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
• 2.2 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
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

40
4(a) Mary’s tale of unhappiness disheartened her friends
This is what it looks like with grammatical words indicated:
4(b) Mary’s tale of unhappiness disheartened her friends
and now with derivational morphemes highlighted:
4(c) Mary’s tale of unhappiness disheartened her friends
and finally, with inflectional morphemes showing:
4(d) Mary’s tale of unhappiness disheartened her friends
In this way the morphological elements which make up the sentence
can be sifted out and classified systematically.
One of the things that should have emerged from the foregoing
survey of the lexicon is the degree of sophistication and productivity
of the morphological system of English. There exists in English a
variety of devices for the formation and derivation of new words.
This offers users of the language numerous resources for innovation
and creativity. The system is thus continually enriched and modified
in order to meet the needs of speakers and writers, and, while some
elements become obsolescent, so other new ones are created. An
intriguing consequence of this process is the way in which
asymmetries and gaps develop in the lexicon. Occasionally
morphological complexes survive into Modern English, while,
bizarrely, the root morphemes from which they are derived do not.
Take for instance Modern English’s ‘uncouth’ and ‘unkempt’. The
positive terms upon which these words are built are ‘couth’ and
‘kempt’ and both are well attested in earlier forms of English. The
first, a past tense form of Old English cunnan, originally meant ‘to
be able to, to know how to’.Yet only the negative derivation survives.
Similarly, ‘kempt’ appears in Chaucer as in ‘He kempte his lokkes’4
(i.e. ‘he combed his locks’) but again only the prefixed version has
been retained. Part of the explanation for this is that the marked
forms achieve special prominence: ‘uncouth’ and ‘unkempt’
represent departures from a norm, something which seems worthy of
special mention, whereas the root forms which constitute that norm
represent the commonplace. Even though the unmarked root forms

41
have since disappeared, speakers are sensitive to the asymmetry
which results: hence, an undergraduate’s recent jocular remark ‘He’s
very couth, you know.’ The same humorous turn is also evident in
the Mock Turtle’s coinage of ‘uglification’ in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s
Adventures in Wonderland. When pressed by Alice on the validity of
the word, the Gryphon supports the Mock Turtle’s lexical innovation
with inexorable linguistic reasoning:
‘Never heard of uglifying!’ it exclaimed. ‘You know what
to beautify is, I suppose?’
‘Yes,’ said Alice doubtfully: ‘it means—to make—
anything—prettier.’
‘Well then,’ the Gryphon went on, ‘if you don’t know
what to uglify is you are a simpleton.’5
Morphological asymmetry creates other types of gap in the lexicon.
It is a feature of many words that they exist only in their root forms,
resisting morphological development. Thus, where ‘clean’ and
‘happy’ may be prefixed by ‘un-’, the roots ‘dirty’ and ‘sad’ cannot.
This restriction is what permits the experimentation in the following
line from e e cummings which is discussed by Traugott and Pratt
(1980:33). The last word in the sequence is relevant here:
[love] is most mad and moonly
and less it shall unbe
When prefixed on to verbs like ‘do’, ‘lock’ and ‘screw’, the
morpheme ‘un-’ has a reversative function. It encourages a reading
along the lines of ‘reverse the action of the process expressed by the
root’. Yet here cummings forms a complex with the verb ‘to be’, a
verb which resists prefixing of this sort, creating a new type of sense.
Although ‘unbe’ shares some of the quality of parallel expressions
like ‘die’ or ‘not be’, it also suggests a process of reversal from a
state of being to a state of not being which the other items do not.
Gaps in the lexicon are also responsible for the process of
innovation known as back-formation. The standard procedure for
deriving new words is for the root to precede the complex: ‘write’,
for example, will convert naturally to ‘writer’ just as ‘read’ yields
‘reader’. In back-formation, however, the complex form actually
precedes the more simple form. The verb ‘beg’ is a prime illustration

42
of this process. Historically, it did not, as might be imagined, produce
the root for ‘beggar’; rather, it was actually derived from ‘beggar’.
What appears to have happened is that ‘beggar’ has been interpreted
as ‘agentive’ in the sense of ‘someone who begs’, whereas the
genuine etymological origin of the word is ‘beghard’, a name for a
medieval brotherhood. This re-interpretation or misanalysis—
whatever one chooses to call it—results in the alignment of ‘beg’
with other regular verb-noun paradigms like ‘read/reader’ and ‘write/
writer’. Back-formation in English is also responsible for the
derivation of the verb ‘burgle’ from the noun ‘burglar’ as well as the
verb ‘diagnose’ from the noun ‘diagnosis’. In fact, new verbs enter
the lexicon all the time through this process: witness recent additions
like ‘giftwrap’, ‘peddle’, ‘enthuse’, ‘gatecrash’—all of which have
been derived from noun complexes. Back-formation is also widely
employed in the formation of nonce-words (words made up ‘for the
nonce’, for use at a specific moment) which do not take hold in the
lexicon but none the less provide an outlet for humour and wit in
everyday interaction. It can thus account for a recent remark by a
therapist friend who said she was going out to ‘therap’ someone, or
a former colleague who, when informed about a particular student’s
vulnerability, replied ‘Yes, you could easily vul him’!
Another productive area of the English lexicon is its capacity to
form new words by combining two or more root morphemes. The
words derived from this highly flexible process are known as
compounds. This capacity for compounding can be attributed in part
to the Germanic origins of English. Indeed, some words which survive
from Old English were originally compounds even though the roots
which formed the compound have been lost. Our modern word
‘nightingale’ is historically derived from a compound of niht ‘night’
and galan ‘to sing’ producing the rather charming ‘night-singer’. All
sorts of permutations are possible in the formation of compounds,
with the major word classes able to enter into combinations with a
wide range of other items. Table 2.1 is a matrix which illustrates the
compounding possibilities of Modern English. For example, the first
element of the word ‘hovercraft’ is a verb and the second a noun. In
the compound ‘bittersweet’ both elements are adjectives.
The principle of compounding lends itself well to creativity in
language. Just look at the way it is employed in the following
paragraph from the ‘Proteus’ episode of James Joyce’s Ulysses
(1922):6

43
Airs romped around him, nipping and eager airs. They are
coming, waves. The whitemaned seahorses, champing,
brightwindbridled, the steeds of Mananaan.
TABLE 2.1 Matrix of compounding possibilities
Two roots make up ‘whitemaned’, while there are three in ‘bright-
windbridled’. Compounding of this sort offers the potential to create
rich densities of meaning, with individual content words compressed
into multiple conceptual clusters. Notice also how in the environment
of references to ‘steeds’, ‘-bridled’ ‘-maned’ and ‘Mananaan’ (a
Celtic god of the sea), even an established English compound like
‘seahorse’ can acquire new significance.
Before closing the more theoretical part of this chapter, it is worth
considering a few more types of word formation. Leaving aside the
straightforward borrowing of foreign words, here is a checklist of a
few of the other common word-formation processes in English, along
with definitions and illustrations:
Type Definition Examples
blend A fusion of two root morphemes,
where only parts of the words are
joined and the remainder deleted
clipping Where a word of two or more
syllables is shortened, without a
change in meaning or function
‘breathalyser’ (breath
+analyser); ‘Chunnel’
(Channel+tunnel);
‘smog’ (smoke+fog)
‘pram’ (perambulator);
‘flu’ (influenza);
‘exam’ (examination);
‘fridge’ (refrigerator)

44
acronym Words formed with the initial
letters of a phrase
This survey of word-formation concludes the introduction to the
lexicon of English. The task now will be to investigate the ways in
which the material assembled in this and the previous section can
be used in textual analysis.
2.4.1 Using linguistic models for stylistic analysis
This is the first part of the practical component of the chapter. In this
subsection, an analysis will be provided of a poem by the American
modernist poet e e cummings; in the next, the analysis is developed
further into a workshop activity.A few short examples of cummings’s
poetry have already been used as illustrations in the previous section.
This should have offered a foretaste of how productive the language
of this writer is for graphological and morphological analysis. In this
subsection, a more sustained analysis of a complete text will be
undertaken.
One topic that will not receive a great deal of attention here is the
general question of the literary ‘merit’ of cummings’s work. This is
simply not the place to provide a detailed evaluation of cummings’s
contribution to American literature, or to offer a case for his inclusion
within or exclusion from the canon of ‘great’ literature. These issues
are best left to the students of cummings, who, it must be added, are
thoroughly divided both on the quality of his poetry and its relationship
to the literary canon. Friedman, for example, while acknowledging the
‘aura of inadequacy’ which attaches to cummings’s reputation, none
the less maintains that he is ‘one of the great creators of our time’
(Friedman 1972:xi). Comparably ambivalent statements have been
offered on the literary genre to which the cummings oeuvre should
belong: classifications range from ‘nihilist’ to ‘romantic anarchist’
(Wegner 1965:63). Whatever position one takes on canonical or
generic issues, the linguistic experimentation which much of
cummings’s work displays is well suited to the type of linguistic
frameworks assembled over the last two sections.
‘nylon’ (New York+
London); ‘Waaf’
(Women’s Auxiliary
Air Force); ‘AIDS’
(Acquired Immuno-
Deficiency Syndrome)
¶

45
The text chosen for analysis is one of the many short untitled poems
in the volume 95 Poems which cummings published in 1958. In the
volume’s consecutive sequence of ninety-five poems, it is numbered
55 and its first line is ‘you no’.7
There is no motivation behind this
choice other than that it appears to lend itself to the type of stylistic
exercise in which we are engaged. It certainly hasn’t received much
attention from the critical establishment: my scan of the major studies
of cummings revealed not a single reference to this poem.Although no
single text is likely to display the full range of graphological and
morphological devices identified in sections 2.2 and 2.3, this one
should none the less offer a locus for exploring many such techniques.
Set in rules overleaf, then, is poem number ‘55’.
A cursory inspection of this text should prompt connections with
the material presented in the previous two sections. In linguistic
terms, the poem exploits the interaction between the written system
of language, principles of word-formation and psycholinguistic
perceptual strategies. Deployed throughout the text are devices which
manipulate the visual medium of language, devices which are
supplemented with deviations from standard word-formation. This
combination of visual tricks and striking morphological structure
can be viewed as a product of the complex intersection of the
graphological and morphological systems. Beginning with
graphology, we can now investigate more systematically the ways in
which these effects are created.
The poem bears all the characteristics of the cummings stylistic
blueprint. Typical of his work is the ‘deformation’ of standard
orthography, layout and punctuation. Perhaps the best known of these
techniques is the use of lower case for items which would normally
be printed in upper case, such as the first word of a line or the
personal pronoun ‘I’—not to mention the spelling of the poet’s own
name. By contrast, when upper case is used, it is used in the most
unlikely of environments: in this text it is restricted exclusively to
comparative and superlative terms (‘Less’; ‘Most’; ‘More’). These
terms thus become foregrounded in a text where lower case is the
norm. Other significant graphological devices include the logogram
‘&’. This feature was discussed early in section 2.2, where it was
pointed out how this and related symbols are situated at the extreme
of the written system of language. These symbols have no direct
spoken counterpart; rather they need to be ‘translated’ into words. In
this instance, then, the logogram <&> will ‘stand for’ the word ‘and’.

46
you no
tice
nobod
y wants
Less(not to men 5
tion least)&i
ob
serve no
body wants Most
(not 10
putting it mildly
much)
may
be be
cause 15
ever
ybody
wants more
(& more &
still More) what the 20
hell are we all morticians?

47
The use of the logogram is supplemented by the extensive use of
parenthesis, often with both types of symbol tied together so closely
that they are adjoining. This creates patterns like that at line 6:
tion least)&i
Where logograms and parenthesis are used to close up elements
within a line, the line layout itself serves to break up linguistic
elements. Each single line of text is followed by a two-line space,
which is in turn followed by a cluster of three lines of text. This
cluster is followed by another two-line space before the whole pattern
begins again. The shortness of each individual line makes the text
almost columnar in format. In fact, apart from the final line (which
will be discussed later), no line contains more than five syllables,
and the average for the text as a whole comes out at around two
syllables per line.
All of these graphological features intersect subtly with patterns
at the level of morphology, so it is impossible to explore the stylistic
effects of any one level in isolation. Operating in tandem with
graphological design, for instance, is a morphological technique
which exploits the principles of word-formation. Line endings are
used to produce morphological breaks, and these breaks subvert the
reading process by forcing a series of perceptual ‘double-takes’. The
specific strategies which engender this linguistic ‘backtracking’ can
be grouped into four types of morphological device. The first of
these is where a word is simply broken into two parts, with neither of
these parts resembling an item which could make sense on its own.
Put another way, the two resulting segments do not resemble free
morphemes. Here is an example of this type of breakage, with the
word ‘nobody’ becoming:
nobod
y wants
This type of breakage is the most linguistically unproductive of the
four in that neither ‘nobod’ nor ‘y’ resembles any other meaningful
units in the lexicon. The same cannot be said, however, of the
remaining three types of morphological experimentation in the poem.
All three of these strategies are based on the principle that parts of
some words happen purely by chance to resemble other root
morphemes.

48
The first strategy involves making a split in a word so that the first
element looks like a free morpheme. Through this process, ‘notice’
is carved up into ‘no’ and ‘tice’ (lines 1–2), with only the first
element forming a ‘real’ word. In this instance, it produces the
negative marker ‘no’, a grammatical word. Similarly, ‘mention’
becomes ‘men’ and ‘tion’ (lines 5–6) and while ‘men’ resembles an
actual content word in the lexicon, ‘tion’ has no such counterpart.
The crucial point is that none of the words so broken up is actually
a morphological complex in the first place. None of them contains
more than one morpheme. The particle ‘-tion’ is not a suffix of
‘men’ and ‘men-’ is certainly not a prefix of ‘tion’. Rather, the
cummings technique is built on analogy: words are fragmented as if
they were genuine morphological complexes. Moreover, the distance
which is placed between these fragments contributes further to the
illusion that they can be interpreted as independent units. Consider,
for example, the manner in which ‘notice’ and ‘mention’ are split:
you no
tice
nobod
y wants
Less(not to men
tion least…
Unlike the strategy employed for the break-up of ‘nobody’, a two-
line space is used here for both of these splits. Placing a substantial
gap between these segments helps to trigger the type of linguistic
trompes l’oeil and perceptual tricks which were discussed in section
2.2. Because the reading process is predicated upon the retrieval of
coherence and grammaticality, there is a tendency to search out
chunks which look like complete units of meaning. The appearance
of ‘men’ at the end of the fifth line looks precisely like one such unit.
However, the later addition of ‘tion’ requires a revision of the original
hypothesis, and the insertion of a relatively substantial gap between
the two elements simply ensures that the cognitive volte face is all

49
the easier to bring off. Interestingly, the same tactic is employed on
the remaining example from this category of morphological
breakage. The interpretation of ‘ever’ at line 16 needs to be re-
assimilated to ‘everybody’ when ‘ybody’ appears after a two-line
separation:
be be
cause
ever
ybody
The third type of morphological breakage is effectively a reversal of
the second. In this category it is the second and not the first part of
the split which resembles a free morpheme. The only exponent of
this type in the text occurs at lines 7–8:
…&i
ob
serve no
Here the second part is the one which has the same shape as another
item in the lexicon. But again the break is ‘false’ in that ‘ob’ is not a
bound morpheme which can be prefixed on to root morphemes. Like
all the other types, this type of break creates only the illusion of a
genuine morphological split.
The fourth and final type is somewhat more sophisticated. This is
where a split is placed so that the resulting components both resemble
complete words in the lexicon. A sustained pattern of this type begins
at line 13:
may
be be
cause
The grammatical words, ‘maybe’ and ‘because’, are each broken up
into segments. These segments are not constituent morphemes

50
because both words comprise only a single morpheme. Rather, the
split is manipulated so that each part resembles another morpheme.
Thus, ‘maybe’ yields the modal auxiliary ‘may’ and the verb ‘be’,
while ‘because’ produces ‘be’ and the content word ‘cause’. Even a
word like ‘nobody’, which had previously been subjected to the first
type of breakage at lines 3–4, can be broken in a way that produces
other morphemes. So, at lines 8–9, it now produces ‘no’ and ‘body’.
The different types of morphological device employed throughout
the poem can be captured quite neatly by means of a matrix like
Table 2.2. This demonstrates the field of possible lexical
permutations, ranging from the breaking of a word into two
meaningless chunks to the production of two elements which are the
same as other free morphemes in the lexicon.
TABLE 2.2 Morphological devices in poem ‘55’
Of course, as has been pointed out, all this morphological
experimentation is built on an analogy with genuine morphological
complexes. All of the examples covered so far—with the possible
exception ‘nobody’—have been divided into ‘false’ constituents. For
instance, whereas a word like ‘becalm’ genuinely comprises the bound
morpheme ‘be’ and the root ‘calm’, the word ‘because’ exhibits no
such parallel structure. Similarly, while the root ‘observe’ may be
prefixed and suffixed to create ‘unobserved’, the root itself cannot be
subdivided into more minimal forms. The same principle extends, for
that matter, to the root ‘notice’. It is this type of ‘breakage by analogy’
which forms the stylistic cornerstone of the text and creates the
perceptual re-orientations which permeate the poem.
Before assessing the implications of these techniques, a brief word
is necessary on the last line of the poem. In many respects, this line
carries a great deal of stylistic weight as it breaks many of the textual
patterns established prior to this point. Its relative length, for one thing,

51
sets it apart from the other lines of the poem. It also displays a degree
of grammatical wellformedness not shared by the remainder of the
text: indeed, its very coherence foregrounds it in a text where linguistic
fragmentation has become the norm. Moreover, where the grammatical
mood of the entire poem up to this point has been declarative (the
form standardly used for making statements), it switches twice in the
space of the final seven words. The sequence ‘what the hell’ is
exclamative, while the final clause ‘are we all morticians?’ is
interrogative. The poem thereby concludes with a grammatical
structure used to ask a (perhaps rhetorical) question. The final word of
this sequence—itself the longest word of the entire poem—produces
what might be best described as a ‘morphological pun’. In American
English the word ‘mortician’ performs the same function as British
English’s ‘undertaker’. In terms of morphology, the American English
version is built from the Romance-language root ‘mort-’ and the
derivational morpheme ‘-ician’, to form a complex which means
something along the lines of ‘practitioner of death’. In fact, the word
‘beautician’ discussed in section 2.3 is constructed on a similar
principle. However, given the environment in which it occurs in the
text, ‘mortician’ acquires new significance. In the three-line cluster
which precedes the last line, the comparator ‘more’ is repeated three
times, ultimately receiving the large case which is reserved for only a
very few words in the poem. This linguistic context projects a second
reading for ‘mortician’: one whereby it may be interpreted as a
complex derived from the items ‘more’ and ‘tician’. The literal
meaning of this complex would be someone who practises the concept
‘more’, or to push the pun a little further, a ‘tician’ of ‘moreness’. As
to the thematic significance of this complex, it plays presumably on
the opposition between ‘more’ and ‘less’ upon which the bulk of the
meaning of the text rests. The constant play on these opposing values,
heightened through the use of upper case and culminating in the pun
of the final line, constitutes a fairly direct critique of acquisitiveness,
consumerism and avarice. Readers interested in extending the scope of
this critique may wish to argue, on the basis of their analysis, that there
are still greater significances embedded within the text. It may perhaps
be interpreted as a covert attack on western capitalism, a disguised call
for responsible citizens to reduce their living standards, or, simply, as
an impassioned plea to everyone to cease to be ‘ticians’ of ‘more’.
So far in the analysis, quite a lot of attention has been paid to the
formal properties of the morphological and graphological devices of

52
the poem. But what can be said about the function of these devices and
how dependent upon them is the meaning which is projected by text?
One important consequence of the intersection between these unusual
patterns of graphology and morphology is the effect it has on the
reading process. A type of ‘game’ developed, in which two reading
strategies are brought into competition with one another. The first of
these is the familiar line-by-line reading strategy, where the eye makes
gradual progress vertically down the page. However, this strategy is
challenged by the morphological fragmentation noted above where
vertical processing is disrupted, and where instead a kind of
‘horizontal’ processing is encouraged. On this horizontal axis, lines
may be interpreted individually as little isolated statements. Because
of the boundaries strategically placed around them, sequences like
‘not to men’ at line 5 look at first glance like self-contained units of
meaning. Further progression down the vertical axis will lead to the
reconstruction of ‘mention’ from ‘men’, and so the horizontal reading
will eventually be overridden. Of course, this reading game is
completely invalidated if any attempt is made to read the poem aloud—
such linguistic experimentation is almost entirely dependent on the
visual system of language. To that extent, it is ‘poetry of the eye’ and
not ‘poetry of the voice’, with cummings himself reputedly remarking
that his work was meant to be seen and not heard (Dumas 1974:72). In
order to give some idea of how dependent the text is on its graphology,
readers may care to try to read the poem aloud for themselves. You
will, I imagine, be faced with two mutually exclusive options. The first
of these would be to attempt it by preserving the horizontal axis at the
expense of the vertical. Line endings could be interpreted as pauses
and so each line would be read in isolation, with no attempt to
reconstruct the text on the vertical axis. This would sound extremely
odd and be virtually unintelligible to any audience who did not have
the written version in front of them. Moreover problems of
pronunciation are likely to be encountered with sequences like ‘tion
least)&i’ and ‘ybody’. In adopting the second reading option, the text
could be reassembled so that the disruptions were removed and be
read as if none of the graphological and morphological devices existed.
But effectively (re)punctuating the poem defeats entirely the purpose
and function of its original stylistic structure. More importantly, this
(re)punctuation of the text would bring it close to standard punctuation
and orthography, producing the following less than exhilarating
aphorism:

53
You notice nobody wants less (not to mention least), and I
observe nobody wants most (not, putting it mildly, much). Maybe
because everybody wants more and more and still more. What
the hell! Are we all morticians?
A less than profound critique perhaps of the social mores which
underpin western culture. If anything, such a reconstruction reveals
the amount of stylistic currency that can be gained by the exploitation
of language’s visual medium. Now stripped of its key linguistic
devices, the text becomes, literally, prosaic, and the message which
it projects is rendered bland and unimaginative. Once the tricks of
the eye are removed, the poem’s dependency on the stylistics of the
written mode—perhaps at the expense of everything else—is
revealed.
The rendering down of a ‘deformed’ text into a more prosaic
version is a practice which can be extended productively in a number
of different directions. It facilitates, for example, a kind of stylistic
reversal, enabling the conversion of straightforward texts into
defamiliarised ones. In other words, if a list of suitable morphological
and graphological operations can be collated, then this list can form
the stylistic blueprint for creative and amusing ‘deformations’ of
language’s written mode. The next subsection will outline a practical
language-based activity which is based precisely on this principle
and which is designed to enrich knowledge about the morphology
and graphology of English further.
2.4.2 Extending the analysis: a workshop
It might be useful to begin this subsection by summarising the
stylistic strategies which were teased out in the course of the analysis
in the previous subsection. Isolating an inventory of key linguistic
devices allows us to explore the ways in which these operations may
be performed on other texts. Here then is the basic stylistic ‘blueprint’
for the cummings text, set out in the form of a list of morphological
and graphological axioms:

54
Strategy 1
Disrupt predictable patterns of large and small case, placing heavy
emphasis on the use of small case in unusual environments.
Strategy 2
Deploy extensively features that are exclusive to language’s written
mode, making particular use of logograms and parenthetical symbols.
Strategy 3
Break up lines of connected prose to form shorter, grammatically
incomplete segments; arrange these segments in a columnar format.
Strategy 4
Split up words into smaller particles. These particles may be anything
from two ‘meaningless’ segments to two particles which resemble
genuine words in the lexicon.
Deviation in language remains deviant for only a limited period of
time, and when disruptive patterns become established in the text
they begin to assume a kind of norm of their own. Once this ‘norm
of oddity’ is established, the way is prepared for a further type of
stylistic exploitation. Strategy 5 subverts those very patterns which
were striking in the first place:
Strategy 5
Break any of the patterns established through the use of Strategies 1–
4. For example: (a) use upper case where the text has established a
dominant pattern of small case; (b) increase line length or word
length in the environment of shorter lines or words; (c) change the
grammatical mood if a particular type has become the textual norm
(e.g. declarative to interrogative).
Once a stylistic blueprint has been abstracted from the analysis
in this manner, it can be re-shaped into a set of creative and practical
exercises. Here, for example, is a simple workshop activity that I
designed for use in my undergraduate English language classes. The
activity permits experimentation within the parameters of the
blueprint derived from the stylistic analysis. This one is designed to
supplement the analysis of cummings’s poem 55, although it can
easily be adjusted to account for virtually any other text in the
cummings oeuvre.¶

55
1 Compose a short text of between twenty and thirty words on
any topic you want. This may be a little narrative, an aphorism
or even something as banal as a comment on the weather.
2 Working in groups, try to ‘defamiliarise’ this text, using the
stylistic blueprint derived from the analysis of the cummings
poem.
3 Assess the effects of your transposition. What impact does it
have on the reading process and how much stylistic ‘mileage’
can be obtained from it? Is the transposition more ‘
literary’ in
character than the original text?
Readers may be interested to know what to expect in terms of the
outcome of such an exercise, so here are the results of a particularly
successful session with a small group of second-year British
undergraduates taking a language-based option in 1991. Of the eight
short texts elicited through Activity 1, the following was selected for
graphological and morphological embellishment. It is the musing of
one participant on the important question of leather jackets and
gravity:
My leather flying jacket cannot fly. Neither can pianos fly and
they are quite heavy. So how the hell does a jumbo jet fly?
The group then embarked on Activity 2, applying the set of strategies
1 to 5 identified above. The result is given in the ruled text overleaf.
Hopefully the broad principles which underpin the transformation
of the text should be clear by now, so a detailed explanation of how
the ‘poem’ was produced will not be necessary. Instead, a few general
comments on the manner by which the blueprint has been
implemented should help. Predictably, extensive use is made of lower
case where upper case is expected. However, this pattern is itself
subverted when upper case is deployed in unexpected environments
(see ‘Fly’ and ‘Jack’ in lines 1 and 2). Features of the written mode
of language, such as logograms and parenthetical symbols,
proliferate in the text (e.g. lines 6 and 10). Sentences are broken up
so that a columnar format is produced, while words are split so that
a range of new forms emerges. Some lexical splits produce

56
my leather Fly
ing Jack
et can
not Fly
n 5
(either
can Pia?
no!
s Fly
&the 10
y’are…
quit.
eh?
eavy So Ho
W.T. 15
he hell!
do es a jumb?
o, jet!
Fly…
acceptable units, such as the break-up of ‘piano’ at lines 7–8 into the
proper name ‘Pia’ and the negative particle ‘no’. Other splits produce
meaningless particles, like ‘ing’, ‘et’, and ‘n’ at lines 2, 3 and 5
respectively. These lexical breaks often create linguistic trompes
l’oeil, where the initial interpretations have to be revised in the light
of later text. The seemingly independent unit ‘quit’ at line 12, for
instance, needs to be assimilated to ‘quite’ in the light of subsequent
segments. By the same token, the first line (‘my leather Fly’), which
has the appearance of a conceptually complete unit, needs to be
revised progressively in the light of the next two lines. Perceptual
strategies are thus manipulated in a manner ¶ similar to the technique
exploited in the original cummings poem.
By way of a footnote, it is worth commenting on the fate of the
‘deformed’ text which was produced in the course of the present
workshop. The student who was responsible for the original
composition made a note of the group’s embellished version and then
¶

57
typed it up later. So taken was he with the product that he actually
offered it to a university literary magazine whereupon it was promptly
published! To my knowledge (and perhaps thankfully, given its origins)
the true provenance of the ‘poem’ has never been divulged.
2.5 Summary
As is consistent with the general rationale of the book, this chapter
has sought to integrate linguistic theory and practice, offering a
selection of critical tools which can be employed in textual analysis.
In sections 2.2 and 2.3, a model for the analysis of graphology and
morphology was developed. This framework was then applied to a
short e e cummings poem in section 2.4. Appended to this analysis
was a proposed workshop in stylistics, the object of which was to
develop a fuller understanding of the theoretical model.
When designing the linguistic model, it seemed good sense to make
it as powerful as possible so that it would be able to handle
graphological and morphological devices beyond those realised in a
single short poem. Certainly, no one text will be likely to realise every
possible permutation, so it is best to be prepared for other types of
innovation. Furthermore, there are a number of types of morphological
and lexical deviation which, although not exhibited by poem 55, occur
repeatedly in the cummings ‘corpus’. A glance through collections of
his work reveals a number of recurring stylistic formulae, all of which
can be comfortably accommodated within the present model. An
especially common strategy is the idiosyncratic use of derivational
morphemes to derive unusual, ‘nonce’ complexes. The prefix ‘un’, for
example, is regularly combined with normally incompatible roots to
form complexes like ‘unstrength’ and ‘unbe’ (see section 2.3).
Suffixes, if anything, are even more widely exploited by cummings.
Commonly occurring bound morphemes like ‘ish’, ‘ness’ and ‘ly’ are
tacked on to roots with which they would never normally conjoin,
yielding constructions like ‘neverish’, ‘muchness’ and ‘happeningly’.
This process may even be duplicated within single items: ‘silverlyness’
incorporates not one but two suffixes (‘ly’ and ‘ness’). An extension of
this tactic is the use of grading suffixes along with roots which would
not normally permit gradation. Thus, non-gradable terms like ‘last’
and ‘chief receive the superlative ‘est’ suffix to produce ‘lastest’ and
‘chiefest’. Even if the root is gradable, the ‘er’ suffix is often preferred

58
when the stricture of grammaticality demands the intensifier ‘more’.
On this pattern, the adjective ‘beautiful’ will not become ‘more
beautiful’ but rather ‘beautifuler’. The compounding of one or more
root morphemes is also common, resulting in constructions like
‘yellowgreen’ and ‘mostpeople’. Finally, new forms are also created
by analogy with the process of back-formation (see section 2.3), with
new verbal forms being derived from related nouns. This explains the
conversion of ‘September’ into a verbal particle in the sequence
‘septembering arms of year extend’.
The central aim of the chapter has been to use textual analysis as a
means of obtaining insights into a complex feature of English language.
Of necessity, literary-critical responses to aspects of cummings’s work
have been largely overlooked. Now that cummings’s style has been
examined in detail and other texts have been generated on the basis of
his stylistic profile, readers may be interested in what the critics have
made of cummings’s experimentation with language. The many essays
on the style of cummings offer little agreement on the function of the
linguistic techniques which have become his stock-in-trade. With
particular regard to the devices identified in the course of our own
analysis, critical commentary has been diverse to the point of absurdity.
The use of parenthesis has probably received more attention than all
the other written mode markers which cummings employs, and has
also been subject to most diffuse and inconsistent interpretations.
Kidder (1979:13–14), while presenting a set of rules on how to ‘read’
cummings, offers the following straightforward piece of advice: ‘Treat
parenthesis carefully… On some occasions…we must ignore the
parentheses.’ No less obscure is Baum’s (1972:112) claim that
parenthesis suggests ‘the simultaneousness of imagery’ and highlights
cummings’s ‘extreme honesty as a poet’. The extensive deployment of
lower case has also become the subject of much comment, with a great
deal of interest in the small case personal pronoun ‘i’. Watson
(1972:40) points out that ‘the little naked swaggering “i” asserts its
reference to one real and single being’, while Baum (1972:115)
contends that ‘By rejecting the pronoun “I” Cummings [sic] assumes
a casual humility’ which ‘dissociates the author from the speaker of
the poem’. Much discussion has centred on cummings’s prolific use of
logograms, which are often referred to by the critics as typographs or,
erroneously, as ideograms. To Wegner (1965:157) they are simply ‘a
moment of coalesced awareness’, but to Dumas (1974:72) they
constitute ‘a means by which nature’s dynamic process may be

59
glimpsed, and the glimpse be passed on to the reader, who may thereby
achieve transcendental vision’.
Readers may assess for themselves the validity of these
interpretations, but on this evidence, it would appear that cummings’s
experimentation with language generates a great deal of interpretative
‘space’. The diversity of critical commentary shows just how variable
interpretations can be. It also problematises the methods by which
critics evaluate innovation and creativity in language. While the remit
of this chapter has simply been to provide a systematic introduction
to graphology and morphology, at least foundations will have been
laid for a method of critical interpretation—a method which is,
moreover, predicated upon a thorough working knowledge of how
linguistic systems operate in the context of modernist poetry.
Graphology and morphology
Readers who wish to investigate further the linguistic topics covered
in this chapter should find the following material useful. Fromkin
and Rodman (1978:138–59) offer a useful and accessible
introduction to basic morphology, while a more technical and
advanced study of the subject can be found in Matthews (1974). Two
books specifically on writing systems are Sampson (1985) and
Coulmas (1989). A comprehensive survey of word-formation in
English is Adams (1973).
Stylistic applications
An extremely good stylistic application of both morphology and
graphology is provided by Traugott and Pratt (1980: Chapters 2 and
3). In addition to the specific references cited over the course of the
chapter, stylistic explorations of this aspect of the language system
include: Leech (1969:39–44), on ‘deviation’ in poetic language;
Carter (1989), on stylistics and ‘concrete poetry’; Van Peer (1993),
on graphology and concrete poetry. Van Peer has also written a
stylistic analysis of e e cummings’s poem ‘yes is a pleasant country’
(1987). He uses a cognitive model of language to investigate the
relationship between reading strategies and literary comprehension.

61
Chapter 3
Words and
meanings: an
introduction to
lexical semantics
• 3.2 Words and meanings 64
• 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
• Suggestions for further reading98
Chapter3

62
3.1 Introduction
That famous philosopher of language, Humpty Dumpty, has this to
say on the meaning of words: ‘“When I use a word,” Humpty
Dumpty said in a rather scornful tone, “it means just what I choose
it to mean—neither more nor less.”’1
Were Dumpty’s principle to
gain universal acceptance amongst language-users, the outcome
would be linguistic anarchy. As speakers would cease to be
accountable for anything they said, so a potentially infinite number
of meanings could be mapped on to any single word they uttered.
The linguistic ‘contract’ that governs everyday interaction would
simply break down and any recognisable system of verbal
communication instantly evaporate. For example, readers of this book
may have happily assumed that they were reading an introduction to
English language.Yet were its author to invoke the Dumpty principle,
all sorts of meanings could be ascribed to it on a whim: it could
become, variously, a discussion of bee-keeping, a treatise on the life
cycle of the mackerel, a discourse on medieval hygiene and so on.
Outside the interactive world of Alice’s Wonderland, the Dumpty
principle does not, of course, obtain, and interlocutors can rest
assured that there is at least some interactive consensus about what a
word means. Although never absolute or immutable, words routinely
designate specific objects, processes and concepts, and these
designations form part of the very bedrock of coherent human
communication.
Explaining precisely what, and how, a word means will be the
main aim of this chapter. There will follow an outline of the principal
types of lexical meaning in English, as well as an account of the
ways in which word-meanings interact with one another. Poetry will,
again, form the nucleus for much of the discussion of this aspect of
the language system, although it will be stressed throughout that
creative or striking patterns of meaning are a feature of many types
of discourse.

