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Exploring the Language of Poems, Plays and Prose
Chapter 1 – Who is Stylistics?
Stylistics is an approach to the analysis of literary texts using linguistic
description
...
When reading a text, we almost always make
judgements as we go along, altering them as we alter our interpretation of
parts of the text
...
Our understanding of linguistic forms and meaning is implicit but
when we discuss literature, we need to discuss meaning in an explicit way
...
Stylisticians aim to
discover not just what a text means but also how it comes to mean what it
does
...
We combine
linguistic, contextual and general world knowledge as the basis for inferring an
appropriate interpretation
...

Exercise 1
The phrase the crimson seeds of blood is metaphorical as blood obviously does
not contain any seeds so it cannot be literal
...
I understand this
sentence as tiny specks of blood dripping out over the snow
...
This implies that he has been perhaps shot or injured and
thus the crimson is the red of his blood leaving a trail in the snow
...

The meaning that we ascribe to sentences and texts is at the same time
heavily constrained and yet variable to some limited degree because of the
interaction between readers and what they read
...
Deviation has an
important psychological effect on readers – any part of a poem that is deviant
becomes especially noticeable or perceptually prominent
...
It is produced as a result of deviation from linguistic norms of
various kinds
...
Then reappear) or by
semantic structure (he yawns wide red)
...

pity this busy monster, manunkind – a new word, manunkind, has been
created which gives the impression of the world as nasty and unpleasant
...

Not
...
This can be obtained
through simple repetition but is far more likely seen through parallelism
whereby some features are held constant while others are varied
...

This may well involve us in construing new aspects of meaning for the words
concerned, or in searching among the possible connotations that a word might
have for the one that is most appropriate in the particular structure
...
The structure ‘we are the
...
This is followed by the structure ‘
...
’ implying
a dull, monotonous existence
...
land’ demonstrating again the loss of hope and the burden they carry
...


An Example of Stylistic Analysis
Beyond all this, the wish to be alone:
However the sky grows dark with invitation cards
However we follow the printed directions of sex
However the family is photographed under the flagstaff--Beyond all this, the wish to be alone
...

The first stanza sets us in the middle of mundane, middle-class English social
life
...


The second stanza extends this wish to its logical terminus of death
...

Lexis
(i) Lexical Repetition – the last line of each stanza is a repetition of its first line
...

(ii) Lexical Groupings – almost all of the repeated words belong to a series of
conceptual groups in the poem:
1
...
All nouns derived from
verbs
2
...
Beyond, beneath – both express remoteness from the locus of the speaker
4
...
This could link to
ovulation calendars
...
However, artful refers to the purposeful excuses of people to get out
of a social event by saying they already have a prior commitment
the costly aversion of the eyes from death – people turn away from death
...
The repeated lines in
the two stanzas also show similarities, all beginning with fronted three-word
prepositional phrases including the word all
...

(ii) Definiteness and Generics – there are no definite noun phrases in the
poem
...
This suggests a tension between specificity and generality
...
This suggests the play
between specificity and generality of what is instantaneous and what is
timeless
...
It all also follows the same pattern
...
The first syllables are phonetically and graphologically
identical
...
Social life is
contrasted with the wish to be alone, just as the wish to be alone is equivalent
to oblivion or death
...


Checksheet 1
A
...

(e) Do the deviations lead to new, non-literal meanings for the text parts
concerned? If so, what are they in each case?
Parallelism
(f) Are there any parallelisms? If so, note the linguistic levels at which they
occur by using the list of levels in (c) above
(g) Does the parallelism rule apply? If so, what is the meaning result?
B
...
Discoursal Deviation
In discourses, sentences are related together to form higher units of
linguistic organisation
...
g
...
)
The prototypical discourse situation is that of a conversation between
two people which follows the context of addresser=message=addressee
...
These mixed addressers
and personas are something to consider when reading poetry
...
Semantic Deviation
Semantic deviation is meaning relations which are logically inconsistent
or paradoxical in some way
...
We are constantly involved in framing interpretations which
make sense of apparent nonsense and providing pattern and consistency
where at first none can be seen
...
Lexical Deviation
The most obvious examples of lexical deviation are those where a poet
makes up a new word known as neologism (e
...
manunkind)
...
g
...
Writers can also
take words associated with one variety of English and insert them in a
variety where they do not normally belong (e
...
taboo vocabulary: sod
all)
4
...

Some deviations are now prototypical of poetic language – e
...

adjectives can come after the noun in noun phrases (remembrance

dear)
...
g
...

Often, lists of coordinated nouns are also continually connected by and
instead of a comma (e
...
and God and hope and hopelessness)
...
The opposite can also be
achieved with no commas at all (lives events miracles places rumours) to
foreground the idea that they are all pushed into one undifferentiated
list
5
...
Morphemes are
the building blocks for these words
...
g
...
This points to an apparently contradictory
quality
...
g
...

6
...

Graphological deviation is much easier for poetry and can be exploited
through such things as capital letters which indicate a particular type of
pronunciation
...

