second type, one member of the pair is at a lower point than the other. The indirect type will therefore he a combination of silence and a tryponym of sound. This representation may help to clarify the principle:

direct oxymoron

rGGG--I indirect oxymoron

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whistle

1 shout

II slng

etc.

TEACHERS' A P P E N D I X

Shen argues that the Indirect type IS more common ~n poetry techntque than the first and that it IS altogether a more soph~st~cated requlnng greater attention and comprehension.

4 Exploring narrative style p. 104 The implementation of these instructions m an actual workshop setting requires some modification. The jumbied sentences can be transposed on to Absued cards. Given the number of participants nomally involved in this type of exercise, it is best that the sentences are enlarged as much as possible, but that sizeable gaps are left between each sentence so that the temptation to interpret contiguous sentences as meaningfully related IS avoided. The cards can then be presented to students along with a worksheet contain~nginstructions like those given.

TEACHERS' APPENDIX

One of the advantages of cnttlng up the card is that each gronp, after havlng recorded thetr own reconstruchon. IS able to assemble the narratives proposed by the other groups. This ensures that all partlapants, when not presenting theu own verston, have before them the narratives of each of the other groups.

p. 104 The participants In the present workshop were second- and third-year students following Liverpool University's B.A. programme in English language and literature. These students had opted to take the stylistlcs course as part of the language 'track' of their degree; all were well motivated and their work in the first-year had revealed that all had demonstrable ability for language study. I had initially used the original, unaltered verslon of the Hemingway story as a sample exercise in comparable tutorials in prevlous years. The main intent~onhad been to highlight a vanety of aspects of narrative organisation, with special emphasls on lsolat~ng the coheslve devices exhihtted by the text. This, in turn, was intended to lead to a comparative discussion of narrative structure by undertaking a contrastwe analysls of this text with some 'soctal stones' told in everyday conversations. Despite the optimism of the tutor about the stylistic potenhat of the text, these tutorials were, frankly, unsuccessful. While many of the more stock responses regarding the 'flatness' of Hemingway's prose style were produced, there were problems in explaining how this 'flatness' was created in the text. Furthermore, whilst many potentially illuminating comments on the 'disinterested' and 'cynical' nature of the narrative style were made. students encountered difficulties in identifying precrsely the linguistic features whch triggered these responses. As the unsatisfactoriness of the exercise was clearly not due to any limitations on the part of the participants. then it had to lie squarely in the design of the exerclse itself. So finally, tn a last ditch attempt to salvage the exercise as a whole, the present workshop activlty was developed. It is worth adding that the activity was certainly engaged in with more enthusiasm than any previous tutorials based on this story. Group members co-operated well with each other, electing a spokesperson to summanse and justify the narrative pattern agreed upon by the group as a whole. One particularly noticeable development was the way in which each group defended its position in response to the queries and suggestions of other groups.

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TEACHERS' APPENDIX

p. t16 For reference purposes and for other teaching applications. here is a fuller breakdown of the Halliday and Hasan cohesion model, along with il1usl:rations of each category.

Formal repetition: Repeated use of expression (morpheme, lexical item, proper noun, phrase etc.) which has already occurred in the text.

Coiiesion - a general term for the ways in which different meaning relations in a text are combined inside sentences and across sentences.

Lericalcohesiodeiegant variatron: Incorporates use of general nouns, synonyms, superordinates and antonyms. Generally entails use of alternative expression (not a pronoun or substitution) for an item in the text:

COHESIVE RELATIONS Anaphora: (a) Bill started to limp. It was strange to see him in pain. (bl

Wash and core six cooking ocples. Put them into o fireproof dish.

Catapltora: (01 He started to limp. It wos strange to see Bill in pain.

Who! shall I do with this crockery? (general noun\

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I began the ascent of the North face. The climb is really quite easy. (synonym) That's o new Ferrori. I love Italian cars. (superordinate1

This is how to get the best results: you let the berries dry in the sun. till all the moisture hor gono out of them.

The first effort was good. But ihe second effort was really bad (antonym1

COHESIVE TIES Definrte reference: In addition to th: definlte art~clethe, definlte reference may be developed through the use of personal pronouns. de~ctlcsand Implied relat~onslups:

p. 122 A word of advlce is necessary on the ways in which this creatlve writing protocol can be aligned with the main workshop activ~ty.Obviously, tasks 1 and 2 of the protocol cannot be camed out afrer the main workshop because foreknowledge of the Hemingway text interferes with the composition of an original story. There are a number of ways around this, one of which is to get two or three participants to peel off from the group as a whole before it embarks on the main activity. It makes sense to chose participants for this 'splinter group' who are interested in creative writing and/or who are confident enough to produce a story from the newspaper account. Their story, which should be wntten when the larger group is doing the central workshop, can then be compared with Hemingway's verslon at the end of the sesslon. If the small group's story is transferred to an OHP transparency, this offers excellent opportunities for a three-way comparison. because all participants will now have access to the Hemingway story, the newspaper account and the 'creation' of their colleagues. It often make for a fitting end to a workshop to have students marvel at the differences between what their peers have created and what Hemingway has created using the same source material. Even more remarkable is the high literary rating they often

(bl

Three blincl mrce, three lylind mrce. See how ftiey run! See how they run1 Substrtrttron: Where a 'token' is subst Nted for a lexical word, My axe IS a o blunt - I must get a sharper one.

A type of 'suhst~tutionby zero', mdicated by the symbol

ENipsu:

:

Everton scored three goals and liverpool 0 two 0. Linkage: :

Realised by co-ordinatiilg conjunctions and linkmg adverbials: 4md(additive),bur adversative);^^ (causal); (hen (tempr,ral): $(condii:ionaI).

TEACHERS' APPENDIX

g v e therr own work m the face of competition from a major twentreth-century novelist. p. lZ3 The advantages of restrlctlng the stories in length m this way are that it saves time. forces participants to focus only on details which they regard as essential and y~eldsversions which are comparable in terms of length and economy to the Henungway version. Although comparisons with the latter may be iessrigorous lingulstlcally and may not focus directly on specific features like coheslon and narrative structure, there is none the less some stylistic benefit. For one thmg, it may be more appropriate with non-advanced learners of English, or in a context where language expertise is generally not as developed. On the other hand, it may be suitable in creative writing classes where such act~vltiesare common but where an exercise such as that proposed here would have the added advantage of providing an insight into Hemingway's method. In both contexts, such a comparative analysis would provide a point of entry for lingurstlc and stylistic analysis.

