Stylistic Syntax.
♦ Topics for Reports and Discussion
1. Syntactic stylistic means based on compression.
2. Syntactic stylistic means (SSM) based on recurrence.
3. SSM based on inverted word order.
4. SSM based on transposition.
5. Syntactic convergence. Stream of consciousness technique.
6.Spatial Structures.
7.The perspective.
♦ Lecture Digest
The material of the lecture and seminars embraces the information on what is traditionally called “figures of speech”. We examine the expressive values of syntax at three superimposed levels (planes): 1) components of the sentence; 2) sentence structure; 3) the higher units into which single sentences combine.
We offer the following classification of syntactic stylistic means (SSM): SSM grouped under compression (omission of one or more parts of the sentence): ellipsis, one-member sentences, decomposition (detachment),asyndeton, aposiopesis (Break-in-the Narrative); 2) SSM based on recurrence: anaphora, epiphora, framing, anadiplosis (doubling, linking or reduplication), polysyndeton,parallel constructions, antithesis moulded in parallelism, syntactic tautology; 3) SSM grouped under Inversion: inversion, chiasmus (reversed parallelism). It should be noted that chiasmus, created by the cross arrangement of the lexical elements, may or may not contain inversion in its basis: the lexical chiasmus would rather contain the normal word order, as in much quoted epigram by G. Byron: «In the days of old men made the manners; manners now make men»; 4) SSM grouped under Transposition (i.e. the use of syntactic structures in unusual denotative meanings and/or with additional connotations): rhetorical questions, litotes.
Syntactic Convergence (called by V. Kukharenko «semantically false chains») is regarded as heaping up elements in similar functions, united by the same syntactic relations, where the last element falls out defeating the reader's expectancy. The phenomenon has been investigated as «many-member coordination row» (многочленный сочиненный ряд).
Stream of consciousness is treated as a verbal transcription of the movement of thought, such technique of presenting events in verbal art when the subconscious prevails over the conscious. It is a writer's attempt to set down the language of free association (J. Joyce, V. Wolf, J. Dos Passos, W, Faulkner).
Spatial structures. The perspective (point of view).
♦ Extension
A text is viewed as a stretch of language complete in itself and of some considerable extent: a business letter, a leaflet, a news report, a recipe, etc. There exist “small-scale” texts (P. Verdonk) such as public notices like “Keep off the grass”, “Keep left”, “Danger”, etc. These minimal texts being meaningful in themselves do not need a particular structural patterning with other language units, they are complete as terms of communicative meaning. For the expression of its meaning, a text is dependent on its use in an appropriate context.
The contextualization of a text occurs when the reader reconstructs the writer’s intended message – i.e. in an act of discourse. In whatever form it comes, a reader (or hearer) will search the text for cues or signals that may help to reconstruct the writer’s discourse. The inference of discourse meaning is a matter of “negotiation” between writer and reader in a contextualized social interaction.
According to P. Verdonk, a text can be realized by any piece of language as long as it is found to record a meaningful discourse when it is related to a suitable context of use.
In a literary discourse (text) we have to bring about an interaction between the semantic meanings of the linguistic items of the text and the pragmatic (complementary, inferred from the interplay of semantic meaning with context) meanings these items take on in a context of use.
It should be noted that the context of literary discourse is different, it is dissociated from the immediacy of social contact.
Literary discourse represents a world that “refuses to be categorized and pigeon-holed”, unlike the social world we live in (P. Verdonk).
Perspective. Spatial Structures: the section bears a most traditional character. Within the set of syntactic problems we also consider a) linguistic elements participating in forming the author’s point of view (perspective), and b) role of prepositions in verbalization of spatial structures.
The perspective (or point of view) represents the author’s attitude to or his sentiment about the events described. Identification of a perspective also refers to cognitive procedures, i.e. certain (individual) schemes of text analysis, as we make sense of a text by relating it to a context of our knowledge, emotions and experience.
The linguistic cues for identification of a perspective are called deictics, which means “pointing” or “showing”. Following P. Verdonk (2003) we distinguish three types of deictics: 1) place deictics: adverbs (here/there), prepositional phrases (in front of, behind), determines or pronouns (this/that), deictic verbs (came/go); 2) time deictics (now/then; yesterday/tomorrow), present of past tense of full verbs and of auxiliaries; 3) person deictics (I/you).
Ways of conceptualizing spatial structures; two subsystems: 1) a matrix or framework; 2) an object and its boundaries. The three forms of spatial properties: 1) an object exhibiting the spatial properties in itself; 2) a spatial property with respect to another; 3) spatial properties of ensemble.
In literary criticism, stream of consciousness is defined as a literary technique that seeks to portray an individual’s point of view by giving the written equivalent of the character’s thought process, either in a loose interior monologue, or in connection to his or her sensory reactions to the events. SC writing is characterized by associative (or dissociative) leaps in syntax and punctuation, tracing a character’s fragmentary way of thinking or his/her feelings.
The writing style of SC is often characterized as wandering, unstable, harsh, fast-paced and introspective. It often focuses on sensations of our bodies and on the objects around us, memories of past experiences and distant events, feelings of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, desires and aversions and other emotional conditions together with determinants of the will in every variety of permutation and combination. The technique is widely used in music and cinema (stream of consciousness rapping in music, e.g.).
1. What is the perspective and what are the linguistic cues for its identification in the text?
2. How do we conceptualize spatial structures?
3. What are the three forms of spatial properties (give the examples).
4. How do you understand a stream of consciousness technique?
♦ List of Works Recommended
1. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. M., 2010. Section Stylistic Syntax.
2. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Сов List of Works Recommended
1. Galperin I.R. Stylistics. M., 2010. Section Stylistic Syntax.
2. Арнольд И.В. Стилистика. Современный английский язык. М., 2006. С. 217-269: гл. IV. Синтаксическая стилистика.
3. Shakhovsky V.I. English Stylistics. M., 2008. PP. 117-130: Lecture 9: The Stylistics of English Syntax.
4. Verdonk P. Stylistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003. The Perspective.
♦ Exercises