This draws attention to particular features and their meanings:
(e
...
Amer
i
ca)
Poets can also play with the absence of punctuation or larger than
normal spacing between words
...
Internal and External Deviation
External deviation is the deviation from a norm external to the text
...
In
the example Song by Keats, the first two stanzas follow a clear format of
the lead role being played by the man with the first two lines identical in
both
...
We
expect this change to carry special interpretative weight
...
Parallelism is one of the mechanisms which writers have at
their disposal for controlling the associative connections which readers make
...
It is thus
an essential device for poetic control
...
This is often a relationship of
quasi-synonymy or quasi-antonymy
...
When authors
invent deviant structures, they choose structures which are outside the bounds
of some norm-system
...
Both choices create the effect of
foregrounding
...
This will give us a more sensitive interpretation of
the text read
...
The choice of doomed is a shocking
comparison with hope and also provides catharsis to the fact that they are
bound to die
...
It is a blending of the two words forget and kettle and thus is
an excellent word to describe exactly what the product does – switches
off automatically
...
Have never heard the word
before but because of the parallelism with turns and over, I assume that
it is a synonym to refer to the idea of spinning slowly
Exercise 2
(a) Alas he went adrift in a boat blue and wide
Fought his life for an hour spoke Jack Peters then died
Mum and dad son and wife and old Timmy and Jane
Never did expect not to see poor dear Bobbie again
Particular poetic features are the reversal order of noun and adjectives
(boat blue and wide), the reverse order of subject and verb (spoke Jack
Peters) and the connection of lists by and
(b) The Tyger tends to delete any grammatical elements and highlights
compression and hidden power reinforced by lexical choice
...
The
inverse order of some verbs such as dare before deadly terrors clasp adds
to the rhythm of the poem and the pace of the tiger
...
This
implies that the electrons have become bound together into a fixed
state and cannot be moved
(b) Where when has been written as one word to imply the singular concept
of time and space
...

This is perhaps done to foreground the word coarse when referring to
the physical qualities of Corrigan
(d) Hitherandthithering has been written together as one word to refer to
the speed and constant movement of the waters
...
The racist person is being displayed in an ironic light
considering his non-standard English and his repetition
...

Exercise 5
In the first few stanzas, whatever core noun is written in the first line is then
repeated straight away in the first line of the next stanza (e
...
And in that hall
there was a bed
...
) After this stanza,
internal deviance occurs with the knight not being mentioned but rather
specific parts of the bed – foot, side and head
...

Exercise 6
(a) Various dappled things are being paralleled through the use of
prepositional phrases – the sky with a cow, chestnuts with finches
...
In the
second stanza, the meaning is widened metaphorically to include many
different kinds of multi-facetedness
...


Exercise 8
yes is a pleasant country:
if's wintry
(my lovely)
let's open the year
both is the very weather
(not either)
my treasure,
when violets appear
love is a deeper season
than reason;
my sweet one
(and april's where we're)
All three stanzas follow the same layout with the first line of each being 7
syllables following the pattern ‘X is a Y’
...
There is also parallelism in the
third line of each stanza that combines the possessive ‘my’ with a term of
endearment such as lovely, sweet one etc
...
There is also a morphogical
inventiveness of if’s which is reflective of spoken English more so than the
typical written genre
...
Next, “if” represents everything in limbo,
everything unsure and uneasy
...

Language Variation: Dialect
Dialect variation is a semi-permanent characteristic of language and can
involve variation at any linguistic level
...
Morphological variation can be demonstrated by the fact that the past
tense of ‘treat’ is ‘treated’ in the South but ‘tret’ in some other dialects
...
’
Language Variation: Medium
The kind of language we use changes from moment to moment each day,
depending upon what we are doing – e
...
speech or writing
...
g
...

Language Variation: Domain
Language varies according to its subject matter or function – e
...
legal
language, scientific language etc
...
Again, variation is not restricted to lexical level –
it is present in grammar through the preference for either passive or active
verb forms
...
g
...

However, this representation is based on a series deviations that we interpret
as characteristics of the dialect concerned
...

Literature and Tenor
Tenor not only refers to the relationship between characters in a fictional piece
but also the relationship between reader and writer
...

Exercise 2
The repetition of “may” followed by various objects is very typical of pulpit
language, so is the address of “my friends
...
”
Literature and Domain
Our assumptions about domain-related language may be formed not from
encounters in the real world but from interacting with verbal art – e
...

espionage terminology influenced by James Bond
...
The poem begins with a cynical transciption of the persona's
latest dinner invitation:
My wife and I have asked a crowd of craps
To come and waste their time and ours: perhaps
You'd care to join us? (181)
and his correspondingly crude retort is: 'In a pig's arse, friend' (181)
...
h]olding a glass of washing sherry, canted
over to catch the drivel of some bitch
Who's read nothing but Which; (181)
Apparently, then, Larkin seems to despise other people in general, and abhors
any kind of company
...


...

Beyond the light stand failure and remorse
Whispering Dear Warlock-Williams: Why, of course - (182)

Checksheet 2 – Style Variation
A
...
Other variation (according to subject matter, function, tenor or
medium)
(a) What linguistic variety does the text you are examining use as its
basic style? Is it an unusual one for the literary genre that the text
comes from? If so, what effect does this have?
(b) What are the linguistic features which indicate this variety?
(c) Are there any parts of the text which have features associated with a
different language variety? If so, what are the linguistic features that
indicate the change? What consequences does this style variation
have for the interpretation of the text as a whole?

Chapter 4 – Sound, Meaning and Effect
Alliteration, Assonance, Rhyme and Related Matters
All of the above phonetic schemes are examples of phonetic parallelism and
therefore are often interpretable via the ‘parallelism rule’
...
In general,
sounds are more salient than spellings
...
Alliteration is much more salient on syllable-initial sounds
than others, particularly when the syllable concerned is itself word-initial
...

In English, the majority of consonants are distinguished from each other
according to three main sets of features: the place in the mouth where the air
flow is impeded (place of articulation), the kind of impediment involved
(manner of articulation) and whether or not the sounds are voiced
...
Despite only having
5 vowels, English actual has 12 vowel sounds or even more with we consider
diphthongs
...
Slightly looser
connections than this are known as half-rhymes and if rhymes occur in
positions other than at the end of a line, they are known as internal rhymes
...

