• Write a reading reflection notes of chapter one up to chapter 6 in: Simpson, P. (2004),  Stylistics, and Your notes should be clear considering the following components   (Final mark= 10) 

 * Write each chapter separately. The notes you took during the classes. Write a detailed description of some aspect of the chapters and the experience that you felt was particularly meaningful for you.

 * A discussion of what you have personally learned. Also, discuss your plans for improving your learning experience of some aspects in the chapters. You should concentrate on the main points in the chapters. Finally, discuss how the information presented on those chapters are connected with your background knowledge of stylistics and how they improved your linguistic knowledge.

* Your notes should be written in around 750 words for the whole chapters.

*You will be given 10 days to complete the tasks.

* Use Times New Roman font – size 12.

* The paper should be double-spaced.

Unit 2, Sections A and B: Stylistics and levels of language
Levels of language at work

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Section A:
Stylistics and levels of language

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Shape and organize stylistics analysis (established)
Principles of methodology ( three Rs)
Basic categories, levels and units.
Stylistics is a new discipline

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ENG 380: Stylistics
“Language in its broadest conceptualisation is not a disorganised mass of sounds and symbols, but is instead an intricate web of levels, layers and links” (Simpson 2004).
The levels of language are…
Interconnected
Dependent on one another
“They represent multiple and simultaneous linguistic operations in the planning and production of an utterance” (Simpson 2004)

Levels of language

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ENG 380: Stylistics
phonology; phonetics: The sound of spoken language; the way words are pronounced.
graphology: The patterns of written language; the shape of language on the page.
morphology: The way words are constructed; words and their constituent structures.
syntax; grammar: The way words combine with other words to form phrases and sentences.
lexical analysis; lexicology: The words we use; the vocabulary of a language.
semantics: The meaning of words and sentences.
pragmatics; discourse analysis: The way words and sentences are used in everyday situations; the meaning of language in context.
Levels of Language (Simpson 2004)

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ENG 380: Stylistics
That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
Emphatic (!)
Phoneme /n/ in ‘knocking’
Distinguished from “rocking”, “mocking”
‘T’ in ‘That’ and ’potplants’
pronounced as glottal stop
phonetic environment: followed by /p/
‘R’ in ‘over’
Irish and American pronunciation: historic
Australian and English pronunciation: no historic
“-ing” in ‘knocking’
Pronunciation of “g” dropped in lower status accent and informal delivery style
Example sentence: Phonology

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ENG 380: Stylistics
That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
Roman alphabet
Font
Font size
Font style: bold
Example sentence: Graphology

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ENG 380: Stylistics
That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
Three morpheme cluster in ‘potplants’
Root morpheme: pot
Root morpheme: plant
Suffix morpheme: -s
Root morphemes can stand alone as individual words, whereas prefixes and suffixes must be joined to words in order to have meaning
Example sentence: Morphology

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ENG 380: Stylistics
That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
Hierarchy of grammar: Morpheme–Word–Phrase–Clause–Sentence
Single clause in the indicative declarative mood
Clause constituents
Subject (‘That puppy’)
Predicator (‘’s knocking over’)
Complement (‘those potplants’)
Phrase structure of predicator
contracted auxiliary ‘[i]s’
main verb ‘knocking’
preposition ‘over’: extension of main verb makes the verb a phrasal verb
Example sentence: Syntax/Grammar

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ENG 380: Stylistics
That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
Grapheme ‘kn’ in ‘knocking’
Derived from Anglo-Saxon
In English, now pronounced /n/
In Dutch, double consonant pronunciation is retained
Example sentence: Lexicology

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ENG 380: Stylistics
That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
“A truth value specifies the conditions under which a particular sentence may be regarded as true or false” (Simpson 2004).
‘Puppy’
“a young canine animal” is responsible for the action
‘dog’ or ‘animal’ are also compatible with the sentence’s truth value
‘That’ and ‘those’
Demonstratives
Expresses physical orientation (deixis)
‘That’/’those’ create a ‘distal’ deictic relationship: the speaker is far from the ‘puppy’ and ‘potplants’.
‘this’/‘these’ would create a ‘proximal’ relationship
Example sentence: Semantics

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ENG 380: Stylistics
That puppy’s knocking over those potplants!
Discourse
“aspects of communication that lie beyond the organisation of sentences” (Simpson 2004)
context-sensitive
domain of reference includes pragmatic, ideological, social and cognitive elements
What are the potential contexts and participant roles? (the puppy sentence)
In a living room, the speaker is addressing the owner of the puppy and the potplants
Infers a “call to action” rather than a response requiring only a verbal agreement
Since the speaker is far away from the puppy and potplants, can infer that there is someone else potentially closer to the potplants who can take action
The speaker is forthright
A less forthright speaker: ‘Sorry, but I think you might want to keep an eye on that puppy . . .’
Indirection serves a politeness function. Politeness is overridden in this ‘urgent’ situation
Consider other potential contexts and participant roles
Example sentence: Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis

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ENG 380: Stylistics
A stylistic analysis can start at any level of language
The interaction between levels of language is important
Interaction between levels is important: one level may complement, parallel or even collide with another level.
Example: Margaret Atwood’s Poem
playing off the level of grammar against the level of graphology.
Conclusion

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Section B:
Levels of language at work: an example from poetry

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Foregrounding
Levels of language

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Orthography
Removed standard punctuation
Removed capitalization
Lexicography
Neologisms (invented words): ‘sunly’, ‘moonly’, ‘unbe’
Colorful treatment of adjectives and adverbs
Structure
Mathematical symmetry in stanzaic organization
Repetition – Key words, phrasal patterns
Constituent clauses connected grammatically to the first word, “love”
’love is more thicker than forget’, e e cummings

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Adjectives of gradability
Ascribe qualities to entities, objects and concepts
Test gradability by intensifying word “very”
Classifying adjectives
Fixed qualities relative to the noun they describe. E.g. former manager – strategic weapons
Adjectives types

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Exploits gradability of adjectives
Extend or modify the degree or intensity (e.g. ‘very’)
Comparing concepts
Comparative relationships: ’more’ or ‘-er’
Superlative relationships: ’most’ or ‘-est’
Equal relationships: ‘as…as’
Inferior relationships: ‘less’
Defies grammatical rules
‘more’ and ‘-er’ used together is technically ungrammatical
Adjectives in ‘love is more thicker’

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Narrows scope of reference by adding material after the adjective
Example:
The pilot was conscious
The pilot was conscious of his responsibility
Another example
Mary is now much better at Maths
Intensifier: much
Adjective: better
Scope: at math

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Initially foregrounded because of grammatical deviance, these phrases move into the background through repetition allowing other phrases to become foregrounded.
“more thicker” instead of “thicker”
“most mad” instead of “maddest”
“less bigger” instead of “less big”

Internal Foregrounding in ‘love is more thicker’

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ENG 380: Stylistics
“more…-er”

“most + 1-syllable”

“less..-er”

Adjectives: ‘Love is more thicker…’
Describing abstract concepts with adjectives used for liquids and solids
Adverbs: ‘more seldom than a wave is wet’, ‘more frequent than to fail’
adverbs of time-relationship in main slot in the adjective phrase
communicate negative time relationships; convolutes meaning of phrases
Logical tautologies: ‘than all the sea which only is deeper than the sea’
Saying the same thing twice (replicating the basic premises of the proposition)

Other stylistic features in ‘love is more thicker’

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Lexical antonyms: ‘thicker’/‘thinner’, ‘never’/‘always’, ‘sunly’/‘moonly’
Words of opposite meaning
Establishes cohesion in a text

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Stylistic choices are a communicative force
“The individual stylistic tactics used in the poem, replicated so vigorously and with such consistency, all drive towards the conclusion that love is, well, incomparable” (Simpson 2004).
“Buried in the semantics of the poem is its central enigma, acted out in the very contradictions ascribed to the poem’s central theme, the experience of love” (Simpson 2004).
Stylistic analysis should be precise
“Much of the internal dynamic of cummings’s poem is sustained by the subversion of simple and everyday patterns of language, and it is the distortion of these commonplace routines of speech and writing that deliver the main stylistic impact” (Simpson 2004).
“…it is an important part of the stylistic endeavour that its methods probe the conventional structures of language as much as the deviant or the distorted” (Simpson 2004).
Stylistic analysis should be retrievable
“Finally, I hope this importance of making the analysis retrievable to other students of style, by showing how not just one level, but multiple levels of language organisation simultaneously participate, some in harmony and some in conflict, in creating the stylistic fabric of a poem” (Simpson 2004).

Stylistic Conclusions

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415644969 (print edition).

References

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Unit 3: Sections A and B:
Grammar and style
Sentence styles: development and illustration

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Section A:
Grammar and style

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ENG 380: Stylistics
the grammar of a language = rules
grammatical rules of a language are the language as they stipulate the very bedrock of its syntactic construction.
intimidating area of analysis because it is not always easy to sort out which aspects of a text’s many interlocking patterns of grammar are stylistically salient.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
sentence (or clause complex)
Clause (most important)
phrase (or group)
word
morpheme
Grammar rank scale (hierarchy)

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Several important functions of language can be found in any clause:
tense
polarity
Mood (declarative, interrogative or imperative)
Core or nub (central idea/point)
The Clause