5 Dialogue and drama p. 148 It should be pointed out that the schema presented m this subsection 1s a very much simplified version of the Birmrngham structural framework. For example, the Birmingham model uses specialist terms like elicitation, directrve and informatrve which correspond respectrvely to my more informal terms question. request and sralemem. Stncuy speaking, the specialist terms are the ones that I should have used in my structural breakdowns. However, there are enough new technlcai terms in thls chapter without havlng to assimllate twenty-two categories of act, seven types of move and about half a dozen exchange types! There are also two more units above the rank of exchange which are not represented here for the same reason. A related terminological problem is that the analytic categories are constantly under review and many of the original terms have been jettisoned or replaced by Coulthard's (1992) collection of essays. Those new to the area might find it useful to see what the practitioners themselves have to say about discourse. Here 1s a useful statement on the structural 'rationale' behind the Birmingham model:

TEACHERS' APPENDIX

The advantages of working within a structural description of discourse are clear. The distinctive feature of a structural description is that the elements in the description and their possible combinations must be rigorously defined. This means that descriptions which are based on the same structural critena are directly comparable. It 1s possible to reveal similarities and differences between different discourses and different genres of discourse once these have been subjected to the same structural analysis. (Willis 1992: 112) p. 155 Teachers nught be Interested to see a selectton of the key,

orrg~nalpassages through wtuch maxm theory and relevance theory were ongmally propounded. Here, fint of all, is Grlce outlining the pnnclpal tenets of tus co-operative prmcrple: Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They are characteristically, to some degree at least. cooperatwe efforts: and each participant recognises in them, to some extent. a common purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted direction. This purpose o r direction may be fixed from the start (e.g. by an initial proposal of a question for discussion), or it may evolve during the exchange: it may be fairly definite. or it may be so indefinite as to leave very considerable latitude to the participants (as m casual conversation). But at each stage. SOME possible conversational moves would be excluded as conversationally unsuitable. We might then formulate a rough general principle which participants will be expected (ceterrr paribus) to observe, namely: Make your conversational contnbution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by the accepted purpose or5direction of the talk exchange m which you are engaged. Onemight label this the COOPERATIVE PRINCIPLE. (1975: 45) Here now is an knportant section from Sperber and Wilson (1986) where they sketch in brief their theory of relevance: an act of ostensive communication automatically communicates a presumption of relevance. . .The relevance of a stimulus is

TEACHERS' APPENDIX determined by i.wo factors: the effort needed to process it optimally, and the cognitive effects this optimal processing achieves.. . It is in the interest of the addressee that the communicator snould choose the most relevant stimulus.. . that is the one that will call for the least processing effort. Here the interests of communicator and addressee coincide. Unless the communicator is merely pretending to communicate, it is in her interest to bf: understood, and therefore to make it as easy as possible for the addressee to understand her. An addressee who doubts that the communicator has chosen the most relevant stimulus compatible with her communicative and informative intentions - a hearer, say, who believes that he is being addressed with deliberate ancl unnecessary obscurity - might doubt that genuine communit:at~on was intended, and might justifiably refuse to make the processing effort requ~red.AU this is mutually manifest; it is ther.tfore mutually manifest that the communicator h;~schosen the most relevant stimulus capable of fulfilling her intentions. (156-7: original emphasis) p. 166 I have used thl!. passage from The Zoo Srory on my thlrd-year stylisttcs semlnars at Oueen's Unlveslty over the last few years. Any responses to the protc#coUedactlvrtles of sectlon 5.2 were elic~ted~n the course of these seminars.

p. 175 Regarding tht: choice of material for stylistic analysis, the Albee text was used in this chapter because it exemplifies many important aspects of discourse. Aithough any text will suffice in principle, it often mak:es good sense to use a text that is considered odd or peculiar in some way. Once chosen, it is worth looking out for a number of linguistic features >vbichnot only shed light on the principles of strategy and structure t u t also reveal interesting devlces in the text itself. p. 176 Perhaps the most dauntin3 aspect of discourse stylistics. especially from a pedagogical p o i n of view, is how to impart and develop knowledge al?out discourst: tlreory. Although the shunting and setting exercises are a good way of 'sugaring the pill', there IS no doubt that the teaching of linguistic theory is a formidable task. Yet there needs to be at least some theo~eticalframework if any purchase

TEACHERS' A P P E N D I X is to be gained on the basic mechanlu of soaal interaction. This necessity prompted the development of the structure and strategy axes In section 5.2 of the chapter. The axes were designed as an overarch~ngframework for organislug and collecting a diverse body of research. Assuming that there will already be some familiarity with the choice and chain axes from Chapter 3, transposltlon to the concepts of structure and strategy in discourse should be conceptually more stralghtfoward. While the axes allow the full gamut of discourse theories to be brought together, the question remains as to how to implement theory in the context of teaching and learning. I find that some pragmatic theories can be illustrated by role play activities. For example. the politeness continuum represented by Figure 5.5 can be prefaced by asking participants in workshops to perform imaginary tasks in different settings. One such task is to think of two ways of gettlng someone to open a window: the first in the most direct manner possible and the second by just dropp~nga hint. The task can be embellished by suggesting different settings for the request. One setting could be an interaction between a sergeant major and a raw recrult and another an encounter between two strangers on a train. Then, following one of the basic principles of stylistic analysis, create a mismarch by switching the two utterances to the wrong settings. Assess the results of the mamatcb, and in particular try to expla~nany oddity that accrues. In this type of actlvrty, not only are constraints on discourse appropriateness thrown Into relief but the opposite poles of the politeness continuum are clearly h~ghlighted.

The more elaborate definitions in this glossary are given for terms wh~chare used across different chapters of the book but which do not recelve extensive treatment in any particular place. Shorter 'refresher' definitions are offered for those terms which are dealt with in detail in specific sections of the book. Accent Accents are varieties of language distinguished

from each other by pronrrrrcratron. There is a tremendous proliferation of accenfs of English, nor orily 111 terms of international vanation (i.e. Australian, Canadian. South African accents), but also within national boundaries. British English, for instance, contains numerous easily recognisable and markedly different accents such as Scouse. Glaswegian and Cockney. The most 'prest~gious'accent of English. known as Received Pronunciation (RP), has its historical ongins in the upper-class speech of London and the surrounding area, although it is now no longer the accent of any particular region. In spite of xts high social status, d is estimated that under three per cent of the population of the United Kingdom speak RP. See also dinlect.

GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY

Aspect Aspect is a feature of the verh which specifies whether the verl>aIaction has been completed or i s m progress; or whether it has had limtted or extended duration. Two important types of aspsct tn English are: Corianuous aspect fonned by using the 'ing-form' of the main verb and a form of the verb 'to be' Perfeclrve aspect fonned by using the the past parttciple of the main verh and a fonn of the verh 'to have' At xesent. he

IS

livtng in Sheffield. (present continuous)

Thcit year. he wcs living in Sheffield. (past continuous) For generations, Nepal has produced brilliant mountaineers. (pre?sent perfect) For generations. Sporto had produced famous worriors. (past perfect1 See also tense. Coherence A term used in the study of discourse which is oflen contra:;ted with cohesion. Whereas cohesion is chiefly a semantic pht:nomenon, colierence is more psychological in emphasis in that it refers to the pr,~cessingand inferencing strategies which people use to interpret t<:xts.A coherent text is one judged to make sense on a general level, rather than on the basis of its cohesive features. For example. 'I ;am sorry I'm late. The traffic was had' exhibits cotrerence withoiit having any cohesion. Alternatively, one would be hard put to rstrieve coherence from the following sequence even though it ccntains obvious cohesive links: New York IS a cty. Cites are mode from buildings. Buildings ore. often tall. 'TCIII' doesn't mean 'short'. See discourse. ca,hesion. Cohesion A term df scribtng the ways in which elements in a text are ho,md together. Cohesive ties are the semantic links that operate within and across sentences. See also coherence.

