Chapter 9
Language and
Literature
1. Style and Stylistics

Style: variation in the
language use of an
individual, such as
formal/informal style

Literary style: ways of writing employed in
literature and by individual writers; the way
the mind of the author expresses itself in
words
2

Stylistics “studies the features
of situationally distinctive
uses (varieties) of language,
and tries to establish
principles capable of
accounting for the particular
choices made by individual
and social groups in their use
of language.” (Crystal 1980)
3

Stylistics is the study of varieties
of language whose properties
position that language in context.
For example, the language of
advertising, politics, religion,
individual authors, etc., or the
language of a period in time, all
belong in a particular situation.
In other words, they all have
‘place’.
4

Stylistics also attempts to
establish principles capable of
explaining the particular choices
made by individuals and social
groups in their use of language,
such as socialisation, the
production and reception of
meaning, critical discourse
analysis and literary criticism.
5

Other features of stylistics
include the use of dialogue,
including regional accents and
people’s dialects, descriptive
language, the use of grammar,
such as the active voice or
passive voice, the distribution of
sentence lengths, the use of
particular language registers, etc.
6

Many linguists do not like the
term ‘stylistics’. The word ‘style’,
itself, has several connotations
that make it difficult for the term
to be defined accurately.

However, in Linguistic Criticism, Roger Fowler
makes the point that, in non-theoretical usage,
the word stylistics makes sense and is useful in
referring to an enormous range of literary
contexts, such as John Milton’s ‘grand style’, the
‘prose style’ of Henry James, the ‘epic’ and
‘ballad style’ of classical Greek literature, etc.
(Fowler, 1996: 185).
7

In addition, stylistics is a
distinctive term that may be used
to determine the connections
between the form and effects
within a particular variety of
language.

Therefore, stylistics looks at what is ‘going
on’ within the language; what the linguistic
associations are that the style of language
reveals.
8

Literary Stylistics: Crystal (1987)
observes that, in practice, most stylistic
analysis has attempted to deal with the
complex and ‘valued’ language within
literature, i.e. ‘literary stylistics’.


The scope is sometimes narrowed to concentrate on
the more striking features of literary language, for
instance, its ‘deviant’ and abnormal features, rather
than the broader structures that are found in whole
texts or discourses.
For example, the compact language of poetry is more
likely to reveal the secrets of its construction to the
stylistician than is the language of plays and novels.
9
Levels of analysis





Sound effects
Vocabulary
Phraseology
Grammar
Implicature
10
2. Foregrounding

The 1960 dream of
high rise living
soon turned into a
nightmare.
11

Four storeys have no windows left to smash
But in the fifth a chipped sill buttresses
Mother and daughter the last mistresses
Of that black block condemned to stand, not crash.
12
The red-haired woman,
smiling, waving to the
disappearing shore. She left
the maharajah; she left
innumerable other lights o’
passing love in towns and
cities and theatres and
railway stations all over the
world. But Melchior she did
not leave.
2.1 What is ‘foregrounding’?

In a purely linguistic
sense, the term
‘foregrounding’ is used to
refer to new information,
in contrast to elements in
the sentence which form
the background against
which the new elements
are to be understood by
the listener / reader.
14

In the wider sense of stylistics, text
linguistics, and literary studies, it is a
translation of the Czech aktualisace
(actualization), a term common with the
Prague Structuralists.

In this sense it has become a spatial metaphor:
that of a foreground and a background, which
allows the term to be related to issues in
perception psychology, such as figure / ground
constellations.
15

The English term ‘foregrounding’ has come to
mean several things at once:
the (psycholinguistic) processes by which - during
the reading act - something may be given special
prominence;
 specific devices (as produced by the author)
located in the text itself. It is also employed to
indicate the specific poetic effect on the reader;
 an analytic category in order to evaluate literary
texts, or to situate them historically, or to explain
their importance and cultural significance, or to
differentiate literature from other varieties of
language use, such as everyday conversations or
scientific reports.