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
It has never been easy to attach an exhaustive, self-contained
meaning to a word which will account sufficiently for its use in all
contexts. Decisions about where exactly to place a boundary on
meaning have exercised linguists and philosophers a great deal;
indeed, even the meaning of the concept ‘meaning’ has itself come
under scrutiny in the relevant literature. The task of specifying
what a word means is influenced by at least four key factors. First
of all, meanings shift over time, which is why dictionary-makers
often have difficulty keeping up with the meaning of a word in its
current usage. A case in point is the word chauvinist. Whereas its
‘official’ meaning designates someone who is distrustful of
foreigners, it rarely means anything other than ‘sexist’ when
applied in popular usage. A second factor is that the meaning of a
particular word may vary in relation to the context in which it is
used. Take, for example, the word terrific. Like chauvinist, this
term has undergone a change over time: in this instance, the original
meaning of ‘instilling terror’ has been replaced by its current
function as an expression of high approbation. Yet even in current
use, the term displays considerable diversity of meaning. Where it
is wholly positive under one set of conditions (‘That film was
absolutely terrific!’) the very opposite will be intended by its use in
a context like: ‘Terrific! You’ve just erased all my data from the
computer!’ A third factor affecting word-meaning arises from the
cross-cultural differences that may pertain between users of the
same language. For instance, if you are deemed politically liberal
in the United Kingdom you can at least consider yourself a tolerant
individual; yet to be called so in North America carries with it no
such guarantee of integrity. The fourth and final factor concerns the
many pairs of words in English which display seemingly identical
meanings. For instance, while brotherly and fraternal purportedly
‘mean’ the same thing, their privileges of occurrence—as well as
the varying degrees of formality which each conveys—are in no
way identical.
It is factors such as these which have polarised debate about word-
meaning into two main schools of thought. One school argues for a
strictly context-free theory of meaning which is divorced from actual
usage; the other for a contextually informed model which examines
words in their natural environments of use. In view of our stylistic
emphasis, both approaches will need to be represented if our basic
schema is to provide a workable and coherent account of words and

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
their meanings. This chapter therefore tries to establish a model that
accounts for core meanings but which still grants usage and context
a say. The first step towards this double goal is taken in the next
section, where a survey of the principal types of word meaning in
English is undertaken. The perspective widens in section 3.3 as
attention turns to the types of meaning patterns that are created when
words combine with other words. Section 3.4 proposes a set of
techniques for stylistic analysis and applies a selection of these
techniques to literary texts. The concluding section, section 3.5,
suggests a set of extensions to the analyses and assesses the
theoretical implications of semantically orientated studies of word-
meaning.
3.2 Words and meanings
Semantics is the study of meaning. The study of meaning
encompasses units of language which vary in size, from parts of
words and sounds right up to whole clauses and sentences. The basic
unit of analysis in semantics is the seme and this term is often
appended as a suffix to other structural terms to indicate which
precise unit is being described. Morpheme, grapheme and phoneme,
as we saw in the previous chapter, are units which are thus derived.
The term lexical semantics is specifically reserved for the study of
word-meaning, while the term for a unit of meaning in lexical
semantics is lexeme.
Before embarking on a survey of lexical semantics, an important
caveat needs to be heeded and it is this: there is not always a one-to-
one correspondence between lexemes and words. This unfortunate
asymmetry arises largely because of the special case of idioms and
related constructions in English.2
An idiom may comprise many
words, but it realises just one lexeme. Take, for instance, the
following colloquial expression:
1 he kicked the bucket
Even though bucket and kick would constitute two lexemes in most
contexts, their individual meanings are nullified within the restricted
semantic domain of this idiom. In other words, it is not the individual
component words of (1) but the entire sequence ‘kicked the bucket’

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
which corresponds roughly to the single unit of meaning ‘died’. The
same principle is at work in this next set of idioms:
2 a red herring
3 it’s raining cats and dogs
4 to go for a song
5 as sick as a parrot
6 to give up the ghost
These constructions (and many others like them in English) express
meanings which cannot be directly accessed from the sum of their
constituent words. Rather, interpretation rests on the understanding
that idioms are fixed expressions and that, moreover, rigid constraints
govern the manner by which their component words are selected and
combined. Idioms cannot therefore be rearranged grammatically or
embellished with other compatible items. If they are, the results are
distinctly odd:
3(a) it’s raining dogs and cats
3(b) it’s pouring cats and dogs
3(c) it’s raining poodles and ginger toms
Furthermore, idioms are normally language-specific and will collapse
if translated literally into another language. As a brief test of this
thesis, you could attempt to translate the examples above into any
other language with which you are familiar. Here, for instance, are
some over-literal conversions into French:
1(a) II a donné un coup de pied dans le seau
2(a) un hareng rouge
3(d) il pleut les chats et les chiens
4(a) aller pour une chanson
5(a) malade comme un perroquet
6(a) abandonner le phantom

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
This ‘franglais’ illustrates well the patent nonsense—if not the
humour!—that results from the literal translation of idioms from one
language into another.
Most traditional accounts of lexical semantics distinguish between
the sense of a word and the referent of a word. Sense is the essential
property or ‘core’ meaning which a word exhibits irrespective of its
context of use. For example, the word dog will encompass all members
of this class of canine animal. Furthermore, the sense expressed by the
term will carry enough essence of ‘dogness’ to differentiate it from,
say, words for non-canine animals like cat, horse or pig. By contrast,
the referent of a word is the actual entity picked out or identified in a
context of use. Thus, when the owner of a pet says
7 I think I’ll take the dog for a walk
it is clearly not an abstract, general class of animals, but a particular,
unique and individual dog to which she refers. Therefore, while sense
captures the ways meanings are organised and structured within a
language; reference accounts for the ‘real-world’ objects, concepts
and processes that exist outside the language system.
One of the primary tasks of traditional dictionaries3
is to capture
the generic, all-encompassing properties of words of different senses.
A dictionary definition will therefore seek to explain what a word
denotes regardless of the context in which it occurs. While this
concept of denotation takes us part of the way, clearly it still does not
provide an exhaustive description of what a word ‘means’. As we
noted in the introduction to this chapter, the sense of a word may
shift over time, so dictionaries can never be looked upon as
repositories of stable, immutable word meanings. Equally
importantly, there is often attached to a word a set of resonances
which are very difficult to accommodate into a description of its
sense. These resonances form a kind of connotational aura around a
word, giving it a layer of affective, associative meaning which is
quite distinct from the layer of core meaning which we have called
denotation. This second, associative layer is normally termed
connotation.
The distinction between connotation and denotation can perhaps
be best appreciated when it is examined in tandem with another
feature of lexical semantics. This feature is the principle of synonymy
in language. Synonyms are simply words which denote the same

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
thing. For instance, mercury and quicksilver clearly denote the same
substance, movie and film the same object, hide and conceal the
same type of activity. The appearance of pairs of synonyms in a
particular language is normally a result of lexical borrowing from
other languages. As a Germanic language which has borrowed
extensively from Romance languages, it is no surprise then that
English is rich in synonyms. Here is a selection of pairs of English
synonyms with the respective languages of origin indicated:
Germanic Romance
sweat perspiration
buy purchase
climb ascend
friendly amicable
get obtain
whore prostitute
Even triple synonyms can be found:
Germanie Latin French
kingly regal royal
The two Romance terms in this triplet reflect different periods in the
historical development of English, with regal borrowed from the
Latin of the first millennium and royal from the French of the post-
Norman-conquest period.
Now, the significant thing about synonymy, when superimposed
on to our earlier distinction between denotation and connotation, is
that while the words may ‘mean the same thing’ in the strictest sense,
they may carry markedly different affective resonances. In other
words, synonyms may share denotation but exhibit different
connotations. Moreover, the choice of a particular term is often
subject to the constraints of register (see section 1.3), so the switch
from one member of a pair of synonyms to another can mark a
concomitant and significant shift in tone. The rule of thumb is that
the Romance-derived items convey greater formality and the native
Germanic items greater informality. In discourse, whereas Latinate
derivations may help engender a more lofty or elevated tone,
Germanic terms tend to have a more prosaic or ‘down to-earth’ feel.
It is no coincidence, for example, that everyday words describing
parts of the human body are Germanic in origin; just as it is no

68
WORDS AND MEANINGS
coincidence that in the substantially more formal register of a medical
encyclopaedia these terms are replaced by their Latinate counterparts.
In this set of examples it should be clear which members of each pair
are Germanic and which Latinate:
skull cranium
thigh femur
belly stomach
kneecap patella
The convergence of register with lexical choice means that terms are
selected in accordance with discourse context. Consequently,
speakers and writers always run the risk of drawing on an informal
item when a more specialist or auspicious term is expected, or
conversely, of using an overly formal item when a less ‘wordy’ form
is required. Consider for a moment the following triplet of synonyms,
ranked in order of descending formality: expectorate, spit, gob. Now
in the context of an encounter with your dentist, any instructions
regarding oral evacuation would presumably be couched in the
medial term:
8 Please spit into the basin.
The mismatches accruing from the use of the other two terms in the
same context would either be absurdly pompous:
9 Please expectorate into the basin,
or irreverently familiar:
10 Please gob into the basin.
For an attested example of a mismatch between register and lexical
choice, consider example (11). It is a notice from an Austrian hotel
catering specially for skiers. Notice how the Latinate selections are
particularly inappropriate, signalling a formality way in excess of
that demanded by the context:
11 Not to perambulate the corridor in the hours of repose in
the boots of ascension.

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
In summary, it can be said that synonyms are words which share
the same sense and which denote the same thing. However,
connotational differences mean that most synonyms are not mutually
interchangeable and that their use is closely associated with register
and discourse context. Pure synonyms, which exhibit perfect
congruence of denotation and connotation, are therefore rare.
Nevertheless, the principle of synonymy offers a useful blueprint for
explaining the general proximity of meaning that exists between
many words in a language.4
The next stage of our survey of lexical semantics focuses on words
which have more than one meaning. Two types of process are
responsible for producing words with multiple senses. The first type
is easily illustrated when we look at a word like bank. In current
usage, this word has two principal senses: it can denote either the
side of a river or a financial institution. The historical provenance of
this double meaning can be explained in the following way. Two
separate words found their way into English from different source
languages. The first of these was bank, of a river, from a probable
Scandinavian origin; the second bank, in the financial sense, from
Old French. This process, where different words converge into the
same form while preserving their original meanings, is known as
homonymy and the words involved are referred to as homonyms.
Here are some more English homonyms:
ear (i) of corn; (ii) of a person
mail (i) armour; (ii) postal service
sage (i) wise; (ii) culinary herb
seal (i) marine mammal; (ii) insulation or fastening
grave (i) burial area; (ii) serious or weighty
As it results from the distillation of different words into the same
shape, homonymy is a rather chance process. None the less,
dictionaries will still attempt to provide separate entries for
homonyms, highlighting their status as genuinely distinct words.
The second process responsible for producing multiple meaning
is when the semantic scope of a single word is extended. Unlike
homonymy, the meaning of an individual word radiates outwards
from a single source, with its sense undergoing a kind of
metaphorical extension. In spite of the semantic divergence which
results from this process, the relationship between the senses can

70
WORDS AND MEANINGS
still often be inferred. This principle of extension is known as
polysemy and a word whose semantic range has widened in this way
is referred to as polysemous. Here is a selection of examples:
flight (i) of bird; (ii) of a dart or arrow; (iii) act of
escaping
neck (i) of bottle; (ii) of body; (iii) of guitar
score (i) of music; (ii) of contest
eye (i) of body; (ii) of needle
drip (i) of water; (ii) weedy person
When the connections between the different senses of a word are
more opaque, it is sometimes difficult to differentiate between
homonymy or polysemy, and so solving the semantic riddle often
requires a good etymological dictionary. Consider, for instance, the
two principal senses of the word sole, where one designates the
bottom of a shoe and the other a species of fish. On the face of it, the
word could either be homonymie or polysemous. It is actually the
latter, because the word stems from the Latin source word solea
meaning a sandal or flat shoe, and has since been extended
metaphorically beyond its original application to footwear. (A
moment’s reflection on the anatomical structure of the fish in
question should reveal the connection!) A trickier task again would
be sorting out the pair port (harbour) and port (fortified wine). On
first glance, these two look distinct enough in sense to be homonyms;
that is to say, two separate words which happen to have the same
shape. However, the second term has developed because it refers to
a drink from Oporto, a city so named because it is itself a harbour. So
a brief etymological search reveals that what looked initially like
distinct homonyms are, in fact, extensions of a single, polysemous
word. Figure 3.1 is a summary of the semantic pathways which lead
to polysemy and homonymy.
Polysemy and homonymy facilitate creativity in many types of
discourse. The figure of speech with which they are most commonly
associated, given their potential for word-play, is the pun. Literary
discourse, which places great emphasis on controlled and motivated
ambiguity, is an obvious site for such linguistic experimentation.
Nevertheless, puns are a feature of many other everyday discourses,
perhaps the most notable of which is advertising language. In
designing messages about products, advertising copywriters draw
heavily on puns to produce the linguistic ‘jingles’ which are at once

71
WORDS AND MEANINGS
FIGURE 3.1
striking and memorable. Here are two short illustrations of how this
technique is employed. The first is taken from an advertisement for
a ‘power’ shower-unit, and the second from an advertisement for a
particular brand of bathroom sealant. The second text also carries the
logo of a seal (of the animate variety!) balancing a ball on its head:
12 You’ll feel a drip under anything else!
13 See how well our seals perform!
The words which activate the puns here are ‘drip’ and ‘seals’,
creating plays on meaning which are polysemous and homonymie
respectively. In anticipation of these examples, both items were
included in the lists of homonyms and polysemous words provided
earlier so they can be checked there.
Puns may be intentional or accidental. In the next example, a
headline from an Irish newspaper,5
it is not clear whether the
homonymy exhibited by ‘grave’ is consciously exploited or whether
it is just one of those semantic coincidences which people are apt to
call ‘Freudian slips’:

72
WORDS AND MEANINGS
14 DUBLIN HAS GRAVE CEMETERY PROBLEM
The next pair of rather hapless examples6
will conclude our survey
of polysemy and homonymy. The first is a notice to the clientele of
a Mexican hotel, while the second advertises donkey rides in
Thailand. That any semantic play is intentional in either case is
unlikely in the extreme:
15 The manager has personally passed all the water served
here.
16 Would you like to ride on your own ass?
Next up in our survey of lexical semantics is the important principle of
‘oppositeness’ in language. Semantic oppositeness is called antonymy,
and pairs of words that have opposite senses are referred to as
antonyms. However, antonymy is a rather broad, catch-all category
which embraces at least three distinct subtypes of semantic opposition.
The first, complementary opposition, is the most strictly ‘logical’ of all
lexical antonymy. If one member of a pair of complementary opposites
is true, then the other must, by imputation, be false. Cancelling one
term will, in other words, automatically guarantee the truth of the
other. For example, in the complementary pair:
present absent
only one of the two terms can be a valid representation of a particular
state of affairs. So, if you are present, you cannot be absent;
conversely, if you are absent, then you cannot be present. The same
principle underpins all of this next batch of complementary
opposites:
asleep awake
married unmarried
legal illegal
alive dead
Gradable antonyms, which evince a different type of antonymy, are
particularly common in English. These opposites are so named
because they can be plotted along a graded scale according to varying
degrees of the property or quality they specify. For example:

73
WORDS AND MEANINGS
old young
big small
wide narrow
good bad
A useful test for gradable antonyms is to see if they can be modified
with adverbs like very, quite or rather, as in ‘very old’, ‘rather wide’,
‘quite good’ and so on. As the qualities designated by gradable
antonyms are relative rather than absolute, it is sometimes possible
to embed pairs of gradable antonyms inside other pairs. Thus:
hot cold
warm cool
In keeping with other sorts of lexical meaning, context will be an
important determinant on the interpretation of gradable antonyms.
Given that size, quality and proportion are all relative, no permanent
or fixed value can be attached to any term on the graded scale. In
other words, the denotation of concepts like hot and cold, big and
small, may shift depending on the nature of the non-linguistic
referents which they describe. A cool oven, for instance, will be
much warmer than a hot day; just as the biggest mouse will still be
very much smaller than the smallest elephant.
The third subtype of lexical antonymy is relational opposition.
Relational opposition is perhaps best conceived of as an alliance of
‘converseness’ rather than of true ‘oppositeness’. Here are some
examples:
give receive
buy sell
teacher pupil
parent child
below above
The distribution of relational opposites is often determined by the
type of sentence in which they occur. For example, if give appears in
a sequence like ‘Fatima gave chocolates to Ibrahim’, then its opposite
can be used when the sequence is reversed: ‘Ibrahim received
chocolates from Fatima.’ Similarly, if Maria is Juan’s teacher, then
Juan is Maria’s pupil, or, if the painting is above the fireplace, then
the fireplace is below the painting.

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
Earlier in this section, mention was made of the elusiveness of
‘pure’ synonymy. In many respects, those same reservations can be
expressed about antonymy. Contextual factors exercise a powerful
influence on the associative and affective values that attach to each
member of a pair of antonyms. One especially sensitive aspect of
lexical antonymy, which has come under the scrutiny of feminist
linguists, concerns pairs of gender-differentiated opposites such as:
bachelor spinster
governor governess
master mistress
patron matron
It is significant that the female member of each pair displays a degree
of negativity which is not carried by the more positive male term.
This gender-determined asymmetry is known as semantic derogation
and it arises when a word acquires pejorative or inimical connotations
simply by dint of its exclusively female reference. Deborah Cameron
elaborates: ‘Whereas the male terms connote power, status, freedom
and independence, the female, which in many cases used to be
parallel, now connote triviality, dependence, negativity and sex’
(1985:77). Clearly, semantic change doesn’t happen in a cultural
vacuum. Feminist linguists argue that the semantic derogation of
words for women reveals just as much about the history of patriarchy
as it does about the history of language.
The final type of word meaning to be examined in this section
concerns classes of items which are semantically compatible. This
type of sense relation is known as hyponymy and differs principally
from synonymy in that it invokes the concept of ‘inclusion’ rather
than ‘sameness’ of meaning. Hyponymy explains how the sense of
one item can sometimes be included in the sense of another. For
instance, the item flower includes other classes of items such as tulip,
rose and daffodil. However, the term flower can itself be included
within the sense of a higher, more general term like plant. The
semantic categories in hyponymy are defined as follows: the
included, more specific terms are hyponyms (literally, terms that are
‘under’ something else), while the encompassing, higher terms are
superordinates (literally, terms that are ‘over’ or ‘above’ something
else).
Hyponyms and superordinates can be set out systematically on a
semantic scale. Figure 3.2 illustrates how a term like dog enters into

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a semantic relationship with other related terms. Any lower term on
the scale is a hyponym and any upper term a superordinate. This
means that dog fulfils the two functions simultaneously, being both a
hyponym of canine and a superordinate of poodle and spaniel. Lower
terms are always instances of terms higher up; indeed, part of the
semantic specification of a term depends upon whichever higher
terms can enclose it. The scale also indicates how a lower term entails
a higher term, so that the relationship between poodle and dog can be
expressed with the proposition: all poodles are dogs. However, as
dog is a superordinate of poodle, then the reverse proposition does
not hold. Consequently, it is not true that all dogs are poodles. ¶
As always, it is important to stress how context shapes the way
language is used. Semantic scales offer an illuminating explanation
of how and why speakers make strategic use of particular lexical
items in particular circumstances. Their semantically inclusive nature
means that hyponyms and superordinates can be used for a variety of
interactive purposes. Clearly, appropriateness to discourse context
will be a determining factor. For instance, if someone asks ‘What’s
that?’ at a dog show, the reply ‘A dog’ will not suffice. In order to
match the degree of detail which the context demands, much greater
lexical specificity7
is required. The reply would therefore need to be
something of the order ‘An Irish Water Spaniel’ or ‘A King Charles
V Spaniel’, both of which contain hyponyms significantly lower on
FIGURE 3.2

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the scale for dog. Other factors influence the way hyponyms and
superordinates are chosen from semantic scales. Lexical specificity
is an important strategy-framing device and often shapes the
pragmatic force of an utterance. In the following exchange, notice
how speaker B is deliberately under-specific:
17 A: What have you got in that case?
B: A musical instrument.
B’s reply clearly incorporates a term which is markedly less specific
than is demanded in the context. And even though it still answers the
question truthfully, this under-specification reveals much about the
speaker’s attitude to the speech situation itself. It suggests in this
instance that some secrecy is to be attached to the contents of the
case, or alternatively, that this is a topic of conversation which should
not be pursued. Here are two more examples where superordinates
are exploited in a similar way:
18 A: Where are you going?
B: Out.
19 A: What did you buy in town?
B: A garment.
Again, by offering less than is anticipated by the question, the replies
convey a certain ‘standoffishness’ or interactive reticence.8
Here now are some examples which, for the sake of contrast,
make explicit use of lexical over-specification:
20 Siobhán let me drive her new 7-series BMW.
21 I play a ‘59 Stratocaster with Seymour Duncan
humbuckers.
Where ‘car’ and ‘guitar’ would probably suffice for most contexts of
(20) and (21) respectively, the utterances here draw on markedly
over-specific hyponyms. This serves to emphasise any included
feature or extra quality that is imported by the hyponym. The
semantic content of (21) may therefore be designed to convey
expertise or specialist knowledge, while (20) may be seeking to
foreground the special quality of ‘BMWness’ which differentiates it

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from ordinary cars. Whatever the intended goals of these particular
utterances, they illustrate clearly how extra ‘pragmatic’ meanings
can be attached to words simply through their natural contexts of
use.
This section has focused on the principal categories and
typologies of meaning in lexical semantics. By concentrating on
the meanings that inhere in words, we have to some extent
neglected the types of meaning that derive when words are
combined with one another. As a counterbalance to this section,
then, the next part of our survey will suggest a framework for the
analysis of the more complex meanings that are produced when
words are combined with other words.
3.3 Words and combinations
One of the traditional ways of explaining how words combine into
patterns is by invoking the concepts of ‘choice’ and ‘chain’. These
concepts are normally represented diagrammatically as two
intersecting axes, as in Figure 3.3.
The syntagmatic axis shows how words combine and which sort
of structural relationships link them. The paradigmatic axis explains
how certain words in the lexicon can be selected at particular points
along the chain and why others would be inappropriate. The
syntagmatic axis thus forms a structural frame which informs the
selectional possibilities offered by the paradigmatic axis. By the same
token, the paradigmatic axis offers a pool of potential lexical entries
for each slot along the syntagmatic axis. At a more conceptual level,
syntagmatic relations between words are of the order: a and b and c
and d; and paradigmatic relations of the order: a or b or c or d.
The following simple phrase, from which the final item has been
removed, will provide our first illustration of how the two axes
function:
22 my sunburnt ____
First of all, a structural frame is established by the syntagmatic
combination of ‘my’ and ‘sunburnt’. This configuration sets up
strong predictions about the nature of the next lexical item that can
be selected on the paradigmatic axis. In this instance, the frame

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anticipates an anatomical noun. More specifically, it requires a noun
which denotes a part of the body that can be exposed to the sun. The
pool of selections available on the paradigmatic axis is therefore
likely to be restricted to the following set of entries:
22(a) my sunburnt face
arms
nose
legs
There is an oft-quoted adage in language study which goes: ‘You
know a word by the company it keeps.’9
Translated into semantic
description, this axiom suggests that a significant chunk of the
meaning of a word will be derived from the syntagmatic relationships
into which it conventionally enters.As example (22) illustrates, a full
semantic profile of ‘sunburnt’ will clearly require some account of
the types of lexemes with which it regularly combines. This principle
of lexical combination is known as collocation. Collocation refers
broadly to the grammatical combination of lexemes, while the term
collocate is used to describe any word which exhibits a standard
pattern of co-occurrence with another word. Given that the
syntagmatic axis sets up strong structural constraints, collocates are
often easily predicted.You may verify this for yourself by completing
the following sequences:
FIGURE 3.3 Choice and chain

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
23 These ____ are addled.
24 Here comes a bay-coloured ____.
25 Throw out that rancid ____.
26 It’s a particularly ferocious pride of ____.
Suitable collocates for ‘addled’, ‘bay-coloured’, ‘rancid’ and ‘pride’
would be ‘eggs’, ‘horse’, ‘butter/bacon’ and ‘lions’ respectively.
These potential selections from the paradigmatic axis underline the
predictive power of the structural frame, showing how items in a
syntagmatic chain generate strong expectations about the sorts of
items that will follow.
The principle of collocation helps explain why words occur in the
sequences they do. Yet equally importantly, this principle has the
capacity to deal with what happens when words do not occur in
familiar combinations and when lexical predictions are not fulfilled.
To illustrate this, we will need to re-introduce example (22).
However, the phrase is now reproduced within its original context,
which is the ninth line of the first sonnet of Sir Philip Sidney’s poem
sequence Astrophil and Stella (circa 1582):10
22(b) Some fresh and fruitful showers upon my sunburnt
brain
None of the standard collocates suggested above are realised here;
instead, an unlikely collocation is produced which does not meet the
predictions of the structural frame. The combination of the
semantically disparate items ‘sunburnt’ and ‘brain’ creates what is
known as a collocational clash. If ever there was a profoundly simple
linguistic technique which has enormous and far-reaching stylistic
potential, it is the collocational clash. This type of semantic mismatch
underpins many of the creative turns of language which are
traditionally referred to as metaphors, images or figures of speech.
Moreover, as it is built on the juxtaposition of lexemes with
incompatible or contradictory senses, the collocational clash also forms
the semantic core of the classical rhetorical trope called oxymoron.
Clearly, poetry offers a rich locus for the exploitation of collocational
clashes. In (22b), for example, there are two within the space of a
single line: ‘sunburnt brain’ and ‘fruitful showers’. Yet clashes figure
in genres other than poetry and are, perhaps surprisingly, a

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commonplace of many types of everyday discourse. In order to
demonstrate this, I will introduce and develop a short stylistic exercise.
This exercise, called ‘shunting’ (for reasons that will become apparent
soon), offers a useful tool for studying language patterns on a number
of different levels. (See also section 5.2 below.) The first stage in the
exercise is to devise a set of straightforward syntagmatic combinations.
These combinations should contain two elements each: a+b. Here is a
set of nine unremarkable syntagms:
stone masons sad dream shredding machine
tangerine pips purple roses sick joke
killing fields soft rain unhygienic café
Some readers may have already spotted the deliberate ‘plants’ in this
collection, but we shall proceed with the exercise none the less. The
next stage involves taking the b elements of each pair and shunting
them randomly around the set. Whatever new a+b pairings result from
the shunt, there are likely to be collocational clashes. Here are six new
possible configurations exhibiting unlikely or improbable pairings:
stone roses sad café soft machine
purple rain killing joke tangerine dream
In fact, these six clashes all turn out to be well-attested constructions
in English. They are all either names of popular rock and pop groups
(e.g. ‘Stone Roses’, ‘Tangerine Dream’) or the names of album or
song titles (e.g. ‘Purple Rain’ by Prince). What the shunt has unveiled
is a formula that is used—perhaps subconsciously—by many
musicians when they attempt to create striking and memorable
monickers for their bands. Given the ephemeral and transient nature
of the rock and pop genre, the need to make a lasting psychological
impact is all the more pressing. Startling combinations of lexemes
clearly possess greater mnemonic (memory-making) potential than
typical collocations, so it is not surprising that the collocational clash
has become the preferred stylistic strategy of many rock and pop
artists.
As our collocational shunt has not yet been completed, here are
three suggested pairings using the items which remain unaccounted
for. Any student readers, with musical aspirations and whose band
has still to be christened, are welcome to use them:
¶

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The Shredding Fields
The Unhygienic Pips
The Sick Masons
A similar shunting exercise can easily be performed on the set (23–6)
above, yielding some further intriguing clashes. The crucial point to
remember is that while the individual component words would rarely
pass muster on their own, when they are forced to keep company with
unfamiliar partners the results are often notably bizarre.Again, aspiring
rockers may draw on this collection as they feel fit:
23(a) [the] rancid lions
24(a) [the] bay-coloured bacon
25(a) [the] addled horse
26(a) [the] pride of eggs
We shall look shortly at the ways in which this essentially simple
principle informs linguistic creativity in poetry. Before doing so, we
shall close this section by examining one of the principal methods
used for recognising and accounting for collocational clashes. The
question that will be addressed is: what is there in a word that tells us
about the company it keeps?
One of the first attempts by linguists to explain semantic
compatibility (and by imputation, semantic incompatibility) between
lexemes is known as componential analysis.11
This type of analysis
involves the sifting out of the subcomponents of meaning that make
up the overall sense of a lexical item. For example, a componential
analysis of a lexeme like boar will consist of a series of smaller,
particularistic descriptions about what sort of entity it is. Boar
supports the following descriptions: it is a pig; it is an adult; it is
male. The formal method for breaking down lexemes into constituent
components is to lay them out systematically using plus and minus
symbols for each attribute. Hence:
boar:[+ animate]; [+ porcine]; [+ adult]; [- immature];
[+ male]; [- female]
The more components there are in the description, then the greater
the likelihood that there will be some redundancy between them. If

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the attribute [+ porcine] is invoked, the quality of animacy will be
presupposed and so the component [+ animate] need no longer be
included in the list of attributes. Similarly, as the component [+ male]
presupposes the component [- female], then the second piece of
information can be deleted. One of the main benefits of the
componential method for stylistic purposes is that it can isolate the
specific semantic features that activate collocational clashes. For
example, in the combination
pregnant boar
it is the incompatibility between the component [+ male] for boar
and the component [+ female] for pregnant that produces the
anomaly. Other components, such as [+ adult] or [+ porcine], are not
responsible for this particular mismatch. However, in a sequence like
pregnant piglet
it will indeed be the criterion [+ adult] / [- adult] which triggers the
clash. In dealing with a combination like
pregnant table
isolation of the higher-order components [+ animate] and [- animate]
should be enough to explain the anomaly.
Here now are some fuller sequences containing collocational
clashes. The significant semantic components of the mismatched
items are displayed next to each example:
27 The concept crushed the boulder concept [+ abstract]
boulder [+ concrete]
28 I drank my computer drank [+ liquid]
computer [- liquid]
29 This bachelor is a good husband bachelor [- married]
husband [+ married]
30 That woman is the father of two woman [+ female]
boys father [- female]

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As a handy means of explaining how parts of words exercise
constraints on collocation, componential analysis is certainly useful
as far as it goes. However, sceptics (and there are many) have argued
that the theory simply doesn’t go far enough. Since its initial
development, a substantial amount of criticism has been directed
towards different aspects of the model. For a start, its early
practitioners had an analytic habit which did little to win favour with
feminist linguists. This was their predilection for describing lexemes
like woman, wife or girl with the component ‘[- male]’. A typical
breakdown of example (30), for instance, would have been:
father. [+ male]
woman: [- male]
Concepts like ‘female’ and ‘feminine’ were consistently downgraded
to the attribute ‘absence of maleness’ rather than ascribed any
positive quality of their own. However, in my opinion this sexist
practice is largely a fault of the shortsightedness of the analysts,
rather than, as has been suggested by some feminists, an inbuilt
sexist principle within the system of language itself.12
Another problem concerns the highly selective manner by which
sample items are chosen in componential analysis. The types of
lexical item which lend themselves well to this sort of semantic
breakdown tend to exhibit stable, generic properties within clearly
defined semantic scales (see section 3.2 above). Items denoting
members of the animal kingdom have proved especially popular
because they can often be differentiated through convenient
superordinates, such as bovine, porcine or human, which pick out the
genus to which the terms belong. Lexemes denoting abstractions,
such as beauty, truth or fate are largely avoided. It would indeed be
difficult to account for the opposition between antonyms like truth
and falsity within the componential framework. All that really can be
done is to prefix each term with a minus symbol and use it as a
semantic component of its antonym:
truth: [- false]
falsity. [- true]
and this is certainly an arid and circular breakdown.

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Finally, components describing relative dimensions and degrees,
which would be needed to distinguish between many semantically
proximate lexical items, are difficult to accommodate satisfactorily
into the model. To differentiate between, say, stone and boulder—
both of which are [+ solid] and [+ mineral]—it would have to be
specified that boulder is [+ large] and stone [– large]. Yet if pebble
were to be brought into the reckoning, it would now be stone that
would assume the [+ large] component in order to distinguish it from
the new term. Measurements of dimension and degree are relative
and are calculated along varying parameters, which simply makes
them difficult to assimilate into a semantic model of this sort.
Although componential analysis remains useful as a general
explanatory tool, the reasons given above suggest that it is nowhere
near a fail-safe method for predicting collocations. Collocation is a
probabilistic phenomenon: it is a question of whether this or that
item is more likely to occur than another. It is no surprise, then, that
a rigid semantic model will have difficulty formalising a principle
that is more a tendency in language-use than an unflinching structural
rule of language. However, it’s not that we don’t have very strong
expectations about what word follows what in language. We do. And
as the next section demonstrates, there are a number of literary-
stylistic techniques available for exploring our intuitions and
expectations about the company a word keeps.
3.4 Techniques for stylistic analysis
An important feature of modern stylistics is the way in which it
employs pedagogical techniques commonly used in the fields of
applied linguistics and English language teaching. It has imported a
variety of such techniques in recent years, including two popular
methods for examining collocation and lexical semantics. These are
cloze [sic] procedure and multiple choice text. The two practices
involve the blanking-out of items in a syntagmatic chain and asking
for students’ (or informants’) predictions about which sorts of entries
could fill that particular grammatical context. Although there are
localised methodological differences between them, cloze procedure
and multiple choice text are both designed to explore the rich
interface between what actually occurs in a text and the expectations
that people have about what should occur in a text.