Connective Connecttves are words whtch link grammatical units together. When the units are of equal grammatical status, then the connectives are referred to as co-ordinonng con)imcnons: He ate his supper and he went to bed. He ote his supper so he went to bed. When the two grammattcal units are not of equal status - that is, when only one of them can stand on its own - the connectives used to link them are referred to as sirbordinotrng con]unctrons: When he had eaten his supper, he went to bed. If lie has eaten his supper, he must have gone to bed Other subordinating conjuncttons are 'although', 'because' and 'stnce'. Connectivity See connective. Declarative A declarative a an especially common type of grammattcal mood in which the subject of a sentence precedes its verb. Declaratives are typically, though not necessarily, used to make statements: Mow shut the door. The cat is in the garden. Dialect Dialects are vaneties of language which are distinguished from one another by differences m grammar and leds. Unlike a register, a dialect will often reveal rmportant information about the social and regtonal charactenstiu of its speakers. The most wdely distributed dialect of English, known as Standard Englislr, 1s the vanety whch ts taught to non-native speakers and is normally used m wnttng:

I haven't seen ony of those kids. (Standard English dialect] I ain't seen none of them children. (Non-standard English dialect) See grammar, leds. Discourse A key term m language study which encompasses a host o i different approaches, theories and analytic models. In its broadest sense, discourse refers to the way language is organised aoove the level of the sentence. The units of analysis m the study of discourse are text and utcemnce. See also pragmatics.

GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY

Exelamative A type of grammatlcal mood wh~chis rather imprec~selydefined. Exclamatrves normally begin with words like 'what' and 'how', contaln some rearrangement of the snb~ectverb-complement sequence. and ~n theu wntten forms conclude vntb an exclamat~onmark:

by wh~chcertarn elements m a text are foregrounded. Attracting criticism from Marxist cntrcs in particular. formalists have been accused, perhaps unfairly, of being overly text-immanent in.the~r approach. See loregrounding, text-immanent. Grammnr A key term in language study. The grammar of a language is the set of core rules which combme phrases, clauses and sentences into well-formed structures. In the academic study of English language, grammatical differences between different dinlects of English are not considered 'good' or 'bad', but rather as systematic, rule-governed differences that define those dialects:

Whot a lovely hat1 How tall Sineod is1 What a great day thot was1 Existential sentence Exlstentral sentences srmply assert that somethmg exssts. They are identified by a combtnaOon of the dummy subject 'there' (which is slmply a formal grammatlcal requirement m English) and some form of the verb 'to be': There was a phone call. There is no need for this. There ore many good textbooks around. Explicative A narrative dence used to explain why certarn events and actrons happened in a story. Explicatives often present mnformatlon about wnich the narrator had no knowledge at the tlme the story happened, but which hascome to light smce. The device a often marked by 'that.. .' clauses and past perfect (see aspect) verb forms: and when we,realised that we were really out of danger then we found out that we had been so tense that our feet hod been up against the panel . ~

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I've my dinner eaten. (Ir~sh-Englishgrommarl I've eaten my dinner. (Standord English grammar) I'm lust oher seeing an occ~dent.(lr~sh-Englishgrammar] I hove lust seen on accident. (Standord English grammar) See also dialect. Graphology Graphology refe~sto the vrsual medium of language. It describes the general resources of language's written system, including punctuation, spelling, typography, alphabet and paragraph structure, but it can also he extended to incorporate any significant pictorial and iconic devices which supplement this medium. Intensifier An intensifier is an adverb whlcb is used to describe a gradable adjective: extremely hot

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Foregronnding Foregrounding is a term developed by the Russian Formalists and Prague school structuralists which refers to any lmguistic feature (at any level of language) whose prominence in a text is motivated for literary purposes. Foregrounded items are 'defamiliarised' in that they deviate from the established background patterns of language m a text. Formalist Formalism is a critical-interpretative method developed chiefly by Russian theorists and poeticians in the earlier part of the twentieth Cenhn'y. Epitomised by the work of Victor Shklovsky, formalist mterpretations are predicated mainly on the formal linguistic features of a literary work and not on its contexts of productron and reception. Special attention is given to the manner

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very wide slightly obscure rather poor more cold Some adjectives like 'military' or 'deliberate', which in certaln grammatical constructions are not gradable, cannot take rntensifiers: o slightly militow lunto an extremely deliberate liar Lexis Simply, words and vocabulary. A study of lexis may involve looking at the structures of words, the meanings of words, the

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GLOSSARY

history and ongills of words or. the geographical distribution of words. Modal anxilinry Mo3al (or secondary) auxiliaries are a closed set of words which precede the !rain verb in a verb phrase. They are: 'can', 'could'. 'must'. ma:^', 'might'. 'will', 'would'. 'shall'. 'should' and 'ought to'. Modals have several funct~ons.One is to convey modality; another is to !:ignal future tlme reference in the absence of a future tense in English. Modality Modality r,:fers to a speaker's or writer's attitude towards. or opinion about, the rrurh of the sentences they utter. It also extends to their opinion abou: the degree of obligalion which attaches to what they say. There are various ways of conveying modality in language: You must/could/nighf be right. ( m o d a l auxiliaries] I believe/fhink/o;sume you a n right. (modol moin verbs) It is cerfain./prc~bable/doubffll thot you ore right. (modol odiectives) You ore certainl~/probably/possiblyr~ght.(modol adverbs] Modals See modal auxiliary. Mood A grammatical term which describes different types of sentence structures. The criterion often used to identify mood is based on the relation between toe sub~ectand the first part of the verbal element in a sentence: Marfha is going to town (declcsmtive) IS Martha going to iown? [interrogative) See also grammar. Narrative A language-based definition of narrative is that it is a method of recapitulatmg past experience by matching a sequence of clauses to the sequence of events which (it is implied) actually occurred. A mrnrmal narrative IS a sequence of two clauses which are tempor;illy ordered: toat is, a change ~ntheir order will affect the interpretation of tho: time sequence of the original story: John drank two whiskies (clause 1 ) and he fell into the river (clause 21. Nafurd narrative Sec narrative

GLOSSARY

Past continuous A past continuous verb phrase IS formed by placing the verb 'to be' in its past tense form in front of the 'ing form' of the main verb. The past contmuous is often used m storytelling to describe events that were ongoing when another, more central event occurred:

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I was lust sitting at home, when W e were livrng in Nott~nghamthat year. when See also aspect. Phonetics The study of the art~culatoryand acoustic properties of speech sounds. Phonetic analysis can be subdivided into three principal areas of investigation: the production of speech sounds (articulatory phonetics); the transmiss~on of speech sounds (amustic phonet~u);the perception of speech sounds (auditory phonetics). See also phonology. Phonology The study of the abstract relationship between meanrng and sound in language. Phonologists examine mtonation patterns I" spoken discourse as well as the individual sound segments which make up words. The unit of analysis in phonology IS the phoneme. See also phonetils. Pragmatics Pragmatics a that branch of language study wh~chseeks to explain the meanlng of utterances in contexts of use. Studies m pragmatics often focus on strategies of social interaction such as indirectness, hints and politeness. See discourse, semantics. Psycholinguistic(s) Psycholinguistics is the scientific study of language and the mind. Psycholinguists examine, among other things, the development of language in young children as well as the general mental processes involved in human communication. Register A variety of language associated with a specific context of use. Sermons, lectures and recipes are all types of register. A register is defined according to the use to which language is being put, and not through the social and regional characteristics of its user. It is not to be confused with dialect, therefore:

i have not seen any of those children. (Standard English dioiect, formal reg~ster) I haven't seen any of those bloody kids. (Standard English dioleck informal reg~ster). See also dialect

