Language Through Literature: An Introduction (Interface)

The

INTERFACE

Series

A linguist deaf to the pactlc functlon of language and a ltterary scho~ar indiffeicnt to iingulsttc problems ana unconvenant srith lbngufsttc mernodr, ilrc equally flagrant anacitron~smr- Roman JaKobsan. This statement, made over twenty-five years ago. IS no less relevant today, and 'flagrant anachron.ms'still abound. The atm of the I N E R F A C E serres ts to examtne toptcs at the 'interface' of language studies and literacy crittcrsm and in dotng so to build bridges between these tradittonally divided disctplines. Aiready published in the senes: The Discourse of Advertising Guy Cook

Twentieth-century Poetry From text to context Edired by Peter Verdonk

Language. Literature and Critical Pmcticc Ways of analys~ngtext Dovid Birch

Textuai Intervention Critrcal and creatsve strategrcr for literacy studies Rob Pope Feminist Stylistis s,, ~ i f b

Literature. Language and Change Rurl~Warerhouse ond John Slephem Liternry Studies in Action Alan Dr~rnnrond Nigel Fobb Narrative A critical lingutstrc tntroductton Michael J. Tooion Longusge in Populnr Fiction Wolier Nu11 Lnnynge, Text nnd Context Essays in styl~sltu Eddrud by MlclraelJ. To010,z The Lnnguage of Jokes Analys~ngvefoal play Delia Clriaro Language, Ideology nnd Point of View A Linguistic History ofEnglish Poetry Ricizard Bradford Literature about Lnnyage Volerte Sheplrerd

I

I I

Language

i

through Lieerature

Twentieth-century Fiction From text to context Perer Verdonk and Jean Jacgner Weire? V d e t y in Written English Texts in sonety: sometles m text Tony Ber

English in Speech and Writing Investtgattng language and literature Rebecca Hltglzer Patterns m Langunge Stylisttu for students of language and hterature Joonna Tlrornborrotv ond Shdn worerng Exploring the Lnnguage of Dmmn Fsom text t o context Edired by lonorIran Culpeper, Mick Slron ond Perer Verdonk

The Series E6itor Ronald Carter a Professor of Modern English Language at the Untventty of Nortlngham and was National Coordinator of the 'Language m the National Curriculum' Project (LINC) from 1989 to 1992.

~ a u Simpson l

Routledge Trytor hFrrnYr Gmup

LONDON AND NEWYORK

First published 1997 by Routledge I I New Fenei Lane. London EC4P 4EE Simultnneausly published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY I0001 Rcpnnted 1998,2001 T n n s f e l ~ e dto Digital Pridliw 2004

A catdogue record for this book is avvilrble from the British Library. Libm.y o/Congrss Carafogtrng m Pttblik!or,orr Dora

Simp!.on. Paul, 1959Language through litenturn : an I ~traductionI Paul Simpson. p. em.- (interface senerl I. English language--Study and tear hing. 2. English litemturStu,iy and teaching. I. Title. 11. Senes: Interface (London, Engiand) PE1065.Sl6 1996 420'7-dc20 9616141

0 1997 Paul Simpson

'I he author nar asscrred h i i moral rights I" ~ccortl2neewllh the Copyrlghl Derlgns and Parenis Act 1988

Typeset znTimes and Futun by Keyslroke, Jacaranda Lodge. Wolverhamptan Pnnled and bound in Great Bntaw by Biddles Ltd., King3 Lynn All n ~ h t reserved. s No Dart of thi:; book may ytrove1 tndustry Those grammatical words which are 'expendable' have been removed. Yet it 1s eisy to constnlct a versaon with all the deleted items reinserted: 'Ttie collapse of a holiday :rant is feared by the travel industry.' Notice, howeve,., that 'of ant1 'by' need to he retamed m

the headline as their removal would lead to ambiguity. Thls type of linguistic reduction is normally displayed by writing varieties which are constrained by space or where economy of language is at a premium. In addition to newspaper headlines, it a not surprising therefore to find such reduction in the linguisticstyle of telegrams and small advertisements. This division between grammatical and content words discussed thus far only partly explains the way in which the lexicon of English is structured. Leaving aside grammatical words for the moment. we need to look more closely at content words. Consider the following set of straightforward content words: happy; walk: horse: like Now consider the following set: unhappy; walked: horses: likable Although the second set is clearly not the same as the first, we would still not want to argue that it comprises 'different' words. Rather, it could be proposed that the items in the second list are systematicaUy related to equivalent Items in the first. What separates the two are the little particles nesting within the words in the second set. These particles ( un-, -ed, -s. -able) have an important grammatical functlon which in many respects resembles the function of the grammatical words discussed above. However, unlike grammatical words, these particles cannot stand alone. They need instead to be bound on to the stem of the content words. What this reveals is that words may be broken down into still smaller units: 'unhappy', for example, may be subdivided into 'un-' and 'happy' The two segments whlch make s are referred to as morphemes. This technical term, with up t h ~ word its predictable Greek etymology, derives from morphe meaning 'form', with the current linguistic term morphology now standing for the 'study of forms'. Returning to the two sets of examples. it can now be proposed that all of the items in the second set of examples contain two morphemes, though each, of course. still constitutes only a,single word. The particles 'un-', '-ed'. '-s' and $-able' we can label bound morphemes in so far as they must be bound to some other unit. The remainder of each word is called the root morpheme. These root

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

morphemes are principally derived from content words: they are thus responsible for carrying the bulk of the meaning of the word in which they occur. Although bound morphemes can operate only in conjunction with other elements. root morphemes may stand alone. Indeed. this capacity is illustrated by the first iist of words, wh~chis comprised solely of 'free-standing' root morphemes. These morphologically simple words, which contam only a slngle root morpheme. may be compared to morphologically complex words which contain at least one free morpheme and any number of bound morphemes. Thus, a word like 'desire' may be defined as a root morpheme constituting a single word. 'Desirable', by contrast, is complex. combining a root morpheme with the bound morpheme '-ablep.More complex again is 'undesirability' which comprises one root and three bound morphemes: un +desire + able + ity. Notice also how. in complex words of this sort, the spelling of the root may be altered to conform to the hound morphemes around it. Thus, 'des~re'becomes 'desir-'. while 'beauty' will be transformed into 'heautl-' in the formation of 'beautiful' and of the mcreasingly common complex 'heaut~cian'. Bound morphemes may be subdivided in terms of the way they conjoin with other morphemes. Operating on the general principle that it is a particle which 'fixes' on to another element. the general term reserved for any type of hound morpheme is a&. The position of a bound morpheme in relat~onto the root leads to finer distinctions. Bound morphemes placed m front of the root are referred to as prefrres: those placed ajier the root as su&es. Take, for mstance. the root 'moral'. Although this may stand alone, it also permits extensive affixation through prefixes and suffixes. The prefixes which are available are 'a-' and 'im-' denving 'amoral' and 'immoral'. Suffixes include '-~ty', '-ly' and '-ist' der~vmgrespectively 'morality', 'morally. and 'moralist'. The last of these actually permits further suffixation with '-ic' as m 'moralistic'. Other common prefixes in English are: 'dis-' as m 'disrespect'. 'un-' as ~n 'unreal'. 'bl-' as in 'bifocal' and 'pre-' as in the word 'prefix' itself. Other common suffixes are: '-ness' ('kindness'), '-ment' ('judgment'), ;-s' ('looks') and '-est' ('fastest'). Brief mention needs to be made of a third type of affix. In some languages of the world, though not in English, bound morphemes may be inserted into root morphemes. Such affixes are referred to as ir~Fres.In Bontoc. a language spoken in the Philippmes, the word for