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ENG 380: Stylistics
It is a defining characteristic of clause structure that its four basic elements are typically realised by certain types of phrases.
Basic Clause Structure:
Subject (usually filled with a noun phrase)
Predicator (always filled with a verb phrase)
Complement (usually filled with a noun or adjective phrase)
Adjunct (usually filled with an adverb or prepositional phrase)
Clause Structure

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ENG 380: Stylistics
The woman feeds those pigeons regularly.
Our bull terrier was chasing the postman yesterday.
The Professor of Necromancy would wear lipstick every Friday.
The Aussie actress looked great in her latest film.
The man who came to dinner was pretty miserable throughout the evening.
Identify the elements of clause structure

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Method 1: Look for placement, and ask “wh-” questions.
Subject
Who/What?
In front of the verb
Finding the Complement:
Who/What?
After the verb
Finding the Adjunct:
How/When/Where/Why?
After the verb
Method 2: Add a ‘tag question’ to the declarative form of a clause.
Narrows the subject down to a single pronoun
Identifies auxiliary verbs, tense, etc.
Testing for Clause Constituents

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Mary’s curious contention that mackerel live in trees proved utterly
unjustified.
Form a tag question.
Example: tag question

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Coordination:
“My aunt and my uncle visit the farm regularly, don’t they?”
Two entities/people coordinated with “and”
Apposition:
“The winner, a local businesswoman, had donated the prize to charity, had she?”
Two phrases referencing the same entity/person (the winner, a local businesswoman)

Testing for Clause Constituents: An Example

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Variations in Interrogatives
Subject-Predicator Inversion
“Do” Insertion
Variations in Declaratives
Subject-Predicator only
Double Complements (direct object and indirect object)
Any number of Adjuncts
Mary awoke suddenly in her hotel room one morning because of a knock on the door.
Clause Structure Variation

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Ellipsis
Predicator is eliminated in context because of a previous reference
This is called a ‘minor clause’
A: “Where are the keys?”
B: “In your pocket!”
they form an important locus (place) for stylistic experimentation.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Section B:
Sentence styles: development and illustration

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Consists of one clause
Stylistic use:
Frenetic/Urgent
Fast-paced
The Simple Sentence
He ate his supper.
He went to bed.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
“I tried to examine myself. I felt my pulse. I could not at first feel any pulse at all. Then, all of a sudden, it seemed to start off. I pulled out my watch and timed it. I made it a hundred and forty-seven to the minute. I tried to feel my heart. I could not feel my heart. It had stopped beating.” Three Men in a Boat
Style description and its effect:
Most sentences are made of single independent clause. This style gives a sense of speed and urgency which helps to show the anxiety of the character as he examines himself.
Example

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Consists of two or more independent clauses
Coordination shows equal status
Coordinating conjunctions
And (direct coordinator)
But (adversive coordinator)
Or
So
For
yet
Stylistic use:
Symmetry, connection
Popular in junior readers
and nursery rhymes
The Compound Sentence
He ate his supper
he went to bed.
and

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Consists of one independent clause and two or more subordinate clauses
Asymmetrical/subordinating relationship
Subordinating conjunctions
When
Although
If
Because
Since
The Complex Sentence (Type 1): subordination
When he had eaten his supper,
he went to bed.
although he had just eaten his supper.
He went to bed

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Consists of one main clause and one embedded (downranked) clause
Embedded Relationship
The Complex Sentence (Type 2): embedding
She announced that
he had gone to bed.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Equivalent constituents
Adjuncts and/or subordinate clauses placed both before and after the Subject/Predicator
“Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day” (Macbeth, V.v.19–20).
Trailing constituents
Adjuncts and/or subordinate clauses placed after the Subject/Predicator
“You walked with me among water mint
And bog myrtle when I was tongue-tied” (Longley 1995).
Anticipatory constituents
Adjuncts and/or subordinate clauses placed before the Subject/Predicator
“On my right hand there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a mysterious system of half submerged fences” (Conrad 1995 [1912]: 1).

Constituent Types

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Un-elaboration of the noun “fog”: undifferentiated, undetermined.
Restricted verbal development in main clauses. one key element is omitted (finite) which provides tense, polarity and person. On going process.
Trailing constituents. subordinate clauses and Adjuncts of location. It refers to the fog? Or to the river? Indeterminacy.
Gradual narrowing of spatial focus
Internal foregrounding: by creating a different Subject element and by shifting the lexical item ‘fog’ to the right of the Predicator in the sixth sentence.
Stylistics features of Charles Dickens’s novel Bleak House

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Style comes from the totality of interrelated elements of language
rather than from individual features in isolation.
Summary

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415644969 (print edition).

