LANGUAGE IN LITERATURE

BBL 3207
 What is literature?
Literature, as an art, is surely to arouse the excitement
of emotion for the purpose of immediate pleasure,
through the medium of beauty (Coleridge 365).

In what way is language in the literature different from

language used in everyday communication?

I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud

I wandered lonely as a cloud

That floats on high o'er vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils;
William Wordsworth
 What is literariness
Russian Formalists defamiliarisation:
deviating from and distorting practical
language.
Mukarovsky the function of poetic
language consists in the maximum of
foregrounding of the utterance
foregrounding opposite of automatisation
(related to defamiliarisation i.e. to estrange
something is to foreground it)
Stylistic devices to compel attention
 What is literariness
Stylistic devices to compel attention
Tung (2007): verbal artfulness - proper choice and
good arrangement of all linguistic components
(phonological, morphological, syntactical, semantic,
and pragmatic).
 Foregrounding
the deautomatization of an act; the more an
act is automatized, the less it is consciously
executed; the more it is foregrounded, the
more completely conscious does it become.
may occur due to deviational or parallelistic
(syntagmatic repetition of the same
element) nature of the poem.
 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.
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 Foregrounding is realized by linguistic
deviation and linguistic parallelism.

Foregrounding

Deviation Parallelism

The Realization of Foregrounding (Leech)

 Deviation
A phenomenon when a set of rules or expectations are
broken in some way. Such as when this font has just changed.
This deviation from expectation produces the effect of
foregrounding, which attracts attention and aids
memorability.

Result: 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).
 Examples of Deviation
e. g: neologism - monomyth, quark (Joyces
Finnegans Wake)
live metaphor - "The fog comes
on little cat feet.
It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on."
(Carl Sandburgs the Fog)
ungrammatical sentences - he sang his didn't he danced his did
(Cummings anyone lived in a
pretty how town)
oxymoron - Beautiful tyrant
Honourable villain
(Shakespeares Romeo and Juliet)
 8 types of deviation:
lexical deviation
grammatical deviation
phonological deviation
graphological deviation
semantic deviation
dialectal deviation
deviation of register and deviation of historical
period.
 Parallelism
A rhetorical device characterised by overregularity or repetitive
structures
e.g: rhyme, assonance, alliteration, meter, semantic symmetry, or
antistrophe.

Because I do not hope to turn again

Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn....
T. S. Eliot's "Ash-Wednesday

I looked upon the rotting sea,

And drew my eyes away;
I looked upon the rotting deck,
And there the dead men lay.
Coleridges Rime of the Ancient Mariner
 Foregrounding
Deviation Overregularity

Phonology Graphology lexicon Grammar Meaning

Realization Form Semantics

Language

Figure 2 The Realization of Foregrounding

 Levels of Analysis

If we want to examine language in a given text, there are

different aspects of language structure which need separate
consideration.
Levels of language Areas of Language Study

The sound of language; how words are Phonology, phonetics

pronounced
The patterns and the shape of written language Graphology

The way words are constructed Morphology

The way words combine with other words Grammar
The words used Vocabulary
The meaning of words and sentences Semantics
The way words and sentences are used in Pragmatics
everyday situations
 1. The sound level
Phonemes
Rhyme
Rhythm
Alliteration
Assonance
 1. The sound level
Forms of sound patterning
Phonemes
Rhyme
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance

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 Phonemes
A phoneme is the smallest phonetic unit in a
language that is capable of conveying a
distinction in meaning. In other words,
phonemes are sounds that differentiate one
word from another (e.g. /hat/ vs. /hot/ or
/mat/).
 Rhyme
the repetition of identical sound combination of
words.
usually placed at the end of the corresponding lines
in verse.
|Humpty |Dumpty |sat on a |wall
|Humpty |Dumpty |had a great |fall
|All the kings |horses and |all the kings |men
|Couldnt put |Humpty to|gether a|gain
 Types of rhyme
1. Full rhyme
2. Incomplete rhyme
3. Assonance
4. Consonance
 Full rhyme
Sometimes known as perfect, true or exact rhyme.
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.