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

'strong' is 'fikas'. If Bontoc speakers want to say 'to be strong' they simply insert the particie '-urn-' into the stem of the word deriv~ng 'fumikas'. Similar conversions can be performed on 'kilad' ('red') to y~eld 'kumilad' ('to be red') and 'fusul' ('enemy') to produce 'fumusul' ('to be an enemy'). Latin also permlts a degree of infixing. The root of the word for 'break' is 'rup-', the antecedent of modem English 'rupture'. The formation of the present tense '1 break' requires the infixation of a nasal consonant to form 'rumpo'. Although not a feature of English morphology, infixing none the less provides some potential for ~nnovationin language. Traugott and Pratt (1980: 90) offer the colloquiaf 'fan-dam-tastic' as an example of creative infixing. They also cite e e cummings's 'manunkind', which can be mterpreted as the infixing of 'mankind' with '-un-', The stylistic effect created by this complex, they suggest, n one by which the concept 'man'. m a generic sense, is portrayed simultaneously as not only unkind but also without true kin. Classifying affixes into the11 respective subcategories is one means of dealing with bound morphemes. There is another method. by which they may be classified not in terms of the11 positions m a word hut in terms of the operations they perform on that word. Some morphemes alter the meamng of the word in wkch they occur, some change it to a new word-class while others are simply needed to mamtain the grammatlcality of the sentence ~nwhich the word occurs. To return to some of the earlier examples, the 'un-' morpheme when prefixed on to 'happy' clearly denves the new meanmg of 'not happy', while 'a-' in front of 'moral' produces 'without morals'. The primary function of other types of bound morpheme 1s to alter the word-class of the root on to wh~chthey are fixed. The addition of '-ness' to 'kind'. for example. will produce a noun from an adjective. By the same token. '-ment' when added to 'judge' will convert a verb Into a noun, while '-fur when joined to 'beauty' will derive an adjective from a noun. Morphemes which perform either funct~on- that is to say, alter the meaning or the word-class of the root to which they are s does not attached - are called denvat~onalmorphemes. T h ~ category however account for all of the hound morphemes that have been discussed in this section. The addition of the suffix '-s' to the verb 'look' alters neither its word-class nor its mearung. 'Looks' is still a verb and it doesn't really differ in sense from 'look'. All that the '-s' particle does is to ensure grammatical agreement with another element in the sentence. More specifically, it signals third person

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

singular agreement with an antecedent noun. as in 'She looks' or 'John looks'. The same principle applies to the plural morpheme '-s* ('cats and dogs'), the bound morpht:me '-ed' which indicates past tense ('John walked'), and the suffu: '-3' which signals possession ('Mary's tale,': 'John's car'). These morphemes operate as grammatical SigIIpOsb, providin;: information on how the unit to which they are attached relates to other unlts m ihe same grammatical envlronment. Such morphemes are called inflectronal morphemes, or simply rnjiections. Unlike denvationai morphemes. inflections do not alter the meaning or the piirt of speech of the word in which they occur. They are requlrernents of syntax, relating units to each other and Indicating stmcnu:il relations vrithm sentences. Derivational morphemes on the other hand have t h e capacity to alter the meaning potential of a word. in s p t e of the fact that they cannot stand on their own. Here is a short summary of the pr~ncipaldifferences between ~nflectionaland derivational morphemes:

Root morohemelcontent word table; Mary: happy; fate

at!% [none &Iin English1

Derrvatronal morphemes 1 They change either the word-class or the meanlng of the root to which they are attached. 2 They may be prefixes or suffixes, e.]:.dis +respect +ful. 3 They typically occur before any ir~flectlonsm a sequence, e.g. moral + rst + s. Inflect~onalmorplremes 1 They do not change the meanin: or word-class of a word, e.g. amve, arrives and amved are ail verbs. 2 They typically indicate syntactic relations between different words in a sentence. 3 They typically occur at the end of a word, after any derivational morphemes, e.g. moral + ist + s. 4 They are only ever sni6xes. This might now be ;mappropriat*: stage at which to pause and review all of the materiai covered so f.nin this section. In order to give a clearer picture o:!' how the numerous categories and suhcategories interlock. Figure 2.1 is a sixnple schema which plots the relationshipof morphemas to words, a ~ distinguishes d the different types of affix found in English.

Non-root moroheme

m n walks;Ma@: retaken

RQtk ahappy;denvationall [always &?respect; stake

Der~vationalmomheme respectful: moral@; likable

FIGURE 2.1 The system of morphology In order to illustrate how thls model may be applied to actual stretches of language, we may perform a short analysls of the follow~ngmade-up sentence: d

Mary's tale of unhappiness disheartened her friends

The tirst step would be to Isolate the root morphemes In the sentence. These tend to be e~therfree-standing content words or Items whlch have formed morphologcal complexes wlth hound morphemes. Here rs the sentence agam, t h ~ stlme wjth root morphemes hghlighted:

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

4(0) Mary's tole of unhappiness disheartened her friends Thls IS what it iooks like with grammatical words mdicated: 4(bl Mary's tole of unhappiness disheortened h e r friends and now with derlvatlonal morphemes htghlighted: 4 [ c l Mow's tole of unhoppiness disheortened her friends and finally, with ~ntlectionalmorphemes showmg: 4(dl Mory's tole of unhappiness disheortened her friends In this way the morphological elements whrch make up the sentence can be sifted out and classified systematically. One of the things that should have emerged from the foregoing survey of the lencon is the degree of soplsticatlon and productivity of the morphological system of English. There exlsts m English a vanety of devices for the formation and derivation of new words. This offers users of the language numerous resources for innovation and creativity. The system is thus continually enriched and modified m order to meet the needs of speakers and writers, and. while some elements become obsolescent, so other new ones are created. An intngulng consequence of this process is the way ~n whlch asymmetnes and gaps develop m the lexlcon. Occasionally morpholog~cal complexes survive into Modem English, while, bizarrely, the root morphemes from wh~chthey are derived do not. Take for instance Modern English's 'uncouth' and 'unkempt'. The posltive terms upon which these words are built are 'couth' and 'kempt' and both are well attested m earlier forms of English. The first. a past tense form of Old English cunnan, onginally meant 'to he able to, to know how to'; Yet only the negatlve denvation survives. Similarly, 'kempt' appears In Chaucer as in 'He kempte his Iokkes'.' (i.e. 'he combed his locks') but again only the prefixed version has been retamed. Part of the explanation for this 1s that the marked forms achieve speclai prominence: 'uncouth' and 'unkempt' represent departures from a norm. someth~ngwhch seems worthy of speclal mention, whereas the root forms which constitute that norm represent the commonplace. Even though the unmarked root forms have since disappeared, speakers are