References

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Unit 4, Sections A, B :
Rhythm and meter
Interpreting patterns of sound

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Section A:
Rhythm and meter

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Rhythm
The repetition of stress patterns across a line of verse/poetry
Meter
An organized, defined pattern of strong and weak syllables
Foot (the basic unit of analysis)
the span of stressed and unstressed syllables that forms a rhythmical pattern.

Key terms

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Different sorts (categories) of metrical feet can be determined according to the number of, and ordering of, their constituent stressed and unstressed syllables.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Iambic
Two syllables
unstressed syllable followed by a stressed syllable
(de-dum) (less heavy-heavy)
Trochaic
Two syllables
stressed syllable followed by an unstressed syllable
(dum-de) (heavy-less heavy)
Dactylic:
Three syllables
stressed syllable followed by two unstressed syllables
(dum-de-de)
Describing Metrical Foot

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ENG 380: Stylistics
The ploughman homeward plods his weary way
Thomas Gray’s ‘Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard’ (1751)

There are five iambs in the line, this metrical scheme is iambic pentameter. (six: hexameter – four: tetrameter)
Metre transcends the lexico-grammar
Metrical boundaries are no respecters of word boundaries.
rhythm provides an additional layer of meaning potential (axis of compensation/poetic line)
Enhance lexico-grammar structure
Or Fragment it

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Alliteration is a type of rhyme scheme which is based on similarities between consonants.
enhances the balancing halves of the line through the repetition of, first, the /pl/ in ‘ploughman’ and ‘plods’ and, later, the /w/ in ‘weary’ and ‘way’.
the first repetition /pl/ links both Subject and Predicator, while the /w/ consolidates the Complement element of the clause

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ENG 380: Stylistics
The ploughman plods his weary way homeward
acoustic punctuation (sound marks) becomes redundant.
this rearrangement collapses entirely the original metrical scheme.
Rearrangement

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Meter combines the type of foot with the number of occurrences of that foot in a line
dactylic trimeter: three dactylic feet in a line
“O / what is that / sound that so / thrills the ear”
Starts with an off-beat (unstressed syllable at the beginning or end of a line that introduces or transitions into the true meter)
Trochaic tetrameter: four trochiac feet in a line
“By the / margin,/ willow veiled
Slide the heavy barges trailed”
iambic pentameter: five iambic feet in a line
“The plough/man home/ward plods/ his wea/ry way”
free verse: uses the inflection of natural speech, without a strict metrical scheme

Metrical Schemes

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Metrical analysis is not an exact science.
So, readers have choices about verse inflection
The distinction between strong and weak syllables is relative to one another, not absolute.
Not all accentuation is equal; there are different degrees of accentuation (stress).
Not all meter is verse.
Meter is not specific to literature. E.g. advertisement.
Issues in Metrical Analysis

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Section B:
Interpreting patterns of sound

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Onomatopoeia: a bridge between style and content that matches the sound of a word with a sound from the ‘real’ world.
Lexical onomatopoeia: Words with linguistic structure in which pronunciation has a symbolic reference to a sound
The book hit the desk with a thud.
A crack of thunder woke the sleeping baby.
She slurped her tea.
The bee is buzzing around the flower.
Nonlexical onomatopoeia: Unstructured/unmediated clusters of sounds referencing the real world
The sound of a car: vroom vroom, brrrrm brrrrm
Onomatopoeia

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Exploits lexical imitative potential
Acquires (develops) a mimetic function by random sequences of sound
Brings visuals, sense experiences to life
Evokes affective response from the reader by sound symbolism. (poetic phonaestasia) (see following two examples)
Stylistic Role of Lexical Onomatopoeia

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ENG 380: Stylistics
[The valley . . . and the green chestnut . . .]
Are mocked dry like the parched bed of a brook.
Stephen Spender’s “Pylon”
Alliterative
Foregrounded specific sounds through repetition to ascribe a quality of aridity (dryness)
Voiced /b/,/d/ and voiceless stops /k/,/t/,/t∫/ combine to mock the dryness of the brook
absence of the ‘softer’ sounds like the fricatives /s/ and /z/
Consonant harmony
Examples

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! [. . .]
Gerard Manley Hopkins’s ‘The Windhover’
Vowel mimesis: (imitative representation of the real world)
Vowel disharmony, discordant (conflicting).
Oscillates (moves/swings) between front/back vowels, open/closed vowels, rounded/unrounded mouth, shorter/longer diphthongs
These oscillations mock the path of the flying falcon in the text.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Impressionistic (subjective) labels such “dry consonant” and a “flying vowel”, has no place in the systematic study of speech sounds.
Phonaesthetic Fallacy: to make direct connections between the phonetic qualities of a text and ‘real’ world.
The fallacy lies in the assumption that language functions unproblematically as a direct embodiment (representation) of the real world.

