Blooming Together_ Growing a Community Garden Worksheet.docx
Style and point of view stylistics- jv albano
1.
2. 1. CONSTITUENT STRUCTURE
(PHRASE STRUCTURE)
• The sentence is consists of two or three smaller units, each of which
consists of some even smaller units and so on, until we reach the
smaller units, which we may take either as WORD/S or as
MORPHEMES
The little girl hugged her dolly.
2 immediate constituents:
The little girl and hugged her dolly
3. 2. Deontic Modality
•The are of MOOD or MODALITY concerned with
permission, obligation and prohibition
Example:
We must finish this job by tomorrow.
You may use the car tonight.
4. 3. Conversion (Zero-derivation)
•Word is shifted from a part of speech to
another without any addition or changes
Example:
BROWN (Adjective) A brown skirt
(Verb) Brown the meat
5. 4. Declension
• In a language with CASE, the inflection of a noun or other word for
case, or the complete set of inflected forms of such a word, specially
when presented as a model for other words showing similar forms.
• Example: the Latin word amicus ‘friend’ has the following declension:
Singular Plural
NOMINATIVE amicus amici
ACCUSATIVE amicum Amicos
GENITIVE amici amicorum
DATIVE amico Amicibus
ABLATIVE amico amicibus
6. 5. Corpus
• Corpora allow us to obtain large samples of how a
language is actually used by its speakers and writers
• Linguistic investigations based upon corpora are
CORPUS LINGUISTICS
7. 6. Cranberry Morpheme
•A morpheme which occurs in only a single word,
such as the cran- of cranberry, the twilight and
the –art of braggart
8. 7. Dative
• In some languages with case, a case-form used to
mark an indirect object.
Example: I gave the book to Anna
I gave Anna the book
9. 8. Dative Shift
•A name sometimes given to the
construction illustrated by Susie showed
Mike her photos, as opposed to Susie
showed her photos to Mike
10. 9. Deictic Category
• Any grammatical category which ‘points’ in space or in
time
Example:
DEICTIC POSITION points is space;
TENSE points in time; and
PERSONS points to the participants in a speech
situation
11. 10. Deictic Position
• The grammatical category which distinguishes
different degrees of distance from the speaker (and, in
some languages, also from the hearer)
• PROXIMAL- Close to the speaker (this/these)
• DISTAL- Far from the speaker (that/those)
14. •The perspective through which the
story is told constitutes an
important stylistics dimension not
only in prose fiction but in many
types of narrative texts
17. •From the viewing position of a
participating character-narrator
whose account of actions and
events is the one we must as
readers share
18. “I have of late,—but wherefore I know not,—lost all
my mirth, forgone all custom of exercises; and
indeed, it goes so heavily with my disposition that
this goodly frame, the earth, seems to me a sterile
promontory.”
(from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Scene II of Act II).
20. •Third Person Omniscient- a detached,
invisible narrator whose ‘omniscience’ facilitates
privileged access to the thoughts and feelings of
individual characters
•Third Person Restricted
Omniscient- comes across as unable or
reluctant to delve at will into the thoughts and
feelings of characters
22. This is a passage from Iain Banks’ novel The
Crow Road which raises a number of
interesting general issues concerning point of
view in fiction.
Kenneth McHoan, one of the novel’s central
characters, has just returned from
university to his home town of Gallanach, and
this episode details his arrival in the
rural village station.
23. He rested his arms on the top of the wall and looked down the fifty feet
or so to the tumbling white waters. Just upstream, the river Loran piled
down from the forest in a compactly furious cataract. The spray was a
taste. Beneath, the river surged round the piers of the viaduct that
carried the railway on towards Lochgilpead and Gallanach.
A grey shape flitted silently across the view, from falls to bridge, then
zoomed, turned in the air and swept into the cutting on the far bank of
the river, as though it was a soft fragment of the train’s steam that had
momentarily lost its way and was not hurrying to catch up. He waited a
moment, and the owl hooted once, from inside the dark constituency of
the forest. He smiled, took a deep breath that tasted of steam and the
sweet sharpness of pine resin, and then turned away, and went back to
pick up his bags.
(Banks 1993: 33)
24. •A good general technique for
the exploration of point of view
in a piece of narrative is to
imagine it as if you were
preparing to film it
26. •Look for clear textual clues about where
to point your camera (visual sequence)
VIEW THEORY- distinction in a story
between who tells and who sees
27. We see what McHoan sees, and we see it in
the gradual and accumulative unfolding of the
focal points that are reflected in his visual
purview. Following the relevant terminology,
that makes the character of McHoan, even if
momentarily, the reflector of fiction.
28. NARRATIVE HETERODIEGETIC- its
narrator is ‘different’ from the exegesis that
comprises the story
NARRATIVE HOMODIEGETIC-
homodiegetic narrator is one who is internal
to the narrative, who is on the ‘same’ plane of
exegesis as the story
29. Converting the character of McHoan
into an internal, HOMODIEGETIC
NARRATOR requires very little alteration to the
text.
I rested my arms on the top of the wall [. . .] I waited a
moment [. . .] I smiled, took a deep breath [. . .] and
went back to pick up my bags.