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3.4.1 Cloze procedure and stylistic analysis
Cloze procedure (or cloze test) is the deletion of particular words in
a sequence with a view to eliciting predictions about appropriate
paradigmatic entries. This relatively straightforward technique has in
fact already been used in this chapter. In the previous section,
examples 22 to 26 were all presented initially in a cloze format,
which helped to focus and develop subsequent discussion of
collocational patterns.
There are three principal ways of using cloze test. The first, and
perhaps most obvious, way is as a language teaching tool. Cloze has
proved especially popular in the EFL context where it serves as a
useful vocabulary testing device. Because it attempts to impart
knowledge about which lexical items are appropriate to which
grammatical context, this, of all its applications, is the one that comes
closest to getting students to fill in the ‘right’ term for the structural
slot. To this extent, cloze test is able to shed a great deal of light on the
concept of the lexical set. A lexical set is a bundle of semantically
compatible items which are closely linked to a specific topic or register.
Although synonyms (and near synonyms) are obvious candidates for
inclusion in lexical sets, the concept extends much more widely to
encompass clusters of key words which correlate generally with a
particular field of discourse. The words Byzantium, flora, floppy disk
and popcorn do not, for example, form a lexical set. The word
goalkeeper, header, off-side, ball and defender clearly do, as they all
relate to the discourse of soccer. A cloze test sequence like
31 The defender headed the———.
can therefore consolidate awareness of this register. Here, the
blanked-out term belongs to a lexical set already clearly signalled by
a syntagmatic chain comprising other members of the same set.
Cloze procedure can also be used as a tool for linguistic research.
By asking informants to predict lexical collocations and then
collating their patterns of response, important information can be
gleaned about the grammar and vocabulary of a language. Crucially,
this information is not the sole product of the analyst’s own (often
unreliable) intuitions, but is instead derived from an attested corpus
of ‘real’ language. In this type of research, no prior assumptions are
made about ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ answers to the cloze test; rather, it is

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the answers themselves which form the quantitative basis for
explaining which items collocate with which.
Third, and most importantly for our present purposes, there is the
stylistic application of cloze procedure. In this context, cloze is a
productive way of exploring the territory between what we expect to
see in a text and what a writer does in a text. It also creates a new
focus for interpretation, because it commits students to providing a
partial analysis of the text in advance of actually seeing the complete
version. In stylistic applications, cloze is most certainly not used as
a test of language skills. On the contrary, it simply asks informants
for their intuitions about a text—intuitions which can’t realistically
be considered ‘right’ or ‘wrong’.
One final comment on the applications of cloze test is necessary
before we embark on the stylistic analysis that will occupy the
remainder of this subsection. In common with other stylistic
techniques, cloze is not entirely the exclusive preserve of the
language class or of academic linguistics. It enjoys a wider non-
academic circulation than might at first appear. The popular satirical
programme called Have I Got News For You enjoys a regular prime-
time slot on BBC television. The programme is organised loosely
along the lines of a quiz, one stage of which involves the completion
of what amounts to a cloze test. Topical newspaper headlines, with
an item blanked out, are presented to a panel of participants. A flurry
of guesses follows, with answers ranging from the surreal to the
irreverent. For the most part, anything but the correct answer is
offered. Here is a selection of examples from the programme whose
topicality has not been entirely lost. A selection of ‘guesses’ is
provided below each example with the actual deletion, which is
eventually provided by the quiz’s host, underlined:
32 QUEEN MOTHER COMBINES ROYAL DUTIES WITH
LOVE OF———.
(i) CHAMPAGNE AND RAFFLES FAGS
(ii) SUPERNINTENDO
(iii) RENAISSANCE SPANISH CHURCH MUSIC
(iv) HORSES AND ENTERTAINING
33 YARD’S NEW CHIEF URGES POLICE TO ABANDON
————.
(i) HOPE

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
(ii) RULE BOOK
(iii) SOCIAL ENGINEERING
34 NUMBER OF SEXUAL PARTNERS LINKED TO———-.
(i) EACH OTHER
(ii) MOBILITY AND CASH
35 BBC LOSES 60 MILLION IN———-.
(i) ALL NIGHT POKER GAME
(ii) CASH BUNGLE
36 PRIME MINISTER PROMISES FRESH————-.
(i) AIR
(ii) HALIBUT
(iii) ULSTER INITIATIVE
Although points are notionally awarded for guessing the right
collocate, the real contest is to see who can offer the wittiest, funniest
or most bizarre suggestion.
Now to our stylistic application of cloze procedure. I intend to
concentrate on a short poem entitled ‘Dolour’ which was first
published in 1948 by the American poet Theodore Roethke.13
Here is
the opening of the poem, and, in keeping with the principle of cloze
test, a lexeme has been deleted from the first line:
Dolour
I have known the inexorable sadness of _____,
The title ‘Dolour’ establishes a semantic framework which is
reinforced by its synonym, ‘sadness’, in the opening line. One would
assume therefore that this structural frame will exercise strong
constraints on the sorts of words that could complete the line. And
judging by the consistency of response in seminars where I have
elicited suggestions, this assumption does indeed appear to be valid.
Suggested entries for the blanked-out item routinely converge on the
following types of terms: death; life; love; parting; dying; leaving.
These items all refer to aspects of human existence which may be
associated (in obviously varying degrees) with feelings of sadness or
unhappiness. All the more effective, then, is the cognitive jolt
delivered when the actual entry in the first line is revealed:
¶

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
The mismatch between ‘sadness’ and ‘pencils’ constitutes a
collocational clash on any semantic parameter. Ascribed to inanimate
objects (‘pencils’) is a quality which is normally attributed to human
emotional experience. A componential analysis of the two lexemes
‘sadness’ and ‘pencils’ would uncover a bundle of semantic features
that could explain the clash systematically. In fact, any one of the
following set of contrasts would be enough to activate it: [+/– animate];
[+/– human]; [+/– concrete]; [+/– abstract] or [+/– sensate]. The clash
is accentuated further at the level of vocabulary and register. The tone
established by the Latinate lexis of ‘Dolour’ and ‘inexorable’ is
portentous and grandiose, but when the lexeme ‘pencils’ suddenly
intrudes, it switches abruptly to the prosaic and commonplace.
After having reinstated the missing term from the first, here is the
second line with its deletion:
Neat in their boxes, _____ of pad and paperweight,
Unlike those offered for line 1, the predictions offered here display
much less consensus. Some participants admit to experiencing
difficulty in finding selections that are compatible with both ‘pad’
and ‘paperweight’. Consequently, the sorts of entries suggested are
diverse and often lack a common semantic link: desk (sic); piles;
box; workstation; cousins. However, the responses of other
participants to the task are rather intriguing. Many seem to be
influenced by the jolt delivered by the earlier line, and so predict the
following types of terms: pain; loneliness; misery; depression;
boredom. It is as if the cloze test has been ‘infected’ by the first line
and the clash has now become part of a new cognitive model that
informs our reading of subsequent lines. This reading is further
impelled by the parallel grammatical structure that links the two
lines. The first line sets up a syntagmatic structure of the order:
I have known the inexorable x of y
In this syntagm, x represents a term from the paradigm of words
describing human emotion. The y element is a member of the
paradigm of words referring to, well, office equipment. And as the
second line exhibits the same ‘x of y’ pattern, then there is every

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good reason that the clash be sustained, a hunch which is indeed
borne out when the original item is reinstated:
Neat in their boxes, dolour of pad and paperweight,
By the third line, this ‘framework of incompatibility’ is firmly rooted
in the cloze test, to the extent that now some participants actually
claim to find the task straightforward:
All the ______ of manila folders and mucilage,
The deleted item, predicted with uncanny precision in students’
responses, is ‘misery’. Here, it is not just the general lexical set of
terms denoting unhappiness that is picked out, but this very lexeme
which is often identified. It is easy to see why. For a start, the ‘x of y’
syntagm is sustained, suggesting that the clash between paradigmatic
entries be sustained also. Another significant factor is the sound
structure of the line, which provides further cohesion along the
syntagmatic axis. The first consonants of the words ‘manila’ and
‘mucilage’ form an alliterative /m/ sequence, which appears to
influence selections from the paradigmatic axis. Even though the level
of awareness at which this sound pattern is perceived may vary, the
preferred entry by many is still ‘misery’. It is noticeable also that, in
entries suggested for the previous line, the lexeme pain was suggested
by two participants on the grounds that it ‘just sounded better’.
Although no further explanation was forthcoming in this session, the
prediction may have been influenced by the consonantal /p/ pattern
evident in ‘pad and paperweight’. In fact, the realised term turns out to
be a repeat of the title, so the /p/ pattern is not sustained. Nevertheless,
the ‘wrong’ entries show just how sophisticated is our awareness of
different layers of linguistic patterning in a text. In this case, the
alliterative lexeme offered by participants proved perhaps to be a little
more ‘poetic’ than the lexeme actually used by the poet!
Here are the next three lines of text, presented in cloze format:
_____ in immaculate public places.
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard
The unalterable ______ of basin and pitcher,
The framework of incompatibility generated by the clashes in the

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previous three lines now governs firmly the processing of the text.
Predictions seldom deviate from a narrow set of synonyms or
proximate synonyms describing negative or unpleasant human
experience. And again they prove to be accurate: the first term is
‘desolation’ and the second, which exhibits another phonological
correspondence, ‘pathos’.
The primary semantic strategy employed in the poem has now
been identified and, hopefully, the basic principle of the exercise will
have been grasped. Suffice it to say, the clash engendered by the
collocation of semantically incompatible lexemes is carried through
the remainder of poem. As there is no real need to demonstrate the
cloze test further, the rest of the poem is produced in pristine form:
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.
Before we move on to consider the general significance of the exercise,
it is worth making a couple of observations about this last section of
the poem. First of all, the ‘x of y’ formula becomes progressively more
condensed over the last few lines of the poem until ultimately the
‘incompatibles’ are distilled into the single phrase ‘the duplicate grey
standard faces’. Second, and as this final phrase suggests, there is a
gradual shift from abstract facets of human experience to more
palpable aspects of humanity. This shift is encoded in terms like ‘nails’,
‘eyebrows’, ‘hair’ and ‘faces’. However, it is only a fragmentary
humanity which is depicted: words for parts of the body eclipse holistic
terms such as ‘people’, ‘women’ or ‘men’. And there is, moreover, a
frailty and powerlessness in the physiological minutiae conveyed by
words like ‘nails’, ‘hair’ and ‘eyebrows’.
This is not the first time that we have witnessed a deviant or striking
linguistic structure becoming established as a kind of ‘norm’ in a text.
In the previous chapter, it was shown how repeated graphological and
morphological breakage in an e e cummings poem created its own
regular design for that poem. In this section, it is a sustained pattern of
collocational clashes which establishes the internal stylistic fabric of

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the text. Roethke incorporates two semantically disparate lexical sets
into a single syntagmatic combination. One set comprises items
typically found in an office environment, such as pad, paper-weight,
mucilage and paper-clip, whereas the other consists of synonyms (or
near synonyms) for the experience of unhappiness, and includes
misery, sadness, desolation and tedium. However, having identified
the technique employed, the next step is to assess how it influences
and shapes the reading and interpretation of the text. Collocational
clashes allow semantic disparates to be brought into grammatical
proximity with one another, so the projection of the human on to the
inanimate can be crystallised into a single compact image in the poem.
The stylistic merger of the living and the lifeless serves presumably as
an indictment of the dehumanisation engendered by institutional
bureaucracy. However, the merger also functions as a conceptual short-
cut. It bypasses the intermediary connections which would be needed
to link two such disparate phenomena: namely, that working in
institutions is stultifying and depressing, and that this condition is
made manifest in the very paraphernalia that characterises the
workplace. Instead, the clash permits humanity and insensate objects
to be distilled together into an image which is both compressed and
minimal. The question of precisely how readers tease out coherence
from such semantically anomalous language will be addressed later in
section 3.5.
This application of cloze test lends itself well to follow-up
activities. Because it unveils the basic stylistic formulae which under-
pin a text, the exercise can be readily transferred to creative and
compositional work. As was pointed out in subsection 2.4.2, stylistic
analysis often yields a replicable ‘blueprint’ which allows for the
development of experimental material within those same linguistic
parameters. Reduced to its most basic ingredients, the formula of
‘Dolour’ could be characterised as ‘structural frame+lexical
incompatibility’. This formula can be replicated in follow-up
exercises which are not only entertaining in themselves but which
can also offer valuable extra insights into synonymy, lexical sets and
the principle of collocation.
Here, for example, is a short ‘recipe’ for collocational
experimentation centred on the poem we have just studied. It is built
on the structural frame of ‘Dolour’, retaining the ‘x of y’ syntagm,
but uses a different set of lexical entries from those identified during
the cloze test.

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1 Alter the lexical set of terms referring to human experience in
the following way. Replace the words describing negative
emotions with their positive antonyms. Or to put it another
way, develop a lexical set containing synonyms of happiness.
Here are some suggestions: joy, pleasure, bliss, ecstasy,
delight, elation, rapture, gusto,
relish, enjoyment, satisfaction, fun
2 Draw up a set of terms from a technical register. This set may
include the vocabulary associated with any hobby or pursuit
which demands some degree of specialist terminology. It may
therefore encompass anything from motor car maintenance to
tropical fish keeping.
Here, for example, is a selection of terms associated with the
register of cookery: jug, oven, microwave, kettle, pot,
pan, knife, fork, spoon, ladle,
skillet, fish-slice, toaster, blender,
worktop
3 Select an item from each lexical set and, using the structural
frame of ‘Dolour’, combine them grammatically. If possible,
create some sound correspondence between the terms. This can
be achieved simply by matching up alliterative consonants thus:
‘bliss of blender’; ‘joy of jugs’; ‘fun of forks’.
To close this subsection, here is a brief sample of the sort of text
which results from the practical activity outlined above:
Pleasure
I have known the inexorable fun of forks;
Neat in their drawers, pleasure of pot and pan,
All the satisfaction of saucepan and spoon,
Elation on immaculate kitchen worktops.

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3.4.2 Multiple choice text and stylistic analysis
In the contexts of language learning and teaching about language,
multiple choice text involves the drawing up of a restricted set of
terms for each blanked out slot in a syntagm. As it has much in
common with cloze procedure, all that is needed here is a brief
sketch of its important features, together with an explanation of when
it is likely to offer a productive alternative to cloze.
Multiple choice text is of particular benefit when there is an
abundance of available paradigmatic entries for a given slot. It closes
down the range of interpretative possibilities, allowing attention to be
centred on the specific aspects of the lexicon which are the focus of
study. Like cloze test, multiple choice text can be used to investigate
virtually all of the topics in lexical semantics introduced in the course
of this chapter. Not only is it a handy tool for investigating synonymy,
collocation and lexical specificity, it is also a useful apparatus for
exploring the relationship between lexis and register. In this latter
application, groups of semantically related terms can be drawn up for
each structural slot along the chain. Example 37 is a syntagm from
which an item has been deleted and below it are listed four choices.
Notice how fixed expressions such as idioms and euphemisms may be
included in the list of lexical entries.
37 We regret to inform you that your great aunt has
just ____.
Choices: died
passed away
kicked the bucket
expired
While all four entries denote the same thing, there are clearly
significant connotational and associative differences between them.
Consequently, some terms are more appropriate than others to this
type of communicative context. Whereas the first two choices on the
list would be likely candidates for inclusion, the second two most
certainly would not as they are manifestly at odds with the register
evoked by the syntagm. Knowing when to use one term and not the
other is an indispensable communicative skill which, while often
taken for granted by native speakers, is the bane of many non-native

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speakers. This type of exercise is one way of assessing the
appropriateness of semantically compatible items to a particular
grammatical context and of differentiating between synonyms
according to the constraints of register.
Multiple choice text (as well as cloze test) can also be used for
investigating a particular feature of vocabulary which has not been
covered thus far in this chapter. It can help to identify core
vocabulary. Core words in a language are those which have especially
wide distribution and usage. They have an extensive collocational
range, being able to combine syntagmatically with many other words.
Take for example the following lexical set which comprises four
closely related lexemes: fat, obese, overweight, plump. Although
broadly synonymous, in no way are these words distributed equally
in the lexicon. However, a common error in language-learning is the
assumption that they are distributed equally. Because it places them
against different syntagms, multiple choice text can highlight the
varying collocational possibilities of these synonyms, thereby testing
for their respective degrees of ‘coreness’ in the language. In the four
examples that follow, a symbol beside a term indicates collocational
acceptability; an × collocational unacceptability:
38 ————person
fat Ö
plump Ö
obese Ö
overweight Ö
39 ————chicken
fat Ö
plump Ö
obese ×
overweight ×
40—————salary
fat Ö
plump × (?)
obese ×
overweight ×
41—————chance
fat Ö
¶

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WORDS AND MEANINGS
plump ×
obese ×
overweight ×
With its extensive collocational range, fat is clearly the most ‘core’
of the four terms, whereas obese and overweight, with their more
restricted range, are the least ‘core’ of the set.
There is not the space to undertake a detailed demonstration of the
stylistic potential of multiple choice text, so to end this subsection a
brief illustration only will be offered. Like cloze test, this semantic
framework foregrounds the use of lexis as a stylistic strategy. A poet
whose use of language generally, and whose use of vocabulary in
particular, has been an important focus of attention in modern
stylistics is W.H.Auden. Here is the opening stanza of his well-known
elegy ‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats’ (1939):14
He disappeared in the dead of winter:
The brooks were frozen, the airports almost deserted.
And snow disfigured the public statues;
The mercury sank in the mouth of the dying day.
What instruments we have agree
The day of his death was a dark cold day.
Even though title of the poem signals a sombre, funereal theme that
will shape and influence subsequent reading of the text, the manner
by which this elegiac content is embodied in lexical choices is
striking. A lexical paradigm built around the second structural slot in
the first line, which might contain the core word ‘died’ and its
euphemistic synonym ‘pass away’, would test the expectations
established by the discourse context. The realised term,
‘disappeared’, is startling, although, significantly, explicit semantic
reference to death is transposed to a later position along the
syntagmatic axis (‘dead of winter’). Similarly, whereas ‘brooks’ in
the first half of line 2 arguably sets up a pastoral framework of
interpretation, the appearance of ‘airports’ in the second half of the
line is incongruous and unexpectedly prosaic. Noticeably, where
commonplace or formulaic expressions might be anticipated in the
discourse context, subtle twists of perception are created when an
unexpected term is realised. For instance, in line 5 it is not, as one
might expect, ‘sources’ or ‘authorities’ who ‘agree’, but
‘instruments’.Auden’s lexical strategies, here as in much of his work,

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do not consist in the deployment of the sort of wholesale semantic
violations that were seen earlier in this chapter; rather, they operate
more as understated deflections from probabilistic collocational
patterns. Carter (1982b: 41–2) talks of Auden’s capacity to develop
a kind of lexical ‘code’ in his poetry: a distinctive poetic style
comprising words which are conventional in themselves but which
are foregrounded through deviations from internal contextual norms.
This vocabulary, Carter continues, draws attention to itself as lexis
and poetic convention, so much so that the ‘lexis itself becomes an
important part of the subject matter’.
3.5 Summary
For the purposes of studying lexical semantics, the practical activities
outlined in the previous section are quite flexible and can be tailored
to suit specific teaching and learning goals. For example, we
conducted our cloze procedure analysis of ‘Dolour’ on a ‘line by
line’ basis. This seemed an appropriate method for assessing how a
sequence of discourse informs and affects our reading of subsequent
sequences. However, the cloze test format can be much more
expansive: whole stanzas or even whole texts, with their blanked-out
slots, can be examined in one go. This larger-scale format can also
be used in the application of multiple choice text to highlight how
strands of meaning operate across larger chunks of text. Whatever
the precise style of their implementation, both techniques help to
scotch the myth that there is such a thing as a ‘literary lexis’ (see
section 1.3, above), emphasising instead that the real stylistic issue is
to do with the company a word keeps. It is often the semantic space
that lies between words, rather than the properties that inhere in the
words themselves, which forms the core of verbal imagery in poetry.
The analysis carried out in section 3.4 also raises important issues
to do with grammatical theory. It has particularly significant
repercussions for those theories of grammar which have at their
core the distinction between semantically acceptable and
semantically anomalous constructions in a language. The
Transformational-Generative model, for instance, is designed to
explain, amongst other things, how speakers know the difference
between a permissible ‘string’ of words and an impermissible one.
Yet in the course of our study of ‘Dolour’, it quickly became clear
¶

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that not only were participants in seminars good at assimilating and
understanding anomalous strings, but that they were even able to
predict anomalous strings. How is it then that we can process such
apparently opaque language?
One solution to the problem has been proposed by the linguist
J.P.Thorne in a well-known article entitled ‘Generative Grammar
and Stylistic Analysis’ (1981).
Thorne’s article is worth reading for several reasons. He carries
out a stylistic analysis of ‘Dolour’, although the Transformational-
Generative model he uses is theoretically very much at odds with my
own approach. This offers the opportunity for some productive debate
between our two positions. Thorne’s main argument is that ‘deviant’
structures in poetry, such as the collocational clashes evident in
‘Dolour’, can be explained by developing a ‘grammar’ for the text.
This new ‘grammar’ will accommodate the deviant structures in the
poem, so the reader’s task of processing semantically anomalous
combinations becomes akin to learning a new language. Thorne
presents his ‘grammar-of-the-poem’ theory thus:
Behind the idea of constructing what is in effect a grammar for the
poem lies the idea that what the poet has done is to create a new
language (or dialect) and that the task that faces the reader is in
some ways like that of learning a new language (or dialect)…For
these poets the point of creating a new language, therefore, seems
to be that it enables them to say not only things that can be said in
Standard English, but in a different way, but also things that cannot
be said in Standard English at all—though they can be understood
only by someone who understands Standard English.
(1981:50–1)
The ‘grammar-of-the-poem’ theory is certainly a challenging one,
but in my opinion it is flawed in several respects. For one thing, to
say that collocational clashes are a ‘new’ language is to nullify their
stylistic effect totally. Deviant patterns function at an intralinguistic
level: their impact results from their interplay with other elements
inside a particular language. If indeed they constituted a ‘new’
language, then describing them would be much the same as
accounting for the formal differences between, say, French and
English. Other parts of Thorne’s analogy with language learning are
problematic. Learners new to a language obviously try to acquire
strings of words that are ‘normal’ in that particular language. It is

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only the experienced users of that language who can be expected to
make sense out of anomalous or irregular patterns. Furthermore, if
deviant combinations create a new language in which the striking
becomes the norm, then presumably this new language is itself
susceptible to the sort of defamiliarising operation that generated it
in the first place. Would the result of this operation be yet another
new language or would it simply constitute a return to the ‘normal’
code from which we started? Clearly a lot more investigation needs
to be done before we have an adequate model of how readers make
sense of the complex and anomalous language that characterises
much poetry. And such a model would be just as much a theory of
reading literature as it would a theory of grammar.
Lexical semantics
Useful introductions to lexical semantics (which also cover the
debates between different approaches to the topic) are: Carter (1987);
Hurford and Heasley (1983); Palmer (1982); Crystal (1987:102–7).
These books are generally accessible and offer fuller accounts than
is possible here. For extra reading on lexical semantics see: Fromkin
and Rodman (1988:205–50); Jackson (1988); Cruse (1986). More
advanced surveys of broader issues in semantics can be found in the
following books: Lyons (1977); Leech (1981); Kempson (1977).
Lexical semantics and stylistic analysis
There are a number of useful books and articles which use lexical
semantics for stylistic analysis. Leech (1969) is the first standard
textbook to be written on the stylistics of poetry. A more recent
contribution to the field is Verdonk (1993), which is a collection of
essays aimed at the non-specialist. The general stylistics of naming
in rock and pop is covered in Wales (1992). Nash (1985) and Chiaro
(1992) are two books on the language of humour which contain
entertaining sections on puns, clashes and plays on word-meaning.
Ronald Carter has written a number of studies of W.H.Auden’s poetry

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from a stylistic perspective. For his discussion of Auden’s poem
‘Mundus et
Infans’ using cloze procedure, see Carter (1981 and 1987:193–
207). An analysis of the poem ‘Oxford’, using similar semantic
techniques can be found in Carter (1982b). For a general discussion
of cloze procedure and multiple choice text in a stylistic context see
Van Peer (1989). Van Peer has also written a more specialist
monograph on stylistics and psychology in which many of the
techniques suggested in this chapter are used (Van Peer 1986). ¶

101
Chapter 4
Exploring narrative
style: patterns of
cohesion in a short
story
• 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
Chapter4

102
4.1 Introduction
In keeping with the general orientation of the book, this chapter
illustrates how literature can be used as a point of entry into the
study of English language. Here the focus of attention will be on
prose fiction and the features of language that will be introduced
and explored are cohesion and narrative. The structure of this
chapter, however, differs from that of the previous two in one key
respect. Whereas the practice up to now has been to discuss topics
in language before the development of practical exercises, this
chapter by contrast takes a direct route to the text and expands
upon topics in language after the main practical activities have
been undertaken.
The chapter is structured as follows. In the next section, readers
will be invited to take part in a practical workshop activity which is
based upon a short story by American writer Ernest Hemingway. A
jumbled version of the story is presented from which readers will be
asked to assemble a coherent and well-formed narrative. In section
4.3, the responses of groups of students who have carried out the
same activity will be reviewed and their (re)constructions will
eventually be compared with the original Hemingway version. In a
more technical way, section 4.3 will also be concerned with exploring
the patterns of cohesion in the narratives developed by the students.
From their collected versions of the story, an idealised narrative will
be constructed which will then form the basis of comparison with the
original Hemingway version. In the fourth section of the chapter, the
analysis of cohesion will be supplemented with a discussion of
natural narrative. A number of extensions to the main study are
developed in section 4.5, including some suggestions as to how the
kind of activity outlined here might be integrated with creative
writing. Finally, some concluding remarks are offered on the ways in
which additional linguistic frameworks may be brought into play in
the study of narrative.

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EXPLORING NARRATIVE STYLE
4.2 Practical activity: reconstructing a short
story
The Hemingway text selected for reconstruction is one of the many
short vignettes peppered throughout the In Our Time collection.
These vignettes are untitled, are seldom over one hundred and fifty
words long and are often simply wedged between the more
substantial short stories in the collection. They are distinct from the
longer stories not only in terms of content, but in graphology also:
most are italicised, which separates them visually from the other
material around them.
Given that the object of the exercise is to foreground the linguistic
devices which bind stories together, I began by dismantling the text
entirely. Both the size and overall structure of the text helped
enormously here, in that the story comprises only eleven sentences
totalling 130 words. I (literally) cut up a photocopy of the story into its
constituent sentences and shuffled the eleven pieces of paper. The
pieces of paper (containing a single sentence each) were then drawn in
random sequence and every sentence was assigned a letter from the
consecutive sequence a, b, c,…up to k. The sequence of sentences is
now completely haphazard; even if any particular combination
happened to match the original it will have been entirely due to chance.
The sequence which emerged from this dismantling process is
reproduced within the ruled text. Before that, there is a set of
instructions on how to ‘re-assemble’ the text which readers might
care to follow. In fact, if time and facilities permit, it would be a
good idea to photocopy the next page, cut it up and then experiment
by laying out and rearranging the eleven sentences on a worktop.
Better still if you can confer with colleagues or peers about which
sequence is best. For the moment, the original Hemingway version
will be withheld until we have had time to explore fully the sorts of
reconstructions that are produced under such circumstances. Here
now are your instructions:
1 You will find a complete (untitled) short story by Ernest
Hemingway. The story comprises in total just eleven sentences.
However, these sentences have been jumbled so that now they
do not occur in the sequence of the original story. Each sentence
has been assigned a letter.

104
(a) All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut.
(b) When they fired the first volley he was sitting down in the
water with his head on his knees.
(c) There were pools of water in the courtyard.
(d) They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down
in a puddle of water.
(e) One of the ministers was sick with typhoid.
(f) Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain.
(g) There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard.
(h) Finally the officer told the soldiers it was no good trying to
make him stand up.
(i) They shot the six cabinet ministers at half past six in the
morning against the wall of a hospital.
(j) It rained hard.
(k) The other five stood very quietly against the wall.

105
2 Try to reconstruct the story. Try to build up what you consider
a normal narrative sequence. This should not become an attempt
to reassemble the original Hemingway text but rather an attempt
to produce a sequence of the sentences that results in a coherent
narrative for you.
3 Make a note of the sequence you have selected (e.g. a b c d e f
etc.) and try to think about why you chose this particular
sequence. It may help to isolate any features of language which
signal that a particular sentence should precede rather than
follow another. Underline any such features.
4.3 Results and discussion
Readers by now should have developed their own versions of the
narrative and have formed some opinion as to why they prefer the
sequence they do. Unfortunately, the communicative dynamics of
print media are such that I am unable to see what you have done or
to discuss with you your particular versions! Perhaps the next best
thing, then, is to look at what others have done using the same
materials. What follow next are the results of an undergraduate
seminar based on the same activity. This was a largish seminar group,
comprising twenty-eight students, so rather than being asked to
produce individual responses, participants were asked to work in six
groups comprising four or five members apiece.
The results obtained from the seminar activity are summarised in
Table 4.1. Readers can now check across the table to see if their own
versions generally square with (or are even identical to) any of the
sequences proposed by the six groups. One of the advantages of a
quantitative summary of this sort is that it is possible to view at a
glance a collected set of responses. These responses are based
specifically upon native speakers’ intuitions about what constitutes a
well-formed, coherent narrative. We can gain insights into not only
the sorts of patterns which recur but also the variety of responses
which is reflected across the six groups. The summary also creates a
kind of ‘Consensus’ response against which readers can check their
own versions. And, of course, all of this will provide an illuminating
point of contrast with the original Hemingway version when it
¶
¶

106
appears later in the section. For the moment, however, it will be
useful to reflect upon and discuss the general patterns that have
emerged from the students’ responses.
4.3.1 General patterns of response
It is noticeable that only two of the available eleven sentences were
selected as viable openings to the story. Of these two, sentence (i)
was favoured:
They shot the six cabinet ministers at half past six in the
The justification offered by the groups who chose (i) as the crucial
opening sentence were interesting and merit some consideration.
The underlying motivation behind this selection was that of all the
sentences this was the one which provided the neatest summary of
the entire story. No other sentence encapsulated the point of the
story in as ‘snappy’ (sic) a way. The precise linguistic justification
offered in support of this centred primarily on two features of the
sentence. First, the noun phrase ‘the six cabinet ministers’ is the
most elaborated of all the references to the ministers, and would
naturally be expected to precede subsequent, more reduced forms.
For instance, the appearance of the partitive expression ‘one of the
ministers’ later in the narrative presupposes an earlier reference to
the group of ministers as a whole. Second, and more significantly,
this is one of only two sentences in the story which contain an
TABLE 4.1 Results of workshop activity sentence

107
indefinite article: ‘a hospital’. This is a linguistic feature which is
often used to introduce a new entity into the text, with subsequent
references adopting the definite article ‘the’. (See, for example, the
reference to ‘the hospital’ in sentence (a).) In spite of this
justification, however, some groups still expressed misgivings about
the selection of (i) as an opening. One feature which perturbed a
number of participants was the use of ‘They’ without an antecedent.
Now, in terms of the cohesion model mentioned in section 4.1, the
pronoun ‘they’ is normally used anaphorically (Halliday and Hasan
1976:14). That is to say, it usually refers ‘backwards’, anaphora
being the type of cohesive relation which points to some earlier,
fuller reference in the text. By contrast, in the present example, the
pronoun is used cataphorically, it points forward to a reference or
references in a subsequent portion of text. In this respect, the ‘They’
can be said to form a cataphoric link with the references to ‘the
soldiers’ and ‘the officer’ later in the narrative. On balance,
however, it was generally agreed that this feature did not warrant
the de-selection of (i) as the best possible opening to the story.
Indeed, a number of students suggested that this type of cataphoric
reference was a common enough characteristic of the openings of
literary texts.
The two groups who chose sentence (j) for their opening took a
somewhat different approach. They argued that a short ‘scene-
setting’ sentence like ‘It rained hard’ was a more appropriate
beginning to the story. Moreover, they had no problems in explaining
away any unusual cataphoric references as the ‘It’ in the sentence is
simply a dummy subject, an item which has no reference value and
is purely a formal requirement of the grammar of English.
One of the more striking aspects of the table of results is the way
in which it highlights certain configurations of sentences which are
almost invariable across all groups. Particularly noteworthy is the
following sequence of sentences proposed by five of the six groups:
(f) Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain.
The justification for this configuration rested on both the formal aspects
of the language system and on the background assumptions of the
participants themselves. First of all, the pronoun ‘him’ in (f) provides
a clear anaphoric link to the antecedent phrase ‘one of the ministers’.

108
Second, further coherence is created through the suggestion of
causality: the minister is ill so he has to be carried. This ‘commonsense’
interpretation prompted a number of illuminating comments on the
general lack of causality in Hemingway’s style. Formal links between
propositions, such as if, so and therefore, tend to be uncommon and,
consequently, ‘cause and effect’ and ‘logical’ relationships often have
to be constructed by readers.
The agreement reached over the sequence of sentences (h) and (b)
also warrants some comment. Four groups proposed the following
pattern, remarkably, at identical points in the narrative:
make him stand up.
The reasons put forward in support of this pattern were interesting.
In addition to the cohesion created through the use of the anaphoric
pronouns ‘they’, ‘he’ and ‘his’, all groups pointed out that extra
cohesion was created by the juxtaposition of the opposites ‘stand up’
and ‘sitting down’. This cohesion through antonyms (see section 3.2)
is identified by Halliday and Hasan as one of the main types of
lexical cohesion in English.
Another area of cross-group similarity is the sequencing of
sentences (i), (e) and (k). Although the exact position of these
sentences in the narrative varied, and the sentences were interrupted
by other elements, the precise sequence was, with only one exception,
invariable. Only Group 5 did not propose the following pattern:
morning against the wall of a hospital. (…)
(e) One of the ministers was sick with typhoid (…)
(k) The other five stood very quietly against the wall (…)
The relative rigidity of this pattern can be explained by reference to
the cohesive chains which develop through it. As was pointed out
above, the partitive expression ‘One of the ministers’ is tied to the
initial reference in (i). The cohesion between (e) and (k) is even
more rigid, with the expression ‘the other five’ undergoing ellipsis.
This cohesive device is a type of ‘substitution by zero’, where one or

109
more items may be deleted but may still be inferred from the
linguistic context. For instance, in the second clause of the following
sentence both the verb ‘scored’ and the noun ‘goals’ have been
ellipted, yet are presupposed through reference to the first clause:
Everton scored three goals and Liverpool two.
Returning to the text, it is clear that the ‘other five’ is only meaningful
through reference to sentences (e) and (i), thus developing strong
anaphoric links between this particular group of sentences. The
cohesive chain which emerges might be formulated as in Figure 4.1.
The chain is further strengthened by the presence of other cohesive
links such as repetition; in this instance, the phrase ‘the wall’ occurs
in both (i) and (k).
The one group who placed (i) after (e) and (k) (see Group 4
above) had specific reasons for doing so, although they felt unhappy
about the overall structure of their narrative. Their decision for
placing (i) towards the end of the narrative will be dealt with later, in
subsection 4.4.2.
FIGURE 4.1

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It is interesting also that only one group chose to conclude the
narrative with a sentence which contains a clear ‘signpost’ in the
form of the initial adverb ‘finally’. Group 6, then, took ‘finally’ to
mean precisely that, yet the other five groups were dissatisfied with
the sense of incompleteness which final (h) would generate.
4.3.2 An idealised narrative
It was anticipated at the outset that the results of the workshop would
produce an ‘idealised’ narrative based on the majority preferences
displayed in each of the eleven sentence columns. This would
produce a sample narrative derived from the collected responses
which could then be contrasted with the original version.
Unfortunately, given the set of results obtained genuine abstraction
of this sort is difficult: some preferences are evenly distributed over
a number of columns whilst other columns yield no statistically
significant set of preferences. Nevertheless, it is still possible to select
a sample narrative representing the most ‘typical’ narrative produced
by all the groups. In this respect, the narrative of group 2 is
appropriate as their choices are most widely shared by other groups.
The complete narrative proposed by this group is as follows, with
letters retained for ease of reference, but with the gaps between the
sentences closed up in order to render the sequence ‘storylike’.
morning against the wall of a hospital. (j) It rained hard. (e)
One of the ministers was sick with typhoid. (f) Two soldiers
carried him downstairs and out into the rain. (d) They tried to
hold him up against the wall but he sat down in a puddle of
water. (g) There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the
courtyard. (k) The other five stood very quietly against the wall.
make him stand up. (b) When they fired the first volley he was
sitting down in the water with his head on his knees. (c) There
were pools of water in the courtyard. (a) All the shutters of the
hospital were nailed shut.