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

senslttve to the asymmetry which results: hence, an undergraduate's recent jocular remark 'He's very couth, you know.' The same humorous turn is also evident m the Mock Turtle's colnage of 'uglification' m Lewls Carroll's Alice's Adverzrures zrz Wonderlarid. When pressed by Alice on the validity of the word, the Gryphon supports the Mock Turtle's lex~calinnovation with inexorable lingulstlc reasonmg: 'Never heard of uglifyingl' it exclaimed. 'You know whot to beoutib is. I suppose?' 'Yes,' soid Alice doubtfully: 'it means to make onvfhing - pretier.' 'Well then,' the Gryphon went on. 'if you don't know what to uglify is you ore o s~mpleton.'~

-

-

Morphological asymmetry creates other types of gap m the lex~con.It is a feature of many words that they exlst only in their root forms, res~stingmorpholog~caidevelopment. Thus, where 'clean' and 'happy' may be prefixed by 'nn-', the roots 'dirty' and 'sad' cannot. This restrict~onIS what permits the experimentation in the following line from e e cummings which IS discussed by Traugott and Pratt (1980: 33). The last word in the sequence is relevant here: [love] IS most mod and moonly and less it shall unbe When prefixed on to verbs like 'do', 'locki and 'screw', the morpheme 'un-' has a reversatwe function. It encourages a reading along the lines of 'reverse the actlon of the process expressed by the root'. Yet here cummmgs forms a complex with the verh 'to be', a verh whch resists prefixrng of this sort, creat~nga new type of sense. Although 'unbe' shares some of the quality of parallel expresstons like 'die' or 'not be'. 11also suggests a process of reversal from a state of berng to a state of not belng which the other items do not. Gaps in the lexicon are also responsible for the process of innovation known as back-formatron. The standard procedure for denving new words IS for the root to precede the complex: 'write', for example, will convert naturally to 'writer' just as 'read' yields 'reader'. In back-formation, however. the complex form actually precedes the more s~mpleform. The verb 'beg' is a prime illustration of

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

this process. Historically, it did not, :as mght be imagmed, produce the root for 'beggar': rather, it was ;actually derived from 'beggar', What appears to have happened is that 'beggar' has been interpreted as 'agentive' in the sense of 'someone aho begs', whereas the genuine etymological origin of the word is 'beghard', a name for a medieval brotherhood. This re-interpretation rtr misanalysis - whatever one chooses to call it - resul1:s in the alignr~entof 'beg' with other regular verb-noun paradigms like 'read/reatler' and 'wntei writer'. Backformation in English .-. - is ilso resoonsible for the derivation of the verh 'burgle' from the noun 'burglar' as well as the verb 'diagnose' from the noun 'diagnosis'. In fact, new verbs enter the lex~conall the tlme through this process: witness recent addihons like 'giftwrap', 'peddle', 'enthuse', 'gatecrash' - all of which lave been derived from noun complexes. Back-format~onis also widely employed in the format~on of nonce-words (words made un 'for the nonce'. for use at a snecific r-----moment) wh~chdo not take hold in the lexicon but none the less provide an outlet for humour and wit in everyday interact~on.It can thus account for a recent remark by z therapist friend who said she was going out to 'therap' someone. or a former colleague who, when informed about a particiilar student's r,ulnerahility, replied 'Yes, you could easily vul him'! area of the E.nglish lexicon is its capacity to Another product~v~: form new words by con~blnmgtwo or more root morphemes. The words derived from this highly flexible process are known as compounds. T h ~ capacity s for compoundirg can be attributed m part to the German~corigins of English. lnde.:d, some words which survlve from Old English were originally com.?ounds even though the roots which formed the compound have t,een lost. Our modem word 'nightingale' is histoncaliy derived from a compound of niht 'night' and galan 'to sing' prodrtcmg the rather charming 'night-singer'. All sorts of permutations a r possible m the formation of compounds. with the major word c1a:;ses able to enter into combinations with a wide range of other item?. Table 2.1 is a matrix which illustrates the compounding possibilitiej of Modem Ilnglish. For example, the first element of the word 'hovercraft' is a vt:rb and the second a noun. In the compound 'bitterswet:t' both elements are adjectives. The principle of compounding lends ~tselfwell to creativity 1x1 language. Just look at the way it IS employed in the follow~ng paragraph from the 'Proteus' episode of James Joyce's Ulysses (1922)? ~

Airs romped around him, nipping and eager otrs. They ore coming, woves. The whitemaned seahones, chomp~ng, brrghtwindbridled, the steeds of Manonoon.