The Phonaesthetic Fallacy

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Basic principles about interpreting sound symbolism:
a particular piece of language (usually poetry) is intended to be performed mimetically.
Be aware of the co-text (text immediately surrounding the particular feature of style under consideration). Think about how the levels of language can parallel each other. E.g. in Hopkins, the disharmony on the phonetic level (vowels) is emphasized by the mixture by the grammatical forms (nouns, verbs and adverbs) that carry those sounds
Notice heightened meaning (how phonetic and semantic properties work together to reinforce/intensify interpretations). E.g. “parched” is picked over “waterless” because the latter has softer sounds /w/, /l/, /s/.
Be cautious about interpreting inherent relationships between phonetic meanings and felt experiences. Avoid subjective interpretation.
Basic Principles

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415644969 (print edition).

References

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Unit 5, Sections A and B :
Narrative Stylistics
Developments in structural narratology

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Section A:
Narrative Stylistics

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Narrative provides a way of recapitulating felt experience by matching up patterns of language to a connected series of events.
The minimal form of a narrative comprises two clauses which are in temporal order.
A change in their order will result in a change in the way we interpret the assumed chronology of the narrative events.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
John dropped the plates and Janet laughed suddenly.
Janet laughed suddenly and John dropped the plates.
Two different interpretations
Example:

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Narrative requires
Development
Elaboration
Embellishment
Stylistic flourish (individuality or personality).
What does narrative require?

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ENG 380: Stylistics
“well this person had a little too much to drink
and he attacked me
and the friend came in
and she stopped it”
minimum criterion for narrative in that it comprises temporally connected clauses
but it also lacks a number of important elements (where, when, who, how, dramatic embellishment)  dull and flat
Discomfort & reluctance: constrained the development
Example by Labov

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ENG 380: Stylistics
the task of providing a full and rigorous model of narrative discourse has proved somewhat of a challenge for stylisticians. Why?
disagreement about
how to isolate the various units which combine to form a story
how to explain the interconnections between these narrative units.
the broad communicative event that is narrative. Just like a coin, narrative has two sides: narrative structure and narrative comprehension.
Issue

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Two basic components of narrative:
Narrative plot: the abstract storyline of a narrative; in other words, the sequence of elemental, chronologically ordered events which create the ‘inner core’ of a narrative.
Narrative discourse: the manner or means by which the plot is narrated which is produced by a story-teller in a given interactive context.
for example, the use of stylistic devices such as flashback, prevision and repetition – which disrupt the basic chronology of the narrative’s plot.
Stylistics and narratology

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ENG 380: Stylistics

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ENG 380: Stylistics
What are the six basic units of analysis in narrative discourse?
Textual medium
Sociolinguistic code
Characterisation 1: actions and events
Characterisation 2: points of view
Textual structure
Intertextuality
stylistic elements of the narrative discourse

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ENG 380: Stylistics
textual medium refers to the physical channel of communication through which a story is narrated. (film and the novel)
Sociolinguistic code expresses through language the historical, cultural and linguistic setting which frames a narrative. (accent and dialect of narrator or characters)
actions and events, describes how the development of character precipitates and intersects with the actions and events of a story. (‘doing’, ‘thinking’ and ‘saying’)

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ENG 380: Stylistics
4. point of view, explores the relationship between mode of narration and a character’s or narrator’s ‘point of view’. (1st, 3rd or 2nd) mixture of the first two.
5. Textual structure accounts for the way individual narrative units are arranged and organized in a story. (broad-based or narrower aspects of narrative cohesion in organization.)
6. Intertextuality (technique of allusion) echoes other texts and images either as ‘implicit’ intertextuality or as ‘manifest’/clear intertextuality.
Intertextuality involves the importing of other external texts while the Sociolinguistic refers more generally to the variety or varieties of language in and through which a narrative is developed.

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Section B:
Developments in structural narratology

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Narrative plot
Abstract storyline
The chronological sequence of events
Narrative discourse
Represented storyline
How the plot is narrated
Stylistic devices used which disrupt chronology
Flashback
Prevision
Repetition
Recap: Narrative plot and discourse

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Plot refers to the actual chronology of events in a narrative; discourse refers to the manipulation/presentation/realistion of that story in the presentation of the narrative.
Distinction between plot and discourse

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Units of narrative analysis
Textual medium: Film, novel, cartoon, ballet, etc.
Sociolinguistic code: Historical, cultural and linguistic setting communicated through language
Characterization #1: Actions and events: How character development and story events/action intersect
Characterization #2: Point of view: Mode of narration (1st person, 2nd person) and relationship with point of view (character perspective)
Textual structure: Story organization
Intertextuality: Allusion; How does the text reference other texts or images?
Recap: Units of narrative analysis