16


Thus the term covers a wide area of
meaning.
This may have its advantages, but may also
be problematic: which of the above
meanings is intended must often be
deduced from the context in which the term
is used.
17
2.2 Devices of Foregrounding



Outside literature, language tends to be
automatized; its structures and meanings
are used routinely.
Within literature, however, this is opposed
by devices which thwart the automatism
with which language is read, processed, or
understood.
Generally, two such devices may be
distinguished, deviation and parallelism.
18

Deviation corresponds to the traditional idea
of poetic license: the writer of literature is
allowed - in contrast to the everyday speaker to deviate from rules, maxims, or conventions.
These may involve the language, as well as literary
traditions or expectations set up by the text itself.
 The result is some degree of surprise in the reader,
and his / her attention is thereby drawn to the
form of the text itself (rather than to its content).
 Cases of neologism, live metaphor, or
ungrammatical sentences, as well as archaisms,
paradox, and oxymoron (the traditional tropes) are
clear examples of deviation.

19

Devices of parallelism are characterized by
repetitive structures: (part of) a verbal
configuration is repeated (or contrasted),
thereby being promoted into the foreground
of the reader's perception.

Traditional handbooks of poetics and rhetoric
have surveyed and described (under the
category of figures of speech) a wide variety of
such forms of parallelism, e.g., rhyme,
assonance, alliteration, meter, semantic
symmetry, or antistrophe.
20
3. Literal language and figurative
language

Friends, Romans and
Countrymen, lend me your
ears…
Anthony in Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar
21
3.1 Simile
O, my luve is like a red, red rose,
That’s newly sprung in June;
O, my luve is like the melodie
That’s sweetly play’d in tune.
Robert Burns
(1759-96)
22
3.2 Metaphor
All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players;
They have their exits and their entrances.
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages …
William Shakespeare
(1564-1616)
3.3 Metonymy
There is no armour against fate;
Death lays his icy hand on kings;
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked Scythe and Spade.
James Shirley (1596-1666)
3.4 Synecdoche
They were short of hands at harvest time.
(part for whole)
 Have you any coppers? (material for
thing made)
 He is a poor creature. (genus for species)
 He is the Newton of this century.
(individual for class)


Name the kind of trope:
The boy was as cunning as a fox.
 ...the innocent sleep,... the death of each day's
life,... (Shakespeare)
 Buckingham Palace has already been told the
train may be axed when the rail network has
been privatised. (Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993)
 Ted Dexter confessed last night that England
are in a right old spin as to how they can beat
India this winter. (Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993)

26
4. Analysis of literary language






Foregrounding on the level of lexis
Foregrounding on the level of syntax: word
order, word groups, deviant or marked
structures
Rewriting for comparative studies
Meaning
Context
Figurative language
5. The language of poetry
Little Bo-peep
Has lost her sheep
And doesn’t know where to find them
Leave them alone
And they will come home
Waggling their tails behind them
Fair is foul and foul is fair
Hover through wind and murky air
Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King!
Long burned hair brushes
Across my face its spider
Silk. I smell lavender
Cinnamon: my mother’s clothes.
5.1 Forms of sound patterning







Rhyme
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
Reverse rhyme
Pararhyme
Repetition
30

Rhyme:
two words rhyme if their final stressed vowel and
all following sounds are identical;
 two lines of poetry rhyme if their final strong
positions are filled with rhyming words.
|Humpty |Dumpty |sat on a |wall
|Humpty |Dumpty |had a great |fall
|All the king’s |horses and |all the king’s |men
|Couldn’t put |Humpty to|gether a|gain

31
32

Alliteration: repetition of the initial
consonant of a word
Magazine articles: “Science has Spoiled my
Supper” and “Too Much Talent in Tennessee?”
 Comic/cartoon characters: Beetle Bailey, Donald
Duck
 Restaurants: Coffee Corner, Sushi Station
 Expressions: busy as a bee, dead as a doornail,
good as gold, right as rain, etc...
 Music: Blackalicious' “Alphabet Aerobics”

33
 Assonance:
Repetition of vowel sounds
to create internal rhyming within phrases
or sentences
The sound of the ground is a noun.
 Hear the mellow wedding bells. (Poe)
 And murmuring of innumerable bees
(Tennyson)
 The crumbling thunder of seas (Stevenson)
 That solitude which suits abstruser musings
(Coleridge)
 Dead in da middle of little Italy, little did
we know that we riddled some middle men
who didn't do diddily. (Big Pun)