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A significant feature of this narrative as a whole is the division
between what might be loosely termed descriptive and actional
frames. The group who produced this version attempted to create a
balance between, on the one hand, the central action of the shooting,
and, on the other, the more ‘static’ descriptions of the rain, the
hospital and the courtyard. To this end, the descriptive sentences
such as (j), (g) and (c) were quite consciously woven around the
central narrative events realised chiefly by sentences (f), (d), (k), (h)
and (b). Like many other groups, this group felt that the narrative
which resulted from this strategy was ‘smoother’, more balanced
and more neatly structured.
Another important feature of this narrative which also reached a
wide measure of agreement is the narrowing of focus created through
the placement of sentences (j), (g) and (c). Almost invariably,
sentence (j) precedes both (c) and (g), the most common
configuration across all groups being:
(j) It rained hard (…)
(c) There were pools of water in the courtyard (…)
(g) There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard
(…)
The justification offered for the sequence is illuminating. Group 2
argued, for instance, that this configuration is not only cohesively
linked by a broad lexical set including the items ‘rained’, ‘water’ and
‘wet’, but it is also linked in terms of an implicit cause and effect
relationship between the propositions expressed by each sentence.
On the basis of largely commonsense reasoning, the following
argument could be proposed, where the second and third sentences
are predicated by the first:
It rained
and so there were pools of water…
and so there were wet dead leaves…
Again, it should be stressed that the relationship between the
propositions is implicit, the absence of formal connectives forcing
readers to infer cause-and-effect relations.
Whilst a number of groups had (j) adjacent to either (c) or (g),
there was a tendency to seek maximum separation between (c) and

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(g). Group 2’s justification for this was echoed unanimously: (c) and
(g) were felt to be too repetitive to be placed side by side. For one
thing, both are existential sentences beginning with the dummy
subject ‘there’; for another, both contain virtually identical sentence-
final prepositional phrases (‘in the courtyard’, ‘of the courtyard’). In
short, the very similarity in structure of the two sentences makes
their proximity to one another feel ‘unnatural’.
Another common pattern reflected in the Group 2 narrative is the
tendency to make sentence (a) the ending of the story. Again, the
justification for this is interesting as it draws on both structural and
thematic evidence. First of all, sentence (a) is part of the descriptive
frame which is woven around the actional frame, providing a
particularly apposite ending with its echo of ‘the hospital’ referred to
in the opening sentence (a cohesive tie of repetition, if one recalls).
The thematic evidence concerns the ‘allusion’ created by the phrase
‘nailed shut’. This group, and indeed the others who chose an (a)
ending, argued that this developed an image of a coffin being nailed
shut, thereby providing a symbolic analogue to the death of the
cabinet ministers. This decision to adopt an ‘emblematic’ reading is
especially telling, as this particular sentence never provoked such an
interpretation in tutorials which used the unaltered, original version.
Comparable identifications of an image of death in other parts of the
descriptive frame (for example, in the reference to the ‘dead’ leaves
in sentence (g)), which were not made in previous tutorials, were
also made in the course of the present exercise. Of course the absence
of any such response to this sentence in the original version might
have been due in part to its location in the story. However, if this and
other related points are to be developed more fully, it is to the original
we must now turn. In the following subsection, therefore, the ‘real’
version will be produced and discussed.
4.3.3 The original version
Here, at last, is the original Hemingway vignette:
morning against the wall of a hospital. (c) There were pools of
water in the courtyard. (g) There were wet dead leaves on the

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paving of the courtyard. (j) It rained hard. (a) All the shutters of
the hospital were nailed shut. (e) One of the ministers was sick
with typhoid. (f) Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out
into the rain. (d) They tried to hold him up against the wall but
he sat down in a puddle of water. (k) The other five stood very
quietly against the wall. (h) Finally the officer told the soldiers it
was no good trying to make him stand up. (b) When they fired
the first volley he was sitting down in the water with his head on
his knees.1
Dealing firstly with the similarities between this and the student
reconstructions, it is noticeable that the preferred opening is vindicated:
sentence (i) is indeed the first sentence of the story. (The reasons why
(i) was considered most appropriate need not be re-introduced here.)
The agreement reached over the (h)–(b) and (e)–(f) pairs is also borne
out by the original. Noticeably, however, both sequences are part of
the actional frame, and there is a strong sense of a temporal progression
from the first element of the pair to the second. It would be difficult to
produce a coherent pattern by reversing these sentences. Beyond this,
there are few similarities between the original and the reconstructions.
There are a number of substantial differences between the texts, many
of which are highly illuminating. There is broad disagreement on the
distribution of the actional and descriptive frames, for example. In the
Hemingway version, these frames are separated into two blocks which,
if we leave aside the opening sentence, comprise five sentences of
description followed by five sentences of action. These are not at all
interwoven in the style of most of the reconstructions. Moreover,
although the (h)–(b) configuration is widespread in the reconstructions,
no group even contemplated this as an appropriate ending to the story.
When confronted with the actual ending, all the groups were surprised
and many felt that (b) rendered the story incomplete, or, at least,
indeterminate.
Even more surprise was expressed at the sequencing of sentences
in the descriptive frame of the story. Contrary to the intuitions of the
participants, the anticipated (j), (c), (g) is dispreferred in favour of
the following:

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(g) There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the
courtyard,
(j) It rained hard.
The focalisation created through this pattern is almost the reverse of
that expected, with a narrowing to the detail of the ‘leaves’ in the
second sentence, followed by an abrupt transition outwards to a
general statement about the rain in the last sentence. Furthermore,
the cause-and-effect relationship which forms the basis of most of
the students’ predictions is actually reversed to an effect-and-cause
relationship. Another consequence of this pattern is that (c) and (g)
are now side by side—a configuration which was ruled out by every
group. Many felt that combining (c) and (g) in this way was repetitive
and clumsy, almost becoming, to use Leech and Short’s term, over-
cohesive (1981:252).
More will be said on the discrepancies between the workshop and
Hemingway versions in the following section, where some further
explanations will be offered as to why such dissimilarities occur. But
one thing that the introduction of the original version should have
highlighted is how a break-up and subsequent reconstruction of the
text is possible in the first place. There is a marked lack of formal
connectives between the sentences of the text, allowing considerable
manipulation of their sequencing to take place without much
disruption to the overall meaning of the story. This, in turn, leads to
a clearer picture of the technique—some would say lack of
technique—of the author. There is little, if any, authorial commentary
on the events of the story, just as there is little signposting as to how
one event precipitates another. It is not made explicit either how one
element in the descriptive frame is supposed to interconnect with
another. One general outcome of the comparison between the original
and reconstructions is that it brought out the very blandness and the
almost self-conscious ‘flatness’ of Hemingway’s style. Moreover,
the linguistic analysis undertaken during the comparison provided
concrete support for these observations. Indeed, many of the groups
actually felt that their own efforts were ‘neater’, more ‘polished’ and
had more all-round ‘literary merit’. This in itself provides some
considerable insight into what students of literature regard as
‘literary’ at least in terms of the kinds of structures which they expect
literary texts to exhibit.

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4.4 Extending the analysis
4.4.1 Cohesion
In the course of the analysis and discussion of the previous section,
a number of key terms from Halliday and Hasan’s model of cohesion
were introduced. Although this was done in an ad hoc and somewhat
piecemeal fashion, it was intended to mirror the direction taken by
the workshop itself. In other words, linguistic terminology was not
introduced prior to the comparative analysis, but was instead allowed
to unfold during the course of the analysis.
Among the specific terms introduced were the notions of
anaphora and cataphora. Anaphoric references, which ‘point back’
to earlier references in the text, provide one means of developing
coherence in a narrative. In relation to this, a number of cohesive
chains have been identified in the analysis, the most significant of
which are the progressions of phrases relating to the cabinet ministers
and the soldiers. By contrast, a more striking pattern of cataphora is
established early on with the pronominally reduced form ‘they’ used
to refer to the soldiers. The pronoun here therefore ‘points forwards’
to subsequent elaboration in the form of full noun phrases such as
‘two soldiers’, ‘the officer’ and ‘the soldiers’. Cohesion through
antonymy is also created in the text through the juxtaposition of the
verb phrases ‘stand up’ and ‘sitting down’ in adjacent sentences (h)
and (b). The first of these phrases is also a repetition of ‘stood’ in the
sentence immediately preceding (k).
However, these largely straightforward patterns of cohesion were
offset by a number of ‘anomalies’ in the original. The ‘over-
cohesiveness’ in adjacent sentences (c) and (g) was commented on
particularly, with workshop participants expressing dissatisfaction at
the repetitiveness of the ‘there were…’ construction and the similarity
of the phrases ‘in the courtyard’ and ‘of the courtyard’.Also noted was
the general absence of connectivity between the sentences in the story.
A wide variety of devices are available in English for developing this
type of cohesion, including additive (‘and’), adversative (‘but’) and
causal (‘so’) conjunctions. However, only one explicit signal is
provided in the form of ‘finally’ (sentence (h)) and yet, ironically, the
sentence which it governs does not constitute the last of the story.
Indeed, much of the benefit of this type of comparative stylistics is that

116
it foregrounds the discrepancies between the students’ and the original
versions, thereby highlighting the peculiar characteristics of the latter.
4.4.2 Natural narrative
Part of the point of an exercise such as this is that it can be
supplemented with a variety of additional linguistic models which
enable the analysis to be developed in a number of different directions.
One such model, which would not only provide an insightful analysis
of the story in its own terms but would also help clarify some of the
reconstructions discussed earlier, is the framework of natural narrative
proposed by the sociolinguist William Labov. Although this is not the
place to undertake a detailed introduction to the model, a brief sketch
will none the less prove useful.
Labov defines a natural narrative as a method of recapitulating
past experience by matching a sequence of clauses to the sequence
of events which (it is implied) actually occurred. A minimal narrative
can be defined as a sequence of two clauses which are temporally
ordered: that is, a change in their order will result in a change in the
temporal sequence of the original semantic interpretation (Labov
1972:359–60). From the dozens of stories collected, Labov proposes
the following narrative categories:
¶

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With the exception of Evaluation, the categories listed above are
arranged in the sequence in which they would occur in a typical oral
narrative. Evaluation is situated outside the central pattern and can
be inserted at virtually any stage during a narrative. A fully formed
narrative realises all six categories, although many narratives may
lack one or more components.
The Labovian model can be used to explore further the similarities
and differences between the idealised and original versions. In this
regard, perhaps the most significant point of agreement between the
two versions is the correct selection of sentence (i) by the students as
an opening:
They shot the six cabinet ministers at half past six in the

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Interestingly, this sentence, in the context of the story as a whole,
satisfies the criteria for a well-formed Abstract. It provides a short
summary of the main event of the story, although in itself does not
constitute a narrative. There was also substantial cross-group
agreement on the selection of this feature, with most groups arguing
that the ‘summarising’ nature of this sentence made it a strong
candidate for an opening to the story. The one group who placed (i)
towards the end of their story did so for reasons which will be
discussed shortly.
A major pattern of disagreement centres on the distribution of
what were loosely termed the descriptive and actional frames of the
story. Hopefully, it should be clear from the foregoing that these two
informal categories may be now aligned with the natural narrative
categories of Orientation and Complicating action respectively.
Orientation provides the all-important background detail which helps
the listener/reader identify the ‘who, what, when and where’ of the
story. It is realised by sentences such as the following:
(g) There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard.
By contrast, the Complicating action of the story is realised primarily
through those sentences which have an actional verb in the simple
past. These core narrative clauses are represented by sentences (f)
and (d) in the following sequence from the original version:
(f) Two soldiers carried him downstairs and out into the rain,
(d) They tried to hold him up against the wall but he sat down
in a puddle of water.
Much wider agreement was reached on such patterns, where the
sentences are temporally ordered and where a change in their
sequence would result in a change in the interpretation of the
chronology of the story. Furthermore, a reversal of (f) and (d) above
would be difficult to justify on the grounds of coherence.
Where the idealised and original versions diverge most noticeably
is in the way in which the descriptive (Orientation) frame is deployed.
Whereas it is scattered throughout the idealised version, in the

119
original version it is confined to the first half of the story. In fact, the
original version is virtually split evenly into two blocks of Orientation
and Complicating action. The idealised version, by contrast, is
peppered with sentences of Orientation which break up what would
otherwise be almost continuous Complicating action. (Consider, for
example, the (d)–(g)–(k) and (h)–(b)–(c) patterns.) Students’
reactions to the pattern of the original version were interesting: they
argued that it felt too ‘top-heavy’, too ‘symmetrical’ and was on the
whole rather unsubtle. In support of their own mixed pattern, they
contended that a more balanced narrative emerged, with the
transitions between Complicating action and Orientation creating a
more ‘engaging’ and ‘dialogic’ (sic) story.
This last point leads us directly to the question of the problematic
ending to the story. It may be recalled that no group contemplated
placing the following sentence at the end:
From an analytic point of view, this sentence raises a number of issues.
For one thing, it tends to cut across the distinctions between narrative
categories established in this section. It satisfies to some extent the
criteria for the recognition of Complicating Action: it has an actional
verb in the simple past (‘fired’) and generally has a ‘what happened’
rather than ‘who, what, where’ feel to it.Yet a couple of features in the
sentence push it towards Orientation: it contains an explicit temporal
signal in the form of ‘when’ and, more significantly, contains a past
continuous verb phrase (‘he was sitting’). Both features are more
characteristic of Orientation sections of natural narratives. This
categorical indeterminacy is what many groups felt renders the story
itself indeterminate. It possesses no clear Coda, no signal that the
events of the narrative are over and the narrator is, so to speak, giving
up the floor. Group 5 felt, for example, that sentence (i), the opening of
the original and idealised versions, accomplished this much more
effectively—which is why they placed it near the end in their version.
Certainly, all of the groups were unhappy with (b) as an ending and no
group placed it more than three sentences from the end. Instead, more
‘symbolic’ Codas were preferred, such as (j) (‘It rained hard.’), (g)
(‘There were wet dead leaves on the paving of the courtyard’) and,
most popularly, (a) (‘All the shutters of the hospital were nailed shut’).

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The first of these was chosen because it is by far the shortest sentence
of the story, whilst the remaining two contain, respectively, explicit
and symbolic allusions to death. All of these choices, it was felt, not
only avoided the sense of incompleteness generated by (b) but also
rounded the story off more neatly with a short descriptive statement
devoid of any actional context.
Much more could be said of the implications of a natural narrative
analysis here. The lack of Evaluation in the story, for example, has
not been touched upon. To do so would in turn lead to questions of
authorial modality, mind-style and point of view—and such questions
really deserve fuller treatment elsewhere.2
One consequence of
Hemingway’s non-evaluative technique is the notable absence in the
story of any rhetorical ‘colour’. There are no stylistic flourishes,
such as departures from the basic syntax through the use of modals,
questions and negatives. Indeed, one might wonder how the same
basic story line would look if supplemented with those evaluative
devices. Would rewrites, rather than reconstructions, reveal more
about what participants informally termed the ‘flatness’ of
Hemingway’s style? It is to issues such as this that the following
short section will be addressed.
4.5 Practical activity: creative writing
Up to now, information on the biographical and literary-critical
context of the story under analysis has been quite consciously
withheld from the study. This has not been done in the interests of
achieving a restrictively formalist or text-immanent reading of the
story, nor is it suggested that contextual detail does not have a part to
play in a multidimensional, interpretative process. On the contrary, it
has been done simply because, as a language-orientated activity, the
concern with linguistic form and function has been uppermost. As a
preparatory stage in the development of the ‘sub-exercise’ which
follows, however, we shall find it necessary to introduce precisely
such contextual detail.
The actual historical event portrayed in the vignette is the execution
of six Greek cabinet ministers, including the ex-premier, in Athens in
1922. The executions took place after Greece’s unsuccessful campaign
against Turkey. Hemingway had previously covered the war for the
Toronto Star and, although based in Paris at the time, would have

121
followed these events closely. Three months after the executions, he
wrote his vignette, probably basing it on a newspaper account he read
in the Paris edition of the New York Tribune (Baker 1969:108;
Reynolds 1972:82). The full text of the story, including a short
preliminary editorial, is reproduced in full within the ruled text.
ATROCITIES MARKED GREEK EXECUTIONS OF FORMER LEADERS
Uncensored Account Brought From Athens—Dead Man Was
Propped Up in Line
GOUNARIS NERVED BY DRUG
Ex-Premier, Dying From Illness, Was Artificially Stimulated to
Stand LONDON, Dec. 20—The Daily Express published the first
detailed account of the recent executions of the Greek ex-
Ministers supplied by its correspondent who was lately in Athens.
M.Gounaris, an ex-Premier, was in a hospital in a very critical
condition. About 11 a.m. he was taken out on a stretcher, placed
in a motor van and driven to a place about one and a half miles
outside of the city. He was left lying on his stretcher in a dying
condition while the car went back to fetch five others from the
prison where they had all been confined in a single room.
To begin the horrors of that morning it was discovered by the
guards that one of the five had died in the van on the way out
from heart failure.
On the arrival of the van Gounaris was lifted out of the stretcher to
stand up and face a firing party. It was then found that this wretched
man, who, after all, had been a figure in the recent history of
Europe, was unable to stand at all. He was thereupon given
sufficient injections of strychnine to strengthen the action of his
heart to enable him to stand up in front of the firing party. The man
who had died on the way out was propped up beside him—a
ghastly line of four live men, one half alive and one dead man.
They were then asked—Gounaris, the dead man and all—if they had
anything to say, an appalling instance of mockery. No reply was
. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

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made, but M.Baltazzis took out his monocle, polished it and put it
back again. General Hadjanestis calmly lit a cigarette. The order to
fire was given. The moment the prisoners fell the firing party rushed
forward and emptied their revolvers into the corpses. Including that
of the man who had died on the way from the prison. The bodies
were then thrown into a lorry and taken to a public cemetery just
outside of the city and were thrown out casually in a heap in the mud
which covered the ground.3
The compositional differences between Hemingway’s short story
and its source material needed only be sketched here. Most noticeable
perhaps is that the dead minister of the newspaper account is removed
completely, thereby channelling attention towards the sick minister in
the vignette. Indeed, it would be difficult to cover both a sick man and
a dying man in so short a space. The time of the execution is also
altered, being brought forward to a time traditionally associated with
‘dawn’ executions. Extrapolating from a reference to ‘a heap in the
mud’ in the last sentence, Hemingway foregrounds the inclement
weather through a series of references to rain and wet conditions. The
location is also altered with the executions conveniently taking place
just outside the hospital, as opposed to one and a half miles away.
Again, this allows for further economy of description. Interesting also
are the allusions by Hemingway to the ‘nailed shut’ windows of the
hospital which, whilst provoking particular comment in the workshop
discussion, are on the basis of this evidence entirely fictitious.
Although the juxtaposition of short story and source material would
provide in itself a useful framework for an informal discussion of
composition and technique, the activity proposed here involves
developing a story based on the newspaper account. I designed the
following protocol for use as a variation on the central workshop plan
(introduced in section 4.2) and have found that it works particularly
effectively with participants who want to develop their compositional
and creative skills in English language. It basically involves writing a
short story using only the newspaper account, without any prior access
to Hemingway’s story. (Of course, the stories collected in this way can
later be compared with the Hemingway vignette.) Reading through the
protocol, you might care to imagine what sort of story you would
produce on the basis of these directives.
¶

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1 Read the accompanying newspaper report which describes
certain events that took place in 1922, The report appeared in
the New York Tribune and details the execution of six Greek
cabinet ministers.
2 Now compose a short story based on the events portrayed in
the newspaper text. Do not exceed two hundred words. Feel
free to:
(i) omit events that you feel are less central to the main
story,
(ii) amplify certain details which you feel are thematically
significant.
In short, you may use your imagination.
3 Now explain how you reached your particular story. Have you
felt it necessary, for example, to delete certain events during
the transition from news report to short story? On the other
hand, have you embellished aspects of the news report for
thematic or ‘literary’ reasons?
4 Now examine a short story written in 1922 by the American
writer Ernest Hemingway. This story is believed to have been
based on the newspaper account you have just read. Are any
features of Hemingway’s version particularly striking? Make a
list of the features if you can. What are the principal ways in
which your story differs from that of Hemingway?
Having paid close attention to Hemingway’s vignette, we are
probably stylistically ‘disaffected’ by now, and will be difficult to
read the newspaper account without being influenced by his
narrative. However, on those occasions where I have elicited stories
through the protocol and where the workshop participants have had
no prior awareness of the Hemingway text, the results are both
striking and extremely insightful. For a start, most of the elicited
narratives are written in the first person. This technique often presents
a highly personalised view of events, mediating them through the
consciousness of a character who participates in the story. Here is
one such version produced by a group of students who had not read
¶

124
Hemingway’s story before they embarked on the creative writing
protocol:
It was sometime last December—I can’t recall exactly. All I can
remember is that the army called me just before lunchtime to
pick someone up. I was to go to the hospital. It turned out to be
someone important who was in bad shape. I wondered what
the hell they wanted to do with him. My instructions were to
pick up five other guys and to drive them one and a half miles
outside the city. When I dropped them off, I realised one of
them was dead. Maybe a heart attack. Fortunately, someone
was there to give the guy on the stretcher a booster. Thank God
it worked! He stood up. The guy who seemed to be in charge
asked the six of them if they needed anything. But before they
could answer they were shot dead.4
Many narrative devices are employed here which are thoroughly
at odds with those used by Hemingway. For instance, a consequence
of the first person narrative framework is that many events are
reported through verbs which emphasise the narrator’s mental
cognition and perception: ‘I can’t recall’; ‘I can remember’; ‘I
wondered’; ‘I realised’. This type of verbal process, it was noted,
was conspicuously absent from Hemingway’s third-person narrative
framework. The students’ narrative is also embellished with explicit
modality. Modality is language which expresses a speaker’s or
writer’s opinion about the validity of what they say and which
indicates whether they are certain or doubtful about the truth of the
claims they make. While non-existent in Hemingway, modal devices
are clearly present here: ‘I can’t recall exactly’; ‘Maybe a heart
attack’; ‘the guy who seemed to be in charge’. A related narrative
feature of the student text is the use of interpolations, asides and
exclamations which signal the narrator’s reaction to the events of the
story as they unfold: ‘what the hell’; ‘Fortunately’; ‘Thank God’. In
terms of Labov’s natural narrative model introduced in subsection
4.4 2, the students’ story exhibits marked narrative Evaluation,

125
consisting mainly of explanations of how one event in the story
precipitates another: ‘they called me…to pick someone up’; ‘I was
to go to the hospital’; ‘My instructions were to pick up five other
guys.’ This is supplemented by the use of a specific subtype of
Evaluation known as an explicative, in which a post hoc explanation
of a particular narrative event is offered when it becomes available
later in the story: ‘It turned out to be someone important…’ All of
these evaluative devices serve to establish a chain of cause-and-effect
relationships which were so markedly absent from the Hemingway
story. With reference to another category of the natural narrative
model, Orientation, the students’ version extrapolates from details in
the newspaper account in order to locate the beginning of the
narrative within a specific temporal framework: ‘last December’;
‘before lunchtime’. Whereas these references to time are removed
completely by Hemingway, references to physical location and the
weather are, conversely, embellished substantially in his vignette.
Finally, the last clause of the students’ version (‘they were shot
dead’), which is in the simple past tense, is much more in keeping
with the criterion for a narrative Coda than the equivalent clause in
Hemingway (‘he was sitting down in the water…’). The openendness
engendered by the past continuous stands in sharp contrast to the
sense of finality and closure produced by the simple past.
This is not to say that there are no points of stylistic similarity
between the two stories. In the students’ version, for example, no
characters are named—a rare characteristic indeed of the narratives
elicited through this exercise. Similarly, there is a certain
indefiniteness about the students’ story, conveyed primarily through
repeated references to ‘sometime’ and ‘someone’, which again
resembles Hemingway’s technique. Nevertheless, irrespective of the
precise degree of similarity between the Hemingway and workshop
texts, this activity invariably generates enough material to form the
basis for productive comparison and it can always be used to locate
and identify different features of language in narrative texts, whether
they be modality, cohesion or natural narrative. Finally, it is worth
noting that the students who created the present workshop narrative
were quite startled when they came to read the Hemingway text—a
response perhaps not often evinced in seminars on this writer’s short
stories. In fact, I have had the feeling ever since that they much
preferred their own version to that of one of the reputed greats of
American fiction!

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4.6 Summary
The frameworks of cohesion and natural narrative are only two of
many linguistic models which may be brought into play in the
analysis of texts. What makes these two frameworks particularly
appropriate for our present purposes, however, is their shared
emphasis on the ‘surface’ features of the text. In other words, the
models of cohesion and natural narrative offer clear indices of
stylistic formulae which can easily be ‘read off against explicit
markers in a story. Not all interpretations are as readily accessed,
however, and there are other, more abstract layers of narrative
communication exhibited by stories. For instance, in the review of
the main workshop activity (section 4.3), it was noted how students
made comments on the covert and symbolic allusions to death in the
story. These inferences are not predicated on overt ‘surface’ clues in
the text; rather, they are meanings which need to be actively mapped
on to the text. Indeed, readers may have made similar inferences in
their own reconstructions of the story. The type of meaning fabric
engendered by this interpretative process is often referred to as
coherence. Although an emphasis on coherence rather than cohesion
would have shifted the scope of this chapter into quite a different
area, it underscores the fact that texts are organised simultaneously
on a number of different linguistic levels. In fact, the analysis of
narrative texts may be undertaken from a whole host of linguistic
perspectives; it has been the concern here to suggest but two of the
range of possible models available for this type of language study.
Cohesion and natural narrative
The model of cohesion presented in this chapter is developed largely
from that of Halliday and Hasan (1976), although see also Halliday
(1994). The model of natural narrative is adapted from William
Labov’s work on urban vernacular. A particularly comprehensive
version of the model can be found in Labov (1972). Toolan (1988:
chapter 5) provides a clear account of the key stages in the
development of Labov’s framework.

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Stylistic applications
Both cohesion and narrative have received extensive and detailed
treatment by stylisticians over the years. From the pool of important
work on narrative structure is Carter (1984) which proposes a
framework for the analysis of narrative openings. Carter partly bases
his model on sets of responses by informants to disarranged
sentences, and thus must be acknowledged as a study which
prefigures the type of activity undertaken here. Stylistic work which
draws more centrally on the Labovian natural narrative model
includes Simpson (1987) which concentrates on a section from
Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea. Haynes (1989) illustrates
passim the stylistic potential of the Halliday and Hasan model, whilst
Fowler (1986:53–68) provides a compact summary of the cohesion
model as well as an analysis of Kurt Vonnegut Jnr’s Cat’s Cradle
from this perspective. Finally, Simpson and Montgomery (1995)
develop a broad-based model of narrative which they use to explore
a variety of stylistic features in the prose and film versions of Bernard
MacLaverty’s novel Cal.
The related study of coherence in narrative has been informed by
relevant stylistic work on, for example, discourse structure (Hoey
1989) and plot structure (Stubbs 1982). The second of these offers a
semantic analysis of plot, and constitutes a useful supplement to the
present study in so far as it focuses on Cat in the Rain, another
Hemingway short story. Because of its focus on the inferencing
strategies used to derive readings from a text, a study of narrative
coherence may also encompass research in text-linguistics and
artificial intelligence. Again, the potential of these two approaches
has been amply explored by stylisticians, samples of which are: de
Beaugrande (1987); Van Peer (1987); Werth (1994).

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Chapter 5
Dialogue and drama:
an introduction to
discourse analysis
• 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
Chapter5

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5.1 Introduction
This chapter explores the nature of dialogue. It investigates the
structure of verbal interaction and assesses some of the strategies
that speakers and hearers use in conversation. Because of this remit,
the literary genre that will offer the primary focus of attention in this
chapter will be drama. It will be argued, amongst other things, that
dramatic dialogue provides excellent source material for explaining
the basic patterns of everyday conversation. And, odd as it may seem,
play dialogue that critics dub ‘absurdist’ is an especially productive
tool for foregrounding the routine and commonplace in verbal
interaction.
In language study, the term reserved for the highest level of
linguistic organisation is discourse. Discourse refers to the structure
and function of language beyond the level of the sentence. The units
in discourse analysis are therefore relatively large and are certainly
much larger than any of the linguistic units covered so far in this
book. One of the primary emphases in discourse analysis is on
explaining how conversation works. Discourse analysts are interested
in how spoken interaction is structured and how speakers’
conversational contributions are connected. Not only will this
emphasis be sustained throughout this chapter, but it will be
orientated towards two interrelated areas. First, does conversation
have a structure and, if so, what sort of structure? Second, what do
speakers hope to achieve in interaction and how do they set about
achieving it? In order to answer these questions, the chapter will be
arranged as follows. The next section will establish some ground
rules for discourse analysis. It will set out the broad principles of
discourse organisation in general terms. The focus narrows
considerably in section 5.3, where a phalanx of influential discourse
models are assembled and evaluated. These models cover both the
structure of discourse and the strategies speakers use in discourse.
The ‘strategic’ models are drawn from that branch of discourse

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analysis called pragmatics, which is primarily concerned with the
meaning of language in context. In keeping with the other chapters
of the book, use will be made only of models that represent both a
significant theoretical development in language study and a viable
and accessible method for stylistic analysis. Section 5.4 is devoted to
the analysis of a passage of drama dialogue and it draws on the
analytic models assembled in the previous two sections. The text
used is Edward Albee’s play The Zoo Story. Literary critics habitually
categorise this play as ‘absurd’, although curiously, Albee himself
tends not to be classified as a dramatist of the absurd. The analysis
will attempt to demonstrate how this sort of play dialogue can offer
fruitful insights into aspects of naturally occurring conversation. The
final section of the chapter draws together some of the strands of the
analysis and provides an inventory of important interactive features
which can be explored in dramatic dialogue.
5.2 Dialogue and discourse
At first glance, conversational interaction appears to be more loosely
organised than the other linguistic levels we have studied in this
book. For one thing, it is peppered with dysfluencies, non-sequiturs,
false starts and hesitations. For another, there is simply no telling
what exactly someone engaged in talk is going to say. Nevertheless,
although discourse seems more ‘fluid’ than other linguistic levels,
this is not to say that it has no underlying structure. On the contrary,
we have very strong expectations about what should occur in
interaction: questions normally evince answers, requests anticipate
reactions while remarks and comments require at least some
acknowledgement from other interactants. Moreover, all these speech
activities will be expected to be delivered with a degree of politeness
that befits the situation or task in hand, and for a speaker or hearer to
deviate from these conventions is to do so at her interactive peril.
Conversation, though complex and multifaceted, is still structured.
Good evidence of what happens when this structure collapses is
provided by communicative breakdowns. Here, for example, is a
piece of real conversation between two sisters (A and B). Speaker A
is planning to make a telephone call to a relative living abroad:
1 A: What’s the code to Los Angeles?

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B: Are you hungry?
A: What?
B: What?
This ‘breach’ in the discourse framework was created by speaker B’s
misinterpretation of A’s utterance. Curiously, she thought that A had
asked ‘Do you want some coleslaw sandwiches?’, and consequently
believed her response to have been appropriate in the context. As far
as speaker A was concerned, it clearly wasn’t a coherent response
and her second utterance precipitates the communicative breakdown.
Often taken as a benchmark in discourse analysis are the following
basic principles of conversational coherence: we have intuitions
about what constitutes well-formed discourse; we rely on speakers
and hearers to be generally co-operative in interaction; we assume
that what people say to us has some degree of relevance. Like many
aspects of language organisation, these principles are best illustrated
when we encounter aberrant or ill-formed interaction. The shunting
exercise that was developed in Chapter 3 (see section 3.3) is a good
way of teasing out our expectations about interactive wellformedness.
Combinations in discourse operate on a similar principle to
grammatical combinations, with the collocation in lexical semantics
broadly analogous to the category of exchange in discourse. An
exchange is a combination of conversational contributions on the
same topic produced by different speakers. Exchanges commonly
(though not necessarily) consist of two parts. Here are four attested
exchanges, each comprising two structural components:1
A: Hi! How’s it going?
B: Oh, not so bad, and yourself?
A: Right now, have the bowels been working OK?
B: Mmm…yeah…
A: What now do you think should be our reaction to
yesterday’s mortar attack in Sarajevo?
B: Well I’m someone who’s said that unless we take firm
action then these problems will escalate. I mean, the best
thing you can say about Bosnia—and there aren’t many
good things you can say—is that it is a crisis that came
before Europe was ready.

