language through literature an introduction

Language through
Literature
Paul Simpson provides a concise introduction to English language
through the medium of English literature. Through the use of
examples from poetry, prose and drama, this book offers a lively and
accessible guide to important concepts and techniques in English
language study.
Each chapter:
• Develops a particular topic in language through a series of
practical tasks.
• Provides points for further discussion.
• Includes project work for use individually, or as part of a group.
• Contains suggestions for follow-up activities.
Students will find the author’s selection and presentation of topics
helpful, as he progressively widens the scope of topics from single
words to the structure of whole conversations. By developing
practical activities designed for the study of English language, this
book goes way beyond pure linguistic description, and will be an
invaluable aid for the beginner student of the English language.
This book also contains a glossary of technical terms and a special
Teachers’ appendix which offers advice on the design and
implementation of workshop activities on language.
Paul Simpson is a Lecturer in the School of English at Queen’s
University, Belfast. His previous publications include Language,
Ideology and Point of View (1993).

The INTERFACE Series
A linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary scholar
indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with linguistic methods,
are equally flagrant anachronisms—Roman Jakobson.
This statement, made over twenty-five years ago, is no less relevant today, and
‘flagrant anachronisms’ still abound. The aim of the INTERFACE series is to
examine topics at the ‘interface’ of language studies and literary criticism and in
doing so to build bridges between these traditionally divided disciplines.
The Discourse of Advertising
Guy Cook
Language, Literature and Critical
practice
Ways of analysing text
David Birch
Literature, Language and Change
Ruth Waterhouse and John Stephens
Literary Studies in Action
Alan Durant and Nigel Fabb
Language in Popular Fiction
Walter Nash
Language, Text and Context
Essays in stylistics
Edited by Michael J.Toolan
The Language of Jokes
Analysing verbal play
Delia Chiaro
Language, Ideology and Point of
View
Paul Simpson
A Linguistic History of English
Poetry
Richard Bradford
Literature about Language
Valerie Shepherd
Twentieth-century Poetry
From text to context
Edited by Peter Verdonk
Textual Intervention
Critical and creative strategies for
literary studies
Rob Pope
Feminist Stylistics
Sara Mills
Twentieth-century Fiction
From text to context
Peter Verdonk and Jean Jacques
Weber
Variety in Written English
Texts in society: societies in text
Tony Bex
English in Speech and Writing
Investigating language and
literature
Rebecca Hughes
Already published in the series:
The Series Editor
Ronald Carter is Professor of Modern English Language at the University of
Nottingham and was National Coordinator of the ‘Language in the National
Curriculum’ Project (LINC) from 1989 to 1992.

Language
through
Literature
An introduction
Paul Simpson
LONDON AND NEW YORK
ROUTLEDGE

First published 1997
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
This edition published in the Taylor &
Francis e-Library, 2003.
Simultaneously published in the USA
and Canada
by Routledge
29 West 35th Street, New York,
NY 10001
© 1997 Paul Simpson
The author has asserted his moral rights
in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patent Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this book
may be reprinted or reproduced or
utilized in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known
or hereafter invented, including
photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system,
without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in
Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is
available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloguing in
Publication Data
Simpson, Paul, 1959–
Language through literature: an
introduction/Paul Simpson.
p. cm—(interface series)
1. English language—Study and
teaching. 2. English literature—
Study and teaching. I. Title. II Series:
Interface (London, England)
PE1065.S16 1996
420'.7–dc20 96–16141
ISBN 0-203-13791-4 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-203-21466-8 (Adobe eReader Format)
ISBN 0-415-14963-0 (hbk)
ISBN 0-415-14964-9 (pbk)

vii
Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgements xiii
1 Introduction: studying
language and literature 1
1.1 Introduction 2
1.2 Why stylistics? 2
1.3 Register and ‘literary language’ 7
1.4 Using this book 19
Suggestions for further reading 21
2 From shapes to words:
exploring graphology
and morphology in poetry 23
2.1 Introduction 24
2.2 The system of graphology 25
2.3 Morphemes and words 33
2.4.1 Using linguistic models for stylistic analysis 44
2.4.2 Extending the analysis: a workshop 53
2.5 Summary 57
3 Words and meanings: an
introduction to lexical
semantics 61
3.1 Introduction 62
3.2 Words and meanings 64
ContentsContentsContentsContentsContents

viii
CONTENTS
3.3 Words and combinations 77
3.4 Techniques for stylistic analysis 84
3.4.1 Cloze procedure and stylistic analysis 85
3.4.2 Multiple choice text and stylistic analysis 93
3.5 Summary 96
4 Exploring narrative style: patterns
of cohesion in a short story 101
4.1 Introduction 102
4.2 Practical activity: reconstructing a short story 103
4.3 Results and discussion 105
4.3.1 General patterns of response 106
4.3.2 An idealised narrative 110
4.3.3 The original version 112
4.4 Extending the analysis 115
4.4.1 Cohesion 115
4.4.2 Natural narrative 116
4.5 Practical activity: creative writing 120
4.6 Summary 126
5 Dialogue and drama: an
introduction to discourse analysis 129
5.1 Introduction 130
5.2 Dialogue and discourse 131
5.3 Models for the analysis of discourse 143
5.3.1 The analysis of discourse structure 143
5.3.2 Discourse strategy: maxims and relevance 148
5.3.3 Discourse strategy: politeness phenomena 155
5.4 Discourse analysis and drama dialogue 164
5.5 Summary 174
Afterword 179
Teachers’ appendix 181
Glossary 197
Notes 207
References 211
Index 217

ix
Preface
The idea for this book sprang from what I can only describe
as a ‘collective groan’. A few years ago I was invited to
speak on the third day of a conference on English studies
held at a British university. Most of the conference
delegates were school-teachers and undergraduates. When
I arrived on the first evening, I took a place at the back of
the auditorium while the conference organisers went
through the programme for the next three days. When
discussion turned to the ‘language’ slot—which was to be
my contribution—I was alarmed to hear a sort of tired
and resigned groan going around the auditorium. Even
though delegates were unaware that the language speaker
was in their presence, this was without doubt an ominous
precursor to my lecture! Over the next few days, in the
course of informal conversations, I pieced together some
of the reasons for the groan. Virtually all of the delegates,
both students and teachers, had come to the conference
with a solid academic grounding in the study of English
literature. However, many had recently begun studying
English language. Most of the undergraduates, for instance,
had embarked on a first-year course in English which
comprised components in both language and literature.
Whereas the literature component, they said, was fine, the
Preface

x
PREFACE
language component was an entirely different matter. They found the
subject rather difficult, the methods technical and the textbook
‘unfriendly’. Some even said that they couldn’t see the point of
studying language. Although the teachers told a somewhat different
story, their general experience of language study was as uninspiring
as that of the students. While acknowledging the general importance
of language study at all levels, many felt that they had been caught
cold by the introduction that year of a new English language A-level
into their syllabus. Trying to cope with the heavy demand for the
course, and having to make a transition from their literary training
into a new subject area, placed them under unreasonable pressure.
What was clear was that both groups felt they needed better access to
a subject that they found at once complex and challenging. My talk
at the conference was, perhaps ironically in the circumstances, entitled
‘Why Study English Language?’ In it, I tried to convince delegates
that language was a valid object of study; that language occupied a
pivotal role in the curriculum; that the study of language was perhaps
even easier to justify intellectually than the study of literature.
Furthermore, I sought to reassure them that there existed plenty of
accessible introductory textbooks which made the study of English
language entertaining and exciting. My talk may have won a few
hearts and minds, but it was something less than a resounding victory.
Later, over a drink, one delegate asked me why I didn’t put my
money where my mouth was and write a book on the subject myself.
As it seemed like a fair enough point at the time, I did. And here is
the result.
This book is an introduction to some key concepts and topics in
English language. It is directed squarely at the non-specialist, towards
those who, for whatever reason, are relatively new to the study of
language. In view of the needs and interests just identified, literary
discourse forms the main vantage point from which these topics in
language are surveyed and addressed. Most of the illustrative material
used in the book is taken therefore from poetry, prose and drama. By
looking closely at what writers are doing linguistically, textual
analysis is presented as a productive means for encouraging
awareness about English language. The book is also designed to
reflect current concerns about language teaching, as well as issues to
do with learning about language. To this end, the material assembled
over the next five chapters is intended to benefit both students and
teachers, whether native or non-native speakers, alike.

