‫علم األسلوب‬
‫المستوى الخامس‬
3313 – 3311 ‫الفصل الثاني‬
STYLISTICS 303 NJD
Level 5
3 credit hours
Instructor Information:
Inaam Perriman, Ph.D.
Office: Room 17/Building 3
11obile:0507155035
iperriman@ksu.edu.sa
http://ksu.edu.sa/inaam
facebook: Inaam PettitnanM'rabet
Office Hours:
Sunday: 12-13
SMS group: 51681 Stylistics
http://sms.ksu.edu.sa
Course Description: .
This course is required for all undergraduate 5th level translation students.
The course includes the factors that determine the choice of the different
words and structures in the different texts, the study of the varieties of
English, the mutual interaction between the topic used, the functions of
style and the different stylistic devices used in the different
types of writing: literary, advertisements, newspaper. lt concludes by
discussing the stylistic problems in translation.
Course objective:
In addition to understanding the basic topics and terminology of stylistics,
this course
should enable you to do the following:
1. Understand the importance of using appropriate words and structures in
the different texts and contexts.
2. Recognize the different stylistic devices used in the different texts.
3. Develop important critical thinking regarding the impact of the choice
of the different words and structures in the different texts.
4. Gain insight into the stylistic problems that you might encounter in the
process of translating.
5. Gain personal insight into the importance of using the appropriate
language for the different texts and contexts.
Course Philosophy:
Research shows that you learn more when you actively process
information, as opposed to passively listen to professor talk. Therefore, my
goal is to keep traditional lecturing to a minimum in this course. We all
use a fair amount of small group work in class. The topics of this work will
then be processed by the whole class. While it is my responsibility to make
the group task meaningful, you will have the responsibility of making the
group process meaningful. It will be helpful to this process if you prepare
before class.
Attendance:
You are expected to come to class and be on time. Regular attendance is
important and a record of attendance will be kept. The university policy is
that once you miss 50%of the class, for any reason, you will be banned of
the course. In fact, from my experience, students who miss 25% of the
classes fail the course anyway!!
Hopefully, you will enjoy the course enough that will be motivated to
attend.
Academic Honesty:
As you might expect, cheating in any form will absolutelgot be tolerated.
If you submit work that is not your own or engage in other forms of cering,
you will receive an F and the administration will be notified.
Course Requirements
Exams:
Two cumulative exams will be given during the term in addition to
quizzes. Each test is cumulative because research shows that we study
differently if we know we will be tested on material again in future. I want
to encourage this type of deep learning. Exams will be composed of
True/False questions, multiple choice questions, short answer questions,
fill in the blanks questions, give example questions and analyze texts to
look for the different stylistic devices.
Grading Procedures
Final course gra cles will b e b asecl on th e f0llowing:
1st In-term 30%
2nd In-term 30%
Final exam 40%
Final grades will b e assessed according to the following scale:
A 90-100
D 60-69
B 80-89
FBelow 60
C 70-79
Tips for Maximum Performance in this Course
1. Keep up with reading.'Each topic contains a lot of new and interesting
information. Trying to cram so much into your memory the night before a
test is not the correct strategy. Instead, read the topics as we go along. This
will help you retain the information as well as make the class discussion
more meaningful.
2. Ask questionsJBy keeping up with the reading you will know what is
confusing or unclear to you. Ask for clarification in class or send an email
or contact me on the chat box on my site.
3.Be an active participant in class and small group discussion. We will do
a lot of both in this course while traditional lecture will be kept to a
minimum. While it is my task to make the discussion topics meaningful
and relevant, it is up to you to be an active class member in order to get the
most out of them.
Course Calendar (modified)
Week 1
Week 2 Style and Stvlistics
Week 3 Introduction to Stylistic Analysis
Week 4 Varieties of English
WeekS Varieties of English
Week 6 Structure, Style
Week 7 Context + exam.
Week 8 Components of Speech events + 1st exam
Vacation
Week 9 Functions of Language
Week 10 Literary Language + Analysis
Week 11 Exercises
Week 12 Language play in advertising
Week 13 Language play in advertising
Week 14 The Language of Newspaper Reports+exam
Week lS The Language of Newspaper Reports
Essential References
-Hough, Graham, Style and Stylistics, Rotlege, 1962.(H.G.808) Ami!
Salman Library.
-Toolan, Michael, Language, Text and Context: essays in Stylistics,
Rotlege,
1992(L.T.40l,4l) Alisha Library.
- Turner, G.W., Stylistics, Penguin, 1973. (T.G.40l) Ami! Salman Library.
- wales , Katie , A Dictionary of Stylistics , ( W.K 418,003) Alisha Library
- http:// www. hud.ac.uk/mh/english/stylistics .
Exam Dates
1st Interm Saturday : ( week 8 )
2nd Interm Saturday : ( week 14 )
Stylistics
Stylistics is the description and antilysis of the variability of linguistic
forms in actual language use . The concepts of "style" and "syulistic"
variation " in language rest on the general assumption that within the
language system , the same content can be encoded in more than one
linguistic form . Operating at all linguistic levels ( e.g. lexicology , syntax
,text linguistics , and inotonation . stylistic variation across texts . These
texts can be literary or nonliterary in nature . Generally speaking , style
may be regarded as a choice of linguistic means , as deviation from a norm
, as recurrence of linguistic forms , and as comparison .
Considering style as choice, there are a multitude of stylistic factors that
lead the language user to prefer certain linguistic forms to others. These
factors can be grouped into two categories: user-bound factors and factors
.referring.to.the ..situation.where.the.Ianguage.is being used. User-bound
factors include, among others, the speaker's or writer's age; gender;
idiosyncratic preferences; and regional and social background. Situationbound stylistic -factors depend on the given communication situation, such
as medium (spoken vs. written); participation in discourse (monologue vs.
dialogue); attitude (level of formality); and field of discourse (e.g.
technical vs. nontechnical fields), With the caveat that such stylistic factors
work simultane-ously and influence each other, the effect of one, and only
one, stylistic factor on language use provides a statistihypothetical
one-dimensional variety. Drawing on this methodological abstraction,
stylistic research has identified many correlations between specific stylistic
factors and language usc. For example, noun phrases
tend to be more complex in written than in spoken lan- gunge in many
speech communities, and passive voice occurs much more frequently in
technical fields ofdis ec'o"urse than in nontechnical ones. Style , as
deviation from a norm , is a concept that is used traditionally in literary
stylistics , regarding literary language as more deviant than nonliterary
language use . This not only pertains to formal structures such as metrics
and rhyme in poems but to unusual lin-guistic preferences in general,
which an author's poet-ic license'allows. Dylan Thomas's poetry, for
example, is characterized by word combinations that are seman-tically
incompatible at first sight and, thus, clearly deviate from what is perceived
as normal (e.g. a grief ago. once below a time). What actually constitutes
the norm' is not always explicit in literary stylistics, since this would
presuppose the analysis of a large collection of nonliterary texts.However ,
in the case of authorship identification, statistical approaches were .
pursued at a relatively early stage. For example, by counting specific
lexical features in the political letters written by an .anonymous Junius in
the 1770s and comparing them with a large collection of texts from the
same period, and with samples taken from other possible contemporary
authors, the Swedish linguist Ellegfird could identify, in the 1960s, the
most likely author of those letters.
The concept of style as recurrence of linguistic forms is closely related to a
probabilistic and statistical understanding of style, which implicitly
underlies the deviation-from-a-norm perspective. It had already been
suggested in the 1960s that by focusing on actu al language use,
stylisticians cannot help describing
only characteristic tendencies that are based on implic- it norms and
undefined statistical experience in, say, given situations and genres. In the
last resort, stylisticfeatures remain f1exible and do not follow rigid rules,
since style is not a matter of grammaticality, but rather of appropriateness.
What is appropriate in a given context can be deduced from the frequency
of linguistic
devices in this specific ·context. As for the analysis of frequencies, corpus
linguistic methods are becoming increasingly important. With the advent
of personal computers, huge storage capacities, and relevant soft- ware,
it is now possible to compile very large collec- tions of texts (corpus
(singular), corpora (plural), which represent a sample of language use in
general, and thus enable exhaustive searches for all kinds of linguistic
,patterns within seconds. This methodology is based on the general
approach of style as probability, by allowing for large-scale statistical
analyses of
text. For example, by using corpora, the notion of text- type-defined by cooccurrences of specific linguistic features-has been introduced to
complement the extralinguistic
concept of 'genre'. The linguistically
defined text types contradict traditionally and nonempirically
established genre distinctions to a considerable extent. In particular, many spoken and written
genres resemble each other linguistically to a far
greater extent in terms of text-types than previously assumed.
Style as comparison puts into perspective a central aspect of the previous
approaches. That is, stylistic analysis always requires an implicit or
explicit comparison of linguistic features between specific texts, or
between a collection of texts and a given norm, In principle,
stylistically relevant features such as style
markers may convey either a local stylistic effect (e.g. an isolated technical
term in everyday communication) or, in the case of recurrence or cooccurrence, a
global stylistic pattern (e.g. specialized vocabulary
and passive voice in scientific texts).
From the multitude of linguistic approaches to
style, two linguistic schools of the twentieth century
have exerted the most decisive influence on the development, terminology,
and the state of the art of sty listics the Prague School and British
Contextual ism. The central dictum of Prague School linguistics, going
back to the Bauhaus School of architecture, is
form follows function. Firmly-established since the 1920s, some of this
dictum's most important proponents are Lubomir Dolezel, Bohuslav
Havranek, Roman Jakobson, and Jan Mukafovsky. These linguists have
paid particular attention to situation-bound
stylistic variation. A standard language is supposed to have a
communicative and an esthetic function that
result in two different 'functional dialects"': prosaic language and poetic
language. More specific function: .
al dialects may, of course, be ident.ified; for example,
the scientific dialect as a subclass of prosaic language,
which is characterized by what is called the 'intellectualization of
language'-lexicon, syntax, and reference conform to the overall
communicative function
that requires exact and abstract statements.
A very important notion is the distinction between
'automatization' and 'foregrounding' in language.
Automatization refers to the common use of linguistic
devices which does not attract particular attention by the language
decoder , for example , the use of discourse
markers ( e.g. well, you know, sort of, kind of) in
spontaneous spoken conversations. with the usual background pattern, or
the norm , in language use it encompasses those
forms and structures that competent language users
expect to be used in a given context of situation.
Foregrounded linguistic devices, on the other hand, are
usually not expected to be" used in a specific context
and are thus considered conspicuous-they catch the
language decoder's attention (e.g. the use of old-fashioned and/or very
formal words such as epicure,
- improvident, and whither in spontaneous spoken
conversations).Foregrounding thus captures deviations :
from the norm. It is obvious that what is considered as
automat zed and foregrounded language use depends
on the communication situation at hand. In technical
fields of discourse, for instance, specialized vocabulary items tend to be
automatized (e.g. lambda marker
in molecular biology), but in everyday communication
become foregrounded devices.
A different, although conceptually similar, tradition
of linguistic stylistics was established by British linguists in the 1930s and
came to be called British
Contextualism, The most important proponents of
British Contextualism include John Rupert Firth,
context in which language ·is used and, secondly, on
characterized by a clear focus, firstly, on the social
M.A.K. Halliday, and John Sinclair. Their work is
the in-depth observation of natural language use. From
the point of View of British Conceptualists, 'linguists
need to describe authentic language use ill context and
should not confine themselves to invented and isolated
sentences. Additionally, linguistics is not considered
as an intuition-based study of abstract systems of form
as, for example, in the merely formal description of
autonomous syntactic rules (as in Chomsky's
approach to language),' but as the observation-based
and empirical analysis of meaning encoded by form.
This approach allows for insights -into the immense
variation within language. It is a fact that depending
on the context of situation, all speakers use different
'registers' (i.e. different styles of language, depending
on the topic, the addressee, and the medium in a given
context of use). Note that there is, of course, a clear
the Prague schools nonon at functional dialect.
Although largely abandoned by mainstream linguists
in the 1960s and 1970s due to the prevailing
Chomsky an school of thought, it had already been
suggested by Firth in the 1950s that large collections
of text were a prerequisite for an empirical approach to stylistic variation.
Thus, it does not come as a tremendous
surprise that, among others, Sinclair set out to
develop computerized corpora that could be used as
empirical databases,
With corpus linguistics now a standard methodology,
stylistic analyses have reached an unprecedented
degree of explanatory adequacy and empirical accuracy.
For example, stylistic features that are beyond most
linguists' scope of intuition, such as the nonstandard
use of question tags in English-speaking teenagers'
'talk, are now feasible in quantitative terms. More
importantly, there is no longer a bias toward foregrounded
phenomena that tend to catch the linguist's
attention. A computer, in contrast, does not distinguish
between conspicuous and common phenomena and
provides an exhaustive array of all kinds of patterns,
depending solely on the search query. Thus, the fuzzy
concept of 'norm' is about to be put on an empiric
footing since the accessible corpus norm represents
the norm of a language as a whole.
Stylistics is a linguistic branch that is immediately
relevant to foreign language teaching. This applies to .
both linguistic and literary stylistics. Language learners
must know which linguistic devices are preferred
by native speakers in specific contexts. Without such a
linguostylistic competence, communication errors
may be made in interacting with native speakers, such
as using highly formal words in informal settings.
Also, learners must have command of text-typological
knowledge, which is important, for example, in writ- ing essays. As for
literary texts, language learners
should acquire a firm understanding of those levels of description where
stylistic variation may occur (e.g.
by analyzing Hemingway's syntactic simplicity and,
moreover, its function). It should be noted that a specific style is
sometimes ascribed.
to a language. In Its entirety, Although the
underling norms remain largely unspecified, general tendencies of stylistic
preference differ across languages, This is particularly important for
translators,
but also for language learners. It is, for instance, common for German
students of English to transfer the .
German style of academic writing, which is characterized by heavy noun
phrases, to their English essays.
As with any other linguistic branch, stylistics is very much a work in
progress, This is because the
object of inquiry constantly grows, evolving new an d specialized fields of
discourse (e.g. genetic engineerstylistic variation come into existence, such as e-mails,
a now widely used genre that seems to blur the traditional
distinction between spoken and written language.
As for empirical approaches to style, new
corpora make it 'possible to address questions of style
not possible before. Also, recent theoretical developments
will no doubt widen the scope of stylistics,
Drawing on British contextualists ' distinction between
language substance (that is, sound waves in the phonic
medium and printed paper in the graphic medium)
and language form (that is, anything that can be transferred
from one medium into the other), it has been
suggested that stylistic analyses should clearly distinguish
between medium-dependent and medium-independent
stylistic variation. Intonation, for example, is
bound to the phonic medium and shows stylistic variation
that cannot be mapped onto punctuation in a
straightforward and monocausal way. With regard to
the graphic substance, English orthography, albeit
highly standardized, is also affected by stylistic variation,
as deliberate misspellings in the language of
advertising and popular culture (e.g. 2 for to/two/too,
lynx, for links) reveal On the other hand, words and
syntax are linguistic devices that, in principle, are subject
to transfer between media, although there are clear
medium dependent preferences of lexical and syntactic choice that need to
be investigated further.
The objective and unbiased approach to stylistic
variation in authentic language use is a cornerstone of
modern descriptive linguistics. Unlike traditional .
grammar, it clearly rejects the normative .prescription
of one specific style.
References
Biber, Douglas. 1989. Variation across speech and writing Cumbridg
:CambridgeUniversity Press.. Coupland, Nikolas (ed.) 1988. Styles of
discourse.London: Croom Helm
Enkvist, Nils Erik-:-1973: Linguistic stylistics; The Haguc
Mouton.
Esser Jurgen. 1993. English linguistic stylistics. Tubingen: Niemeyeer
2000 Medium-transferability and presentation structure in speech and
writing. Journal of Pragmatics 32.
Garvin, PaulL. (ed.) 1964.APrague school readeron esthetics,
literary structure and style. Washington: Georgetown
university Press.
Halliday ,M.A.K 1978 . Language as a Social semiotic the
Social interpretation of language and meaning London
Arnold
Joos, Martin. 1961. The five clocks: a linguistic excursion into
the five styles of English usage. New York Harcourt, Brace
and World
Leeh, geoffrey, and michael Short. 1981. Style In fiction a
linguistic introduction to English fictional prose. London: Longman.
Semino, Elena, and Jonathan Culpeper (eds.) 2002. Cognitive
srylistics: language and cognition in text analysis.
Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Sinclair, John. 1991. Corpus, concordance. collocarion. Oxford:
Oxford Univcrsity Press.
Weber, Jean Jacques (ed.) 1996. The stylistics reader: from
Roman Jakobson to the present. London: Arnold.
JOYBRATO MUK.HERJ8F
See also Firth, John Rupert; Halliday, M.A.K.
(Michael Alexander Kirkwood)
Stylistics
Introduction
He was a little man, considerably less tban .of middle height, and
enormously stout; hehad a large, fleshy face, clean-shaven, with the
cheeks hanging on each side in great dew-laps,and three vast chins;'
his small features were all dissolved in fat; and, but for a crescent of
white hair at the back of his head, he was completely bald: He
reminded you of Mr. Pickwick. He was grotesque, a figure of fun,
and yet, strangely enough, not without dignity, His blue eyes, behind
large gold-rimmed spectaoles, 'were shrewd and vivacious, and there
was a great deal of determination in his face. He was sixty, but his
native vitality triumphed over advancing years, Notwithstanding his
corpulence hlsmovements were quick, and he walked with a heavy
resolute tread as though he sought to impress his weight upon the
earth, He spoke ·in a loud, gruff voice.