The penultimate syllable of each line is also similar, each with a consonant
followed by an /ai/ sound
...

Other phonetic patterns include stirred for a bird

The sound of off, off forth represents the pent-up energy of the bird as it
begins its sweep through the air
...
In some words, such as miaow and crack, there is and this is
known as onomatopoeia as the sounds which make up the word mimic the
sound which the word refers to
...
English has both long and short vowels and consonants and
these can be played upon in poetry to achieve a particular effect
...

The Relative Pitch of Different Sounds
Within any speaker’s normal pitch range, some phonemes will be produced at
higher or lower pitches than others
...

Indistinctness
Short, bright consonants like /t/ and /p/ are usually perceived as clear sounds
and longer voiced consonants will tend to feel more indistinct
...
The sounds also follow the appropriate sequential order
and the assonance and loose alliterative relationship between click and trip
help form a close link between the slogan and the idea of putting on your belt
when you get into the car
...
For example, words that beginning with gl- such
as glimmer and gleam are typically associated with light
...
This can also be
viewed with the sl- of slime and slug indicating something wet and unpleasant
...
The
sound-symbolic effect of smallness correlates with the smallness of the fishes
and the visual phenomenon of vanishing with a wink
...
But ironically, the expansion of
the human heart is for the mundane purpose of tinkering with a car
...


Checksheet 3 – Phonetic Structure
A
...
Sound Symbolism
(a) Are there any occurrences of sound symbolism?
(b) Are there any occurrences of words belonging to a phonaesthetic
series?
(c) What effects can you associate with the sound symbolism and
phonaesthesia, either locally, or at a more global interpretative level?

Chapter 5 – Rhythm and Metre in the Reading of Poetry
Rhythm in Language
Rhythm is a fundamental human ability
...
In English speech, each lexically full, or
content words has a major stress on one of its syllables
...
Metre gives a text a
new rhythmical dimension, not generally found in prose
...
Metred poems can be said to
be poems where the line lengths and rhythmical patterns within the lines are
close enough for us to feel a basic pattern of equivalence from line to line
...
When combined, we get the sounds did um
(known as iamb) and dum di (known as trochee)
...

The work of Shakespeare and Wordsworth is made of iambic pentameters –
five iambic beats per metric line
...
We see examples of iambic monometer (upon his
departure hence), iambic trimeter (the aged lover renounceth love), trochaic
septameter (never weather-beaten sail), iambic tetrameter (phantom) and
iambic pentameter (lamia)
There are some general conventions at work when poets decide what to delete
or not:

1
...
This tends to mean that syllables
carrying grammatical information are more likely candidates for elision
than those which carry lexical meaning
2
...
There appears to be a hierarchy of the ease with which particular
consonants can be deleted
...

Intonation or Sentence Stress
Prose rhythm has two layers of organisation: the stress assignment rules for
English words and English intonation patterns and the special sentence
stresses we apply to particular syllables to make our meaning clear in context
...

The alliteration on so, strode and slow is on the fricatives which are long
consonants, again indicating a long journey back
...
He goes from remembering happy days with his wife, to the
anger and fading away of them drifting apart to her death where he feels
sadness and begins to see her everywhere
...
The fact
that he drops down a line when mentioning bounce almost mimics the action
of the word in the written form
...
Wasn't this poem supposed to be in "memory" of Yeats? Doesn't
that mean that he's dead? So why would our speaker describe him as if he'd just disappeared?

It's an interesting question, for sure
...
But
keep reading…

Lines 2-4
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted,
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day
...
A snowstorm and an empty downtown?
Check
...


Frankly, folks, it's got all the makings of a thriller
...
Notice how the
day has a "mouth" and is "dying"? Poets dig describing nature in human terms
...


Plus, winter is sort of the perfect time to talk about death
...


Lines 5-6
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day
...
We'll get back to it in a few
stanzas, we promise
...
B
...
In
fact, we'll just go ahead and assert that that's what's going on
...


Now let's get to the actual language of these lines, shall we?

Notice how the speaker's syntax in line 5 seems to suggest that there might be other
instruments out there that could calculate the day differently? As in, "what instruments
we haveagree
...
"

Maybe it's just us, but it almost sounds like the speaker is wishing he could describe the
day of Yeats's death differently
...
After all, that's what this poem is about
...
And if recording the death of the body is hard, imagine
how much more difficult it would be to commemorate the life of his mind and soul in, say, a
poem
...
Get it?

Lines 7-9
Far from his illness
The wolves ran on through the evergreen forests,
The peasant river was untempted by the fashionable quays;



A man is dead, but life goes on
...


Auden is actually being sneaky here
...
Do you usually think of
water as being "peasant" or quays (that means wharfs, or loading docks for ships) "fashionable"?
Nope
...
As Auden ostensibly describes the rivers, he
also manages to sneak in a little allusion to the human world
...
Everything's ordered just as it should be
...
It seems like
everyone around you should stop and scream just as loudly as you want to be screaming
...
Sure, it's natural, but, in a very real way, it's
also unnatural, at least as far as the speaker is concerned
...



The speaker is describing the reaction to Yeats's passing by insisting on the ways
that readers of his poems will encounter his poetry
...
After all, Auden deliberately chooses to refer to Yeats as "the poet," making him
an anonymous figure rather than a specific man
...


In fact, in the absence of specific people in these lines, Yeats's poems themselves seem
to take on a life of their own
...

That description makes the poems sound like living, breathing beings
...

In other words, the poems endure after the poet's death
...