xi
PREFACE
When writing the book, I tried to avoid delivering a
straightforward description of the structure and function of different
levels of language. Nor did I want to write a workbook, as this would
have meant developing sets of worked examples with a more
restricted academic focus. Although I have retained some elements
of both of these types of textbook, I have tried to do a little bit more
besides. What readers can expect to find therefore is a variety of
approaches represented within the book. Each chapter addresses a
key aspect of English language. This feature of language is illustrated
extensively and is amplified through the analysis of a literary text.
This analysis is, in turn, opened out through suggested practical
extensions such as classroom activities and exercises. These practical
extensions are largely derived from my own experience of English
language teaching and normally detail the outcomes of stylistics
workshops that I have run over the years with different groups in
different cultural contexts. By incorporating this ‘hands-on’ element
to the book, I hope to achieve several things. For a start, by
recounting the responses of their peers to exercises and activities, I
want to grant student readers a ‘voice’ in the book. So that they don’t
always feel that they are being ‘talked at’, I have, wherever possible,
reproduced from classroom activities their responses and opinions
about texts. Furthermore, I want to reassure students that what their
intuitions tell them about a particular piece of language is often
illuminating and insightful, and that it can provide valuable extra
dimension in the analysis of a text. At the same time, I am trying to
produce a selection of materials that teachers can adapt to suit their
own pedagogical needs. Many of the techniques developed in the
book can be replicated or modified, depending on specific teaching
goals. Where appropriate, I have indicated to teachers in a separate
Teachers’ appendix which ideas I have found worked best in which
environments, as well as offering more localised comments on
various aspects of English language teaching. Each chapter concludes
with a section containing suggestions for further reading. This is
designed to allow a comprehensive, annotated bibliography to be
built up progressively over the book, without overburdening the main
body of each chapter. I have also provided a glossary to enable
readers to check the definitions of the technical terms used in the
text. Finally, each chapter is laced with in-text exercises and language
‘games’ in which readers are invited to participate. These practical
activities should, if nothing else, prove a welcome distraction on

xii
PREFACE
occasions when the more rarefied intricacies of linguistic theory are
being addressed!
Let me conclude this preface by returning briefly to our conference
delegates. Although the precise reasons for studying the subject are
perhaps best addressed in another project, there can be no doubt that
as an academic discipline English language now occupies a
prominent and pivotal place in the educational curriculum. And
judging by the exponential growth in interest it has enjoyed over the
last five years, it is a discipline which is well and truly here to stay.
My task in this book has been to enlarge the pool of material that is
currently being developed to meet the demand for the subject. What
follows is only a small contribution and a necessarily selective one at
that. Take it as my attempt, if not to silence the collective groan, at
least to stifle it into a sigh.

xiii
Acknowledgements
Now this isn’t going to be easy. As this book is based largely on my
experiences of teaching and researching English language over the last
few years, thanking everyone whose comments, feedback and support
have shaped the book’s development is wellnigh impossible. My
apologies to anyone, anywhere whom I may have missed out. For their
various inputs, I would particularly like to thank Janice Hoadley, Mick
Short, Julia Hall, Michael Allen, Joanna Mclntyre, David Seed, Peter
Stockwell, Sonia Zyngier, Martin Montgomery, Ron Carter, Linda
Williams and Joan Rahilly. Special thanks to Rory Simpson for his
contribution to Chapter 5 and for confirming that a toddler’s grammar
is indeed a wondrous thing. I am also grateful to the following people
who have participated in the workshops and seminars developed in the
book: for their constructive comments on Chapter 5, the Stylistics
Research Group at Lancaster University; for their general co-operation
and crack, the undergraduates who have taken my language courses at
the Universities of Liverpool and Belfast; for their insights and
hospitality, staff and students at the Universidade Federal do Rio de
Janeiro, the Universities of Sofia and Granada, the UPEL and Central
Universities in Caracas, and the Pädagogisches Landesinstitut in
Brandenburg. Finally, I’d like to record my gratitude to the Language
and Linguistics production team at Routledge who put everything
together so efficiently and so professionally. Any flaws that remain in
the book are, as they say, to be attributed entirely to its author.

xiv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
Chapter 4 of this book was originally published as an article in the
journal Language and Literature. I would like to thank Addison
Wesley Longman for their permission to reprint a revised version of
that chapter here. ‘You no’ is reprinted from Complete Poems 1904–
1962, by E.E.Cummings, edited by George J.Firmage, by permission
of W.W.Norton & Company Ltd. Copyright © 1953, 1981, 1991 by
the Trustees for the E.E.Cummings Trust. The extract from In Our
Time by Ernest Hemingway is reprinted with permission of Scribner,
a Division of Simon and Schuster. Copyright 1925 Charles Scribner’s
Sons. Copyright renewed 1953 by Ernest Hemingway. The extract
from The Little Drummer Girl by John le Carré is reproduced by
permission of Hodder & Stoughton Ltd. Copyright © Author’s
Workshop AG 1983. The extract from ‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats’ is
taken from W.H.Auden’s Collected Poems, edited by Edward
Mendelson. Copyright © 1940 and renewed 1968 by W.H.Auden.
Reprinted by permission of Faber & Faber Ltd and Random House,
Inc. The recipe for yoghurt with walnuts and fresh coriander from
Madhur Jaffrey’s Indian Cookery is reprinted with the permission of
BBC Worldwide Limited.
While the author and publishers have made every effort to contact
copyright holders of material used in this volume, they would be
grateful to hear from any they were unable to contact.

1
Chapter1
C h a p t e r 1
Introduction:
studying language
and literature
• 1.1 Introduction 2
• 1.2 Why stylistic? 2
• 1.3 Register and ‘literary language’ 7
• 1.4 Using this book 19
• Suggestions for further reading 21

2
1.1 Introduction
First and foremost, this is a book about modern English language. It
highlights principal areas for study, introduces important theories
and key developments in English language research and develops a
‘toolkit’ for describing some of the main structures and functions of
the English language.
To be more specific, this book offers an introduction to English
language through the medium of literature in English. Unlike many
other introductory language textbooks, the focus of this book is
consistently on literary discourse, with illustrations taken from poetry,
prose and drama. It will be argued that the linguistic resourcefulness
which typifies much literary discourse creates a valuable nexus for
exploring forms, structures and concepts in English language. The
branch of language study which is principally concerned with this
integration of language and literature is known as stylistics. The
potential of stylistics for language study and the benefits which can
be obtained from its fusion of literary and linguistic methods have
been amply demonstrated by many publications in the field in recent
years. One of the principal aims of this book will be to enrich and
advance this significant body of work.
1.2 Why stylistics?
There is popular misconception in literary-critical circles that
stylistics is some sort of impersonal mechanical device which is used
to dismantle literary texts. Once stripped bare, the texts are then
scoured for any significant features of language that influence
reading or interpretation. This highly erroneous view of stylistics is
disseminated in different ways through the academic system. The
following excerpt is from an authoritative and prestigious glossary of
literary terms. It defines stylistics as:

3
INTRODUCTION
a method of analysing works of literature which proposes to
replace the ‘subjectivity’ and ‘impressionism’ of standard
criticism with an ‘objective’ or ‘scientific’ analysis of the style of
literary texts.1
In the face of this singularly uninspiring definition, one could be
forgiven for being reluctant to adopt stylistics as an effective method
of literary study. More important however is the fact that this
definition, like much of the received critical wisdom surrounding
stylistics, is simply inaccurate. The four key terms in the excerpt are
presented in scare quotes, implying that there is some doubt about
their status, but the nature of this doubt is never explained.
Moreover, pairs of terms are conflated as if they mean the same
thing: ‘subjective’ is equated with ‘impressionistic’; and ‘objective’
with ‘scientific’. This is simply untenable: in neither of the pairs do
these terms mean the same thing. Furthermore, and despite the
common assumption to the contrary, stylistics is not ‘objective’ in
any absolute sense. To say so suggests that stylistics is a thoroughly
depersonalised activity in which the analyst is somehow removed
from the analysis, exerting no influence or control over it. The texts
simply self-select and the discoveries made about them have nothing
at all to do with the goals, beliefs and preconceptions of the
stylistician. Promoting the ‘objective’ view of stylistics also implies
that there resides in every text a ‘correct’ meaning which is ready to
be sifted out by the analytic ‘comb’ that is stylistic analysis.
Contrary to all of this, the analyst is present in stylistics: he or she
chooses a text for study, has intuitions about the meaning of this text
and selects language models which are thought appropriate to the
task in hand. There is, moreover, no single ‘correct’ interpretation of
the text. There couldn’t possibly be, because any interpretation of a
piece of language is conditioned by three key factors. The first is to
do with what’s in the language itself, the second with what’s in the
context of communication, while the third is to do with what’s in
your head (that is, the assumptions and knowledge you bring to a
text). Different readers will clearly bring different experiences to a
text; and as there are no identical readers, then there are no identical
readings. Complex and varied patterns of meaning and interpretation
permeate all texts, and the language models that are the toolkit of
stylistics are designed specifically with this in mind. It is the fact that
these stylistic methods are principled, rigorous and consistent which

4
INTRODUCTION
perhaps explains why many critics are apt to label the discipline
‘objective’.
The glossary definition’s point about the avoidance of
‘impressionism’ in stylistics is a valid one. Part of the stylistic remit
is to banish the imprecision, speculation and flights of fancy that
have characterised much traditional practical criticism. The aim
instead is to arrive at a consensus about a text based on a principled
and systematic study procedure. Part of this study procedure involves
the use of descriptive models of language that are retrievable and
accessible to other students of stylistics. These models also provide
a language for talking about language: a metalanguage, in other
words. However, it is debatable whether this practice is ‘scientific’ in
the strictest sense. Linguistics is the scientific study of languages,
and stylistics draws upon models in linguistics, so the relationship of
stylistics to science is at one remove. However, while stylistics does
not embrace science directly,2
its systematic techniques, coupled with
its pursuit of conceptual rigour, make it easy to see why the status of
science is often conferred upon it.
The part of the glossary definition that is most likely to raise the
hackles of stylisticians is its tacit premise that their discipline is an
offshoot of mainstream or ‘standard’ literary criticism. Stylistics is
represented as a kind of non-standard criticism operating as an
appendage to the real business of literary study. It suggests that a
stylistic ‘discovery’ is really only a supplement to what the critic
already knows; a means of offering pseudo-scientific evidence—if
such evidence were needed—for an interpretation made entirely
through intuition.
Extrapolating from the glossary definition as a whole, stylistics
emerges as a kind of hybrid activity which is subservient to its two
‘parent’ disciplines of linguistics and literary criticism. It is portrayed
as a watered-down linguistics, acting in the service of literary study,
wedged in the no man’s land between the humanities and the social
sciences. This portrayal is a common and perennial misunderstanding
of stylistic practice. As the record clearly needs to be set straight, the
remainder of this section can therefore be considered a defence of
stylistic theory and practice.
One of the main assets of modern stylistics is its heuristic value.
Stylistics is a method of applied language study which uses textual
analysis to make discoveries about the structure and function of
language. Simply put, finding out about what writers do is a good