34

Consonance: The repetition of two or more
consonants using different vowels within
words.
All mammals named Sam are clammy
 And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each
purple curtain (Poe)
 Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectile /
Whether jew or gentile I rank top percentile. (Hiphop music)

35

Reverse rhyme: C V C
Coca-Cola; Hoola hoops
 Such storms can bring you to the brink of all you fear
Restore what faith you can in faded hopes and feel


Pararhyme (Frame rhyme): C V C


Each sturdy steed-like soldier ranked the field
With fearsome faces seldom seen defiled
Rich Rhyme: C V C

What does it avail you to prevail in every affair
When nothing you’ve gained can be regained as
spiritual fare
36

Repetition:
“Words, words, words.” (Hamlet)
 “This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of a
world as he had known it...” (James Oliver
Curwood)
 “We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the
landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in
the streets, we shall fight in the hills… we shall
never surrender.” (Winston Churchill)
 “What lies behind us and what lies before us are
tiny compared to what lies within us.” (Ralph
Waldo Emerson)

37
5.2 Stress patterning






Iamb: 2 syllables, unstressed + stressed
Trochee: 2 syllables, stressed + unstressed
Anapest: 3 syllables, 2 unstressed + stressed
Dactyl: 3 syllables, stressed + 2 unstressed
Spondee: 2 stressed syllables
Pyrrhic: 2 unstressed syllables
38
5.3 Metrical patterning







Dimetre: 2 feet
Trimetre: 3 feet
Tetrametre: 4 feet
Pentametre: 5 feet
Hexametre: 6 feet
Heptametre: 7 feet
Octametre: 8 feet
39
5.4 Conventional forms of metre and
sound

Couplets: a pair of lines of verse, usually
connected by a rhyme. It consists of two
lines that usually rhyme and have the same
meter.

Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
(from Geoffrey Chaucer: Canterbury Tales –
General Prologue)
40

Quatrains: Stanzas of four lines

Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
(from William Blake, “The Tyger”)
41

Blank verse: lines in iambic pentametre which do
not rhyme
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back; you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe not bites; and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew; by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war - to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt;...
(from Shakespeare: The Tempest, 5.1)
42

Sonnet: The term “sonnet” derives from the
Provençal word sonet and the Italian word
“sonetto,” both meaning “little song.” By
the thirteenth century, it had come to signify
a poem of fourteen lines that follows a strict
rhyme scheme and specific structure.
One of the most well known sonnet writers is
Shakespeare, who wrote 154 sonnets.
 The proper rhyme scheme for an English
Sonnet is: a-b-a-b / c-d-c-d / e-f-e-f / g-g

43
Let me not to the marriage of true minds (a)
Admit impediments, love is not love (b)
Which alters when it alteration finds, (a)
Or bends with the remover to remove. (b)
O no, it is an ever fixed mark (c)
That looks on tempests and is never shaken; (d)
It is the star to every wand'ring bark, (c)
Whose worth's unknown although his height be taken. (d)
Love's not time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks (e)
Within his bending sickle's compass come, (f)
Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks, (e)
But bears it out even to the edge of doom: (f)
If this be error and upon me proved, (g)
I never writ, nor no man ever loved. (g)
(Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 )
44
ROMEO:
JULIET:
ROMEO:
JULIET:
ROMEO:
JULIET:
ROMEO:
If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this:
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this;
For saints have hands that pilgrim’s hands do touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmer’s kiss.
Have not saints lips, and holy palmers too?
Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in prayer.
O, then, dear saint, let lips do what hands do;
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to despair.
Saints do not move, though grant for prayer’s sake.
Then move not, while my prayer’s effect I take.
(from Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet)
45

Free verse: styles of poetry that are not written using
strict meter or rhyme, but that still are recognizable as
poetry by virtue of complex patterns of one sort or
another that readers will perceive to be part of a
coherent whole.