Auden is emphasizing Yeats's humanness here: his death is just as depressing and
solitary as any other death
...
If anything, an attempt
to describe the minutia of Yeats's last minutes would only redouble the "rumours" which the
speaker describes here
...

Other than those few sneaky adjectives we discussed earlier, this poem sounds almost like
someone talking right in our ear
...
No rhymes at all, in
fact – at least not yet
...
It's almost as if Auden is determined
to depict Yeats's death with a restraint that he himself doesn't feel
...
(See what we had to say about the waters just a few lines ago
...




This is our first extended metaphor, so be sure to check out what we have to say about it
in our "Symbolism, Imagery, Wordplay" section
...
if only because cities aren't exactly natural
...
They didn't just appear – unlike the wolves or rivers that the
speaker refers to earlier
...


Line 17
The current of his feeling failed; he became his admirers
...
Keep track of those – it'll pay off, we promise
...
well, just a
little bit off
...
After all, who wouldn't rather have
Yeats around than a whole bunch of his admirers? The conventional sayings just don't seem to
have much to offer in terms of consolation here
...
He wants us to experience the awful
strangeness and emptiness of Yeats's death as a very real and unnerving kind of loss
...



It's almost like Yeats is being devoured by a whole bunch of strangers, right? His "life"
becomes the topic of dinner conversations around the world on the night that he dies, and our
speaker imagines just how strange it would be for Yeats himself to inhabit those bodies and
those conversations
...


There's a strange tension between the assertion of Yeats's death and the imagery at
work here, which seems to suggest that the poet is still alive in some ways
...


It's pretty common to talk about people who've just died in the present tense
...
Maybe its' just too hard to face the fact of their death
...
He'll be a thirty-second clip on the nightly
news, and people will come up with a sound byte to describe his lifetime of achievements
...
right?

Lines 22-23
The words of a dead man
Are modified in the guts of the living
...
They can no longer emerge from the poet's own mouth
...
Tasty, huh?

Our speaker seems to withdraw even further from Yeats's death in these lines, becoming
almost philosophical as he describes "a dead man
...


Lines 24-27

But in the importance and noise of to-morrow
When the brokers are roaring like beasts on the floor of the Bourse,
And the poor have the sufferings to which they are fairly accustomed,
And each in the cell of himself is almost convinced of his freedom,


So the human world is going on as usual
...
Everything's great, right?

Well, not exactly
...

People locked in the "cell[s]" of themselves? That's a far cry from gathering hands and singing
"Kumbaya
...
Remember how his death was
described as the shutting down of a self-enclosed city? That's pretty darn similar to the "cell"
Auden describes here
...
See the problem? They're diametrically opposed ideas – which makes it a
wee bit difficult to cram both into one poem
...


Lines 28-29
A few thousand will think of this day
As one thinks of a day when one did something slightly unusual
...


"In Memory of W
...
Yeats," by the way, is a far cry from traditional elegies (poems written
in memory of a dead person), which tend to claim that the world will change forever after "X" dies
and millions of people from hundreds of countries will spend thousands of years wailing and
sobbing
...


Lines 30-31
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day
...


We heartily concur with what we said the first time around: these lines seem to suggest
that there's a certain limitation to what humans are able to express in times like this
...
" But it's also much, much more than that
...


Plus, after the last few lines, the understatement that characterizes this first section
begins to seem strained or even ironic
...
[…]


Notice how all of a sudden the speaker directs his words towards a "you" who seems to
be Yeats?

The tone of the poem doesn't get any more reverent, though
...
And you'd have to be a good
friend to take the criticisms of line 33 without punching the speaker in the face
...

Instead of just showing us the honorable and good stuff, he makes sure we understand that
Yeats's "gift" emerges in spite of (or perhapsbecause of) all these complications
...

Now Ireland has her madness and her weather still,
For poetry makes nothing happen: […]


We've got to confess, these lines take our breath away, like a punch straight to the gut
...


Here's the quick-and-dirty background:

Yeats was deeply involved in (and occasionally critical of) the Irish independence
movement of his time
...


Yeats often got frustrated with Irish nationalists – especially the generation emerging
right around the time of World War I
...


The speaker says that Ireland hasn't changed one bit because of Yeats's poetry
...
Yeats's poetry wasn't, at least
...


The speaker isn't saying that poetry is worthless
...
) He is, however, asserting that the "work" poetry can do is very different from other sorts
of work
...
But it also is able to make "nothing" happen in a
way that, say, politics isn't able to do
...
It's a complicated line
...
Poems will always be
both more and less complicated than that
...
When you're done reading a poem, you don't
have anything tangible to keep from the experience, no souvenir
...
It's just a poem
...


Lines 36 - 40
[…] it survives
In the valley of its making where executives
Would never want to tamper, flows on south
From ranches of isolation and the busy griefs,
Raw towns that we believe and die in
...
sort
of like the currents of Yeats's feelings flowed earlier in the poem
...
It remains untouched by all of the busy activities of the rest of the world, which,
after the descriptions we've had earlier, is probably a good thing
...



In case you still didn't get it, our speaker clarifies even further
...
It's a
mode of doing something, "a way of happening
...
That's something,
isn't it?

Lines 42-43
Earth, receive an honoured guest:
William Yeats is laid to rest
...
Auden's delving deep into tradition with the last
section of this poem (and believe us, we'll have a whole bunch to say about that in "Form and
Meter")
...
Explaining just who it is that you're mourning is usually one of the first
things that an elegy sets out to do – something this final, formal section makes very clear
...