5
INTRODUCTION
way of finding out about language. This basic heuristic principle—
the principle of learning and discovery—will inform every
subsequent chapter in this book.
Another good reason for doing stylistics is the critical potential
which it has for literary study. This is stylistics in its literary-
interpretative guise, where it can assist critical readings by
highlighting and explaining linguistic patterns in literary texts. This
critical function is a reflex of the heuristic: if looking at what writers
do leads to a better understanding of language, then knowing about
language is an extremely effective way of finding out about what
writers are doing. The two functions are therefore really opposite
sides of the same coin. However, as the glossary definition suggests,
this critical component is often mistakenly promoted as the only
function of stylistics.
Stylistics also has a specifically linguistic function. It offers an
invaluable testing ground for theories and constructs in linguistics.
Many linguistic theories are highly abstract and do not rest easily
beside actual language usage. The experimental and creative discourse
that characterises much literary communication makes it an excellent
site for investigating theories about language which have been
developed, as it were, in vitro. It has become an axiom in stylistics
that we often perceive conventional modes of language only through
exposure to deviant or distorted ones. In this respect, literary discourse
has an important role to play in that it often highlights the ‘norms’ of
communication by its very departure from them.
Because its methods are systematic and principled, stylistics
allows different readers to come to an interpretative ‘consensus’
about a text. This is stylistics in its intersubjective role. It is an
empowering tool, because it helps explain the multiple and varied
responses to linguistic patterning which different readers experience
when reading texts. A brief anecdote may be germane here. As a
post-graduate, I once presented a paper on stylistics to a conference
on literary studies. My paper contained a stylistic analysis of a short
novel, and the naivety of the presentation was countered only by the
enthusiasm of the speaker. Later, I was approached by an avuncular
professor of English literature who, while interested, was clearly not
convinced by the case for stylistics. He pointed out that as he had
been reading literature for over forty years, he had a pretty good idea
of what it was all about. No doubt this was true, but it is of little
solace to those of us who have not been reading literature for forty

6
INTRODUCTION
years. Our critical faculties are assumed to be not yet sharp enough,
nor our sensitivities adequately developed, to be able to offer a
mature or viable reading of a text. This exclusion of the literary
neophyte from critical debate is not new: it is redolent of the tradition
of literary criticism espoused by F.R.Leavis,3
of which, incidentally,
my professor was an avid exponent. The ‘Leavisites’ had a profound
influence on the development of a canon of ‘great’ English literature.
The hegemony of this canon was sustained by a series of critical
‘hand-me-downs’ which arbitrated over the value and quality of
literary works. These ideas were not based on any discernible critical
method as such; they were simply a product of the community of
‘sensitive readers’ who made up the Leavisite movement and whose
views consequently constituted the received critical opinion of the
day. In the absence of any rigorous framework of analysis, luckless
pupils and students (without their forty years’ reading experience)
could do little more than clone these ideas. Thankfully, the shape of
the literary canon has altered drastically in recent years and nowadays
bears a more egalitarian and multicultural profile. None the less, the
authoritarianism which characterises Leavisite criticism is still very
much alive as a mode of critical practice. In stylistics, however, the
playing field is levelled, because the critical framework which it
employs is coherent, retrievable and accessible. It is not surprising
then that this text-centred model is becoming increasing popular in
the context of literature teaching to non-native speakers, where there
is an even greater need for a ‘hands-on’ approach to textual analysis.
Finally, stylistics facilitates the comparison of different genres of
language. In this generic application, emphasis is placed on the
relationship of literature to other types of discourse. Leech and Short
present clearly the rationale for the generic component in stylistics:
Linguistics places literary uses of language against the background
of more ‘ordinary’ uses of language, so that we see the poet or
novelist making use of the same code, the same set of
communicative resources, as the journalist, the scientist, or the
garden wall gossip… It is unthinkable that the literary artist should
cut himself adrift from the all-embracing role that language has in
our everyday lives. So literary expression is an enhancement, or a
creative liberation of the resources of language which we use
from day to day.
(1981:6–7)

7
INTRODUCTION
Given that it examines literary discourse against the totality of
discourses, stylistics is essentially a comparative method of study.
The assumption behind this is that a better understanding of literary
communication can be reached only if it is viewed as contiguous
with other discourses. It is pointless therefore to focus on literature
in a restricted ‘cellular’ fashion whereby it is cut adrift from other
contexts of language use. This aspect of stylistics will be dealt with
more fully in the next section.
1.3 Register and ‘literary language’
There is no such thing as a ‘literary language’. That is to say, there
are no items of modern English vocabulary or grammar that are
inherently and exclusively literary. It is impossible to identify or
isolate any linguistic feature that will automatically confer a ‘literary’
status on a text. In short, the concept of ‘literary language’ is a
chimera.
The claims made in the previous paragraph may sound startling—
especially so in view of the aims and scope of this book. However,
they reflect a position which is shared by many practitioners of
stylistics:
We stated at the outset that it is difficult to make a linguistic
distinction between literature and the rest of language. By this we
mean that, despite a widespread assumption to the contrary, we
know of no particular linguistic feature or set of linguistic features
which are found in literature but not other kinds of text.
(Short and Candlin 1986:107; original emphasis)
Given that it will be pivotal to much of this book, this rejection of
‘literary language’ as a recognisable linguistic variety needs to be
explained and justified.
An immediate objection to my argument is a commonsensical
one: surely the language of ‘great’ literature must, by definition, be
‘literary’. What is the language of Shakespeare if not the very apogee
of ‘literary language’? Yet this type of reasoning is a far cry from
providing a definition of literary language. It is a bit like asking
someone to define classical music and being told that it’s what Mary
has in her CD collection. Being told where to find something does
not tell you what it is. Writers like Chaucer and Joyce are

8
INTRODUCTION
acknowledged literary giants, and so, the argument runs, their
language must be by imputation literary. However, one would still be
hard put to specify a list of their words and constructions that have
inherently literary significance in all contexts of use. Literary
language has no ‘ontology’: it has no permanent or fixed existence.
‘Literary’ is a quality conferred upon texts not according to what
they are, but according to what they do. It is, if anything, a functional
description, not an ontological one. Consider for a moment an
analogy which, though curious, is genuinely parallel. Crows,
cormorants and ring-doves are clearly all species of bird. Their status
as birds is ontological in so far as it is stable, fixed and real. However,
an ornithologist friend once told me that under certain circumstances
all three are considered ‘pests’. Now the attribute ‘pest’ is not an
inherent characteristic of these animals; it is an attribute which they
acquire in specific contexts. In fact, they can by implication cease to
be pests as circumstances dictate. The same principle applies to
language that is commonly regarded as ‘literary’. The property of
‘literariness’ is not an immutable or permanent quality of language.
It is not something that texts are; rather, it is something conferred
upon them according to what they do. And that texts can also cease
to have ‘literary’ value is borne out by the fact that the canon of
‘great’ literature has changed dramatically over the centuries under
the influence of cultural and critical tastes.
Denying the existence of literary language as a discrete category
of language might seem like the debunking of literature as a
discipline. It smacks perhaps of a churlishly reductive attack from
English language quarters levelled at literary criticism. Nothing could
be further from the truth. The real intention is to emphasise the full
panoply of linguistic resources that are available to writers, not to
foreclose on its creative possibilities. In fact, the real reductionist
position is the one which upholds the existence of a ‘literary
language’. Setting parameters around a discourse automatically
confines that discourse, and may even reduce it to a set of clichés.
My argument is that literary discourse, rather than manifesting a
uniform language variety, derives its effectiveness from its
exploitation of the entire linguistic repertoire. Literary
communication thrives not on the presence of a clearly defined
linguistic code but on the very absence of such a code.
I can anticipate other objections to the case presented here. It
could be argued, for example, that it is possible to list the rhetorical

9
INTRODUCTION
strategies that give literature its distinctive quality. What, after all, is
a glossary of literary terms for if not to highlight the ‘special’
language that is literature? What of ‘poetic’ devices such as
parallelism, word-play, punning and rhyming? One of the central
aims of this book will be to demonstrate that for every device cited
as peculiar to literature, examples of it can be found outside literature.
Advertising discourse depends for much of its impact on memorable
or startling figures of speech—the sort of figures of speech that are
often thought the exclusive domain of poetry. Moreover, in the
context of advertising, these creative ‘jingles’ do not necessarily
confer ‘quality’ or ‘value’ on a text. As a brief illustration of this
point, I propose to examine an advertisement for Henri Winterman
cigars which appeared in the late 1980s in the December editions of
several British colour supplements. The ad’s central image is the
face of a middle-aged man presented in extreme close-up. He is
smoking a cigar and wearing the sort of paper party-hat that is found
inside Christmas crackers. His expression is smug and self-satisfied;
he is clearly in ‘festive’ mood. In the bottom right-hand corner of the
picture is the product name and a brand logo. To the left of the
picture runs the following text:
When you’ve pulled the wishbone,
have a cigar.
When you’ve pulled a little cracker,
have a Winterman’s.
The text is built on a rhetorical scheme involving two parallel
grammatical structures. The formula which underpins these structures
is: when you’ve pulled an x, have a y. Other rhetorical devices include
punning, such as the exploitation of the different meanings of the word
‘cracker’ in the couplet. In the ‘Christmas’ scenario, ‘cracker’
designates the familiar paper object that is ritualistically ‘pulled’ apart
during a meal. However, when preceded by ‘little’ it acquires another
sense: a young attractive woman. The sexual theme is further
reinforced by plays on the verb ‘pull’ across the couplet. The first
sense is to ‘tug’, as in that other seasonal ritual involving the pulling
apart of a wishbone. The second sense, deliberately orientated towards
a specifically heterosexual male consciousness, establishes ‘pulling a
little cracker’ as a sexual conquest. This sexual sense reverberates
outside the text in common colloquial phrases such as ‘to pull a bird’,
and, whether by design or not, this echoic ‘bird’ forms yet another