The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes,
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes
Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening,
Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains,
Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys,
Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap,
And seeing that it was a soft October night,
Curled once about the house, and fell asleep.
(from T. S. Eliot: The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)
46



Limericks
The word derives from the Irish town of
Limerick. Apparently a pub song or tavern
chorus based on the refrain “Will you come
up to Limerick?” where, of course, such
bawdy songs or ‘Limericks’ were sung.
Limericks consist of five anapaestic lines.
Lines 1, 2, and 5 of Limericks have seven to ten
syllables and rhyme with one another.
 Lines 3 and 4 of Limericks have five to seven
syllables and also rhyme with each other.

47

Variants of the form of poetry referred to as
Limerick poems can be traced back to the
fourteenth century English history.
Limericks were used in Nursery Rhymes and
other poems for children.
 But as limericks were short, relatively easy to
compose and bawdy or sexual in nature they
were often repeated by beggars or the working
classes in the British pubs and taverns of the
fifteenth, sixteenth and seventh centuries.
 The poets who created these limericks were
therefore often drunkards! Limericks were also
referred to as dirty.

48

Limerick poems have received incredibly
bad press and dismissed as not having a
rightful place amongst what is seen as
‘cultivated poetry’. The reason for this is
three-fold:
The content of many limericks is often of a
bawdy and humorous nature.
 A Limerick as a poetry form is by nature simple
and short – limericks only have five lines.
 And finally the somewhat dubious history of
limericks have contributed to the critics
attitudes.

49
Limericks by Edward Lear

There was an Old Man with a beard,
Who said, ‘It is just as I feared!
Two Owls and a Hen,
Four Larks and a Wren,
Have all built their nests in my beard!’
50

There was a Young Lady whose chin,
Resembled the point of a pin;
So she had it made sharp,
And purchased a harp,
And played several tunes with her chin.
51
5.5 The poetic functions of sound
and metre






Aesthetic pleasure
Conforming to a form
Expressing/innovating
with a form
Demonstrating skill,
intellectual pleasure
For emphasis or contrast
Onomatopoeia
52
5.6 The analysis of poetry



Info about the poem: poet,
period, genre, topic, etc.
Structure: layout, number of
lines, length of lines, metre,
rhymes, sound effects, etc. plus
general comment on the poem
53
“Easter Wings”, by George Herbert
(1593—1663)
Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became Most poore:
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories:
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.
54
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)
l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness
55
r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r
who
S
a)s w(e loo)k
upnowgath
PPEGORHRASS
eringint(oaThe):l
eA
!p:
rIvInG
(r
a
.gRrEaPsPhOs)
to
rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
,grasshopper;
56
6. The language of fiction

From realism to
modernism
6.1 Modernist literature

Modernist literature is defined by its move
away from Romanticism, venturing into subject
matter that is traditionally mundane--a prime
example being The Love Song of J. Alfred
Prufrock by T. S. Eliot.

Modernist literature often features a marked
pessimism, a clear rejection of the optimism
apparent in Victorian literature.
58

A common motif in Modernist fiction is that
of an alienated individual--a dysfunctional
individual trying in vain to make sense of a
predominantly urban and fragmented
society.

However, many Modernist works like T. S.
Eliot's The Waste Land are marked by the
absence of a central, heroic figure.
59

Modernist literature transcends the
limitations of the Realist novel with its
concern for larger factors such as social
or historical change; this is largely
demonstrated in “stream of
consciousness” writing.

Examples can be seen in Virginia Woolf's
Kew Gardens and Mrs Dalloway, James
Joyce's Portrait of the Artist as a Young
Man and Ulysses, William Faulkner's The
Sound and the Fury, and others.
60

Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in
large part, as a reaction to the emergence of
city life as a central force in society.

