Narrative Stylistics Notes PDF

# Narrative Stylistics - Narrative discourse: Connecting patterns of language to a series of events - Narrative plot: Abstract storyline, sequences - Narrative discourse: How the plot is narrated => Flashback, repetition => Represents the realized texts - Textual: Physical channel - Sociolinguistic...

# Narrative Stylistics - Narrative discourse: Connecting patterns of language to a series of events - Narrative plot: Abstract storyline, sequences - Narrative discourse: How the plot is narrated => Flashback, repetition => Represents the realized texts - Textual: Physical channel - Sociolinguistic mode: Historical, Cultural, Linguistic setting => Time & Place - Action & Events: How the development of the characters intertwines with the story - Point of view: The relationship between mode or the narration & narrator's pov - Textual structure: How narrative units are organized - Intertextuality: Reversed of allusion ## Metaphor - Connecting two concepts => Target domain / Source domain - Repeating metaphors => Idioms / Fixed expressions ## Metonymy - The part & the whole (synecdoche): A fresh pair of legs - A producer & the produced: Have you read the new Kate Atkinson? - A location & its institution: The Pentagon refuse to comment on the story. - The instrument & its user: The lead guitar has gone AWOL. - Meronymic agency: A part 'standing for' the whole => The voice explained. (the "voice" represents the teacher) ## Caricature - Distortion of some aspect of human appearance => It highlights specific personality traits or flaws, making a character appear larger than life or ridiculous ## Concretasation - Change an abstract thing to more palpable => Instead of saying "She loved him deeply," a story might show her knitting him a warm sweater during winter, despite her tired hands. ## Mixed Metaphor - A blend of two idioms=> He's burning the midnight oil at both ends. ## Extending - Expressing it through linguistic resources to introduce new conceptual elements from the source domain. ## Orientational Metaphors - They use the idea of space as a vehicle for tracking human emotion. => GOOD IS UP => Vertical - Metaphorical orientation => horizontal=> - a. The back - and - forth movement of emotions. (like in tennis) - b. The underlying conflict in the couple's relationship. ## Elaboration - Capturing an existing component of the source domain in an unusual or unconventional way. # Dialogue - Interaction works on two levels, with one level of discourse embedded inside another. - How the utterances that pass from one character to another become part of what the playwright 'tells' the audience. - 2 sets of interactive contexts: - 1. Fictional context surrounding the characters within the world of the play. - 2. 'Real' context framing the interaction between author and reader. - The features that mark social relations between people at the character level become messages about those characters at the level of discourse between author and reader/audience. ## Reported Speech - One character reports the words of another on stage => third layer of embedding. ## Soliloquy - Break down the layering pattern; the words of a character, while remaining 'unheard' by other interlocutors on the stage, are relayed directly to the reader/audience. - The assumptions we make about dialogue in the world of the play are predicated upon our assumptions about how dialogue works in the real world. # Contexts - **1. Physical context**: Actual setting in which interaction takes place. => - **2. Personal context**: Social and personal relationships of the interactants to one another. => social networks, group membership, the social and institutional roles of speakers and hearers, the relative status and social distance - **3. Cognitive context**: Shared and background knowledge held by participants in interaction. => speaker's world-view, cultural knowledge and past experiences ## Axis of Combination - Forms a structural frame along which units of dialogue are strung in => Structre ## Axis of Selection - Connects elements of discourse => Strategy / Tactical Nature of discourse ## Exchange - A back-and-forth interaction between two speakers, usually with one asking (initiation) and the other replying (response). ## Insertion Sequence - A brief interruption in a conversation to clarify or add information before continuing. ## Directness - Clarity and conciseness ## Indirectness - Politeness ## Conventionalized Indirectness - Grammatical form used for asking questions and not the one anticipated for commands or requests ## Structure - How it is organized in a linear fashion and how its various components are connected together. ## Strategy - The way speakers use different interactive tactics at specific points during a sequence of talk. => Selection / Direct to Indirect ## Metastatements - Statements about the conversation itself, often used to comment on, clarify, or guide the dialogue. => "Let's not argue about this anymore." # Transitivity - Experiential function: Use L to show what's going on of physical and abstract world / Represent patterns of experience through written or spoken texts. - Experiential function is a marker of style, because it emphasizes style as a choice. - Grammatical facility used for capturing experience = System of transitivity ## Transitivity: - The way meanings are encoded in the clause, and the way different types of process are represented. - **3 components of process**: - 1. **Process** => Verb phrase - 2. **Participants** => Noun phrase - 3. **Circumstances** => Prepositional & Adverb phrase - **6 types of process**: - **1. Material**: Doing - Actor & Goal => - I closed the door. - Physical world - Present continuous - **2. Mental**: Sensing - Consciousness= Cognition, reaction, perception - Sensor & Phenomenon => - Mary understood the story. - Simple present - **3. Behavioral process**: Physiological action - Behaver => - The student fell asleep. - **4. Verbalization process**: Saying - Sayer & Receiver & Verbiage (sth which is said) => - Mary told me the truth. - **5. Relational process**: Being in sense of establishing relationships - *3 Types of Relational process:* - 1. **Intensive**: A relationship of equivalence - 