10
INTRODUCTION
parallel with ‘wishbone’ of the real bird in the previous line. The
transition from ‘pulling a wishbone’ to ‘pulling a bird’ presumably
requires a concomitant upgrade in the quality of the cigar: the post-
prandial is ousted by the post-coital. The discourse of the advertisement
decrees that a congratulatory cigar is warranted—not just any cigar,
but a cigar as befits the occasion.And it is through this parade of back-
slapping machismo that the brand name is inflicted on readers. The
parallels at the textual level function at an ideological level, with female
gender constructed as a commodity. Women are projected into a
constellation of trivial consumer disposables which also include cigars,
wishbones and Christmas crackers. The ideological assumptions on
which the text is grounded are startling and one would indeed be hard
put to find a more deeply sexist and genuinely ‘bad’ piece of language.
However, lamentably crass as it is, it draws upon some stock techniques
of poetic creativity. Puns, word-play, parallelism and even stanzaic
organisation are present here. That these devices exist outside literary
texts is therefore obvious and, as we have witnessed, their deployment
is not a necessary guarantor of quality in writing.
A useful tool with which to make comparisons between literary
texts and other genres of language is the concept of register. This is
a valuable term which links variation in language to variation in
situation. A register should not be confused with a dialect, however,
and a distinction needs to be drawn between the two terms early on.
A dialect is a linguistic variety that is defined according to the user
of language: it tells you things about their social and regional
background. A register, on the other hand, is defined according to the
use to which language is being put. In other words, a register shows
what a speaker or writer is doing with language at a given moment.
In more formal terms, a register is a fixed pattern of vocabulary and
grammar which regularly co-occurs with and is conventionally
associated with a specific context. Like dialects, registers are often
easily recognised. Take for example the following extract. Even
though it has been stripped of its original context, there will be little
difficulty in establishing what sort of register it is:
Yoghurt with walnuts and fresh coriander
Akhrote ka roita
Another cooling, nourishing dish. It may be eaten by
itself or served with Indian meals

11
INTRODUCTION
Serves 6:
20 fl oz (570 ml) plain
yoghurt
2 tablespoons finely
chopped fresh coriander
Even with only nine lines of text to go on, it would be hard
to mistake this for anything other than a recipe.4
The convergence of
vocabulary, grammar and visual layout serves notice that this is a
well-attested register in English. The visual form of the text
comprises a title (along with its ethnic Hindi version) and a short
opening text, both of which are displayed above two further columns
of text. These columns separate out the ingredients (to the left) and
the instructions (to the right). The vocabulary is clearly organised
into a recognisable lexical set (see subsection 3.4, below) which
unequivocally establishes the culinary topic. This set includes not
just the obvious items like ingredients but also the implements
(‘bowl’; ‘tablespoons’) and the processes (‘chopped’; ‘whisking’;
‘stirring’) conventionally associated with cookery. Abbreviations are
used for technical weights and measurements (‘fl oz’; ‘ml’), although
clauses too are ‘abbreviated’ in that they lose some of their more
expendable words: ‘2 tablespoons [of] finely chopped coriander’;
‘Beat [it] lightly with a fork’. There is also a preponderance of
imperative constructions in the extract. These are clauses which begin
with a verb and which are standardly (though not always) used to
make requests and issue commands. In keeping with the purpose of
the discourse, every clause in the instructional part of the extract is in
its imperative form. It is this particular configuration of linguistic
elements which forms the backbone of the ‘recipe’ register.
Registers are often discussed in terms of three features of context
known as field, tenor and mode. These are defined as:
field = the setting and purpose of the interaction
tenor = the relationship between the participants in interaction
mode = the medium of communication (i.e. whether it is spoken or
written)
Within this framework, our recipe register can be classified as:
field: cookery
Put the yoghurt in a bowl. Beat
lightly with a fork or whisk until
it is smooth and creamy. Add all
the other ingredients. Stir to mix.

12
INTRODUCTION
tenor: ‘cook’ to readership
mode: written
A sermon, on the other hand, will have the following configuration:
field: liturgical/religious
tenor: cleric to congregation
mode: spoken
The concept of register can cover everything from academic lectures
to personal conversations about the weather. What is more, providing
descriptions of field, tenor and mode is not as tricky a procedure as
it first appears. By simply saying ‘personal conversation about the
weather’, you have already undertaken a preliminary analysis of field
(‘weather’), tenor (‘personal’) and mode (‘conversation’).
There are two ways of approaching register which are really
opposite sides of the same coin. A register can be deduced from the
actual language which comprises a text and the categories of field,
tenor and mode identified retrospectively—this was the approach
taken in the recipe analysis above. The other approach is to draw up
specifications for field, tenor and mode and then check them against
a piece of language. For example, if we designate field as ‘chemistry’,
tenor as ‘pupil to teacher’ and mode as ‘written’, then strong
predictions are established about the sort of text that fulfils these
criteria. Only the first of the following two sequences would be
predicted by this particular configuration:
1 A quantity of copper sulphate crystals were dissolved in a
beaker containing 200ml of H2
O.
2 The other day, me and my best mate had great fun putting
some copper sulphate stuff into a jug of water. It was really
brill.
Clearly, context influences choice of register, and, by the same token,
certain registers are appropriate only to certain contexts. In this
instance, only (1) is appropriate to the specific field-tenor-mode
paradigm of the chemistry register. However, if the paradigm were
altered to account for, say, a personal narrative about a chemistry
lesson, then it would be example (2) that would be appropriate to this
new context.

13
INTRODUCTION
Although it is an axiom in language study that certain
communicative contexts regularly predict certain registers, a notable
exception is literary communication. Literature is simply not a
register of language. As was suggested earlier in the section, this is
an enabling feature of literary discourse because it shakes itself free
of the strictures imposed by register. Literary discourse, moreover,
has the capacity to assimilate and absorb registers producing complex
and multilayered patterns of communication. The following brief
analysis of a short passage of fiction will amplify this point.
John le Carré’s novel The Little Drummer Girl (1983) is about
espionage and international terrorism. The first seven paragraphs of
the novel provide an account of an explosion. This explosion, referred
to as ‘the Bad Godesberg incident’, is the result of a bomb planted by
an international terrorist group, and is responsible for precipitating
the major action of the story. In spite of the ostensible purpose of the
description, however, my intuition tells me that all is not what it
seems. The actual explosion and its immediate consequences appear
to be downplayed. An ironic narrative voice presides over the
description, sometimes weaving around—rather than engaging
directly with—the incident that is purportedly central to the story.
Here is the third paragraph of this opening sequence which typifies
the sort of narrative style that le Carré employs:
At twenty-five minutes past eight, the Drosselstrasse in Bad
Godesberg had been just another leafy diplomatic backwater,
about as far from the political turmoils of Bonn as you could
reasonably get while staying within fifteen minutes’ drive of
them. It was a new street but mature, with lush, secretive
gardens, and maids’ quarters over the garages, and Gothic
security grilles over the bottle-glass windows. The Rhineland
weather for most of the year has the warm wet drip of the
jungle; its vegetation, like its diplomatic community, grows
almost as fast as the Germans build their roads, and slightly
faster than they make their maps. Thus the fronts of some of the
houses were already half obscured by dense plantations of
conifers, which, if they ever grow to proper size, will
presumably one day plunge the whole area into a Grimm’s
fairy-tale blackout. These trees turned out to be remarkably
5
10
15

14
INTRODUCTION
effective against the blast and, within days of the explosion,
one local garden centre had made them a speciality.5
My reading of this passage prompts me to suggest that there is a
lot more going on here than ‘straight’ spy novel narrative. A number
of stylistic features regularly occur which echo a particular register
of language outside the context of fiction. Consistent use is made of
certain types of grammatical construction in conjunction with
specific vocabulary items. There are, in the passage, many phrases
with nouns as their central component. What is striking, however, is
that these noun phrases often contain several modifying words. These
modifiers are normally, though not necessarily, adjectives. Here is a
selection of examples displaying this pattern with the central noun in
the phrase italicised in each case:
leafy diplomatic backwater (2)
a new sfreef, but mature (5)
lush, secretive gardens (5–6)
the bottle-glass windows (7)
Some phrases also display sound similarities: notice, for example,
the alliterative/w/pattern in ‘the warm wet drip of the jungle’ (8–9).
The modifiers in other phrases offer ‘mythical’ intertextual allusions:
‘Gothic security grilles’ (6–7), ‘a Grimm’s fairy-tale blackout’ (14–
15). Syntactic parallelism, of the sort we identified in the
advertisement discussed above, is also evident in the paragraph. Here
is a good example, where two structurally similar comparative
clauses are governed by the single verb ‘grows’:
its vegetation, like its diplomatic community, grows almost as
fast as the Germans build their roads, and slightly faster than
they make their maps. (9–11)
Other types of rhetorical device are used in the paragraph, including
metaphors exhibiting ‘personification’:

15
INTRODUCTION
secretive gardens (5–6)
dense plantations of conifers…will presumably one day
plunge the whole area into a Grimm’s fairy-tale blackout.
(12–15)
The construction which includes the pronoun ‘you’ (3) is also
interesting. Like the use of the pronoun ‘one’ in similar
environments, ‘you’ signals a generic reference. In this instance, the
construction posits as a general rule the relative distances between
Bonn and Bad Godesberg—the underlying assumption of which is
that the reader needs to be told this information. The descriptions of
the weather and flora of the region, similarly, suggest that this is the
sort of information that readers will want to know.
The patterns of language teased out of the passage have, in my
opinion, more in common with travel writing or the guidebook, than
they do with the spy novel. Features of grammar and vocabulary of
the ‘travelogue register’ have been inserted into prose fiction. In
other words, le Carré has ‘re-registered’ the language of the
guidebook or the travelogue by placing it in a new discourse context.
It might be worth comparing the le Carré passage with the following
extract, which is from a travel guide:
Haddon Hall is the English castle par excellence, not the
forbidding fortress on an unassailable crag, but the large,
rambling, safe, grey, lovable house of knights and their
ladies, the unreasonable dream-castle of those who think of
the Middle Ages as a time of chivalry and valour and noble
feelings. None other in England is so complete and
convincing. It is set in gentle green surroundings, with woods
above and lush fields and the meandering river below.6
The similarities between this and the paragraph from The Little
Drummer Girl are surely not coincidental. For a start, it contains the
familiar noun phrases with multiple modifiers:
5

16
INTRODUCTION
large, rambling, safe, grey, lovable house (2–3)
unreasonable dream-castle (4)
gentle green surroundings (7)
It exhibits the same alliterative contouring across words:
forbidding fortress (2)
complete and convincing (6–7)
and displays rhetorical parallelism, as in the following structure
where a pair of opposites are balanced within the framework of a
single sentence:
It is set in gentle green surroundings, with woods above and
lush fields and the meandering river below (7–8)
Intertextual references are rife, with most taking the form of allusions
to medieval chivalric codes and conduct. Even the same word, the
adjective ‘lush’, occurs in both passages.
My suggestion is that in the le Carré extract the basic novelistic
format has been overlaid with elements from a tourist-travelogue
register. However, in stylistic judgments of this sort, it is always
worth exploring the reactions of others to the same text, not least
because it helps refute or confirm claims made about it. So, as a
simple followup to the analysis, I devised an informal questionnaire
in which the paragraph from The Little Drummer Girl (without its
‘giveaway’ final sentence) was presented to twenty informants
comprising under-graduates and postgraduates from a university
department of English.7
The aim was to keep the exercise deliberately
vague so that the responses provided would be as ‘raw’ as possible
and would be unsullied by clues about the actual source of the text.
Given that the passage had been thoroughly decontextualised in this
manner, informants were then asked to respond to the following
directive: ‘A: Identify the source from which this passage is taken.’
In the event of not being able to specify a particular source, they
were then asked the following question: ‘B: Does the language of the
passage remind you of anything in particular?’ Acknowledging the

17
INTRODUCTION
obvious limitations of the experiment, the responses were
nevertheless interesting and merit some discussion.
Two of the twenty informants identified the author and title of the
novel and consequently provided no response regarding the second
part of the questionnaire. Of the remaining eighteen informants, six
said that the passage was taken from a novel, probably a spy story or
political thriller, whilst eight (forty per cent of the total number of
informants) said that it was taken from travel literature of various
kinds. Neither of these groups responded to the second part of the
question, although some of the individual responses were quite
specific about the potential source of the passage (e.g. ‘a glossy
magazine’; ‘an article on German tourism’; ‘an intrigue about a
German general election’). The responses of the remaining four
informants brought to light an interesting paradox: all agreed that the
source was a novel, yet they all pointed out that the language
reminded them of tourist or travel literature. Transcribed here are
three comments which are typical of this set of responses:
1 A novel—thriller? Near beginning. Reminds me of an Alan
Wicker [sic] intro[duction] into the place on which the
ensuing programme concentrates.
2 A spy novel: language seems like holiday advertisement.
3 ‘Sam Spade’ language mixed with holiday brochure.
By pinpointing the two layers of discourse operating in the text, the
responses as a whole confirm that one register has been superimposed
on to another. The blending of registers arguably trivialises the
description of events in a passage whose apparent purpose is to detail
the horrifying aftermath of an explosion. This technique of re-
registration may explain why critics have found this narrative
strategy ‘distant’ or ‘disinterested’. For example, in the chapter of
his book devoted to The Little Drummer Girl, Barley talks of the
‘clenched’ irony in the story, adding that this mode of narration
takes on a divorced, ‘knowing’ distance, permitting itself to weigh
the speculative and digressional aspects of an event with what
normally would constitute its principal components… Often there
is a throwaway matter-of-factness to descriptions or, again, a

18
INTRODUCTION
disturbing faux-naiveté. Such techniques give a cool pathos to
parts of the narrative.
(1986:162)
While endorsing these observations, I would want to add that a
stylistic analysis will go some way towards explaining just how such
‘cool pathos’ or ‘“knowing” distance’ is created. It will be one of the
purposes of this book to illustrate how stylistics offers a much greater
purchase on a text than can be obtained through traditional modes of
criticism, and while this is not the place to offer a detailed critique of
le Carré’s prose style, the analysis undertaken here should at least
lay the foundations for discussion in this area.
To conclude this discussion of register and ‘literary language’, it
might be worth reviewing this brief analysis in the light of arguments
put forward earlier in the section. Literary language is not a variety
of language in any palpable sense. And by clearing away the
misconception that it is, the way is opened up for a coherent and
principled assessment of what writers actually do with language. The
‘re-registration’ spotted in the le Carré passage is just one example
of how literature, while not in itself a register of language, has none
the less the capacity to assimilate other registers and discourses.
Whereas non-linguistic constraints are exercised on the choice of
register in most other discourse contexts, the context of literary
communication allows unlimited variation in linguistic style. Brumfit
and Carter comment on this significant (although not necessarily
unique) feature of literary texts. They point out that a literary text
is almost the only ‘context’ where different varieties of language
can be mixed and still admitted. Any deviation from norms of
lexis and syntax in legal documents would be inadmissible…any
non-literary linguistic form can be pressed into literary service.
Writers will exclude no language from a literary function.
(Brumfit and Carter 1986:8-9)
The channel of literary communication, then, has the capacity to
assimilate other registers to produce discourse that is composite and
multidimensional. It is this sort of ‘many-voiced’ or ‘multi-mode’
discourse for which the Russian theorist Mikhail Bakhtin reserved
the term ‘polyphon’. And, echoing implicitly the concept of re-
registration, he also proposes a distinction between primary and

19
INTRODUCTION
secondary speech genres. Literature, he contends, is specifically a
secondary speech genre. That the distinction is intended to
encompass writing as well as speech is clear from his definition:
Secondary (complex) speech genres—novels, dramas…arise in
more complex and comparatively highly developed and organised
cultural communication (primarily written) that is artistic,
scientific, sociopolitical, and so on. During the process of their
formation, they absorb and digest various primary (simple) genres
that have taken form in unmediated speech communion.
(Bakhtin 1986:62)
As we need to press on quickly to more practical aspects of language
study, further discussion of the theories of re-registration and speech
genres is not possible here. However, many of the arguments
developed in this section will re-surface in the course of the next four
chapters.
1.4 Using this book
Textbooks on English language come in many shapes and sizes.
Some offer straightforward accounts of the levels and functions of
language; others are workbooks whose squarely practical emphasis
is reflected by sets of exercises and worked examples. This book,
however, attempts to tread the middle ground between the two. By
developing practical activities designed for the study of English
language, it tries to go beyond linguistic description alone. On the
other hand, to avoid the often soulless feel of a workbook, topics in
language are discussed, reviewed and evaluated creating a discursive
thread which runs through the entire book. There is, of course, a
special focus to all of this in that literary texts provide the raw
materials from which much of the practical component of the book is
crafted.
Each chapter in the book is relatively self-contained and is
designed to introduce and develop a specific area of study in English
language. Each proposes a specific model of language, which is a
synthesis of current research in language and linguistics but which
has been rendered down into a simplified and manageable format. At
every stage in its development, each model is illustrated extensively

20
INTRODUCTION
with examples from many sources. All the models are intended to be
used as a way of understanding how different elements of language
function in different contexts. Each chapter also contains an analysis
of a literary text within the parameters of its model of language, as
well as a series of demonstrations and suggested follow-up activities.
The hope is that each model may be re-applied to a range of other
discourse types and will be able to handle texts beyond those actually
analysed in the course of the chapter. For the primary benefit of
teachers, pedagogical issues and suggested extensions to workshop
plans are carried over and elaborated upon in a special Teachers’
appendix at the end of the book. When, in the course of a chapter an
issue emerges which is thus carried over, the symbol ¶ appears in the
margin. Finally, a glossary is provided which contains short
definitions of the main technical terms employed in the book. Terms
which appear in the glossary are highlighted in bold.
As this book is designed for non-specialists who are new to
language study, accessibility and clarity are the primary influences
on its structure and content. In the interests of producing a ‘hands-
on’ language package, some of the more rarefied theoretical
intricacies of linguistic inquiry have been avoided. Where a
theoretical issue does open up a fruitful avenue for further study, this
is elaborated upon in the notes to each chapter placed at the end of
the book and, in order not to saddle the main body of each chapter
with scholarly digressions, references to the history and development
of a particular theory of language are also included there. Annotated
references and suggestions for further reading can be found in special
sections at the end of each chapter. Over the course of the book, an
extensive bibliography of stylistics and English language is built up,
although care is taken to include wherever possible accessible
textbooks or articles published in widely circulated journals.
The topics covered in the next four chapters widen progressively
in scope, beginning with the structure of single words and
progressing right up to the structure of whole conversations. This
shift in focus is reflected by the use of different literary genres, from
poetry, through prose, to dramatic dialogue. Chapter 2 concentrates
on small linguistic elements: words, their structures and the visual
patterns they form on the page. The central analysis will be of a short
modernist poem. Chapter 3, which also uses poetry for its core
analysis, is primarily concerned with explaining what words mean.
This basic objective is expanded to look at how word-meanings

