Transcript Lecture # 32 (Ling 2 - English504).pptx

LECTURE # 32
Review of lecture 22 – 28
ROLE OF LINGUISTICS IN LITERARY
INTERPRETATION
Some major premises of linguistics which play
their roles in the study of style are the nature
and importance of the addresser-addressee
relationship, the interrelationships between
linguistic and non-linguistic contexts, the
uniqueness of the phenomenon language etc.
 Literary language is not a yardstick to measure
all other functions of language.
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ROLE OF LINGUISTICS IN LITERARY
INTERPRETATION
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Phono-stylistics will deal with more or less
regular recurrences of specific phonological
characteristics and such features as verse,
length (measured syllabic length), rhyme (the
use of same sequence of phonemes in a given
distribution normally at the end of each verse
in a sequence of verses; or assonance (each
verse ending in the same consonant or vowel
phoneme; though not same consonants)
ROLE OF LINGUISTICS IN LITERARY
INTERPRETATION
Writing has its own means of indicating some
of the patterned contrasts perceived clearly in
spoken language e.g. written language’s use of
the alphabet, and of combinations of some of
its letters to represent some of the sounds of
language use; its use of punctuation
italicization, capitalization, and so on.
 Moreover, to deal with features such as stress
and intonation
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ROLE OF LINGUISTICS IN LITERARY
INTERPRETATION
In other words, phonology and graphology not
only connect substance to form, they are
themselves aspects of form, patterns which on
occasions directly make substance meaningful
in a situation.
 Grammar has dominated the description of
form
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ROLE OF LINGUISTICS IN LITERARY
INTERPRETATION
‘Stylistics of word’ or lexical stylistics will
explore the expressive resources available in
the vocabulary of a language.
 It will explore the stylistic implications of such
phenomenon as word formation, synonymy,
ambiguity, or the contrast between vague and
precise, abstract and concrete, rare and
common terms, foreign words, etc.
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ROLE OF LINGUISTICS IN LITERARY
INTERPRETATION
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‘Stylistics of sentences’ or ‘syntactic stylistics’
will express the expressive values of syntax at
three superimposed planes: components of the
sentence (individual grammatical forms,
passages from one word-class to another),
sentence- structure (word order, negation etc.),
and the higher units into which single
sentences combine (direct, indirect and free
indirect speech, etc.)
ROLE OF LINGUISTICS IN LITERARY
INTERPRETATION
Eight kinds of temperaments: weak, delicate,
balanced, positive, strong, hybrid, subtle, and
defective.
 We can study an author’s mind or inner ideas
with the help of psycho-stylistics.
 Socio-stylistics too has a role to play. It studies
a literary text from the point of view of the
varieties of language.
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The student of style is to see language in literature
in relation to other functions of language and has
to keep the contextual meaning in mind as well.
 By code- switching and dialect switching as well
writers create literary effects – T.S. Eliot’s use of
Sanskrit in ‘The Waste land’
 So stylistics studies the psychic, social, linguistic,
literary, ideological circumstances of a literary text.
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SUMMARY
Linguistics leads to the development and
critical maintenance of a sensitive attitude to
language
 The problems of stylistic reconstruction
involves all aspects of language: sounds,
vocabulary, morphology, syntax and semantics.
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DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
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‘Discourse’ refers to any utterance which is
meaningful. These texts can be:
- written texts
- oral texts (‘speech’/’talk’)
- mixed written/oral texts (e.g. Internet chat)
Discourse does not depend on the size of a text
(“P” and “Ladies” can both be analysed as
discourse)
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Definitions of ‘discourse’
(a)
A set of terms, metaphors, allusions, ways
of talking, references and so on, which
constitute an object
(b)
A to-and-fro of exchanges in talk (or text)
that performs social actions
APPROACHES TO DISCOURSE
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Deborah Schiffrin “Approaches to Discourse”
(1994) singles out 6 major approaches to
discourse:
the speech act approach;
interactional sociolinguistics;
the ethnography of communication;
pragmatic approach;
conversation analysis;
variationist approach.
THE SCOPE OF DISCOURSE ANALYSIS
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Discourse analysis is not a discipline which exists on its
own. It is influenced by other disciplines and influences
them as well. It is a two-way process …
For this reason discourse analysis examines spoken and
written texts from all sorts of different areas (medical,
legal, advertising) and from all sorts of perspectives
(race, gender, power)
Discourse analysis has a number of practical
applications - for example in analysing communication
problems in medicine, psychotherapy, education, in
analysing written style etc.
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SUMMARY OF APPROACHES TO
DISCOURSE
Approaches to Studying Discourse
Focus of Research
Research Question
Structural
CA
Sequences of talk
Why say what at what
moment?
Variationist
Structural categories
within texts
Why that form?
Speech Acts
Communicative acts
How to do things
with words?
Ethnography of
Communication
Communication as cultural How does discourse
behaviour
reflect culture?
Interactional
Sociolinguistics
Social and linguistic
meanings created during
communication
What are they doing?