GLOSSARY

GLOSSARY

Semantics Put most simply, the study of meaning. A more preclse, and therefore more complex, definition would be that semantlcs is concerned with the abstract meaning potential of units of language of varying sues. The unlt of analysis in semantics 1s the senle. Unlike pragmntics, semantics is more concerned with the core meaning of linguistic units ~rrespectlveof their various contexts of use. Speech act Coined by the philosopher J. L. Austin, the term speech acr refers to what is done when somethlng is said (e.g. statlng, warning, declaring, threatening etc.). An utterance may therefore be regarded as perforrmng a specific funcoon as well as having a semantic value. Aust~nargues that m performing a speech act, a speaker simultaneously performs the follow~ng three kmds of 'sub-act': a locutronary act - the act of saymg a meaningful, grammatical sentence m a language an rllocutionary act - the act performed m saylng somethlng (a command. request, warnmg, questlon and so on) a perlocunonary act - the act performed by saying something (frightening, convincing, persuading and so on) See also pragmatics. Tense Tense is a grammatical term which describes the correspondence between the form of a verb and our concept of tlrne. The basic tense distinction in English IS between present and past:

I walk [stmple present: formed by uslng the base form of the verb) I walked islmple past formed by using !he 'ed'form of the verb) Unlike French or Latm. there is no specific fitture tense in English corresponding to the present and past, m so far as there is no grammatical operation wh~chis performed on the maln verb to y~eldsuch a tense. Consequently, future tlme is expressed in a vanety of ways in English: On Tuesday she leaves for Poris. [slmple present) She wiN leave for Parts on Tuesday. (modal auxiliary and base*form of mom verb1 On Tuesday she 1s leavrng ior Paris. [present continuousl See also aspect.

Text-immanent A text-immanent interpretation assumes that textual meaning resides entrrely within the formal linguistic properties of a text and is not influenced by dynamics of communication. the context of textual production or by pragmatic aspects of cornmumcation. See Formalist

1 introduction 1 This excerpt is taken from: Abrams. M. H. (1981) A Glossary of Literary Ternrs (4th edition) New York: Holt Rinehart & Winston. p. 192. 2 When stylist~csdoes become genuinely 'sc~entific'it is transformed into something else, known as the 'empincal study of literature' or 'literary science'. This is not the method that will be used in the book, although if readers want to acquaint themselves with this type of work, then Steen (1994) is a representative sample of research in the area. The journal Poer;cr is also heavily orientated towards the empirical study of literature. 3 A useful criticai review of the Leavisite movement can be found in Eagleton (1983). 1 have aiso urlticn a ptece on this tradttton of crttlclsm (Slmpson 1990), whlch looKs Into the l~ngutsttcsirategtes that its pracutmners use to get the11

~ r a d s r r r & k ~ nag1iternr)r-cnt~cnl introduct~ontole Cane's fictton mlghi like lo consult Barley (19116). !vliich cuntalns a e h a ~ t e on r Tile Lirrle Dnr,rrnter Girl. Simpson (1988) offers a s&liatic analysis of theopening of this novel. 6 This passage a taken from: Pevsner, Nikolaus (1953) T/re Btrildings of Englond: Derbyshire Harmondsworth: Penguin Books Ltd. 1 am grateful to Professor Walter Nash for bringing this text to my attention.

NOTES

NOTES 7 Thanks are due to tne students alLiverpoa1 Un~versltys Dcpartm
English Language and Litcrature for responding to this qucstionn3tre. 'The11 rriponscs were collected over a mornlng in the Dcparlmcnt. The questlonnvrre was distributed between classcs;not dunng any one class. which is why I[ was possible to obtatn responses from both undergraduates and ~osttraduates.The exercise as a whole is not intended to be a ngorous,quanl~tat~ve survey and obviously more systemattc expenmentation would he requtred m order to produce a stal~sticallyszgnificant set of results. In the context of this chaptcr, it simply offers some valuable extra perspectaves on the particular text under scruony.

4 Another problem with synonymy is that the privileges of occurrence of ench item in a pau are not always identical. For instance, deep and profound share the same sense, but while someone's thoughts may be either, a nver can only be described with the fint term. Similarly, the term film a somewhat broader in scope than movre: we may speak of a camera mnntne of film. but ~ . .out . ~ ~ ~not out of movie. ~ -~ , 5 This example 1s one of the many amusing newspaper headlines studied in an amcle by Lindemnnn (1990). Lindemnnn challenges the popular view that headlines are tclegrammatic and infomoUve, argulng ~nsteadthat they often idismform' through riddles, puns and cryptic allusions. 6 are taken from Alumnr summer 1991 issue. 0. 21. . Rnth exnrnnler ~~. r . 7 T i c idea of lcxlcal specificity and the pragmatic implicauons of over- and under-specification was originnlly developed is detail in Cruse (1977). See also Crusc (1986) for a book-length trealmcnt of this and other lapc.! in lrxlcul semimtlcs. 8 lnleract!vc 'put-douns like this urc nut however the sole iuncuon oi marked undcr.specificut~on.Crusc (1977) dctails a scnes of cnulronmcnts where they can even function as marker; of ln-group expertae. At the races, pundits may remark 'That is a fine anzmal' which produces less specifictty than the contextually neutral term horse. Similarly, a jeweller may exclalm 'These are fine sfones' (as opposed to 'diamonds' or .emeralds'), while a flight attendant may urge passengers to move to the hack of the 'axcraft' (a superordinate of aeroplanel. 9 This axtom comes from-one of the founders of modem descriptive lineu~ucs. J. R. Firth. His influential (19571 book contatns a chapter on u semantac analyse. 10 This quotation from Asfrophil and Srello is taken from the Oxford Authors edit~on.1989. p. 153. 11 One of the main impirations for componential analysts 1s an arttcie by Katz and Fodor (1963). For a fuller critique of the development and practcce of componential analysis, see the references to addittonal rending provided at the end of the chapter. 12 The feminlst critlc Dale Spender has argued that it is the system of language itself which is semt, man-mode and p e r m ~ e n d yunder the control of the patriarchy. (Spender 1 9 8 0 , p a r s ~ ) A . critique of Spender's position, with specific reference to componential analysis. IS provided in Cameron's survey o f f e m h s m and linglust~ctheory (1985: 59-62), 13 The edition from which Roethke's 'Dolour' 1s taken is: Words for flie Wind: The Collecred Verse of Theodore Roefhke (1961). Bloomington: Indiana Umvenity Press; p. 55. 14 W. H. Auden's 'In Memory of W. B, Yeats' 1s taken from The Norfort Anrhology of English ~iterifure:Volume 2, fifth edition (1986). London: Norton & Company, pp. 2299-300.

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2 From shapes to words 1 There is, unfortunately, an anomaly m the graphological system in that there e no allograph symbol corresponding to the square brackets. '1 1'. of phonetm. Rcalisutrons of graphemes are encoded with '<>. the same symbol, in other words. as the graphemes themselves. 2 This extract from Samuel Beckett's Murphy is taken from the Picador edition (1973). p. 10. 3 This extract is from page 1of the Independenr on Srtndoy, 20 July 1992. 4 This quotatton from Chaucer is taken from line 188 of The Miller's Tale (Bantam Books edition, edited by Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt. 1964). 5 This quotauon from Alice I" Wonderlar~dis taken from the Signet editton (1960). p. 91. 6 This quotation from Ulysses e from the Penguin edition (1980). p. 44. 7 This poem can now be found in: e e cummlngs (1968). Complele Poe,nc Volume 2 1936-1962, London: MacGibbon & Kee, p. 727.