21
INTRODUCTION
interrelate with one another and how complex clusters of meaning
result from combinations of words. Signalling a transition from
poetry to prose, Chapter 4 is broadly concerned with study of
narrative. It introduces the concepts of cohesion and natural
narrative and examines these elements of language in a short story.
Finally, Chapter 5 looks at the structure of dialogue and assesses
some of the strategies that speakers and hearers use in conversation.
Concentrating on drama, this chapter suggests, amongst other things,
that ‘absurdist’ play dialogue is a useful mechanism for explaining
how we understand the more commonplace routines of every
interaction.
Suggestions for further reading
Stylistics and English language
A great deal of work has been published in stylistics over the last few
years, including a number of collections aimed at the non-specialist.
Many of the essays in these volumes concentrate specifically on
teaching and learning about English language from a stylistic
perspective. Here is a representative sample: Carter (1982a); Brumfit
and Carter (1986); Short (1989a); Carter and Simpson (1989);
Verdonk (1993). Most of the papers in these volumes stress the value
of integrating language and literary study and to this end provide
useful practical guidance on undertaking stylistic analysis. Of related
interest is Wales (1989) which is a comprehensive dictionary of key
terms in stylistics. Other useful works include: Traugott and Pratt
(1980); Fowler (1986); Leech and Short (1981); Widdowson (1975);
Short (forthcoming).
Register
The term register has received extensive coverage in language study,
especially in the work of the influential linguist M.A.K.Halliday and
that of his followers. Halliday himself has provided an extremely
compact definition of the concept (1978:31–5). A book which offers
an accessible introduction to the notion of register is Gregory and
Carroll (1978). Crystal and Davy (1969), although a little dated,

22
INTRODUCTION
remains a useful reference work on register and style. Hudson (1980:
48–55) contains a helpful definition of register, while Freeborn
(1986: Chapters 7–10) deals broadly with the subject of language,
situation and register.
Register and literature
As a study of the interrelationship between language, literature and
register, an article by Carter and Nash (1983) is well worth reading.
They look at a variety of passages, both literary and non-literary, and
propose a principle of ‘literariness’ which they regard as a creative
property of texts. Crucially, however, they are at pains to point that
‘literariness’ can be found in many texts outside those commonly
designated as literature. (Some of this material is reproduced in
Carter and Nash (1993).) An article which also explores this feature
of literary texts and which has a strong pedagogical emphasis is
Short and Candlin (1986). One of the texts they examine is Leonard
Cohen’s ‘All There is to Know about Adolph Eichmann’—a poem
which is presented in a format more commonly associated with
passports or identity cards. Working from a similar point of departure,
Trengove (1986) discusses the use of a professional-technical register
in Robert Graves’s ‘The Persian Vision’. A compact survey of
stylistic applications of register can be found in Downes (1994).
¶

23
C h a p t e r 2
From shapes to
words: exploring
graphology and
morphology in
poetry
• 2.1 Introduction 24
• 2.2 The system of graphology 25
• 2.3 Morphemes and words 33
• 2.4.1 Using linguistic models for stylistic analysis 44
• 2.4.2 Extending the analysis: a workshop 53
• 2.5 Summary 57
• Suggestions for further reading 59
Chapter2

24
2.1 Introduction
The best place to begin an extended survey of the structure and
function of modern English is with the basic elements which form
the building blocks of the language. In this chapter, the focus will be
on precisely those basic elements. The two main aspects of language
selected for study are the structure and make-up of words, and the
shapes and patterns which comprise written language. The overall
aim of the chapter is to offer a selection of critical tools which might
usefully be employed in textual analysis. To this end, there will be a
practical analysis of these two components of the language system as
well as a detailed examination of how they are exploited in a
modernist poem.
The chapter is structured as follows. The next section will provide
an introduction to the visual medium of language, while in section
2.3 the focus will shift to words and their constituent structures.
Although largely theoretical in orientation, these two sections will
still offer many practical illustrations and will be enriched with
several examples of actual language usage. Moreover, the language
models will be developed eclectically, and will be built up through
the collation of material from several different schools and traditions
in linguistics. In an attempt to make the resulting models as accessible
as possible, only the most practical and workable ideas will be teased
out of this substantial body of research. Section 2.4 has two parts.
The first offers a sample analysis of a short e e cummings poem
drawing specifically on the materials developed in the previous two
sections. The second provides a number of practical extensions to
the analysis, and includes a workshop activity offering a creative
application of the two models.
As the overarching aim is to use textual analysis as a means of
getting to grips with a formidably complex part of the language
system, all the sections are designed so as to offer a set of language
tools. It is hoped that these tools will be both usable and replicable;

25
FROM SHAPES TO WORDS
usable in that they should provide a coherent model for textual
analysis, replicable in so far as they permit extension to types of
texts beyond those covered in the main body of the chapter.
2.2 The system of graphology
The term graphology will be used here in its broadest sense to refer
to the visual medium of language. It describes the general resources
of language’s written system, including punctuation, spelling,
typography, alphabet and paragraph structure, but it can also be
extended to incorporate any significant pictorial and iconic devices
which supplement this system.
In their explanations of graphology, linguists often find it useful
to draw parallels between this system and the system of spoken
language. One such parallel relates to the actual physical channels
which each system uses to transmit and receive information. The
audible ‘noise’ upon which the spoken mode relies for
communication is normally referred to as phonetic substance.
Analogously, the shapes and characters which comprise the written
mode are referred to as graphetic substance. The parallel can be
further developed by considering the ways in which these ‘raw’
linguistic elements are organised into meaningful combinations in
language. Different sounds combine into clusters, with each cluster
yielding a particular meaning. The individual units which signal these
differences in meaning are called phonemes. Thus, the phoneme/b/
at the beginning of a word like ‘bit’ will ensure that it is
systematically differentiated from, say, a word like ‘pit’ which is
headed by the phoneme/p/. This/b~p/alternation is said to generate a
‘meaningful difference in sound’. The study of the meaning potential
of clusters of sounds is referred to as phonology. By the same
principle, the study of the meaning potential of written characters
will be enveloped by our term graphology, while the basic
graphological units themselves are referred to as graphemes.
However, to differentiate them from their counterparts in the spoken
system, graphemes are normally enclosed within angled brackets
rather than slashes. For instance, the total set of graphemes which
comprise the words ‘bit’ and ‘pit’ can be set out as <b>, <p>, <i>
and <t>. Distinguishing graphemes and phonemes in this way is
important because the systems from which they derive, although

26
theoretically parallel in many respects, employ different physical
resources—resources which are governed by their own specific sets
of rules and conventions. In short, graphemes simply do not exhibit
an exact one-to-one correspondence with phonemes. For instance,
the grapheme <c> in English may yield two different pronunciations
depending on the word in which it occurs: in ‘clue’ it is /k/ but in
‘juice’ it corresponds to /s/. Conversely, the phoneme /z/ can be
represented not only by the grapheme <z> in a word like ‘size’, but
also by the grapheme <s> in ‘rise’.
A related theoretical point concerns the manner in which
phonemes and graphemes are produced. The <c> grapheme, for
instance, can be written in a host of different typefaces and fonts
such as <c>, <c> or <>. These individual realisations of a single
grapheme are normally called allographs. Although they all exhibit
variation, they are still representative of a general category;
transitions between one and the other will not therefore alter the
meaning of the word in which they occur. The same could not be
said of variation between, say, <s>, <d> and <f>. The ‘allo-’ principle
also applies to the spoken system of language. A phoneme like /t/
may be pronounced in a host of different ways depending on a range
of contextual factors, of which the most important are the social and
geographical origins of the speaker. To return to an earlier example,
the acoustic quality of the /t/ in ‘bit’ will vary depending on whether
it is spoken with, say, the Cockney accent of London, the ‘Scouse’
accent of Merseyside or the accent of English spoken in South Africa.
In the first variety, the /t/ is not produced as a familiar ‘t’ sound as
such, but rather as a glottal stop. In the second variety, the /t/ would
be accompanied by a considerable amount of breathiness—indeed,
the resulting word would sound almost like ‘biss’. The South African
/t/ would be produced with no aspiration or breathiness at all,
contributing to what is often perceived as the ‘dry’ quality which
distinguishes this accent of English. These three variant
pronunciations of /t/ are referred to as allophones of /t/. They are,
furthermore, only three of possibly dozens of allophonic variants of
this phoneme. Despite this variation in the actual ways in which /t/ is
produced, however, none of the variants is sufficient to alter the
meaning of the word in which they occur. Allophones, just like their
allograph counterparts, are not distinct units of meaning.1
Aside from the theoretical parallels between the systems of speech
and writing, there are substantial points of departure between the