Could it mean that Auden places less emphasis on the man than on his poetry? Could it mean
that he just doesn't like all the stuffy formalness of traditional elegiac forms? Could he just want
the familiarity of addressing Yeats himself instead of a crowd of readers?

Well, we don't have any good answers for you, but it's something to think about
...
They roll right off the tongue as if
they've been there before
...


Lines 44-45
Let the Irish vessel lie
Emptied of its poetry
...



Each previous section has some reference to the poet's body ending and his work
continuing on
...


It's almost as if the poem itself goes through a purifying process: as Auden recycles
certain ideas about Yeats's death, he figures out new ways to approach a subject that is
admittedly pretty difficult
...
"

Lines 46-49

In the nightmare of the dark
All the dogs of Europe bark,
And the living nations wait,
Each sequestered in its hate;


Auden may be drawing on age-old traditions in the first stanza of this section, but he's not
about to let his readers forget some of the specifics of Yeats death, particularly the time of his
death
...
Yeats and Auden
shared the sentiments of many of their fellow artists and intellectuals, who were dismayed at the
thought of another world war
...


Notice how the speaker paints the impending war as a sort of nightmarish unreality
...
There was a general sense of incredulity
and horrible fascination with a world that seemed to be heading straight to hell in a hand
basket…again
...
Read a few lines aloud and you'll see what we mean
...
But once it's in motion, it's hard to make it
stop
...
Check out how similar the descriptions of "sequestered" nations are to the isolated cells of
human beings in section I
...
Small consolation? Yup
...


Lines 50-53
Intellectual disgrace
Stares from every human face,
And the seas of pity lie
Locked and frozen in each eye
...
All that locking and freezing don't seem to lead to much sharing or caring
...


But wait – isn't this poem supposed to be about Yeats? This is the second stanza in a
row now that doesn't seem to have anything to do with the man himself
...
And like most good questions, it doesn't have an easy answer
...
Yeats, remember, was
deeply connected to his nation and to political and social movements
...
You could think of these stanzas as
a way for Auden to spend a little bit of time in another poet's head
...
But our speaker seems to value Yeats's ability to
accept that
...
even when celebration might not be the first thing on everybody's mind
...
After all, it would be easy to escape into fantasy, or just to mope
about how bad things are
...
We know all
about them
...
He's
no longer addressing us or an outside audience; he's talking to the "poet," someone who
continues to exist in the present, even after Yeats himself has died
...
Or maybe he does; we don't really know
...


Lines 58-61
With the farming of a verse
Make a vineyard of the curse,
Sing of human unsuccess
In a rapture of distress;



Wow
...
In fact, not a lot of hope at all
...


Lines 62-63
In the deserts of the heart
Let the healing fountain start,


Ah, now we're back to the flowing and running of poetry
...


Poetry, which was earlier described as a thing that can creep through the nooks and
crannies of our stiff and frozen world, is now channeled into a single image: that of a healing
fountain
...


All this wishing and hoping has led to language that tends to be a whole lot more
metaphorical than, say, the first section of the poem
...


Pay attention to the way Auden crafts these last lines: it's an invocation of Yeats's poetic
powers
...
(It's very polite command, but you see
what we're saying
...


Lines 64-65
In the prison of his days
Teach the free man how to praise
...
Sure, it's a pretty radical
claim
...


Auden's final approach to this elegy is peculiar
...
He
wants the people of his time to read and think and maybe even be better people as a result of
their interaction with Yeats's poems
...
Metrical Patterns
(a) Is there an identifiable metrical form for the poem as a whole? If
so, what is it and what effects do you associate with it?
(b) Are there any lines where interesting rhythmical effects are
created by marked good fit, or marked lack of fit between the
dictates of the metrical form and those of the stress assignment
rules for English? If so, note down their effect
(c) Are there any lines in the poem which depart significantly from
the overall metrical set for the poem? If so, what meaning and/or
effects are connected with this internal metrical deviation?
(d) Examine the relationship between grammatical organisation and
line boundaries
...
Interpretative Integration of Metrical and Phonetic Patterns
Are there any interesting ways in which phonetic and metrical
organisation interrelate? How do the sound and rhythmic patterns you
have identified integrate with what you have noted about the poem at
linguistic levels more directly related to meaning?

Chapter 6 - Drama: The Conversational Genre
Introduction
Drama is the literary genre which is most like naturally occurring conversation
...

ADDRESSER 1
(Playwright)

MESSAGE

ADDRESSEE 1
(Audience/Reader)

ADDRESSER 2
(Character A)

MESSAGE

ADDRESSEE 2
(Character B)

The overarching level of discourse is that between the playwright and the
audience
...
It is this doubled structure which gives rise to the notion
of dramatic irony, which typically occurs when knowledge of some of the
characters is less than that of the author and audience at Level 1, producing
tension for the audience as they wonder what will happen when that
knowledge is revealed to the characters
...

Sometimes, there are variations of this pattern as at character level, we rarely
have just two characters talking to one another for the whole play
...

How like real conversation is dramatic dialogue?
Most ordinary conversations do not have a doubled discourse structure
...


How dramatic dialogue is not like conversation?
Dramatic dialogue is written to be spoken whereas casual conversation is
unprepared and unrehearsed
...

This type of non-fluency does not occur in drama dialogue precisely because
the dialogue has been written
...

Drama dialogue also does not contain the feedback of everyday conversation
whereby regular indications are given that somebody is listening and
understanding what is being said
...
The ensuing pauses and repetition are also characteristic of real life
scenarios
...
This demonstrates Sybil's conversational efficiency
...

Drama dialogue also exhibits the turn-taking characteristic of real conversation
and apart from small overlaps between the end of one speech and the
beginning of another, the don't talk at the same time rule is fairly strictly

observed
...