I

TABLE 2.1 Matrix of compounding possibilities First element

~~~

Verb Noun Adjectrve Grammatical word

Second element Verb

Noun

Adjective

Grammatical word

st~rfry sightsee deepfry offload

hovercraft bullshit goldfish outdoors

holdall seasick bittersweet overdue

takeaway handout blackout without

~

Two roots make up 'whitemaned', while there are three in 'bnghtwmdbridled'. Compounding of this sort offers the potentla1 to create rich densities of meaning, with individual content words compressed Into multiple conceptual clusters. Notice also how in the environment of references to 'steeds', '-bridled' '-maned' and 'Mananaan' (a Celtic god of the sea), even an established English compound like 'seahorse' can acquire new significance. Before closing the more theoretical part of this chapter, it is worth considering a few more types of word formatton. Leaving aside the stra~ghtfonvardborrowing of foreign words, here is a checklist of a few of the other commod word-formation processes in English, along with definitions and illustrat~ons: Type

Definition

Examples

blend

A fusion of two root morphemes, where only parts of the words are joined and the remainder deleted

'breathalyser' (breath 'Chunnel' (Channel + tunnel); 'smog' (smoke + fog)

clippmg Where a word of two or more syllables 1s shortened, without a change m meanmg or function

i analyser);

.pram' (perambulator); 'flu' (influenza); 'exam' (exammahon); 'fridge' (refrigerator)

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

acronym

1

Words formed with the initial letters of a phrase

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

'nylon' (New York + London): 'WaaP (Women's Auxiliary Air Force); 'AIDS' (Acquired ImmunoDeficiency Syndrome)

This survey of word-formation concludes the introduction to the lexicon of English. The task now will be to investigate the ways m which the materlal assembled m this and the prev~oussectlon can be used m textual analysis.

2.4.1 Using linguistic models for stylistic anaiysis This is the first part of the practicai component of the chapter. in this subsection, an analysis will be provided of a poem by the American modernist poet e e cummings; m the next, the analysis is developed further into a workshop activity. A few short examples of cumm~ngs's poetry have already been used as illustrations in the previous section. Thls should have offered a foretaste of how productive the language of this writer 1s for graphological and morphological analysis. In this subsection, a more sustained analysis of a complete text will be undertaken. One toplc that will nor recelve a great deal of attention here is the general question of the literary 'ment' of cumrmngs's work. This is sunply not the place to provide a detailed evaluation of cummings's s contribution to American literature, or to offer a case for h ~ inclusion withln or exclusion from the canon of 'great' literature. These issues are best left to the students of cummings, who, it must be added. are thoroughly divided both on the quality of his poetry and its relationship to the literary canon. Fnedman, for example, while acknowledging the 'aura of inadequacy' which attaches to cummings's reputation, none the less maintains that he is 'one of the great creators of our tlme' (Friedman 1972: xi). Comparably ambivalent statements have been offered on the literary genre to which the cummings oeuvre should belong: classifications range from 'nihilist' to 'romantic anarchist' (Wegner 1965: 63). Whatever position one takes on canonical or genenc issues, the linguistic expenmentatlon which much of cummmgs's work displays a welt suited to the type of linguistic frameworks assembled over the last two sections.

The text chosen for analysis is one of the many short untitled poems in the volume 95 Poems whlch cummings published in 1958. In the volume's consecutive sequence of ninety-five poems. it is numbered 55 and its first line is 'you no',' There is no motivation behlnd this choice other than that it appears to lend itself to the type of stylistic exercise in which we are engaged. It certainly hasn't received much attention from the critical establishment: my scan of the major studies of cummings revealed not a single reference to this poem. Although no single text IS likely to display the full range of graphological and morphological devices identified in sections 2.2 and 2.3, thls one should none the less offer a locus for exploring many such techniques. Set in rules overleaf, then, is poem number '55'. A cursory inspection of this text should prompt connections with the material presented in the previous two sections. In linguistic terms, the poem explolts the interactlon between the written system of language, principles of word-formation and psycholinguistic perceptual strategies. Deployed throughout the text are devices which manipulate the visual medium of language, devices which are supplemented with deviations from standard word-formation. This combrnation of visual tricks and striking morphological structure can be vlewed as a product of the complex intersection of the graphological and morphological systems. Beginning with graphology, we can now investigate more systematically the ways in which these effects are created. The poem bears all the characteristlu of the cummings stylistic blueprint. Typical of hrs work is the 'deformation' of standard orthography, layout and punctuation. Perhaps the best known of these techniques is the use of lower case for items which would normally be printed in upper case, such as the first word of a line or the personal pronoun 'I' -not to mention the spelling of the poet's own name. By contrast, when upper case ISused, it is used in the most unlikely of environments: in thls text it is restricted exclusively to comparative and superlative terms ('Less'; 'Most'; 'More'). These terms thus become foregrounded in a text where lower case is the norm. Other significant graphological devices include the logogram '&'. This feature was discussed early m section 2.2. where it was pointed out how this and related symbols are situated at the extreme of the wntten system of language. These symbols have no direct spoken counterpart; rather they need to be 'translated' into words. In this instance, then, the logogram will 'stand for' the word 'and'.

--

FROM S H A P E S TO WORDS

you no

I

FROM S H A P E S TO WORDS

The use of the logogram is supplemented by the extensive use of parenthesis, often with both types of symbol tled together so closely that they are adjoinmg. Thls creates patterns like that at line 6:

lice nobod Y wonts Less(not to men

body wonts Most

butiing it mildly much)

be be cause ever

Where logograms and parenthesis are used to close up elements within a line, the line layout itself serves to break up linguistic elements. Each single line of text is followed by a two-line space, whrch is in turn followed by a cluster of three lmes of text. Thrs cluster IS followed by another two-line space before the whole pattern begins again. The shortness of each individual line makes the text almost columnar in format. In fact, apart from the final line (which will be discussed later), no line contains more than five syllables, and the average for the text as a whole comes out at around two syllables per line. All of these graphological features intersect subtly with patterns at the level of morphology, so it is impossible to explore the stylistic effects of any one level in isolation. Operating in tandem with graphological design, for instance, is a morphological technique which exploits the principles of word-formation. Line endings are used to produce morphological breaks, and these breaks subvert the reading process by forcing a senes of perceptual 'double-takes'. The specific strategies which engender this linguistic 'backtracking' can be grouped into four types of morphological device. The &st of these is where a word a simply broken into two parts, with neither of these parts resembling an item which could make sense on its own. Put another way, the two resulting segments do not resemble free morphemes. Here is an example of this type of breakage, with the word 'nobody' becoming:

wants more

I&more &

still More) whot th,?

--

hell ore we all mo~tic~ons?

46