27
two modes. This divergence normally reflects the different functions
which the two modes serve. Writing, for instance, permits contextual
displacement where writer and reader can be separated in time and
space. Spoken language, on the other hand, is normally channelled
through a physical context which is shared between speaker and
hearer. Where writing is characterised by permanence, speech is
ephemeral. Features of one system, moreover, may have no direct
counterpart in the other. For example, the written mode contains a
set of logograms—graphemes like <&> and <@>—which ‘stand
for’ other words. Strictly speaking, logograms have no spoken form:
the ‘&’ symbol cannot be read aloud without prior conversion to the
word ‘and’.
The stylistic exploitation of the system of graphology is often
considered the preserve of poets rather than novelists. Indeed, the
stylistic effects created within the genre of writing known as
‘concrete poetry’ rely almost exclusively on manipulation of the
visual medium of language. Nevertheless, writers of prose fiction
have, in principle, those same techniques at their disposal, and as
early as the eighteenth century the novelist Laurence Sterne, author
of Tristram Shandy, was exploring the potential of the written system
to the full. For a more recent example of graphological innovation in
the context of prose fiction, consider the opening of the second
chapter of Samuel Beckett’s novel Murphy (1938).2
This sequence is
devoted to the introduction of the character Celia, a prostitute, who is
to feature as Murphy’s confidante throughout the story. Until this
point in the novel, the text has been written entirely within
conventional, left to right, connected prose:
Age Unimportant
Head Small and Round
Eyes Green
Complexion White
Hair Yellow
Features Mobile
Neck 13 3/4"
Upper Arm 11"
Forearm 9 1/2"
Wrist 6"
Bust 34"
Waist 27"

28
Here, details of the new character are presented not in fully
grammatical sentences but in a format which is reminiscent of official
documents like passports. In keeping with the discourse type which
it echoes, fixed categories are listed in the left-hand column while
specific, individual characteristics are provided in the right. It is
worth considering how a more conventional introduction to Celia
might look:
Celia’s green eyes were set in her small and round head.
Her complexion was white, her hair yellow…
The columnar format adopted in the Beckett also restricts the
elaboration of physical characteristics: none of the adjectives used is
modified with intensifiers like ‘rather’ (‘rather white’) or ‘quite’
(‘quite small and round’). Of course, the usefulness of the details
which are provided is highly questionable. Where age, for instance,
is arguably one of the most important pieces of information required
on such documentation, forearm size is most certainly not. The
criterion for describing someone’s features is normally
‘distinguishability’, not ‘mobility’. It could be added that this type of
graphological deviation subverts textual norms on two planes. First,
it constitutes a break with the canonical prose format which
represents the norm for the novel as a whole. Second, it subverts an
extraneous register, ‘officialese’, by appropriating it and then
recontextualising it into the context of prose fiction.
The linguistic system of graphology interacts in subtle and
sophisticated ways with the cognitive systems of information
processing and working memory. Graphology, in other words, exerts
a psycholinguistic influence on the reading process. Much of the
activity of reading relies on informed guesswork; efficient readers
do not read words, they read meanings (Smith 1973:188). Children,
in fact, often develop this skill instinctively. They quickly learn not
to linger over every individual word, but learn instead to search for
grammaticality, to form hypotheses—in short, to read for sense. This
psycholinguistic ‘guessing game’ relies on the scanning of visual
information to produce coherent readings, while simultaneously
suppressing ambiguous readings. However, in those genres of writing
that exploit the resources of language—of which literature is a pre-
eminent example—this visual medium provides an excellent
opportunity for controlled and motivated ambiguity. Before we

29
examine some examples from literary texts, it is worth undertaking a
couple of brief experiments in order to illustrate more clearly the
psycholinguistic potential of the visual medium of language.
The first experiment will require a little piece of paper or card and
a commitment from you not to turn over the page, or read the next
paragraph on this page until instructed to do so! What you will find
overleaf is a single sentence which is built up through the progressive
accumulation of units. The first word, ‘Businessmen’, occurs on a
line of its own; the next line adds on the second word, the next line
the third and so on. This pattern is continued until the sentence is
complete. As you read through it, note your impressions of how the
sentence develops as a unit of meaning and how your process of
reading employs hypothesis formation and re-formation. Now read
the sentence one word at a time, using your piece of paper or card to
blot out the lines below.
The interpretative strategies which this example warrants should
illustrate how reading is often a process of conceptual reorientation
and revision. Our search for ‘sense’ depends on the interpretation of
chunks of language as coherent units of meaning, and frequently this
means taking psycholinguistic ‘short cuts’. These short cuts, which
are normally referred to as perceptual strategies, are an integral part
of the reading process. They involve forming hypotheses about
linguistic units in order to reduce ambiguity, as well as discarding
other hypotheses in the light of new information. For instance, the
strategies used to process the sentence overleaf will require
progressive revision as each new element is added on. The third line
is the first which ‘looks’ like a coherent unit of meaning and would
yield a satisfactory (if sexist!) interpretation. This hypothesis has to
be revised, however, when in the fourth line it becomes clear that
‘like’ is to be interpreted as a comparative item and not as a finite
verb. Readers may have experienced further reorientations at the
fifth line (‘Businessmen like secretaries are difficult’) where a
reading is suggested along the lines that both types of people tend to
be recalcitrant or tetchy. However, the subsequent text reveals that
this reading too has to be jettisoned. Thus, processing the sentence
rests on a string of interpretations which are progressively revised
until the guessing game is over.
One of the consequences of the interaction between visual
information and cognitive processing is that it often interferes with a
reader’s intuitive judgments about the grammaticality of a particular

30
Businessmen
Businessmen like
Businessmen like secretaries
Businessmen like secretaries are
Businessmen like secretaries are difficult
Businessmen like secretaries are difficult to
Businessmen like secretaries are difficult to fool
sentence. Perceptual strategies can, in other words, often
lead to mis-analysis and misinterpretation. Here is a good
example of a sentence which would pose such a problem:
1 The train left at midnight crashed.
It is likely that this sentence would be judged ungrammatical by
many readers and would simply be interpreted as a clumsily
expressed attempt at The train left at midnight and crashed’ or The
train which left at midnight crashed.’Yet a more thorough inspection
will reveal that there is, in fact, nothing ill-formed about this example
at all. This is best explained by invoking a sentence with a
superficially parallel structure. Consider the following, which should
cause no problems:
2 The baby abandoned at midnight cried.
This parallel structure will help ‘disambiguate’ our problematic
example. What has happened in (1) is that the intuitively coherent
grammatical unit (‘The train left at midnight’) has interfered with
our perception of the sentence as a whole. In the second example,
however, the superficially similar sequence (The baby abandoned at
midnight’) creates no such obstacle—it simply cannot be interpreted
as a complete grammatical unit. This second sequence thus reinforms
our interpretation of the parallel construction in the first so that it can
now be successfully reinterpreted along the lines of The train which
was left (i.e. in a siding, in a tunnel) at midnight crashed.’ The point
is that it is the perceptual strategy—the grammatical short cut which
is so central to the act of reading—that triggers the misanalysis in the
first place.¶

31
Informal experiments like these can highlight the ways in which
visual information is encoded and retrieved. They also illustrate the
linguistic complexity of the written system. Indeed, one of the benefits
of graphological innovation in general is that stylistic effects can be
created on more than one level. Where a line ending in poetry may,
for instance, suggest a pause, it may also function as a subtle
conceptual break with other grammatical structures. An excellent
illustration of this aspect of the visual medium of language is offered
by Roger Fowler (1986:45) in his discussion of William Carlos
Williams’s poem ‘The Right of Way’. Fowler is particularly interested
in the line boundaries in the last of the following three stanzas:
Why bother where I went
for I went spinning on the
four wheels of my car
along the wet road until
I saw a girl with one leg
over the rail of a balcony
The structure of the final stanza creates a striking linguistic trompe
l’oeil. The reader first assumes that the penultimate line refers to an
amputee, only to have the missing leg ‘restored’ in the final line. These
two potential readings, Fowler argues, are contradictory: the penultimate
line suggests pathos, violence, the grotesque, whereas the girl on the
balcony implies relaxation and confidence. The result is a visual
ambiguity where, although the second of the two projected readings is
preferred, the impression left by the first never completely disappears.
Manipulation of the visual system of language is not the
exclusive preserve of literary communication. Indeed,
graphological exploitation is a resource which is available to other
genres of discourse. There is not the space here to develop this
point in detail, but a brief illustration from advertising language
should none the less prove useful. The extract below is part of an
advertisement which ran regularly in the weekly magazine TV
Times. The product advertised is a beverage called ‘Cranberry
Classic’. The pictorial detail which forms the backcloth to this
written text comprises a tranquil village cricket game, set in the
late afternoon and photographed in warm and sumptuous colours.