Within each turn, the speech produced counts as one or more acts performed
by the person or character and the act which the speech performs will vary
from one context to another depending upon what is assumed
...

In dramatic conversation, characters often say one thing but mean another
...
Key
aspects to consider are the length and complexity of speeches (whether the
organisation internal to the speeches is more reminiscent of writing or speech)
and how organised the conversation is at a more tactical level, how aimed it is
towards particular plot and thematic ends and how much it takes into account
the overhearing audience
...
Given that the lower characters speak in prose, this has
been creatively used to highlight the difference in classes between speakers
...


Checksheet
A
...
Does the discourse structure remain constant throughout the
whole text or does it vary? Are there any significant discoursal collapsings?
What interpretative consequences does the discourse architecture of the text
have?
B
...
Is the lexis formal or informal?
b
...
To what extent are there graphological contractions?
d
...
Are there any other significant features to be noted?
How do your findings affect your overall interpretation of the text or your
response to it? Do any of the features you have noted have specific local
interpretative effects at the point they occur in the text?

Chapter 7 - The Meaning of Speech Acts, Turn-Taking and Politeness
Speech Acts
When people say things, they don't just say things; they also perform acts by
saying what they do
...
g
...

Speech acts change the world we inhabit
...

Act performed by speaking
Intended effect as a consequence of
performing a speech act
Actual effect caused by the act

Speech act/illocutionary force
Intended perlocutionary force/effect
Actual perlocutionary force/effect

In plays, speech acts usually only operate inside one of the levels of discourse
previously described
...
Often, certain contextual conditions (known as felicity
conditions) have to be in place for an utterance to function properly as a
particular speech act
...
Relevant
contextual conditions for the adequate performance of particular speech acts
include speaker/hearer intentions as well as states of affairs in the world
...
If I say that I will pay you a visit tomorrow, that counts as a promise
on the assumption that you want me to come and I know that you do
...

This contextual aspect of speech acts is important, particularly at the beginning
of the play, when we must infer important unstated aspects of context and
relationship between participants
...
However, the guests have trouble interpreting this request
...
The occurrence of a speech act by one speaker enables us to
predict the occurrence of another speech act by another speaker
...

These turn-taking patterns and deviations can often become meaningful in
texts
...

Exercise 2
Normally, it will be powerful speakers that have the most turns, have the
longest turns, initiate conversational exchanges, control what is talked about
and who talks when, and interrupt others
...
Particular functional and
contextual circumstances for conversations will also demand some variation
from these general rules: e
...
in an interview scenario, the least powerful
person will take the longest turns
...
Her
son feels intimidated by her and as such, he stammers and is very obedient
...
This is a reflection of her power
...
We all want people to be polite
to us and in turn we are polite to others because we recognise the same need
in them and we will be unlikely to get things done if we are impolite
...

Positive face is our need for our actions and wants to be desirable to other
people as well as to ourselves
...
The term face threatening act (FTA) is used to refer
to a time when somebody may upset somebody else
...

Exercise 4
Politeness strategies include:
- The greeting good morning
- Giving the student a chance to introduce herself by posing a question
- Shaking hands
- Thanking the other person
- Telling them they needn't have hurried
- Reformulation of speech
- Several apologies

Checksheet
A
...
Does one character have significantly more turns than the others?
b
...
Are the patterns of initiating turns roughly equal for each character or are
there significant disparities?
d
...
Does one of the characters allocate turns to others?
f
...
Which characters initiate new topics and which do not? Are there any
significant patterns of topic control?
h
...
Are there any other interesting turn-taking patterns?
Now that you have collected the data, can you discern any patterns among the
categories which help distinguish the roles or functions of the characters? How
do the turn-taking patterns relate to your overall interpretation of the text
analysed, and what light do they throw on the personalities of the characters
and how they relate to one another
...
Speech Acts
a
...
Examining each speech act in turn, decide whether it is a direct or indirect
speech act
c
...
Now consider the felicity conditions for the various speech acts
...
Do the intended perlocutionary effects of the speech acts succeed, or are
there cases where they fail? If so, what are the consequences of these failures?
How does what you have found out through speech act analysis affect your
understanding of the play and your reaction to the relationships between the
characters?
C
...
Are the characters' politeness behaviours reciprocal?
b
...
Are there any examples of impoliteness?
d
...
Try to measure the number of politenesses or impolitenesses and the
extent of the (im)politeness in each instance
...

If the characters are not acting reciprocally, in what ways are they acting
differently from one another? What do your detailed answer to questions a-d
above tell you about the relationships between the characters? Are there any
examples of particular styles of politeness behaviour for particular characters?
How do the patterns of (im)politeness you have discerned relate to the plot
and thematic development of the play?

Chapter 8 - Assumptions, Presuppositions and the Inferring of Meaning
Introduction
To infer appropriate meaning from what is said or written often crucially
depends upon applying relevant assumptions about the world to the linguistic
message
...
This situationality is often prompted by
clues from within the text
...
Instead, we are
prompted by the text itself and the situation which that text set up
...
At
the other extreme are presuppositions, specific assumptions of rather precise
matters that are embedded inside sentences
...

Schema Theory
We bring to bear relevant parts of our knowledge of the world when we
understand what other people say or do
...
These get updated from
time to time as new information comes to hand
...

Exercise 2
My schematic assumptions are that a man should propose to the woman and
that the proposal is likely to be informal and occur in private
...