3 Words and meanings 1 This quotation IS taken from Lewu Carroll's Alice through rlre Looking Glass. 118711. Sienet edition 119601 o. 186. 2 carteri198i:~5&5~ reserveithe t e k h e d erorersronr for connructlons ~r like eupheni~rms.proverbs and StocK phrases. Thc pnnuplc common to all these cxpresstons n thai (I) tncar component words ana structures 3rc fixed and (2) the meaning of the whole i s not oovtous from t h ~ .lneantng of the consutuent parts. Here are some examples: 'The little boy.$ room'; 'A stitch in ttme saves nme': 'When all is said and done': 'As sober as a judge'; 'A watched kettle never boils.' 3 By 'traditional dictionaries', I have in mmd. for example, the vanous edit~onsof the Claombers Dictionary or the Oxford English Dicflonnry. The accuracy of word-definitions in such dictionanes is often largely dependent on the tntuitton of the lex~cographerswho compile the dictronary. 'However. recent, corpus-based dicttonaries have broken with t h ~ s tradition. The Collins COBUlLD dictionary, for example. lists words as they occur m attested ('real') constructrons which have been transcribed from a naturally occurring corpus of language. ~~~

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4 Exploring narrative style 1 This story, first published in 1925 by Charles Scribner's Sons, is taken from p. 285 of The Essenlrul Hemmngwoy. Jonathan Cape. 1970. 2 Two of the many studies which explore mmd-style and pomt of new in narrative are Fowler (1986: 127-46) and Simpron (1993: 11-85).

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NOTES 3 Onginally pnnted m the New York Times. 20 December 1922. p. 1. col. 3. The Paris edition of the ;liibune is likely to have reproduced an identical story. (See Reynold: 1972: 82 for a fuller account of Hemingway's source matenat.) 4 I am grateful to Sonia Zyngier, her colleagues and her students at the Unrversidade Feoerale m Rio de Janeiro for participanng in this creative writing exercise end for producl~gsuch an illuminating series of narratives. The narrative c~tedhere is $oneof many elicited in the course of this workshop.

5 Dialogue and dnzrna 1 The precise sources for the four exchanges used for the shunt are as follows. The first is from an en:ounter with a colleague at work. The second, the doc!or-patient enr:ounter, was overheard in a hospital wardduring visiting hours in Mirch 1994. The third exchange 1s from a televised ~nterviewbetween David Frost and the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Paddy Ashdown (The Frosr Progromme; BBC TV; 6 Febmary 1994). 'fie last results from a recent, unsuccessful attempt on my part to inspiie my nmeteen-month-old son to eat some breakfast cereal. 2 In some non-standard dialed sy:;tems the mles governing the formauon of ~mperat~ve sentences can b= rather more complex. Irish-English dialccls. for exarr.ple, often pemit the msertion of a subject as in 'Come you here!' or 'Don't youse be goin'. 3 Example (39) was uttered by BEIC commentator. Hany Carpenter. The occasion which produced it was boxer Frank Bruno's entrance Into an arena to a thundt:rous rendition of 'Land of Hope and Glory' (16 March 1994). Simpson (1992) is a pragrnatlc study of the humour that this sort of gaffe produces. 4 I am grateful to hlichael Finn. an honours student at Queen's Unlvenity. for bnnging this tixample to my ;lttentlon. 5 It is worth addins that the misn~atchin (45) forms a princ~plewhich is exploited by dramatists of the atsurd. It is one of the techn~quesused to produce startling and bizarre clialogue. Simpson (1989) explores this absurdist use of politeness phenomena in a play by Eugene ionesco. 6 This extract from Edward Albe~'s.TlreZoo Sory is taken from: Absrrrd Dramn (ed. Marlin Esslin) 1976: Harmondsworth: Penguin. Literarycritical introductions to this wtitcr and his work can be found in Bigsby (1984) and McCarthy (1987). 7 On the use of repetillon as a feature of child language, notice how, m the fourth exchan~e - of the shunt in section 5.2, the youngster repeats 'No wantit!' 8 The eventual out8:ome of the pla,, is that Jerry manages to impale himself on a knife he has lust thrown to tLe luckless Peter. Jeny's dying confessron is interest~ngbecause for a few brief moments there is a total change in his attitude towards Peter. This change m attitude 1s signalled by a concomitant shift in discourse str.ltegies, and, while I have not the space to deal with them h:re, they would none the less form the basts of a useful comparatne exerclse.

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Adams, V. (1973) An inrroducnon rn Modern English WordFonnarron Harlow: Longman. Baker, C. (1969) Ernest Hemmgtvoy: A Life Slow New York: Scribner's. Bakhtxn. M. M. (1986) Speech Genres ond orlzer Lore fisnys Austtn: Urnversity of Texas Press. Barley, A. (1986) Toking Sides The Ficrion of Jolrn le Carre Milton Keynes: Open Unrversity Press. Baum. S. V. (1972) 'E. E. Cummmgs: The Techntque of Immediacy'. In Friedman (ed.), pp. 104-20. Bennison. N. (1993) 'Discourse Analysis, Pragmatta and the Dramatic "Character": Tom Stoppard's Profess;onnl Fortool'. Longtinge ond Lirernrure, 2. 2.79-1W. Bigsby, C. W. E. (1969) Albee Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. (1984) A Criricol Inrrodrrctton ro T~ventierlr Century Amencon Dromo vol. 2. Cambridge: Cambridge Un~versityPress. Birch. D. (1989) Language. Liferorure ond Criticnl Proctlce London: Routledge. - (1991) The Lortguoge of Dramn: Crilicol Theory and Procrrce Houndmills: Maemillan. Blakenlore. D. (1992) Undermnding Ulleronces Oxford: Blackwelt. Brown. G. and Yule, G. (1983) Dircourse Anolysrs Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Brown. P. and Levinson, S. (1978) 'Universals tn Language Usage: Politeness Phenomena'. In Goody, E. N. (ed.) Qrresrions ond Politeness Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56289. - (1987) Polireness: Some Un~versnlrm Lnnguoge Usage Cambridge: Cambridge Un~versityPress.

