Lettere e FilosofiaLaurea Magistale

2018-2019

WEEK 1 - LECTURE 1Dr. Margherita Dore

margherita.dore@gmail.com

ENGLISH 1Module A - Advanced Stylistics

Calendar: 30 hrs (12 lectures, 6 weeks)

Start date: Monday 4 March, 16.00-18.00 Room T21

Timetable: Monday, 16.00-18.00 Room T21Friday, 16.00-19.00 AULA T27

Office hour: Mondays, 15.00-16.00 or by appointmentBlog:http://www.lettere.uniroma2.it/it/contratto/dore-margherita

Important Information

Who is the Course for?

ü First Year Students (LM) and a number of otherstudents from other courses

The attendance of both the lettorato and this course is not compulsory but highly recommended….

Exam Information

The exam is in ENGLISH and it includes a

WRITTEN an ORAL test

• Language C1 Level (written exam)

• Advanced Stylistics (oral exam; Module A) and

Stylistics and Translation (oral exam; Module B)

However, please wait to further details…

IMPORTANTE: l’esame orale può essere sostenuto solo dopo averesuperato quello scritto.

Study BooksLeech, G. N. and Short, M. H. (2007) Style In Fiction, 2nd edition. London: Longman.C. Gregoriou, English Literary Stylistics, 2009.Simpson, P. (2004) Stylistics: A Resource Book for Students. London: Routledge (Selected chapters only).

Novels (choose one from this list; only ONE if attending both Module A+B):Huddon, Mark (2003) The curious incident of the dog in the night-time, London: Penguin. Donoghue, Emma (2010), Room, London, Picador.Sebold, Alice (2002), Lovely Bones, London, Picador.

All books can easily be purchased online

You MUST bring the novel you choose toEVERY Friday class.

Translation Task

Towards the end of the course (Module A + Module B)

students will be asked to take a translation task on aVOLUNTARY BASIS. They will be given a mark that will count

towards their final mark of the exam.

More details will follow during the course.

Course IntroductionThis Advanced Stylistics Course focuses on the linguisticanalysis of texts, dealing particularly with the relationshipbetween linguistic choice and the reader’s interpretation(s).

The analysis will concentrate primarily on literary texts butother text types (e.g. newspaper articles, advertisementsand political speeches) will be also considered.

The course aims to provide Students with a set of analyticalTOOLS that they can use to examine texts (for example,their words, sounds, structures, or interactive aspects) andreflect on them in relation to the context within which theyare created.

Course Outline• Style and Stylistics. What is this all about?• Brief History of Stylistics and Literary Style • Mainly POETRY• Linguistic choice, style and meaning• Creativity: words and phrases • Foregrounding, patterns, deviations• Stylistics Devices: Rhetorical Devices, Figures of Speech• The grammar of simple sentences• Mainly PROSE• Style and style variation• Complex sentences and grammar• Discourse structure and point of view • Speech presentation • Mind Style and Prose analysis • Mainly DRAMA• Conversational structure and character(s)• Reading between the lines: meaning • Shared knowledge• Other Text Types• Advertisements, newspapers and political speeches

Style & StylisticsHere we will be considering the STYLE OF TEXTS with asystematic attention to what words or structures are chosen inpreference to others.

Style is here thought as “the way in which language is usedin a given context, by a given person, for a given purpose,and so on” (Leech & Short 2007: 9) and as ‘the linguisticcharacteristics of a particular text’ (Leech & Short 2007: 11)

Stylistics (or the study of style) investigates how readersinteract with the language of (mainly literary) texts inorder to explain how we understand and are affectedby texts when we read them.

Brief History of stylisticsStylistics explores how readers interact with the language of (mainly literary) texts in order to explain how we understand and are affected by texts when we read them. Stylistics draws from Linguistics and Psychology as developed in the second half of the twentieth century.