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A: Come on now, eat up your Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.
B: No want it! No want it!
With only decontextualised utterances to go on, our communicative
competence is still sophisticated enough to provide us with a lot of
information about these exchanges. Not only can we deduce their
probable sources, but we can even make predictions about the status,
identity and power of the participants involved in the dialogue. As it
happens, the first exchange is an informal opening to a conversation,
the second is from a doctor-patient encounter, the third from a political
interview and the last from a domestic encounter between an adult and
a toddler. All four exchanges represent nothing out of the ordinary.
However, by simply nudging the second utterances in each exchange
into the equivalent positions in the exchange immediately following,
the following rather surreal collection is produced:
A: Hi! How’s it going?
B: No want it! No want it!
A: Right now, have the bowels been working OK?
B: Oh, not so bad, and yourself?
A: What now do you think should be our reaction to
yesterday’s mortar attack in Sarajevo?
B: Mmm…yeah…
A: Come on now, eat up your Crunchy Nut Cornflakes.
B: Well I’m someone who’s said that unless we take firm
action then these problems will escalate. I mean, the best
thing you can say about Bosnia—and there aren’t many
good things you can say—is that it is a crisis that came
before Europe was ready.
It is through the very peculiarity of these shunted exchanges that the
commonplace and prosaic in ‘normal’ discourse is foregrounded.
Furthermore, the juxtaposition of the original set with the second
highlights the subconscious and perhaps taken-for-granted
assumptions that we have about coherence and wellformedness in
discourse. It also underscores expectations about the appropriateness
of topic in interaction. For instance, outside a medical context, human
bodily emissions make an unsuitable or at least unlikely topic of
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Explanations for why the shunted exchanges should look so out-
landish will unfold over the course of the next two sections. For the
moment, readers can use their intuitions to tease out the bizarre
features of each exchange. Your hunches about why these examples
sound weird may be more profound than you think—in fact, you
may be taking an important step towards defining the ‘absurd’ as a
dramatic genre!
How can we account systematically for the routines, patterns and
structures that are the mainstay of conversation? The best way to
start is by painting a picture of discourse organisation with the widest
brush strokes possible. This picture can then be embellished by
introducing some specific models for analysing discourse. To begin
the ‘macro-survey’ of general patterns in discourse, it is worth re-
introducing the two axes of language that were developed early in
section 3.3 to account for patterns of collocation. These intersecting
axes, the syntagmatic and the paradigmatic, also serve as a useful
conceptual model for explaining how conversation works. The
syntagmatic axis, it may be recalled, is the axis of ‘chain’. It forms
the structural frame along which combinations of units are strung.
These units are linked in the relationship: a and b and c. The
paradigmatic axis is the axis of ‘choice’. It accounts for the pool of
possible entries for a given slot in the structural frame and links
elements in the relationship: a or b or c. When mapped on to
discourse, these axes realise the twin poles of structure and strategy
(Figure 5.1).
The structural axis is a neat way of conceptualising how discourse
units are combined and built up to form exchanges. Put another way,
the structural axis accounts for the linear progression of discourse as
FIGURE 5.1 Structure and strategy

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a sequence of exchanges. We have already seen four exchanges,
consisting of two structural elements apiece, in our shunting exercise.
Exchanges often take the form of familiar pairings such as ‘questions
and answers’ or ‘statements and acknowledgments’. However,
exchanges can also encompass non-verbal behaviour. If, for example,
a speaker issues a request, then a non-verbal reaction from the hearer
is normally warranted. Even though its second part is not a verbal
utterance in the strictest sense, this ‘request-reaction’ sequence none
the less constitutes an exchange in discourse. Here now are the three
principal types of discourse exchange—questioning, stating,
requesting—arranged along the syntagmatic axis:
2 A: What’s the time? & B: Three o’clock.
3 A: That was a great goal. & B: Yeah, you bet.
4 A: Open the window. & B: [opens the window]
With its focus on strategy, the paradigmatic axis foregrounds the
‘tactical’ nature of discourse. This axis represents an utterance as a
choice from a pool of available options. Consider again the ‘request-
reaction’ sequence expressed by example (4). While speaker A’s
utterance is unquestionably efficient and clear as a directive, its
forthrightness will be interpreted as peremptory and rude in many
contexts. There are other, more subtle ways of getting a hearer to
perform the same operation. A stratagem like ‘Could you open the
window please?’ is less direct, though, of course, it is rather more
tangential to the task required of the hearer. Even more oblique is a
gambit like ‘Goodness me, it’s hot in here!’, which, although subtle,
is even further removed from the task required. In Figure 5.2 all
three strategies are arranged along the paradigmatic axis. They are
ordered according to the degree of directness which they exhibit to
the service requested. The paradigmatic axis thus forms a strategic
continuum ranging from ‘direct’ to ‘indirect’ along which different
types of utterances can be plotted.
There is however a crucial third dimension in discourse analysis.
The contextual setting of an interaction is both a significant
determinant of discourse structure and an important influence on
discourse strategy. Setting is the non-linguistic context which
envelops a piece of communication. This does not, however, just
mean the physical environment of interaction; it also extends to the
assumptions and beliefs that people bring to discourse. The setting,

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moreover, is constantly changing as a dialogue progresses. And this
change need not necessarily occur because, say, a bull elephant
happens to crash into the room during a conversation. It may simply
be that a new framework of shared knowledge develops between
interactants as discourse develops. For instance, if you suddenly blurt
out to someone in the course of a conversation that you love them,
then clearly a new discourse context is created which will affect
profoundly subsequent patterns of interaction.
The importance of setting as a third dimension in discourse can be
illustrated with a brief example. Here is an actual exchange between
two speakers which I witnessed a few years ago:
5 A: er…you have to go to head office…please
B: [nods and rises to go]
Even without any description of its setting, it is still possible to work
out that this is a ‘request-reaction’ exchange of the sort we have just
been discussing. However, this structural description, while
straightforward enough, is not especially interesting in itself.
Exploration of the strategy axis reveals more about the exchange. For
example, the speaker employs two particles either side of the main
content-bearing component of the utterance: ‘er’ and ‘please’. Both
particles, in tandem with the hesitation used around them, mitigate the
overall force of the request function. The impact of the central
sequence of the utterance is also comparably softened. The ‘have to’
FIGURE 5.2 The strategy axis

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phrase, like its counterpart ‘must’, operates as a marker of obligation.
However, unlike ‘must’, it expresses objective obligation. In other
words, the requirement expressed by ‘have to’ is presented as a general
rule and not something that can be attributed directly to the speaker.
The use of ‘must’, on the other hand, makes the obligation encoded in
the request more like a subjective decree that is passed from speaker to
hearer. All of these features combine to push the utterance towards the
indirect end of the strategy continuum, reducing the overtly ‘command-
like’ status of the request more to the status of a ‘suggestion’.
Yet it is only with an account of the setting in which this exchange
took place that the full picture begins to emerge. The exchange took
place in a travel agent’s shop in Liverpool. Speaker A is a young black
manageress who emerges from her own office into the main office.
The addressee is a white middle-aged male employee who is positioned
behind a desk and is dealing with customers. Descriptions of discourse
setting often help explain the motivation behind linguistic strategy.
Here, the woman is the ‘powerful’ interactant, at least in terms of
institutionally sanctioned employment practices. Nevertheless, in spite
of her status, she treads a cautious interactive path. In designing her
utterance, she avoids the higher risk ploys from further up the strategy
continuum, opting instead for an interactive gambit which appears less
direct and less coercive. This more cautionary strategy may also have
been prompted by the fact that she is entering the physical ‘territory’
of her addressee. She leaves her own space, and is moving towards a
stationary interlocutor who is comfortably ensconced behind a desk.
The outcome of her gambit is a successful one: she gets someone to do
something without having appeared to have given them an order.
However, the exchange as a whole raises a number of issues to do with
the complex interaction between language and social roles. Whereas
perceived power and status is one determinant of strategy, this is perhaps
counterbalanced in this exchange by a web other social variables such
as gender, age and ethnicity. This interrelatedness of discourse strategy
and discourse setting will be spotlighted further in the next section
when attention is focused on the linguistic routines of politeness.
We are now in a position to replace our two dimensional discourse
model with a model which comprises the three components:
structure, strategy and setting. These three ‘Ss’ can be employed as
a handy mnemonic for discourse analysis at its broadest level.
Although clearly interrelated, the three parameters enable the analyst
to sift out and concentrate upon different aspects of discourse

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organisation. Figure 5.3 is the revised model which depicts setting as
a circle embracing the other two axes. Any piece of discourse can be
viewed as an intersection of the three Ss.
As we saw in the shunting exercise above, it is often possible to
deduce information about the three Ss even with only
decontextualised utterances to go on. Further experimentation along
these lines can be carried out using setting as a contextual variable.
By taking one utterance and offering a selection of different contexts,
the manner by which setting acts as a constraint on discourse
appropriateness can be highlighted. Here is a short two-part exercise
in which readers may care to participate. It involves taking a
decontextualised chunk of language and mapping it against three
possible scenarios. The three scenarios are:
Setting 1
A chance encounter between two middle-aged strangers at a bench
in a public park
Setting 2
An eight-year-old child in conversation with her father’s adult friend
whom she has met for the first time
Setting 3
A doctor engaged in a diagnosis of a patient’s illness
The next stage involves taking the following utterance and assigning
it to one of the given settings:
6 I’ve been to the zoo. I said, I’ve been to the zoo. MISTER,
I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!
Make a note of your decision about which setting fits the utterance,
and if possible, the reasons which led you to make this decision.You
could also try to write brief utterances which would fit the remaining
two settings.
The second part of the exercise is as straightforward as the first. It
involves matching up vocabulary, register and setting. The point that
can be made here is that even a lexical set (see subsection 3.4.1),
which is much less developed than a fully formed utterance, is often
strongly associated with a particular discourse setting. Here then is a
lexical set which contains some rather grisly terms:

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FIGURE 5.3 A revised discourse model: the three ‘Ss’
7 prosthesis
lung cancer
cancer of the mouth
doctor
jaw
Again, the task is to assign this set to one of the three settings
provided. If possible, draw up a lexical set which would be predicted
by the remaining two settings.
I imagine there will have been little difficulty in aligning the three
settings with the two pieces of data provided. Given the
straightforwardness of the exercise, readers may indeed be
wondering where its heuristic value lies. For now, simply make a
note of your reactions to the two protocols. We shall have good cause
to return to them later.
There remains one final matter that needs to be cleared up in this
section before we move on to assess more specialised frameworks
for discourse analysis. This is to serve partly as a note of caution and
partly as a way of consolidating one or two earlier points. Although
they have been touched upon earlier in the book (sections 1.3 and
2.4.1), nowhere in this discussion has there been any mention of the
three important grammatical terms imperative, interrogative and
declarative. When talking about discourse, we need to be very careful
about how these terms are used. This is mainly because they describe
the formal make-up of sentences and not the function of utterances
in context. Although they are often erroneously used interchangeably
with discourse terms, imperatives, interrogatives and declaratives are

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really types of grammatical mood. Why this confusion is a particular
problem in discourse analysis will become clear soon. Before that, a
basic description of these three key categories of mood is required
(Figure 5.4, see opposite).
Imperatives differ principally from the two indicative moods,
declarative and interrogative, in that they express no grammatical
subject.2
Furthermore, the verb which fronts imperative constructions
is always in its base form and so cannot be marked for tense. (See
what happens when you try to convert any of the four imperatives
above into a past tense.) Indicatives, on the other hand, contain both
subjects and verbs, although they may be further subdivided
according to the position of these elements. In declaratives the subject
simply comes first. In many interrogatives, either all or part of the
verb phrase comes first which is then, in turn, followed by the subject.
In the following interrogatives, the verb phrases are indicated by
underlining and the subjects by italicisation:
12 Has Roisín closed the door?
13 Is the cat in the garden?
14 Can they sing well?
Sometimes a special verb, do, needs to be imported in order for this
grammatical operation to be carried out:
15 Did the snake eat it?
On other occasions, a so-called ‘WH-word’, like where, why or how,
can be incorporated into the interrogative:
16 Where is the cat?
This enables the interrogative to be used to prompt a more open kind
of response rather than the ‘yes’ or ‘no’ that would be elicited by
examples (12–15).
The three principal moods are commonly associated with
particular discourse functions. An interrogative is the form standardly
used for asking questions; a declarative is the form standardly used
for making statements; an imperative is the form standardly used for
commands or requests. However, if ever there was a crucial axiom
about the interaction of grammar and discourse it is this: there is no
necessary correspondence between the mood of a sentence and its

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function in discourse. For instance, you can do a lot more with an
imperative than just give an order. Here are a few instances of
imperatives which are clearly not commands. Notional descriptions
of their respective discourse functions are provided beside each
example:
21 Have a drink. [offer]
22 Have a nice day. [ritualistic parting]
23 Blow me down! [exclamation]
24 Look after yourself. [exhortation]
Interrogatives are similarly flexible. Here is a selection of
interrogatives of which not one is a genuine question for information:
25 Are you still here? [command]
26 Could you pass the salt? [polite request]
27 Will you have a drink? [offer]
28 Is the Pope a Catholic? [rhetorical question; i.e. no
reply elicited]
Finally, the declarative form also has many discoursal possibilities.
For instance, it can function as a command in an utterance like the
following:
FIGURE 5.4 Important types of mood in English

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29 That door is still open.
In fact, the same declarative sentence can carry a number of
discoursal functions depending on the intonation (rises or falls in
pitch) which it exhibits. Consider the following declarative:
30 You’ve had enough cake.
If uttered with a rising tone in the context of, say, a polite dinner
party, it can function either as an offer or as a genuine request for
information. Yet when uttered with a pronounced falling tone, by a
mother to a toddler, then it is clearly a command and it signals to the
youngster that she is out of luck!
Sometimes, we don’t even need to have a recognisable mood at all
to get things done in language. The following construction contains
no verb so it is moodless. Nevertheless, its request function would be
clear in any context:
31 The door, please.
This ‘lack of fit’ between form and function is an important strategy-
framing device in discourse. The strategy continuum, it may be
recalled, runs between the poles direct and indirect (see Figure 5.2,
above). The form-function asymmetry identified here provides a
valuable criterion for measuring this continuum systematically. The
most direct strategy will be one which draws on the mood type that is
standardly associated with a particular discourse function. For
example, a direct request will be one which employs an imperative
construction, as in ‘Open the window’. A less direct utterance will
employ an oblique grammatical form, such as the use of an
interrogative to make a request. This is precisely the tactic that is used
in the medial example on the strategy continuum: ‘Could you open the
window?’. The most indirect strategy of all is when an utterance
employs not only an oblique form, but also has no overt semantic link
with the ostensible purpose of the exchange. Notice how, in the most
indirect request on the continuum, there is no actual mention of the
service requested: ‘Goodness me, it’s hot in here!’ This is a kind of
optimal indirectness which is so opaque in character that it tests the
strategic nature of discourse to the limit. Explaining precisely how and
why speakers should choose to behave in so linguistically enigmatic a
fashion will be one of the main tasks of the next section.

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5.3 Models for the analysis of discourse
This section offers a general overview of some of the important
developments that have taken place in discourse analysis over the last
two decades. One of the main purposes of this is to suggest ways in
which discourse models can be productively applied to the analysis
of talk. The overview that follows is organised in accordance with the
broad principles of discourse organisation that were established in
the previous section, thereby enabling several diverse strands of work
to be brought together under a few basic overarching principles. The
subsection that follows will focus specifically on discourse structure.
The remainder of the section will be devoted to discourse strategy.
The third parameter on our discourse model, setting, will be integrated
where appropriate with those discourse models in which it plays a
key role.
5.3.1 The analysis of discourse structure
One of the most significant advances in the structural analysis of
verbal interaction has been the development over the years of the
‘Birmingham model’ of spoken discourse. This model is so named
because it has been pioneered by the English Language Research
Unit based at the University of Birmingham. The remit of the early
research undertaken by the unit was to design a model of discourse
that could account for classroom discourse. The object was therefore
to isolate the exchange patterns that typified interaction between
teachers and pupils during lessons. It emerged in the course of the
research that exchange patterns like the following were typical of
classroom discourse:
32 Teacher: What’s the capital of France?
Pupil: Paris.
Teacher: Yes, Paris. That’s right.
This teaching exchange consists of three basic components: an
initiation by the teacher, a response by the pupil and some feedback
from the teacher. However, while clearly appropriate in a classroom
setting, this three-part pattern is not especially common in much
other naturally occurring language. Unless you happen to be running

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a quiz, you do not normally know in advance the answers to the
questions you ask people. If you did, then exchanges like the
following would be a perfectly normal part of everyday conversation:
33 A: What’s the time?
B: Three o’clock.
A: Yes, three o’clock. That’s right.
The need to account for interaction outside the classroom prompted
extensions to the early model, the most substantial of which was
Deirdre Burton’s study of discourse structure (1980). Burton revised
the classroom model to enable it to deal with all sorts of talk and,
interestingly, she chose to illustrate many of her revisions by applying
them to drama dialogue. Here is a brief summary of some of the
significant features of her model. First of all, in keeping with the
structural emphasis of the Birmingham tradition, she places units of
discourse in a hierarchical scale. This is the lower part of her scale
illustrating how the exchange is situated above two smaller units of
discourse:
The scale shows how a lower term is nested inside the structure of a
higher term. In other words, exchanges comprise moves, while moves
are in turn realised by acts. For their part, acts have no structure: if
they had, then they simply wouldn’t be the bottom-most unit on the
scale. Like all structurally orientated research into discourse,
Burton’s model is built by analogy with grammatical structure. In
fact, a good way of approaching her model is to see it as a parallel to
the way words form structural relationships. If we imagine that
moves are equivalent to words, then we can see that, just as words
combine into collocations, so moves are able to join with other moves
to form exchanges. Moreover, as we saw in Chapter 2, words can be
sub-divided further into smaller particles called morphemes. In terms

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of discourse, the smaller particles which make up moves are acts.
This parallel with word structure may be extended further by
reintroducing root and bound morphemes (see section 2.3). Root
morphemes are the main content-bearing component of a word and
can often stand on their own; bound morphemes are clustered around
the root and never stand on their own. Discourse acts can be similarly
subdivided: some acts carry the main content of a move and are
relatively freestanding whereas others can only operate in
combination with another more substantial act. Here is a summary of
the parallels that have been drawn between discourse and grammar:
discourse grammar
Exchange Collocation
Move Word
Act Morpheme
It is important to stress the centrality of the move as an interactive
unit. Moves are often coincidental with a speaker’s turn in
conversation and they also mark the transition points at which other
speakers are drawn to respond and react. Of the seven principal
moves identified by Burton, the three most important will suffice for
our purposes. These are:
Opening moves
essential topic-carrying items which are recognisably ‘new’ in terms
of the immediately preceding talk
Supporting moves
occurring after any other type of move and involving items that
concur with the initiatory moves they are supporting
Challenging moves
functioning to hold up the progress of a topic or the introduction of
a topic in some way
As the discourse scale suggests, moves can combine with other
moves to form exchanges. Here is a ‘question-answer’ exchange of
the sort introduced in section 5.2, with the move types indicated
beside each speaker’s contribution:
34 A: John! Have you got the time? (Opening move)
B: Four o’clock. (Supporting move)

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This single conversational exchange is clearly made up of two moves:
the opening move introduces a new topic and the supporting move
maintains the discourse framework by providing the answer to the
question posed. However, it is important to note that speaker A’s
opening move comprises more than just a single act. It begins with
the act summons (‘John!’) which is followed by the more substantial
act question. (This progression would be mirrored in word grammar
when a bound morpheme is tacked on to the front of a root
morpheme.) The supporting move in (34) consists of just a single
act, an answer. For a breakdown of an attested sequence of discourse,
it is worth looking again at the travel agent exchange discussed in
section 5.2:
5 A: er…you have to go to head office…please
B: [nods and rises to go]
It was established earlier that this sequence is a ‘request-reaction’
exchange. It consists of two moves which are, as is commonly the
case, coterminous with each interactant’s contribution. The
manageress’s move consists of three discourse acts. The main
content-bearing act is the one that is most central to the coherence of
the exchange as a whole: ‘you have to go to head office’. However,
studded around this act are two subordinate acts: ‘er’ and ‘please’.
These ‘bound’ acts can be categorised as, respectively, a marker (a
signal that a more substantial act is about to follow) and a prompt (a
check to ensure that the request function is understood). In order to
give some idea of what a structural analysis of discourse looks like,
Table 5.1 is a breakdown of the exchange following the Birmingham
framework. It will serve as an illustration of the type of visual layout
favoured by this approach.
As yet, we have not looked at any exchanges which contain
challenging moves. As their label suggests, these moves hold up the
onward progression of discourse in some way and they occur when
an addressee withholds the anticipated second part of an exchange.
For example, answering a question with another question, rather than
providing the anticipated answer, clearly constitutes a challenging
move in discourse. A good illustration of how challenging moves
function in this way can be found in the communicative breakdown
exhibited by example (1) which opened section 5.2. Where a
response would have supported speaker A’s initial question, another

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question is offered in its place. This challenge creates a breach in the
framework which ultimately leads to the collapse of the exchange as
a coherent transfer of information between speakers. This is a
structural breakdown of example (1), with an extra column for
challenging moves added to the left-hand side of the diagram. Notice
how the column for supporting moves is empty here (Table 5.2).
Although a key element in the overall organisation of discourse,
discourse structure is not the only element. Structural models tend to
explore the surface of discourse, rather than tease out the strategies
which operate below the surface. So, while the material presented in
this subsection will hopefully have given a flavour of this important
branch of discourse analysis, a full-blown application of the
Birmingham model to drama dialogue would not be possible in this
context. For our purposes, the structural model is useful as a way of
explaining how chunks of discourse are connected. It will not
TABLE 5.1 Requesting Exchange
TABLE 5.2 Questioning Exchange

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however explain why people say the things they do. To answer that
question we will need to look elsewhere.
5.3.2 Discourse strategy: maxims and relevance
The philosopher H.Paul Grice published in 1975 an article which set
the agenda for exploring the strategies of verbal interaction. His article
had an especially important influence on the study of the way speakers
use indirectness as a ploy in conversation. His entire thesis rests on a
fundamental premise about interaction which he refers to as the co-
operative principle (CP). The CP, which is mutually understood
between interlocutors, is a basic assumption that speakers normally
intend to accomplish purposeful and effective communication in
conversation. Grice contends that if speakers wish to observe the CP
faithfully they observe four conversational maxims. These are:
The maxim of Quality
Make your contribution one that is true and don’t say things that are
false.
The maxim of Quantity
Make your contribution as informative as is required for the current
purposes of the exchange—don’t say too much or too little.
The maxim of Relation
Say things that are relevant in the context.
The maxim of Manner
Be clear—avoid unnecessary obscurity and ambiguity.
Readers may rightfully be sceptical about the way these highly
normative maxims would be implemented in interaction.
Conversation is simply not like this. If people behaved in this
automaton-like way, conversation would become an over-literal,
direct and unsophisticated routine. However, the fact that speakers
do not always obey maxims in conversation is precisely the essence
of Grice’s theory. He argues that many of the non-literal meanings
that accrue from interaction are derived from deliberate departures
from these maxims. Speakers may chose to ‘flout’ any of the maxims
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by blatantly departing from them. This places the CP in jeopardy
because it leaves the listener to do some inferencing work to unravel
the more covert meaning that the utterance conveys. These covert
meanings are referred to as implicatures and they are typified by the
sorts of utterances which are situated at the indirect end of our
strategy continuum (see Figure 5.2 above).
Here are some illustrations of how implicatures work. First of all,
a speaker may choose to flout the maxim of quality by saying
something that is manifestly untrue in the context:
35 A: You’ve failed your exam.
B: Terrific!
As speaker B’s response is unlikely to be a true reflection of their
state of mind, an implicature can be inferred whereby speaker B’s
intended meaning is the opposite of what is literally asserted. This is
another quality flout which I witnessed recently:
36 I like the way you let the kettle boil dry.
Again, it is clear from the context that the intended meaning is the
opposite of what the speaker actually asserts. Other common flouts
of the quality maxim are metaphors, which are often strictly speaking
‘untrue’ descriptions of states of affairs. Grice’s own example here is
‘You are the cream in my coffee’ (1975:53), a remark which is
literally untrue but which none the less conveys meaning at the level
of implicature.
Flouts of the quantity maxim normally involve deliberately saying
too much or too little. Grice (1975:52) offers the following example
of a reference written for a candidate who has applied for a post in
philosophy:
37 Dear Sir, Mr. X’s command of English is excellent, and his
attendance at tutorials has been regular, Yours, etc.
Whereas (37) is clearly under-informative and would indicate tacit
disapproval, the reply in the following exchange is clearly over-
informative:
38 A: Did John go to the party last night?
B: Yes, and don’t let anyone tell you anything different.

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The assumption behind the uptake of implicatures is that departures
from maximal efficiency are strategically motivated and are not just
aberrant or purposeless bits of discourse. Uptakes depend on the
willingness of the addressee to do the inferencing work necessary,
otherwise the utterance may be left looking like a disconnected
remark. Here is an attempt at a quantity flout made by a television
sports commentator.3
39 Well, there are entrances and there are entrances, and
that was an entrance.
Although this utterance is tautological, it is nevertheless meaningful
at the level of implicature. However, when devoid of the original
setting in which it occurred, it does look curious.
There are two more types of implicature which are derived from
flouts of the maxims of relation and manner. Flouts of the relation
maxim often take the form of non-sequiturs which rely heavily for
their uptake on the hearer assembling a meaningful connection
between them and the previous utterance. The following exchange
occurred during a recent telephone conversation between myself
(speaker A) and a colleague (speaker B). We had been talking for a
while about a rather tedious administrative matter in which we were
both involved:
40 A: So should we do the transitivity stuff on day one?
B: Mary’s just come into the room with a big plate of supper
and switched on the telly.
Speaker B’s utterance clearly flouts the maxim of relation. On the
assumption that it was not just a disconnected remark and that he was
still obeying the CP at some level, I inferred from this that it was a
signal to terminate the conversation. It is in the nature of implicatures
that they carry with them a certain amount of calculated risk. It would
have been possible not to have accessed this implicature. So while
indirectness is often useful as a politeness tactic (as in (40)), the
likelihood of the success of the utterance diminishes in direct
proportion to the degree of indirectness (see below, subsection 5.3.3).
Finally, flouting the maxim of manner often involves saying
something that is blatantly obscure in the context. Take the following
example:

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41 Can you give him his B-O-T-T ‘cos I’m goin’ for a C-I-G.
The speaker of this utterance (a smoker) is talking to another adult in
the presence of an astute toddler. Explicit mention of both ‘bottle’
and ‘cigarette’ is disguised to avoid trouble.
Grice’s model offers useful guidelines for accounting for the ways
in which implications, suggestions and hints function in conversation.
Perhaps its greatest benefit lies in its capacity to explain how ‘non-
literal’ meanings in language are passed between interlocutors.
Although influential for these reasons, it has been criticised for being
a rather informal model. Grice’s own illustrations are all carefully
contrived to fit his analytic model; as a result there emerge from the
theory too few explicit criteria to handle the complexity of naturally
occurring language. Ironically, Grice is regarded as a philosopher of
‘natural language’, even though he never actually uses attested
natural language. There is also some overlap between the maxims,
especially quality and manner. This in turn throws up another issue
about how many maxims there really are. Is four too few or too
many? Grice himself remarks that there is an additional maxim, ‘Be
polite’, which influences all the others (1975:47). We shall explore
further the issue of politeness shortly. To round off this subsection,
attention needs to be focused on another important extension to
Grice’s theory. This is a model that expands the relation maxim, and
although it is not the main analytic apparatus that will be used in
section 5.4, it cannot be overlooked if our survey is to be properly
informative.
Dan Sperber and Deirdre Wilson have proposed a theory of
communication which is based on the concept of ‘relevance’ (1986).
Relevance theory, as it has come to be known, advances a cognitive
model of interaction which takes as its point of departure Grice’s
maxim of relevance. Like Grice, Sperber and Wilson are not so much
interested in the formal or logical meanings of sentences but rather
in the types of non-literal inferences and assumptions that speakers
and hearers draw in communication. Sperber and Wilson contend
that communication is successful not when hearers recognise the
‘linguistic meaning’ of an utterance but when hearers infer the
speaker’s ‘meaning’ from it (1986:23).
Sperber and Wilson describe communication in terms of two
interrelated components: ostension, which is a speaker’s act of
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which is what hearers do when they attempt to decode acts of
ostension in their search for meaning. Together these elements
comprise ostensive-inferential communication.
The next stage in the development of the model involves building
in the underlying principles which shape and inform ostensive-
inferential communication. Communication, Sperber and Wilson
argue, is designed to bring about contextual effects. However, when
they say contextual effects they do not mean adjustments to the
physical context of interaction. They mean instead modifications in
the store of knowledge between participants in interaction. The
bringing about of a contextual effect may mean that a
communicator’s cognitive domain is enriched by: the addition of
new information, the strengthening of previously existing knowledge
or even the contradiction of previously held assumptions. Whatever
the precise nature of these contextual effects, they all warrant an
adjustment of a communicator’s cognitive framework in some
respect.
Sperber and Wilson argue that an act of ostensive communication
automatically communicates a presumption of relevance. To
understand an utterance is to derive some contextual effect(s) from
it; and to derive some contextual effect(s), you have to identify its
relevance. The more overt the ostensive stimulus, then the less the
processing effort needed to decode it. When this happens, the
stimulus can be said to carry strong relevance. When the stimulus is
less overt, more processing effort is required. Consequently, the
ostensive signal is said to exhibit weak relevance.
By now, readers may have quite justifiably formed the impression
that relevance theory is not exactly an amenable, hands-on framework
for the analysis of discourse. No doubt my attempt to explain the
theory in four paragraphs will have strengthened this impression. It is
time for an illustration. Imagine that you are driving along a country
road in Ireland.You see, walking beside a river, a man who is carrying
a fishing rod in one hand and a large salmon in the other. This ostensive
stimulus interacts with other existing assumptions you have to lead
you to the inference that he has caught the salmon in the river. The
other existing assumptions that you bring to bear in your processing
might be something like the following: salmon are fish which are
found in rivers; fishing rods are implements for getting fish out of
rivers and so on. As your inference enhances your store of knowledge
with new information, it produces a contextual effect. In reaching this

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contextual effect, you have accessed only the most relevant stimuli. In
other words, you search for relevance only as far as you need to and
once relevance is proven, then inferencing is halted. For example, it is
still possible that the inference that you have drawn here is not the
right one. The man could be an actor, playing the part of a poacher, on
his way to a film set; or perhaps a rather over-zealous partygoer on his
way to the local fancy dress ball. However, in cost-benefit terms, the
aim of interaction is to derive the greatest substantial contextual effect
at the lowest processing cost and the most accessible conclusion in this
scenario will be the one that is most relevant given the available
ostensive stimuli.
One of the most significant benefits of relevance theory is the way
it handles the concept of ‘intention’ in communication. Crucially, it
is not a speaker’s intention but a speaker’s intention to communicate
which underpins communication. Making clear your intention to
communicate is not the same thing as making clear your intention.
From a speaker’s point of view, the object is to get your hearer to
recognise your intention to communicate. From a hearer’s point of
view, the intention of your interlocutor is simply not recoverable, so
what you do is construct an assumption on the basis of the speaker’s
behaviour (Sperber and Wilson 1986:65).
Again we are coming up a wall of rather abstract theorising which
can probably be unpacked properly only through an example. The
nature of communicative intention (and indeed related aspects of
relevance theory) can be demonstrated by examining an incident
which recently ran in the newspapers in the Republic of Ireland.4
An
eighty-year-old man was taken to court for allegedly driving while
under the influence of drink. It transpired during the court
proceedings that the arresting officer (a member of the ‘Gardai’, the
Irish police force) had not breathalysed the suspect. The gard
explained that he had not taken a breath sample on account of the
following remark which was made to him by the suspect:
42 If an eighty-year-old man had pleurisy of the chest, would
you make him blow into a breathalyser?
The case against the man was eventually dropped, perhaps not
surprisingly, for lack of sufficient evidence. However, it became clear
during the proceedings that not only was the defendant hale and
hearty, but that he had never had pleurisy of the chest in his life! His
gambit in (42) would appear therefore to have been a complete

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success. The steps which link (42) to his ultimate acquittal can be
presented in relevance theoretic terms:
1 In saying (42) the old man makes an ostensive stimulus.
2 The gard recognises the old man’s intention to communicate.
But, crucially, the gard does not recognise the old man’s
intention.
3 The gard seeks to establish the relevance of the assumptions in
utterance (42).
4 The gard brings to the inferencing process other contextual
assumptions (e.g. that the man is old; that pleurisy restricts your
breathing etc.) which interact with the assumptions in what the
man has said.
5 The outcome of this inferencing process is to derive a new
assumption: that is, to produce a satisfactory contextual effect.
The gard derives an inference which is most relevant for him in
the context: namely, that his interlocutor has pleurisy. This
contextual effect determines the gard’s subsequent actions.
6 Importantly, the gard draws no further inferences: he assumes
his first hypothesis is best and that, in cost-benefit terms, he has
derived maximum contextual effect from a minimum of
processing effort.
Of course, the gard has recovered an inappropriate implicature, which
ultimately leads to the man’s acquittal. He simply underestimates the
communicative-cognitive skills of his suspect. What is more, the old
man would appear to have been fully aware that the gard would
underestimate his skills. Knowing that the gard has a false impression
of his cognitive abilities and resources enables the old man to open
up to his interlocutor an ostensibly neat inferencing path—a veritable
garden path as it turns out!
Although the above is no more than a superficial sketch of
relevance theory, there should be enough material here to provide an
important cognitive perspective on the concept of discourse strategy.
The relevance theory model has, however, attracted criticism for
being over-formal in approach, for not being developed on the basis
of attested examples and for not paying enough attention to how the
social characteristics of speakers and hearers determine strongly