Many Modernist works are studied
in schools today, from Ernest
Hemingway's The Old Man and the
Sea, to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land,
to James Joyce's Ulysses and A
Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
61
It had been an easy birth, but then for Abel and
Zaphia Rosnovski nothing had ever been easy,
and in their own ways they had both become
philosophical about that. Abel had wanted a son,
an heir who would one day be chairman of the
Baron Group. By the time the boy was ready to
take over, Abel was confident that his own name
would stand alongside those of Ritz and Statler
and by then the Baron would be the largest hotel
group in the world.
62
Abel had paced up and down the colourless
corridor of St. Luke’s Hospital waiting for the
first cry, his slight limp becoming more
pronounced as each hour passed. Occasionally
he twisted the silver band that encircled his wrist
and stared at the name so neatly engraved on it.
He turned and retraced his steps once again, to
see Doctor Dodek heading towards him.
Jeffrey Archer: The Prodigal Daughter
63
There is the Hart of the Wud in the Eusa Story
that wer a stage every 1 knows that. There is the
hart of the wood meaning the veryes deap of it
thats a nother thing. There is the hart of the
wood where they bern the chard coal thats a
nother thing agen innit. Thats a nother thing.
Berning the chard coal in the hart of the wood.
That’s what they call the stack of wood you see.
The stack of wood in the shape they do it for
chard coal berning. Why do they call it the hart
tho? That’s what this here story tels of.
Russell Hoban: Ridley Walker
64
Sir Tristram, violer d’amores, fr’over the short sea,
had passen-core rearrived from North Armorica on
this side the scraggy isthmus of Europe Minor to
wielderfight his penisolate war: nor had topsawyer’s
rocks by the stream Oconee exaggerated themselse
to Laurens County’s gorgios while they went doublin
their mumper all the time: nor avoice from afire
bellowsed mishe mishe to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not
yet, though venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended
a bland old isaac: not yet, though all’s fair in vanessy,
were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe. Rot
a peck of pa’s malt had Jhem or Shen brewed by
arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to be
seen ringsome on the aquaface.
65
The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbron
ntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoo
hoordenenthur— nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr is
retaled early in bed and later on life down through all
christian minstrelsy. The great fall of the offwall
entailed at such short notice the pftjschute of
Finnegan, erse solid man, that the humptyhillhead of
humself prumptly sends an unquiring one well to the
west in quest of his tumptytumtoes: and their
upturnpikepointandplace is at the knock out in the
park where oranges have been laid to rust upon the
green since dev-linsfirst loved livvy.
(from James Joyce: Finnegans Wake)
66
6.2 Fictional prose and point of view





I-narrators
Third-person narrators
Schema-oriented language
Given vs New information
Deixis
67

Schema-oriented language:
different participants in the same
situation will have different
schemas, related to their different
viewpoints.

Shopkeepers and their customers will
have shop schemas which in many
respects will be mirror images of one
another, and the success of
shopkeepers will depend in part on
their being able to take into account
the schemas and points of view of
their customers.
68

Morley railway station from viewpoint of
Fanny:
She opened the door of her grimy, branch-line
carriage, and began to get down her bags. The
porter was nowhere, of course, but there was
Harry... There, on the sordid little station under
the furnaces... (D. H. Lawrence: Fanny and
Annie)
  unfavorable.

69

Given vs New information: narrative
reference to everything in the fiction except
items generally assumed by everyone in our
culture (e.g. the sun) must be new, and
hence should display indefinite reference.

One evening of late summer, before the
nineteenth century had reached one third of its
span, a young man and woman, the latter
carrying a child, were approaching the large
village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on
foot. (Thomas Hardy: The Mayor of
Casterbidge)
70

Deixis: reference by means of an expression
whose interpretation is relative to the
(usually) extralinguistic context of the
utterance, such as
who is speaking
 the time or place of speaking
 the gestures of the speaker, or
 the current location in the discourse.


Examples of deictic expressions in English:

I, You, Now, There, That, The following, &

Tenses
71

Because deixis is speaker-related it can
easily be used to indicate particular, and
changing, viewpoint.

Mr Verloc heard the creaky plank in the floor
and was content. He waited.
Mrs. Verloc was coming.
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6.3 Speech presentation
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Direct speech (DS)
Free indirect speech (FIS)
Indirect speech (IS)
Narrator’s representation of speech acts
(NRSA)
Narrator’s representation of speech (NRS)
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
(1) He thanked her many
times, and said that the old
dame who usually did such
offices for him had gone to
nurse the little scholar whom
he had told her of. (2) The
child asked how he was，and
hoped he was better. (3) “No,”
rejoined the schoolmaster,
shaking his head sorrowfully,
“No better. (4) They even say
he is worse.” (Charles Dickens:
The Old Curiosity Shop )
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6.4 Thought presentation