PASSAGB A
Name: Frank Ross
Profession :Accountant
Date of Birth : 17.4.49
Place of Birth: Brimingham
Height: 5' 10"
Colour of Hair : Brown
Colour of Eyes : Blue
Question 1 where would you find a sescription of this kind ?
Question 2 Height is given but no weight why ?
Question 3 what kind of information is given in this description ?
Question 4 Which of the details in Passage A would you expect to find in:
(i) An application for a driving licence
(ii) A Health Service registration form .
Which other detailswould yoU expect to find?
Alternatively (or in addintion) one could provoke discussion by a question
of this form: -v ;:
Question 5 In what kinds of official forms would you expect to find
entries like these:
(i) Marital status:
(ii) Address:
(iii) Degrees and qualifications:
(iv) Religion:
Question 6 Who do you think would write a description like that in
Passage A?
PASSAGE B
He' was about six feet tall, thin, and about thirty-five to forty
years old. He had grey eyes and his hair was fair and curly.
He was wearing a dark blue overcoat.
The same sortof questions can be asked as before:
Question 1 Where would you expect to find a descriptionof this kind ?
Question 2 What kind of information is given in this passage?
Question 3 Who do you think would give a description of this kind?
Question 4 What kind of information appears in Passage A which
does not appear in Passage B ? Why?
Question 5 What kind of information appears in Passage B which
does not appear in Passage A? Why?
PASSAGE C
Frank Ross
Mr ROBS has been employed in this firm as clerk for the past
five years. I have always found him reliable and hardworking
and he has the initiative to take on responsibility when required.
He has a cheerful personality and gets on well with his colleagues.
We now proceed to ask the same questionsas before:
Question l Where would you expect to find a description of this kind ?
Question 2 What kind of information is given in this passage?
Question 3 Who do you think would give a description of this kind?
Question 4 How does the information given here differ from that given in
Passages Band C?
Notes on passages A and B
The following conclusion might be expected to emerge, In Passage
A we have details which are both permanent and personal .They are
provided by the person who is being described and who is Consequently
both the author and the object of the description, Passage
B cannot provide information of this land since it is not available
to observation by a third person, Details like date and place of birth
cannot occur in a description of the Passage B type because they
are not ,open to observation and details regarding wearing apparel
are not included in Passage A type descriptions because they relate
only to temporary appearance.
Notes on passages C (A and B)
This passage represents the land of description to be
found in character references, The information relates to the character
of the person described and contains no detail in common with
the descriptions in either Passage A at Passage R This is not because
such information is not available 'to the describer, who is likely to
have noticed a number of physical characteristics of the person
described during the period of his employment, but because such
information is not relevant to the 'person's: capacity for carrying
out his professional work. Here, then, it is the purpose of the
description which control the selection of detail and in this respect
Passage C has a similar function to Passage A. On the other hand
Passage C is the work of one person, and he (or she) is someone
higher in authority or status than the 'person being described. The
information given' is not precise and permanent in an objective sense,
as it is in Passage A, but has the character of a subjective assessment.
From this point of view the accuracy of the description depends on
the sound judgement of the describer rather as the accuracy of the
description in Passage E depends on the perception and memory of
the describer. In one respect, then, Passage C resembles Passage A
and in another respect it resembles Passage B; burin most respects,
of course , it resembles neither.
Now what, it might be asked, has all this to do with the, under.
standing of literary discourse? The answer is that a close analytic
study of these passages brings to the learners' notice features of
conventional ways of describing which (as it has been argued: in
previous chapters) have to be understood as a necessary prelim]
to understanding the nature of literary description such as is
exemplified by the passage from Somerset Maugham cited at the
beginning of the chapter. What the learner will (one hopes) have
come to recognise through an examination of these passages is that
the information which is given depends on such factors as the purpose
for which the description IS made and on the describer's orientation
or point of view In relation to the person (or other object) he is
describing , whether this constrains what he can observe or the
Objectivity of his. observation. In short, he should be able to say that
a certain detail is not included in a certain conventional kind of
description because it 1S irrelevant or because it is inaccessible to the
describer, that this detail is objective and verifiable whereas that detail
is subjective, and so on. With reference to the first, second and third
persons in the communication situation,
we can say that the learner should, have been made aware that the
different kinds of conventional description we have .considered can
be characterised by reference to the relationship between the first
person describer, the second person to whom the description is
directed and the third person object of description. The accessibility.
exactitude and relevance of information can be accounted for in
terms of these relationships.
At this point we can provide the learners with a simple scheme
representing these different relationships:
III
3rd Person
Who/What is
described
I
1st Person
Describer
II
2nd Person
Who receives'
the description
The describer's orientation is, of course, the relationship between I and III
and the purpose of the description is the relationship between I and II.
With this scheme we can now return to the three passages discussed so far
and see how it can be used to characterise them. In this way we can move
from an informal discovery and discussion to a more exact formulation of
the learners' findings.
The kind of description represented by Passage A, for example,
is compiled partly by II and partly by III. The selection of the kind
of detail is made according to what the 2nd Person requires to know
and the provision of particular information is made by the 3rd Person
himself. So there is no separate 1st Person describer, and in Consequence
there is no problem in deciding on purpose since this is absolutely
determined by II acting as I and no problem of orientation since this is
determined by III acting as 1. This might be shown as follows:
I=II
I=III
Name:
Frank Ross
Profession:
Accountant
Date of Birth: 17.4.49
Place of Birth: Birmingham
etc.
In Passage B, of course, the situation is very different. What. I
describes is controlled by his relationship with III-he may have seen
him/her only once, or several time" he/she might be a complete
stranger or someone quite well known. It is also controlled by what
II needs to know, and 'in the case of a witness or Someone giving
evidence, II will typically subject the describer to questioning or
cross-examination so as to elicit the information he wants, so the
situation here is, in this respect, not unlike that in Passage A, except,
of course, that here I and II are distinct. What II needs to know
brings up the relationship between II, and III.
The purpose of a description is to tell somebody something-which
he needs to know. In many cases (though not in the case of Passage
A, and, for reasons just given, often not in the case of Passage :B
either) this involves the describer's judgement as to what is relevant
and what is not. But it also involves him in a decision as t6 what is
already known' by the person to whom his description is directed:
in other words,' the describer, I , assesses the relationship between
II and III. In the case of Passage ,B, II will probably know nothing
at all about III and so requires the information that I gives for the
purposes of Identification, A person, III, exists and I has seen him:
II needs details from I to enable him to identify III when he sees
him. Potentially, then, the relationship between I and III and II and
III can be the same; though operating, .as it were, in' a reverse
direction. We might represent this in a simple diagram as follows:
PASSAGE B
The dotted line here represents the matching procedure which leads
to identification .
The diagram for Passage A will be different since essentially all
that happens is that information passes from III to II directly after
II has specified which information is required. We might show this as
follows:
PASSAGE A
Here the dotted line indicates that I is a compound of III and II and does
not exist as a separate entity.
Passage C resembles Passage B in that II can relate I's information
to III. But this is not done for the purposes of identification but in
order to arrive at a judgement of qualifications, suitability and so
on and II will compare I's description with information deriving
from other sources such as an application form (usually a Passage A
type description) and his own experience of the person in interview.
Another difference is that there, will be no prompting from II to I
as there is in Passage B. We might express these facts by removing
the parenthesis around III and showing only a single arrow from
I to II
PASSAGE C
A stylistic analysis of passage D ( The literary passage )
Having prepared the ground, then, we can now present the literary
passage as PASSAGE D and proceed to investigate In what respects
it differs from the others. We may begin with the same first question
as before:
Question 1 Where would you expect to find a description of this kind?
Question la Would this description be given by a witness, like the
description in Passage B?
Question 1b Would this description appear in a reference, like the
description in Passage C?
Question 2 What kind of information is given in this passage?
Question 3 How does the information given in this passage differ
from that given in Passage A, Passage B, Passage C?
Question 2a What is the difference between these descriptive details:
He was shrewd
He was sixty
He was a little man
Question 3a In which of three passages you have already
examined would you expect to find details of the following kind
He was shrewd
He was sixty
He was a little man
Question 3b Why do you think it would be strange to find the
following descriptive details in the passages mentioned:
He was shrewd: in passage A
He was sixty: in Passage B
He was a little man: in Passage C
Question 4 Draw a simple diagram like those given for the previous
passages to show the relationship between I, II and III
in this passage.
Question 5 Write brief descriptions of a conventional kind based on
Passages A, B, rind C using 'as much information given
in Passage D as possible but providing more exact
information when required.
Question 6 Write down the expressions in Passage D and in your
A-type and B-type descriptions which refer to the size
of the person described. .
Question 7 What is the difference between the words in Column I
and the words in Column II?
I
small
little
large
II
tiny
minute
vast
enormous
great
Question 8 What kind of words are used to describe the man's size in this
passage 7
Question 9 How is the selection of marked subjective words related
to the absence of a real III as shown in the diagram drawn in answer to
Question 4 ?
Varieties of English
To use language properly, we of course have to know the
grammatical structures of language and their meanings. But
we also have to know what forms of language are
appropriate for given situations.
The Common Core
Many of the features of English are found in all, or nearly all
varieties. We say the general features of this kind belong to
the 'common core' of the language. Take for instance, the
three words children, offspring and kids. Children is a
'common core' term; kids is informal and familiar. It is
safest, when in doubt, to use the 'common core' term; thus
children is the word to use more often. It is part of 'knowing
English' is knowing in what circumstances it would be
possible to use offspring or kids instead children. Below is
another illustration, this time from grammar:
1) Feeling tired, John went to bed.
2) John went to bed early because he felt tired.
3) John felt tired, so he went to bed early.
Sentence (2) is a 'common core' construction. It could be
used in both speech and writing.( 1) is rather formal in
construction, typical of written exposition; (3) is informal,
and likely to occur in relaxed conversation.
Speaking versus Writing
Josef Essberger
The purpose of all language is to communicate - that is, to move
thoughts or information from one person to another person.
There are always at least two people in any communication. To
communicate, one person must put something "out" and another
person must take something "in". We call this "output" (>>>)
and "input" (<<<).
• I speak to you (OUTPUT: my thoughts go OUT of my
head).
• You listen to me (INPUT: my thoughts go INto your head).
• You write to -me (OUTPUT: your thoughts go OUT of your
head).
• I read your words (INPUT: your thoughts go INto my
head).
So language consists of four "skills": two for output (speaking
and writing); and two for input (listening and reading. We can
say this another way - two of the skills are for "spoken"
communication and two of the skills are for "written"
communication:
Spoken:
>>> Speaking - mouth
<<< Listening - ear
-Written:
>>> Writing - hand
<<< Reading - eye
What are the differences between Spoken and Written English?
Are there advantages and disadvantages for each form of
communication?
Status
When we learn our own (native) language, learning to speak
comes before learning to write. In fact, we learn to speak almost
automatically. It is natural. But somebody must teach us to
write. It is not natural. In one sense, speaking is the "real"
language and writing is only a representation of speaking.
However, for centuries, people have regarded writing as superior
to speaking. It has a higher "status". This is perhaps because in
the past almost everybody could speak but only a few people
could write. But as we shall see, modern influences are changing
the relative status of speaking and writing.
Differences in Structure and Style
We usually write with correct grammar and in 'a structured way.
We organize what we write into sentences and paragraphs. We
do not usually use contractions in writing (though if we want to
appear very friendly, then we do sometimes use contractions in
writing because this is more like speaking.) We use more formal
vocabulary in writing (for example, we might write "the car
exploded" but say lithe car blew up") and we do not usually use
slang. In writing, we must use punctuation marks like commas
and question marks (as a symbolic way of representing things
like pauses or tone of voice in speaking).
We usually speak in a much less formal, less structured way. We
do not always use full sentences and correct grammar. The
vocabulary that we use is more familiar and may Include slang.
We usually speak in a spontaneous way, without preparation, so
we have to make up what we say as we go. This means that we
often repeat ourselves or go off the subject. However, when we
speak, other aspects are present that are not present in writing,
such as facial expression or tone of voice. This means that we.
can communicate at several levels, not only with words.
Durability
One important difference between speaking and writing is that
writing is usually more durable or permanent. When we speak,
our words live for a few moments. When we write, our words
may live for years or even centuries. This is why writing is
usually used to provide a record of events, for example a
business agreement or transaction.
Speaker & Listener I Writer & Reader
When we speak, we usually need to be in the same place and
time as the other person. Despite this restriction, speaking does
have the advantage that the speaker receives instant feedback
from the listener. The speaker can probably see immediately if
the listener is bored or does not understand something, and can
then modify what he or she is saying.
When we write, our words are usually read by another person in
a different place and at a different time. Indeed, they can be
read by many other people, anywhere and at any time. And the
people reading our words, can do so at their leisure, slowly or
fast. They can re-read what we write, too. But the writer cannot
receive immediate feedback and cannot (easily) change what has
been written.
How Speaking and Writing Influence Each
Other
In the past, only a small number of people could write, but
almost everybody could speak, Because their words were not
widely recorded, there were many variations in the way they
spoke, with different vocabulary and dialects in different regions.
Today, almost everybody can speak and write. Because writing is
recorded and more permanent, this has influenced the way that
people speak, so that many regional dialects and words have
disappeared. (It may seem that there are already too many
differences that have to be learned, but without writing there
would be far more differences, even between, for example,
British and American English.) So writing has had an important
influence on speaking. But speaking can also influence writing.
For example, most new words enter a language through
speaking. Some of them do not live long. If you begin to see
these words in writing it usually means that they have become
"real words" within the language and have a certain amount of
permanence.
Influence of New Technology
Modern inventions such as sound recording, telephone, radio,
television, fax or email have made or are making an important
impact on both speaking and writing. To some extent, the
divisions between speaking and writing are becoming blurred.
Emails are often written in a much less formal way than is usual
in writing. With voice recording, for example, it has for a long
time been possible to speak to somebody who is not in the same
place or time as you (even though this is a one-way
communication: we can speak or listen, but not interact). With
the telephone and radiotelephone, however, it became possible
for two people to carry on a conversation while not being in the
same place. Today, the distinctions are increasingly vague, so
that we may have, for example, a live television broadcast with a
mixture of recordings, telephone calls, incoming faxes and emails
and so on. One effect of this new technology and the modern
universality of writing has been to raise the status of speaking.
Politicians who cannot organize their thoughts and speak well on
television win very few votes.
English Checker
• aspect: a particular part or feature of something
• dialect: a form of a language used in a specific region
• formal: following a set of rules; structured; official
• status: level or rank in a society
• spontaneous: not planned; unprepared
• structured: organized; systematic
Note: instead of "spoken", some people say "oral" (relating to
the mouth) or "aural" (relating to the ear).
© 2001 Josef Essberger
FORMAL 8: INFORMAL ENGLISH
Summary
Language Styles
Rules of Language Styles
Different Styles between Informal & Formal English
Dictionary of Formal & Informal English
Exercise 1
Exercise 2
2
3
4
6
7
7
Language Styles
There are three main language styles:
1. Formal
2. Semi-Formal
3. Informal
The diagram below illustrates how these styles are rated on a scale of 0 to 10.
Diagram of Formal & Informal English
Rules of Language Styles
The following rules apply to both written and spoken English.
analysis
Language Style: Rules
Writing to ….
Company
Know name of recipient?
No
Formal
Dear Sir or Madam,
Yes
Formal
Dear Sir,
Person
Have spoken or exchanged info?
No , Yes
Are on familiar terms?
No
Semi-formal
Dear Mr. Donald,
Yes
Informal
Dear Guy
Don't know anything about the person who receives letter.
Know title or name of person. Never met or exchanged info.
Know name of person and have exchanged . greetings.
Know person well and on familiar terms.
Different Styles between Informal & Formal English
The follow examples illustrate the main differences between informal and
formal English.
1. Active & Passive Voice
Our technician repaired the fault on 12th June. Now it's your turn to pay
us. Informal
Although the fault was repaired on 12th June, payment for this
intervention has still not been received. Formal
2. Verb Form: Phrasal Verbs & Latinate
The company laid him off because he didn't work much. Informal
His insufficient production conducted to his dismissal. Formal
3. Language: Direct & Formulaic
I'm sorry but ...
I'm happy to say that ... Inforaml
We regret to inform you that ...
We have pleasure in announcing that ... Formal
4. Use of Slang
He had to get some money out of Clhole in the wall ... Informal
He withdrew the amount from an ATM. Formal
5. Personal Form & Nominators
If you lose it, then please contact us as soon as possible. Informal
Any loss of this document should be reported immediately ... Formal
6. Linking Words
The bank can't nnd the payment you say you've made. Informal
Notwithstanding that the payment has been sent the bank fails to
acknowledge it. Formal
7. Revitalised Sentences
Anybody or ,my company . Informal
... any natural person who, and any legal entity which …. Formal
8. Modal Usage
If you need any help give us a call . Informal
Should you require any assistance, please feel free to contact us ... Formal
9. Singular & Plural Person
I can help you to solve this problem. Call me! Informal
We can assist in the resolution of this matter.
Contact us on our toll-free number. Formal
Dictionary of Formal & Informal English
Type Informal
Prep. About ...
Idiom Agree with ...
Conj. And
Idiom Bearing in mind
Conj. Because ...
Verb Begin
Conj. But
Adj. Careful/Cautious
Verb Carry out
Verb Check
Adj. Enough
Verb Fill me in
Verb Find out
Verb Follow
Verb Get
Verb Get in touch
Verb Go over
Verb Has to be
Verb Have to give
Conj. If ...
Conj. If ... or not.
Idiom If you don't ...