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patterns of dialogue. Although a cognitive dimension in discourse
analysis is invaluable, we will still want a framework that says
something about the social and personal dimensions of verbal
interaction. It is to such a model that we now turn.
5.3.3 Discourse strategy: politeness phenomena
It is perhaps fitting that the last major theoretical model to be
introduced in this book is, in my opinion, one of the most elegant,
powerful and convincing linguistic frameworks available to English
language study. It is an elegant model in that it sets out a relatively
simple rationale for explaining complex linguistic behaviour. It is
powerful in that it develops a system of universal principles which
underlie many different languages. And it is convincing in that it is
based on strong empirical support derived from substantial cross-
cultural comparisons between languages. This model is Penelope
Brown and Stephen Levinson’s theory of politeness phenomena
(1978; 1987).
Given its focus on discourse strategy, the politeness model quite
naturally has points of overlap with the other pragmatic models
introduced in subsection 5.3 2. In common with these other models,
the politeness framework seeks to explain the linguistic strategies of
verbal interaction. Where the models differ principally, however, is
that while those in subsection 5.3.2 are primarily cognitive and
philosophical in orientation, that of Brown and Levinson is social
and anthropological. Furthermore, whereas Grice’s maxim of
‘relation’ provides the point of entry into relevance theory, it is his
maxim ‘be polite’ which informs the Brown and Levinson model.
The best place to begin our sketch of the Brown and Levinson
model is by seeing how the authors themselves state their position.
Here are the rudiments of their theory of politeness:
certain precise parallels in language usage in many different
languages can be shown to derive from certain assumptions about
‘face’—individuals’ self-esteem. We phrase this derivation in
terms of three main strategies of politeness, ‘positive politeness’
(roughly, the expression of solidarity), ‘negative politeness’
(roughly, the expression of restraint) and ‘off-record (politeness)’
(roughly, the avoidance of unequivocal impositions), and claim
¶

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that the uses of each are tied to social determinants, specifically
the relationship between speaker and addressee and the potential
offensiveness of the message content…
In the case of linguistic pragmatics a great deal of the
mismatch between what is ‘said’ and what is ‘implicated’ can
be attributed to politeness.
(1987:2)
Although useful as a statement of their main thesis, their commentary
does not in itself offer enough usable criteria for the analysis of
politeness. Therefore, what follows is an account of the central tenets
of their model.
As is clear from the quotation, Brown and Levinson build their
framework of politeness around the concept of face. Face is a
fundamental aspect of the human psyche. It is primarily a sociological
phenomenon which has two interrelated dimensions. These are:
Positive face
This is your wish to be liked by others; your desire to have your
interests approved of; your desire to have what you like and want
shared by others. In short, this is your positive self-image.
Negative face
This is your wish not to be coerced, ordered or forced into things; your
desire not to be encroached upon or have your actions impeded by
others. In short, this is your basic desire to be free from imposition.
In interaction, there are a host of situations where someone’s face is
likely to be threatened. Trying to get people to do things for you,
trying to broach a subject that you know is touchy or trying to offer
a bit of constructive advice: these are all circumstances which
threaten some aspect of face. If carried through, these threats become
encoded into verbal acts like requests, criticisms, offers, questions
and complaints. Any such utterance, which constitutes a threat to
face in some way, is called a Face Threatening Act (FTA).
Doing FTAs is part and parcel of language usage. If it weren’t,
verbal interaction would become extremely odd, as no one would
ever complain, no one would ever ask a question and no one would
ever ask anyone to do anything. Allowing then that FTAs are a
necessary feature of interaction, the next question to be asked is
what sort of strategies do people use to perform FTAs? To answer
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(Figure 5.2, above) which provided a selection of different tactics for
getting someone to open a window. The form ‘Goodness me, it’s hot
in here!’ was categorised as maximally indirect, in that it contains no
overt semantic link to what is requested and employs a grammatical
mood that is tangential to its request function. Following the Brown
and Levinson taxonomy, this strategy would be classified as off-
record. It is so named because it goes, so to speak, ‘off-the-record’
by avoiding any explicit mention of the goods or services requested.
Basically, an off-record strategy involves dropping a hint.
At the opposite extreme on our continuum lies the maximally
direct utterance ‘Open the window.’ This strategy is clearly on-
record, in so far as it draws explicit attention to and contains a direct
semantic link with the service requested. However, it is also
extremely blunt. It contains no softeners or mitigating elements,
offering no redress whatsoever to the hearer. Brown and Levinson
describe this unmitigated, direct strategy as having been performed
baldly, without redress. With the bald, non-redressive strategy the
function of the utterance is clear, unambiguous and concise. In terms
of Grice’s model (see subsection 5.3.2 above), it follows faithfully
all four conversational maxims. In terms of Sperber and Wilson’s
model, it exhibits strong relevance as it would require little processing
effort to achieve a satisfactory contextual effect. To get a better
understanding of how all of these pragmatic concepts are
interconnected, it might be worth aligning Brown and Levinson’s
two categories diagrammatically with those of Grice and Sperber
and Wilson. Figure 5.5 is a modified version of Figure 5.2 with the
key concepts of each pragmatic model brought into line with each
other. It should be clear that the direct-indirect cline can be plotted
against a parallel continuum which goes from impolite to polite.
The strategic value of both the politeness strategies identified so
far can be measured in cost-benefit terms. The impolite bald non-
redressive strategy has an obvious payoff: it is direct and un-
ambiguous, and its function is clear. However, it also carries a fair
amount of risk: to be so blunt with someone indicates that you do not
care about their face. In damaging the face of the interlocutor, the
way is opened up for retaliatory face threats or at least a negative
evaluation of your own behaviour. The polite off-record strategy also
has payoffs and risks. Given that it involves dropping a hint, the
immediate payoff gained from using it is that you are not seen to be
coercing anyone or impeding them. But this very indirectness is

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FIGURE 5.5 Aligned pragmatic models
itself a risk, as the function of the utterance is obscured.
Consequently, there is a much greater likelihood that the strategy
will fail as you may not be understood. And even if you are
understood, the interlocutor can use your indirection as a ‘get out’ by
pretending not to have understood the request function.
We have yet to account for the third strategy which is situated in
the middle of Figure 5.2 and which is represented by the utterance
‘Could you open the window?’ First of all, this FTA is on-record in
that it contains clear lexical links (‘open’; ‘window’) to the specific
service requested. Second, although it threatens negative face, it does
so indirectly. This deliberate use of indirectness is a means of offering
the hearer some redress. It is an example therefore of negative
politeness, politeness which is specifically designed to preserve or
protect the negative face of the interlocutor. It is motivated by a
principle of avoidance: while doing a FTA, a speaker tries
simultaneously to avoid offending that person. The strategy therefore
calls for a dressing up of the speech act in linguistic features which
will allay or mitigate the threat to face. There are a number of specific
strategies which are available for doing negative politeness. Here are
some of the most common:
1 Use indirectness: As we have seen from ‘Could you close the
window?’, this strategy is built on a mismatch between
grammatical form and discourse function. None the less, the
function of the utterance will still be conventionally understood,
despite this obliqueness. Indeed, only the most pedantic will
‘misunderstand’ a routinely polite indirection like ‘Can you pass
the salt?’

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2 Use hedges: Hedges are the small particles of language which
soften the impact of an FTA. They include ‘sort of, ‘er…’, ‘by
any chance’ and ‘as it were’. Modal auxiliaries, such as ‘could’,
‘would’ and ‘might’, are also useful softeners. Hesitation and
mumbling (often considered not to be real language at all) can
also be used to hedge an FTA.
3 Be pessimistic: This is a curious though pervasive tactic of
negative politeness. It basically involves expressing doubt about
the chances of your FTA succeeding. It is encoded in expressions
like: ‘I don’t suppose you could give us a lift’; ‘There’s no
chance you could babysit next week.’
4 Minimise the imposition: This is suggesting that the FTA is not
intrinsically serious and that you’re only committing a minor or
negligible infringement to someone’s face. For example, an FTA
like ‘Could I borrow a tiny little bit of paper’ downplays all
aspects of the potential infringement: the amount of paper you
request is minimal and you only want to borrow it, not take it for
ever. If your interlocutor interpreted this literally, you would be
less than satisfied with the outcome.
5 Indicate deference: This strategy, which is most obvious in
overtly polite terms of address such as ‘sir’ or ‘madam’, accords
social status to your interlocutor. However, deference can also
be communicated if you humble yourself in some way. For
example, you can downgrade your own abilities and possessions
in remarks like ‘I’m not too good at this sort of thing…can you
help?’; ‘Look, I’m really ashamed to have to ask you this—I feel
such a pillock.’
6 Apologise: This is perhaps the most obvious candidate for
inclusion which, in its most explicit form, simply solicits
forgiveness from your interlocutor (‘Please forgive me’; ‘sorry’;
‘excuse me’). However, you can also apologise by referring
explicitly to the impingement you’re making (‘I’d like to ask
you a big, big favour’) or you can indicate your reluctance to
have to bother someone (‘I really don’t want to intrude but…’; ‘I
hate to have to ask you this…’). Alternatively, you can cite the
overwhelming reasons that forced you to commit the FTA, a
tactic normally interpreted as an ‘excuse’ (‘There just wasn’t
enough time to do this’; ‘I’m sorry, but the bus was late…’).

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7 Impersonalise: This means removing references to yourself from
the FTA. It is often a feature of official correspondence where an
FTA is being committed (‘It would be desirable if…’). Plural
forms can also be used for this function as they remove any
individual responsibility for the FTA (‘We regret to inform you’).
8 State the FTA as a general rule: This allows you to get yourself
‘off the hook’ by asserting that the conditions that led you to do
the FTA are general ones and therefore not directly attributable
to you. It is characterised by remarks like ‘Look, you’re not
supposed to smoke in this compartment’ or ‘Textbooks must not
be taken into the examination.’
9 Acknowledge the debt: This is simply a straightforward
admission in a FTA that you are indebted to someone (‘I’ll never
be able to repay you’; ‘I’ll be eternally grateful’).
It is worth reviewing briefly the travel agent exchange (example 5,
above) in the light of this classification of negative politeness.Attention
was given earlier to how the manageress exploits a cluster of linguistic
strategies in a single discourse move. These strategies can now be
accounted for systematically within the present model. The manageress
employs a number of key negative politeness markers in the execution
of her request to her interlocutor. She hedges the FTA by hesitating
and using the particle ‘er’. She uses indirectness by employing an
oblique grammatical form (a declarative) that is tangential to the
discourse function. She impersonates the FTA by removing any
reference to her own responsibility for producing it. She states the
FTA as a general rule suggesting that the conditions incumbent on her
addressee are external ones and not attributable to her. All this is
supplemented with the word ‘please’, which is not only an obvious
marker of politeness but also acts as a ‘force disambiguator’. It is often
tagged on to an utterance to make sure that its request function will be
understood.
Up to now, we have considered only threats to negative face and
the redressive strategies that are available to speakers when doing
these FTAs. There remains the other side of our persona, positive
face, which reflects our basic desire to be approved of by others. As
with negative face, there are many linguistic acts which intrinsically
damage positive face. Criticisms, reprimands, complaints and
accusations are all quite obviously threats to a person’s desire to be
liked and appreciated. Similarly, the mention of irreverent or taboo

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topics that are inappropriate in the context indicates that the speaker
has little regard for the hearer’s wishes and feelings. On the other
hand, there is a great deal of linguistic behaviour which is designed
to attend to positive face, including compliments, expressions of
solidarity and general displays of approval of each other’s
personality. Linguistic behaviour which attends specifically to the
hearer’s positive face is called positive politeness. Positive politeness
is not avoidance-based like negative politeness, but extends more
generally to unsolicited ‘polite’ behaviour. It is often used to claim
common ground between speakers and can take the form of
spontaneous compliments and displays of approval. Positive
politeness is basically designed to ‘oil the wheels’ of interaction.
Here are some of the more common strategies:
1 Compliment the hearer: This involves saying ‘nice things’ about
your hearer. These compliments can be focused on their
possessions (‘What a lovely vase’), their appearance (‘Nice tie!’)
or their capacities (‘I don’t know how you manage to keep your
kitchen so clean’). Compliments are often ostentatiously
exaggerated (‘What an absolutely amazing meal that was!’).
2 Use in-group markers: This tactic is designed to close down the
social distance between speakers and to proclaim common
identity. Popular in-group markers include: ‘mate’, ‘pal’, ‘luv’,
‘guys’ and ‘dear’.
3 Claim common opinions and attitudes: This involves seeking
agreement with your interlocutor and trying to avoid
disagreement. This may be achieved by restricting conversational
material to uncontroversial or safe topics. It can also be achieved
by focusing on the particular aspects of a topic which are least
likely to give offence. For example, if a friend wearing a garish,
poorly designed jacket asks you if you like their new suit, you
can always reply ‘Gosh, it fits ever so well.’
4 Hedge your opinions: This means not appearing too dogmatic in
your views. The same hedging particles that have a negative
politeness function can double up here as positive politeness
markers (‘Well, it’s sort of a bit of a botched job, really’).
Positive politeness is often used as a supplement to negative politeness.
Basically, it provides an excellent opportunity for ‘buttering somebody

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up’ before you try to get them to do something. In the first of the
following two examples from Brown and Levinson (1987:103), the
utterance is headed by a sequence of positive politeness employing the
strategy ‘compliment the hearer’. However, the sting in the tail comes
soon after in the form of a negative politeness FTA:
43 Goodness, you cut your hair. How lovely!…By the way, I
came to borrow some flour.
In the next example, an FTA is supplemented with an in-group
marker (‘mate’) which Brown and Levinson (1987:108) argue is
designed to close down the social distance between the interactants:
44 Here mate, I was keeping that seat for a friend of mine.
I would like now to close this subsection by doing a little ‘fine tuning’
to the politeness model outlined above. There are a number of
important principles governing the way speakers select strategies
which need to be explained. One of these concerns the amount of
mitigation which speakers decide to use in a FTA. Generally speaking,
the number of mitigating elements is directly proportional to the
amount of intended imposition to face. In other words, the greater the
threat to face, the greater the number of politeness strategies. Here is a
rather odd example where the number of negative politeness strategies
used dramatically exceeds that warranted in the context:
45 I’m sorry to trouble you—I know it’s an awful imposition—
but could I possibly impose on you and ask you if you
could tell me what time it is?
The oddity of (45) derives from the mismatch between the inordinate
amount of politeness markers exhibited by the FTA and the actual
imposition that it poses to the interlocutor.5
The relative social power of interlocutors is a strong determinant of
choice of politeness strategy. In asymmetrical encounters, the speaker
who holds high relative power need fear little threat to their own face
from their interlocutor. Consequently, they can afford to use a less
polite strategy such as the bald, non-redressive tactic. By contrast, the
less powerful interactant will need to make use of the more polite
strategies, such as negative politeness and off-record. The degree of

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social distance that holds between speakers is also crucial to choice of
strategy. People who don’t know each other very well behave
differently from people who do. Intimates in conversation can relax to
some extent because the risks of damage to face are minimal. Non-
intimates, where social distance is much greater, can take no such
chances and so are under greater pressure to select politeness strategies
appropriate to the context. There is a further consequence of this in
that social roles are open to constant renegotiation. Politeness strategies
can be used in a constitutive manner to close down or to expand the
social distance between speakers. We perhaps all have acquaintances
who are that little bit too ‘pally’ or who feign impoliteness through
banter to claim a social proximity that isn’t really justified. We also
probably all know people whose linguistic routines resist intimacy or
whose politeness strategies are such that they sustain social distance.
Politeness strategies do not just reflect existing social roles; they often
go a very great way towards constructing new ones.
Finally, there is an aspect of interaction which offers an excellent
opportunity to study the confluence of the three Ss: setting, structure
and strategy. This is the type of linguistic behaviour known as phatic
communion (Laver 1975; 1981). In a structural sense, phatic
communion occurs at the margins of interaction: it constitutes the
beginnings and endings of conversations. It normally takes the form of
the routine formulae of greeting and parting (‘Hi!’; ‘Good morning’;
‘Goodbye’), although significantly, it also consists of stereotypical
remarks on topics like the weather. Perhaps nowhere is face more at
risk than at this sensitive time, as speakers attempt to manage the
transition from silence into conversation. Phatic communion therefore
demands placatory language, not only to defuse the potential
discomfort of silence but to ensure that only safe, non-threatening
conversational topics are broached. This explains why, in phatic
utterances, speakers so often search out emotionally uncontroversial
themes—even if this reduces them to making supremely obvious or
inanely trivial remarks about aspects of their immediate non-linguistic
setting. Consider for instance typical phatic remarks like ‘Great view’,
‘About time these trains were cleaned’ or ‘Rotten weather again’. To
put it more systematically, phatic communion draws heavily on the
strategies of positive politeness, especially the substrategy which seeks
to claim common opinions and attitudes with an interlocutor. It involves
seeking agreement and solidarity with the listener, while at the same
time trying to avoid face-damaging acts like disagreement, irreverence

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or taboo language. And the need for this interactive harmony is
heightened in unequal power encounters or, as we have just seen,
between socially distant interlocutors. Soon, we shall be seeing what
happens when this and other conversational routines are not observed
in social interaction.
5.4 Discourse analysis and drama dialogue
The profitability of using drama texts for the study of conversation has
been stressed earlier in this chapter. However, this is not to say that
drama and naturally occurring conversation are identical types of
communication. The most obvious difference between the two is that
characters in plays are simply not real people in the way that
interlocutors in conversation are. Another difference is that whereas
naturally occurring conversation is straightforwardly ‘face to face’, in
drama dialogue the channel of communication is more complex. This
is because there are two communicative layers at work in drama
discourse (Short 1989b: 149; Elam 1980:135). On the one hand, there
is interaction within a play: this is the character-to-character dialogue
which is displayed on stage or in the text. On the other, there is
communication between the dramatist and audience or reader. At this
higher level, the playwright becomes a kind of puppeteer who oversees
and controls the displayed interaction. In a sense, the messages passed
between characters within the play become, at the higher communicative
level, messages about the play itself. Nevertheless, this is not to say
that the character-to-character level of interaction cannot be subjected
to the same analytic procedures as naturally occurring conversation.
On the contrary, in the process of textual construction dramatists (like
poets and novelists) have at their disposal all the codes and resources
of language. Their creativity can therefore be fully appreciated only
when charted against this substratum of naturally occurring language.
Translated specifically to drama dialogue, this means that the analytic
tools needed for observing what dramatists do must be able to handle
the full panoply of verbal interaction.
Aware, then, that it comprises this dual communicative structure,
we will now move on to examine a short piece of drama dialogue.
The extract in the ruled lines is the opening of Edward Albee’s one-
scene play The Zoo Story (I960).6
The play is based on a short
encounter between two middle-aged men in New York’s Central
Park. The men, Peter and Jerry, are strangers. Peter, who is described
in the stage directions as being ‘neither handsome nor homely’, wears

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tweeds and smokes a pipe. Jerry is carelessly dressed and his
appearance communicates ‘a great weariness’. Peter is seated on a
bench reading a book as Gerry enters. Before reading the passage, it
would be a good idea if readers were to review their responses to the
two exercises built around examples (6) and (7) in section 5.2.
JERRY: I’ve been to the zoo. [PETER doesn’t notice.] I said, I’ve
been to the zoo. MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!
PETER: Hm?… What?… I’m sorry, were you talking to me?
JERRY: I went to the zoo, and then I walked until I came here.
Have I been walking north?
PETER: [puzzled]: North? Why… I… I think so. Let me see.
JERRY: [pointing past the audience]: Is that fifth Avenue?
PETER: Why, yes; yes, it is.
JERRY: And what is that cross street there; that one, to the right?
PETER: That? Oh that’s Seventy-fourth Street.
JERRY: And the zoo is around Sixty-fifth Street; so I’ve been
walking north.
PETER: [anxious to get back to his reading]: Yes, it would seem so.
JERRY: Good old north.
PETER: [lightly, by reflex]: Ha, ha.
JERRY: [after a slight pause]: But not due north.
PETER: I…well no, not due north; but, we…call it north. It’s
northerly.
JERRY: [watches as PETER, anxious to dismiss him, prepares his
pipe]: Well, boy; you’re not going to get lung cancer,
are you?
PETER: [looks up, a little annoyed, then smiles]: No, sir. Not
from this.
JERRY: No, sir. What you’ll probably get is cancer of the mouth
and then you’ll have to wear one of those things Freud
wore after they took one whole side of his jaw away.
What do they call those things?
PETER: [uncomfortable]: A prosthesis?
JERRY: The very thing! A prosthesis. You’re an educated man,
aren’t you? Are you a doctor?
5
10
15
20
25
30

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PETER: Oh, no; no. I read about it somewhere: Time magazine,
I think. [He turns to his book.]
JERRY: Well, Time magazine isn’t for blockheads.
PETER: No, I suppose not.
I hope readers will forgive me for having rather mischievously
duped them into participating in a stylistic experiment. What is
more, it will probably be clear by now that the setting exercise and
lexical set protocols developed around examples (6) and (7) were
designed in anticipation of this precise piece of dialogue. The point
of these protocols was to elicit intuitive predictions about
appropriacy in discourse. These predictions can now be set against
the stretch of dialogue above and any disparities between them
explored. Utterance (6) turns out in fact to be Jerry’s opening
conversational move. However, what is significant here is that in
every elicitation I have carried out in workshops and seminars, this
utterance is only ever aligned with setting 2, that of young child
talking to an adult. Even though one of the remaining settings
details specifically an encounter between two strangers at a park
bench, this is never entertained as a viable setting for utterance (6).
A similar point can be made about the appearance in the text of the
lexical set containing items like ‘cancer’, ‘doctor’ and ‘prosthesis’.
This set is only ever aligned with setting 3, the doctor-patient
context, and is ruled out as positively ludicrous if applied to the
other two scenarios. Moreover, the rather obvious nature of both
parts of the exercise (commented upon by many participants!)
makes all the more striking the discoursal twists that occur in the
Albee passage. What you expect in discourse is a far cry indeed
from what Albee provides, and the lack of fit between your
predictions and the text itself means that there is a rich stylistic
space which can be explored. Basically, and this is a point which
will be resumed later, you have made a reading of the text before
you have read the text.
Any of the analytic models assembled in the previous two sections
can be brought to bear on the character-to-character communication
exhibited in the extract and each can be directed towards different
aspects of the text’s organisation. Here are some suggestions as to
how each model may be applied.
¶

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In terms of its discourse structure, the dialogue is organised into
two blocks of exchanges. These blocks are collections of exchanges
which are broadly related by a common topic or theme. Such
topically related blocks are often referred to as discourse transactions
by discourse analysts. The first topic comprises Jerry’s attempt to
discover the direction of the zoo and it extends from the opening line
to line 19. The second, which occupies the remainder of the passage,
is broadly concerned with exploring the clinical consequences of
smoking. A key structural feature of the passage is that Jerry is
responsible for initiating every single exchange: it is he who makes
all the opening moves and controls the topic of discourse. Peter, by
contrast, initiates nothing and is instead charged with the
responsibility for supplying follow-ups to Jerry’s moves. The bulk of
the exchanges are straightforwardly two-part structures. Some are of
the ‘questioning’ type (see subsection 5.3.1) where the act question
elicits the act response:
JERRY: [pointing past the audience]: Is that Fifth Avenue? 7
PETER: Why, yes; yes, it is.
Others are ‘stating’ exchanges where a statement anticipates the act
acknowledgement:
JERRY: Well, Time magazine isn’t for blockheads. 33
PETER: No, I suppose not.
There are two marked exceptions to this pattern of discourse structure.
The first is provided by the faltering opening to the conversation:
JERRY: I’ve been to the zoo. [PETER doesn’t notice.] I said, I’ve
been to the zoo. MISTER, I’VE BEEN TO THE ZOO!
PETER:Hm?…What?…I’m sorry, were you talking to me?
Here, Jerry’s statement does not receive the acknowledgement which
it predicts. Instead, Peter follows it with a question which halts
momentarily the progression of the dialogue. As it constitutes a
‘breach’ in the discourse framework, Peter’s question is therefore a
challenging move. The second exception to the dominant pattern of
discourse structure takes the form of a three-part exchange towards
the end of the passage:

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JERRY: …you’ll have to wear one of those things Freud 25
wore after they took one whole side of his jaw away.
What do they call those things?
PETER: [uncomfortable]: A prosthesis?
JERRY: The very thing! A prosthesis.
Jerry’s second turn here functions as an evaluation of Peter’s
response. This sort of three-part exchange structure was discussed
earlier in the context of classroom interaction (see subsection 5.3.1).
Outside the classroom context, however, its use tends to be restricted
to situations such as quizzes (when speakers know the answer to the
questions they are asking) or to situations where a speaker who has
forgotten some fact asks their interlocutor about it. Whatever its
precise nature here, the sense of cross-examination which it
engenders clearly does little to put Peter at his ease.
The onesidedness of the dialogue is further reinforced by the
length of speakers’ conversational turns. While many of Peter’s
responses are minimal, Jerry tends to hold the floor for much longer
than his interlocutor. Moreover, Jerry repeats his material and, in his
first utterance, even resorts to shouting it at his addressee. This is
curious because repetition, when accompanied by an increase in
loudness, is often used as an attention-getting device by children.
This point is borne out by the consistency of predictions in the setting
exercise, where responses consistently assign Jerry’s opening
sequence (utterance 6) to child-adult interaction.7
Although it is
common for children to use the strategy to get attention from adults,
its use is plainly socially proscribed in spoken interaction between
adults.
Many structural features of the passage are clearly shaped by the
discourse strategies used, and to this extent, a stylistic analysis would
not be complete that did not pay attention to pragmatic features of the
text. However, a pragmatic analysis does not mean trying to recover
the psychological intentions of what are, after all, invented fictional
characters. Rather, it involves trying to position yourself within the
displayed interaction. What, for example, would you think if you
were a witness to this interaction? What would your response be if
someone spoke to you, say, in the manner of Jerry? Or again, what
would your reaction be if a complete stranger you’d just met in a park
kept trying to ascertain the direction in which they had been walking?
In terms of Grice’s theory of maxims, Jerry’s over-persistence on this

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‘direction’ topic constitutes a flout of the maxim of quantity. He says
more than is required for the current purposes of the exchange. His
obsessive pursuit of this information is lexicalised through abundant
repetition of the word ‘north’ as well as references to street names
such as ‘Fifth Avenue’ and ‘Sixty-fifth Street’. However, as was
established in subsection 5.3.2, the entire rationale behind flouting
maxims is to generate implicatures. The question which is raised here
is what sort of implicature could Peter possibly be expected to infer
from all this? Again, what would we make of someone so obsessively
concerned with whether they had been walking due north or just
northerly? Jerry’s communicative goals are far from obvious, and
from Peter’s perspective, the unease which this induces is clearly
signposted in the stage directions. And no sooner does it seem that
Jerry’s obsessive questioning is fizzling out, when he launches
abruptly into the second block of exchanges without any clear
resolution of the purpose of the first.
Relevance theory offers a framework for assessing discourse
strategies which is compatible in many respects with Grice’s theory
of maxims and implicature. A guiding principle for exploring
relevance in this text would be to ask: why does Jerry say the things
he does? Take his opening sequence, for example. What would one
make of a complete stranger announcing out of the blue that he had
just been to the zoo? In relevance theoretic terms, Jerry provides an
ostensive stimulus which signals his intention to communicate. The
addressee’s task is to achieve a contextual effect by establishing the
relevance of Jerry’s act of ostension. Now, the setting in which an
interaction takes place would normally offer clues about which
existing assumptions you could bring to bear in your search for the
relevance of an utterance. This can be confirmed by looking back at
the protocols for this utterance. There are strong pre-existing
assumptions about the type of discourse that occurs in an encounter
between two strangers. In fact, when asked to write exchanges for
this setting, participants’ responses routinely converge on formulaic
phrases like ‘Nice day’ or ‘Is this seat taken?’ However, none of
these assumptions about context help establish the relevance of
Jerry’s utterance. And as the relevance of the utterance is weak, so
the effort needed to process it becomes all the greater. The same
principle extends to Jerry’s questions about the direction in which he
has been walking. To achieve a satisfactory contextual effect, an
addressee must establish the relevance of what a speaker says, and in

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the case of Jerry’s utterances, this is far from easy. So while Jerry’s
intention to communicate is clear, and the literal meaning of
everything he says is clear, the intrigue lies in trying to establish the
relevance of what he says. Moreover, in view of the context, there is
something deeply disquieting about not knowing why an interlocutor
singlemindedly pursues a topic whose relevance is so difficult to
establish. It is interesting that McCarthy (1987:45) touches upon this
aspect of the dialogue in his critique of the play, commenting on how
Peter finds himself in the presence of an ‘unpredictable and
consequently threatening’ interlocutor.
The framework of politeness phenomena, which enables us to
explore the intersection of setting, structure and strategy, forms a
valuable extra dimension to the analysis. Jerry and Peter’s conversation
is located at the initial phase of interaction—a period, it may be
recalled, which carries heightened psychological risk. This is especially
so given that the two interlocutors are strangers and that maximal
social distance therefore obtains between them. As we observed in
subsection 5.3.3, this phase of conversation calls for linguistic routines
which gently massage the transition from silence into interaction,
signalling that the speakers’ intentions are pacific and placatory. These
routines of phatic communion are, in other words, designed specifically
to attend to face: they comprise acts of face redress; they make use of
safe topics of conversation; they avoid doing intrinsically face
damaging acts. Moreover, the onus for initiating phatic communion
often falls on the speaker who is moving in physical space into the
territory of their interlocutor. Given these expectations about language
and context, what occurs in the passage is markedly odd, and the
protocols, again, are a good way of teasing out this feature of the
interaction. An interactive gulf develops between the two interlocutors
right from Jerry’s first move. What follows is an explanation of this
conversational schism in terms of politeness phenomena.
First of all, many of Jerry’s utterances constitute direct threats to
the negative face of his interlocutor. In other words, his linguistic
acts do not observe the addressee’s basic desire to be free from
imposition. In doing these negative FT As, Jerry makes extensive use
of the bald, on-record strategy. This is the strategy that is situated at
the direct end of the strategy continuum. It offers no redress to the
hearer, and, although clear and unambiguous, it is also blunt and
rude. In the passage, the bald on-record strategy is encoded in direct
questions containing no hedges or mitigation:

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Have I been walking north? (4–5)
Is that Fifth Avenue? (7)
What do they call those things? (26–7)
The tactic extends to demands for information which is the personal
preserve of the interlocutor:
You’re an educated man, aren’t you? Are you a doctor?
(29–30)
Questions like this constitute a substantial intrusion into the
psychological domain of an interlocutor. As a discourse strategy, it
carries a great deal of risk. Consequently, its use is often confined to
asymmetrical encounters where it is the speaker who wields the
greater power and who therefore has less fear of retaliatory face
threats from the interlocutor. However, symmetrical encounters, such
as that between two strangers, exhibit no perceived power
differential, so direct, unmitigated attacks on the hearer’s negative
face are a very risky strategy indeed.
Many of Jerry’s utterances also pose a threat to positive face. From
his opening outburst onwards, his linguistic acts offer no redress to his
interlocutor’s positive self-image and self esteem. He does not hedge
his opinions, nor soften his statements and questions with any of the
mitigating particles that are available for doing positive politeness. In
view of the setting in which the interaction takes place, the term of
address Jerry uses to Peter is markedly over-familiar (‘Well, boy!’).
Amongst other things, this suggests that the social distance between
the two speakers is small, when, remembering the context, it is
manifestly high.Another striking feature of Jerry’s discourse is that he
has no qualms whatsoever about using acts which intrinsically damage
face. It was emphasised throughout the survey of positive politeness,
that the use of taboo language or sensitive topics constitutes an
inherently serious threat to a hearer’s positive face. For one thing, it
signals that the speaker does not care about the hearer’s face-wants
and feels no compunction to create interactive harmony. And there can
hardly be a more alarming or emotionally controversial topic of
discourse than discussing the likelihood of an interlocutor’s chances
of contracting cancer. Even more disturbing is the fact that this topic is
broached within the first few minutes of a conversation between two
total strangers. It is notable that Albee is at pains to highlight the

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discomfort which Peter experiences under this onslaught, carefully
monitoring his reactions through stage directions like ‘anxious’,
‘uncomfortable’ and ‘annoyed’.
Peter’s discourse strategies are situated firmly at the opposite end
of the politeness continuum from those employed by Jerry. His
utterances bear all the hallmarks of the positive politeness strategies
characteristic of phatic communion. He qualifies his opinions and is
not dogmatic in his views. This is signalled in the text by extensive
use of modality, encoded in hedging verbs like ‘think’, ‘seem’ and
‘suppose’, and is supplemented by the use of hesitation, indicated by
three-dot sequences ‘…’. Here is a sample of Peter’s positive
politeness strategies:
Why…I…I think so. (6)
I…well no, not due north; (1 8)
it would seem so. (13–14)
No, I suppose not. (34)
Elsewhere, Peter apologises to Jerry with ‘I’m sorry’ (3), an act of
negative politeness in which the speaker takes the blame for
committing an FTA. He employs the term of address ‘No, sir’ (23)
which suggests decorousness and which forms an interesting
counterpoint to Jerry’s ‘Well, boy’. However, this strategy is
immediately thrown back at him as Jerry’s next utterance (24) begins
with an echoic and possibly sarcastic ‘No, sir.’ Peter’s strategies meet
further interactive rebuffs when the sensitive topic of lung cancer is
introduced (21–2). Albee’s stage directions are interesting here: Peter
looks up annoyed, but then smiles. The directions may be trying to
communicate that the initial irritation Peter experiences at the mention
of a taboo subject subsides in the realisation that his interlocutor is, in
one respect, offering reassurance. However, the respite is only
momentary, as Jerry immediately manoeuvres the topic to cancer of
the mouth—a condition from which his interlocutor will not be
immune. Peter’s interactive acquiescence, signalled by his use of
positive politeness strategies, is the antithesis of the direct, on-record
strategies used by Jerry. This interactive asymmetry is sustained for
most of the play, with the reticent Peter becoming ever more
exasperated by his interlocutor’s doggedly blunt discourse strategies.8
Literary critics have had a lot to say about how the dialogue of
The Zoo Story represents the discourse of the ‘absurd’. In common