30. The smoothness and facility of
transposition shows just how strongly in
the reflector mode the original passage is;
in effect, nothing is narrated that has not
been felt, thought or seen by McHoan
31. However, a first person version makes for a
very different narrative in other respects. For a
start, it brings us psychologically much closer
to the central character. In consequence, it
loses much of the space, the often ironic
space, that can be placed by a writer between
the narrator of a story and a character within
that story.
32. The combination of two levels
of language: DEIXIS and
ADJUCNT
• The semantic principle of DEIXIS- situating the speaking voice in
physical space
• Origo- deictic center
• Notice, for instance, how certain verbs of directionality express
movement towards the speaking source: eg. ‘[A grey shape] zoomed
. . .’. Alternatively, movement away is signalled when, near the end of
the passage, the reflector ‘turned away’ from the scene and when he
‘went back’ (not ‘came back’) to pick up his bags.
33. • The use of certain types of grammatical Adjunct- units of clause
structure are normally expounded by prepositional and adverb
phrases indicating place and directionality
The combination of two levels
of language: DEIXIS and
ADJUCNT
34. LOCATIVE EXPRESSION
• used to cover grammatical units which provide an index of location,
direction and physical setting in narrative description.
[looked] down
Just upstream
[piled] down
Beneath
across the view
from falls to bridge
into the cutting
on the far bank of the river
from inside the dark constituency of
the forest.
35. ATTENUATED FOCALIZATION refers
to a situation where point of view is limited, even
if temporarily, to an impeded or
distanced visual perspective.
• A grey shape flitted silently across the view . . . the owl hooted . . .
ATTENUATED
FOCALIZATION- blurring of
vision
auditory and not
visual identification
36. Attenuated focalization often works subtly in
relaying the impression that we are
momentarily restricted to the visual range of
a particular character
•‘A grey owl flitted silently across the view’
NULL
37. SUMMARY
• In sum, this unit has laid some foundations for a description of point
of view in narrative. Working from a single passage, some general
categories for a model of point of view have been proposed. Across
the thread, the model will be progressively refined and reviewed as
further categories are added and further passages analyzed.
• The reading which informs this unit is Mick Short’s study of narrative
viewpoint in Irvine Welsh (we will be encountering him as we go
further to the discussion later on)
Editor's Notes
Parse!
Must is deontic – is obliged to
May- is permitted to
Parse!
Omit and addition
A very large body of material produced by the speakers or writers of a particular language, these days typically held on a computer and available for study
Dative a grammatical form that identifies the agent and the objects as well as its instrument action
Feel, colour or texture of a story is being explored through narrative framework or simply narration
Hamlet, the protagonist, explains the feeling of melancholy, which afflicts him after his father’s death in the following lines (from Shakespeare’s “Hamlet”, Scene II of Act II).
This is one of the best first person point of view examples. The use of first person point of view gives us a glimpse into the real inner feelings of frustration of the character. The writer has utilized the first person point of view to expose Hamlet’s feelings in a detailed way.
These issues of narrative organisation are very much at the heart of story-telling and, as
noted in A5, function as an important index of characterisation in fiction. The
umbrella term reserved for this aspect of narrative organisation is point of view.
Much has been written on point of view by stylisticians and narratologists, such that
there is now a proliferation of often conflicting theories, terms and models. In these
circumstances, the best way to develop an introduction to point of view will be by
going straight to a textual example from which can be garnered some basic categories
and principles.
Kenneth McHoan, one of the novel’s central characters, has just returned from
university to his home town of Gallanach, and this episode details his arrival in the
rural village station.
Conceive a particular episode in terms of its visual perspective, its various vantage points and viewing
WHAT ARE THE POINTS TO CONSIDER?
This passage works extremely well in this respect insofar as it abounds in point of view markers that work to structure the panoramic sweep of the narrative camera.
It is clear from this passage that whereas a detached, omniscient narrator tells the story, it is a particular character who sees the unfolding scene described
EXEGESIS- analysis of texts: the explanation or interpretation of texts, especially religious writings
The distinction between heterodiegesis and homodiegesis can be explored by
transposing the text between first-person and third-person modes of narration. This
is a very useful exercise in terms of what it can reveal about point of view, and it is
often surprisingly easy to carry out a transposition in those instances where a third
person narrative employs a reflector of fiction.
The distinction between heterodiegesis and homodiegesis can be explored by transposing the text between first-person and third-person modes of narration.
--a third person narrative employs a reflector of fiction
passage reverberates with references to its reflector’s senses of taste, sight and hearing
Throughout the Banks extract, as noted above, there are stylistic cues about the viewing position it privileges.
Origo- Objects are positioned relative to their relative proximity or distance to the reflector
--This deictic anchoring is supplemented by groups of Adjuncts which express location and spatial relationship
which a selection from the passage includes but is not restricted to
-there is in the passage an occurrence of a particular, specialised point of view device which merits some comment.
--Lexical items which signal that such a restricted viewing has occurred are nouns with generalised or unspecific reference (thing, stuff
HOOTED- owl’s cry (sound)
As always in point of view analysis, transposition exercises will accentuate the technique and its stylistic effect. Consider, for example, how the impact would be nullified had the sequence been reversed in the first instance; that is, had the item ‘owl’ replaced ‘shape’