Idiom If you've got any questions ...
Idiom In accordance with ...
Idiom In the red
Verb Involve
Idiom Lost
Verb Make sure
Adj. Many
Verb Order
Verb Pay·
Idiom Put in writing
Idiom Sorry!
Verb Supply
Verb Take away
Verb Tell
Verb Trusted
Idiom We don't want to do this ...
Idiom We'll call the law ...
Idiom When we get ...
Idiom Whenever we like '"
Verb Write (e.g. Cheque)
Verb Written
Formal
Regarding / Concerning ...
Be bound by ...
As well as ...
Reference being made to ...
As a result of / due to (the fact) ...
Commence
While / Whereas
Prudential
Effect
Verify
Sufficient
Inform / Tell
Ascertain
Duly observe
Receive
Contact
Exceed
Shall be
Submit
Should ...
Whether ... or not.
Failing / Failure to...
Should you have any queries ...
Pursuant to
Overdrawn
Entail
Inadvertently mislaid
Ensure
Several/Numerous
Authorise
Settle
Provide written confirmation
We.regret ...
Furnish
Withdraw
Disclose
Entrusted
This a course of action we are anxious to avoid ...
We will have no alternative but involving our legal ...
On receipt
Without prior notice ...
Issue (e.g. Cheque)
Shown / Indicated
Summary of Differences between Formal & Informal English
Informal
1. Active Voice
2. Phrasal Verbs
3. Direct Language
4. Possible use of Slang
5. Personal Form
6. Little use of Conjunctions
7. Few Revitalised Sentences
8. Direct Style
9. 1st Person Singular
Formal
Passive Voice
Latinate Verbs
Formulaic Language
No use of Slang
Nominator
Linking Words
Revitalised Sentences
Modal Usage
1st Person Plural
Formal Ianguage
When writing or speaking, we choose the words which seem most suitable
to the purpose and audience. In academic writing we use formal language,
avoiding the use of slang and colloquial language.
Try to learn a range of appropriate language for expressing your opinions
and referring to those of others.
Some of the Ianouaqe in the following examples is more appropriate for
speakinq than writinq. Identify which expressions are too informal.
1. When I look at the situation in emergency wards, with many staff
leaving, it's hard not to worry about how many doctors will be available to
treat patients in the future.
2. If we consider the situation in emergency wards, with increasingly low
staff retention rates, there are concerns about thecapacity of hospitals to
maintain adequate doctor to patient ratios.
3. It's so obvious that people were given jobs just because they were male
or female. I don't think that is an acceptable approach and is even against
the law.
4. It appears that in a number of instances jobs were assigned on the basis
of gender. Given the current anti-discrimination laws, this raises serious
concerns.
In contrast to spoken English, a distinctive feature of academic writing
style is for writers to choose the more formal alternative when selecting a
verb, noun, or other part of speech.
English often has two (or more) choices to express an action or
occurrence. The choice is often between, on the one hand, a verb which is
part of a phrase (often verb + preposition), and a verb which is one word
only. Often in lectures and in everyday spoken English, the verb +
preposition is used (eg speak up, give up, write down); however, for
written academic style, the preferred choice is a single verb wherever
possible.
For example
Informal: The social worker looked at the client's history to find out which
interventions had previously been implemented.
Academic: The social worker examined the client's history to establish
which interventions had previously been implemented.
Exercise 1
Rewrite the sentences in a more academic style using verbs from the list
below.
Note that you may need to change the verb tense.
• investigate
• assist
• raise
• discover
• establish
• increase
• eliminate
1. Systems analysts can
managers in many different ways.
2. This program was
to improve access to medical care.
3. Medical research expenditure has to nearly $350 million.
4. Researchers have
that this drug has serious side effects.
5. Exercise alone will not medical problems related to blood pressure.
6. Researchers have been this problem for 15 years now.
7. This issue was
during the coroner's inquest.
Personal or impersonal style ?
Should you use a personal or impersonal style? Until quite recently, text
books on scientific writing advised students to use an impersonal style of
writing rather than a personal style.
An impersonal style uses:
• the passive voice
• the third person rather than the first person ( it rather than I or we)
• things rather than people as subjects of sentences.
However, overuse of the passive voice may mean that your writing is less
precise,and it may lead to writing which is more difficult to read because it
is less natural than the active voice.
Times are changing, and in some disciplines and sub-disciplines of
Science it is now quite acceptable to use the active voice, personal
pronouns such as I and we, and to use people as subjects of sentences.
Examples of active and passive sentences
Active: I observed the angle to be ...
Passive: The angle was observed to be ...
Active: The authors suggest. ..
Passive: It is suggested ...
Active: We used a standard graphical representation to ...
Passive: A standard graphical representation was used to ...
Examples of thefirst and third person pronouns
First person: I found ...
Third person: It was found that. ..
First person: I assumed that ...
Third person: It was assumed that...
Examples of persons or things as subjects
Person as subject: I noticed...
Thing as subject: Analysis of the raw data indicated...
Person as subject: In this report I show...
Thing as subject : This report presents Impersonal style
Compare the changes in these sentences from informal to academic style
Informal writing
When I look at the situation in emergency
wards, with many staff leaving, it's hard
not to worry about how many doctors will
be available to treat patients in the future.
It's so obvious that people were given
jobs just because they were male or
female. I don't think that is an acceptable
approach and is even against the law.
Academic writing
If we consider the situation in emergency
wards, with increasingly low staff
retention rates, there are concerns about
the capacity of hospitals to maintain
adequate doctor to patient ratios.
It appears that in a number of instances
jobs were assigned on the basis of
gender. Given the current antidiscrimination
laws, this raises serious
concerns.
You will notice that, in general, in academic writing we:
• minimise the use of the personalf in the text: avoid writing
'When flook; f don't think this is an acceptable approach'
• use formal verbs, and fewer verb phrases (verb + preposition),
use consjder rathet than look at
• use impersonal expressions: there are.. , this raises
• use more nouns than verbs: concerns, rather than to worry
• avoid emotional expressions, such as it's so obvious ( it appears is
preferable); justbecause ( assigned on the basis of is preferable)
• aim for concise, often abstract expression, gender, rather than male or
female.
Objective writing
• In general, academic writing aims to be objective in its expression of
ideas. Therefore specific reference to personal opinions, or to yourself as
the performer of actions, is usually avoided.
Expressing opinions
Personal
In my opinion
I believe that. ..
In my view ...
'Objective'
It has been argued that
Some writers claim...
Clearly, ...
It is clear that...
There is little doubt that..
Avoiding too much reference to yourself as agent in your writing
Agent or performer No agent or performer
I undertook the study... The study was undertaken...
I propose to …. It is proposed to ….
In this essay I will examine... This essay examines...
Structure, Style and Context
1.0 Objectives
This book is a short introduction to a large topic: how the structures
of language serve the communicative needs of man. Our communicative
needs span the whole range of our experience, from buying bus
tickets to making love or war. Language, to serve these needs, must
have a similar range, and any natural language, be it English or
Eskimo, is a system of great complexity.
The complex structures of language, however, appear to be built
up with remarkable economy from a limited set of units and processes.
Language, in the words of Van Humboldt, makes infinite
use 'of finite means. Our main focus, then, will be on some of the
basic units and processes of the 'structure' or perhaps better the
'construction' of English.
What we say or write, however, is seldom built, as it were, 'into
the air'. We adapt our English to particular purposes and people,
even from a very early age. Consider the following dialogue between
a rather smallchild and its mother, overheard in a supermarket:
(1) CHILD: Mummy, buy these. [Pointing to a pink box of icecream
cones]
MOTHER: No, not those. [Moving on]
CHTLD: You can, you know, it's your own choice.
'It's your own choice' happens to be true, up to a certain point,
of language as well as of shopping, A language, like a supermarket,
provides its users with a remarkable range of options, some indispensable,
others not. Much of what follows will focus on these.
One particular kind of option is illustrated in the child's two remarks
to its mother. The simple appeal, 'Mummy buy these' contrasts
with the statement 'You can, you know, it's your own choice'.
The latter has a distinctly more adult look; it still functions as an
appeal, but in what seems like a much more sophisticated way.
Between the first remark and the second, the child has switched
styles. Its purpose remains, presumably, the same, but the langnqge
shows a surprising re-adaptation after the mother's 'No, not those'.
A 'style' can be regarded as an adaptation of language to a particular
purpose or audience: adaptations of this kind will be a major theme
of our text.
This wilI involve taking a fresh look at processes of which we ourselves
have been part ever since we started to talk. There is, of course,
some difficulty in achieving a new focus upon what we have regularly
taken for granted since early childhood. As Chomsky (1968) phrased
it in Language and Mind:
Phenomena can be so familiar that we do not see them at all,
important as they may be to our social or personal lives.
1.1 Structure
At tills point, a brief initial illustration of what we mean by a 'structure'
and by the options surrounding it, may be in order. Take the
instruction regularly flashed to aircraft passengers:
(2) FASTEN SEAT BELTS
That this is structured becomes clear as soon as we scramble the
words. It begins to lose shape and its function becomes unclear if
we remake it as
(3) *SEAT BELTS FASTEN
and both shape and function disappear in
(4) *SEAT FASTEN BELTS.
Neither (3) nor (4) is quite 'English'. (4) is more or less what Jacobs
and Rosenbaum (1967) appropriately call 'word-salad'. (An asterisk
* at the beginning of a sequence will mean 'This isn't English' or in
more general terms 'Tills isn't right'.)
FASTEN SEAT BELTS, however, is recognizably English. It has
one of the typical forms of an English imperative, which we can write
informally as:
(5) V NP
i.e. a VERB (V), here fasten, followed by a NOUN PHRASE (NP),
here seat belts. It is easy to make up approximately parallel structures
e.g.
(6) Shut your window
(7) Make fresh tea
and all of these will have a common element of meaning which we
can conveniently call DIRECTIVE or 'command '.
[One must add, however,· that all imperatives are not shaped
exactly like (2). There are one-word imperatives, consisting of a
single verb, e.g. 'Stop!' and more complex imperatives like 'Tell
Daddy supper won't be ready till eight'. And the 'hidden' structure
of imperatives, which we shall be presenting later, is rather more
complex than the crude formula 'V NP' might suggest.]
Here our point is simply that FASTEN SEAT BELTS is immediately
recognizable as an English imperative, partly because it
parallels similar imperatives like (6) and (7) and partly because it
contrasts with non-imperatives like
(8) The passengers fastened their seat belts
which do not fit the imperative pattern. These two principles of
parallelism or analogy between structures of similar meaning and of
contrast between structures of dissimilar meaning, are basic to the
workings of language:
Lewis Carroll was perhaps one of the first to grasp that structures
can be meaningful in themselves. Consider his famousstanza from
Jabberwock y;
(9) 'Twas brillig, and the slithy toves
Did gyre and gimble in the wabe
All mimsy were the borogroves
And the mome raths outgrabe.
This is interpretable up to a point even without the word-meanings
later supplied by Humpty Dumpty. Vie can infer, for instance that
in the world of Jabberwocky toves can be slithy and may gyre; that
some raths are mome. some borogroves mimsy and so on.
Here of course we are responding to structural signals rather than
to word-meanings as such. The slithy toves, for instance, has apparently
one of the characteristic shapes of an English noun phrase
(The plus Adjective plus Noun) and we recognize gyre and gimble
as verbs because they pattern with the auxiliary verb did. Compare:
(10) a) Did gyre and gimble
b) Did swill and guzzle ...
Structural meanings, one might say, are thus up to a point independent of
word-meanings: structures, at any rate, as well as words, can .
in themselves be meaningful.
1.2 Style
A style is a way of doing something. Thus one might speak of a
Japanese style of flower arrangement, Muhammad Ali's style of
boxing or Shakespeare 's style of writing.
Implicit in this view of style is some kind of distinction between
what is done and how (Epstein 1978) as in
(11) WHAT
Flower-arrangement
HOW
a) Japanese-style
b) Classical Seika
c) As executed by Rikun Oishi
The entries in (11) are intended to suggest simply that one can speak
of a style in terms descending from the general to the particular: e.g.
merely as Japanese, or within Japanese flower-arrangements generally,
of the classical 'Seika ' school or within that school of the
work of one particular master, Rikun Oishi. There is thus a strong
association of the concept 'style' both with particular groups of
stylists (e.g. the English Metaphysical or Augustan poets) and within
any given group, with its outstandingly representative individuals,
e.g. Donne or Pope.
Styles, of course, are not peculiar to the fine arts or to the great.
There are styles, e.g. of baking bread, playing rugby or newspaper
reporting and one might well say of a party that it was in the best
Corworst) style of its hostess.
We shall not at this stage involve ourselves with the individualizing
properties of styles - these will be touched upon later - but rather
with the close relationship of styles to structures and the rather
intractable problem of distinguishing the what of a style from the
how.
As a first example take two closely related sentences:
(12) a) Victoria spoiled the puddings
b) The puddings were spoiled by Victoria.
For these the content is virtually identical: (b) is simply the PASSIVE
form of (a), and (a) can be converted into (b) by a simple linguistic
move, the Passive Transformation, which will be presented later.
The difference between (a).and (b) is thus largely stylistic: they are
very nearly identical on the what,differing mainly on the how. There
are evident structural differences, though we shall later see·that the
underlying structures for both sentences - their 'inner' as opposed
to their surface forms - are remarkably alike.
The surface difference is largely one of focus. In one situation
there may be a good reason for starting the sentence with Victoria,
as in (a); in another situation, the puddings, as in (b), may rate first
place.
(There are a few 'trick' sentences, e.g. All hunters chase some foxes,
for which passive and non-passive versions mean, or may mean,
different things, but these need not detain us.)
As another example of differences which can be regarded as
mainly stylistic, take three translations of a verse of the Book of
Ecc1esiastestEcclesiastes 12.1):
(13) a) Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth
(Authorized Version, 1611).
b) Remember also thy Creator in the days of thy youth
(Revised Version. 1881).
c) So remember your Creator while you are still young
(Good News Bible, 1976).
All three of these consist basically of an imperative - e.g. 'Remember
your Creator'. and an indicator of time, e.g. 'while you are still
young. In (a) and (b), this time-indicator or 'adverbial of time' is
structured as a prepositional phrase: 'in the days of thy youth'.
In (c) it is structured as a clause: 'while you are still young'. The
conversion is basically from a structure whose nucleus is the nounphrase
the days of thy youth, to one in which the nucleus is a sentence,
you are stiR! young, The change involves the loss of the noun
days which is concrete and 'imaginable' by comparison with the
perhaps more abstract 'while.' of (c).
(Again the technical concepts of 'clause', 'prepositional phrase'
etc. will be explained later: the simple issue is that the change of
style involves a change of structure.)
There is, of course, a less simple issue, namely that the changes of
style involve changes of content too. The days of (a) and (b) have
fallen away in (c). There is also the change from thy to your. Thy,
for the modern reader, has formal and archaic overtones which the
translators of the modern Good News Bible are avoiding. Thy,
incidentally,
is a 'singular' form, whereas your is either singular or
plural, so that the focus of (a) and (b) on a single person is diffused
in (c).
There is also the important contrast between now, also and SO.
The nOW of (a) anticipates and therefore reinforces the time-adverbial
in the days of thy youth, with a special note of immediacy. Also in (b)
marks the sentence as part of a sequence, but without suggesting·
any particular way in which it links up with what has gone before.
So in (c) is also a connective, but implies a causal connection with the
preceding sentence: the actual sequence in tile Good News Bible is
(14)You aren't going to be young very long.
So remember your Creator in the days of your
youth, before those dismal days and years
come when you will say 'Idon't enjoy life'.
The point of our discussion of (13) is to illustrate that what wesay
is usually affected by how we say it, in other words that we cannot
make an absolute separation between content and style As a more
extreme example, conslder these two exchanges, between, say, an
anny officer (O) and a trainee (T):
(15) a) O: Your hairs a bloody disgrace.
T: Yes sir.
b) O: Report at once to the barber.
T: Yes sir.
In both cases O 's remark may have exactly the same effect: T gets
his hair cut as soon as possible. Both 'O' remarks can thus be roughly
interpreted as 'Get your hair cut'. But they have in fact not a single
word in common and they differ structurally too: the (a) remark is a
statement, the (b) one an imperative.
A further consideration is that the two exchanges of (15) may
reflect quite different situations: there are cases in which Your hairs
a bloody disgrace will not take effect as an instruction, and there are
cases in which Report at once to the barber may be addressed to a
man whose hair is by no means disgracefully long. So that with 15(a)
and 15(b) we have reached a point at which there are differences of
structure, of style, and potentially, of situation too.
This brings us to another and rather different use of the word
style. Compare the following:
(16) Beat till smooth
(17) LAKE MURDER PROBE. DRAMA
(18) Subject to the approval of the Board of the Faculty of Arts,
a candidate may present himself for examination and obtain
credit in not more than two courses additional to those prescribed
in paragraph A 27 above
(19) When your real hair won't do, Dynel will.
We mightwellsay thathere .we have four different styles: .(16) Iooks
like a snippet from a cookery-book, (17) is recognizably a newspaper
headline, (18) a university regulation and (19) from an advertisment.
But these four sentences differ basically not only in style but in
content too: they reflect, to put it briefly, four different ways of
writing adapted to four very different kinds of purpose. We often
use 'style' in this sense when we speak , say , of a legal versus a scientific
style, or of a 'novelistic' style versus a strictly historical one.