The following books represent its beginnings: • Fowler, Roger (ed.) (1966) Essays on Style in Language. London:

Routledge and Kegan Paul.• Freeman, Donald C. (ed.) (1971) Linguistics and Literary Style. New York:

Holt, Rinehart & Winston.• Leech, Geoffrey N, (1969) A Linguistic Guide to English Poetry. London:

Longman.• Sebeok, Thomas A. (1960) Style in Language. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT

Press. Most importantly:Roman Jakobson 'Closing Statement: Linguistics and Poetics' (in Sebeok 1960: 350-77),https://monoskop.org/images/8/84/Jakobson_Roman_1960_Closing_statement_Linguistics_and_Poetics.pdf

Brief History of Stylistics (1 of 2)Literary Criticism in Britain: Practical Criticism: moving from studying authors (19th

Century) to studying texts (20th Century) and how readers were effected by those texts; in the USA New Criticism. They shared two important features: (i) an emphasis on the language of the text rather than its

author; (ii) Paying very close attention to the language of the texts

when reading them, describing how readers understood them, were affected by them and then quoted them (Claim and Quote)

Brief History of Stylistics (2 of 2)In the early years of the 20th century, the members of the Formalist Linguistic Circle in Moscow (usually called the Russian Formalists), like I. A. Richards, also favoured the analysis of the language of the text in relation to psychological effects of that linguistic structure.

Roman Jakobson left Moscow at the time of the Russian Revolution and moved to Prague, where he became a member of the Prague Structuralist circle. when Czechoslovakia also became communist, he moved to the USA.

Both circles contributed to develop the so called foregrounding theory. This view suggested that some parts of texts had more effect on readers than others in terms of interpretation, because the textual parts were linguistically deviant or specially patterned in some way, thus making them psychologically salient (or 'foregrounded') for readers.

Literary Style• (i) Style is a way in which language is used• (ii) Therefore style consists in choices made from the repertoire of the

language.• (iii) A style is defined in terms of a domain of language use (e.g., what

choices are made by a particular author, in a particular genre, or in a particular text).

• (iv) Style is relatively transparent or opaque: transparency implies paraphrasability; opacity implies that a text cannot be adequately paraphrased and that interpretation of the text depends greatly on the creative imagination of the reader.

• (v) Stylistic choice is limited to those aspects of linguistic choice which concern alternative ways of rendering the same subject matter.

• (vi) Stylistics (or the study of style) has typically been concerned with literary language.

• (vii) Literary stylistics is typically concerned with explaining the relation between style and literary or aesthetic function

(Leech and Short 2007: 31)

Linguistic choice, style and meaningHow great writing happens - Genius, or the careful choice of language?

I wander’d lonely as a Cloud That floats on high o’er Vales and Hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden Daffodils . . .

(Wordsworth 1804)I was strolling along When all of a sudden I saw a bunch of lovely Daffodils

(maybe you and I)

Linguistic choice, style and meaning

John Keats worked on various versions of this poem. Oneword in particular changed in the first and the final version ofthe poem. Which one do you think is Keats's final choice?

Try to work out why the choice you prefer is best:

closeAs though a rose should and be a bud again

shut

(John Keats, 'The Eve of St Agnes, stanza 27, line 9)

Linguistic choice, style and meaningAs though a rose should shut and be a bud again

So Keats rejects his first choice, ‘close’ for its synonym, ‘shut’. A firstreaction might be that it doesn’t really matter which word he chose. Afterall, synonyms have the same meaning.

However, for most people the verb ‘shut’ is a faster action than ‘close’(quiet). Hence, poetry should better fit the calmness of ‘close’…

Why, then, did Keats cross out ‘close’ and write ‘shut’?

‘Close’ rhymes with ‘rose’; ‘shut’ rhymes with ‘bud’

Levels of Language

Sounds/WritingShapes

i.e. Phonology (speech) i.e. Graphology (writing)

Grammar i.e. Syntax and Morphology

Meaning e.g. Lexis ('word meaning') e.g. Semantics ('sentence meaning')

The Sounds/Letters LevelSpoken language physically consists of distinctive speech sounds (phonemes) which make up words

Phonemes are sounds which distinguish one word from another (e.g. /bet/ vs. /pet/ or /bit/)

The written equivalent to the phonemic or phonological level in speech is usually called graphology.