Incomplete rhyme
Also known as half-rhymes, which are not exact repetitions
but are close enough to resonate e.g. supper, blubber; sane,
maintain; dangerous, hostages.
 Assonance

Repetition of vowel sounds to create internal

rhyming within phrases or sentences
vowel rhymes, rhyme on the final vowel sound, but
the final consonance sound is different, e.g. flesh,
fresh, press (e); wine, life (i); head, said (e);
tries, side (i);

Hear the mellow wedding bells. (Poe)

And murmuring of innumerable bees (Tennyson)
The crumbling thunder of seas (Stevenson)
 Consonance
The repetition of two or more consonants using different
vowels within words.
Consonant rhymes, rhyme on the final consonant sound but
the final vowel sound is different, e.g. blank, think (nk);
man, wind (n); wants, cards (a); aim, brim (m); work,
hurt (r); flung, long; tale, tool

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.
(Hip-hop music)
 Rhythm
The regular periodic beat.
a unit which is usually larger than the syllable, and which
contains one stressed syllable, marking the recurrent beat,
and optionally, a number of unstressed syllables (Leech,
1969: 105).
Rhythm is related to the regularity of alternating patterns.
It may involve a succession of weak and strong stress; long
and short; high and low and other contrasting segments of
utterance. Rhythm can occur in prose as well as in verse.
 Meter
Meter is a type of rhythm of accented and unaccented
syllables organized into feet, aka patterns.
It is determined by the character and number of syllables in a
line. Meter is also dependent on the way the syllables are
accented.

Shall I compare thee to a summers day?

(Shakespeares Sonnet 18)

The above line consists of ten syllables that show a pattern of unstressed
and stressed syllables: 1st syllable unstressed, 2nd syllable stressed, 3rd
syllable unstressed. 10th syllable. The unstressed syllable is underlined
while the stressed syllable is in bold (Cumming 2006).
 Foot stress patterning
A foot is made up of a pair of unstressed and stressed
syllables. Thus, the above line altogether contains five feet (see
below):
1 2 3 4 5
Shall I..|.. compare |.. thee to..|.. a sum..|.. mers day?
 5 types of foot
"To be or not to be"
Iamb
Unstressed + Stressed Two Syllables (Shakespeares
(Iambic)
Hamlet)
"Doule, doule, toil and
Trochee trouble."
Stressed + Unstressed Two Syllables
(Trochaic) (Shakespeares
Macbeth)
Spondee heartbreak
Stressed + Stressed Two Syllables
(Spondaic)
"I arise and unbuild it
Anapest Unstressed + Unstressed +
Three Syllables again" (Shelley's
(Anapestic) Stressed
Cloud)
Dactyl Stressed + Unstressed + openly
Three Syllables
(Dactylic Unstressed
Meter depends on the type of foot and the number of feet in
a line. Below are the types of meter and the line length:

Monometer One Foot

Dimeter Two Feet
Trimeter Three Feet
Tetrameter Four Feet
Pentameter Five Feet
Hexameter Six Feet
Heptameter Seven Feet
Octameter Eight Feet

1 2 3 4 5
Shall I..|.. compare |.. thee to..|.. a sum..|.. mers day?
 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)
 Onomatopoeia
a word that imitates the sound it represents
Example:
splash, wow, gush, kerplunk

Examples: Over the cobbles he clattered and clashed in the

dark inn-yard, / He tapped with his whip on the shutters, but
all was locked and barred; Tlot tlot, tlot tlot! Had they heard
it? The horse-hooves, ringing clear; / Tlot tlot, tlot tlot, in the
distance! Were they deaf that they did not hear?
("The Highwayman" by Alfred Noyes)
 2. Graphological Level
Design, layout, spelling and lettering
The typographical arrangement of words is as
important in conveying the intended effect

she loves me
she loves me not
she loves
she loves me
she
she loves

she
- Emmet Williams
 3. Grammatical Level
Grammar itself is also composed of a number
of levels.
Sentences composed of one or more clauses (or
"simple sentences").

Clauses composed of one or more phrases.

composed of one or more words.