Here we have arrived at a second and sometimes rather useful
concept of .style, namely that it is the adaptation of language to particular
purposes or occasions, e.g. of (16) to 'the cookery-book
situation', and so on. Thus the headline
(17) LAKE MURDER PROBE DRAMA
shows a particular adaptation of English (sometimes called 'block
language ') to the purposes of newspaper headlining. (17) could perhaps
be roughly paraphrased as 'There's a fuss (DRAMA) about the
investigation (PROBE) into the MURDER at the LAKE.' Other
interpretations, of course, are possible. The point of interest, however,
is that the paraphrase is substantially longer than the original,
which consists simply of four nouns without any connective words
at all. The headline achieves its brevity by structuring of a particular
kind (,premodification ') which is best shown in a diagram:
(18)
LAKE
MURDER
PROBE
DRAMA
Here LAKE 'nodifies' MURDER, forming the subordinate unit
LAKE MURDER: this as a whole 'modifies' PROBE to form the
unit LAKE MURDER PROBE, which again acts as a modifier
to the 'headword' DRAMA.
The hierarchical organization of (18) into a 'branching tree'
structure as we shall see, is typical of language organization generally.
What is much less typical of 'ordinary' English is an unbroken
sequence of four nouns, though patterns like that of (17) are fairly
common in certain styles, notably those of newspaper headlines
and of certain kinds of advertising copy: compare 'million-dollar
.machine tools' or 'Philips PABX systems technology. '
[Our analysis of Lake as a 'noun' in a structure like Lake Murder
will be justified later.]
1.3 Style and Vocabulary: Lexical Sets
Up to this point our focus has been on the dependence of style on
structure. In fact, as we shall show later, language can be seen as
'structured' at three rather different levels: those roughly speaking
of sentence, word and sound. Each of these three levels must be
explored if we are !o understand the workings of language or to
attempt a full stylistic analysis of a given text. At this point, however,
a brief note on one particular aspect of the relationship of style to
vocabulary may be in order. Take the following recipe:
(19) CHOCOLATE SAUCE
250 ml brown sugar
45 ml cocoa
1 ml cream of tartar
125 ml water
15 ml butter
5 ml vanilla essence
Mix sugar with cocoa and cream of tartar in a saucepan ...Add
water and mix to a paste. Melt and cook for five min over
low heat. Remove from heat, add butter and cool slightly.
Stir in vanilla and serve hot.
Here we have typical structures: the noun phrases listing ingredients
(e.g. 45 ml cocoa) and the brief imperatives (Stir in vanilla
and serve hot) telling us what to do with them. But we have also a
conspicuous set of words characteristic of cookery books: the names
of ingredients - sugar, cocoa, water, butter etc. - and the words of
instruction - mix, add, melt, cook, stir. But though the names are
nouns and the instructions are verbs, both 'belong' to the same art,
namely cookery.
Together they constitute a LEXICAL SET, which we can define
informally as
a group of words relating to a particular field of experience.
This of course is a somewhat flexible notion: just as it is difficult in
practice to say where one field of experience ends and another
begins, so it is with lexical sets. Perhaps the simplest example of a
lexical set is a shopping list:
(20) Pilchards; matches, bread, pencil, light-globes, potatoes ...
and the open-endedness of shopping lists (one could so easily add 'Fetch children at 1230' -) parallels the elasticity of lexical sets: there
is no operational test for membership of any given set.
But since the effect of a text is partly determined by the vocabulary,
lexical sets are often worth looking for. Here, for instance, is the
first stanza of Ben Johnsons 'Song to Celia' (1616) in which we
retain the Elizabethan spelling:
(21) Drinke to me, onely, with thine eyes,
And I will pledge with mine;
Or Ieaue a kiss but in the cup,
And ne not looke for wine.
The thirst, that from the soule doth rise,
Doth aske a drinke diuine:
But might I of lOVE'S Nectar sup,
I would not change for thine.
Here again, some of the words 'hang together' - Drinke, pledge,
CUlP, wine, thirst, nectar and S~JPl- and again some are nouns and some
are verbs. Together, however, they 'sustain' the concepts of thirst,
drinking and their significance in the context of love, focussed in the
word of commitment, pledge.
But the sam.ewords.in a different structural setting, will of course
register in a very different way: 'Mr Jonson liked to drink at the
Mermaid and pledge Doll Tearsheet in 3. cup of wine; "Dolly", he'd
say, "you're the nectar that I'd like to sup".' This fails of the stylistic
effect of (21), though we have of course altered vocabulary as
well as structures.
1.4 Utterances and Texts
At this point it will be useful to introduce a rather neutral term for
'something said': the term UTTERANCE.
Utterances vary considerably in length, complexity and structure.
'Yuk', says a child, recoiling before a spoonful of medicine. This
is a very short utterance. At the other end of the scale are lengthy
sequences such as a news broadcast. or a sermon.
An utterance can be roughly defined as 'any stretch of talk, by one person,
before arid after which there is silence on the part of that
person' (Harris, cit. Lyons: 1968).
The written counterpart of an utterance is a TEXT, which we can
r crudely define, following Harris, as 'a stretch of writing with a
beginning and an end". Texts, like utterances, may be very short
(e.g. a NO PARKING notice) or very long (e.g. Milton's Paradise
Lost). An utterance can be converted into a text simply by writing
it down, and in linguistics and anthropology the term text is often
used for transcripts or recordings of unscripted speech.
1.5 Ear-Language and Eye-Language
There are however, substantial differences between the organization
of language for speech on the one hand, and for writing on the other,
so that 'ear-language' and 'eye-language' are often clearly distinguishable.
Consider first:
(22) Any person who, not being a Post Office employee, enters
this room without the permission of the Postmaster-General
will be prosecuted in terms of Section l00(i) of the Post
Office Act, No. 44 of 1958.
Tills is a notice of a kind often seen in offices where civil service
styles of English prevail, but it is difficult to imagine its being spoken
except perhaps in the formal context of a prosecution in terms of the
Post Office Act. The length and complexity of the sentence, the
passive construction win be prosecuted and the carefully formulated
subordinate structures - not being a Post Office employee and
without the permission of the. Postmaster-General - combine to
suggest that this is intended for the eye and not the ear.
Now look by contrast at:
(23) All the first years they ... seem to get all the nice lessons
they get all their speech and drama lessons and ... you know
all the ones that erm ... erm we are stuck with like maths
and something like that .. oh it's horrible you know really
.makes you feel awful 'cause ... oh I 'm just dying to get in
that pool and you know every ... we're not allowed that
we're not allowed to go only at weekends and you know The effective
transmission of any message will require what
Gleason calls sufficient redundancy to compensate for any noise
in the system'. In a telephone call over a noisy line, a message may
have to be repeated several times. This is a rather obvious case: .
what is less obvious is that in ordinary language the same "bit ' of
information may be signalled several times over. In 'This shoe
pinches' the concept 'singular' is marked three times - in this, in
shoe and in pinches: compare 'These shoes pinch'. Thus it is important
to bear in mind the extent to which redundancy is built into
language itself and necessary for effective communication. People who use
the absolute minimum of words are seldom very good
communicators.
A suitable level of redundancy is in fact a precondition for effective
communication of any kind and some of the 'hesitation phenomena'
- pauses, ums and ahs - of ordinary conversation may actually be
helpful to listeners in slowing down a flow of information that might
otherwise come too fast for comprehension.
Strategies for speaking and for writing are necessarily different.
This is sometimes overlooked by students - and others! - whose
prepared contributions to class discussion consist quite often of
carefully formulated notes which the contributor reads to the class..
If these notes are conceived as eye-language and simply read aloud they
are unlikely to mean much to people who can only listen to
them, though a reasonably skilful speaker can of course translate
skeletal notes into intelligible spoken English as he goes along.
The practical problem has been well stated by Schramm (1973):
We always have to choose between transmitting more information in a
given time, or transmitting less and repeating more' in the .hope of being
better understood.'
It is worth adding that a regular criticism of somebody 's manner
of speech is 'He talks like a book', and that from very early times
one of the standard comic effects in fiction and plays has been to
assign eye-language to a character in a situation in which earlanguage
is called for. This is lightly done by Shakespeare for such
characters as Malvolio in Twelfth Night or Polonius in Hamlet.
A pleasing example is the following from Nancy Mitford's Dr Jore,
'head psycho-analyst to Nato':
(24) 'Perhaps I could put this matter rather more succinctly by
stating a paradigm which I believe to be unconfutable.
Human beings, in may view and in the view of others more
qualified than I, are roughly divided (in respect of what I
am about to enucleate, to the best of my endeavour and
without having had access to my case), human beings, then,
fall into two roughly definable categoremia : those who are
subject and liable to a Pull to the East and others, I am
happy to say an appreciably larger grouping, who are
subject and liable to a Pull to the West.'
Nancy Mitford (1960): Don't Tell Alfred
An important question about any text will thus be to what extent
it is organized as 'ear language') 'eye language' or a compromise
between the two. Most playscripts, far instance, probably represent
a compromise: if organized strictly as 'eye-language' they would run
the risk of being unintelligible in their spoken form, yet if organized
exactly like normal conversation they would probably be intolerably , .
long and diffuse.
1.6 Contexts
Most utterances (or texts) are in some way purposeful. They are
seldom random happenings for no apparent reason at all. Thus the
text FASTEN SEAT BELTS relates meaningfully to air travel: normal
texts - and normal utterances - belong to some kind of situation:
they do .not float unattached in the air, coming to rest on the pages
" of a language textbook. Consider, for instance:
(25) A: Well, how are you going to do that, you can't do both?
B: I don't know, it's going to be difficult.
This snippet from a telephone conversation clearly relates
a) To previous utterances, e.g. to a possible previous remark by B
on the lines of 'I'd like to see that movie tonight but there's an
assignment due tomorrow.'
b) To relevant facts or possibilities, alluded to in the words do that,
do both and it's going to be difficult.
It has, in other words, a setting in experience - a CONTEXT as we
shall call it - which includes both related utterances (or text) and
related facts or knowledge.
The context of a given item can be specified in various ways. Thus for
(26) All the perfumes of Arabia ....
will not sweeten this little hand
we can say that the context of Arabia is Sentence (26). The context
of (26) is the scene of Lady Macbeth's (Macbeth, V.i)
and the larger context of the sleepwalking scene is the play Macbeth.
It is worth remembering that 'context' does not mean 'content':
the context of (26) is not its meaning, much as this meaning depends
upon its setting in the play as a whole ..
Context, in short, helps to determine meaning, though 'context'
and 'meaning' should never be equated. Thus 'Two spades' will mean one
thing if the context is that of ordering garden tools and
quite another if the context is a game of bridge, 'Shoot" may have
rather different meanings as between a gunnery exercise, a game of
marbles and a film set. Consider also a bar customer's 'The usual·
please': this requires a context of previous orders correctly remembered
by the barman if the customer is to get what he wants.
Context will thus be a key term for much of what follows, since
any given 'piece of English' is likely to relate to its background or
setting. This background may include knowledge, physical facts
and other 'pieces of English', and we can thus distinguish between
a wider 'context of situation' and a 'linguistic context' as such.
A CONTEXT OF SITUATION is
The setting in experience of a particular object or statement
Drever (1955), Dictionary of Psychology)
while a LINGUISTIC CONTEXT consists of
The parts which immediately precede or follow a passage or
text, and determine its meaning (The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary).
The context of situation of a particular utterance thus includes its
linguistic context if it has one, so that we can represent a possible
context for I don't know, it '8 going to be difficult' like this:
Figure l(a): Contexts
CONTEXT OF SITUATION: e.g. movie tonight assignment due tomorow
etc.
LINGUISTIC CONTEXT
You can't do both
UTTERANCE
I don't know
it's -going to be difficult
well think again . .
A context of situation tends to be a matter of facts, relationships,
motives and possibilities rather than a mere physical environment.
Thus the 'scene' of (26), Lady Macbeth's 'All the perfumes of
Arabia' ... is, according to some editions of Shakespeare, 'Dunsinane:
an ante-room in the castle ' but this is hardly the 'context'
of the remark, which relates most obviously to past events and utterances,
e.g. the murder of Duncan and Lady Macbeth's remark at
that time that 'A little water clears us of this deed'.
Styles, quite clearly, will' be strongly influenced by contexts of
situation. Thus a plan or proposal cannot be presented in writing
to a group of relative strangers in the same way as it could be put
verbally to an intimate friend; say, a major influence on style, as we
have already suggested, is the adaptation of language to particular
audiences or contexts
1.7 Matching and Contrast
Two of the simplest possible stylistic effects are those of matching
and contrast. Both occur in the slogan
(29) PLAN A SMALLER FAMILY FOR A BIGGER FUTURE.
The matching structures here are the noun phrases a smaller family
and a bigger future. These match in structure: both could be written as
(30) A + ADJECTIVE + NOUN
with the further parallels that both the adjectives are in the 'comparative'
(-er) form and that both the nouns begin with approximately
the same sound.
The contrast, of course, is established mainly by smaller versus
bigger, but also by subtler factors: the concrete family versus the
abstract future (which for some people may be a more enticing word
than family).There is also the imperative force of Plan and the
purposefulness implied in for.
Of course, these two basic devices of matching and contrast can
be used much more subtly and on a much larger scale. They occur
for instance in the famous .closing words of the Old English Battle
of Ma/don, two 'lines of which can be roughly translated
(31) Mind shall the harder, heart the keener,
Mood the more, as our might lessens'
in which the tone is more serious and the effects subtler and harder
to describe. But some practice in observing and describing linguistic
structures may be likely to sharpen our appreciation of the language
of poetry and perhaps to improve our mastery of our own.
1.8 Further Reading
Further readings will be suggested in subsequent chapters. The
coverage of this introductory chapter is rather wide: so that a
comprehensive
list of further readings at this stage would be unmanageably
long.
Lewis Carroll (1888): Through the Looking Glass and What Alice
Found There, Macmillan, incorporates some challenging views on
language ('This must be the wood', she said thoughtfully to herself:
where things have no names ') .
Jacobs and Rosenbaum (1967): Grammar One, Ginn, is a short
introduction to sentence-structure, which tries hard to put the basic
issues as simply as possible.
E. L. Epstein (19.78): Language and Style, Methuen, pursues some
of the points introduced in (1.2).
Abercrombie (1963): 'Conversation and Spoken Prose', in Abercrombie
(1965): Studies in Phonetics and Linguistics, OVP-LALL,
is a useful essay on ear-language versus eye-language.
1.9 WORKPOINTS
1.9.1. Suggest possible contexts of situation fort
a) 328,5, John Smith speaking
b) CROSS THE LINE BY THE BRIDGE ONLY
c) Jimmie, leave the room immediately.
1.9.2 Suggest possible linguistic contexts for each of the pieces
below, indicating in each case what the clues to context are.
a) Saudi Oil Price Hike.
b) A candidate shall be deemed to be in his first year of study until he
has obtained credit in two courses including at least one of the
subjects specified- in paragraph A.4.
c) Grant your people graceto 'love what you command and to desire what
you promise.
d) Monday 25: Expected Mr Bird) it threatened rain, he did not
come- the D went to MrBailey's location for a dance.
e) As we indicated earlier in this chapter, all of the plants with
vascular tissues are placed in the phylum Tracheophyta. Early
tracheophytes are believed to have evolved from ancestral algae
at about the same time at which the bryophytes were developing
along a different line.
f) Pour over lamb, and serve immediately.
1.9.3 What inferences can you make about the source and context
of the following and how?
Far left: Claret velvet trouser-suit with"smock jacket and straight
trousers, $255 with cream silk waterfall ruffle blouse by Dana of
France $85, all from Bloomingdale 's. Black velvet skirt and jacket
with. satin lapels, -$42.50 and $60 by Vicky. Blouse $24.50.
1.9.4 What elements are common tc? the following) and how do they
differ stylistically?
a) Why does your brand so drip with blood, Edward?
b) What makes that blood onthe pointof.your knife
My son now tell to me?
1.9.5 Comment briefly on stylistic and other differences between.the
following versions of Isaiah, 40, verses 3 and 4.
a) The voice of him that crieth in the wilderness
'Prepare ye the way of the Lord
Make straight in the desert a highway for our God.
Every valley shall be exalted
And every mountain and hill shall be made Iow
And the crooked shall be made straight
And the rough places plain.'
b) A voice cries out
'Prepare in the wilderness a road for the Lord
Clear the way in the desert for Our God!
Fill every valley,
Level every .mountain
The hills will become a plain
And the rough country will be made smooth.'
a) is from the Authorized Version (1611); (b) from The Good News
Bible (1976).
1.9.6 Assume that the following is English:
He gropped beside the tottish sporls,
Where klorm had owled the otting atch,
And umly tunk the motty thorls
And bosmerized the bandersnatch.
Can you identify any of the words in it as nouns) adjectives or verbs,
and if so, what structural. or other clues have guided you?
1.9.7 Identify the dominant lexical set in the following from Time
magazine (March 1975):
Charles de Gaulle once described the French armed forces as
'the rampart of order'. Today that rampart looks as if itwere
part of a half-ruined fortress. Morale in the ranks is so low,
warned General Alain de' Boissieu in a top-secret report that
leaked to the press last December, that an upheaval similar to
the one that racked France in May 1968 could break out within
the army. Even the professional cadre of officers, wrote Boissieu
(who happens to be De GauIle's son-in-law), .'have lost confidence
in the hierarchy'.
What concept appears to be common to all the members of this set?
1.9.8 Identify two or more lexical sets in the following, and suggest
how they relate to one another. (The source is Samuel Butler's
(1663) Hudibrast.