Pragmatics
Meaning in interaction
What does the
speaker mean?
Functional
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How do you analyse discourse?
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Various ways. Depends on what sort of
discourse you’re interested in.
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Constituting an object vs realising a social
action
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Why you might do Discourse Analysis
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- you get close to the data
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the data (eg video recordings) are of life as it’s lived
you uncover the subtle organisation of language, the
prime medium of our social lives (and selves)
You plug in to social practices that - at the grandest constitute reality and our place in it
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Other reasons why discourse analysis might
interest you
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it might be connected to your life (job, family,
friends and so on)
it can go on your cv
if you get interested in the subject you might want
to take it further (specialization)
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GENERAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN SPOKEN &
WRITTEN DISCOURSES
1. Grammatical intricacy
 2. Lexical density
 3. Nominalization
 4. Explicitness
 5. Contextualization
 6. Spontaneity
 7. Repetition, hesitations, and redundancy
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STRUCTURE OF CONVERSATION
According to Brown and Yule (1983) there are two main
forms of conversation:
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transactional – spoken language used to obtain goods
or services – also referred to as service encounters;
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interactional – spoken language used to allow people to
interact with each other – which features a phatic use of
language whose purpose is to establish an atmosphere
and allow people to socialise.
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Turn taking, Turn ending, Adjacency pairs, Tag
questions, preferred/dispreferred responses,
Face-saving, Face threatening acts,
THE COOPERATIVE- PRINCIPLE
The ‘rules ‘ of conversation were first formulated by the
Paul Grice (1975) as the Co-operative Principle. This
states that we interpret the language on the assumption
that a speaker is obeying the four maxims (known as
Grice’s Maxims) of:
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QUALITY (BEING TRUE)
QUANTITY (BEING BRIEF)
RELATION (BEING RELEVANT)
MANNER (BEING CLEAR)
Conversation is a flexible text negotiated
between the various participants in a
conversation.
 With the knowledge of Grice’s maxims, the
speakers and listeners support and evaluate
each other using known building blocks:
adjacency pairs and turns,
 Non-fluency features (voiced gap fillers),
 openers and closures
discourse markers to sign-post the structure.
This sign-posting causes the participants to be
aware of the conversation’s structure , enabling
the smooth progression from topic to topic and
from speaker to speaker.
At the same time, conversation also observes
the politeness principle, which in turn involves
issues of face.
CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS
Basic notions -Turn- taking
 Conversation is analysed in turns. One speaker
and then the next
 A turn consists of one or more turn
constructional units
 The end of a turn constructional unit is a point
during a turn when another speaker can
intervene
 This point is called a turn transitional relevant
point
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BASIC TURN TYPES
Adjacency pairs
One of the most noticeable things about conversation
is that certain classes of utterances conventionally
come in pairs.
Example:
 Question/answer
 Greeting/greeting
 Invitation/acceptance(declination)
 Offer/acceptance (refusal)
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THE ORGANIZATION OF REPAIRS
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Repair types
The repair system embodies a distinction between
1) the initiation of repair (marking something as a
source of trouble), and
2) the actual repair itself. There is also a distinction
between
1) repair initiated by self (the speaker who produced
the trouble source), and
2) repair initiated by other. Consequently, there are
four varieties of repair:
INTERRUPTIONS & OVER-LAPPING
Interruptions break the symmetry of the
conversational model: the interruption prevents
the first speaker from finishing his/her turn, at
the same time gaining a turn for oneself
(second speaker).
 Bennett (1981) : Overlap is when two voices
are going on at the same time.
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LANGUAGE VARIATION
Changes occur because they are natural – just
as human behaviour changes
 Language in the state of constant variation
because it is transmitted from one generation
to the next.
 Change slow but sure,
 Sometimes it is unnoticed & becomes
prominent over long period of time
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LANGUAGE VARIATION
Change neither for good, nor for bad, but just
for the suitability – just for need.
 Language change can be studied along two
lines – Diachronic and Synchronic
 Examples: Chaucer – Milton – T.S.Eliot
Old English – Middle – Modern English
Diachronic variations
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LANGUAGE VARIATION
Diachronic variations
 Meaning changed sometimes due to its
continuous use in particular context, Extension,
Euphemism, metathesis, spellings, syntax.
Synchronic Variations
Language contact, dialect, register
SYNCHRONIC VARIATIONS
Varieties of dialect
 The variety of language according to the user is
called Dialect.
 It is determined by a speaker’s social and
geographical background.
SYNCHRONIC VARIATIONS
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General American English and RP are two
different dialects of English. They differ in many
ways as shown below:
RP
Gen. American
Last
/La:st/
/Læst/
Dance
/da:ns/
/dæns/
SYNCHRONIC VARIATIONS
Register
 The same individual uses different varieties of
language depending upon the situation.
 Language according to the situation is called
‘Register’.
 Different registers – formal, informal,
linguistics, law, literary, commerce, science,
business etc.
SYNCHRONIC VARIATIONS
Classification of Registers
(i) Register according to field of discourse
(ii)Register according to the mode of discourse