Phrases

Words
 Words
Word class:
noun (N),
verb (V),
adjective (A)
adverb (Adv).
 3. Grammatical Level

Sentence structure:
Single a sentence with only one verb group
Compound sentences / clauses linked simply
(and, but)
Complex sentences where subordinate clauses
are bound together by more complex connectives
and punctuation
 Consider the sentence,
'The audience might like the play but I hate it'.
Using round brackets to indicate the phrases and
square brackets to indicate the clauses, we can show
the sentence's structure as follows:
[ ( The audience) ( might like ) ( the play ) ] [ but ( I ) (
hate ) ( it ) ]
The sentence thus consists of two coordinated
clauses (ie two simple sentences joined together as
one sentence). In the first clause each constituent
phrase consists of two words, and in the second
clause each phrase consists of one word.
 3. Grammatical Level
Identifying elements of simple sentences
functions of words and phrases in sentences:
subject, predicate, object, complement,
adverbial
Predicators consist of verb phrases (e.g. 'ate', 'had been eating', 'is', 'was being') which can be
used to express tense and aspect)
function as the centre of English sentences and clauses, around which everything
else revolves they express actions (e.g. 'hit'), processes (e.g. 'changed', 'decided')
and linking relations (e.g. 'is', 'seemed') they are the most obligatory of English
sentence constituents Note that we use the term 'predicator' to be able to distinguish
the form-property (VP: verb/verb phrase) from its function in the sentence so that this
difference can parallel those for the other SPOCA elements (see below)
Examples Mary loves John (transitive predicator), John had been running
(intransitive predicator), John seems quiet (linking predicator)
Subjects consist of noun phrases (NPs) (e.g. 'a student', 'John')
function as
the topic of the sentence, and the 'doer' of any action expressed by a dynamic
predicator and normally come before that predicator subjects are the next most
obligatory element after predicators
Examples Mary loves John, The exhausted student had been running, John seems
quiet
Objects consist of noun phrases (NPs)
function as
the 'receiver' of any action expressed by a dynamic predicator, where relevant and
normally come immediately after that predicator
objects are obligatory with transitive predicators (but do not occur with intransitive or
linking predicators)
Examples Mary loves John, The exhausted student had eaten all his food, Mary has
the biggest ice cream
Complements consist of noun phrases (e.g. 'a student') or adjective phrases
(e.g. 'very happy') and normally come immediately after a linking
predicator (when they are subject complements) or an object (if
they are object complements) Complements are obligatory with
linking predicators
function as
the specification of some attribute or role of the subject (usually) or
the object (sometimes) of the sentence
Examples John is a student, The exhausted student is ill, Mary
made her mother very angry
Adverbials consist of adverb phrases (AdvPs: e.g. 'soon', 'then' 'very quickly',
prepositional phrases (PPs: e.g. 'up the road', 'in a minute' or noun
phrases (e.g. 'last Tuesday', 'the day before last')
function as
the specification of a condition related to the predicator (e.g. when,
where or how the predicator process occurred)
adverbs are the most optional of the SPOCA elements and can
normally occur in more positions than the other SPOCA elements,
though the most normal position for most adverbials is at the ends
of clauses
Examples Then John walked up the road, The exhausted student
became ill last Thursday, Next Mary stupidly made her mother very
angry on her wedding anniversary
 Words and Tropes: Transference of
Meaning
Trope: (Greek tropein, to turn) involves a
deviation from the ordinary and principal
signification or meaning of a word. Metaphor,
metonymy, personification, simile, and
synecdoche are sometimes referred to as the
principal tropes.
Involves transference:
Tropetransference of meaning
Schemetransference of order
More on Foregrounding, Deviation
and Parallelism
Foregrounding:
some parts of texts had more effect on readers than others in terms of
interpretation, because the textual parts were linguistically deviant or
specially patterned in some way, thus making them psychologically
salient (or 'foregrounded') for readers (Short 1996)
Deviation:
exploits choice and frustrates expectations that are set up either by the
linguistic system or by changing the pattern set up within the poem at
some expected point (Herman 1998).
Parallelism:
defined as where some features are held constant, usually structural
features, while others, usually lexical items - for example, words or
idioms - are varied (Short 1996).
 Foregrounding
Earlier it has been stated how foregrounding , deviation and
parallelism are special characteristics of literary language or
contribute to the literariness of language.
One way to produce foregrounding in a text, then, is through
linguistic deviation. Another way is to introduce extra
linguistic patterning into a text. The most common way of
introducing this extra patterning is by repeating linguistic
structures more often than we would normally expect to
make parts of texts PARALLEL with one another.
This: linguistic deviation + lingustic paralellism = produce the
effect of foregrounding
 Sound Parallelism
how sound patterns contribute to the
meaning and effects of poems: alliteration,
assonance and rhyme,
and also how particular sounds and groups of
sounds 'mimic' phenomena in the world to
create effects like onomatopoeia