For his Religion it was fit
To match his Learning and his Wit:
Twas Presbyterian true blew,
For he was of that stubborn Crew
Of Errant Saints, whom all men grant
To be the true Church Militant;
Such as do build their Faith upon
The holy Text of Pike and Gun;
Decide all Controversies by
Infallible Artillery;
And prove their Doctrine Orthodox
By Apostolic Blows and Knocks;
Call Fire and Sword and Desolation,
A godly-thorough-Reformation,
Which always must be carry 'd on,
And still be doing, never done:
As if Religion were intended
For nothing else but to be mended.
1.9.9 Discuss the use of matching and contrasts of structures and
meanings in the following paragraph from a high-school pupil's
essay on 'The Departure of a Passenger Liner':
It was mid-afternoon. The serenity of a calm bay contrasted
sharply with the noisy bustle of the docks. Blackened chimneys
defiled the limpid blue sky with their smoke; sweating, overalled
dock-workers elbowed their way in and out of the crowds that
thronged the quayside. Raucus voices shrieked commands, mingling
strangely with the murmered conversations of waiting passengers.
Communication: English For What?
2.0 Aims
We have' suggested (1.6) that the most practical approach to
language in useisby way of 'context of situation'. This chapter
accordingly.sketches
a)amodel of the basic components of verbal communication or of
what philosophers and others call 'speech events;
b) some of the .principal functions orusesof Ianguage
as essential background to our presentation,of language structures in
relation to ,style.
2.1 A Model of Verbal Communication
As a first illustration of our modelofverbal,communication take the
following imaginary but not too improhable,telephone conversation:
(1) A: [Answering call]Hello,Mainsail.supplies here.
B:Hello. Tell me, can you supply bottle-screws?
A: Sorry, there's a noise on the line. I didn't quite hear that.
B: Do you have any bottle-screws'?
A: Corkscrews, sir? Certainly.
B: No.Bottlescrews. You know those steel screw dinguses for
tigatening up on stay.
A: Ah yes. Hold an a minute and I'll call Mr M.
Here thecontext of situation presumably includes a sailing boat for
which Bappears to need the .gadgetscalled bottle-screws. (There are,
of course, other possibilities.but they need. not detain us).
We can regard (1) as a miniature but fairly representative 'speech
event', whose components are:
a) The speakers A and B, who alternate between the roles of
ADDRESSER and ADDRESSEE;
b) A connected sequence of UTTERANCES, involving
c) A CONTEXT about which we can make onlylimited inferences,
but which might include B 's jrrevious dealings with Mainsail
Supplies, and his present need for a bottle-screw;
d) A LANG·UA GE, here English, shared by A and B though B .
has problems with the unfamiliar termbottle-screw;
e) NOISE on.the line, which interferes with
f) TheCONTACT between A and B Whoare talking not into the air
but as far as possible to one another.
Each .ofthe terms.in capitalsinthelist above, e.g. ADDRESSER,
ADDRESSEE and CONTACT, represents' one .of the normal.
Components of a speech event' or sequence-of verbalcommunication.
The obvious points are that in agiven CONTEXT an ADDRESSER
communicates with an ADDRESSEE by means of an . . UITERANCE(or
written TEXT)..
Two less.obvious factors are what Jakobson (1960) calls:
A CODE [a LANGUAGE in our model] fully , or at least partially
,common to the .addresser and addressee ,(or in other
words, to the encoder anddecoder of the message] ; .and,….a
CONTACT, aphysical channel and psychological connection
Between the addresser and addressee, enabliagborh of them to
enter and stay in communication.
One further possible factor is that of NOISE, which for our purposes .
will be any kind of interference with a signal noise.ona telephone,
yellingchildren, traffic noises etc.
We can schematize these seven components of speech events as follows:
Figure 2(a): Verbal Communication: an adaptation of Jakobson's model
CONTEXT
ADDRESSER UTTERANCES OR TEXTS ADDRESSEE
LANGUAGE/CODE
CONTACT
(NOISE)
bracketing 'noise' in .the diagram because it may or may notbe
present. The other .sixcomponents are necessary foranycomplete
.act of verbalcommunication,
The telephone conversation of (l) can be taken as a single 'speech
event' with a new "event' beginning if and when Mr M.comes to the
telephone. The boundaries of speech events i.e. the points at which
a given 'event 'begins, srops.or shades off into another one -are
often not easy to determine, .but this is not of importanance at this stage.
(The model above owes a good deal-to .Jakobson (1960) though
we have altered some of his terms ..A very similar model is outlined .
by Schramm (1973) but again with a somewhat differeat termiaology.
Figure 2(a) includes the term CODE as well as LANGUAGE
because CODE is a term very commonly usedin communication theory:)
2.2 Components of the Model
We shall now commeat briefly on the seven components of our
model, taking note of how three of them are typically reflected in English.
An ADDRESSER, if he mentions himself, will typically use the
FIRST-PERSON pronouns lIme (singular) or we/us (plural). There
are of courseother possibilities.ie.g. a mother's 'Come to mummy'
(not 'Come to me') spoken to a very small child and for him perhaps
deliberately avoiding the 'empty' pronorninalme. In highly formal contexts,
e.g. 'The Vice-Chancellor requests the pleasure
of the company of ... ' an addresser may use of himself what traditional
grammarcalls a 'third-person.' form. Consider also:
(2) Helena Rubinstein introduces the New, New Glamour.
In this advertisement headline, (Vogue, April 1977), there is no firstperson
form. We can say that in this case the organization Helens
Rubinstein has paid an advertising agency, or possibly its own
publicity staff, to make up 'a text about itself. Alternatively, we can
say that the e.ffective addresser in (2) is the Helena Rubinstein
organization.
Addressers do not always identify themselves, and in special
cases 1ike (2) it may not he 'easy to say who the Addresser is.
An ADDRESSEE~ similarly, may figure ina textin several ways.
In
(3) Dr Gripfix , are you sure this patient is sober ?
he is indicated by title by name and by the SECOND-PERSON
pronoun you. In many imperatives, like
(4) Soberup!
there is no word directly representing theAddressee.Modern English you
can. refer to a single personor or to more than one: older
forms of English have separate second-person singular pronouns
thou and thee. Terms of address are often explicit signals of social .roles;
as in
(5) ' Good-morning Dr Gripfix.'
Lizzie in this brief exchange greets Dr Gripfix formally, with an
unabbreviated 'Good-morning' and his title and surname. He responds
with the shorter, less formal 'Morning' and with her first
name only - also probably. in a shortened form since few people
are actually christened Lizzie,
What do we infer? There are various possibilities, but it seems probable that
Dr Gripfix is older than Lizzie and that his 'occupational
status' is one generally regarded as higher than hers.
The choice of modes of address :- "Dr Gripfix,'Madam ", "Mrs
Turner', 'Lizzie ' etc. - provides important and sometimes fairly
simple clues to the human relationships involved in a given speech
event. Notice that we can only draw inferences if we see .both sides
of the exchange, 'Morning Lizzie 'occurs both in (5) and in
(6) 'Morning Lizzie",
'Morning snookums' .
but the human relationships reflected in (5) and (6) are clearly different..
though it is quite possible for the same person to figure as 'Dr
Gripfix ' in one kind of social exchange and as 'snookums' in another.
Consider also the social signals .involved in "third-person address"
as in 'We are grateful to the Archbishop for his presence here tonight,
Elements of the CONTEXT- persons, animals or things other
than the Addresser and the Addressee –may be reflected in a THIRDPERSON noun-phrase e.g. this mountain, any pig, etc. or in one of
the 'third-person pronouns he/She/it (singular) or they (plural).
There is thus a rough correspondence between Addresser,Addressee
and Context and the system of English persenal pronoans. or more
precisely with the system of grammatical 'person' in English.
Figure 2(b): English. Personal Pronouns
Grammatical personal Pronouns
Addresser First I, me, we, us
Addressee Second you,(thou/thee)
Context Third he, she, it,
Him, her,
They, them ……
(Other markers of 'person' not tabulated above are the 'possessives '
my, our, your ~his, her etc., which will he discussed later.)
Very often, addresser and .addressee are both human and both
individuals. But often, as in the case of the Helena Rubinstein
advertisement? the 'addresser' maybe regarded as an organization
aiming at the attention of a range of possible addressees, (e.g.
readers of Vogue or Seventeen's. For certain types of text, e.g. a
shopping list or a private diary, addresser and addressee are the same
person. And in novels, plays and poems, the addresser-addressee
relationships are of a special kind, which we shall be sketching later.
UTTERANCES and TEXTS were presented 'in (1.4) and here we
need only add that for our purposes an utterance or text will Invariably
be verbal. i.e. a word or a pattern of words. There. are plenty
of non-verbal signals, e.g, traffic lights, or the hitch-hiker's typical
gesture. But these fall outside our present terms of reference.
An utterance or text. is of course distinguishable from the LANGUAGE:
in which it is framed. An. utterance is a particular structure
or sequence, e.g. 'Well how are you going to do that?'But a language
is (e.g.) English or Xhosa or Japanese one of the vast and complex
systems out of which utterances and texts are built.
We shall use 1anguage to refer both to a natural language , e.g.
English, or to one of its sub-languages, sometimes called codes .
e.g. baby-talk or the ingroup jargon of surfing or meter-cycling
suhcultures. jakobson, remarks that for communication to take effect , the
language (or in his terminology , the code) must be fully or at
This has-important practical bearings, e.g. on communication
problems in teaching and on the in-group uses of certain kinds of
sub-language, e.g. the following from a review -of the Kawasaki
Z650motorcyc1e:
(7) The two mufflers silence the four-pot motor to a purr at low
revs. and a frantic ripping noise nearer the redline. Tappet
noise .has been reduced on the 650by placing the valve shims
below the valve bucket, butting directly onto the valve stem
and preventing shim movement.
This holds a number of decoding problems (e.g, the meaning of
valve shims) for outsiders to the motorcycling subculture.
CONTACT for Jakobson involves both a physical channel"
and 'a psychological connection'. The message is lost to the addressee
if either fails e.g. if club conversation drowns 'The usual,
please," or if a telephone line goes dead. Both of these are cases of the
failure of the 'physical channel' . Failure of the "psychological
connection' is a common experience towards the end of a lecture
(and often unfortunately, quite near the beginning too) or in the
course of what figures in the Ingoldsby Legends as 'a long and prosy
tale' .
The most obvious contact-signals are 'vocatives' such as yet!
there or .Jane, We shall return to contact-language later.
NOISE, in communication theory, refers 10 'any disturbances or
defects .in the system which interfere with the faithful transmission
of signals ' (Lyons, 1977:44). We can perhaps distinguish roughly
three kinds of noise:
a) Physical interference with a signal: - jukebox music, party
noises, screaming children- sometimes cal1ed "channel noise';
b) Psychological factors such as-panic, shyness, stage-fright or fatigue;
c) Linguistic factors, e.g. misinterpretation arising because of
differences of language or sublanguage between addresser and
addressee Thus (7) is fairly .opaque for the non-motorcyclist.
Consider also interpretations of
(8) I met my brother in town for an African speaker of English, for whom
my brother may not always mean 'a male child of my (biological) parents
'but also a male cousin . This may present difficulty to people with "
English " expectations about the meaning of brother.
Defining 'noise' however as some communication theorists do,
to include physical noises (e.g. screaming children), psychological
blockages (e.g.stagefright) and decoding problems (sometimes called
'semantic noise") as in (8), is a rather questionable practice, reducing
its status to that of a catch-all-designation for a number .of distinguishable
sources of failure of communication: - physical, psychological
and linguistic.
2.3 WORKPOINTS
2.3.1 What are the components of the model of verbal communication
outlined in (2.1)? Illustrate from the following :
PETE: Hey Jane. Pass me the feeler gauge.
JANE: Shut up you kids! What did you say Pete?
PETE: 1 said pass me the feeler gauge.
JANE: And what's a feeler gauge?
PETE: It's that silvery dingus over by your left foot. No, your left foot.
JANE: Good thing we didn't throw it away. Catch! 2.3.2 What are the three 'persons ' of the English pronoun-system? . ". . . .
Group the pronouns of the following passage according to the
grammatical 'persons' to which they belong . If you find the text
itself peculiar, explain if possible what makes it so.
"They told me you had been to her
And mentioned me to him
"She gave me a good-character
But said I could not swim
He sent them word 1 had not gone
(We know it to be true):
If she should push the matter on
What would become of you ?
I gave her one, they gave trim two,
You gave us three or more
They all returned from him to you
Though they were mine before
Lewis Carroll (1855): Alice in Wonderland
2.3.3 What can you infer about addresser, addressee and possible
context of situation from the following:
A: What must I do now?
B: Be .pleased to dismount, Sir.
A: 1 have dismounted, Sir.
2.3.4 What can you infer about addresser-addressee relationships
in the following, and from what clues in the language?
JANE: Good afternoon; Sebastien,
SEBASTIEN: Good afternoon, Miss Jane.
JANE: I came on before the others because I wanted to have a little talk
with you.
SEBASTIEN: I am both flattered and charmed, Miss Jane. Can I.
offer you any refreshment?
JANE: No thank you.
SEBASTIEN : A Light at least? (He lights her cigarette.)
JANE: Perhaps you would like to sit down?
SEBASTIEN : Mademoiselle is most democratic.
Noel Coward (1956): Nude with Violin
2.4 Uses of Language
Our next few sections will offer some initial answers to the question
'What do we use language for?'
While a complete answer to this question is clearly out of anyone's
reach, some of the major function of language in any culture do
stand out quite clearly Thus we might say that· .
(9) Quick your horrible cat has got the fillet.
functions primarily as a directive ('Get the fillet away from the cat')
though its form happens to be statement rather than imperative .
Two points, however, must be stressed at the outset. The first is
that function can be judged only for particular contexts of situation
(9), as it stands in this page , is an example sentence and no more.
Thus, although it is handy to talk about 'functions of language",
functions, properly speaking belong to particular utterances ( or
texts) in particular settings.
The second is that a single utterance often fulfils more functions than one
Thus (9) in a given context may simultaneously:
a) convey information
b) invite action ('Do something about it. ')
c) express personal feeling, e.g. resentment against the cat, the addressee
or both.
Elsewhere, however, each of these three different functions might
well be manifested on its own. Thus in
(10)Over the coasts of most of the continent there is a well-marked
alternation of wind from the sea in summer and from
the land in winter
there is no call to action and no manifested personal feeling: (10)
appears 'simply' informative
2.5 Three Basic Functions- : Emotive ,Directive and Informative
As a starting-point, let us take another example involving more
functions than one. The following is .borrowed, with one small
change, from. Wouk's The Caine Mutiny:
(11) Blimey! Come on you guys- wake up! There's an officer here.
This, like (9), expresses personal feeling, conveys information . .
and invites action Blimey is an .expression of the addresser 's .personal
feeling.
It does not :explicitly refer to its context, nor does ,it
invite action by the addressees, BY contrast, Come on you guys, wake
up is an order , specifically directed at the addressees it commands
action, Finally, There's an officer here is a statement of fact, though
it may involve feelings too and may indeed give the reason for the
instruction to wake up
The three typical functions of language reflected in (9), (10) and
(11) have been given various names. Here we shall call them:
a) EMOTIVE
b)DIRECTIVE
c) INFORMATIVE
(Blimey !)
(Wake up!)
(There's an officer here)
It is, of course, an oversimplification to identify each function with
a particular part of (11). Blimey! certainly looks non-directive and
non-informative. But Come on you guys, wake up! is not 'simply'
directive: it is incidentally informative in that a listener can gather
that it is spoken to men probably asleep. And there's an officer here,
while it conveys information, may well reinforce the directive effect
of wake up.
EMOTIVE language expresses personal feeling, or purports to
do so. It communicates the addresser's attitude towards what he is
speaking about. Interjections and swearwords are the simplest
signals of the emotive function, as in Ow! (or something stron ger)
upon hammering ones thumb.
Over and above its interjections, ev.ery language has other and
subtler resources for marking or simulating emotive function or the
personal feeling of the addresser, ranging from personal declarations
('1 adore you, Jane ') to poetry with 'first-person 'focus, e.g. Keats 's
(12) .My heart aches, and a drowsy numbness pains
My sense .....
'I adore you, Jane ' illustrates an important point about the
emotive Junction. For though we often speak to express personal
feeling, we seldom do this exclusively for our own benefit, People
swear, for instance, partly to express their own feelings. But also to
impress other people. Thus emotive language often merges into directive.
DIRECTIVE utterances are intended to get results. The most
obvious directives are imperatives: Come on, you guys, wake up !
An imperative, as we shall show later, has a built-in focus on the
addressee(s), manifested in our example as you guys.
But questions, likewise, are normally intended to get results,
though results of a different kind. While an imperative, e.g, 'Put
the cat out' calls for an action, .a question e.g. 'Did you put the cat
out?" calls in the first instance for a reply This, of course, drastically
oversimplifies the possibilities for imperatives and questions. Some
imperatives, .e.g. Explain your absence yesterday" call for replies, and
some questions, .e.g. Did you make the tea ? in certain family
contexts, can in effect for action. But this supports rather than
undermines the general point that questions, very often, are a special
type of directive. (Examination questions are a clear case of this) .
Directive intentions, of course, are very frequently disguised. Thus .
instead of the direct imperative 'Make tea' we have the quasi-emotive
'I'd love some tea'. Instead of 'Fly Air France' we have such
advertising headlines as
(13) A COSY WORLD
First class on Air France.
which again is not imperative in form. And instead of the imperative
'Vote Prevarication Party" we have, e.g.:
(14) The Prevarication Party stands for the. rule of law.
A recurrent strategy in communication is in fact to find ostensibly
non-directive language for a directive purpose.