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ENG 380: Stylistics
The unit is reviewing an important structuralist model of narrative and then continues with an application of it to two narrative texts.
The Jungle Book
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Developed from a corpus of 115 folktales
Defines the discourse of the folktale genre
Details 31 narrative plot functions and 7 basic types of character roles
Captures all of the possible elements in a folktale
Not all folktales have all 31 elements
Not always chronological
Gives primacy to what the characters do rather than who does it or how it is done

Propp’s morphology of the folktale

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Such an analysis requires the rendering down of narratives into their raw, basic elements, producing a kind of grammar of narrative which is indicated by the reference to ‘morphology’ in the title of Propp’s study.
Does this mean that Proppian analysis examines the grammar of the text? No.
Morphology means the study of form and structure.
The scope of Proppian Model

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See Table B5.1
Initial situation: Hero leaves home (absentation)
2nd narrative function: Hero is told not to do something (interdiction) (warning of danger – what not to do. Eg “Beauty and the Beast”
3rd narrative function: Hero does what he/she is told not to do (violation)
4th narrative function: Villain arrives (reconnaissance) finding the whereabouts or weakness of the hero.
(Etc.)
Propp’s 31 narrative functions

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the point of Propp’s model is not to imply that all narratives realise all functions. Nor is it to suggest that all narratives, in their manifestation as discourse, follow a straightforwardly linear chronology.
Propp’s model does is to try to define a genre of narrative discourse, the fairy tale, through a circumscribed set of core organisational parameters. How those parameters might be applied to more contemporary narratives.
it is a central principle of the Proppian framework that it should have universal relevance.

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(1) Mowgli the ‘mancub’ wanders the jungle with no parents, away from home (1)
(12) Mowgli (the hero) finds Bagheera the panther and Baloo the bear (helpers)
(2) The Helpers warn Mowgli of the jungle’s dangers (interdiction)
(3) Mowgli ignores the advice (violation)
(4) Shere Khan the tiger appears (the Villain)
(4) Interrogates Kaa the snake to plan against Mowgli (reconnaissance)
(6) Tries to kidnap Mowgli
(8) Injures Baloo, Mowgli’s protector. (family member is injured)
(16) Mowgli and Shere Khan fight
(12) Mowgli uses fire (‘red flower’ magic) against Shere Khan
(18) Shere Khan is scared away
(20) Mowgli returns home to the ‘man village’ enticed by the water girl’s song
(31) Perhaps Mowgli will be married or crowned in the future
Example: Disney’s The Jungle Book (1967)

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Disney’s cartoon draws out, from a finite list of universalised functions, a specific selection of plot advancing devices. What is interesting is that even though their particular settings, ‘dramatic personae’ and historical periods may change, a great many Disney films work to the same basic plot typology.

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It is noticeable that certain of the narrative functions in the film are slightly out of order with the sequence developed in Propp.
e.g. Harry’s parents were killed before the 1st action of the film, yet Harry only later discovers this and relives the episode through flashback.
the use of flashback, prevision and other devices are markers of individuality in the story.
Not all 31 functions are present, however, they are not all needed to create a coherent narrative.
Harry Potter and Proppian Model

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is that many of the archetypical patterns that inform fairy stories are alive and well in certain genres of contemporary narrative.
Both film texts examined here are magical, mythical adventures much in the vein of the folktale
so the success with which the Proppian model can accommodate all narrative genres remains to be proven. (western, romance, detective, science fiction stories)
If anything, the import of Propp’s model is not to suggest that all narratives are the same, but rather to explain in part why all narratives are different.
General notes about Proppian Model

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415644969 (print edition).

References

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Unit 6, Sections A and B:
Style as choice
Style and transitivity

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Section A:
Style as choice

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Stylistic choices are motivated by writer’s perception of reality/experiences, captured through transitivity
Experiential function of language: spoken and written representations of experience in the physical and abstract world
Stylistic choices dictate structure and interpretations of texts
Style as choice

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Grammatical function
Captures experience through language
Transitivity: “the way meanings are encoded in the clause and…the way different types of process are represented in language” (Simpson 2004).
Transitivity

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Process: in the verb phrase
Participants: in noun phrases
Circumstances: in prepositional/adverb phrases

Components of processes

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Material
Mental
Behavioral
Verbalization
Relational
Circumstantial
Attributive
Identifying
Existential
6 Types of processes

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The process of doing
Process is in the physical world
Answers question “What happened?”
Participant roles
Actor: obligatory role in the process
Goal: may or may not be involved in the process.
Typically described in the present continuous tense
Material processes

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Examples

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The process of sensing
Process is in the mental world
Cognition (thinking – wondering)
Perception (seeing – hearing)
Reaction (liking – hating)
Participant roles
Sensor: (the conscious being that is doing the sensing)
Phenomenon: (the entity which is sensed, felt, thought or seen).
Typically described in the simple present tense