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with much criticism of the absurd, particular emphasis is placed on
the way Peter and Jerry’s interaction exhibits a sense of alienation,
crisis and bewilderment, and on how it unveils the isolation of the
individual in human society. What is remarkable about this criticism,
however, is the absence of any coherent explanation of what Albee is
actually doing with language in order to create these absurdist themes
and motifs. The fact that the play is absurd is tacitly assumed—an
assumption which only serves to bypass Albee’s particular skill with
dialogue. What little critical attention there is on Albee’s technique
tends unfortunately to be rather anodyne. What is more, it is difficult
to conceptualise the sort of dialogue that there is in The Zoo Story on
the basis of critical commentaries on the play. For instance, Bigsby
(1969:24) sees the play in terms of a ‘breakdown of communication’
between the characters. Well, the very first exchange cited in this
chapter (example 1) was a genuine communicative breakdown and
the type of discourse structure it displays is far removed indeed from
that of The Zoo Story. To describe the play as a communicative
breakdown then is simply misleading. McCarthy (1987:16–20) talks
of the isolation and alienation created through the ‘raw violence’ of
Jerry’s language. This suggests that Jerry issues a string of
unsophisticated verbal insults, triggering a proverbial ‘slagging
match’ between the two characters. Again, this is not what happens:
Jerry’s discourse strategies do much more than simply deliver
wholesale abuse and invective. Critical comments such as these,
which focus on character-to-character interaction, have an important
influence on the sorts of interpretations that are made about the
higher communicative level in the play. Impressionistic descriptions
of dialogue within the text are sometimes aligned directly with the
supposed mind set of the writer. McCarthy, for example, talks of
Albee’s ‘aristocratic’ use of language which he says reflects ‘the
situation of the writer’ (1987:8). Similarly, Evans (1977:199) makes
the astonishing claim that Albee’s ability to dissect ‘sterile usages of
speech’ can be directly attributed to his ‘apparent preoccupation with
an inability to beget children…as an image of sterile futility’.
The point is simply this. Behind many critical interpretations of
the absurdism of the play is the taken-for-granted assumption that
we all know what absurd dialogue looks like. However, the lack of
agreement between the critics shows that we don’t. Discourse
analysis can at least establish a framework for the systematic analysis
of character-to-character interaction. This in turn lays the foundations

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for a coherent, rather than impressionistic, evaluation of Albee’s
dramatic technique. It is clear from the stylistic analysis, for instance,
that the dialogue Albee produces is not nonsensical or inane. On the
contrary, his technique involves taking some basic, commonplace
principles of naturally occurring conversation and knocking them off
kilter. As we have seen, the impact created by exploiting these
conversational routines in this manner is, well, dramatic. In this
regard, the analysis of discourse has hopefully laid the foundations
for a more rigorous appreciation of what Albee is doing with
language. More importantly, given the current task in hand, it will
have helped to highlight the routine and commonplace rituals of
spoken interaction through observing what happens when they are
distorted or subverted.
5.5 Summary
Given its scope, and the extensive array of theories covered, it will
be worth drawing together here the material covered over the course
of this chapter. The provision of a short inventory of significant
stylistic features might also help with practical applications of
discourse models.
The concept of the discourse ‘shunt’ (section 5.2) offers a useful
way in to the analysis of conversational exchanges. It may be recalled
that this involves collecting three or four ordinary exchanges,
arranging them in sequence and then nudging the second member of
each pair along one position. Amongst other things, this foregrounds
the concepts of structure and appropriateness in discourse because,
through the shunt, ordinary exchanges become extraordinary. In view
of the material covered since the shunt was undertaken, readers may
like to see if they can explain more systematically the peculiarity of
the shunted examples, now that they are in possession of a fuller
analytic toolkit.
The setting exercise, also introduced in section 5.2, involves
aligning a single utterance (and also, if possible, a lexical set) with a
set of possible contextual scenarios. This can act as a valuable
precursor to the stylistic exploration of drama dialogue. Assuming
that the primary focus of study is linguistic and not literary, then it
also makes good sense to concentrate on drama texts which are
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are obvious choices, thereby making the work of writers like Samuel
Beckett, Harold Pinter and Eugene Ionesco good candidates for
selection. Another of Edward Albee’s plays, The American Dream,
also lends itself well to this sort of applied discourse analysis.
Here is an inventory of key aspects of discourse organisation. This
inventory recasts the material covered over the course of the chapter
into a checklist of discourse features which can be applied directly to
dramatic dialogue.
Discourse structure
1 Are discourse exchanges structured in a neat and orderly way,
with opening moves followed by supporting moves? If not, are
there any challenging moves which function to hold up or
suspend the discourse framework? If there are challenging
moves, do they form a pattern? Are they, for example, associated
with a particular character in the text?
2 Which character initiates the conversational exchanges and
which character responds? Is there a marked asymmetry in
patterns of initiation, such as that identified between Peter and
Jerry in The Zoo Story?
3 How long are respective speakers’ turns? Does one character
hold the floor for longer than another? Does one character strike
you especially as interactively reticent? Again, recall how the
interaction between Peter and Jerry is differentiated in this way.
4 Are there any interruptions in the dialogue? Does the discourse
of one character tend to cut across the discourse of another in
any way?
Discourse strategies (maxims and relevance)
1 Do characters observe faithfully Grice’s four conversational
maxims? Or, in the absence of ‘maximal efficiency’, do
characters flout maxims? Are there flouts of any one maxim in
particular?
2 Are the implicatures generated by maxim flouts accessible? Or,
for example, do characters speak ‘in riddles’ all the time?
3 In terms of deriving satisfactory contextual effects, is it easy to
establish the relevance of what characters say to each other? If
not, does what characters say require substantial processing
¶

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DIALOGUE AND DRAMA
effort? And if so, what are the interactive consequences of these
utterances which carry weak relevance? (Recall, for example,
the problems that were involved in assigning relevance to what
Jerry says.)
Discourse strategies (politeness phenomena)
1 Are characters differentiated through their use of politeness
strategies?
2 What are the perceived social relationships between characters?
For instance, is a clear power differential or high social distance
signalled in the text? How are these social relationships encoded
into discourse strategies? Is any use made, for example, of the
bald on-record strategy? If so, under what conditions? Is it
attributable to a perceived power differential or to a suggested
social intimacy between speakers? Are any strategies used which
appear to conflict with assumed social roles? Is, say, the bald on-
record strategy used when the social distance between the
speakers is too great to warrant it normally?
3 In Face-Threatening Acts, is the number of mitigating features
used in the utterance in line with the actual imposition caused to
the interlocutor? Or are they mismatched in some way?
This inventory can be modified and reshaped to have more general
relevance or can be adjusted to accommodate different types of
spoken interaction. It has been the central aim of this chapter to
illustrate how the stylistic analysis of drama dialogue can cast light
on the organisation of naturally occurring conversation. Significantly,
it is the sometimes absurd or surreal patterns exhibited by drama
dialogue which offer the opportunity for exploring the common-
place and routine patterns that often pass unnoticed in everyday
conversation.
General discourse analysis
Standard introductions to discourse analysis include Coulthard
(1977); Stubbs (1983); Brown andYule (1983); Levinson (1983). An
¶

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DIALOGUE AND DRAMA
important overview of the stylistic potential of discourse analysis is
Short (1989b). The same writer also offers a useful later survey
(1994). Herman (1996) is a substantial application of a range of
techniques in discourse analysis to drama dialogue.
The Birmingham tradition of discourse analysis
The main inspiration for much work in the Birmingham tradition is
Sinclair and Coulthard (1975). Relevant work from the 1980s
includes Burton (1982) and Coulthard and Montgomery (1981). The
tradition has continued into the 1990s with the publication of
Coulthard (1992). The chapter by Francis and Hunston (1992) in this
collection is a ‘state of the art’ version of the structural model
outlined in this chapter. In addition to Burton’s seminal study (1980),
stylistic analyses which employ the structural discourse model and
which are worth reading are Toolan (1987) and (1989).
Pragmatics
Useful introductions to pragmatics are Grundy (1995) and
Blakemore (1992). The second of these offers an extremely clear
introduction to relevance theory (1992:24–38). Pilkington (1990)
undertakes a relevance theoretic analysis of metaphor while Toolan
(1992) offers a sustained critique of Sperber and Wilson’s theory.
Jucker (1988) offers a survey of the connections between relevance
theory and Brown and Levinson’s theory of politeness phenomena.
Simpson (1989) explores absurdism and politeness in dramatic
dialogue.
Additional reading
Over the last few years, there has been a steady output of material on
discourse and drama in the journal Language and Literature.
Moreover, much of this work draws on models of pragmatics and
discourse analysis that I have not been able to cover in this chapter.
Particularly useful is: Calvo (1992) on Shakespeare’s As You Like It;

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DIALOGUE AND DRAMA
Bennison (1993) on Tom Stoppard’s Professional Foul; Lowe
(1994) on Arthur Miller’s The Crucible. Two other important
references, in which developments in critical theory add an extra
dimension to the analysis of drama dialogue, are Birch (1991) and
Elam (1980:135–297).

179
Afterword
Emphasising the value of literature in the study of
language has been the theoretical cornerstone that
supports this book. The focus has been not so much on
the importance of language to literary study but rather on
the importance of literature in language study. Given this
emphasis, I hope that not too many readers have been
alarmed that the sanctity of the pristine literary text has
been violated, and that the works of canonical writers
have been mauled, pummelled, dismantled and re-
assembled in language exercises and workshops. The
primary aim has simply been to explain linguistic structure
and function. This is not to suggest, however, that what
we have done has no relevance to critical reading. On the
contrary, all the chapters of the book have attempted to
underscore the value that stylistic analysis has for critical
interpretation.
As far as a holistic and comprehensive survey of
English language goes, this is, of course, nowhere near
the full picture. All that a short introductory textbook like
this can offer is a point of access into the study of the
language—a full-blown account of all its structures and
functions is simply not possible. Other key areas of
language, into which literature would offer useful access,
Afterword

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AFTERWORD
are phonetics and phonology. These topics, touched upon in Chapter
2, are concerned with the sounds of language, and stylisticians have
demonstrated the value of poetry, in particular, as a way in to this
branch of language study. Another complex and substantial area of
language organisation is grammar, which would probably merit an
entire textbook to itself. Moreover, the coalescence of grammar,
phonetics and phonology—along with vocabulary—offers access to
the study of accent and dialect. Poetry, prose and drama written in
regional or non-standard English not only offer valuable source
material for this type of applied language study but also raise
attendant issues to do with cultural, social and ethnic identities among
speakers of English.
Perhaps the greatest challenge in the study of English language is
how to understand and explain its most basic structures and its most
prosaic, day-to-day functions. It is hard to develop a conscious
awareness of what we routinely take for granted about language. At
the start of this book, I pointed out that one of the primary goals of
stylistics—the linguistic analysis of literary discourse—is to get at
the heart of everyday language. I hope that I have demonstrated to
some degree, over the book, that the very act of explaining how and
why something is linguistically striking goes a long way towards
illuminating the ordinary and the commonplace in language.

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Teachers’ appendix
1 Introduction
p. 22 The technique of re-registration (introduced by
Carter and Nash 1983:129) is the stock device used by
‘Merseybeat’ poet Adrian Henri in his poem ‘Bomb
Commercials’. The poem is built on a veritable mosaic of
different voices, registers and narrative styles which
include ‘officialese’, advertising discourse and
conversational narrative.Although not discussed here, this
poem lends itself well to the sort of practical stylistic
analysis undertaken in the course of the chapter. Dorothy
Parker’s short poem, ‘One Perfect Rose’ also works well
in this type of application. The poem is written largely in
the form of a traditional lyrical ballad, focusing on the
traditional romantic red rose, yet with the appearance in
its final stages of words like ‘limousine’ it exhibits a
marked switch in register.
2 From shapes to words
p. 30 I have found that this linguistic ‘conundrum’, which
is taken from Smith and Wilson (1979:41), serves a useful
Appendix

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TEACHERS’ APPENDIX
teaching device. It works particularly effectively if presented as an
isolated sentence on an overhead projector. After students have
offered their opinions about its coherence, it can be disambiguated
by adding the parallel constructions one at a time.
p. 44 The study of the lexicon has probably been plagued more than
any other area of linguistics by a proliferation of technical terms.
Often linguists have good reason for introducing terms of their own
and in many cases the new terms are used in slightly different senses
from established terms. None of this helps the reader who approaches
the discipline for the first time, however, and the irritation that might
be felt when confronting this intimidating array is quite
understandable. Nor does it help the teacher who needs to
disseminate to pupils and students a workable and straightforward
set of clearly defined terms. Wherever it has been feasible in this
chapter, I have tried to restrict the number of terms used, and to use
them as consistently as possible. For the benefit of those teachers
who wish to develop this topic, here is a checklist of some of the
over-lapping and alternative terminology that they are likely to
encounter in the relevant literature:
Term used in this chapter Other available terms
grammatical word form word
content word full word
lexical word
root morpheme stem
base
operand
lexical formative
derivational morpheme content morpheme
derivational formative
inflection(al morpheme) function morpheme
inflectional formative
p. 54 A brief word to teachers who may wish to adapt this workshop
plan to their own requirements. I have found over the years that
Activity 1 is best undertaken by all the individuals making up a
workshop or class. However, restrictions of time normally make it
good practice to work in groups for the remaining activities, and to
concentrate on a few rather than all of the short texts produced by the

183
group as a whole. Any remaining ‘untransformed’ texts could be
written up as exercises by participants after the workshop. Activity 3
can be carried out by placing a sample of the transpositions on OHP
transparencies and then asking all of the groups for their comments.
A useful subactivity is to swap the transpositions between groups,
getting one group to comment on another’s efforts.
The students who participated in the present version of the
workshop were in the second year of their single honours degree
programme in English language and literature at Liverpool
University. All had taken, in the previous year, an introductory course
in English language which comprised three principal components:
basic grammatical description; phonetics and phonology; the history
of the English language. The present session was a two-hour seminar
in stylistics, the first part of which was a broad survey of the material
covered in sections 2.2 and 2.3, the second a set of practical activities
using the guidelines set out in section 2.4. Given that the time
available was restricted, only one of the eight short texts elicited in
this session was transposed.
I have in general been able to use this set of activities with groups
who have very different language requirements and linguistic
abilities. This includes students of EFL.
p. 56 One of the benefits of this activity is that it can be built up
around a few stylistic devices and that, furthermore, these devices
are pre-programmable. This ensures that the transposition exercise
does not become a linguistic ‘free for all’ but instead works within
a set of tightly defined stylistic boundaries. As the end product
reveals, the results of the transposition can be quite striking.
Moreover, the transformed text will be even more eye-catching if it
is assembled using a typeface such as that provided by a computer
screen. Although such facilities were not available during the
present session, the final text still looked quite startling even though
it was handwritten with a marker on a large whiteboard.
3 Words and meanings
p. 75 The semantic entailment scale is one means of capturing
diagrammatically the nature of semantic inclusion and compatibility
between classes of words. The Venn diagram can also be used for

184
this purpose, and teachers may prefer to adopt this type of schema.
Here is part of the entailment scale for dog, presented here in the
Venn diagram format:
p. 80 Collocational clashes in the rock and pop arena are certainly
easy to find—indeed, the shelves of music shops are bedecked with
countless examples designating groups, albums and song titles.
However, the nature of the genre is such that they can drop in and out
of vogue almost by the week. Here are more names of bands, which
are at least relatively topical at the time of going to press. Students
and pupils will have no trouble in enriching this list.
Psychedelic Furs Upholstered Eldorados
Spandau Ballet Voice of the Beehive
Soup Dragons Aztec Camera
That Petrol Emotion Inspirai Carpets
Wishbone Ash Velvet Underground
Prefab Sprout Icicle Works
The New Fast Automatic Daffodils
p. 87 Teachers may be interested to know why I chose this
particular poem. I have found not only that it lends itself well to
cloze test (there are many poems that do) but that it is short enough
to be easily managed in the classroom context. Each line may be
introduced in turn either by overhead transparency or by

185
transcription on to a whiteboard or blackboard. In this way, the
entire text can be built up cumulatively and predictions about the
lexical gaps in each line can be sought in turn. The suggestions
used in this chapter were collected informally in the course of a
seminar with a small group of third-year students in 1993. The five
students who comprised the group were all taking an option in
stylistics as part of their joint honours degree at Queen’s University,
Belfast. Although in their final year, none of the students had a
particularly specialised knowledge of English language. Before
then, all had taken courses in English literature as well as courses
from the other disciplines in their respective joint degrees, such as
history, French and politics. During the course of the seminar,
suggestions were elicited and noted down. Students sometimes
made more than one guess for a particular slot, in which case all
responses were recorded. Occasionally, the same suggestion was
made by different students, and where this impacts on the exercise,
it is highlighted in the main part of the chapter. I have used this text
in different pedagogical contexts and found that there is still a
broad consensus of agreement about suggested entries to the cloze
test. In the course of an introductory lecture on stylistics to year 1
students, I use it to elicit suggestions ‘from the floor’ as it were.
Aside from the productive interactive function it has in this setting,
it also provides a useful tool for highlighting basic semantic
constraints on lexical combination.
p. 94 The elicitation of core words (or ‘nuclear vocabulary’, as it is
sometimes known) using multiple choice text has proved a popular
device in EFL teaching. One reason for this is that core words often
form commonly occurring idiomatic or metaphorical constructions
in English. (See Stubbs (1986:99–115) and Carter (1987:33–46) for
a fuller account.)
p. 96 For copyright reasons, it has not been possible to reproduce in
multiple choice format any part of Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B.
Yeats’, so unfortunately readers will need to track this poem down
for themselves. Listed below are some four-term paradigms which
can be applied to five suggested blanked out slots in the opening
stanza of the poem. Each set contains the original term along with
three other items which are compatible with the grammatical context
of the deletion:

186
Paradigmatic choices for stanza I:
line: 1 2 3 4 5
passed away forests covered mercury academics
disappeared farmyards disfigured sun authorities
died airports adorned rain sources
expired motorways fell upon chill instruments
Different sorts of issues can be developed through the exercise.
For a start, attention can be focused upon the relationship of words to
context. Set 1, with its euphemistic constructions, raises attendant
issues concerning appropriateness and register. The relationship
between lexis and grammar can also be explored. The line from
which the item in list 2 has been deleted, for instance, contains a
parallel structure of the order: ‘the xs were frozen, the ys [were]
almost deserted’. This exerts a strong influence on the selection of
the y element. And of course, the semantic gap between what is
anticipated and what actually occurs in a text can throw light on the
process of literary composition.
Here are suggested multiple choice paradigms for the next three
stanzas of the same poem, presented again in the format of multiple
choice text. The deleted terms, as well as the selections offered for
each entry, are only suggestions and need not be taken as a rigid
formula. I have found that these lists work well in seminars, but they
can easily be adapted to deal with all sorts of issues in lexical
semantics.
Paradigms for Stanza II:
line 2: 3: 5
streams fashionable personality
wolves dilapidated identity
images nice death
yokels interestin g work
Paradigms for Stanza III:
2 4 5 6
clerics squares suburbs lost
rumours depths bedroom attacked
doctors windmills hospital upset
tranquillisers bits poetry became

187
Paradigms for Stanza IV:
1 3 4 6
famous lifestyle honour guts
scattered craft conduct souls
forgotten profession conscience semantics
unknown wood practice land
It is worth adding that, prior to the cloze procedure and multiple
choice activities, I had used ‘straight’ versions of the Roethke and
Auden poems in seminars to little effect. ‘Dolour’ proved especially
unsuccessful. It seemed that the full version of the poem closed off
many of the potentially illuminating interpretations and readings that
accrue from the progressive build-up of the text. Another reason for
the relative effectiveness of the cloze test approach may have been
that it commits students to making a semantic description of the text
before they try to interpret it. In other words, it is their criterion of
semantic appropriateness that helps establish the interpretative
tramlines upon which a reading of the text can be developed.
Moreover, the disparity between collocational predictions and
collocational realisations throws into sharper relief the process of
textual composition.
p. 99 It is also worth detailing an article which explores the concept
of oxymoron from a semantic perspective. Shen (1987) uses both
componential analysis and the concept of the semantic scale to
investigate this figure of speech. He argues that there are two main
types of oxymoron: the direct (e.g. ‘the silence sounds’) and the
indirect (e.g. ‘the silence whistles’). The difference is that in the first
type the two opposites are at equivalent points on their respective
semantic scales, whereas in the second type, one member of the pair
is at a lower point than the other. The indirect type will therefore be
a combination of silence and a hyponym of sound. This representation
may help to clarify the principle:

188
Shen argues that the indirect type is more common in poetry than
the first and that it is altogether a more sophisticated technique
requiring greater attention and comprehension.
4 Exploring narrative style
p. 104 The implementation of these instructions in an actual
workshop setting requires some modification. The jumbled sentences
can be transposed on to A4-sized cards. Given the number of
participants normally involved in this type of exercise, it is best that
the sentences are enlarged as much as possible, but that sizeable gaps
are left between each sentence so that the temptation to interpret
contiguous sentences as meaningfully related is avoided. The cards
can then be presented to students along with a worksheet containing
instructions like those given.
1 On the accompanying card you will find a complete
(untitled) short story by Ernest Hemingway. The story
comprises just eleven sentences. However, these sentences
have been ‘shuffled’ so that now they do not occur in the
sequence of the original story. Each sentence has been
assigned a letter.
2 Working in groups, try to reconstruct the story. You may cut
the card into strips if you prefer, thereby enabling you to
build up what you consider a ‘normal’ narrative sequence.
This need not necessarily be an attempt to reassemble the
original Hemingway text: just ‘re-shuffle’ the sentences so
that they produce a relatively satisfactory narrative pattern.
3 Now make a note of the sequence you’ve selected (e.g. a b c
d e…etc.) and try to justify your decisions. It may help to
isolate any features of language which signal that a particular
sentence should precede rather than follow another.
Underline any such features.
4 Each group will be asked to state the sequence of their
narrative and to account for the decisions they’ve taken. Each
group’s selection will be discussed.
5 Yes…the original version will be produced!

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One of the advantages of cutting up the card is that each group,
after having recorded their own reconstruction, is able to assemble
the narratives proposed by the other groups. This ensures that all
participants, when not presenting their own version, have before them
the narratives of each of the other groups.
p. 104 The participants in the present workshop were second- and
third-year students following Liverpool University’s B.A.
programme in English language and literature. These students had
opted to take the stylistics course as part of the language ‘track’ of
their degree; all were well motivated and their work in the first-year
had revealed that all had demonstrable ability for language study.
I had initially used the original, unaltered version of the
Hemingway story as a sample exercise in comparable tutorials in
previous years. The main intention had been to highlight a variety
of aspects of narrative organisation, with special emphasis on
isolating the cohesive devices exhibited by the text. This, in turn,
was intended to lead to a comparative discussion of narrative
structure by undertaking a contrastive analysis of this text with
some ‘social stories’ told in everyday conversations. Despite the
optimism of the tutor about the stylistic potential of the text, these
tutorials were, frankly, unsuccessful. While many of the more stock
responses regarding the ‘flatness’ of Hemingway’s prose style were
produced, there were problems in explaining how this ‘flatness’
was created in the text. Furthermore, whilst many potentially
illuminating comments on the ‘disinterested’ and ‘cynical’ nature
of the narrative style were made, students encountered difficulties
in identifying precisely the linguistic features which triggered these
responses. As the unsatisfactoriness of the exercise was clearly not
due to any limitations on the part of the participants, then it had to
lie squarely in the design of the exercise itself. So finally, in a last
ditch attempt to salvage the exercise as a whole, the present
workshop activity was developed. It is worth adding that the activity
was certainly engaged in with more enthusiasm than any previous
tutorials based on this story. Group members co-operated well with
each other, electing a spokesperson to summarise and justify the
narrative pattern agreed upon by the group as a whole. One
particularly noticeable development was the way in which each
group defended its position in response to the queries and
suggestions of other groups.

190
p. 116 For reference purposes and for other teaching applications,
here is a fuller breakdown of the Halliday and Hasan cohesion model,
along with illustrations of each category.
Cohesion—a general term for the ways in which different meaning
relations in a text are combined inside sentences and across
sentences.
COHESIVE RELATIONS
Anaphora:
(a) Bill started to limp. It was strange to see him in pain.
(b) Wash and core six cooking apples. Put them into a fire-
proof dish.
Cataphora:
(a) He started to limp. It was strange to see Bill in pain.
(b) This is how to get the best results: you let the berries dry in
the sun, till all the moisture has gone out of them. ]
COHESIVE TIES
Definite reference: In addition to the definite article the, definite
reference may be developed through the use of personal pronouns,
deictics and implied relationships:
Three blind mice, three blind mice,
See how they run! See how they run!
Substitution: Where a ‘token’ is substituted for a lexical word,
My axe is too blunt—I must get a sharper one.
Ellipsis: A type of ‘substitution by zero’, indicated by the
symbol <Ø>:
Everton scored three goals and Liverpool Ø
two Ø.
Linkage: Realised by co-ordinating conjunctions and linking
adverbials: and (additive); but (adversative); so
(causal); then (temporal); if (conditional).

191
Formal repetition: Repeated use of expression (morpheme, lexical
item, proper noun, phrase etc.) which has already occurred in the
text.
Lexical cohesion/elegant variation: Incorporates use of general
nouns, synonyms, superordinates and antonyms. Generally entails
use of alternative expression (not a pronoun or substitution) for an
item in the text:
What shall I do with this crockery?—Leave the stuff there,
(general noun)
I began the ascent of the North face. The climb is really
quite easy, (synonym)
That’s a new Ferrari. I love Italian cars, (superordinate)
The first effort was good. But the second effort was really
bad. (antonym)
p. 122 A word of advice is necessary on the ways in which this
creative writing protocol can be aligned with the main workshop
activity. Obviously, tasks 1 and 2 of the protocol cannot be carried
out after the main workshop because foreknowledge of the
Hemingway text interferes with the composition of an original story.
There are a number of ways around this, one of which is to get two
or three participants to peel off from the group as a whole before it
embarks on the main activity. It makes sense to chose participants
for this ‘splinter group’ who are interested in creative writing and/or
who are confident enough to produce a story from the newspaper
account. Their story, which should be written when the larger group
is doing the central workshop, can then be compared with
Hemingway’s version at the end of the session. If the small group’s
story is transferred to an OHP transparency, this offers excellent
opportunities for a three-way comparison, because all participants
will now have access to the Hemingway story, the newspaper account
and the ‘creation’ of their colleagues. It often make for a fitting end
to a workshop to have students marvel at the differences between
what their peers have created and what Hemingway has created using
the same source material. Even more remarkable is the high literary

192
rating they often give their own work in the face of competition from
a major twentieth-century novelist.
p. 123 The advantages of restricting the stories in length in this way
are that it saves time, forces participants to focus only on details
which they regard as essential and yields versions which are
comparable in terms of length and economy to the Hemingway
version. Although comparisons with the latter may be less rigorous
linguistically and may not focus directly on specific features like
cohesion and narrative structure, there is none the less some stylistic
benefit. For one thing, it may be more appropriate with non-advanced
learners of English, or in a context where language expertise is
generally not as developed. On the other hand, it may be suitable in
creative writing classes where such activities are common but where
an exercise such as that proposed here would have the added
advantage of providing an insight into Hemingway’s method. In both
contexts, such a comparative analysis would provide a point of entry
for linguistic and stylistic analysis.
5 Dialogue and drama
p. 148 It should be pointed out that the schema presented in this
subsection is a very much simplified version of the Birmingham
structural framework. For example, the Birmingham model uses
specialist terms like elicitation, directive and informative which
correspond respectively to my more informal terms question, request
and statement. Strictly speaking, the specialist terms are the ones
that I should have used in my structural breakdowns. However, there
are enough new technical terms in this chapter without having to
assimilate twenty-two categories of act, seven types of move and
about half a dozen exchange types! There are also two more units
above the rank of exchange which are not represented here for the
same reason. A related terminological problem is that the analytic
categories are constantly under review and many of the original terms
have been jettisoned or replaced by Coulthard’s (1992) collection of
essays.
Those new to the area might find it useful to see what the
practitioners themselves have to say about discourse. Here is a useful
statement on the structural ‘rationale’ behind the Birmingham model:

193
The advantages of working within a structural description of
discourse are clear. The distinctive feature of a structural
description is that the elements in the description and their possible
combinations must be rigorously defined. This means that
descriptions which are based on the same structural criteria are
directly comparable. It is possible to reveal similarities and
differences between different discourses and different genres of
discourse once these have been subjected to the same structural
analysis.
(Willis 1992:112)
p. 155 Teachers might be interested to see a selection of the key,
original passages through which maxim theory and relevance theory
were originally propounded. Here, first of all, is Grice outlining the
principal tenets of his co-operative principle:
Our talk exchanges do not normally consist of a succession of
disconnected remarks, and would not be rational if they did. They
are characteristically, to some degree at least, cooperative efforts;
and each participant recognises in them, to some extent, a common
purpose or set of purposes, or at least a mutually accepted
direction. This purpose or direction may be fixed from the start
(e.g. by an initial proposal of a question for discussion), or it may
evolve during the exchange; it may be fairly definite, or it may be
so indefinite as to leave very considerable latitude to the
participants (as in casual conversation). But at each stage, SOME
possible conversational moves would be excluded as
conversationally unsuitable. We might then formulate a rough
general principle which participants will be expected (ceteris
paribus) to observe, namely: Make your conversational
contribution such as is required, at the stage at which it occurs, by
the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange in which
you are engaged. One might label this the COOPERATIVE
PRINCIPLE.
(1975:45)
Here now is an important section from Sperber and Wilson (1986)
where they sketch in brief their theory of relevance:
an act of ostensive communication automatically communicates a
presumption of relevance… The relevance of a stimulus is

194
determined by two factors: the effort needed to process it
optimally, and the cognitive effects this optimal processing
achieves… It is in the interest of the addressee that the
communicator should choose the most relevant stimulus… that is
the one that will call for the least processing effort. Here the
interests of communicator and addressee coincide. Unless the
communicator is merely pretending to communicate, it is in her
interest to be understood, and therefore to make it as easy as
possible for the addressee to understand her. An addressee who
doubts that the communicator has chosen the most relevant
stimulus compatible with her communicative and informative
intentions—a hearer, say, who believes that he is being addressed
with deliberate and unnecessary obscurity—might doubt that
genuine communication was intended, and might justifiably refuse
to make the processing effort required. All this is mutually
manifest; it is therefore mutually manifest that the communicator
has chosen the most relevant stimulus capable of fulfilling her
intentions.
(156–7; original emphasis)
p. 166 I have used this passage from The Zoo Story on my third-year
stylistics seminars at Queen’s University over the last few years.Any
responses to the protocolled activities of section 5.2 were elicited in
the course of these seminars.
p. 175 Regarding the choice of material for stylistic analysis, the
Albee text was used in this chapter because it exemplifies many
important aspects of discourse. Although any text will suffice in
principle, it often makes good sense to use a text that is considered
odd or peculiar in some way. Once chosen, it is worth looking out for
a number of linguistic features which not only shed light on the
principles of strategy and structure but also reveal interesting devices
in the text itself.
p. 176 Perhaps the most daunting aspect of discourse stylistics,
especially from a pedagogical point of view, is how to impart and
develop knowledge about discourse theory. Although the shunting
and setting exercises are a good way of ‘sugaring the pill’, there is no
doubt that the teaching of linguistic theory is a formidable task. Yet
there needs to be at least some theoretical framework if any purchase

195
is to be gained on the basic mechanics of social interaction. This
necessity prompted the development of the structure and strategy
axes in section 5.2 of the chapter. The axes were designed as an over-
arching framework for organising and collecting a diverse body of
research. Assuming that there will already be some familiarity with
the choice and chain axes from Chapter 3, transposition to the
concepts of structure and strategy in discourse should be conceptually
more straightforward. While the axes allow the full gamut of
discourse theories to be brought together, the question remains as to
how to implement theory in the context of teaching and learning. I
find that some pragmatic theories can be illustrated by role play
activities. For example, the politeness continuum represented by
Figure 5.5 can be prefaced by asking participants in workshops to
perform imaginary tasks in different settings. One such task is to
think of two ways of getting someone to open a window: the first in
the most direct manner possible and the second by just dropping a
hint. The task can be embellished by suggesting different settings for
the request. One setting could be an interaction between a sergeant
major and a raw recruit and another an encounter between two
strangers on a train. Then, following one of the basic principles of
stylistic analysis, create a mismatch by switching the two utterances
to the wrong settings. Assess the results of the mismatch, and in
particular try to explain any oddity that accrues. In this type of
activity, not only are constraints on discourse appropriateness thrown
into relief but the opposite poles of the politeness continuum are
clearly highlighted.

197
Glossary
The more elaborate definitions in this glossary are given
for terms which are used across different chapters of the
book but which do not receive extensive treatment in any
particular place. Shorter ‘refresher’ definitions are offered
for those terms which are dealt with in detail in specific
sections of the book.
Accent Accents are varieties of language distinguished
from each other by pronunciation. There is a
tremendous proliferation of accents of English, not
only in terms of international variation (i.e.Australian,
Canadian, South African accents), but also within
national boundaries. British English, for instance,
contains numerous easily recognisable and markedly
different accents such as Scouse, Glaswegian and
Cockney. The most ‘prestigious’ accent of English,
known as Received Pronunciation (RP), has its
historical origins in the upper-class speech of London
and the surrounding area, although it is now no longer
the accent of any particular region. In spite of its high
social status, it is estimated that under three per cent
of the population of the United Kingdom speak RP.
See also dialect.
Glossary

198
GLOSSARY
Aspect Aspect is a feature of the verb which specifies whether the
verbal action has been completed or is in progress; or whether it
has had limited or extended duration. Two important types of
aspect in English are:
Continuous aspect
formed by using the ‘ing-form’ of the main verb and a
form of the verb ‘to be’
Perfective aspect
formed by using the the past participle of the main verb and
a form of the verb ‘to have’
At present, he is living in Sheffield, (present continuous)
That year, he was living in Sheffield, (past continuous)
For generations, Nepal has produced brilliant mountaineers,
(present perfect)
For generations, Sparta had produced famous warriors, (past
perfect)
See also tense.
Coherence A term used in the study of discourse which is often
contrasted with cohesion. Whereas cohesion is chiefly a
semantic phenomenon, coherence is more psychological in
emphasis in that it refers to the processing and inferencing
strategies which people use to interpret texts. A coherent text is
one judged to make sense on a general level, rather than on the
basis of its cohesive features. For example, ‘I am sorry I’m late.
The traffic was bad’ exhibits coherence without having any
cohesion. Alternatively, one would be hard put to retrieve
coherence from the following sequence even though it contains
obvious cohesive links:
New York is a city. Cites are made from buildings. Buildings
are often tall. ‘Tall’ doesn’t mean ‘short’.
See discourse, cohesion.
Cohesion A term describing the ways in which elements in a text are
bound together. Cohesive ties are the semantic links that operate
within and across sentences. See also coherence.