The INFORMATIVE function of language is typically reflected in
verifiable statements such as
(15) Water boils at 100 Centigrade.
(16) Socrates is a man.
One characteristic of sentences like (15) and (16) is that they can
be tested for truth, whereas one cannot ask 'True or false 'T' of a
directive such as Put the cat out' or an emotive outburst such as
"Blimey ! ' . On the other hand most utterances, including exclamations
and commands, are informative up to a point: the informative or
'referential' function of language is somehow present in it most of
the time.
Informative utterance tends to focus on the context rather than
on addresser or addressee as such . Even in the case of " My temperature is
101°', which is 'about' the addresser or "Your sweater is on
back to front' which is 'about' the addressee, it seems reasonable
to say that the focus is at any rate partially informative. The first
remark may .also convey personal feeling, .and The second may be
implicitly directive (Put it on the fight way round) but both relate
clearly to items in the context of situation, the temperature in the one
case and the sweater in the other.
Informative utterance is typically 'referential'. The REFERENT
of a word or phrase, in a particular context of situation, is that to
which the word in that context refers. Thus, if you notice a cat in
your room and say 'Put that cat out', the referent or eat is that
particular eat. This again shows how functions can be combined:
while 'Put the cat out' is directive, it is also referential: it is unusual
to find an utterance with no referential content at all.
The kind of language most often thought of .as referential is .
probably that-of textbooks of the natural or physical sciences,
particularly at their more popular and less abstract levels, e.g.
(17) The nucleus of the copper atom contains 29 positive elementary
charges" which are neutralized: by 29 negatively charged
electrons. The 29th (outermost) electron is only very loosely
connected 10 the atomic nucleus. Even at room temperature
the-thermal energy is great enough to enable copper .atoms
to perform vibrations about .their position of rest in the .
crystal lattice.
Paladin (1972):How Things Work, Vol. I
Here the prevailing mode of statement (with out questions or imperatives),
the lack of emotive or personal elements and the specialized ,
highly specific vocabulary (nucleus, atom, elementary charges,
thermal energy) typify a particular kind of scientific style . Less
obvious, but also characteristic, is the focus on relationships , e.g.
in the concept neutralized and the link between thermal energy
and vibrations .
(Reference, however, is a tricky concept to which we shall be
returning later in Chapter Nine)
A final point about the informative Junction of language is that
though it tends to pervade the others, it is a mistake to regard it as
the only or the generally dominant function. Language is not, only
a mirror of experience: it is also one of our principal tools for relating
to and acting upon our fellow-men .
2.6 Functions and Sentence-Types
The distinction of 'persons' in the system of English pronouns
Toughly parallels, as we have shown, the distinction between addresser,
addressee and context. There is a similar rough correspondence
between some of the SEENTENCE-TYPES of traditional grammar
and the three functions of language presented in (2.5).
Traditional grammar distinguishes among others, four basic types of
sentence:
a) STATEMENTS, e.g. It's raining, sometimes called Indicatives;
b) QUESTIONS, e.g. Is it raining? sometimes called Interrogatives;
c) COMMANDS, e.g. Put on your raincoat, often called Imperatives;
d) EXCLAMATIONS, e.g. How wet you are !
A rough correspondence emerges with .our three basic functions :
Statement for the :informative function (often but not exclusively),
Imperative and Question for the directive, Exclamation for the
emotive. The correspondence is important, but, as we have seen
already, it cannot be pressed too far. In military contexts, the statement.
'Your boots are dirty" can well function as a directive to clean
your boots,
For this reason it is important to use different terms for sentence types
(e.g. Imperative) on the one band and language functions
(e.g. Directive)on the other.
A sentence-type is a particular kind of structure a language function
can perhaps best be thought of as a type of intention or
purpose . The speaker is free to shift any particular structure (e.g.
statement) out of its characteristic function into another. There are certain
constraints upon this freedom : one of the fundamental mistakes about
language is to believe that any move is possible . But the creative potential
of language would not exist without it .
The traditional Latinate names for sentence-types- ' Indicative' '
Interrogative ' , " Imperative ' – have a certain advantage over the more
familiar ' statement ' , ' Question' , and ' Command' in maintaining this key
distinction between structures and function .
The structural differences between sentence-types will be sketched
in-Chapter ,Six. At this stage, it may be enough to stress that there
ore structural differences (compare He spoke , Did he speak ? and Speak!),
which we recognize almost intuitively. In the words of
James Harris (1752):
With respect therefore to the different Species of Sentences, who
is there so ignorant as, if we address him in his Mother Tongue,
not to know when 'tis we assert; and when we question; when
'tis we command, and when we pray or wish?
(Readers interested in a more 'structural ' outline of sentence types
than there is room for here, may like to consult (6.1).
2.7 Contact-language
Some writers on language distinguish only the three functions presented so
far. But there are clearly others. Consider first the exchange:
(I 8) A: Good-morning; nice day isn't it.
B: Lovely morning-And how are you?
A: Fine thanks. And you?
B: Me, I'm fine.
This is not necessarily emotive in that it mayor may not involve
the personal feelings of A and B. It is not necessarily informative
either. Its function is not to exchange information about the weather
and the speakers ' health the information-bearing words of (18)
could be substantially changed without greatly reducing its social
effectiveness:
(19) A: Good-morning, .lousy day isn't it.
B: Horrible weather. And how are you?
A: Oh not so 'bad, thanks ..And you?
B: Well, I've got a bit of a cold, but ...
The primary function of such ritual exchange as (18) and (19)
is to open up social contact. They typify a large and important set
of PHATIC utterances. (Phatic is related to the Greek verb phanein,
to speak ) . Among these we can distinguish:
a) Contact-makers, .e.g. 'Hi', 'How are you? "Howzit?"
b) 'Feedback' signals: 'Sure, 'Really?' 'Right', 'OK', 'You
don't say! 'etc., i.e. signals of attention on the part of the addressee.
c) Contact-breakers, -e.g. 'It's getting late', '1 'ye stacks of work this
evening' and the various kinds of goodbye .Contact-breaking,
as at the end of a party, is sometimes difficult to manage gracefully,
and may call for phatic skills of a special kind.
Phatic signals serve thus. 'to establish, to prolong or to discontinue
communication, to check whether the channel works' ( Jakobson,
1960). In our model of verbal communication, they relate to the
"factor of contact.
Two noticeable features of .a good many phatic signals, though
not of course of all, are: ,.
a) They are relatively uninformative. 'How are you', as a rule, is not
treated as an invitation to deliver a comprehensive medical report,
nor does 'Fine thanks' necessarily mean that all is well with the speaker .
b) They are often formulaic, i.e, fixed and seldom varied, as are
social formulae such as Howzit, How do you do, Fine thanks,
Nice day , chow for now etc.
We do not accordingly 'make up , 'How do you do ?' as we have
To make up, e.g 'Quick, your horrible cat has got the meat' to meet
Particular circumstances or emergencies . Phatic utterance .tends to
lack the innovative qualities of Language which we shall be discussing
Later
We have noticed above the role of phatic Signa1s such as
'yes ', fine', right ' etc. as simulators. Of FEEDBACK. One kind of
feedback
has been defined as:
The return. to .the in put of part of the out put of a machine, system or
process (Webster's Seventh New Collegiate Dictionary).
This how ever, is hardly what the 'feedback' signala of ordinary
Conversation achieve. 'Yes Mr Smith' does not return to Mr Smith
any part of his (verbal) output, what ever that happened to be: it only
assures an addresser, not always truthfully that his message is receiving
attention. But to receive no signs at all of feedback , as in the .
case of a complete silence 'at the other end of the telephone' or
that of a totally unresponsive seminar group, is a highly disconcerting
experience.
Malinowksi (1921) notes 'the .strange and unpleasant tension
which men feel when facing one another in silence', and the .role of
speech in breaking this. Here a contact-signal may, in Malinowski's
words, fulfil ' a function to which the meaning of its words is almost
completely irrelevant' , that of establishing what he calls 'phatic
communion ' i.e. a solidarity between people depending on-speech.
The phatic function of language, incidentally, may be one of the
first that we acquire in infancy: Jakobson points out that .small
babies 'are prone to communicate before being- able to send Or
receive information '.
2.8 The Poetic Function
2.8.1 Metaphor. While for phatic purposes we tend to use familiar
And relatively fixed formulae, the POETIC function of language
tends towards innovation, though often innovation. With in an established tradition. One innovative device is METAPHOR, as in
(19) My .sweetheart my bride, is a secret garden
(from the Song of Songs, Chapter 4, verse 12, in the Goad News Bible
rendering). Since Solomon was more of a lover than a gardener, this
neatly illustrates-what is still perhaps the most useful comment on
metaphor since linguistic studies began, namely Aristotle' s:
Metaphor consists in giving the tiling a name that
belongs to something else.
Aristotle: Poetics 21
While this may not fit every type of metaphor, it fits some types, e.g.
metaphors 1ike(19), remarkably well. Compare
(20) My sweetheart , my bride , is a good cook
This, in ordinary contexts, is non-metaphorical. In Aristotle's terms,
there is no reason why the 'name' good cook should not 'belong'
to Solomon 's sweetheart, while the name secret garden fairly
obviously 'belongs' to something, else.
There is, nevertheless, a long-standing association between the
concepts 'garden' and 'beloved ' which may well reach back to before
the time .of the Song of Songs; compare the later 'There is a
garden in her face' and Burns's "My Love is like a red, red rose. '
There are perhaps not many metaphors without some kind of
tradition behind them.
Aristotle's remarks about metaphor hest fit those cases like (19)
in which the metaphorical term, 'the name that-belongs to something
else 'is a noun-or noun .phrase, e.g. a secret garden. For other grammatical
types of metaphor, e.g. that of
(21) Maw Kettle's coffee leapt snarling from the pot
it will need a slight. adaptation. In (21) the 'metaphorical' terms are
leapt snarling, verbs which we are more apt to 'predicate' of animals
than of coffee. (21) is an 'animating ' metaphor. We shall accordingly
adjust Aristotle's statement to:
Metaphor consists in giving-the thing a name or predicate
that belongs to something else.
The fuller implications of this will be explored in Chapter Nine
Our point here is simply the key role of metaphor in linguistic
innovation or deviance, which is one of the hallmarks of the poetic
functioning of language .
2.8. 2. Verbal' Patterning .A second indicator of the poetic function
is that of WERBAL PATTERNING in what Jakobson calls 'the
well- ordered shape ' of a poetic text.
Verbal pattering may involve elements of three .different kinds
which we can here call 'sound" , 'shape 'and 'sense'.
Sound-patterning appears in alliteration and in rhyme, as in .. - ..
(20) I wish I were a woolly worm ~. '\
or Edith Sitwell's
(21) When
Sir
Beelzebub called for his syllabub in the hotel in Hell
where Proserpine first fell
Patterning of linguistic 'shape' is seldom completely separate
from patterning of sense, but it is common in political oratory, as in
wington churchill' s
(22) we shall defend our island, whatever -the cost may be.
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds,
we shall fight in the fields and in the streets: we will
never surrender.
Note the repeated We shall fight plus locative (on the beaches, in
The fields etc.) anticipated in the ·'Keynote' statement: We shall defend
Our island, and quilt up through: the lexical set of beaches,
landing-grounds, fields and streets ".
Patterning both of "shape" and "sense" is common across a wide
variety of texts, ranging from the poetic hooks of the Bible to
advertisingcopy.
Consider for instance verses 5 to 7 of Psalm 92:
(23) 5. Thou shalt not be afraid for any terror by night,
nor for-the arrow that flieth by day ..
6. For the pestilence that walketh in the darkness: .
nor for the sickness .that destroyeth in the noonday.
7. A thousand shall fall .beside thee: and ten thousand
at thy right hand but it shall not .come nigh thee.
Each verse presents a pair of partially matching structures, e.g.
The pestilence that walketh in darkness
the sickness that destroyeth in the noonday
with matching but at the .same time partially contrasted senses ..
In the above pairs sickness matches pestilence while darkness and
Noonday , though contrasting, are both indicators of time . these
repetitions –with –variations are characteristic of the "thought-rhyme'
which is one of the standard effects of the poetic books of the Old
Testament. Yet similar devices are quite common, though usually
less impressive" in advertising copy, e.g.
(24) we go to India for tamarinds
Collect the cloves in Zanzibar
Comb the Middle East for garlic
(and so on) in an advertisement for Worcester sauce.
This illustrates a point of rather basic importance: the poetic
function) as here defined, is mantfested in . texts of many different
kinds, only some of which are 'poetry' in the ordinary sense of the
word. It stands out particularly clearly in the more formal kinds of
prayer , in advertisements and (rather less often)in political speeches .
Conversely, poetry in the generally accepted sense of the term in valves
functions other than the poetic, as Jakobson points out. The
epic, normally focussed on the third person ( 'the man' ; Odysseus,
Adam) regularly involves the informative function of language
The lyric, often with first-person focus ('1 wandered lonely as a
cloud ') regularly involves the emotive.
It should also be clear at this point that discussion of poetic structure in
terms of verbal patterning, metaphorical .language and
deviations from a linguistic norm .cannot be taken much further
without some apparatus of description for the structure of language.
As Jakobson says of the poetic function: .
This function cannot be productively studied out of touch with
The general problems of language , and on the other hand, the
Scrutiny of language requires a thorough. study of 'its poetic
function .
2.8.3Dramatis Personae. There is, however ,one further characteristic of
many poetic
texts which is worth noting. This is that they
tend to involve dramatis personae distinguishable from the addresser .and
addresser of ordinary discourse. Take, for instance, Sir Walter
Raleigh's
(25) As you came from the holy land
Of Walsinghame
Mett you not with my tru love
by the way as you came?
How shall I know your trew love
That have mett many one
As I went to the holy lande
That have come that have gone.
Looking at this in the context of the personal history of Raleigh,
one might identify 'your trew love' with Queen Elizabeth I and the
speaker of' the first stanza with Raleigh himself. But the impact of
(25) and of the poem into which .these two stanzas lead, is only
marginally affected by this information, and for a great many other
'first person "or dialogue poems there is no possibility of identifying
the dramatis personae with any actual people . for texts like (26),
we can possibly map the addresser-addressee relations like this:
There are, in other words, two addresser-addressee pairs: the poet
addressing the reader, and the 'I' of the poem addressing its 'you'.
These dramatis personae of the poetic text are distinct, except .in
Entirely private poems, from the actual poet and reader. The 'I',
and 'your true love' of :(25) are fairly simple cases of the general
phenomenon of fictional dramatis personae ('persons of the play ')
distinct or distinguishable from 'real- life' addresser and addressee.
This regularly occurs in poetry, plays, novels and in advertisements
using dialogue,
2.8.4Summary.We have thus three possible indications of the
poetic function:
a) Linguistic deviance (my bride is a secret garden).
b) Verbal patterning (e.g. the matching of shape and sense between
the structures of We shall fight on the beaches . ..we shall fight
in the fields)
G) Fictional characters or dramatis personae distinguishable from
the actual addresser and addressee.
Most of our examples of verbal patterning so far have, as in(b) above,
included effects .of repetition or near-repetition. This is partly
for the sake of simplicity at this stage ,since complex effects would call
for an expository terminology which we shall build up only later in
this text. But repetitions or partial repetitions are nevertheless very
basic to poetic effect.
2.9 . Metalanguage
Metalanguage is language for talking about language .One of the.
major functions of language is that of enabling us to check up on
language itself. This is the function reflected in questions ranging from
(26) How do you say this in Sesotho?
to
(27) What do you people mean by liberal?
and
(28)What is a-Class 2 verb?
These three questions, and the possible answers to each of them,
all manifest what Jakobson calls the M ETAlINGUAL function of
language , involving a focus upon language or 'code'
Our most obvious need for metalanguage arises when we are
learning second language . Without at any rate a small repertoire for
asking questions about meanings, structures and pronunciations,
our difficulties will be considerably greater than they need be. But
many metalingual problems involve our mother -tongue, notably
of course in the interpretation of other people's English .and of
technical and legal texts -a great deal of legal argument is argument
about language-and again in formal linguistics e.g. thetraditional
statement that 'A full sentence consists of Subject and Predicate'
or more recent notational grammar, e.g. the formula S →NP Aux
VP ('Sentence consists of Noun Phrase, Auxiliary and Verb-Phrase'
which we shall discuss in Chapter Five). Ad hoc metalingual operations
play an important role, though not of course the only one , in
the child's acquisition of his mother-tongue (cp. young Paul Dombey's
question 'What is money ?'in Dickens's Dombey and Son).
One of -the limitations of this chapter is that with the general
decline of language study in schools, there is no commonly understood.
terminology for talking about Language beyond some of the
names of the traditional 'parts of speech', e.g. noun, verb, adjective.
This means that in an introduction to language studies one must
either try the impossible task of discussing phenomena without
naming them, or introduce a fair amount of terminology - traditional
or new as the case may be - unfamiliar to tile ordinary reader today.
No specialized area of study, even at high-school level, can be
explored with out a fairly extensive terminology: think for a .moment
of the specialized vocabulary of any subject that you know fairly
well. Language study calls for metalanguage. Much of our traditional
metalanguage ,e.g the terms Sign and sentence and the names {noun,
verb, adjective etc.)of the parts of speech, is an inheritance from the
beginnings of linguistic study in the West in Graeco- Roman-times.
But part of the work of linguistics during the past half-centuryhas
been to extend this metalanguage to capture rather more of the
comp lexities of linguistic behaviour than our traditional terminology
is able to do .