1. Girls like cats. (/kats/)2. Girls like hats. (/hats/)

The Grammatical LevelGrammar is the form by which we position and group the elements that go to make up sentences:

Syntax is the order in which words and phrases come in the sentence. Sentence (1) below uses exactly the same words as sentence (2) but the different syntax results in radically different meanings:

Ø Girls like cats. S V O

Ø Cats like girls.S V O

Morphology accounts for the building blocks ofmeaning inside words.

The Meaning Level: Semantics

Different meaning 1. cats. (/kats/)2. hats. (/hats/)

Different meaning (connotations and associations)1. Girls like cats2. Girls like feline quadrupeds

When we changed the syntax in sentence (1) to producesentence (2) we also changed the meaning of thesentence in dramatic fashion. This sort of sentencemeaning is included in the aspect of meaning usuallycalled semantics

The Meaning Level: PragmaticsPragmatics is the study of meaning in context.

[Assume that the context is an article about the similarities anddifferences between boys and girls.] The favourite animal for boys is the dog. Girls like cats. Here the meaning of the second sentence is the same as in (1), butadditionally it also has to be interpreted as an example of adifference between boys and girls.

Now, imagine a conversation between two teenage boys: A. Cats are stupid. What use is a cat?B. Girls like cats.

Probable additional meaning: 'you could increase your chancesof getting a girl to like you by saying that you like cats'.

Textual analysis 1 - InstructionsIn the next slide, I report a poem by Stephen Crane, but witha choice of three possible alternatives in four places in the poem. Preferably working with some other students, your task is:

üto work out, in each of the four places, which choice that you think Crane actually made, and üto work out why you think your choice is preferable, taking into account the effects at different linguistic levels that one choice or another has in relation to the rest of the poem.

It is important that you work carefully at what you think the best choices are, and why, as you will then get more out of comparing your views, and so learn more.

Textual analysis 1on place

I stood upon a high mountainin hill

And saw, below, many devils Running, leaping

livingAnd indulging in sin.

carousing

One looked up, grinning,

"Comrade! Brother!"And said "Join us!"

"Help me!" Stephen Crane

Peer, W (1988) 'How to do things with texts: Towards a pragmatic foundation for the teaching oftexts', in Short, M (ed) Reading, Analysing and Teaching Literature, 267-297.

Textual analysis 2 - KEY

I stood upon a high place,And saw, below, many devils

Running, leapingAnd carousing in sin.

One looked up, grinning,And said 'Comrade! Brother!’

You can hear it on YouTube at:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s5c3Ey0dT4

Lettere e FilosofiaLaurea Magistale

2018-2019

WEEK 1 - LECTURE 2Dr. Margherita Dore

margherita.dore@gmail.com

ENGLISH 1Module A - Advanced Stylistics

20/03/19 Pagina 26

Overview• Creativity: Word classes• Open Class Words• Defining Open Class Words• Closed Class Words• Manipulating nouns• Manipulating verbs• Manipulating adverbs

Creativity: Word classes

Words and phrases in English are the basic building blocks of English grammar.

We will see how writers can manipulate these language levels in order to create special meanings and effects.

Word ClassesTest your intuitions on the following words. What is the most basic word class for each of the following words?

Noun Verb Adjective Adverb

Run

chair

yellow

near

Word Classes

Noun Verb Adjective Adverb

Run X

chair X

yellow X

near X

Word ClassesWe can make a basic distinction between open class (lexical) andclosed class words:

Open Class Words

Open class words are extremely large in number and about90% of the words in our personal vocabularies belong to thisclass. It is possible to coin new words in this Class:

black + box - blackbox (N/V) – blackboxed (V)

And we can combine meaningful parts of words(morphemes) to generate new words:

micro à microscope - microchip

Defining Open Class Words

Defining Open Class WordsThe meaning of nouns is that they refer to concrete objects in the outside world. Internal form: sing/plur. Function: it is the head of a noun phrase The boy

The meaning of adjectives is that they ‘refer’ to the properties of nouns. Internal form: basic, comparative, superlative form. Function: They act as pre-modifiers to the head nouns of noun phrases: a big car