Thls type of breakage is the most lingu~sticallyunproductive of the four in that neither 'nobod' nor 'y' resembles any other meaningful unlts in the lexrcon. The same cannot he said, however, of the remaming three types of morphologrcal expenmentatron in the poem. Ail three of these strategres are based on the pnnclple that parts of some words happen purely by chance to resemble other root morphemes.

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

The first strategy involves maktng a split in a word so that the first s 'notice' is element looks like a free morpheme. Through t h ~ process, carved up into 'no' and 't~ce'(lines 1-21? with only the first element form~nga 'real' word. In this instance. tt produces the negattve marker 'no', a grammatical word. Similarly, 'mentton' becomes 'men' and 'tton' (lines 5-6) and while 'men' resembles an actual content word in the Iexlcon, 'tion' has no such counterpart. The cruc~alpoint 1s that none of the words so broken up 1s actually a morpholog~cal complex tn the first place. None of them contains more than one morpheme. The particle '-tion' is not a suffix of 'men' and 'men-' is certainly not a prefix of 'tion'. Rather, the cummings techntque 1s built on analogy: words are fragmented as if they were genuine morphological complexes. Moreover. the distance which 1s placed between these fragments contributes further to the illus~onthat they can be Interpreted as Independent units. Consider, for example, the manner in whtch 'nottce' and 'mentton' are split:

between the two elements stmply ensures that the cognltlve volre face IS all the easter to brlng off. Interestmgly, the same tactlc is employed on the rematntng example from thts category of morpholog~calbreakage. The ~nterpretatlonof 'ever' at tine 16 needs to be re-asstmilated to 'everybody' when 'ybody' appears after a two-line separation: be be cause ever

The third type of morpholog~cal breakage IS effectively a reversal of the second. In tlus category it is the second and not the first part of the split whtch resembles a free morpheme. The only exponent of thts type tn the text occurs at lines 7-8:

you no &i

fice nobod y wonts

Less(not to men

Unlike the strategy employed for the hreak-up of 'nobody', a two-line space IS used here for both of these splits. Placlng a substantial gap between these segments helps to tngger the type of linguistic trompes l'oeil and perceptual tncks whlch were discussed in section 2.2. Because the reading process is predicated upon the retrieval of coherence and grammaticality, there is a tendency to search out chunks which look like complete units of meanmg. The appearance of 'men' at the end of the fifth iine looks precisely like one such unit. However, the later addition of 'tion' requires a revtsion of the original hypothes~s,and the insertion of a relatively substantla1 gap

ob serve no Here the second part is the one whtch has the same shape as another Item m the lextcon. But agatn the break 1s 'false' tn that -ob' 1s not a bound morpheme whtch can he prefuted on to root morphemes. Like all the other types. thts type of break creates only the illusion of a genutne morpholog~calsplit. The fourth and final type IS somewhat more soplust~cated. T h ~ 1s s where a split a placed so that the resulttng components bot/~ resemble complete words tn the lexlcon. A sustatned pattern of thls type b e ~ n at s line 13: may

The grammatical words. 'maybe' and 'because', are each broken up Into segments. These segments are not constituent morphemes

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

because both words comprise only a slngle morpheme. Rather, the split is manipulated so that each par1 resembles another morpheme. Thus. 'maybe' yields tlie modal auxiliary 'may' and the verb 'be', while 'because' produc(:s 'be' and th~:content word 'cause'. Even a word like 'nobody', which had previc.usly been subjected to the first type of breakage at lines 3-4, can be broken m a way that produces other morphemes. So. 2.1 lines 8-9, it now produces 'no' and 'body' The different types of morphological device employed throughout the poem can be captured quite: neatly by means of a matrix like Table 2.2.Thls demonstrates the field of possible lexical p e n u t a tions. ranging from the breaking of a word into two meaningless chunks to the production of two elements which are the same as other free morphemes in the lexicon.

TABLE 2.2 Morphological devices in poem '55' First portproddces 'fiee' morpheme

Secona pnrtprodrrces 'free'morpheme

Example m text

x x

'nobod' + 'y' 'men' + 'tion' 'ob' + 'serve' 'be' + 'cause'

\I

i

Of course. as ha:; been pointed out, all this morphoiogrcal experimentation a buill. on an analol:y with genulne morphological complexes. All of'the examples covered so far - with the possible exception 'nobody' - have been dividsd into 'false' constituents. For instance. whereas a word like 'becllm' genuinely comprises the bound morpheme 'be' and the rocot 'calm', the word 'because' exhibits no such parallel structure. Similarly, while the root 'observe' may be prefixed and suffixed to creale 'unobserved', the root itself cannot be subdivided into more minlmal forms. The same principle extends, for that matter. to the root 'riotse'. It is this type of 'breakage by analogyi whlch fi~rmsthe stylirtlc cornerstone of the text and creates the perceptual 11:-orientations which permeate the poem. Before assessing the implicatiot~sof these techniques, a bnef word is necessary on tlie last line ol the poem. In many respects. this line carries a great deal of stylistic weight as it breaks many of the textual patterns established prior to this point. Its relative length. for one thing, sets it apart from the cther lines of the poem. It also

displays a degree of grammatical wellformedness not shared by the s coherence foregrounds it in a remainder of the text: mdeed. ~ t very text where linguistic fragmentation has become the norm. Moreover, where the grammatical mood of the entire poem up to this point has been declarative (the i o n standardly used for maklng statements), it switches twice in the space of the final seven words. The sequence 'what the hell' is erclan~afive,while the final clause 'are we all morticians?' is mterrogntwe. The poem thereby concludes with a grammatical structure used to ask a (perhaps rhetorical) question. The final word of this sequence - itself the longest word of the entlre poem - produces what might be best described as a 'morphologlcal pun'. In American English the word 'morticiani performs the same function as British English's 'undertaker'. In terms of morphology, the American English version is built From the Romance-language root 'mort-' and the derivational morpheme '-ician', to form a complex which means something along the lines of 'practitioner of death'. In fact, the word 'beauticlan' discussed in section 2.3 is constructed on a similar principle. However, given the environment in which it occurs in the text. 'morticrau' acquires new significance. In the three-line cluster which precedes the last line. the comparator 'more' is repeated three times. ultimately receiving the large case which is reserved for only a very few words in the poem.This lingulstrc context projects a second reading for 'mortician': one whereby it may be interpreted as a complex derived from the items 'more' and 'tician'. The literal meaning of this complex would be someone who practises the concept 'more', or to push the pun a little further, a 'tician' of 'moreness'. As to the thematic significance of thrs complex. it plays presumably on the opposition between 'more' and 'less' upon which the bulk of the meaning of the text rests. The constant play on these opposlng values, heightened through the use of upper case and culminating in the pun of the finai line, constitutes a fairly direct critique of acquisitiveness, consumerism and avarice. Readers interested in extending the scope of this critique may wish to argue, on the basls of their analysis, that there are still greater significances embedded within the text. It may perhaps be interpreted as a covert attack on western capitalism, a disguised call for responsible citizens to reduce therr living standards, or, slmply, as an impassioned plea to everyone to cease to be 'ticians' of 'more'. So far in the analysis, quite a lot of attentton has been paid to the formal properties of the morphological and graphological devlces

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