2.10 Functions in Jakobson's Model
Jakobson's brief account of the functions of Language is by no means
the only one on the market, though .many Later ones, e.g. that of
Hymes (1977)are ciosely related to it. Some alternative approaches
are listed under 'Further Reading' at the end of this chapter.
The Jakobson schema is certainly not the final word on language
functions. It 'works' reasonably well, in that most utterances seem
to relate to it fairly easily. Problems do arise: we have indicated for
instance how emotive function merges into directive .
An advantage of Jakobson 's schema is that each of his six
functions relates to a particular component of his model of verbal
communication (2.1). Thus a directive is oriented towards the
addressee (Fetch the paper, Sarah) an informative utterance towards
the context (The chops are in the freezer).
The relationships can be mapped as follows:
Figure 2(d): Orientation of Functions
INFORiv1ATIVE
To Context
EMOTIVE
To Addresser
POETIC
To Utterance/Text
DIRECTIVE
To Addressee
METALlNGUAL
.To Language/ Code
PHATIC
To Contact/Noise
It maybe useful to hear in mind that the functions displayed in this
table are functions 'of' utterances or texts, not, e.g., of the Addresser
and the Addressee. One cannot acoordingly say that the emotive
function is that 'of' the Addresser, or the directive function that 'of'
the Addressee: all the-functions are functions of language in particular
contexts of situation.
Something not clearly reflected in Jakobson 's schema is that in
many situations, though not in all, the roles -of Addresser and
Addressee are interchangeable. Conversation and the exchange of
correspondence are reciprocal activities, involving 'give' and 'take'
on both sides. We shall Look briefly later at what this 'give' and 'take'
involves.
2.11 Language and identity
All the functions of language outlined so far are to some extent under
a speaker 's conscious control, We are free at any rate to try to direct
express feelings, be sociable , give information etc. there is , however ,
a further set of functions, of great social importance, of which we
are less conscious and which are in many ways less controllable.
These are not accommodated in the Jakobson model.
Consider for instance the following:
(29) 'You aint eat this evening, Herbert?'
'Yes Ma.'
'You aint eat one whole roti?
'Yes Ma.'
'You aint eat bhaji?'
'Yes Ma.'
'You aint drink half a big pot of tea?'
'Yes M a..'…
'You eat all that and you drink all that and you still asking
me to believe that you hungry?'
'Yes Ma.'
From the language of (29), we can identify the speakers as mother
and son(Ma, Herbert) and as members moreover, of an English
speaking community of a particular kind. We may not recognize the
community as Trinidadian Indians (the source is V.S, Naipaul(1958):
The Suffrage of Elvira) but their English is marked as a local variant,
distinct from Southern British 'standard ' .
The specific markers in (29)of 'dialect' status are Constructions
like 'you aint eat' and "you still asking' and the words roti and bhaji,
unfamiliar to people without experience of Indian food. And could
we hear the dialogue of (29) as Naipaul's Mrs Baksh and her son
Herbert might have spoken it, we could expect accents markedly
different from what it is convenient to call 'standard English'.
(29) in short, is a simple illustration of what we shall call the
IDENTIFICATOR Y functions of language (elsewhere sometimes
Called 'indexical'). Listening to somebody talking, we may he able to
identify or 'place 'him as:
a) An individual ('That's John Smith")
b) A member of a group ('That's a scot' or 'That's a psychologist')
c) Somebody in a particular social role ('that must be Herbert's
mother')
Thus again in Eliza Doolittle's
(30) Cheer ap, keptin, 'n baw ya flahr orf a pore gel
in the opening scene of Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, pronunciation
and vocabulary signal role relationships, (those of keptin- 'captain'versus a pore gel) and mark the speaker as a member of a particular
social group. Spoken by a particular actress, (30) might possibly
have further individualizing features of pronunciation characteristic
of her. And this identificatory information carried in (30) is quite
independent of its phatic and directive functions which we can regard
as being under the speaker 's conscious control .(It is often
however in phatic exchange that we find the Clearest signals of social
role).
Identificatory features may occur at any of the three levels of
language - those of sound, 'shape" and sense, to which we have
briefly alluded (2.8.2). Thus in (30) the spelling (keptin, baw,
gel) suggests a Cockney pronunciation; the structures of both (29)
and (30) (aint eat and haw orf) are again characteristic of particular 'kinds
of English and hence of speaker, as ,is some of the
vocabulary of (29) , notably the exotic roti and bhaji,
A particularly interesting set of identificatory signals are those
distinguishing men
from women Thus there is a fairly strong probability
that What a darling magenta lampshade ' will in most
circles not be spoken by a man : the differentiation of women's
language from men's is carried to extreme lengths in some societies
and is still fairly marked in ours.
What we have called the identfficatory functions of language are
clearly important to the art of 'characterization' in novels and plays.
Among English authors, Dickens and more recently Naipaul, (to
name only two),show a particular awareness and control of identificatory
signals, but almost any novel or play makes use of them to a
certain extent.
2.12 Performatives
One interesting function of language, or type of speech act, not clearly reflected in Jakobson's schema , is typified in
(31) I declare you man and wife.
(32) I find you guilty as charged .
(33) I resign.
which, following J. L. Austin (l962), we shall call PERFOMATIVES.
What sets these apart from virtually all the examples considered so
On language functions:
Robinson, W. P. (1972): 'Functions of Language', pp. 36-56 of
Robinson (1972) Language and Social Behaviour, Penguin ..A social
psychologist's survey.
On language in poetry:
Leech, Geoffrey N .(1969):'The Creative Use of Language': Chapter
2, (pp. 23-33)of Leech (1969) A Linguistic Guide to English
Poetry, Longman.
On performatives:
Austin ,T. L. (1962): How to do things with Words, Oxford University
Press paperback,
Lectures I and II.
The main concepts of this chapter relate to those of:
Jakohson(1960),'Linguistics and poetics' :pp.350-377 Sebeok
(ed . 1960) Style in Language, Technology Press of MIT and John
Wiley. Especially relevant are pp. 352-,-359. Jakobsen was writing
for an expert audience and people Looking for easy background
reading may not find this suitable for their needs .
2.14WORKPOINTS
2.14.1 Which functions of language appear ,and where, in the following?
A: It's after nine Go to sleep now. How was your supper?
E:Lousy.
2.14.2. Explain whether each of the sentences below is in your
view a Statement, Question or Imperative in structure and suggest
is possible function(s)
1) Bring on the dancing-girls.
2) I wonder who stole those goats.
3) Please change the oil.
4) YOU must change the oil. 5) Who did that?
6) We haven't any bread.
7) Your report is incomplete.
2.14.3 Suggest for each of the following extracts a possible context
and the function(s) wh.ich it appears to fulfil.. Explain as far as possible by
what does :of content and/or language you have been
guided.
a) On most modern engines some form of crankcase ventilation is
provided to prevent both condensation of moisture within the sump
and the formation of sludge; it also serves to extract oil fumes. A
fume pipe may be taken into the carburettor air cleaner, or the engine
may be sealed and a depression created in the crankcase by suction
from the induction manifold.
b) Remember the Post Office offers a variety of interesting and
rewarding careers, provides training free of charge and pays full
salary during the training period.
Educational qualifications determine the choice of a work sphere .
c) Thou elvish-marked abortive rooting hog,
Thou that wast sealed in thy nativity
Tile slave of nature and the son of hell ,
Thou slander of thy mother 's heavy womb,
Thou loathed issue of thy father's Loins,
Thou rag of honour, thou detested…
d) Dissolve thegelatine in the boiling stock, and then combine all
ingredients. Allow to set in an attractive mould. When firm, unmould
and garnish with olives, shredded lettuce, radish roses and hardboiled
eggs.
e) 1- SITE CLEARING.
Shall mean the removal of all vegetation, trees , bushes and rubbish
from the site, and the removal of all roots, old foundations, sub-soil
pipes and any other obstructions to the commencement and satisfactory
completion of the works.
2. EXCAVATIONS
Shall mean excavating in all material encountered, including hard
and soft rock, old foundations and pickable material.
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2.14.4 Consider the following adapted from the opening of Enid
Bagnold's play The Chalk Garden. Both characters are about to be
interviewed for a job.
Scene.:a waiting-room. Miss Madrigal, who says nothing. A Little
Lad v is show in.
LITTLE LADY: Good-morning. May one sit?
(No answer. She sits).
Lovely blowy weather ... (Still no answer). Are you too
here for the interview? ( Miss Madrigal looks towards
her). As I came in ... I saw a lady going out ... in a
temper.
What, in this sequence, is characteristic - and what is not characteristic
of ' contact language' and contact situations ?
2.14.5 'Ah, H2S04 Professor! And the reciprocal of II to your
good wife!'
Does the above, from the Flanders and Swann musical, At The
Drop of Another Hat, fulfil the phatic function of language? Comment
briefly On this remark considered as a greeting .
2.14.' Explain ,the functions of language reflected in the following
Dialogue from Lytton Strachey (1922):Queen Victonia, taking into
account the roles of
a) The Queen
b) Mr. Grevii1e
c) The author, Lytton Strachey.
"Have you been riding to-day, Mr. Greville ? asked the Queen.
'No, Madam, I have not;' replied Mr. Greville,
'It was a fine day, ' continued the Queen.
'Yes, Madam, a very fine-day," said Mr Greville,
'It Was rather cold, though," said the Queen.
'It was rather cold, Madam,' said Mr Greville. , '
'Your sister, Lady Frances Egerton, rides, I think, doesn't she?
said the Queen,
'She does ride sometimes, Madam," said Mr Grevilie.
There was a pause after which Mr Greville ventured to take the lead,
though he did not venture to change the subject.
'Has your Majesty been riding to-day?' asked Mr Greville.
'Oh yes, a very long ride,' answered the Queen with animation.
'Has your Majesty got a nice horse?' said Mr Greville.
'Oh, a very nice horse, ' said the Queen.
It was over; Her Majesty gave a smile and an inclination of the head,
Mr Greville a profound bow, and the next conversation began with
the next gentleman.
Lytton Strachey (1928): Queen Victoria
2.14.7 How, in a given text, would you recognize the 'poetic ~use of
language? Illustrate from .one or more of the following, and suggest
what functions other than poetic each of these 'texts might fulfil in a
given situation.
(a)
Green, green 'the river-side grass,
Dense, dense the garden willows,
Fair, fair the girl upstairs,
Bright, bright she faces the casement,
Gay, gay her red-powdered face,
Slender , slender the white hand she extends.
Sometimes a singing-girl,
Now she is a traveller's wife;
The traveller has departed and returns not,
And a mateless bed is hard to keep a lone
English translation from the Chinese Nineteen Old Poems,
2nd century AD: Penguin Book of Chinese Verse
(b)
[Text displayed over full-page advertisement picture: a bottle and
glasses of vermouth on a surface of Ice.]
..
Frozen Assets.
Winter just wouldn't be the same without ice,
Nor would Martini Dry.
Because ice enhances the clean, subtle taste of
Martini's unique blend of fine herbs and wines .
Ice and Martini simply belong together. And
we'll drink to that.
MARTINI
Extra Dry. The right one. Just by itself.
(c)
My river runs to thee:
Blue sea, wilt welcome me?
My river waits reply.
Oh sea, look graciously.
I'll fetch thee brooks
From spotted nooks, -
Say, sea,
Take me!
Emily Dickinson
(d)
MOONRISE'
I awoke in the Midsummer not to call night, in the white
and the walk of the morning:
The moon, dwindled and thinned to the fringe of a finger-nail held to the
candle,
Or paring of paradisiacal fruit, lovely in waning lusterless,
Stepped from the stool , drew back from the barrow, of dark
Maenefa the mountain;
A Cusp still clasped him, a fluke yet fanged him ,entangled .
him, not quit utterly .
This was the prized, the desirable sight, unsought, presented
so easily,
Parted me leaf and leaf, divided me eyelid and eyelid of slumber.
Gerard Manley Hopkins
NOTE: The him of the fifth line is perhaps best taken as 'dark
Maenefa the mountain', behind which the moon is' rising. Bran
Maenefa happens also to have been the bardic name with which
Hopkins signed his Welsh poems.
2.14.8 Indicate what you understand by the identificatory functions
of language. Illustrate by explaining as dearly as possible what,
if anything, you are able to infer about each of the speakers reflected
in the extracts below, and what clues have guided you in each case.
(Most of the extracts contain some indications of one or more of the
following: age, sex, social status, membership of a particular speech
community,but in each case only limited inferences can be drawn.)
What function(s) other than identificatory ones might each passage
serve in an appropriate context?
a) You can 't possibly wear that top .
b) Dartmouth had the puck around our goal again. Again our goalie
deflected their shot. Kennaway pushed it at Johnston, who rifled it
down tome. Well, this had to be a score.
c) I knowed very well I had done wrong and I see it warn 't no use
for me to try to learn to do right; a body that don't get started right
when he's little, ain't got no show-when the pinch comes there ain't
nothing to back him up and keep him to his work, and so he, gets
beat, Then I thought a minute and says to myself, hold on – s'pose
you'd done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what
you do now? No, says I, I'd feel bad – I'd feel just the same way I do
now.
d) You take off all the monkeys
And kitties
And Phyllis and Humpty Dumpty
And monkeys and horsie
And vacuum Cleaner
And Fifi
And horsie
No house
And house
And house
e) Mind you, I think you're raving mad, I wouldn't have left, I'd
have battled it out with this Berenice woman - what a soppy name!
Look how keen on Pendle you were, and-now look at you. Well,
Ace may have fancied this woman a bit, and now he doesn't, You
wait. He'll come pounding after you.
2.14.9 What makes an utterance performative ? Which of the following
could be performative in suitable circumstances?
a) N. I baptize thee in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost,
b) Our son was baptized at Salem on 23rd August 1976.
c) I bet you twenty cents it will rain tomorrow.
d) He said he bet me twenty cents it would rain tomorrow.
e) Sandringham grew a beard.
f) Flight-sergeant Sandringham is .hereby authorized to· grow a beard.
g) I apologize.
h) The guide apologized profusely.
i) Your father expects you to graduate next year.
j) I confer upon you the degree of Bachelor-of Arts.
NOTE: It is suggested that you look back at some of these Work-points
after you have studied Chapter Four to Nine . Chapter Two
presents communication issues only with a minimum of reference
to language structure; you may find it interesting to assess what,
if anything, your later studies of language structure have done for
your understanding of the communicative functions of language.
Literary Devices
alliteration – the repetition of sounds , especially initial consonant sounds
in two or more neighboring words .
(eg "she sells sea shells")
euphemism – from the Greek for "good speech," a more agreeable or less
offensive substitute for a
generally unpleasant word or concept .
extended metaphor- a metaphor developed at great length, ocurring .
frequently in or throughout a work
hyperbole - a figure of speech using deliberate exaggeration or
overstatement
irony - the contrast between what is stated explicitly and what is really
meant
metaphor - a figure of speech using implied comparison of seemingly
unlike
things or the substitution of
one for the other, suggesting some similarity
metonomy - from the Greek "changed label", the name of one object is
substituted for that of another .
closely associated with it (eg "the White House" for the President)
onomatopoeia - natural sounds are imitated in the sounds of words (eg
buzz, hiss )
paradox – a statement that appears to be self-contradictory or opposed to
common sense but upon closer
inspection contains some degree of truth or validity
parallelism – from the Greek for "beside one another," the grammatical or
rhetorical framing of words ,
phrases , sentences , or paragraphs to give structural similarity
personification – a figure of speech in which the author presents or
describes concepts , animals , or
inanimate objects by endowing them with human attributes or emotions
and analyzes information ; argumentation proves validity of an idea ;
description re-creates , invents ,
or presents a person , place , event or action ; narration tells a story or
recount an event )
sarcasm – from the Greek for " to tear flesh , " involves bitter , caustic
language that is meant to hurt or
ridicule someone or something
satire -a work that targets human vices and follies or social institutions and
A man
By : Nina Cassian
While fighting for this country , he lost an arm
And was suddenly afraid :
"From now on , I shall only be able to do things by halves .
I shall reap half a harvest .
I shall be able to play either the tune
Or the accompaniment on the piano ,
but never both parts together .
I shall be able to bang with only one fist on doors , and worst of all, I shall
only be able to half hold my love close to me .
There will be things I cannot do at all , applaud , for example , at shows
where everyone applauds . "
From that moment on, he set himself to do
everything twice as much
And where the arm had been tom away a wing "grew.
Chapter I
The Period
It was the best of times , it was the worst of times , it was the age of
wisdom , it was the age of foolishness , it was the epoch of belief , it was
the epoch of incredulity , it was the season of Light , it was the season of
Darkness , it was the spring of hope , it was the winter of despair , we had
everything before us , we had nothing before us , we were all going direct
to Heaven , we were all going direct the other way – in short , the period
was so far like the present period , that some of its noisiest authorities
insisted on its being received , for good or for evil , in the superlative
degree of comparison only .
There were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a plain face , on the
throne of England ; there were a king with a large jaw and a queen with a
fair face , on the throne of France . In both countries it was clearer than
crystal to the lords of the State preserves of loaves and fishes , that things
in general were settled for ever .
_Mary had a little lamb,
The news made every front page ,
With pictures of her being taken to jail ,
Cause you see , he was under age
Literary devices Exercise
The cold , clammy hands grasped my neck .
The bloody watchman told a tale of trouble and torture .
Waves high as mountains broke over the reef .
I had to wait an eternity for the file to download .
Watching it rain , he said , " Lovely day for a picnic " .
The smashed hulk of metal , twisted and shaped into awkward , unlikely
angles , lay on its side ; one rear wheel spun slowly . Ruefully , the man
said to his companion , " I'll bet I finally got rid of that squeak in the
dashboard " .