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Firth. 1,R. (1957) Papers m L i n g u ~ ~ f1934-1951 ~cs Oxford: Oxiord Unlventty Press. Fowler, R. (1986) Lingeisrtc Crificrrnr Oxford: Oxford Unlventty Press. Franms, G. and Hunston, S. (1992) 'Analysmg Everyday Conversation'. In Coulthard (ed.), pp. 123-61. Freeborn. D. (19861 Vnnerres of English (2nd edit~onl Houndmills: ~acmi~an. Friedman, N. (ed.) (1972) E. E. Cztmmrngs Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prenttee HaIl. Fromkin, V. and Rodman. R. (1988) An Ineoducrion lo Language (4th editton) London: Holt. Rinehart &Winston. Gregory, M. and Carroll. S. (1978) Larzg~rageond Siruanorz London: Routledge. Gnce. H. P. (1975) 'Logic and Conversation'. In Cole. 1. and Morgan. 1. (edsl . Synrar and Semonrtw III New Yark: Academlc Press, pp. 41-58. Grundy, P. (1995) Doing Progmnncr London: Edward Arnold. Halliday, M. A. K. (1966) 'Descriptive Linguisucs In Literary Studies'. In Mclntorh. A. and Halliday, M. A. K. Porrems of La~rguage:Papers m Ge,reral. Dercrtprzve and Applied Linguisltu Harlow: Longman. pp. 56-59. -(19781 Langrrage ar Social Semtonc London: Edward Arnold. (1994) An inrroducrion lo F~mcrronalGranrmor (2nd editton) London: Edward Arnold. -and Hasan. R. (1976) Colruton rn English Hnrlow: Longmnn. Haynes. 1. (1989) Inrroductng Slylirrlcs London: Unwln HymaniRoutledge. Herman. V. (1996) Drnmorrc Discotcrse London: Routledge. Hoev.. M. (1989) 'Discourse-Centred Stylisttu: A Way Forward?' In Carter and Simpson (eds), pp. 12%-38. Hudson, R. (1980) Socrolingurrrrcs Cambridge: Cambridge Unlverslty Press. Hurford, 1.R. and Heasley, B. (1983) Senconrrcs: A Cortrsebook Cambridge: Cambridge Unlvcrstty Press. Jackson, H. (1988) Wordr and llietr Meanings Harlow: Longman. Jucker, A. H. (1988) 'The Relevance of Politeness'. Mulrilingua. 7.4.371-84. Katz, J. I. and Fodor, J. A. (1963) 'The Structure of a Semant~cTheory' Longaage, 39, 17CL210. Kemoson. R. (1977) Sernanlrc Theory Cambridge: Cambridge UnlversltY Press. Kidder. R. M. (1979) E. E. Cuwmmgs: An Inrrodrccrton ro rite Poerry New York: Columbia Unlvers~tyPress. Labov. W. (1972) Lan~uoge1" the h n e r City Philadelphia: Unrversity of Pennsylvanta rei is. Laver, J. (1975) 'Commun~catne F u n a ~ o n sof Phalic Communion'. In Kendon. A.. Harrts. 11. and Key. M. (eds) The Orgonrranon of Belmvlour m Face lo Face Inrerocrron The Hague: Mouton, pp. 21540. -(1981) 'Linguete Routtnes and Politeness In Greeting and Partlng In Coulmas.. F. fed.) . . Conversanonol Roulrne The Hague: Mouton, pp. 289-304. Leech. G. N. (1969) A Lingurrirc Gtride ro English Poerry Harlow: Longman. (1981) Semnrrricr (2nd edition) Harmondsworth: Penglun. -and Short, M. (1981) Style m Fiction Harlow: Longman. Lev~nson.S. (1983) Pragrnancs Cambridge: Cambridge Unlvenity Press.

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Smith, F. (ed.) Psydolingtrrrrrcr nnd Reading London: Half, Rineharf & Winston, pp. 183-96. Smith, N. V. and Wilson. D. (1979) Modem Lingutstzcs: The Results of Clronuky's Revohrtron Harmondsworth: Penguln. Spender, D. (1980) Man Made Langrrnge London: Routledge. Sperber. D. and Wilson, D. (1986) Reievnnce: Communication and Cognition Oxford: Blackwell. Steen, G. (1994) Understanding Metaphor Harlow: Longman. Stubbs, M. (1982) 'Stir Until the Plot Thickens'. In Carter and Burton (eds). pp. 57-85. (19831 DLrcozrne Analysts Oxford: Blackwell. (1986) Edecatronol Lingtttsttu Oxford: Blackwell. Thome. 1. P. (1981) 'Generat~ve Grammar and Stylistic Analyas'. In Freeman. D. C. (ed.) Essoys m Modern Stylirttcs New York: Methuen, pp. 42-52. Toolan, M. (1987) 'Analyslng Conversat~onm Fictlon: The Chnstmas Dinner Scene m Jovce's Portrart of tire A n m m a Young Man'. Poetics Today, 812.393-4i6. (1988) Narrative: A Critical Lingulstrc Introdrrctron London: Routledge. (1989) ' ~ ~ a l y s i nConversahon g rn Fictlon: An Example from Joyce's Ponrnit'. In Carter and Simpson (eds), pp. 195-211. 1992) 'On Relevance Theory' In Wolf. G. (ed.) New Depantcres m Lingutsnw New York: Garland Publications. p p 146-62. Traugott, E. C. and Prntt. M. L. (1980) Lingrrlstrcs for Students of Literature New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovrch. Treneove. G. (1986) 'What is Robert Graves Plapng at?' In Brumfit and -carter (eds). pp. 60-9. Van Peer, W. (1986) Stylirttcs and Psyclrology: Inver~~gul~ronr of Forsgmmding London: Croom Helm. (1987) 'Top-Down and Bottom-Up: Interpretative Strategies In Reading e e cu-ngs'. New Literary Hisrory, 18.3.597-609. (1989) 'How to Do Things with Texts: Towards a PragmaUc Foundntron for the Teaching of Texts'. In Short (ed.. 1989a). pp. 267-97. (1993) 'Typographic Foregrounding'. Language and Literature, 2, 1, 49-61. Verdonk. P. (1993) T~ventiethCentury Poetry: From Text 10 Context London: Routledge. Wales, K. (1989) A Dictionary ofStylirties Harlow: Longman. 11992) 'Zodiac Mindwarp Meets the Horseflies'. Englirh Today. 29, 50-1. Watson. B. (1972) 'The Dangers of Security: E. E. Cumm~ngs'Revolt agalnst the Future'. In Friedman (ed.), pp. 31-15. Wegner. R. E. (1965) The Poetry nnd Prose of E. E. C~~mmrngs New YorK: Hnrcoud Brace. Werth, P. (1994) 'Extended Metaphor - A Text-world Account'. Lungtiage ond Liternlure. 3.2.79-103. Widdowsan, H. G. (1975) Stylirtres and tlre Teaching of Liferonire Harlow: Longman. Willis. D. (1992) 'Caught m the Act: U s ~ n gthe Rank Scale to Address Problems of Delicacy,. In Caulthard (ed.), pp. 111-22.

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-

Abstract 116. 118 absurdist plays 21,130,131,134, 176,see alro Albee. E. accentl80.197 accusatrons 160 acronyms 44 actional frames 111. 113. 118 acts 145-7: bound 146: content-beanng 146: subordinate 146: see oko speech Adams. V. 59 adjectrvcs 14,16,28,34,42,43, 5R. .

advcrbr 34. 110. 116 adven~srnglanguage 31-2-35. 70-1.181 affixes 36-7.39 agreement 163 Albee. E.: absurdist play 131. 164-74 posstm, 175.194 alliteraoon 16 allographs 26 allophones 26 analogy 48.50 analysts extensron 115-20; natural naRaUVe 116-20 anaphora 107, 108,109,115.190 antonymy 72-4,83.92.108,115: complementary opposition 72; gradable 72-3: relatronal

oppositron 73: semanllc derogat~on74 apology 159 approval, displays of 161 arlrcles 34, 107 asides 124 aspect 198 asymmetry 142, 171. 172 attltude 76 Auden, W. H. 954.98.185, 187 back-formarfion 58 backtracking 47 Baker. C. 121 Bakhtrn. M. 18-19 Barley, A. 17 Baum. S. V. 58 Beckctt. S. 274.175 Benn~son,N. 177 Bigsby. C. W. E. 173 Birch. D. 178 Birmrngham model 143-4, 146, 147, 192-3 Blakemore. D. 177 blend 43 bound morphemes 3 M . 39.50. 57.145. 146: ree also affixes: tnfues;pre&es: suffixes breakage 50

INDEX

INDEX Brown, G. 176 Brown. P.155.156-7,158,162,177 Brumfit, C. 18 Burton. D. 144-5, 17'1 C~IVO C., I n Cameron. D. 74 Candlin, C. 7.22 Carroll. L.41 Carroll. S.21 Carter. R.A.18, ,96, 127,181,185 cataphora 107. I l i cause-and-effect nshi 111.114.125 Chaucer. G. 7-8 Chiaro. D. 98 cho~ceand chain axes 77.78, 195 classroom discourse 143-4

.'