of the poem. But what can be said about thejirncrron of these dev~ces and how dependent upon them is the meaning which is projected by text? One Important consequence of the intersection between these unusual patterns of graphology and morphology is the effect it has on the reading process. A type of 'game' developed, in which two readmg strategies are brought into competition with one another. The first of these is the familiar line-by-tme readmg strategy, where the eye makes gradual progress vertically down the page. However, thls strategy 1s challenged by the morpholog~calfragmentation noted above where vertical processing is disrupted, and where instead a lund of 'horizontal' processing is encouraged. On thls horizontal axis. lines may be interpreted individually as little isolated statements. Because of the boundaries strategically placed around them. sequences like 'not to men' at line 5 look at first glance like selfcontmed unlts of meaning. Further progression down the vertlcal axrs will lead to the reconstruction of 'ment~on'horn 'men', and so the horizontal reading will eventually be overridden. Of course, thls reading game is completely invalidated if any attempt is made to read the poem aloud - such IingulsUc expenmentauon is almost entlrely dependent on the visual system of language. To that extent. it is 'poetry of the eye' and not 'poetry of the voice', with cummings hunself reputedly remarking that his work was meant to be seen and not heard (Dumas 1974: 72). In order to give some idea of how dependent the text is on its graphology, readers may care to try to read the poem aloud for themselves. You will, I unagine, he faced with two mutually exclusibe options. The first of these would be to attempt it by preserving the horuontal axis at the expense of the vertical. Llne endings could he interpreted as pauses and so each line would be read In isolation, with no attempt to reconstruct the text on the verucal axis. This would sound extremely odd and be vutually unintelligible to any audience who did not have the written verslon in front of them. Moreover problems of pronunciat~onare likely to be encountered with sequences like 'uon least)&? and 'ybody'. In adoptlng the second reading option, the text could be reassembled so that the dismptlons were removed and be read as if none of the graphological and morphological devices existed. But effectively (re)punctuatmg the poem defeats entirely the purpose and funct~onof its original stylistlc itructure. More importantly, this (refpunctuation of the text would bnng it close to standard punctuauon and orthography, producing the followmg less than exhilarating aphonsm:

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

You notice nobody wants less (nof to mention leostj, and I observe nobody wonts most (not. pulling it mildly, much). Moybe because everybody wants more ond more and still more. What the hell! Are we all morticians?

A less than profound critique perhaps of the soc~almores whlch underpin western culture. If anything, such a reconstruction reveals the amount of stylistic currency that can be gamed by the exploitation of language's v~sualmedium. Now stripped of its key linguistic devices. the text becomes, literally, prosaic, and the message which 11 projects IS rendered bland and unimagmative. Once the trlcks of the eye are removed, the poem's dependency on the stylistlcs of the written mode - perhaps at the expense of everything else is revealed. The rendering down of a 'deformed' text into a more prosalc version is a practlce which can be extended product~velyin a number of different directions. It facilitates, for example, a klnd of stylistlc reversal, enabling the conversion of straghtfonvard texts into defamiliarised ones. In other words. if a list of suitable morpholog~cal and graphological operations can be collated, then thrs list can form the stylistic bluepnnt for creative and amusing 'deformations' of language's written mode. The next subsect~onwill outline a practical language-based activity whlch is based precisely on this prrnclple and which is designed to enrich knowledge about the morphology and graphology of English further.

-

2.4.2 Extending the analysis: a workshop It m~ghtbe useful to beg~nthls subsection by summarrsing the stylistic strategies which were teased out in the course of the analysts in the prevlous subsection. Isolating an inventory of key linguist~c devices allows us to explore the ways in which these operations may he performed on other texts. Here then is the basic stylistic 'blueprint' for the cummlngs text. set out in the form of a list of morpholog~caland graphological axioms:

O M SHAPES TO WORDS

i

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

Strategy I Disrupt predictable patterns of l a ~ g eand small case, plac~ngheavy emphasls on the use of small case in unusual envrronments. Straregy 2 Deploy extensrvely fi:atures that a-e exclusive to language's wntten mode. making parttcular use of logograms and parenthetical symbols. Strategy 3 Break up lines of ccennected pros.: to form shorter, grammatically mcomplete segments arrange thes~:segments m a columnar format. Srralegy 4 Split up words Into smaller particle:;. These particles may be anything from two 'meanmglcss' segments to two particles which resemble genuine words in the lexicon. Dev~atlonin language remalnj devlant for only a linnted penod of tlme, and when disruptive patterns become established tn the text they begin to assume a kmd of noirn of the11 own. Once thls 'norm of oddity' 1s establislied. the way IS prepared for a further type of stylisuc exploitat~on.Strategy 5 subverts those very patterns whlch were strik~ngin the first place: Srrategy 5 Break any of the patterns established through the use of Strategies 1-4. For example: (a 8 use upper case where the text has established a dominant pattern of small case; ( b ) Increase line length or word length m the environment of shorter lines or words; (c) change the grammattcat mood if a particular tvpe has become the textual norm (e.g. declarative to mterrogattve).

P

Once a stylistic blueprint has been abstracted from the analysls In thls manner. it can be re-shaped into a set of creative and practical exercises. Here, for example. is a simple workshop actlvlty that I designed for use in my undergraduate English language classes. The activity permits experimentation within the parameters of the blueprint derived from the stylistic analysis. Thls one is designed to supplement the anal:& of cummings's poem 55, although it can easily be adjusted to account for virtually any other text in the cummlngs oeuvre.

Readers may he interested to know what to expect in terms of the outcome of such an exercise, so here are the results of a partlcularly successful session with a small group of second-year British undergraduates taking a lauguage-based option in 1991. Of the eight short texts elicited through Activity 1, the following was selected for graphological and morphological embellishment. It is the musing of one participant on the important question of leather jackets and gravlty: My leother flying jacket cannot fly. Neither con ptanos fly and they ore quite heavy. So how the hell does a lumbo let fly? The group then embarked on Activity 2, applylng the set of strategies 1 to 5 identified above. The result is given in the ruled text overleaf. Hopefully the broad principles which underpin the transformation of the text should be clear by now, so a detailed explanation of how the 'poem' was produced will not he necessary. Instead, a few general comments on the manner by which the blueprint has been ~mplementedshould help. Predictably, extensive use is made of lower case where upper case is expected. However, this pattern IS itself subverted when upper case is deployed in unexpected environments (see 'Ry' and 'Jack' in lines 1and 2). Features of the written mode of language, such as logograms and parenthetical symbols, proliferate in the text (e.g. lines 6 and 10). Sentences are broken up so that a columnar format is produced, while words are split so that a range of new forms emerges. Some lexical splits produce acceptable units, such

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

my leolher Fly ing Jock et con not Fly

11up later. So taken was he wlth the product that he actually offered st to a umverssty literary magazme whereupon it was promptly published! To my knowledge (and perhaps thankfully, gsven its ongms) the true provenance of the 'poem' has never been divulged.

2.5 Summary

n (either con Pio? no1 s Fly &the y'ore . . . quit. eh? eovy So Ho W. T. he hell1 do es o lurnb? O. jet1 Fly