199
GLOSSARY
Connective Connectives are words which link grammatical units
together. When the units are of equal grammatical status, then
the connectives are referred to as co-ordinating conjunctions:
He ate his supper and he went to bed.
He ate his supper so he went to bed.
When the two grammatical units are not of equal status—that is,
when only one of them can stand on its own—the connectives
used to link them are referred to as subordinating conjunctions:
When he had eaten his supper, he went to bed.
If he has eaten his supper, he must have gone to bed.
Other subordinating conjunctions are ‘although’, ‘because’
and ‘since’.
Connectivity See connective.
Declarative A declarative is an especially common type of
grammatical mood in which the subject of a sentence precedes
its verb. Declaratives are typically, though not necessarily, used
to make statements:
Mary shut the door.
The cat is in the garden.
Dialect Dialects are varieties of language which are distinguished
from one another by differences in grammar and lexis. Unlike
a register, a dialect will often reveal important information about
the social and regional characteristics of its speakers. The most
widely distributed dialect of English, known as Standard English,
is the variety which is taught to non-native speakers and is
normally used in writing:
I haven’t seen any of those kids. (Standard English dialect)
I ain’t seen none of them children. (Non-standard English
dialect)
See grammar, lexis.
Discourse A key term in language study which encompasses a host
of different approaches, theories and analytic models. In its
broadest sense, discourse refers to the way language is organised
above the level of the sentence. The units of analysis in the study
of discourse are text and utterance. See also pragmatics.

200
GLOSSARY
Exclamative A type of grammatical mood which is rather
imprecisely defined. Exclamatives normally begin with words
like ‘what’ and ‘how’, contain some rearrangement of the
subject-verb-complement sequence, and in their written forms
conclude with an exclamation mark:
What a lovely hat!
How tall Sinead is!
What a great day that was!
Existential sentence Existential sentences simply assert that
something exists. They are identified by a combination of the
dummy subject ‘there’ (which is simply a formal grammatical
requirement in English) and some form of the verb ‘to be’:
There was a phone call.
There is no need for this.
There are many good textbooks around.
Explicative A narrative device used to explain why certain events
and actions happened in a story. Explicatives often present
information about which the narrator had no knowledge at the
time the story happened, but which has come to light since. The
device is often marked by ‘that…’ clauses and past perfect (see
aspect) verb forms:
and when we realised that we were really out of danger
then we found out that we had been so tense that our feet
had been up against the panel…
Foregrounding Foregrounding is a term developed by the Russian
Formalists and Prague school structuralists which refers to any
linguistic feature (at any level of language) whose prominence in
a text is motivated for literary purposes. Foregrounded items are
‘defamiliarised’ in that they deviate from the established
background patterns of language in a text.
Formalist Formalism is a critical-interpretative method developed
chiefly by Russian theorists and poeticians in the earlier part of
the twentieth century. Epitomised by the work of Victor
Shklovsky, formalist interpretations are predicated mainly on the
formal linguistic features of a literary work and not on its
contexts of production and reception. Special attention is given
to the manner by which certain elements in a text are

201
GLOSSARY
foregrounded. Attracting criticism from Marxist critics in
particular, formalists have been accused, perhaps unfairly, of
being overly text-immanent in their approach. See
foregrounding, text-immanent.
Grammar A key term in language study. The grammar of a language
is the set of core rules which combine phrases, clauses and
sentences into well-formed structures. In the academic study of
English language, grammatical differences between different
dialects of English are not considered ‘good’ or ‘bad’, but rather
as systematic, rule-governed differences that define those
dialects:
I’ve my dinner eaten. (Irish-English grammar)
I’ve eaten my dinner. (Standard English grammar)
I’m just after seeing an accident. (Irish-English grammar)
I have just seen an accident. (Standard English grammar)
See also dialect.
Graphology Graphology refers 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 medium.
Intensifier An intensifier is an adverb which is used to describe a
gradable adjective:
extremely hot
very wide
slightly obscure
rather poor
more cold
Some adjectives like ‘military’ or ‘deliberate’, which in
certain grammatical constructions are not gradable, cannot
take intensifies:
a slightly military junta
an extremely deliberate liar
Lexis Simply, words and vocabulary. A study of lexis may involve
looking at the structures of words, the meanings of words, the

202
GLOSSARY
history and origins of words or the geographical distribution of
words.
Modal auxiliary Modal (or secondary) auxiliaries are a closed set of
words which precede the main verb in a verb phrase. They are:
‘can’, ‘could’, ‘must’, ‘may’, ‘might’, ‘will’, ‘would’, ‘shall’,
‘should’ and ‘ought to’. Modals have several functions. One is to
convey modality; another is to signal future time reference in
the absence of a future tense in English.
Modality Modality refers to a speaker’s or writer’s attitude towards,
or opinion about, the truth of the sentences they utter. It also
extends to their opinion about the degree of obligation which
attaches to what they say. There are various ways of conveying
modality in language:
You must/could/might be right, (modal auxiliaries)
I believe/think/assume you are right, (modal main verbs)
It is certain/probable/doubtful that you are right, (modal
adjectives)
You are certainly/probably/possibly right, (modal adverbs)
Modals See modal auxiliary.
Mood A grammatical term which describes different types of
sentence structures. The criterion often used to identify mood is
based on the relation between the subject and the first part of the
verbal element in a sentence:
Martha Is going to town (declarative)
Is Martha going to town? (interrogative)
See also grammar.
Narrative A language-based definition of narrative is that it is a
method of recapitulating past experience by matching a sequence
of clauses to the sequence of events which (it is implied) actually
occurred.A minimal narrative is a sequence of two clauses which
are temporally ordered: that is, a change in their order will affect
the interpretation of the time sequence of the original story:
John drank two whiskies (clause 1) and he fell into the river
(clause 2).
Natural narrative See narrative.

203
GLOSSARY
Past continuous A past continuous verb phrase is formed by placing
the verb ‘to be’ in its past tense form in front of the ‘ing form’
of the main verb. The past continuous is often used in storytelling
to describe events that were ongoing when another, more central
event occurred:
I was just sitting at home, when…
We were living in Nottingham that year, when…
See also aspect.
Phonetics The study of the articulatory and acoustic properties of
speech sounds. Phonetic analysis can be subdivided into three
principal areas of investigation: the production of speech sounds
(articulatory phonetics); the transmission of speech sounds
(acoustic phonetics); the perception of speech sounds (auditory
phonetics). See also phonology.
Phonology The study of the abstract relationship between meaning
and sound in language. Phonologists examine intonation patterns
in spoken discourse as well as the individual sound segments
which make up words. The unit of analysis in phonology is the
phoneme. See also phonetics.
Pragmatics Pragmatics is that branch of language study which seeks
to explain the meaning of utterances in contexts of use. Studies
in pragmatics often focus on strategies of social interaction such
as indirectness, hints and politeness. See discourse, semantics.
Psycholinguistic(s) Psycholinguistics is the scientific study of
language and the mind. Psycholinguists examine, among other
things, the development of language in young children as well as
the general mental processes involved in human communication.
Register A variety of language associated with a specific context of
use. Sermons, lectures and recipes are all types of register. A
register is defined according to the use to which language is
being put, and not through the social and regional characteristics
of its user. It is not to be confused with dialect, therefore:
I have not seen any of those children. (Standard English
dialect, formal register)
I haven’t seen any of those bloody kids. (Standard English
dialect; informal register).
See also dialect.

204
GLOSSARY
Semantics Put most simply, the study of meaning. A more precise,
and therefore more complex, definition would be that semantics
is concerned with the abstract meaning potential of units of
language of varying sizes. The unit of analysis in semantics is
the seme. Unlike pragmatics, semantics is more concerned with
the core meaning of linguistic units irrespective of their various
contexts of use.
Speech act Coined by the philosopher J.L.Austin, the term speech act
refers to what is done when something is said (e.g. stating, warning,
declaring, threatening etc.).An utterance may therefore be regarded
as performing a specific function as well as having a semantic
value. Austin argues that in performing a speech act, a speaker
simultaneously performs the following three kinds of ‘sub-act’:
• a locutionary act—the act of saying a meaningful,
grammatical sentence in a language
• an illocutionary act—the act performed in saying something
(a command, request, warning, question and so on)
• a perlocutionary act—the act performed by saying something
(frightening, convincing, persuading and so on)
See also pragmatics.
Tense Tense is a grammatical term which describes the
correspondence between the form of a verb and our concept of
time. The basic tense distinction in English is between present
and past:
I walk (simple present: formed by using the base form of the verb)
I walked (simple past: formed by using the ‘-ed’ form of the verb)
Unlike French or Latin, there is no specific future tense in
English corresponding to the present and past, in so far as
there is no grammatical operation which is performed on
the main verb to yield such a tense. Consequently, future
time is expressed in a variety of ways in English:
On Tuesday she leaves for Paris, (simple present)
She will leave for Paris on Tuesday, (modal auxiliary and
base form of main verb)
On Tuesday she is leaving for Paris, (present continuous)
See also aspect.

205
GLOSSARY
Text-immanent A text-immanent interpretation assumes that textual
meaning resides entirely within the formal linguistic properties
of a text and is not influenced by dynamics of communication,
the context of textual production or by pragmatic aspects of
communication. See Formalist.

207
Notes
1 Introduction
1 This excerpt is taken from: Abrams, M.H. (1981) A Glossary of
Literary Terms (4th edition) NewYork: Holt Rinehart & Winston,
p. 192.
2 When stylistics does become genuinely ‘scientific’ it is
transformed into something else, known as the ‘empirical study of
literature’ or ‘literary science’. This is not the method that will be
used in the book, although if readers want to acquaint themselves
with this type of work, then Steen (1994) is a representative
sample of research in the area. The journal Poetics is also heavily
orientated towards the empirical study of literature.
3 A useful critical review of the Leavisite movement can be found
in Eagleton (1983). I have also written a piece on this tradition of
criticism (Simpson 1990), which looks into the linguistic
strategies that its practitioners use to get their points across.
4 This excerpt is part of a recipe from: Jaffrey, Madhur (1982)
Indian Cookery London: BBC Publications, p. 163.
5 This extract is from pages 11–12 of the Pan Books edition of The
Little Drummer Girl published in 1984. (The novel was originally
published in 1983 by Hodder & Stoughton Ltd.) Readers seeking
a literary-critical introduction to le Carré’s fiction might like to
consult Barley (1986), which contains a chapter on The Little
Drummer Girl. Simpson (1988) offers a stylistic analysis of the
opening of this novel.
6 This passage is taken from: Pevsner, Nikolaus (1953) The
Buildings of England: Derbyshire Harmondsworth: Penguin
Books Ltd. I am grateful to Professor Walter Nash for bringing
this text to my attention.
7 Thanks are due to the students of Liverpool University’s
Notes

208
NOTES
Department of English Language and Literature for responding to this
questionnaire. Their responses were collected over a morning in the Department.
The questionnaire was distributed between classes, not during any one class,
which is why it was possible to obtain responses from both undergraduates and
postgraduates. The exercise as a whole is not intended to be a rigorous,
quantitative survey and obviously more systematic experimentation would be
required in order to produce a statistically significant set of results. In the
context of this chapter, it simply offers some valuable extra perspectives on the
particular text under scrutiny.
2 From shapes to words
1 There is, unfortunately, an anomaly in the graphological system in that there is
no allograph symbol corresponding to the square brackets, ‘[ ]’, of phonetics.
Realisations of graphemes are encoded with ‘<>’, the same symbol, in other
words, as the graphemes themselves.
2 This extract from Samuel Beckett’s Murphy is taken from the Picador edition
(1973), p. 10.
3 This extract is from page 1 of the Independent on Sunday, 20 July 1992.
4 This quotation from Chaucer is taken from line 188 of The Miller’s Tale
(Bantam Books edition, edited by Kent Hieatt and Constance Hieatt, 1964).
5 This quotation from Alice in Wonderland is taken from the Signet edition
(1960), p. 91.
6 This quotation from Ulysses is from the Penguin edition (1980), p. 44.
7 This poem can now be found in: e e cummings (1968), Complete Poems:
Volume 2 1936–1962, London: MacGibbon & Kee, p. 727.
3 Words and meanings
1 This quotation is taken from Lewis Carroll’s Alice through the Looking Glass,
[1871], Signet edition (1960) p. 186.
2 Carter (1987:58–65) reserves the term fixed expressions for constructions like
euphemisms, proverbs and stock phrases. The principle common to all these
expressions is that (1) their component words and structures are fixed and (2)
the meaning of the whole is not obvious from the meaning of the constituent
parts. Here are some examples: The little boy’s room’; ‘A stitch in time saves
nine’; ‘When all is said and done’; ‘As sober as a judge’; ‘A watched kettle
never boils.’
3 By ‘traditional dictionaries’, I have in mind, for example, the various editions
of the Chambers Dictionary or the Oxford English Dictionary. The accuracy of
word-definitions in such dictionaries is often largely dependent on the intuition
of the lexicographers who compile the dictionary. However, recent, corpus-
based dictionaries have broken with this tradition. The Collins COBUILD
dictionary, for example, lists words as they occur in attested (‘real’)
constructions which have been transcribed from a naturally occurring corpus of
language.
4 Another problem with synonymy is that the privileges of occurrence of each
item in a pair are not always identical. For instance, deep and profound share

209
NOTES
the same sense, but while someone’s thoughts may be either, a river can only be
described with the first term. Similarly, the term film is somewhat broader in
scope than movie: we may speak of a camera running out of film, but not out of
movie.
5 This example is one of the many amusing newspaper headlines studied in an
article by Lindemann (1990). Lindemann challenges the popular view that
headlines are telegrammatic and informative, arguing instead that they often
‘disinform’ through riddles, puns and cryptic allusions.
6 Both examples are taken from Alumni summer 1991 issue, p. 21.
7 The idea of lexical specificity and the pragmatic implications of over- and
under-specification was originally developed in detail in Cruse (1977). See also
Cruse (1986) for a book-length treatment of this and other topics in lexical
semantics.
8 Interactive ‘put-downs’ like this are not however the sole function of marked
under-specification. Cruse (1977) details a series of environments where they
can even function as markers of in-group expertise. At the races, pundits may
remark That is a fine animal’ which produces less specificity than the
contextually neutral term horse. Similarly, a jeweller may exclaim These are
fine stones’ (as opposed to ‘diamonds’ or ‘emeralds’), while a flight attendant
may urge passengers to move to the back of the ‘aircraft’ (a superordinate of
aeroplane).
9 This axiom comes from one of the founders of modern descriptive linguistics,
J.R.Firth. His influential (1957) book contains a chapter on semantic analysis.
10 This quotation from Astrophil and Stella is taken from the Oxford Authors
edition, 1989, p. 153.
11 One of the main inspirations for componential analysis is an article by Katz and
Fodor (1963). For a fuller critique of the development and practice of
componential analysis, see the references to additional reading provided at the
end of the chpater.
12 The feminist critic Dale Spender has argued that it is the system of language
itself which is sexist, man-made and permanently under the control of the
patriarchy. (Spender 1980, passim). A critique of Spender’s position, with
specific reference to componential analysis, is provided in Cameron’s survey of
feminism and linguistic theory (1985:59–62).
13 The edition from which Roethke’s ‘Dolour’ is taken is: Words for the Wind: The
Collected Verse of Theodore Roethke (1961), Bloomington: Indiana University
Press; p. 55.
14 W.H.Auden’s ‘In Memory of W.B.Yeats’ is taken from The Norton Anthology
of English Literature: Volume 2, fifth edition (1986), London: Norton &
Company, pp. 2299–300.
4 Exploring narrative style
1 This story, first published in 1925 by Charles Scribner’s Sons, is taken from p.
285 of The Essential Hemingway, Jonathan Cape, 1970.
2 Two of the many studies which explore mind-style and point of view in narrative
are Fowler (1986:127–46) and Simpson (1993:11–85).
3 Originally printed in the New York Times, 20 December 1922, p. 1, col. 3. The
Paris edition of the Tribune is likely to have reproduced an identical story. (See
Reynolds 1972:82 for a fuller account of Hemingway’s source material.)

210
NOTES
4 I am grateful to Sonia Zyngier, her colleagues and her students at the
Universidade Fédérale in Rio de Janeiro for participating in this creative writing
exercise and for producing such an illuminating series of narratives. The
narrative cited here is one of many elicited in the course of this workshop.
5 Dialogue and drama
1 The precise sources for the four exchanges used for the shunt are as follows.
The first is from an encounter with a colleague at work. The second, the doctor-
patient encounter, was overheard in a hospital ward during visiting hours in
March 1994. The third exchange is from a televised interview between David
Frost and the leader of the Liberal Democrats, Paddy Ashdown (The Frost
Programme; BBC TV; 6 February 1994). The last results from a recent,
unsuccessful attempt on my part to inspire my nineteen-month-old son to eat
some breakfast cereal.
2 In some non-standard dialect systems the rules governing the formation of
imperative sentences can be rather more complex. Irish-English dialects, for
example, often permit the insertion of a subject as in ‘Come you here!’ or
‘Don’t youse be goin’.
3 Example (39) was uttered by BBC commentator, Harry Carpenter. The occasion
which produced it was boxer Frank Bruno’s entrance into an arena to a
thunderous rendition of ‘Land of Hope and Glory’ (16 March 1994). Simpson
(1992) is a pragmatic study of the humour that this sort of gaffe produces.
4 I am grateful to Michael Finn, an honours student at Queen’s University, for
bringing this example to my attention.
5 It is worth adding that the mismatch in (45) forms a principle which is exploited
by dramatists of the absurd. It is one of the techniques used to produce startling
and bizarre dialogue. Simpson (1989) explores this absurdist use of politeness
phenomena in a play by Eugene Ionesco.
6 This extract from Edward Albee’s The Zoo Story is taken from: Absurd Drama
(ed. Martin Esslin) 1976; Harmondsworth: Penguin. Literary-critical
introductions to this writer and his work can be found in Bigsby (1984) and
McCarthy (1987).
7 On the use of repetition as a feature of child language, notice how, in the fourth
exchange of the shunt in section 5.2, the youngster repeats ‘No want it!’
8 The eventual outcome of the play is that Jerry manages to impale himself on a
knife he has just thrown to the luckless Peter. Jerry’s dying confession is
interesting because for a few brief moments there is a total change in his
attitude towards Peter. This change in attitude is signalled by a concomitant
shift hi discourse strategies, and, while I have not the space to deal with them
here, they would none the less form the basis of a useful comparative exercise.

211
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217
Abstract 116, 118
absurdist plays 21, 130, 131, 134,
176; see also Albee, E.
accent 180, 197
accusations 160
acronyms 44
actional frames 111, 113, 118
acts 145–7; bound 146; content-bearing
146; subordinate 146;
see also speech
Adams, V. 59
adjectives 14, 16, 28, 34, 42, 43, 58
adverbs 34, 110, 116
advertising language 31–2, 35,
70–1, 181
affixes 36–7, 39
agreement 163
Albee, E.: absurdist play 131,
164–14 passim, 175, 194
alliteration 16
allographs 26
allophones 26
analogy 48, 50
analysis extension 115–20; natural
narrative 116–20
anaphora 107, 108, 109, 115, 190
antonymy 72–4, 83, 92, 108, 115;
complementary opposition
72; gradable 72–3; relational
opposition 73; semantic
derogation 74
apology 159
approval, displays of 161
articles 34, 107
asides 124
aspect 198
asymmetry 142, 171, 172
attitude 76
Auden, W.H. 95–6, 98, 185, 187
authoritarianism 6
back-formation 58
backtracking 47
Baker, C. 121
Bakhtin, M. 18–19
Barley, A. 17
Baum, S.V. 58
Beckett, S. 27–8, 175
Bennison, N. 177
Bigsby, C.W. E. 173
Birch, D. 178
Birmingham model 143–4, 146,
147, 192–3
Blakemore, D. 177
Index
Index

218
INDEX
blend 43
bound morphemes 36–8, 39, 50, 57,
145, 146; see also affixes; infixes;
prefixes; suffixes
breakage 50
Brown, G. 176
Brown, P. 155, 156–7, 158, 162, 177
Brumfit, C. 18
Burton, D. 144–5, 177
Calvo, C. 177
Cameron, D. 74
Candlin, C. 7, 22
Carroll, L. 41
Carroll, S. 21
Carter, R.A. 18, 22, 59, 96, 98–9,
127, 181, 185
cataphora 107, 115, 190
cause-and-effect relationships 108,
111, 114, 125
Chaucer, G. 7–8
Chiaro, D. 98
choice and chain axes 77, 78, 195
classroom discourse 143–4
clipping 43
cloze procedure 84, 85–92, 94, 95,
96, 184–5, 187
co-operative principle 148, 150, 193
Coda 117, 119, 125
cognitive processing 29
Cohen, L. 22
coherence 126, 127, 133, 182, 198
cohesion 21, 102–27, 188–92, 198,
207–8; additive, adversative and
causal conjuctions 115; chain 109;
creative writing 120–5; devices
189; model 190; relations 190; ties
190–1; see also analysis extension;
short story reconstruction
collocation 78–9, 132, 134, 144, 145,
184; cloze procedure and stylistic
analysis 86–7; multiple choice text
and stylistic analysis 93; patterns
84, 85, 96; predictions 187; range
94, 95
collocational clashes 79–83, 88, 89,
90–1, 97
columnar format 27–8
combinations see under words
commands 140
common opinions and attitudes 161,
163
communicative breakdown 131–2,
146–7, 173
comparator 51
complaints 160
complementary opposition 72
Complicating action 116, 118–19
compliments 161, 162
componential analysis 81–4, 88, 187
compounds 42–3
conceptual clusters 43
conjunctions 115
connectivity 115, 199
connotation 66–7, 69, 93
content words 33, 34, 35, 36, 39, 43,
50, 182
context 63, 68–9, 73, 75
contextual effects 152–3, 154, 157,
169
core narrative 94, 116, 118, 185
Coulmas, F. 59
Coulthard, M. 176, 177, 192
creative writing 120–5
criticisms 160
cross-cultural differences 63
Cruse, D.A. 98
Crystal, D. 21, 98
cummings, e e: poem 44, 57, 58, 59,
90; analysis extension 53–6;
linguistic models 45–53 passim;
morphology 37, 41
Davy, D. 21
de Beaugrande, R. 127
debt acknowledgement 160
declarative 51, 139–42, 160, 199
deference 159
definite reference 190–1
deformed text 56
denotation 66–7, 69, 73
derogation 74
descriptive frames 111, 113, 118,
183

219
INDEX
deviation 54
dialect 10, 180, 199
dialogue 131–42; communicative
breakdown 131–2; lexical set
138–9; mood 140–2; paradigmatic
axis 134–5; request-reaction
135–7; setting 135–9; shunting
132–5, 138; strategy 134–8, 142;
structure 121, 134, 137;
syntagmatic axis 134–5; topic
133–4
discourse analysis 130–78, 192–5, 199,
208; maxims and relevance 148–55;
scale 145; strategies 149, 156–7,
163, 170, 195(see also maxims;
politeness phenomena; relevance
theory); structure 143–8; theory
194; see also dialogue; drama
dialogue; politeness phenomena
disruptive patterns 54
Downes, W. 22
drama dialogue 20, 21, 164–74;
classroom interaction 168;
communicative breakdown 173;
exchanges 167; maxims theory
168–9; politeness phenomena
170–2; question/response 167;
relevance theory 169; statement/
acknowledgement 167; structure
166–7; three-part exchange 167–8;
transactions 167
Dumas, B. 52, 58–9
dysfluencies 131
effect-and-cause relationships 114
Elam, K. 164, 178
ellipsis 108–9, 190
euphemisms 93, 95
Evaluation 117, 120, 124–5
Evans, G. 173
exchanges 147
exclamative 51, 124, 200
existential sentences 112, 200
explicatives 117, 125, 200
face see politeness
false starts 131
first-person narrative 123–4
foregrounding 33, 45, 200
form-function asymmetry 142
formal repetition 191
formalist reading 120, 200–1
Fowler, R. 31, 127
fragmentation 48, 51, 52
Francis, G. 177
Freeborn, D. 22
Freudian slips 71
Friedman, N. 44
Fromkin, V. 59, 98
geographical origins 26
Germanic derivations 67–8
grammar 96, 180, 186, 201
grammatical words 33, 34, 35, 43, 182
graphemes 25–6, 27, 34, 45, 47, 64
graphetic substance 25
graphology 25–33, 103, 181–3, 201,
206; advertising language 31–2;
breakage 90; perceptual strategies
29–30; psycholinguistic influence
28–9; see also graphemes
greeting 163
Gregory, M. 21
Grice, H.P. 148–9, 151, 155, 157, 158,
168–9, 175, 193
Grundy, P. 177
Halliday, M.A.K. 21, 107, 108, 115,
126, 127, 190
Hasan, R. 107, 115, 126, 127, 190
Haynes, J. 127
Heasley, B. 98
hedging 159, 160, 161, 172
Hemingway, E.: short story 102,
104–5, 127, 188–9, 191–2;
creative writing 120–5; general
patterns of response 106–10;
idealised narrative 110–12;
natural narrative 117–20; original
version 112–14; reconstruction
103
Henri, A. 181
Herman, V. 177
hesitations 131, 159, 160, 172

220
INDEX
Hoey, M. 127
homonymy 69–72
horizontal processing 52
Hudson, R. 21
Hunston, S. 31, 127
Hurford, J.R. 98
hyponymy 74–6, 187
hypothesis formation 29
ideograms see logograms
idioms 64, 93
imperatives 11, 139–42
impersonalisation 160
implicatures 149, 151, 154, 156,
158, 169, 175
imposition, minimising 159
in-group markers 161
indicatives 140, 141
indirectness 142, 150, 158, 160
inferencing 151–3, 154
infixes 36–7, 39
inflections 39
intensifies 28, 58, 117, 201
intention to communicate 153, 154
interpolations 124
interpretations 29
interrogative 51, 139–42
intimacy 163
Ionesco, E. 175
Jackson, H. 98
Joyce, J. 7–8, 42–3
Jucker, A.H. 177
Kempson, R. 98
Kidder, R.M. 58
Labov, W. 116–17, 124, 126, 127
Latinate derivations 67–8
Laver, J. 163
le Carré, J. 13–16, 18
Leavis, F.R. 6
Leech, G.N. 6, 59, 98, 114
Levinson, S. 155, 156–7, 158,
162, 176, 177
lexemes 64, 78, 80, 83, 87, 88, 89, 94;
incompatible 90; juxtaposition 79
lexical cohesion/elegant variation 191
lexical semantics 28, 62–99, 132,
183–8, 204, 206–7; advertising
language 70–1; analysis 127;
antonymy 72–4; boundaries 63;
choice 68; compatibility 81;
connotation 66–7, 69; context-free
theory 63; denotation 66–7, 69, 73;
homonymy 69–72; hyponymy
74–6; idioms 65–6; incompatibility
81; link 157; paradigm 95;
polysemy 69–72; puns 70–2;
register 67–9; scale 74–5, 83, 187;
seemingly identical 63; shifting 63;
space 96; specificity 75–6, 93;
strategies 95–6; superordinates
74–6; synonymy 66–9, 74
lexical set 11, 85, 89, 91, 92, 94, 111
lexicon 33, 34, 35, 40, 41, 42, 182
lexis 186, 201–2
line boundaries 31
line endings 47
line-by-line reading strategy 52
linguistic models for stylistic analysis
44–53; graphemes 45, 47;
morphology 47–52;
psycholinguistic perceptual
strategies 45; word-formation 45
linguistic reduction 34–5
linkage 190
literary communication 13
literary language 7–19; advertising
discourse 9–10, 14; rhetorical
devices 8–9, 14
logograms 27, 45, 47, 55, 58
Lowe, V. 177
lower case 45, 54, 55, 58
Lyons, J. 98
McCarthy, G. 170, 173
marker 146, 161
Matthews, P.H. 59
maximal efficiency 157, 158
maxims 148–55, 175–6; flouting
169, 175; manner 148, 150–1;
quality 148, 149, 151; quantity
148, 149–50, 169; relation 148,

221
INDEX
150, 151, 155; theory 168–9,
193
meanings see lexical semantics
metaphors 14, 79, 149
Miller, A. 177
mnemonics 80
modal auxiliaries 50, 159, 202
modal verbs 34
modality 124, 125, 172, 202
modals 117
modifiers 14; multiple 15–16
Montgomery, M. 127, 177
mood 51, 140–2, 157, 202
morphemes 64, 144; derivational 37,
38, 39, 40, 57, 182; free 48, 49,
50; inflectional 38, 40, 182; plural
38; reversative function 41; see
also bound; root
morphology 35–57, 181–3, 206;
asymmetry 40–1; back-formation
41–2; breakage 49, 90; compounds
42–3; single 50; see also
morphemes
moves 144–7; challenging 145, 147,
167, 175; opening 145, 175;
supporting 145, 146, 147, 175
multiple choice text 84, 93–6, 185,
186, 187
mumbling 159
narrative 21, 102, 202; categories
116–17; first-person 123–4;
minimal 116; style see cohesion;
third-person 124; see also core;
natural
Nash, W. 22, 98, 181
natural narrative 21, 102, 124, 125,
126
newspaper headlines 34–5
non-sequiturs 131, 150
nonce-words 42, 57
nouns 34, 43, 58, 78, 109; antecedent
38; phrases 14, 15–16, 106; see
also verb-noun paradigms
obligation 137
Orientation 116, 118–19, 125
ostension 151–2, 154, 169, 193
over-cohesion 114, 115
over-specification 76
oxymoron 79, 187–8
Palmer, F. 98
paradigm/paradigmatic axis 77, 78,
79, 85, 88, 89, 93, 134–5
parallelism 9, 10; rhetorical 16;
syntactic 14
parentheses 47, 55, 58
Parker, D. 181
particles 35, 36, 37, 48, 56, 58
parting 163
past continuous 116, 119, 203
perceptual strategies 29–30, 33, 45,
48, 56
pessimism 159
phatic communion 170, 172
phonemes 25, 26, 64
phonetics 25, 179–80, 183, 203
phonology 25, 179–80, 183, 203
Pilkington, A. 177
Pinter, H. 175
placatory language 163
poetry 20, 21, 79; concrete 27; see also
Auden, W.H.; cummings, e e
politeness phenomena 137, 150,
155–64, 172, 176, 195; bald,
non-redressive strategy 157; bald,
on-record strategy 170, 176; drama
dialogue 170–2; face 155, 156,
157, 163, 170; Face-Threatening
Acts 156–60, 162, 170, 172, 176;
in-group marker 162; negative face
155, 156, 158–60, 162, 170, 172;
off-record 155, 157, 158, 162;
on-record 157, 158, 172; phatic
communion 163–4; positive face
155, 156, 160–2, 163–4, 171,
172; pragmatic concepts 156, 157,
158
polyphony 18
polysemy 69–72
power and status 137
pragmatics 76, 77, 130–1, 156, 157,
158, 168, 195, 203

222
INDEX
Pratt, M.L. 37, 41, 59
prefixes 36, 39, 40, 41, 50, 57
prepositions 34
prompt 146
pronouns 15, 34, 58, 107, 115;
anaphoric 108
prose 20, 21
psycholinguistics 28, 29, 203
punning 9, 10, 51, 70–2
question/response 140, 145, 146, 167,
192
re-formation 29
re-registration 181
referent 65
register 10–19, 67–9, 88, 93, 94, 186,
203; context 12–13; field 11–12;
mode 11–12; re-registration 17–19;
recipe 10–11, 12; sermon 12;
technical 92; tenor 11–12;
tourist-travelogue 15–17
relevance theory 148–55, 157, 158,
175–6, 193
repetition 109, 191
reprimands 160
request-reaction exchange 140, 146,
192
Resolution 117
resonances 65, 67
Reynolds, M. 121
rhyming 9
Rodman, R. 59, 98
Roethke, T. 87, 91, 187
root morphemes 35, 39, 40, 42, 47, 58,
182; blending 43; discourse
structure analysis 145, 146
Sampson, G. 59
semantics see lexical
sense 29, 65, 69
setting 163, 170, 174–5, 194
Shakespeare, W. 7, 177
shapes to words see graphology;
morphology
Shen, Y. 187–8
Short, M. 6, 7, 22, 114, 164, 177
short story see Hemingway
shunting 80–1, 132–5, 174, 194;
dialogue 132–5, 138
Sidney, P. 79
silence 187
Simpson, P. 127, 177
Sinclair, J. McH. 177
Smith, N.V. 181
social distance 163
solidarity 161, 163
speech act 158, 204
speech genres, primary and secondary
18–19
Sperber, D. 151–3, 157, 158, 177,
193–4
stanzaic organisation 10
statement/acknowledgement 140, 167,
192
Sterne, L. 27
Stoppard, T. 177
structure 144, 147–8, 163, 170, 175, 195
Stubbs, M. 127, 176, 185
stylistic analysis techniques 84–96;
cloze procedure 85–92; multiple
choice text 93–6
stylistics 2–7; generic application 6,
15; heuristic value 4–5;
intersubjective role 5; linguistic
function 5; literary interpetative
guise 5
substitution 190
suffixes 36, 37, 38, 39, 50, 57–8, 64;
grading 57
summons 146
superordinates 74–6, 83
surface features 126
symmetrical encounters 171
synonymy 66–9, 74, 85, 87, 90–4;
euphemistic 95
syntagm/syntagmatic axis 134–5; cloze
procedure and stylistic analysis 85,
88, 89, 91; multiple choice text and
stylistic analysis 93, 94, 95; words
and combinations 77–8, 79, 80, 84
taboo topics 161, 163–4, 171, 172
tense 125, 204
text-immanent reading 120, 205

223
INDEX
third-person narrative 124
Thorne, J.P. 97–8
Toolan, M. 126, 177
topic 133; see also taboo
Transformational-Generative model
96–7
Traugott, E.C. 37, 41, 59
Trengove, G. 22
typographs see logograms
under-specification 76
upper case 46, 51, 54, 55
Van Peer, W. 59, 99, 127
Venn diagram 183–4
verbs 58, 109, 124, 140; actional 119;
hedging 172; morphemes and words
34, 38, 41–2, 43, 50; past
continuous 116, 119; verb-noun
paradigms 42
Verdonk, P. 98
visual ambiguity 31
visual information 29, 31, 32, 33
visual system 52
vocabulary 88
Vonnegut, K. Jnr 127
Wales, K. 98
Watson, B. 58
Wegner, R.E. 44, 58
wellformedness 133
Werth, P. 127
Williams, W.C. 31
Willis, D. 193
Wilson, D. 151–3, 157, 158, 177, 181,
193–4
word-play 9, 10
words and combinations 77–84;
antonymy 83; collocation 78–9, 84;
collocational clash 79–83;
componential analysis 81–4;
paradigmatic axis 77, 78, 79;
semantic scales 83; shunting 80–1;
superordinates 83; syntagmatic axis/
combinations 77, 78, 79, 80; see
also lexical semantics
Yule, G. 176

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