Mental processes

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Examples

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Process lies in behavior
Physiological processes (breathe – cough)
States of consciousness (sigh – cry – laugh)
Behavior resulting from state of consciousness (stare – dream – worry)
Participant roles
Behaver (conscious entity who is behaving)
Typically the only participant
Circumstances
At…
In…
Test: can be described in the present continuous tense
Behavioral processes

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Example

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Processes of saying
Participant roles
Sayer
Animate (A person speaking)
Inanimate (A notice, a sign, etc)
Receiver
Verbiage
Content of message (“the story had been changed”)
Name of message (“the decision”)
Processes of verbalization

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Processes of being; relation between two beings/entities
Relational Processes
Types of processes: Modes to describe participant roles:
Intensive
Equivalent entities x is y
Connection between the entities (verb: to be)
Possessive
Possession x has y
One entity has another entity (verb: to have)
Circumstantial
The circumstance component is upgraded to a participant
’is at’, ‘is in’, ‘is on’, ‘is with’ (verb: to be + preposition) Attributive
Carrier is the person being described
Attribute is the quality ascribed to the character
Identifying
Identifier and the Identified
Reversible

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Assertion of existence/occurrence
‘There’ (There is/was, Has there been?)
Answers question “What happened?”
Participant roles
Typically only one
Existent
The role is nominalised (converted from a verbal process to a noun)
Example: There was an assault
Has there been a phone call?
Existential Processes

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A little boy bites his brother, and the father asks what happened.
How does the boy respond?
“There was a nip!”
Existential process
Avoids an explicit Actor role
Boy doesn’t take blame for his actions in order to avoid getting into trouble
“I nipped Daniel.”
Material process
Identifies himself as the explicit actor
Boy takes blame for his actions
Example: Transitivity and choice

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The general point is that transitivity offers systematic choice, and any particular textual configuration is only one, perhaps strategically motivated, option from a pool of possible textual configurations.
Final note about transitivity

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Section B:
Style and transitivity

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Types of agency
Holonymic agency
The participant role (Actor, Sayer, etc.) is occupied by a complete being.
Meronymic agency
A body part, rather than the person, is in the participant role.
Makes characters actions/behaviors appear involuntary
Differentiates the character experientially from other characters
Key concepts

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M. A. K. Halliday (1971)
Applies transitivity model to William Golding’s novel The Inheritors
Analyzes linguistic patterns encoding the ‘mind-styles’ Neanderthal characters
Applies ‘material processes’ to Lok’s tribe
Analyses narrative statements as having the presence of an actor without a Goal
This stylistically depicts the tribe as aimless, leading to its replacement with a more advanced tribe later in the story
Meronymic agency: Lok’s ears and nose typically carry out the action, not himself
“illustrates well the usefulness of stylistic analysis as a way of exploring both literature and language” and “shows how intuitions and hunches about a text …can be explored systematically and with rigour using a retrievable procedure of analysis” (Simpson 2004)
Controversial work that prompted Stanley Fish’s critique of stylistics

Developments in the analysis of style and transitivity

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Kennedy (1982)
Applies transitivity model to a passage in Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent in which a character named Mrs. Verloc murders her husband, Mr. Verloc.
Argues that Conrad’s transitivity profile asks reader to not see Mrs. Verloc as the actual murder of her husband
No mental processes attributed to Mrs. Verloc
Reader cannot determine what she thinks or feels
This impresses her action as being done without reflection
Goal-less patterns in Mrs. Verloc’s actions
This impresses her action as not directly affecting her husband
Material processes with non-human actors to push narrative forward
Meronymic agency: Mrs. Verloc’s hand carries out the murder, not Mrs. Verloc herself.
Mr. Verloc’s processes are mainly mental processes
He is in the Sensor role; phenomenon element is present
This portrays him as aware of what is happening, but he cannot take the action to prevent his death
Developments in the analysis of style and transitivity

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415644969 (print edition).

References

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Unit 1, Sections A and B:
What is stylistics? Developments in stylistics

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ENG 380: Stylistics

Section A:
What is stylistics?