2. **Possessive**: x has y - 3. **Circumstantial**: has the full role of participant= x is at / is in / is with y. - *Attributive Vs. Identifying* - 1. **Attributive**: - Carrier = being described - Attribute = the quality - 2. **Identifying**: - Identified & Identifier=> - Joe is the best singer. - All Identifying processes are reversible. - **6. Existential process**: Sth exists / happens There... - Existent => - There has been an accident. - Existential process is like material process. - In Existential there is nominalization, by converting a verb to a noun. ## Transmission of Actions and Events: - The way character is developed through Semantic processes and participant roles - Meronymic agency # Holonymic agency - **Meronymic agency**: a part standing for the whole - **Holonymic agency**: the participant role is occupied by a complete being ## Transitivity Profile: - Regular pattern of transitivity choices # What is Stylistics? - Stylistics is a method of textual interpretation in which primacy of place is assigned to language. => Why language? Various forms, patterns and levels that constitute linguistic structure --> an important index of the function of the text - **Connection between stylistics and literature**: - 1. Creativity and innovation in language use should not be seen as the exclusive preserve of literary writing => advertising, journalism, popular music - 2. The techniques of stylistic analysis=> insights about linguistic structure and function & understanding literary texts - Stylistics: language is used as a function of texts in context, and that utterances (literary or otherwise) are produced in a time, a place, and in a cultural and cognitive context. - The more complete and context-sensitive the description of language, then the fuller the stylistic analysis that accrues. ## Purpose: - Explore creativity in language use - Enriches our way of thinking about the L - Tells us about the rules of L ## Principles: - **• Rigorous** => based on an explicit framework of analysis - **• Retrievable** => organized through explicit terms and criteria - **• Replicable** => methods should be sufficiently transparent as to allow other stylisticians to verify ## Foregrounding: - A form of textual patterning, motivated for literary-aesthetic purpose => Rhyme, Deviation, Repeation => Across & Within 'deviation from a norm': Breaking norms of language, structure, or content to grab attention. 'more of the same' / Repetition: Highlighting ideas through repeated patterns. ## Ostranenie: - A method of 'defamiliarisation' => Presenting familiar concepts in unusual ways to make readers see them differently. ## Internal Foregrounding: - Inside the text as a kind of deviation within a deviation. => A sudden switch from formal to casual tone within a narrative. ## Poetic Function: - 1. **Conative**: Focuses on persuading or influencing the receiver (e.g., commands). - 2. **Phatic**: Establishes or maintains communication (e.g., "Can you hear me?"). - 3. **Referential**: Conveys information or content (e.g., facts, descriptions). - 4. **Emotive**: Expresses the speaker's attitude or emotion (e.g., "Wow!"). - 5. **Poetic**: Highlights the form and aesthetic qualities of language, like rhyme or rhythm. => Projects the axis of selection to axis of combination. - 6. **Metalingual**: Explains or clarifies language itself (e.g., defining a word). ## Conceptual Metaphor: - Understanding one idea in terms of another, often abstract through concrete => Time is money. ## Levels of Language: - **Phonology/Phonetic**: How words are pronounced - **Graphology**: How we write Language - **Morphology**: How words are constructed - **Syntax / Grammar**: How words are combined to make phrases - **Lexical analysis / Lexicology**: The vocab of a L - **Semantics**: The meaning of words - **Pragmatics/Discourse analysis**: The meaning of L - Words are made up from smaller grammatical constituents known as morphemes. - **Sub. / Predictor / Complement** ## Truth Value: - Specifies the conditions under which a particular sentence may be regarded as true or false. ## Orientational Function of Language: - Deixis ## Gradability: - Adjectives can be graded by extending or modifying the degree or intensity of the basic quality which they express. => Use very to test it => They can compare =>comparative, superlative, equal and inferior relationships. ## Classifying Adj.: - Specify more fixed qualities relative to the noun they describe. - The way the grammar of English allows for material to be placed after the adjective in order to determine more narrowly its scope of reference. ## Tautology: - Say the same thing twice => War is war. ## Accents: - Distinguished through patterns of pronunciation # ## Dialects: - Distinguished by patterns in grammar and vocabulary. ## Register: - What a speaker or writer is doing with language at a given moment - 1. **Field**: The setting and purpose of the interaction. - 2. **Tenor**: the relationship between the participants in interaction - 3. **Mode**: the medium of communication => Written / Spoken ## Antilanguages: - Has the characteristics of drugs, sexual behaviours, crime. ## Rank Scale: - Grammatical units are ordered hierarchically according to their size. - Clause (The most important) -> Phrase -> Word -> Morpheme (The smallest) - **Sub / Predictor (verb) / Complement (object) / Adjunct (adverb)** ## Coordination: - Drawing together different entities => For, And, Nor, But, Or, Yet, and So ## Apposition: - Makes variable reference to the same entity => a noun phrase that follows another noun phrase and provides additional information about it - 'adversative' conjunction => but ## Subordination: - Where the subordinate clause is appended to a main clause => Although, if, since => Dependent clause + Independent ## Embedding => - Mary realised he had eaten his supper. => taking a unit at the rank of clause and squeezing it inside another clause. ## Equivalent Constituents: - When Adjunct / Subordinate clause is balanced on either side of subject predictor ## Trailing Constituents: - Units after Subject and Predicator ## Anticipatory Constituents: - Units before Subject and Predicator ## Various Clause Structure: - Normal - Imperative - Interrogative