"

cloze procedure 84,8!L92,94,95, 96,184-5.187 co-operative principle 148,150. 193 Coda 117,119,125 cognitive processing 29 Cohen, L. 22 coherence 126. 127.1Ii3. 182. 198 cohesion 21,102-27,188-92.198, 207-8: additive. adversative and causal conjuctions 115: chain 109: creative writing 120-5; devlces 189: modei 190; relations 190; ties 190-1; see nlro analysis extension; short stc,ry reconstruction collocat~on78-9, 132, 134, 144,145, 184: cloze procedure and stylistic analysis 86-7: multiple choice text and stylistic analysis 93: patterns 84.85.96: predict~ons 187: range 94.95 collocational ciashes 7 M 3 , 88, 89. 90-1. 97 columnar format 27-8 combinations see under words commands 140 common opinlons and attitudes 161. 163 communlcatlve breakdown 131-2, 146-7.173 comparator 51 compiatnts 160

complementary opposrtson 72 Complicattng actlon 116, 118-19 compliments 161. 162 componential analysls 81-4. 88. 187 -compounds 42-3 conceptual clusters 43 conjuncttons 115 connectivity 115, 199 connotation 66-7.69. 93 content words 33.34.35, 36.39.43. 50, 182 context 63, 68-9.73. 75 contextual effects 152-3, 154, 157, 169 core narralzve 94, 116. 118. 185 Coulmas. F. 59 Coulthard, M. 176. 177. 192 creatlve writ~ng120-5 criticisms 160 cross-cultural differences 63 Cruse. D. A. 98 Crystal. D. 21. 98 cummings. e e: poem 44,57,58,59, 90; analysis extensron 556: lingutstrc models 45-53 posnm; morphology 37.41 D a y , D. 21 de Beaugrande. R.127 debt acknowledgement 160 declarative 51. 139-42, 160. 199 deference 159 definite reference 190-1 deformed text 56 denotation 66-7.69.73 derogatton 74 descnptlve frames 111.113, 118. 183 dev~atlon54 dialect 10. 180. 199 dialogue 13142: communrcatlve breakdown 131-2: lexrcal set 138-9: mood 140-2; paradigmaoc axls 134-5: request-react~on 135-7; settlng 135-9: shuntang 132-5.138: strategy 134-8. 142: structure 121.134.137; syntagmatlc axrs 134-5: toplc

. discourse analys~s130-78. 192-5, llld *-<

199.208; maxlms and relevance

148-55: scale 145: strategies 149, 156-7.163.170, 195 (see also maxtms: politeness phenomena: relevance theory); structure 143-8: theory 194: see also dialogue: drama dialogue: politeness phenomena dismpllve patterns 54 Downes. W. 22 drama dialogue 20.21, 164-74; classroom ~nteractlon168; communrcatlve breakdown 173: exchanges 167: m m m s theory 168-9: politeness phenomena 17c&2: quest~oniresponse167: relevance theory 169: statementlacknowledgement 167: s t ~ ~ 166-7: t ~ wthree-part exchange 167-8: transacuons 167 Dumas. B. 52.58-9 dysfluencies 131 effect-and-cause relationships

- ..... .

exchanges 147 exclamative 51. 124,200 extstent~alsentences 112.200 explicatlves 117. 125,200 face see politeness ialse starts 131 first-person narrative 123-4 faregrounding 33.45.200 form-function asymmetry 142 formal reperitlon 191 formalist reading 120.2W-1 Fowler. R. 31.127 fragmentation 48.51.52 Franczs. G. 177 Freeborn. D. 22 Freudian slips 71 Friedman, N. 44 Fromkin. V.59.98 geographical origins 26 Gemongc denvations 67-8 grammar 96,180,186,201

erammatlcal words 33.34.35.43182 graphemes 25-6,27.34.45,47.64 graphetsc substance 25 graphology 25-33.103,181-3.2013 206: advertjstng language 31-2: breakage 90; perceptual slrategles 29-30; psycholingu~stlc influence 28-9: see also graphemes u

6 r e g o j , M. 21 Grice, H. P.148-9, 151,155,157. 158, 168-9.175.193 Grundy, P. 177

Haynes, J. 127 ~ e i s l eB. ~ ,98 hedgtng 159.160.161.172 Hemmgway, E.: short story 102. 104-5.127, 188-9.191-2: creatrve writing 120-5: general patterns of response 106-10; idealised narrative 110-12: natural narratlve 117-20; onglnal verslon 112-14: reconstruction 103 Henn. A. 181 Herman, V.177 henmtlons 131.159.160.172 Hoey. M. 127 homonymy 69-72 horizontal processing 52 Hudson. R. 21 Hunston. S. 31,127 Hurford, J. R.98 hyponymy 74-6.187 hypathesls formation 29 ideograms see logograms idioms 61.93 rmperat~~es 11.139-42 mpersonalisat~on160 rmplicatures 149.151.?54,156.158, 160 174

mn-iroup markers 161 rndicnttves 140,141 mdireclness 142.150,158,160 tnferenctng 151-3,154

INDEX

INDEX infutes 36-7.39 ~nflectlons39 intensifiers 28,58,117,201 intenuon to communicate 153,154

mtlma6 163 Ionesco, E. 175 Jackson. H. 98 Joyce, J. 7-8.42-3 Jucker, A. H.177 Kempson. R. 98 Kidder, R. M. 58 Labov. W. 116-17,124.126.lZ7 Latlnate denvations 67-8 Laver. J. 163 le Carre. 1.13-16,18 Leavls, F. R. 6 Leech, G. N.6.59.98.114 Lennson. S.155.156-7.158.162, 176.177

