Style as Choice Much of our everyday experience is shaped and defined by actions and events, thoughts and perceptions,

and it is an important function of the system of language that it is able to account for these various goings on in the world (Simpson, 2004: 22). Language must be able to account for the things we see and experience. Construal of Experience The way in which a person construes their world experiences will be organised by (and reflected in) the grammar. The grammar of a language can be visualised as a network of systems (Halliday and Matthiessen, 2004: 23). Each system represents a set of alternatives, which would suggest that in any language there are certain choices available for construing experiences in different ways. Different ways of saying the same thing (1): Land Rover closed the factory on Tuesday. The factory was closed by Land Rover on Tuesday. The factory was closed on Tuesday. The factory closed on Tuesday.

Different ways of saying the same thing (2): Gordon Brown increased taxes. Taxes were increased by Gordon Brown. Taxes were increased. Taxes increased. Systemic Functional Grammar Halliday describes experience as consisting of ...a flow of events, or goings-on (2004: 170) and suggests that the grammar of a clause organises these goings-on into: PARTICIPANTS the things or people that are involved in the event. PROCESSES the verbal group which tells us about the event. CIRCUMSTANCES the adverbial or prepositional group which provides more detail regarding the ...time, space, cause, [and] manner (ibid.) in which the event took place. This is known as the ideational metafunction. The question to ask: Who does what to whom under what circumstances? Identify the participant(s), process, and circumstance in the following:

The chair collapsed The water damaged the carpet The president arrived by train

The dog bit him on the ankle

Identify the participant(s), process, and circumstance in the following: Participant Process The chair collapsed Participant The water Process Participant damaged the carpet Circumstance by train Participant him Circumstance on the ankle

Participant Process The president arrived Participant The dog Process bit

Categories of Process and Participant Material processes Mother made a fruit cake

Material processes construe doing; they answer the question What did X do? or What happened?. The Actor is the doer of the process. The Goal is the thing affected by the process. Q: Can you think of any other material processes? Categories of Process and Participant Mental processes (cognition, perception) Jon noticed the scratch on the wall

Mental processes encode the inner world of cognition and perception. The Sensor is the doer of the process and MUST be human, or at least a conscious participant. The Phenomenon is the thing which is felt, thought, wanted, or perceived. Q: Can you think of any other mental processes? Material processes vs. mental processes To sum up: Material processes are those which relate to outer experience and usually describe an event or action (work, give, go). Mental processes are those which relate to inner experience the things going on inside ourselves in the world of consciousness and usually describe emotions, thoughts or perceptions (see, know, think). Activity Read the passage taken from Joseph Conrads The Secret Agent. The scene depicts the murder of Mr Verloc by his wife. The event comes at the end of a chapter describing Mrs Verlocs reaction to the news that her brother Stevie is dead and that Mr Verloc, as she sees it, caused his death (Kennedy, 1892). First, highlight the processes (realised through the verbs) that are used to describe the murder. Are they material or mental (perception/cognition) processes? Create two lists. Second, look at the participants which relate to those processes. What do you notice? How does the grammar affect your interpretation of the text? What could you say about the following lines all refer to Mr Verloc? he was content he waited

he expired ...the time to move either hand or foot ...turning slightly on his side ...without stiffing a limb elaborate a plan taste the flavour of death take in the full meaning of the portent hear the creaky plank not see that (see) the moving shadow of an arm recognise the limb and the weapon STYLE AS CHOICE Choice is determined by purpose. Linguistic form is not absolutely controlled by the concepts we want to express. Style in its most general sense is a specific characteristic of human activity arising as a result of choice, within the accepted norms, of a definite mode or manner of conducting this activity. Style is indicative of the actors social role, of the social group to which s/he belongs or strives to belong, as well as of his/her individual features and psychological state. Choice is determined by the parameters of the speech situation, by considerations of convention, and is therefore very much a matter of how the addressee is expected to decode the message or how he or she actually decodes it. Examples: Each struggle of party was marked with blood and death: bold and hardened adventurers seized the helm of power, whose only aim at competition was to outvie each other in enormity, and alternately did the Jacobins and Girondists blaze like firebrands of the earth. Louisa Stanhope, The Nun of Santa Maria, 1818 It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other wayin short, the period was so far like the present period, that some of its noisiest authorities insisted on its being received, for good or for evil, in the superlative degree of comparison only. Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities, 1859 For many revolutionaries in the world the French Revolution was considered as the model and for many counter revolutionaries in the world the French Revolution was the model of the atrocities committed on the behalf of ideals. Jean Clement Marin (historian), BBC 2007 Addressees exercise choice as much as the speakers themselves, although it may not be a choice made on precisely the same criteria.