32
The message superimposed on to this salubrious scene takes the
following format:
ALL THE JUICE
GOODNESS OF FRUIT.
YET THERE’S NOTHING
TRADITIONAL ABOUT IT.
CRANBERRY CLASSIC IS
THE JUICE DRINK
THAT GIVES YOU BOTH
GOODNESS AND AN
EXCITING, DRY,
REFRESHING TASTE.
The layout of the text is a crucial determinant of the interpretative
path it encourages. Although the product is a ‘juice drink’—the main
ingredients of which are normally sugar, water and fruit flavouring-
one might have assumed that the text actually advertises ‘fruit juice’.
The graphological presentation of the first sentence is especially
telling in this respect. Significantly, the sentence is split into the two
sequences ALL THE JUICE and GOODNESS OF FRUIT, serving to
create two information units within a single grammatical structure.
The placement of these units on separate lines suggests that the
product is ‘all juice’, so to speak, while at the same time it emphasises
the ‘goodness’ that fruit contains. Reassembling the sentence offers
a very different message:
ALL THE JUICE GOODNESS OF FRUIT
Here the product emerges more as an approximation to juice; as a
beverage which exhibits some of the characteristics of juice. Only
later in the advertisement is this aspect of the product divulged:
CRANBERRY CLASSIC IS
THE JUICE DRINK
and, noticeably, this sequence is followed quickly by echoes of the
‘goodness’ theme which opened the extract.
The manner by which a text presents information can often be
distinguished from the content of that information. As far as one can

33
tell, there is nothing factually untrue or inaccurate about the claims
made on behalf of the product. What is at issue here is the technique
by which copywriters shape messages in strategically motivated
ways. Some elements are played down while others are
foregrounded. The visual organisation of the text, in particular,
serves to manipulate perceptual strategies, creating cognitive maps
which influence the way we process and assimilate information.
This section has explored the system of graphology and assessed
the creative potential which it offers writers. For the moment, we
will leave graphology, in order to introduce some new concepts in
language. However, we will return to it later where it will be
integrated with the framework of morphology which forms the focus
of attention in the next section.
2.3 Morphemes and words
This section introduces some of the basic principles relating to the
study of words and vocabulary. The general term which is normally
reserved for the ‘pool’ of words which form the basis of any language
is the lexicon. Like most technical terms in linguistics, this one is
derived from Classical Greek: from lexis ‘word’ into lexikon
‘inventory of words’. In most surveys of the English lexicon, it is
normal practice to adhere to an important basic distinction between
two different types of words. These are known as content words and
grammatical words. This distinction is based not only on what
particular words mean but also according to what their function is
within a sentence. Here is a simple—if unimaginative—example of a
sentence which contains both content and grammatical words:
3 The cat sat on the mat
Content words, as the term indicates, are those which carry
substantial meaning and in this sentence they are ‘cat’, ‘sat’ and
‘mat’. The function of content words is to name the many objects,
qualities, actions and events which are manifest in everyday life. Not
surprisingly, this class of words is enormous, with new content words
being added to the language all the time. The addenda of any recent
dictionary, with everything from computer-age ‘megabyte’ to
populist ‘bonk’, illustrates how the lexicon is being expanded to

34
account for new developments in a host of social and technological
domains.
Nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs are the parts of speech which
typically contribute to the class of content words. Grammatical
words, on the other hand, are realised by parts of speech such as
articles (‘the’, ‘a’), prepositions (‘in’, ‘by’), pronouns (‘I’, ‘you’,
‘she’) and modal verbs (‘would’, ‘do’, ‘may’). One of the most
important functions of these items is to bind content words together
to form coherent, grammatical units. Grammatical words thus
provide the structural foundations upon which the building blocks of
the lexicon—the content words—can be assembled. Unlike content
words, grammatical words form a closed system: they comprise a
small and stable class. It is rare in any language for new grammatical
words to be invented or borrowed from another language. Indeed,
the last significant change that affected this part of the English
language happened when the Anglo-Saxon and Old Norse pronoun
systems partially merged after the Viking invasions of the eighth and
ninth centuries. Another criterion which distinguishes the two classes
of words is relative length. Grammatical words tend to be short: they
are normally of one syllable and many are represented in spelling by
less than three graphemes (‘I’, ‘he’, ‘do’, ‘on’, ‘or’). Content words
are longer and, with the exception of ‘ox’ and American English’s
‘ax’, are spelt with a minimum of three graphemes. This criterion of
length can also be extended to the production of the two sets of
words in connected speech. Here grammatical words are often
unstressed or generally de-emphasised in pronunciation. For
instance, the modal verb ‘would’ and the negative particle ‘not’ can
both be contracted to shortened forms: ‘He’d hate it’; ‘She isn’t
there.’ Furthermore, in some varieties of writing, grammatical words
may be deleted from sentences altogether, on the proviso, of course,
that their basic sense can still be inferred in the context. Headlines in
newspapers are prime candidates for this, as the following example
from the Independent on Sunday3
should demonstrate:
Collapse of holiday giant feared by travel industry
Those grammatical words which are ‘expendable’ have been
removed. Yet it is easy to construct a version with all the deleted
items reinserted: ‘The collapse of a holiday giant is feared by the
travel industry.’ Notice, however, that ‘of’ and ‘by’ need to be

35
retained in the headline as their removal would lead to ambiguity.
This 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 is
not surprising therefore to find such reduction in the linguistic style
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 systematically
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 function
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 which make up
this word are referred to as morphemes. This technical term, with 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

36
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 list of words,
which is comprised solely of ‘free-standing’ root morphemes.
These morphologically simple words, which contain only a single
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 ‘-able’. 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 bound
morphemes around it. Thus, ‘desire’ becomes ‘desir-’, while
‘beauty’ will be transformed into ‘beauti-’ in the formation of
‘beautiful’ and of the increasingly common complex ‘beautician’.
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 bound morpheme is affix. The position
of a bound morpheme in relation to the root leads to finer distinctions.
Bound morphemes placed in front of the root are referred to as
prefixes’, those placed after the root as suffixes. Take, for instance,
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-’ deriving ‘amoral’ and ‘immoral’.
Suffixes include ‘-ity’, ‘-ly’ and ‘-ist’ deriving respectively
‘morality’, ‘morally’ and ‘moralist’. The last of these actually permits
further suffixation with ‘-ic’ as in ‘moralistic’. Other common
prefixes in English are: ‘dis-’ as in ‘disrespect’, ‘un-’ as in ‘unreal’,
‘bi-’ 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
infixes. In Bantoc, a language spoken in the Philippines, the word for

37
‘strong’ is ‘fikas’. If Bantoc speakers want to say ‘to be strong’ they
simply insert the particle ‘-um-’ into the stem of the word deriving
‘fumikas’. Similar conversions can be performed on ‘kilad’ (‘red’)
to yield ‘kumilad’ (‘to be red’) and ‘fusul’ (‘enemy’) to produce
‘fumusul’ (‘to be an enemy’). Latin also permits a degree of infixing.
The root of the word for ‘break’ is ‘rup-’, the antecedent of modern
English ‘rupture’. The formation of the present tense ‘I 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 innovation in language. Traugott and
Pratt (1980:90) offer the colloquial ‘fan-damm-tastic’ as an example
of creative infixing. They also cite e e cummings’s ‘manunkind’,
which can be interpreted as the infixing of ‘mankind’ with ‘-un-’.
The stylistic effect created by this complex, they suggest, is one by
which the concept ‘man’, in a generic sense, is portrayed
simultaneously as not only unkind but also without true kin.
Classifying affixes into their respective subcategories is one means
of dealing with bound morphemes. There is another method, by
which they may be classified not in terms of their positions in a word
but in terms of the operations they perform on that word. Some
morphemes alter the meaning of the word in which they occur, some
change it to a new word-class while others are simply needed to
main tain the grammaticality of the sentence in which the word
occurs. To return to some of the earlier examples, the ‘un-’ morpheme
when prefixed on to ‘happy’ clearly derives the new meaning of ‘not
happy’, while ‘a-’ in front of ‘moral’ produces ‘without morals’. The
primary function of other types of bound morpheme is to alter the
word-class of the root on to which they 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 ‘-fui’ when joined to ‘beauty’ will derive an
adjective from a noun. Morphemes which perform either function—
that is to say, alter the meaning or the word-class of the root to which
they are attached—are called derivational morphemes. This category
does not however account for all of the bound 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 meaning. ‘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

38
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 morpheme ‘-ed’ which indicates past
tense (‘John walked’), and the suffix ‘-’s’ which signals possession
(‘Mary’s tale’; ‘John’s car’). These morphemes operate as
grammatical signposts, providing information on how the unit to
which they are attached relates to other units in the same grammatical
environment. Such morphemes are called inflectional morphemes,
or simply inflections. Unlike derivational morphemes, inflections do
not alter the meaning or the part of speech of the word in which they
occur. They are requirements of syntax, relating units to each other
and indicating structural relations within sentences. Derivational
morphemes on the other hand have the capacity to alter the meaning
potential of a word, in spite of the fact that they cannot stand on their
own. Here is a short summary of the principal differences between
inflectional and derivational morphemes:
Derivational morphemes
1 They change either the word-class or the meaning of the root to
which they are attached.
2 They may be prefixes or suffixes, e.g. dis+respect+ful.
3 They typically occur before any inflections in a sequence, e.g.
moral+ist+s.
Inflectional morphemes
1 They do not change the meaning or word-class of a word, e.g.
arrive, arrives and arrived are all 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 suffixes.
This might now be an appropriate stage at which to pause and review
all of the material covered so far in this section. In order to give a
clearer picture of how the numerous categories and sub-categories
interlock, Figure 2.1 is a simple schema which plots the relationship
of morphemes to words, and distinguishes the different types of affix
found in English.

39
In order to illustrate how this model may be applied to actual
stretches of language, we may perform a short analysis of the
following made-up sentence:
4 Mary’s tale of unhappiness disheartened her friends
The first step would be to isolate the root morphemes in the sentence.
These tend to be either free-standing content words or items which
have formed morphological complexes with bound morphemes. Here
is the sentence again, this time with root morphemes highlighted:
FIGURE 2.1 The system of morphology

language through literature an introduction

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