The meaning of verbs is that they ‘refer’ to actions. Internal form: present I go , he goes. Verbs always function inside verb phrases, either as the main (head) verb, or as an auxiliary to it, as in: has been drinking

The meaning of an adverb is that they ‘modify’ or specify a verb. Internal form: basic, comparative, superlative form: quickly, more quickly, most quickly. Function: the head of an adverb phrase: very quickly, unbelievably slowly

Closed Class WordsClosed class words are referred to as grammatical or function words, andthey serve to link up open class words in longer meaningful structures:

Types of Closed Class Words Symbol Examples

Determiner/ article (d) the, a, this, that, some, any, allPronoun (pn) you, me, she, them, some, it, us Preposition (p) in, of, on, at, to, under, fromConjunction (cj) and, but, or, if...then, althoughAuxiliary Verb (aux) can, will, may, is, has, does, shallEnumerator (e) one, three, first, second, eighteenthInterjection (ij)

oh, ah, ugh, hey, oops, gadzooks, f***!

ExampleNow look at this sentence. Try and classify its composing elements:

The horses ran near their stable.

Three questions to help identify what class a wordbelongs to:• What kind of MEANING does it have? - What does it

refer to or express? • What is its FUNCTION? - its purpose or role relative to

other words within a phrase, clause or sentence? • What is its FORM? - its morphological structure (‘root’

and suffix, inflections etc.)

Exercise 1- KEY

The horses ran near their stable.Art N V ADV Pos.ADJ N

‘Horses’, ‘ran’, ‘near’ and ‘stable’ are open-classwords.

‘The’ and ‘their’ are closed-class words.

20/03/19

Inflectional vs Derivational Morphemes• Derivational Morphemes are used to createnew words from old ones (they change themeaning or part of speech)e.g. to buy -> buyer; to sell -> seller;

quick -> quickly

• Inflectional Morphemes mark grammaticalcategories (do not change the meaning or part ofspeech)e.g. tall -> taller; work -> worked

20/03/19

DerivationYou take an old world and make a new one

20/03/19

Compounding

Avocado Pig

You take an old world and make a new one

20/03/19

ClippingCan you reconstruct the longer word?

20/03/19

Acronyms

20/03/19

Blends

20/03/19

BackformationA word that is formed from an existing word which looks as though it is a derivative, typically by removal of a suffix

20/03/19

Invention

20/03/19 Pagina 45

Borrowing and calque

Manipulating Nouns. . . and concurrently simultaneously what is more for reasonsunknown in spite of the strides of physical culture the practice ofsports such as tennis football running cycling swimming flyingfloating riding gliding conating camogie skating tennis of allkinds dying flying sports of all sorts autumn summer winterwinter tennis of all kinds hockey of all sorts penicillin andsuccedanea in a word I resume and concurrently simultaneouslyfor reasons unknown to shrink and dwindle in spite of the tennis Iresume flying gliding golf over nine and eighteen holes tennis ofall sorts in a word for reasons unknown in Feckham PeckhamFulham Clapham . . .

(Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot, pp. 43-4)

Manipulating Verbs[Context: The extract below is from near the beginning of a novel about a man who is drowning. He has apparently managed to cling to a piece of rock and is struggling not to be swept off it by the sea.]

His legs kicked and swung sideways. His head ground againstrock and turned. He scrabbled in the white water with both handsand heaved himself up. He spat and snarled. He glimpsed thetrenches with their thick layers of dirty white, a gull slipping awayover a green sea. Then he was forcing himself forward. He fell intothe next trench, saw a jumble of broken rock, slid and stumbled.He was going down hill and he fell part of the way.

(William Golding , Pincher Martin, p. 42)

Manipulating Adjectives[Below is a passage from Hotel du Lac by Anita Brookner.Consider the effects of the adjectives in the extract , which I have highlighted for you]

The Hotel du Lac (Famille Huber) was a stolid anddignified building, a house of repute, a traditionalestablishment, used to welcoming the prudent, the well-to-do, the retired, the self-effacing, the respected patrons ofan earlier era of tourism. It had made little effort to smartenitself up for the passing trade which it had always despised.Its furnishings, although austere, were of excellent quality,its linen spotless, its service impeccable.

