Pusat Program Luar/FBMK UNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA

Pusat Program Luar/FBMKUNIVERSITI PUTRA MALAYSIA Program Bersemuka I Semester 2 2012/13 Kursus: BBL 3207 (LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE) 23 FEBRUARI 2013

BBL 3207Language in Literature: An Overview

Course Synopsis This course covers the interconnections between language and literature. It introduces the use of language in literary texts as a methodical approach in the study of literature, and explores definitions of literature and literariness. The course traces the development of the study of literature which focuses on language from traditional literary criticism to the study of style or stylistics in linguistic criticism. It also examines the value of a linguistic method in reading literature.

BBL 3207 – Course Objectives By the end of the course, students will be able to: • analyse the interconnections between language and literature(C4), • explain the main concepts in the study of language in literary texts (P2), • discuss the value of using linguistics as a methodology in reading literature (A4) and, • accept new ideas and develop autonomous learning (LL)

Topics for 1st half of semester: • Introduction: connection between language and literature • Foregrounding: Deviation and parallelism • Structure: Shapes and patterns • Choice of lexical: figurative expressions • Sentence structure

Assessment • Assignment I 20% • Mid-Semester Exam 20% • Assignment 2 30% • Final Exam 30%

Ordinary language • makes an ordinary use of the possibilities of language design. • made up of many kinds of normative structures

Literary language • makes an extraordinary use of these possibilities  this makes the text more memorable • Particular linguistic patterning • Extends and modifies normative structures of language in unusual ways In reading a text, we create a perception of that text. The perception of a literary text is affected by language design, and by the relationship of the text to the literary tradition

The object of “burn” has to denote a concrete, combustible material or be a more general term for such materials. What does it mean by “burn daylight”? ‘burnt’ destroyed/used up Possible meaning = we are using up daylight (metaphor)

“we burn daylight” Consider the context: • Romeo and Juliet: Montaguesgatecrashing Capulet ball (first meeting of R&J) • Reference to torches: burning is literal, daylight is metaphorical  a joke Combination of linguistic, contextual and general world knowledge  basis for inferring an appropriate interpretation

What seems to distinguish literary from non-literary usage may be the extent to which the phonological, grammatical and semantic features of the language are salient, or foregrounded in some way.

Foregrounding • Foregrounding is a significant literary stylistic device based on the Russian Formalist's notion that the very essence of poeticality lies in the "deformation" of language. • "Foregrounding" literally means "to bring to the front." • The writer uses the sounds of words or the words themselves in such a way that the readers' attention is immediately captivated.

Foregrounding • Foregrounding works in two ways: • by distortion against a norm, • by imposing regularity in grammatical patterns over and above those designated by the language- repetition or parallelism. Distortion can be studied under deviation, and can take place at any ‘level’ of language i.e. lexical, grammatical, phonological, historical, graphological, semantic and others (Leech :1981).

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.

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 spatialmetaphor: that of a foreground and a background, which allows the term to be related to issues in perception psychology, such as figure / ground constellations.

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.

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.

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.

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). • e.g. neologism, live metaphor, or ungrammatical sentences, as well as archaisms, paradox, and oxymoron

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. • e.g., rhyme, assonance, alliteration, meter, semantic symmetry, or antistrophe.

Phonological deviation • Syllable omission “Goody, goody. Pay’er back for all those “Rise an’ Shines.”(Lies down, groaning) You know it don’t take much intelligence to get yourself into a nailed-up coffin, Laura. But who in hell ever got himself out of one without removing one nail?” (Tom, 175) “Pay’er”(=pay her ), “Rise an’ Shines”(=Rise and Shine) (from The Glass Menagerie)

Levels of language • Language is not merely a mass of sounds and symbols, but is instead an intricate web of levels, layers and links.

“That puppy’s knocking over those pot plants!” Graphology: Roman alphabet, in a 12 point emboldened ‘Georgia’ font. Exclamation mark suggests an emphatic style of vocal delivery. Phonology: Potential for significant variation in much of the phonetic detail of the spoken version (e.g. the /t/ vs. ‘glottal stop’ ; /r/ variations ; /ing/ vs. /in/ ). The social or regional origins of a speaker may affect other aspects of the spoken utterance. Morphology: 3 constituents: two root morphemes (‘pot’ and ‘plant’) and a suffix (the plural morpheme ‘s’), making the word a three morpheme cluster.

“That puppy’s knocking over those pot plants!” Grammar: A single ‘clause’ in the indicative declarative mood. It has a Subject (‘That puppy’), a Predicator (‘’s knocking over’) and a Complement (‘those potplants’). Semantics: The demonstrative words ‘That’ and ‘those’ express physical orientation in language by pointing to where the speaker is situated relative to other entities specified in the sentence( deixis) - suggest that the speaker is positioned some distance away from the referents ‘puppy’ and ‘potplants’. Pragmatic:This sentence in a two-party interaction will be understood as a call to action on the part of the addressee. Yet the same discourse context can produce any of a number of other strategies – compared with “Sorry,but I think you might want to keep an eye on that puppy..’ (politeness)

Phonological deviation 2. Pronunciation deviation from the norm Often happens to interjection, which is deliberately pronounced longer, expressing a stronger emotion When Laura and Jim talks about her unicorn, her long answer shows that she has a deep feeling toward the glass collection. “Mmm-hmmm!” (Laura, 205) (from The Glass Menagerie)

Phonological deviation • Done deliberately in regard to the rhyme, just to keep the poems rhymed. e.g. wind (N) / wind / wind (V) / waind/

Graphological Deviation • Related to type of print, grammetrics, punctuation, indentation, etc. • Parenthesis – explains a specific action / certain / separate situation, When Amanda called Tom to be seated by the table, Tom’s reply showed his reluctance to his mother. “Coming. Mother.” (He bows slightly and withdraws, reappearing a few moments later in his place at the table.) (Tom, 164)