'B

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

as the bteak-up of 'piano' at lines 7-8 into the proper name 'Pia' and the negative partscle 'no'. Other splits produce meaningless particles. like k g ' , 'et', and 'n' at lines 2. 3 and 5 respectively. These lexscal breaks often create linguistic rrompes l'oeil, where the lnitial interpretations have to be revssed in the light of later tea. The seemingly independent unit 'quit' at line 12, for instance, needs to be assimilated to 'quite' in the light of subsequent segments. By the same token, the first line ('my leather Fly'), which has the appearance of a conceptually complete unit, needs to be revrsed progressively in the light of the next two lines. Perceptual strategies are thus manspulated in a manner similar to the technique exploited in the original cummings poem. By way of a footnote. it is worth commenting on the fate of the 'deformed' 'text which was produced m the course of the present workshop. The student who was responsible for the orrgsnal composition made a note of the group's embellished versson and then typed

As is conssstent with the general rationale of the book, this chapter has sought to integrate linguistic theory and practice, offenng a selection of critical tools whsch can he employed in textual analys~s. In sectsons 2.2 and 2.3, a model for the analysls of graphology and morphology was developed. This framework was then applied to a short e e cummsngs poem in section 2.4. Appended to thss analysis was a proposed workshop m stylistic,, the object of which was to develop a fuller understanding of the theoretical model. When desigmng the linguistic model, it seemed good sense to make st as powerful as possible so that it would be able to handle graphological and morphological devices beyond those realised sn a single short poem. Certainly, no one text will he likely to realise every possible permutation, so it is best to be prepared for other types of Innovation. Furthermore, there are a number of types of morphological and lexical deviation which, although not exhibsted by poem 55. occur repeatedly in the cummings 'corpus'. A glance through collectsons of hls work reveals a number of recumng stylistic formulae, all of which can he comfortably accommodated withn the present model. An especially common strategy is the idiosyncratic use of denvauonal morphemes to derive unusual. 'nonce' complexes. The prefix 'un', for example. 1s regularly comblned with normally incompatible roots to form complexes like 'unstrength and 'unhe' (see section 2.3). Suffixes, if anything, are even more widely exploited by cummmgs. Commonly occurring bound morphemes like 'ish'. 'ness' and 'ly' are tacked on to roots with whch they would never normally conjoin, yielding constructions l i e 'neverBh', 'muchness' and 'happeningly'. This process may even be duplicated within ssngle stems: 'silverlyness' mcorporates not one but two suffures ('ly' and 'ness'). An extension of thss tactic is the use of grading suffixes along with roots which would not normally permit gradation. Thus, nougradable terms l i e 'last' and 'chief receive the superlatsve 'est' suffix to produce 'lastest' and 'chsefest'. Even if the root is gradable, the 'err

FROM SHAPES TO WORDS

FROM SHAPES TO WIORDS

suffix is often preferred when the strict~reof grammaticality demands the intensifier 'more'. On this pattern, the adjective 'beautiful' will not become 'more beautiful' but rather 'beiiutifuler'. The compounding of one or more root morphemes is also common, resulting in constructions l i e 'yellowgreen' and 'mostpeople'. Finally, new forms are also created by analogy with the process of back-formation (see section 2.3), with new verbal forms being derived from related nouns. This explains the conversion of 'Septembe::' Into a verbal particle in the sequence 'septembering arms of year extend'. The central aim of the chapter has been to use textual analysis as a means of obtaining insights into a complex feature of English language. Of necessity, literary-criticai responses to aspects of cummings's work have been. largely overlooked. Now that cummings's style has been examined in detail and oiher texts have been generated on the basis of h ~ stylistic s profile, readers may be interested in what the cntics have made of cummmgs's e:cperimentation with language. The many essays on thm: style of curnmings offer little agreement on the function of the linguistic techniques which have become his stock-in-trade. With pa~ticularregard to the dev~cesidentified in the course of our own analysis, critical commentary has been diverse to the point of absurdity.The use of parenthesis has probably received more attention than all the other Imtten mode markers which cummings employs, and has also been subject to most diffuse and inconsistent interpretahons. Kidder (1979: 13-14), while presenting a set of rules on how to 'read' cummmgj, offers the following straightforward piece of a'dvlce: 'Treat pare~ithesiscarefully . . .On some occasions.. .we must ignore the parentheses.' No less obscure is Baum's (1972: 112) claim that parenthesis suggests 'the s~multaneousness of imagery' and highlights cumnnngs's 'extreme honesty as a poet'. The extensive deployment of lower case has also become the sub~ectof much comment, with a great deal of interest in the small case personal pronoun 'i'. Watson (1972: 40) points out that 'the little naked swaggenng "i" asserts its reference to one real and s~nglebeing', while Baum (1972: 115, contends that 'By rejecting the pronoun "I" Cummings [SIC]assumes a casual humility' which 'dissociates the author from the speaker cf the poem'. Much discussion has centred on cummings's prolific use of logograms, which are often referred to by the critics ;is typographs or, erroneously, as ideograms. T o Wegner (1965: 157) they are s~mply'amoment of coalesced awareness', but to Dumas (1974: 72) they r:onstrtute 'a means by which

j ! I

j I

! !

1

nature's dynamic process may be glimpsed, and the glimpse be passed on to the reader. who may thereby achieve transcendental v~s~on'. Readers may assess for themselves the validity of these interpretations, but on this evidence, it would appear that cumm~ngs's experimentation with language generates a great deal of interpretal shows just how tive 'space'. The diversity of c r ~ t ~ c acommentary variable mterpretations can be. It also problematises the methods by wh~chcritics evaluate lnnovatlon and creativity in language. While the remit of t h ~ schapter has simply been to provide a systematic introducr~onto graphology and morphology, at least foundations will have been laid for a method of critical interpretation - a method which is, moreover, predicated upon a thorough workmg knowledge of how linguistic systems operate in the context of modernist poetry.

Suggestions for further reading

Readers who w~shto lnvestlgate further the lingu~stictopics covered m t h ~ chapter s should find the followng matenal useful. Fromkm and Rodman (1978: 138-59) offer a useful and accessible introduct~onto bas~cmorphology, while a more techn~caland advanced study of the subject can be found in Matthews (1974). Two books specifically on wnting systems are Sampson (1985) and Coulmas (1989). A comprehens~vesurvey of word-formation m English IS Adams (1973).

Stylistic applications An extremely good stylistic application of both morphology and graphology 1s provided by Traugott and Pratt (1980: Chapters 2 and* 3). In addition to the specific references cited over the course of the chapter, stylist~cexplorations of this aspect of the language system include: Leech (1969: 39-44), on 'deviation' in poetic language: Carter (1989)- on stylistics and 'concrete poetry'; Van Peer (1993), on graphology and concrete poetry. Van Peer has also wntten a stylistic analysis of e e cummings's poem 'yes is a pleasant country' (1987). He uses a cognitive model of language to investigate the relationship between reading strategies and literary comprehension.

Chapter

3

meanings: an introduction to lexical semantics 0

*

*

3.1

Introduction

62

3.2

Words and mennings

64

3.3

Words and combinations

77

3.4

Techniques for stylistic analysis

84

3.4.1 Cioze procedure and stylistic analysls

85

3.4.2 Muftlple cholce text and stylistrc analysls

93

3.5

Summary

96

Suggestions for further rending

98

-

1

WORDS AND MEANINGS

#

! i

i 3.1 Introduction

