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Literature As Text Powerpoint

This document discusses linguistic deviations found in literature. It provides examples of deviations in the use of definite articles, categorization rules, sub-categorization rules, and selection restriction rules. Specific examples are given from poems by Yeats, Browning, Eliot, and Owen to illustrate how authors violate grammar rules to impart effects. The document also discusses how Mick Short analyzed deviations at various linguistic levels from discoursal to phonological in works like Finnegans' Wake and poems. Examples of semantic, lexical, grammatical, morphological, and phonological/graphological deviations are provided.

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115 views

Literature As Text Powerpoint

This document discusses linguistic deviations found in literature. It provides examples of deviations in the use of definite articles, categorization rules, sub-categorization rules, and selection restriction rules. Specific examples are given from poems by Yeats, Browning, Eliot, and Owen to illustrate how authors violate grammar rules to impart effects. The document also discusses how Mick Short analyzed deviations at various linguistic levels from discoursal to phonological in works like Finnegans' Wake and poems. Examples of semantic, lexical, grammatical, morphological, and phonological/graphological deviations are provided.

Uploaded by

latif ur rahman
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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You are on page 1/ 9

UAP 3 Literature as TEXT

Presented by Nassera Senhadji

1
Unit Objectives

This unit presents different examples of linguistic deviations:


The deviation in the Use of the Definite Article, in
categorization-rules, in sub-categorisation rules, in selection
Restriction Rules. Literature as text is to point out the nature
of the deviation .

2
Literature as Text

The deviation in the Use of the Definite Article

Leda and the Swan

A sudden blow: the great wings beating still


Above the staggering girl, the thighs caressed
By the dark webs, her nape caught in his bill
He holds her helpless breast upon his breast.
W.B Yeats( Widdowson, 1975,p. And Halliday, 2002,p.10-11)

the nominal groups although they have the structure M.H.Q (Modifier
Headword Qualifier) do not fulfil the characteristic of cataphora as a self-
contained reference to something specific but refer to something outside
the nominal group and must therefore be either anaphoric or homophonic.

Categorisation rules:
Ethel was boying her hair in the bathroom;
Maggie has boyed her dolls again.
3
Sub-categorisation rules:
At noon I scaled along the house so as far as the coal-house door. (Widdowson, 1975, p.
16).

Selection restriction rules :


There is another kind of rule violation extremely common in literary writing: some
verbs only take animate subject and others only animate object and again for other verbs,
both the subject and the object can be animate; speaking more technically there exist
certain selection restriction rules or collocation rules in the language description which
make the following sentences deviant and impossible:

The thistle saw the gardener


The gardener hurt the thistle
The thistle assaulted the cauliflower.

These sentences can be corrected by the following ones:

The gardener saw the thistle.


The thistle hurt the gardener.
The gardener assaulted the housemaid. (Idem)

4
Device of Personification:
H.G Widdowson shows how much recurrent and common this violation of
selection restriction or collocation rules are in literary writing. He gives us the
examples of Browning, Eliot, Swinburne and Owen who all used them:

The rain set early in tonight,


The sullen wind was soon awake,
It tore the elm tops down for spite,
And did its best to vex the lake

Browning (in Widdowson, 1975, p. 18)


The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window panes
The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window panes.
Eliot(Idem,p.18).
The south west wind and the west-wind sing
(Swinburne)(Idem)

5
There was a whispering in my hearth,
A sigh of the coal,
Grown wistful of a former earth
It might recall
Owen (Idem, p. 18)

In these quotations, authors purposefully violate selection restriction


rules and give the feature of animacy (or / + animate) to nouns which are
specified as inanimate (or / - animate) in the description of the language
system. Not only are inanimate nouns given the feature of animacy but also
that of human beings as in all the quotations cited above except that of Eliot.
It is this variability in the patterns to impart a certain effect that is so
conspicuous of literary style and that is communicated in the writers
quotations above.

6

His conclusion is that it is common to find sentences in literature which
will not be generated by grammatical rules. Specifying the nature of the
deviation of these sentences is possible by referring to the base rules of
deep structure, like category rules, sub-categorisation rules and selection
restriction rules and to
the transformational rules which derive different structures from a single
base:
A page in crimson clad
A page / a page is clad in crimson
A page who is clad in crimson
a page clad in crimson
(Idem, p.23)

And when an author wants to impart an archaic tone to his poetry, he will use in
crimson before clad and so we obtain:

a page in crimson clad.(idem, p.23).

Several examples were given to illustrate the different kinds of deviations we could find in
literary texts and they mainly consist of what we have illustrated above under category rules,
sub-categorisation rules, selection restriction rules and transformational rules.

7
Whereas H.G Widdowson mainly resorts to grammatical deviations, Mick Short
is going to unveil many more deviations occurring at all linguistic levels from
discoursal to phonological levels:
1) Discoursal level:Ex: Finnegans Wake by James Joyce or a speech beginning
with: And in conclusion
2)Semantic deviation: Dylan Thomas Light breaks where no sun shines.
3)Lexical deviation: ex : The boys are dreaming wicked or of the bucking
Ranches of the night and the jollyrodgered sea
(functional conversion from one grammatical class to another)
4) Grammatical deviation: Little enough I sought :
But a word compassionate( Ernest Dowson, Exchanges)
5) Morphological Deviation: museyroom is an invented morpheme which comes
from to muse to think a little and y gives a diminutive connotation to a word
such as doggy or potty so a museyroom is where one muses a little which can
be substituted for museum.

8
6) Phonological and graphological deviation:
Think you are in
Heaven?
Well- youll soon be
in H
E
L
L- ( Michael Horovitz, Man-to-man Blues)

(N.B: All the above examples are extracted from both H.G Widdowson in Stylistics and
the Teaching of Literature ( 1975) and Mick Short in Exploring the language of
Poems, Plays and novels ( 1996).

Thank You!

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