Here, Gwendolene does not accept Jack's proposal as she is expecting him to
get down on bended knee formally
...
In order to fully engage
with a text, we must presuppose the existence of particular characters and
entities
...
Once we have read the first sentence, a presuppositional
pool opens and widens to include what has already been asserted
...

Exercise 3
Once Lamb has been severely tortured, he is then subjected to the traditional
interview format
...

Inference
Our understanding of all human behaviour seems to involve processes of
inference
...
In normal
circumstances, we make inferences so quickly and automatically that we may
not even notice the inferential work needed
...

Inference is based on the rules of:
1
...
Describing what happened at an appropriate level of detail
3
...
Say what you need to say in a brief, direct and unambiguous manner
The rules of conversational cooperation were first spelled out by Paul Grice
...
Quality
2
...
Relation
4
...
Lying
2
...
Talking about something else
Sometimes we can choose to flout these maxims for creative effect
...
Although this
flouts the maxim of relation, the unstated meaning is easily inferred, known as
conversational implicature
...
This adds emphasis
...
This
implies that the interlocutor does not wish to be interrupted and wants to be
left alone
...

Exercise 4
Iago is economical with the truth by not openly stating that Desdemona is
having an affair but rather, implying it through the use of indeed
...


Checksheet
A
...
Establish the schemas that are being relied upon in the text you are
examining
...
Do these schemas interact with one another in interesting ways? If so, how?
c
...
Presuppositions
a
...
Are any of these presuppositions at odds with those of speeches uttered by
other characters in the same text? If so, what does this tell you about the
characters and the text?
c
...
Conversational implicature
a
...
Given that the breaks are covert for (some) other characters, but not for
the reader/audience, what can you deduce about what the author is telling
you about the characters and their relations?
b
...
What effect does this have on the relationships between you and the
text and you and the author?

c
...

ADDRESSER 1
(Novelist)

MESSAGE

ADDRESSEE 1
(Reader)

ADDRESSER 2
(Narrator)

MESSAGE

ADDRESSEE 2
(Narratee)

ADDRESSER 3
(Character A)

MESSAGE

ADDRESSEE 3
(Character B)

I-Narrators
The person who tells the story may also be a character in the fictional world of
the story, relating the story after the event
...
These narrators are often said to be limited or unreliable
as they don’t know all the facts and may trick readers by withholding some
information
...
This type of narrator is the dominant type and are more
likely to be omniscient
...


Linguistic Indicators of Viewpoint
1
...
Viewpoint can be controlled through choosing to
describe what only could be seen from a particular position
...
Value-laden Expressions
As well as indicating viewpoint by choosing what to describe, novelists
can also indicate it by how it is described, particularly through
expressions which are evaluative in nature
...
Given Vs New Information
This refers to the fact of whether novelists chose to take the addressee’s
viewpoint into account
...
This often happens if the item has been previously
referred to in the text but is also used if the item is assumed to be
common knowledge
...
Indicators of a Particular Character’s Thoughts or Perceptions
Character viewpoint can be indicated in descriptions through the use of
verbs of perception and cognition and verbs and adverbs related to
factivity
...
Deixis
This term denotes pointing expressions such as this and that and here
and there
...
Social Deixis
We can also view social relations in deictic terms – somebody that you
refer to as Mr + last name would be socially remote unlike somebody
who you call with a pet name who is socially close
...
The Sequencing and Organisation of Actions and Events to Indicate
Viewpoint
The grammatical organisation of clauses can be used by writers for
viewpoint manipulation – Horatio opened the door and the door was
opened indicate completely different perspectives for the reader
...

8
...
Many expressions can contain hidden
ideological assumptions – e
...
He’s going to the Middle East tomorrow;
he’s going to North Africa tomorrow to refer to Saudi Arabia
...

By Wilcox using the initial letters CNC instead of ‘computer numerically
controlled’ shows that he is very familiar with the term and assumes that
others are too
...

Exercise 3
The third-person narrative is told from a viewpoint consistent with Colonel
Fergusson’s perspective
...
We
also see the use of near and remote deictic adverbials (here; over there)
...
’

Exercise 4
These figures are not socially equal and as readers, we are inserted into the
middle of the social hierarchy
...
However, Mr Luscombe, the
farm owner, is above us
...
Old Sam seems to have more status than Lewis – status that comes with
age and experience
...
However, his foregrounding at
end may suggest that he is actually to become the most significant character in
the book
...
g
...

Exercise 1
The comma and inverted commas around the reported clause of the direct
speech are removed and the order of the reporting and reported clauses are
reversed
...
Indirect speech is a
backgrounding, and direct speech a foregrounding, device
...
Sometimes, a mere sentence that sums up the speech
that occurred is present – this is known as the Narrator’s Representation of
Speech (NRS)
...

2
...

4
...
We can also see an amalgam of direct and
indirect speech features, known as Free Indirect Speech
...
g
...

Exercise 2
a
...
The first sentence is indirect speech and the second is direct speech –
there is an ironic flavour because such an important question is
represented in an indirect form and the content of the response is
laconical
c
...
Free indirect speech
The Categories of Speech Presentation Discussed in Detail
Narrator’s Representation of Action (NRA)
This category accounts for sentences of physical description and action where
speech is not presented at all:
1
...

3
...


Actions by characters
Events or happenings caused by inanimate agents
Descriptions of states
Character perceptions of any of the above

Narrator’s Representation of Speech (NRS)
This category tells us that speech occurred, without any indication of what was
said
...

For example – (Mr D’Arcy) told them the history of his cold
...
All linguistic devices will be from
the own speaker’s viewpoint
...

Indirect Speech
In indirect speech, the speaker is the person doing the reporting – in the case
of the novel, the narrator
...