1 j

That famous philosopiier of language, Humpty Dumpty, has t h ~ s to say on the meaning of words: "'When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone. "it means just what I choose it to mean neither more nor les:;."'I Were Dumpty's princ~ple to gain un~versalacceptance amongt language-users. the outcome would be linguist~canarchy. As speal:ers would cease to be accouutable for anything t h q said, so a potentially infinite number of meanlngs could be mapped on to an:<s~ngleword they uttered. The linguistic 'contract' that governs everyday interaction would s~mpfy break down and any r8:cognisahle s).stem of verbal communlcatlon instantly evaporate. For example, rsaders of this hook may have happily assumed that they were reatling an introduction to English language. Yet were its author to invoke the Dumpty pnnciple, all sorts of meanings could be ascribed to it on a whim: it could become, variously, a discussion ,of hee-keepin:, a treattse on the life cycle of the mackerel, a discourse on medie~.alhygiene and so on. Outside the interactive world of Alice's Wor.derland, the Dumpty princ~ple does not, of course. obtarn, and intrrlocutors can rest assured that there 1s at least some inyeractive consc:nsus about what a word means. Although never absolute or immutable. words routinely designate specific objects, processes and concepts. and these designations form part of the very bedrock of coherent human commun~cation. Explaining precis~:ly what. and how, a word means will be the maln alm of t h ~ chapter. s There will fi>llowan outline of the princ~pal types of lexical meanliig m English. as well as an account of the ways in whiah word-meanmgs interact with one another. Poetry will, again, form the nucleus: for much of the discussion of this aspect of the language system. although it will be stressed throughout that creatlve or striking patterns of meaning are a feature of many types of discourse.

-

i!

It has never been easy to attach an exhausuve, self-contained meaning to a word which will account sufficiently for its use in all contexts. Decisions about where exactly to place a boundary on meantng have exercised linguists and philosophers a great deal; indeed. even the meaning of the concept 'meaning' has itself come under scrutiny in the relevant literature. The task of specifying what a word means is influenced by at least four key factors. F i s t of all. meanings shift over time, which is why dictionary-makers often have difficulty keep~ngup with the meaning of a word in its current usage. A case in point is the word ctrauvm~r.Whereas its 'official' meaning designates someone who is distrustful of foreigners. it rarely means anything other than 'sexist' when applied in popular usage. A second factor is that the meaning of a particular word may vary in relation to the context in wh~chit is used. Take, for example, the word terrific. Like chauv~nrsr.this term has undergone a change over time: in this instance, the original meaning of 'instilllig terror' has been replaced by its current funct~onas an expression of high approbation. Yet even in current use, the term displays considerable diversity of meaning. Where it is wholly positlve under one set of conditions ('That film was absolutely rerrific!') the very opposlte will he intended by its use in a context like: 'Terrijc! You've just erased all my data from the computer!' A third factor affecting word-meaning arises from the cross-cultural differences that may pertain between users of the same language. For instance, if you are deemed polit~callyliberal in the United Kingdom you can a t least consider yourself a tolerant individual: yet to be called so in North Amer~cacarries with it no such guarantee of integrity. The fourth and final factor concerns the many pairs of words in English which display seemingly identical meanings. For instance, while brotherly and fraternal purportedly 'mean' the same thing, their privileges of occurrence - as well as the varylng degrees of formality which each conveys - are tn no way identical. It is factors such as these whlch have polansed debate about word-meaning Into two main schools of thought. One school argues for a strictly context-free theory of meaning which is divorced from actual usage: the other for a contextually informed model which examines words in their natural environments of use. In view of our stylistic emphasis, both approaches will need to be represented if our basic schema IS to provide a workable and coherent account of

WORDS AND MEANINGS

I I

WORDS AND MEANINGS

1

words and the11 meanings. This chapter therefore tnes to establish a model that accounts for core meanings but which still grants usage and context a say. The first step towards this double goal IS taken in the next section, where a survey of the principal types of word meaning in English is undertaken. The perspective widens in section 3.3 as attention turns to the types of meaning patterns that are created when words combine with other words. Section 3.4 proposes a set of techniques for stylistic analysis and applies a selection of these techniques to literary texts. The concluding section. section 3.5, suggests a set of extensions to the analyses and assesses the theoretical implications of semantically orientated studies of wordmeaning.

1

i

/

! i

2 3

a red herrlng it's raining cats and dogs

4

to go for o song

6

to give up the ghost

These constructions (and many others like them in English) express meanings which cannot be directly accessed from the sum of their constituent words. Rather, interpretation rests on the understanding that idioms are fixed expressions and that, moreover, rigid constraints govern the manner by which their component words are selected and combined. Idioms cannot therefore be rearranged grammatically or embellished with other compatible items. If they are, the results are distinctly odd:

3.2 Words and meanings Semar~ncsis the study of meamng. The study of meanlng encornpasses unlts of language which vary m size. from parts of words and sounds nght up to whole ciauses and sentences. The basic unit of analysis ~n semantics is the seme and t h s term is often appended as a suffix to other structural terms to indicate which precise unit is being described. Morpheme, grapheme and phoneme, as we saw in the previous chapter, are units which are thus derived. The term lexical semanrics is specifically reserved for the study of wordmeaning, while the term for a unit of meantng in lexical semantics IS [creme. Before embarlng on a survey of lexical semantics, an Important caveat needs to be heeded and it IS this: there IS nor aibvays a one-to-one correspondence between iexemes and words. Thls unfortunate asymmetry arises largely because of the special case of idiom and related constructions in Eng1ish.l An idiom may compnse many words, but it realises just one lexeme. Take, for instance, the following colloquial expression:

which corresponds roughly to the single umt of meaning 'died'. The same p ~ c i p l is e at work in this next set of idiom:

3[01 it's raining dogs and cots 3(b] it's pourlng cots and dogs 3(c\ it's rainlng poodles ond ginger toms Furthermore, idioms are normally language-specific and will collapse if translated literally into another language. As a brief test of this thesis, you could attempt to translate the examples above into any other language with which you are familiar. Here. for instance, are some over-literal conversions into French: i

1 [a) II a donne un coup d e pied dons le seau 2(a) un horeng rouge

1

he kicked the bucket

1

3(d) il pleut les chats et les chiens 4(a1 aller pour une chonson

Even though bucker and kick would constitute two lexemes in most contexts, their individual meanings are nullified within the restricted semantic doman of this idiom. In other words, it is not the Individual component words of (1) hut the entire sequence 'kicked the bucketi

5(o) malode comme un perroquet

6(ai obandonner le phantom I

WORDS AND MEANINGS

This 'franglais' illustrates well the patent nonsense - if not the humour! -that results from the 1itt:ral translation of idioms from one language into another. Most traditional accounts of lexical semantics distinguish between the sense of a word and the referent of a word. Sense is the essential property or 'core' meanirg which a word exhibits irrespective of its context of use. For example, the word dog will encompass all members of this