Role of linguistics in literary interpretation

1. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation Lecture # 22

2. Review of lecture 21 • Style as a set of individual or collected characteristics Almost all writers have their individual individuality • Style as deviation from a norm It becomes evident that it is difficult to separate style from context. No way to know what an accepted norm is

3. Review of lecture 21 Style as set of those relations among linguistic entities that are stable in terms of wider spans of text than the sentence. • Even a single sentence possesses style and one cannot write a single sentence without style. • Concept of spans not so much stylistic as grammatical

4. Review of lecture 21 • Style is the aggregate of frequencies because it is the result of more than one linguistic item. • Any satisfactory stylistic analysis would be a combination of all the six approaches: • All stylistic analysis is ultimately based on the matching of a text against a contextually related norm.

5. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Linguistics today offers to the students of style tools of considerable precision for certain purposes. • Linguistics does not provide just theories & techniques. • It leads to the development and critical maintenance of a sensitive attitude to language.

6. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Some major premises of linguistics which play their roles in the study of style are the nature and importance of the addresser-addressee relationship, the interrelationships between linguistic and non-linguistic contexts, the uniqueness of the phenomenon language etc. • Literary language is not a yardstick to measure all other functions of language.

7. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Language of literature is only one of the varieties of language; it is one of its registers. • The problems of stylistic reconstruction involves all aspects of language: sounds, vocabulary, morphology, syntax and semantics. • Hence stylistics will have the same sub-divisions.

8. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Phono-stylistics will deal with more or less regular recurrences of specific phonological characteristics and such features as verse, length (measured syllabic length), rhyme (the use of same sequence of phonemes in a given distribution normally at the end of each verse in a sequence of verses; or assonance (each verse ending in the same consonant or vowel phoneme; though not same consonants)

9. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Stylistics of sound will also deal with the utilization of onomatopoaeia or expressive purpose. • Hence phonology may throw light on such features as alliteration, assonance, rhyme, pararhyme, onomatopoaeia, rhythm and metre. • Classical prosody could thus be modified.

10. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • This means that a satisfactory phonology would postulate units to cope with a wide range of contrasts of differing status carried by stretches of sounds of different lengths: contrasts in the structure of syllabus, contrasts of stress, and of intonation pattern. • Graphology can be of help because stylistic studies are primarily concerned with examination of written language.

11. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Writing has its own means of indicating some of the patterned contrasts perceived clearly in spoken language e.g. written language’s use of the alphabet, and of combinations of some of its letters to represent some of the sounds of language use; its use of punctuation italicization, capitalization, and so on. • Moreover, to deal with features such as stress and intonation

12. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • In other words, phonology and graphology not only connect substance to form, they are themselves aspects of form, patterns which on occasions directly make substance meaningful in a situation. • Grammar has dominated the description of form

13. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Grammar deals with all such places where choice is to be made between small and limited number of possibilities. • Grammar can indicate why ‘sit’ differs from ‘be seated’, ‘to be’ from ‘not to be’, ‘the snake killed the man’ from ‘the man killed the snake’, ‘A rich man helped a poor man’ from ‘A poor man was helped by a rich man’

14. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • But grammar cannot indicate why ‘she had a fear’ differs from ‘she had a hope’ • Such a work can be done by lexis. • Theoretical categories are required for the formal description of lexis. • Two fundamental categories of lexis (collocation and set) have been proposed by linguists.

15. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • ‘Stylistics of word’ or lexical stylistics will explore the expressive resources available in the vocabulary of a language. • It will explore the stylistic implications of such phenomenon as word formation, synonymy, ambiguity, or the contrast between vague and precise, abstract and concrete, rare and common terms, foreign words, etc.

16. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • The study of imagery will also occupy a prominent place here. • Word formation – an important source of particular literary effects. • Some examples: Lewis Carroll’s and James Joyce’s portmanteau words, novelists of the stream of consciosnessschool and expressionistic dramatists,

17. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Elizabethan writers were fond of transferring words from one form class to another. • They would use happy malice, or foot as verb, fair or pale as nouns, or seldom as an adjective. • In more serious literature, word formation is a source of many more or less startling effects especially in ultra-modern poetry.

18. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • ‘Stylistics of sentences’ or ‘syntactic stylistics’ will express the expressive values of syntax at three superimposed planes: components of the sentence (individual grammatical forms, passages from one word-class to another), sentence- structure (word order, negation etc.), and the higher units into which single sentences combine (direct, indirect and free indirect speech, etc.)

19. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • The most effective use of syntactic resources is made by those authors who stay within the boundaries of everyday speech. • They stay within boundaries but combine independent and dependent, major and minor clauses, and expand or contract the attributive elements to either coincide with the reader’s expectations or to differ with them.

20. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Syntactical effects in literature not only include complexity and recurrence but also syntactical ambiguity. • Lexical ambiguity recognized in the metaphor and the pun. • In the drama and the novel, differentiation between dialogue, monologue and narrative, or between speakers is commonly made by grammatical means.

21. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • This is done normally with the aid of lexical and graphological features which support and intensify these differences. • Writers can use syntactical incompleteness of full syntax without punctuation for special effects • Psychological implications also important

22. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Psychological considerations can help a literary critic in classifying style exactly and accurately. • For example Henri Morier in his book ‘ La psychologie des style’ (Geneva, 1959), distinguished eight fundamental types of style, each corresponding to a certain form of character and temperament

23. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Eight kinds of temperaments: weak, delicate, balanced, positive, strong, hybrid, subtle, and defective. • We can study an author’s mind or inner ideas with the help of psycho-stylistics. • Socio-stylistics too has a role to play. It studies a literary text from the point of view of the varieties of language.

24. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Such considerations take us beyond the realm of literature and involves us in the relation between language use and social and cultural patterns. • We can then account for notions of style which shift and change in different periods and among different groups.

25. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • The student of style is to see language in literature in relation to other functions of language and has to keep the contextual meaning in mind as well. • The formal meaning of an item, according to Halliday, is its operation in the network of formal relations.

26. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Contextual meaning is the part of a situation and so has a context, a relationship with that situation. • The contextual meaning of an item is its relation to extra-textual features. • Concluding words:

27. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Briefly speaking, socio-stylistic is the study of a literary text on the basis of historical and dialectical differences, that is on the basis of the field of discourse, mode of discourse, and tenor of discourse. • Field of discourse- subject matter • Mode of discourse – dimension which accounts for linguistic differences which result from distinctions between spoken & written discourse

28. Role of linguistics in literary interpretation • Tenor – style of discourse • Registers are distinguished on these three bases. • By code- switching and dialect switching as well writers create literary effects – T.S. Eliot’s use of Sanskrit in ‘The Waste land’ • So stylistics studies the psychic, social, linguistic, literary, ideological circumstances of a literary text.

29. Summary • Linguistics leads to the development and critical maintenance of a sensitive attitude to language • The problems of stylistic reconstruction involves all aspects of language: sounds, vocabulary, morphology, syntax and semantics.

30. Summary • Hence phonology may throw light on such features as alliteration, assonance, rhyme, pararhyme, onomatopoaeia, rhythm and metre, • ‘Stylistics of word’ or lexical stylistics will explore the expressive resources available in the vocabulary of a language.

31. Summary • word formation, synonymy, ambiguity, or the contrast between vague and precise, abstract and concrete, rare and common terms, foreign words, etc. • Word formation – an important source of particular literary effects.

32. Summary • ‘Stylistics of sentences’ or ‘syntactic stylistics’ will express the expressive values of syntax at three superimposed planes: components of the sentence (individual grammatical forms, passages from one word-class to another), sentence- structure (word order, negation etc.), and the higher units into which single sentences combine (direct, indirect and free indirect speech, etc.)