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“a method of textual interpretation in which primacy of place is assigned to language.” (Simpson 2004)
Analyzing the language used in literature: innovation and creativity
Stylistics
Language
Literature
Stylistics
“[Wood bridge rural]” photo by [Hanna Bergblau] licensed under [CC0 1.0] via [StockSnap.io]

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In 21 century, stylistics is flourishing in books, journals, scholarly conferences, and dictionaries.
Sub-disciplines growth: stylistics methods are enriched and enabled by theories of discourse.
Pedagogical: language teaching and language learning
Creative writing: techniques of creativity and invention in language
Stylistics

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Cognitive psychology  cognitive stylistics
Feminist theory  feminist stylistics
Discourse analysis  discourse stylistics
Etc.
Influences on the branches of stylistics

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The object of stylistics:
Literature
Noncanonical forms of writing

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Creativity and innovation in language are not exclusively found in literature (e.g., music, advertising, conversation, newspapers).
Techniques of Stylistic analysis are as much about deriving insights about linguistic structure and function as they are about understanding literary texts.
Caveats

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There appears to be a belief in many literary critical circles that a stylistician is simply a dull old grammarian who spends rather too much time on such trivial pursuits as counting the nouns and verbs in literary texts. Once counted, those nouns and verbs form the basis of the stylistician’s ‘insight’.
Myth

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Stylistics is interested in language as a function of texts in context, and it acknowledges that utterances (literary or otherwise) are produced in a time, a place, and in a cultural and cognitive context. These ‘extra-linguistic’ parameters are inextricably tied up with the way a text ‘means’.
Fact

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Exploring creativity in language use and its impact on a literary text
Enriches
our ways of thinking about language
Our understanding of literary texts
Stylistic analysis, as a method of inquiry, explores texts where the rules of language are bent, distended or stretched to breaking point.
The Purpose of Stylistics

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Stylistics should be…
Rigorous – “based on an explicit framework of analysis” (Simpson 2004)
Retrievable- has defined and agreed upon terms that can be used to describe a style
Replicable- analysis can be checked by other stylisticians using the same method on the same text or beyond the text.
Example: Moore’s work is ‘invertebrate’.
This isn’t a retrievable analysis (‘invertebrate’ is not a common term that can be easily defined by stylisticians).
It isn’t appropriate metalanguage (language used to describe language).
Three Basic Principles

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Section B:
Developments in stylistics

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Pre-20th century:
Classical period: “relationship between patterns of language in a text and the way a text communicates” (Simpson 2004)
Greek rhetoricians: “tropes and devices that were used by orators for effective argument and persuasion” (Simpson 2004)
Early 20th century:
Russian Formalism (Viktor Shklovsky, Boris Tomashevsky)
Prague School Structuralism (Jan Mukarovsky, Wilhem Mathesius)
Formalism + Structuralism (Roman Jakobson)

History of Stylistics

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form of textual patterning with an artistic (literary-aesthetic) purpose
A technique of defamiliarization (ostranenie)
“Making strange” in a language
Shklovsky (Russian Formalist)
Works at any level of language
An aspect of the text is made salient through…
Stylistic Distortion (deviation from the norm)
Repetition or Parallelism
Foregrounding

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To draw attention to a textual pattern and makes it notable to the reader.
This notability is motivated by literary considerations rather than a personal preferred stylistic of the writer. E.g. Jonathan Swift’s monosyllabic words.
In sum, if a particular textual pattern is not motivated for artistic purposes, then it is not foregrounding.
Purpose

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1st issue: It is impossible to define “norms” in the English language, so how can one measure deviation from the norm?

2nd issue: when a once deviant pattern becomes established in a text. Does it stay foregrounded for the entire duration of the text? Or does it gradually slip into the background?
Problematizing Foregrounding

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Hemingway’s The Old Man in the Sea
How many times can the ‘no-adjective’ pattern stay foregrounded before one stops noticing it?
What if Hemingway put an adjective in the text?
Is the foregrounding the ‘no adjective’ pattern because this deviates from the normal discourse norm? Or…
Is the foregrounding the use of an adjective, because this deviates from Hemingway’s style?
Internal foregrounding: deviation within a deviation

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Six Functions of Language:
Conative
Phatic
Referential
Emotive
Poetic
Metalingual
“The poetic function projects the principle of equivalence from the axis of selection into the axis of combination” (Jakobson 1960).
Jakobson’s Poetic Function

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ENG 380: Stylistics
He ________ in the dead of winter.
Opening line from W. H. Auden’s ‘In Memory of W. B. Yeats’ (1939)
Make a list of words to “fill in the blank”.
Think of the phonetic, semantic qualities, and poetic function of each word choose.

Cloze Test Activity

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He disappeared in the dead of winter.
Phonetic Qualities:
Three syllables
Alliteration:  occurrence of the same letter or sound at the beginning of words
Assonance: vowel harmony
Semantic Qualities:
Death: dead, disappeared
Conceptual metaphor: “Death is a journey”
Poetic Function:
a principle of equivalence: establish connections
the axis of selection: the pool of possible words
the axis of combination: the words in the poetic line

The actual sentence…

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ENG 380: Stylistics

It is essential to view the poetic function not as an exclusive property of literature but rather as a more generally creative use of language
Caveat

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ENG 380: Stylistics
Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. ISBN 9780415644969 (print edition).

References

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ENG 380: Stylistics