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” (Joyce’s
Finnegan’s 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 Sandburg’s the Fog)
ungrammatical sentences - he sang his didn't he danced his did
(Cumming’s anyone lived in a
pretty how town)
oxymoron - “Beautiful tyrant”
“Honourable villain”
(Shakespeare’s 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.
Coleridge’s “Rime of the Ancient Mariner”
Deviation
Foregrounding
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
pronounced
Phonology, phonetics
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
everyday situations
Pragmatics
1. The sound level
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•
•
•
Phonemes
Rhyme
Rhythm
Alliteration
Assonance
1. The sound level
Forms of sound patterning
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•
•
•
•
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 king’s |horses and |all the king’s |men
|Couldn’t put |Humpty to|gether a|gain
Types of rhyme
1.
2.
3.
4.
Full rhyme
Incomplete rhyme
Assonance
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 summer’s day?
(Shakespeare’s “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..|.. mer’s day?
5 types of foot
Iamb
(Iambic)
Unstressed + Stressed
Trochee
(Trochaic)
Stressed + Unstressed
Spondee
(Spondaic)
Stressed + Stressed
Anapest
(Anapestic)
Dactyl
(Dactylic
"To be or not to be"
Two Syllables (Shakespeare’s
Hamlet)
"Doule, doule, toil and
trouble."
Two Syllables
(Shakespeare’s
Macbeth)
“heartbreak”
Two Syllables
"I arise and unbuild it
Unstressed + Unstressed +
Three Syllables again" (Shelley's
Stressed
Cloud)
openly
Stressed + Unstressed +
Three Syllables
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
Dimeter
Trimeter
Tetrameter
Pentameter
Hexameter
Heptameter
Octameter
1
One Foot
Two Feet
Three Feet
Four Feet
Five Feet
Six Feet
Seven Feet
Eight Feet
2
3
4
Shall I..|.. compare |.. thee to..|.. a sum..|.. mer’s day?
5
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.
Phrases
Words
composed of one or more 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
Objects
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
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:
• Trope—transference of meaning
• Scheme—transference 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