The cat's eyes were jewels, gleaming out of the darkness.
The window was etched with frost .
His fear was a prison , stronger than any more visible barricade .
Time stood still.
Love enfolded us in her arms .
" I've always regarded archery as an aimless sport , " he said with a quiver
Then there was the doctor who liked to needle his patients just to make a
point
The dentist joined the infantry because he liked to drill
Like a writhing snake , the broken electrical wires hissed and twitched in
the damp grass .
When the gates were opened , the mob surged forward like a burst dam .
The Language of News Paper Report
Summary
General Features
- News paper Reports have the same aim : They are concerned to present a
certain number of facts in as interesting a manner as possible .
- The writes are under the same pressure : the need for compression of the
information into a limited space .
- The need for clarity , and the avoidance of ambiguity .
- Between the beginning and end of an article , one always finds different
sizes and shape of letters juxtaposed – the most noticeable device is the
graphitic highlighting of headlines .
- The text is divided into paragraphs and smaller units .
- The use of subtitles .
- Commas are absent from many places where they would
normally be expected to avoid disturbing the tempo of
reading ; for example,
- after initially placed adverbials
- between sequences of adjectives
- between co-ordinations
-Frequent use is made of inverted commas in a variety of
Functions; direct quotations, indirect quotation , spot1ight
Terms for particular attention because they are being used
in a new or technical way.
-The use of dashes. They are used to mark a parenthesis to
give the parenthetic phrase a greater independence,
-Sentence- type are largely statements with normal order
of elements SPC. Occasionally, we find a question
which the writer answers himself, and which he has
introduced to keep the article from dragging.
Occasionally, also, we find imperative (in headlines).
- The most significant features within the broad category
of statement-type sentences concern:
-The position of subject in relation to the verb.
The normal sp word-order becomes PS- said .Dr .
Mason. This is restricted to the words of speaking
(explain, declare, laugh ... )
- The position of adverbials within the clause.
Adverbials whose normal position is post-verbal are
brought forward for emphasis.
- The types of phrase and clause structure
Which may occur within any given structure
The Differences between Standard and Non Standard
"
News Paper Reports
Standard
-Less graphic variation in the text
- Relatively Monotonous, there are few resting-places for the eye because
of the long paragraphs.
-The formal use of dashes
- Different sentence types: simple, coordinate, complex. .
-Technical vocabulary.
- Scientific and historical background .
Non Standard
- Different graphic types and Sizes.
-Much more easy to read than standard because of shorter paragraphs .
-The informal use of dash- a usage which 1Smost frequent hi llifor1Ilal
letter writing.
- Mostly simple.
- Informal inventive Vocabulary .
- Human details .
Hostage Moore
Returns Home
By staff reporter
Published : Today
Freed hostage peter Moore
Arrived back in the UK today
Following his two – and – a – half – year
Kidnap ordeal in Iraq .
The 36 – year- old computer expert from
Lincoln in oxfordshire shortly after 5 pm .
Mr Moore was seized with his four
British bodyguards by militants posing
As police at Baghdad's finance ministry
In May 2007 .
His return to the UK was veiled in
Secrecy following a request for privacy
From his family
He spent a quiet New Year's Eve at the Baghdad embassy before boarding
his UK-bound flight .
His family are believed to have asked for " a period of decompression " ,
to let Mr Moor ease gently back into normal life .
He was finally released from captivity on Wednesday following lengthy
negotiations .
The bodies of three of his bodyguards
Alec MacLachlan , 30 , from Llanelli ,
South Waled , Jason Swindlehurst , 38 ,
Form Skelmersdale , Lancashire , and
Jason Creswell , 39 , originally from
Glasgow – were passed to UK
authorities last year .
A fourth bodyguard , Alan Mc Menemy 34 , from Glasgow , is
unaccounted for , presumed dead .
British hostage in Iraq peter Moore is released
It consultant from Lincoln is lone survivor of five taken in May 2007
militant raid on finance ministry in Baghdad .
Peter Moore , the only known survivor from five British hostages in Iraq ,
has been released in Baghdad .
The computer programmer was captured in the Iraq capital in 2007 by
militants with four other Britons and spent 31 months in captivity . The
bodies of all but one of the others have since been returned to Britain .
Moore , aged 39 , was released to Iraqi officials this morning and then
transferred to the British embassy in Baghdad . A young cleric , Qais alGhazali , held by the US military , was being handed over for release to
the Iraqi government in exchange , officials said .
The British foreign secretary , David Milliband , said Moore was in good
health and " delighted " to be freed . He was in a " remarkable frame of
mind given the two and a half years that he has had . Real strength , real
commitment , a real determination to get back to his life "
Miilband said the British government had made on substantive
concessions had made no substantive concessions to the kidnappers and
attributed Moore's the kidnappers and attributed Moors's release to the
process of reconciliation being carried out by the Iraqi prime minister ,
Nouri al-Maliki . " The process of reconciliation is the foundation of the
decision of the kidnappers to release him , " said Miliband .
Moore's captors called the Iraqi government early this morning and said
they were willing to free him in east Baghded . The hardline Islamic group
known as the Righteous League has insisted on trading Moore for Ghazali
, who was captured near Basra by the SAS along with his brother Laith alGhazali and a senior member of Lebanese Hezbollah in March 2007 .
Read the newspaper articles and then answer the following questions:
1. Identify the type of each of news paper.
2. Comment on the tiding of both texta.
3. What kinds of sentences are used in the text? Please give one example
for each kind.
4. Comment on the orthography used in the text. (2pts)
5. Comment on the punctuation used in the text.( 2 pts)
Language play in advertising Linguistic invention in product naming
The basic function of business is to sell product . There are many ways in
which this can be done . one way is to improve the product ; another way
is to develop a need for the product ; another is to improve the package
;still another is to improve the description of the product . Each of these
devises for selling the product was more superficial , more cosmetic than
the one before it . Probably the most superficial and the most cosmetic ,
and yet the most succinct and powerful device for selling a product ,
resides in choosing a name for the product . I would like to submit
evidence that whoever it is that goes about naming products is aware of all
five levels of linguistic analysis ( phonology , orthography , morphology ,
syntax , and semantics ) , and that the resulting name are usually a merger
of these five levels , each functioning in relation to the others in a
sophisticated and complex language game .
Phonological devices :
There are various types of sound repetitions that occur in product named .
Alliteration can be seen in the names of Jumbo Jack hamburgers , Pringles
Potato Chips , and Ronrico Run ( this last example is like saying ' Chile
con carne with meat ' because ron is the Spanish word for rum ) . In some
ads , the alliteration goes beyond the name to tie in the name with the
description . Seagram's seven : ' Say Seagram's and be sure ' , is an
example of eye alliteration because of the repetition of s-letters , but in this
example , the s may be pronounced as /z/ -- the last sound in ' Seagram ' s'
– or as /sh/ , the first sound in ' sure ' . The alliteration with the name in a
Savage perfume ad is especially effective because homonymy is involved ,
so that , in a way , both homonymic forms alliterate with the name Savage
. On one page it says ' Try it on for sighs ' (speled s-i-g-h-s) , and on a
facing page it says ' We make scents (spelled s-c-e-n-t-s ) .
Another phonological device is assonance (the repetition of vowel sounds )
. Finger pinkies are used for changing type writer ribbons ; there are
Sunbeam Mist Stick curlers , Polaroid's Super Shooter camera , and
Double Plumber . Beef cater gin also shows assonance , but is especially
effective because with a different juncture , the word is broken differently
– as bee feeder . The names of song groups also frequently exhibit
assonance , as can bee seen in Spooky Tooth and the Nitty Gritty Dirt
Band.
Various types of rhymed an also be noted in product naming . Masculine
rhyme is seen in ' Amour ( a perfume by Jean Patou ) , which is described
as two parts love and one part legend , and in pall Mall . I once saw a
graffito which read ' pall Mall can't spall ' . When a new product takes on a
name very similar to an old established product is often attempting to take
advantage of the long and effective advertising campaigns that came
before . In phoenix , one of our main contractors for housing developments
is ' John F.Long ' . Is it , then , coincidence or not that there is now the '
John F . Lahan ' furniture company ?
There are other phonological devices at work in the language of product
naming clipping can be seen in such product names as pepsi , Cole , Olds ,
and Cheavy ; and Samsonite has an ad for a bag named ' Sam ' . Blending
is also common , as illustrated by such product names as Bank Americard ,
Aspergum , Hemorr – Aid , Bisquick and Travelodge . The name Nabisco
takes two or three letters from each of the words from which it is derived –
National Biscuit Company . There is also an onomatopoeic process
functioning in the naming process : one product is called psssst shampoo ,
and another is the Sears Ah-h bra . A cat food advertises that ' Meow Mix
tastes so good nine out of ten cats ask for it by name' .
Orthographic devices :
There is a very practical reason for innovative spelling in product naming .
A word that is already part of our language cannot be patented as a product
name , so it must be misspelled in order for it not to be a word already in
our language . Thus we have kool cigarettes , Brite , Quik chocolate and
Minit Rice all misspelled . It looks like pall Mall is not the only one who
can't ' spall ' . Another orthographic device is the insertion of letters that
are to be pronounced as letters . In La-z-boy lounge chairs , the z is
pronounced . The letter U is homonymous with the pronoun you , so we
have such names as ' U-Haul ' and ' U-totem' ( which , by the way , is a
whole sentence , with subject , verb , and contracted direct object in the
single name ) . My daughter Nicolette had to explain to me that ' Arby's '
was actually the pronunciation of the two letters resulting from the
acronym of the expression roast beef to give the letters RB and the name '
Arby ' . In our very technological world , a new orthographic device is just
developing its full potential , the use of letters and numbers as part of the
jargon of technology . The SX in SX-70 is an imperfect pronunciation . of
the word sex and the XL in XL – 100 is the thinly disguised word excel .
The opposite device of letter pronunciation could be called letter no
pronunciation. Wrangler Sporting wear tells you to ' Wremember the ' w' is
silent in their name . Letters can also be miswritten . The 0 in Lovable ( a
kind of bra ) is written in the shape of a heart , and in phil's pay-le$$ the s's
are dollar signs . The best example of orthographic innovation I have been
able to find is in the product name Mr.pibb.It is meant to be subliminally
associated with a similarly tasting product named Dr. peppor . They are
both personifications beginning with a capital letter followed by an r
followed by a period .
As our culture becomes more complex , and more institution and products
have to be named , a device which will become more and more important
is the acronym By the time you have enough words to set your product or
institution off from all others , the name is too long , and has to become
shortened , but the acronym process has important constraints to make the
shortened forms appropriate and east to remember constraints to make the
shortened forms appropriate and east to remember . The Zoning
Improvement plan was named to describe the speed : Zip . The Melton
Book Company in Dallas , Texas , produces bilingual materials . Its kits
are called ' Region one curriculum kits ' some acronymic naming is
pejorative , e.g. the Group Against Smoking Public (GASP) .
Morphological devices :
There are two morphological devices that are common in product naming :
affixation and compounding . The rules of affixation for product naming
are very different than the rules of affixation in the language in general .
Seldom or never would the suffix-up be attached to a number – there is no
3-up, or 8-up , yet 7-up is now perfectly natural for us as is its eponym , '
the uncola , Jim Beam's Whiskey can yield a salutation , ' Beamingly yours
' ,and a cosmetics product invites you to ' Come play in our Yardley ' . The
ler of Adler Calculators is not
INFORMATIVE
To Context
EMOTIVE
To Addresser
POETIC
To Utterance/Text
DIRECTIVE
To Addressee
METALINGUAL
To Language /Code
PHATIC
To Contact/Noise
It may be useful to bear in mind that the functions displayed in this
table are functions 'of' utterances or texts, not, e.g., of the Addresser
and the Addressee. One cannot accordingly say that the emotive
function is that 'of' the Addresser, or the directive function that 'of'
the Addressee: all the functions are functions of language in pa-cular
contexts of situation.
Something not clearly reflected in Jakobson 's schema is that in
many situations, though not in all, the roles of Addresser and
Addressee are interchangeable. Conversation and the exchange of
correspondence are reciprocal activities, involving 'give' and 'take'
on both. sides. We shall look briefly later at what this 'give' and 'take'
involves.
2.11 Language and identity
All the functions of language outlined so far are to some extent under
a speaker's conscious control. We are free at any rate to try to direct,
express feelings, be sociable, give information etc. There is, however,
a further set of functions; of great social importance, of which we
are less conscious and which are in many ways less controllable.
There are not accommodated in the Jakobson model .
Consider for instance the following:
(29) 'You aint eat this evening Herbert ?"
Morpheme ; but a word beginning with Ad , even with this spelling , is
somehow appropriate . Trash bags would probably not be given the name
Heave because of its negative connotations , but the adjectival from Hefty
is perfectly acceptable for the containment of garbage . We have overalls
and underwear in our language , which sets up the arrival of Underalls . A
Spamwich is a sort of slantrhymo counterpart of sandwich , formed by an
affixation process that would not be possible in the language as a whole ,
in the same way that we get cheeseburger and Whataburger from
hamburger .
The process of word compounding is very productive in product naming .
It is possible for a girl going on a date to get into her I-can't –believe – it's
– a – girdle and her no – visible – means – of – support bra after the
shampoos with her gee – your – hair – smells – terrific shampoo , while
her mother is using Janitor – in – a – Drum or cooking the Congratulations
dear , but exactly what does an assistant vice president do ? pudding
(believe it or not , the real name of pudding ) .
Syntactic devices :
In addition to the syntax of acronym formations like I HOPE , U and I ,
and OIC , it is possible to work syntax into the formation of nonacronym
named , as in Coutesy Chevrolate in hoenix , Sheer Energy pantyhose or
the seventh A venue Auto shop ( which has now been expanded
throughout Phoenix without changing its name ) . Not only does the
adjective – noun construction appear ( as in the preceding examples ) . but
also the verb followed by a direct object , as in Twist Lemon Menthol
Cigarettes ; and a play can be based on a name in the entire sentence , as
when Seagram's tells you to ' Make yourself a Red Baron ' , with Red
Baron being a compound or not depending on the interpretation .
Semantic devices :
By far the most frequently used type of language play present in product
naming is semantic or lexical in nature . Words are often borrowed from
another language , and normally the words have the correct connotations in
both the borrowing and lending languages , but not always . Matador ,
Capri , Vega , and Nova are all names of cars , yet in the original
languages , matador os a kind of killer , Capri means goat and vega is
meadow , none of them the correct connotations for a car Nova is a kind of
extraterrestrial star formation , which I suppose is all right , but in Spanish
, Nova means ' It doesn't run ' We also have fake borrowings . The product
L ' eggs looks as though it begins with the French definite article , but this
is followed by an English word .
The shifting of meanings is frequent in product naming . After teaching a
class in taboo , euphemism , and dysphemism one day , one of my students
asked me ' why do they call it ' toilet water ' ? That doesn't seem to ve a
very attractive name for the product ' I had to explain that the connotations
of the French eau de toilette are better because the basic meaning of
toilette in French is ' dressing table ' ( where the small towels are , and
where such perfumes as eau de toilette can also be found ).
Another kind of meaning shift is generalization . Such products as Kleenex
, Thermos , Jello , and Frigidaire have become so popular as to have
entered the language as common ( as opposed to proper ) nouns .
A very common type of semantic shift is the metaphor . There is a pen
called the Bic Banana ( yellow of course ) , and a car called the Jaguar (
advertised as nobody's pussycat) .
Metaphors can become mixed . A plumber is a person , but Liquid plumr ,
with its innovative spelling , is merely a product .
Let me conclude this paper by illustrating how all of the five levels of
linguistic analysis can be integrated together in product naming go form
puns . By definition , a pun is : a play on words , that is , a play on the
relationship between the form and the meaning of certain words . I will
read these ads , all punning on the product names , without comment , and
will muffle myself at the end with a Midas Metaphor .
Where do you Ambush ? ( a perfume by Dana )
Put some people in your life . ( a magazine )
You can buy happiness . ( hair color by Clairol )
Take Aim against cavities . ( a toothpaste )
No Time to call your own ? ( a magazine )
May Oui have a word with you ? ( a magazine )
Memories are made of Y – u . ( Oriental perfume )
Knox nails can take life's hard nocks . ( fingernail conditioner )
We can do more for you if you think First . ( a bank )
What makes a shy girl get Intimate ? ( a toothpaste )
The Hatchback of Notre Dame . ( a car )
Flatt Tire Company . ( operated by the Flatt family )
I subjected you to this punning torture on purpose to make a point . For a
long time I was unable to figure out why a muffler company would name
itself Midas . Midas was a king and everything he touched into gold , and
what does that have to do with mufflers ? I then discovered that this is an
elaborate pun , based on a maxim-' Silence is golden' . I am sure that with
all of the punning you have had to endure during this paper , no one will
argue will argue with that .
REFERENCES
Nilsen, Don L. F. , and Allen Paco Nilsen . 1978. The great cover-up of
the 1970's
Proving that women too get into shenanigans, or an analysis of the
language of
Modern advertising using-pantyhose as an example. In : Language play:
An
Introduction to linguistics. Rowley , Mass : Newbury House . 46-51
Nilsen , Don L . F 1977 . Deviation as doublespeak . Teaching English in
the TwoYear college , Spring 159-165 .
Nilsen ,Don L.F 1976 a . The right to write wrong . Language Arts 53:6 .
670:672.
Nilsen , Don L. F. 1976b. Teaching English through the language-of
advertising.
English Journal 65: 2. 29-38. .