Graphological Deviation 2. Capital “What’s the matter with you, you---big---big---IDIOT!” (Amanda, 172) Phonological and graphological deviation are often closely linked. This is because authors sometimes use respelling to provide information about how something sounds when spoken aloud, often to capture (and emphasize) regional or social variation. ‘Man….dis life no easy’ (Zadie Smith 2000)

Graphological Deviation • Poets often disregard the rules of writing. They write words in such a way without any boundaries in lines, space, or rhyme ~ E.E. Cumming ~ seeker of truthfollow no pathall paths lead wheretruth is here

Lexical Deviation • The coining of entirely new words (neologism) When he awakened under the wire, he did not feel as though he had just cranched. Even though it was the second cranching within the week, he felt fit (Cordwainer Smith 1950). The prefix fore is applied to verbs like ‘see’ and ‘tell’. T.S. Eliot uses the term ‘foresuffer’. • Functional conversion of word class But me no buts (Henry Fielding 1730)

Syntactical Deviation • Poet disregards the rules of sentence i. fastened me flesh ii. A grief ago (Dylan Thomas) iii. “the achieve of, the mastery of the things” (Hopkins, the Windhover) • Typical word order can be altered to produce particular effects What dire Offence from am’rous Causes springs (Alexander Pope 1714)

Morphological Deviation • Involves adding affixes to words which they would not usually have, or removing their ‘usual’ affixes; • Breaking words up into their constituent morphemes, or running several words together so they appear as one long word

Morphological Deviation a billion brains may coax undeath from fancied fact and spaceful time (e.e. cummings 1960) coldtonguecoldhamcoldbeefpickledgherkinssaladfrenchrollscresssandwichepottedmeatgingerbeerlemonadesoda water (Kenneth Grahame 1908)

Semantic deviation • Tranference of meaning • phrase containing a word whose meaning violates the expectations created by the surrounding words e.g., “a grief ago” (expect a temporal noun) “in the room so loud to my own” (expect a spatial adjective)

Semantic Deviation • Simile - describes one thing as another using such words “like” or “as”. Simile also has the power of making language visual and vivid. Laura’s separation increases till she is like a piece of her own glass collection, too exquisitely fragile to move from the shelf. (Glass Menagerie, 161)

Semantic Deviation 2. Metaphor – one thing describes another without the use of ‘like’ or ‘as’ “So it is! A little silver slipper of a moon. Have you made a wish on it?” (Amanda, 182)

Repetition • Another method of foregrounding • Repeated structure Blow, blow, thou winter wind (Shakespeare, As You Like It) Wind is greater than usual / the speaker has stronger feelings about it than usual

Repetition No pain felt she; / I am quite sure she felt no pain (Robert Browning, Porphyria’s Lover) Foreground the notion that the murder caused no physical discomfort to the victim, and thus signals once more the fact that the speaker might be disturbed, might be distorting the truth, and might not be giving an accurate account of the events narrated.

Parallelism • Parallel structure joins together two or more recognizably similar, yet not identical structures • Repeated elements • Can occur at all levels of language (phonological, syntactic, morphological etc.) But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities (Isaiah, 53, v)

Phonological parallelism • Rhyming verse • Alliteration, assonance, consonance "the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain." (Edgar Allen Poe, The Raven) Severus Snape," "Luna Lovegood," "Rowena Ravenclaw (characters in Harry Potter series)

Syntactic / grammatical Parallelism "Thinking less, feeling more. Doing less, being more. Fearing less, loving more.“ Also, lexical parallelism i.e. ‘less/more’ word  phrase  clause The birds are in their nests and in their nests they sing. Each morning we sing, each morning we dance, and each morning we pray.

Parallelism and effect Parallelism is more than just a repetition of sentence structure. The thoughts expressed by the repeating pattern are also repeated. When we talk of things being in parallel, then the things are of equal force and have the same tone. He was a tender young man, he was a gentle young man, he was an affectionate young man. He was the man everyone wanted. In the example above, the repeating thought is that of a young man of very warm affection. Parallelism in prose aims at basically two things: 1. Reinforcing ideas of importance and 2. Making the text more pleasurable to the reader. In the first instance, if the writer wants to reinforce a certain idea or thought, he will repeat it by using a cyclic pattern: he will repeat sentence structure or word order. The overall effect is that the reader will notice the point that he wants to emphasise and pay particular attention to it.

Parallelism and effect • Parallelism in prose also aims at pleasuring the reader. We are naturally musical by nature and are sensitive to rhythm. Not only do we notice rhythmical patterns, but we also enjoy them. Thus, a passage imbued with parallelism is enjoyable and memorable.

Parallelism and effect 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... (Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities? )

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 fairHover through wind and murky air

Forms of sound patterning • Rhyme: full rhyme, incomplete rhyme • Alliteration • Assonance • Consonance • Repetition

Full rhyme • Sometimes known as perfect, true or exact rhyme. This is a case when the stressed vowels and all following consonants and vowels are identical, but the consonants preceding the rhyming vowels are different e.g. chain, drain; soul, mole. In other words this is a case of near-exact repetitions of end-sounds. Incomplete rhyme • Also known as half-rhymes, which are not exact repetitions but are close enough to resonate e.g. supper, blubber.

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... • Novels:Godric Gryffindor, Helga Hufflepuff, Rowena Ravenclaw, Salazar Slytherin”

Alliteration • The repetition of sound, usually consonant, at the beginning of words. Example: • sweet smell of success, a dime a dozen, bigger and better, jump for joy • And sings a solitary song That whistles in the wind. (Wordsworth)

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