As we move along the scale from direct speech to NRS, so the control and
influence of the narrator’s viewpoint over the reporting of what the character
said gets stronger and stronger
...
This is used particularly to convey ironic statements and was a key
feature of 19th/20th century literature
...
However, Oliver’s responses are in free indirect
speech showing his naivety
...
He spent the day thinking
Narrator’s Representation of Thought
2
...
She thought that he would be late
Indirect Thought
4
...
“He will be late,” she thought
Direct Thought

Direct Thought
Direct thought tends to be used to present conscious and deliberative thought
...

Free Indirect Thought
Free indirect thought allows us to feel closer to the character, almost getting
inside their head as they think and thus, emphasise with their viewpoint
...

Stream of Consciousness Writing
This term refers to the novelistic portrayal of the free flow of thought,
particularly prominent in Virginia Woolf and James Joyce novels
...
As a
consequence, there are various possible speech/though presentation
ambiguities
...


Checksheet 9 – Speech and Presentation Thought
A Is speech or thought being presented? For each sentence, and sometimes for
parts of sentences as they slip from one mode to another, you will need to
decide whether action, speech or thought is being presented, and whether
there is any ambiguity about possible decisions
...

Is there any of the cohesive disjunction associated with stream of
consciousness writing? If so, examine its form
...
Often, styles can be mimicked through
copying of content as well as particular linguistic constructions
...
As his excitement grew, so his
eyes grew even larger
...
He is a young boy with large brown eyes and nice
hair
...

(Pastiche of Steven Saylor and Jacqueline Wilson)
Writing style is seen as symptomatic of the mind style or world view of the
writer
...

Authorial Style 2 – Style Completely Unrelated to Meaning: Fingerprinting
Some individual styles can be completely independent of meaning
...
This technique will determine the true
authorship of a text
...
To examine
this style, we must look at linguistic choices intrinsically connected with
meaning and effect on the reader
...
We count anything that is countable but not assume that quantitative
analysis leads to automatic conclusions

2
...
Just counting up the totals of a particular feature is not helpful unless
the text we are comparing with are similar in length
4
...
Averages or percentages for an entire passage may conceal differences
between one part of the passage and another so we must examine how
much internal variation from the average there is
6
...

2
...

4
...

6
...


Foregrounded features
Patterns of style variation
Discoursal patterning of various kinds
Patterns of viewpoint manipulation
Patterns of lexis
Patterns of grammatical organisation
Patterns of textual organisation

Lexis
When looking at text style, we must consider the type of lexis used (whether
words are common or technical)
...
We can also consider the verbs and whether they are
dynamic, stative or thoughtful as well as whether they are transitive or
intransitive
...

We must also note their length and how often subordination occurs
...
We can also look at the way in which tense

changes
...

Cohesion and Coherence
We must look at how a text uses cohesive links such as and and but to link
sentences together to create an overall coherent text
...

Poetic Features
Alliteration and metaphor are often dominant in written prose
...

Exercise 2
On my right hand there were lines of fishing stakes resembling a mysterious
system of half-submerged bamboo fences, incomprehensible in its division of
the domain of tropical fishes, and crazy of aspect as if abandoned forever by
some nomad tribe of fishermen now gone to the other end of the ocean; for
there was no sign of human habitation as far as the eye could reach
...
And when I turned my head to take a parting glance at
the tug which had just left us anchored outside the bar, I saw the straight line
of the flat shore joined to the stable sea, edge to edge, with a perfect and
unmarked closeness, in one leveled floor half brown, half blue under the
enormous dome of the sky
...
Here and there gleams as of a
few scattered pieces of silver marked the windings of the great river; and on
the nearest of them, just within the bar, the tug steaming right into the land

became lost to my sight, hull and funnel and masts, as though the impassive
earth had swallowed her up without an effort, without a tremor
...
And
then I was left alone with my ship, anchored at the head of the Gulf of Siam
...
Lexis
General
Examine the open class words in the text
a
...
Does the writer make greatest use of referential or denotative
meanings or do you have to think about connotations or other
emotive associations of the words?
c
...
Are there any unusual words – archaic, rare or specialised
vocabulary?
e
...
Do they play any significant role in the text? Is
there frequent or striking use of the first person pronouns, negative words or
the definite or indefinite article?
Specific
a
...
ADJECTIVES – Do they occur frequently? What kinds of attributes do
they embody? Do they occur in comparative or superlative forms? Do
they occur singly or in groups?
c
...
ADVERBS – Do they occur frequently? What kinds of meaning do they
have? Do they occur in comparative or superlative forms?

B
...
g
...
SENTENCES – Are they statements, questions, commands etc or are they
like speech sentences? Are they simple, compound or complex? How
long are they? Are there striking contrasts in sentence length or
structure at any point in the text? If the sentences are long, is their
length due to the embedding of clauses inside one another, coordination
o f clauses, long phrases acting as single clause elements or other
reasons?
b
...
g
...
PHRASES
i
...

VERB PHRASES – What is the tense? Present or past? Are there
sections of apparent narration where the tense is other than the
simple past tense?
iii
...
Cohesion and Coherence
A
...
Does the text contain logical or other links between sentences or does
it rely on implicit connections?
ii
...
Are meaning connections made by means of lexical repetition or by
the frequent use of words from the same semantic field?
iv
...
COHERENCE
I
...
Then proceed to the more detailed analysis
 Order your analysis so that the areas which bear most directly on the
interpretation come first
 Begin with discoursal and pragmatic structure (style, discourse structure,
conversational maxims)
 Then move onto point of view and speech presentation/viewpoint
 Then repetition, parallelism and metaphor



---