191 lexical semantics 28.62-99. 132. 1834,204,206-7; adverusing language 70-1: analysis 127: antanymy 7211; boundanes 63; chotce 68: compatibility 81: connotation 66-7-69; context-free theory 63; denotat~on66-7.69.73; homonymy 69-72; hyponymy 74-6: idioms 656: incompatibility 81; link 157: paradigm 95; polysemy 69-72; puns 70-2; register 67-9; scale 74-5.83, 187: seemingly identical 63: shifting 63: space 96: specificity 75-6. 93; strategies 9 5 4 . superordinates 7 M , synonymy 66-9.74 lexical set 11, 85.89. 91. 92.94, 111 lexicon 33.34.35.40.41, 42. 182 lex~ 186. 201-2 line boundaries 31 line endings 47

line-by-line reading strategy 52 lingurstic models for stylisuc analysis 44-53; graphemes 45,47: morphology 47-52: psycholingutst~cperceplual strategies 45; word-formation 45 linguist~creduction 34-5 linkage 190 literary communlcatron 13 literary language 7-19; advcrtis~ng discourse 9-10, 14: rhetoncal dev~ces8-9.- I4 logograms 27,45,47,55,58 Lowe. V. 177 lower case 45,54.55.58 Lyons. J. 98 McCanhy. G. 170.173 marker 146.161 Matthews, P. H.59 maximal efficiency 157.158 maxlms 148-55.175-6: floutlng 169, 175: manner 148. 150-1: quality 148, 149. 151; quantity 148. 149-50.169: relat~on148. 150, 151.155; theory 168-9.193 meanmgs see lexical semvntlcs metaphors 14.79.149 Miller. A. 177 mnemonics 80 modal auxiliaries 50. 159. 202 madal verbs 34 modality 124,125, 172,202 modals 117 modifiers 14: multlple 15-16 Montgomery, M. 127,177 mood 51. 240-2,157,202 morphemes 64.144: denvattonal 37. 38,39, 40.57, 182; free 48,49. 50; inflectional 38.40, 182; plural 38: reversatlve functlon 41: see olso bound: root morphology 35-57, 181-3.206; asymmetry 40-1: back-formation 41-2; breakage 49.90; compounds 42-3; single 50; see oko morphemes moves 144-7: chalfengmg 145, 147, 167.175; opening 145.175: supporting 145.146.147.175

multtple cholce text 84. 93-6, 185. 186, 187 mumbling 159 21. 102.202; categories 116-17: first-person 1234, m ~ n ~ m116: a l stvle see coheston: third-personl2k: see also core; natural Nash. W. 22.98.181 natural narrative 21, 102,124, 125, narrative

126 .-.

newspaper headlines 34-5 non-sequiturs 131. 150 nonce-words 42.57 nouns 34.43.58.78,109; antecedent 38: phrases 14. 15-16.106: see also verb-noun paradigms obligatton 137 Onentation 116.118-19. 125 ortenston 151-2. 154. 169. 193 over-cohesion 114. 115 over-speciflcation 76 oxymoron 79,187-8 Palmer. F. 98 parad~gmlparad~gmauc axtr 77, 78. 79. 85.88. 89. 93. 134-5 parallelism 9.10. rhetorical 16. syntactrc 14 parentheses 47.55.58 Parker, D. 181 parucles 35.36, 37, 48.56.58 parllng 163 past continuous 116,119,203 perceptual strategies 29-30.33.45. 48.56 pessrmrsm 159 phauc communton 170.172 phonemes 25.26.64 phonetics 25.179-80.183.203 phonology 25,17940,183,203 Pilkington. A. 177 Pinter, H.175 placaiory language 163 poetry 20.21.79; wncrete 27: see oko Auden. W. H.: cummmgs, e e politeness phenomena 137.150. 155-64. 172. 176.195; bald. non-redressrve strategy 157; bald,

on-record strategy 170. 176; drama dialogue 170-2; face 155. 156.157.163,170; Face-Threatening Acts 156-60. 162, 170,172,176; m-group marker 162; negatrve face 155, 156.15860.162.170.172; off-record 155.157.158. 162; on-record 157.158. 172; phatlc communion 163-4: posittve face 155,156,160-2, 16311, 171, 172; pragmattc concepts 156.157.158 polyphony 18 polysemy 69-72 power and status 137 pragmatics 76.77,130-1. 156.157. 158, 168.195.203 Pratt. M. L.37.41.59 prefixes 36.39.40.41.50.57 DreDositlons 34 prompt 146 pronouns 15.34.58.107. 115: anaohonc 108 bsycholingulsucs 28.29.203 punnrng 9. 10, 51. 70-2

re-formatton 29 re-regetration 181 referent 65 register 10-19.67-9, 88, 93, 94, 186.203: context 12-13: field 11-12: mode 11-12: re-regtstratton 17-19; recipe 10-11. 12: sermon 12; technical 92: tenor 11-12: tourist-travelogue 15-17 relevance theory 148-55.157.158. 1754.193 ., ... repetition 109. 191 reprimands 160 request-reacuon exchange 140, 146. 197 -- Resolution 117 resonances 65.67 Reynolds. M. 121 rhyrmng 9 Rodman. R. 59.98 Roethke. T. 87. 91. 187

INDEX

INDEX root morphemes 35.39.4'1.42. 47.58, 182; blending 4% discourse structure an~ilysts145, 146 Sampson. G. 59 semantics see lexical sense 29.65.69

morphology Shen. Y. 187-8 Short. M. 6.7. 22. 114. 16q. 177 short story see Hemhgway shunting 80-1, 132-5.174.194; dialogue 132-5.138 Sidney. P. 79 silence 187 Simpson. P. 127.177 Sinclair. 1. McH. 177 Smith, N. V. 181 social distance 163 solidanty 161. 163 speech act 158,204 speech genres, pnmary arid secondary 18-19 Sperber. D. 151-3. 157, l!i8, 177. 193-4 stamalc organisallon 10 statementiacknowledgem~:nt 140, 167.192 Steme, L. 27 : Stoppard, T. 177 structure 144.147-8, 163,170,175, 195 Stubbs. M. 127,176. 185 stylistic analysis technlqut:~84-96: cioze procedure 85-92: multiple choice text 93-6 stylistics 2-7: generic application 6. 15: heuristic value 4-5: intersubjectlve roie 5: linguistic function 5: literary intemetative guise 5 substltut~on190 su€lixes 36.37.38.39. SO. 57-8.64: eradine 57 ~

~

~

superordinates 74-6.83 surface features 126 ryrnmclncal encounters I11

synonymy 66-9.74.85.87.90-4: euphemistic 95 s!~ntagdsyntagmat~c a u s 134-5; clorc procedure and stylistic analysis 85. 88.89.91; multiple cholce text and stylistlc analyss 93.94.95: words and combinat~ons77-8.79.80.84 t;tboo topics 161. 163-4.171.172 tcnse 125.204 text-~mmanent reading 120. 205 third-person narrative 124 lhome. J. P. 97-8 Toolan. M. 126.177 topic 133; see oLro taboo lransfomational-Generative modci 96-7 ..

'Traugott, E. C. 37.41.59 lrengove. G. 22 tpogrsphs see logograms under-specificatton 76 upper case 46.51.54.55 t a n Peer. W. 59.99.127 \enn diagram 183-4 v:rbs 58,109,124,140; actlonal 119: hedg~ng172; morphemes and words 34,38,41-2,43.50; past contrnuous 116.119: verb-noun paradigms 42 t erdonk, P. 98 v sual ambigu~ty31 v sual infomatlon 29, 31.32.33 v sual system 52 v,~cabulary88 tonnegut, K. Jnr 127 Vlaies. K. 98 vlat~on,B. 58 Pfegner. R. E. 44.58 wellfomedness 133 P'erth, P. 127 P1illiams, W. C. 31 Villis, D. 193 Wilson. D. 151-3.157,158.177.181, 19q-d -.-

word-play 9. 10 words and combinat~ons77-84: antonymy 83: collocation 78-9.

84: collocat~onalclash 79-83: componential analys~s81-4: paradigmatic axls 77.78, 79; semanoc scales 83: shunting 80-1: superordinates 83:

I

syntagmatlc axis/combinat~ons 77,78. 79.80; see oiso lexical semantics Yule, G. 176