(Anita Brookner, Hotel du Lac, p 13)

Manipulating Adverbs

Now the party was noisily in full swing. Many students were singing raucously. Others lurched drunkenly here and there. Then, suddenly, there was a horrifyingly loud noise outside.

It is quite difficult to find a text with a large amount ofadverbs in it. The adverb is the least frequent and mostoptional, grammatically speaking, of the four major wordclasses.

Textual Analysis

Based on individual readings.

1. Let’s look and discuss the incipit (i.e. opening words) of the three books you can choose from.

2. Then let’s try and work on the textual analysis by looking at open and closed class words.

3. Lastly, let’s look at any interesting linguistic items (any compounds, blends, inventions, etc.?)

The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time It was 7 minutes after midnight. The dog was lying on the grass in the middle of the lawn in front of Mrs. Shears's house. Its eyes were closed. It looked as if it was running on its side, the way dogs run when they think they are chasing a cat in a dream. But the dog was not running or asleep. The dog was dead. There was a garden fork sticking out of the dog. The points of the fork must have gone all the way through the dog and into the ground because the fork had not fallen over. I decided that the dog was probably killed with the fork because I could not see any other wounds in the dog and I do not think you would stick a garden fork into a dog after it had died for some other reason, like cancer, for example, or a road accident. But I could not be certain about this. I went through Mrs. Shears's gate, closing it behind me. I walked onto her lawn and knelt beside the dog. I put my hand on the muzzle of the dog. It was still warm. The dog was called Wellington. It belonged to Mrs. Shears, who was our friend. She lived on the opposite side of the road, two houses to the left. Wellington was a poodle. Not one of the small poodles that have hairstyles but a big poodle. It had curly black fur, but when you got close you could see that the skin underneath the fur was a very pale yellow, like chicken. I stroked Wellington and wondered who had killed him, and why.

The Lovely Bones

Always, Glen

Inside the snow globe on my father's desk, there was a penguin wearing a red-and-white-striped scarf. When I was little my father would pull me into his lapand reach for the snow globe. He would turn it over, letting all the snow collecton the top, then quickly invert it. The two of us watched the snow fall gentlyaround the penguin. The penguin was alone in there, I thought, and I worried forhim. When I told my father this, he said, "Don't worry, Susie; he has a nice life.He's trapped in a perfect world."

OneMy name was Salmon, like the fish; first name, Susie. I was fourteen when I wasmurdered on December 6, 1973. In newspaper photos of missing girls from theseventies, most looked like me: white girls with mousy brown hair. This wasbefore kids of all races and genders started appearing on milk cartons or in thedaily mail. It was still back when people believed things like that didn't happen.

RoomToday I’m five. I was four last night going to sleep in Wardrobe, but when I wake up in Bed in the dark I’m changed to five, abracadabra. Before that I was three, then two, then one, then zero. “Was I minus numbers?”“Hmm?” Ma does a big stretch.“Up in Heaven. Was I minus one, minus two, minus three—?”“Nah, the numbers didn’t start till you zoomed down.”“Through Skylight. You were all sad till I happened in your tummy.”“You said it.” Ma leans out of Bed to switch on Lamp, he makes everything light up whoosh.I shut my eyes just in time, then open one a crack, then both.“I cried till I didn’t have any tears left,” she tells me. “I just lay here counting the seconds.”“How many seconds?” I ask her.“Millions and millions of them.”“No, but how many exactly?”“I lost count,” says Ma.“Then you wished and wished on your egg till you got fat.”She grins. “I could feel you kicking.”“What was I kicking?”“Me, of course.”I always laugh at that bit.

20/03/19 Pagina 54

What we covered so far• Leech, G. N. and Short, M. H. (2007) Style In Fiction, 2nd

edition. London: Longman (Study Ch. 1)

• Gregoriou, C. English Literary Stylistics, 2009 (Study pp.

1-5; Ch. 1, you can skip pp.9-17)

• Simpson, P. (2004) Stylistics: A Resource Book forStudents. London: Routledge. (Study Sections A1-A2)

Please, also read at least the first chapter of the bookyou have chosen for next Friday!