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

Narrator’s representation of thought (NRT)
Narrator’s representation of thought acts
(NRTA)
Indirect thought (IT)
Free indirect thought (FIT)
Direct thought (DT)
Stream of consciousness
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




“He will be late”, she thought. (DT)
She thought that he would be late. (IT)
He was bound to be late! (FIT)
He spent the day thinking. (NRT)
She considered his unpunctuality. (NRTA)
He will be
late …
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
Stream of consciousness

Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found
them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz
and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual.
Aphrodis. (sic) He was in the Red bank this
morning. Was he oyster old fish at table. Perhaps
he young flesh in bed. No. June has no ar (sic) no
oysters. But there are people like tainted game.
Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese
eating eggs fifty years old, blue and green again.
Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless
might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery.
(James Joyce: Ulysses )
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6.5 Prose style
 Authorial
style: way of writing
recognizable across a range of
texts written by the same writer
 Text style: linguistic choices
which are intrinsically connected
with meaning and effect on the
reader
Text style of a book
 Text style of a writer

6.6 Analyzing the language of fiction


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



Lexis/vocabulary
Grammatical organization
Textual organization
Figures of speech
Style variation
Discoursal patterning
Viewpoint manipulation
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7. The language of
drama



Drama as poetry
Drama as fiction
Drama as conversation
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7.1 Analyzing dramatic language







Turn quantity and length
Exchange sequence
Production errors
The cooperative principle
Status marked through language
Register
Speech and silence
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

Turn: Because conversations need to be
organised, there are rules or principles for
establishing who talks and then who talks
next. This process is called turn-taking.
Two guiding principles in conversations:
Only one person should talk at a time.
 We cannot have silence.


The transition between one speaker and the
next must be as smooth as possible and
without a break.
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
Ways of indicating that a turn will be
changed:
Formal methods: for example, selecting the next
speaker by name or raising a hand.
 Adjacency pairs: for instance, a question
requires an answer.
 Intonation: for instance, a drop in pitch or in
loudness.
 Gesture: for instance, a change in sitting
position or an expression of inquiry.
 The most important device for indicating turntaking is through a change in gaze direction.

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
The rules of turn-taking are designed to
help conversation take place smoothly.
Interruptions in a conversation are
violations of the turn-taking rule.
Interruption: where a new speaker interrupts
and gains the floor.
 Butting in: where a new speaker tries to gain the
floor but does not succeed.
 Overlaps: where two speakers are talking at the
same time.

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
Minimal responses: Responses such as
mmmm and yeah.
These are not interruptions but rather are
devices to show the listener is listening, and
they assist the speaker to continue.
 They are especially important in telephone
conversations where the speaker cannot see the
listener's eyes and hence must rely on verbal
cues to tell whether the listener is paying
attention.

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
There is some evidence that women tend to
use minimal responses more than men, and
this is a possible reason why, in mixed
conversations, men talk more than women.
With the encouragement of these minimal
responses, men often continue to talk, and
without the encouragement of these
minimal responses, many women will stop
talking.
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
Story-telling within a conversation is
indicated by some kind of preface. This is a
signal to the listener that for the duration of
the story, there will be no turn-taking.
Once the story has finished, the normal
sequence of turn-taking can resume.
 Young children, in learning about this
convention, have to be asked not to interrupt
when someone is telling a story within a
conversation.

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7.2 Analyzing dramatic texts
Paraphrasing
 Commentating






Words
Grammar
Meaning
Conversation
Using theories
8. The cognitive approach to
literature
Going
There is an evening coming in
Across the fields, one never seen before,
That lights no lamps.
Silken it seems at a distance, yet
When it is drawn up over the knees and breast
It brings no comfort.
Where has the tree gone, that locked
Earth to the sky? What is under my hands,
That I cannot feel?
What loads my hands down?
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Cognitive analysis



What are the main attractors at the
beginning of the poem?
What is the figure (trajectory) and ground
(landmark) in the first two stanzas?
Based on the above, what then, or who, is
going?
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
See Textbook, pp. 237-240, for a detailed
analysis of the poem ‘Going’.
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