Linguistic choice is made possible due to linguistic redundancy in language as a code. motivated by: n Extralinguistic grounds: truth. Peter / John for X X loves Mary, drizzling /pouring for x It was x. n Grammatical choice presupposes the encoders knowledge of grammatical rules. Peter / to eat X loves Mary. to eat loves Mary

Stylistic choice? fine man /nice chap He is an X.

But fine and nice are associated with different attitudes of the speaker to the subject of speech, with different social situations, different contextual constellations. Stylistic variations may be found on all the language levels phonemic, morphemic, lexical and syntactical. Example: WITH THAT MOON LANGUAGE Hafiz, 14-th century Persian poet Admit something: Everyone you see, you say to them, Love me. Of course you do not do this out loud, otherwise someone would call the cops. Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us to connect. Why not become the one who lives with a full moon in each eye that is always saying, with that sweet moon vision, what every other eye in this world is dying to see?

Denotation and Connotation. The information encoded in messages may be of two types: (1) the primary, basic information, the subject of the message Conveyed by denotation (basic conceptual meaning)

(2) the secondary information, associated with the si-tuation of discourse and its participants. Conveyed by connotation (various additional co-meanings) Example of choice of words by connotation (italicized) Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of springs unclouded weather (Wordsworth, The Green Linnet) Connotation: the additional content of the word (or expression), its attendant seman-tic or stylistic nuances that are superimposed on its basic meaning and express va-rious expressive-emotive-evaluative overtones and can impart to the utterance a so-lemn, playful, familiar, etc. ring. Connotation appears to be inherent not only in words but also in units of the other language levels. Stylistic variation is observable in pronunciation, in morphemic forms and in syntax.

n The difference between these two types of information is most obvious on the lexical level. n Connotation (also known as stylistic colouring), consists of at least two components: (1) the stylistic colouring that discloses the expressive-emotive content of speech (2) the stylistic co-louring that indicates the sphere of social usage of the linguistic unit. Components of connotation: (All the four may be present in one unit, or they occur in various combinations, or they may be totally absent.) n emotive n expressive n evaluative n functional-stylistic.

All the four may be present in one unit, or they occur in various combinations, or they may be totally absent.

In actual practice, however, it is very difficult, if not impossible, to discriminate between these four components of connotation.

Beneath these fruit-tree boughs that shed Their snow-white blossoms on my head, With brightest sunshine round me spread Of springs unclouded weather n William Wordsworth, The Green Linnet

Connotation, synonymy and the creation of meaning

Language units even if redundant denotationally are never redundant with regard to their stylistic connotation which justifies their existence in the language system.

Synonymy and style: Synonymy is a fundamental problem in any discussion of the meaning of style and its relation to choice. Do stylistic variants denote the same thing or different things? Does style create meaning or is it the inevitable product of redundancy?

The two approaches: dualist and monist

Linguistic or stylistic monism: no difference between form (the word) and content (the thought). On the other hand, if there are many words for one meaning, what makes literary writers in particular choose this word rather than that? This approach one meaning, more than one word for it is more common among stylisticians, and is known as the dualist approach. Benedetto Croce (philosopher): intentions can only be embodied in particular expressions, and therefore, any change in style implies a change in intention. The New Critics: talk about the intentions of the literary work rather than the intentions of the author. Poetry is unparaphrasable. Wallace Stevens: A man has no choice about his style. Archibald McLeish: A poem should not mean but be. David Lodge in Language of Fiction: (Lodge later retracted his position)

1) literary writing is unparaphrasable; 2) literary writing is untranslatable; 3) appreciating a literary work is impossible to separate from appreciating its style.

Linguistic or stylistic dualism: one meaning, more than one word for it. Style as embellishment, the dress of thought: True wit is nature to advantage dressed,

What oft was thought but neer so well expressed. (Alexander Pope) Style is not meaning in the sense that the way we say something must be distinguished from what we really intend.

Example: Autumn is the time when the sun does not shine as strongly as before and when the fruits ripen.

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness, Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun; Conspiring with him how to load and bless With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run Keats, Ode to Autumn Problems with dualism: We cannot expect that the reader will reconstruct exactly the same information in exactly the same quantity and connotative expansion as the writer, presumably, intended.

Primary and secondary codes

For the writer as speaker, language at large furnishes the common linguistic material as the primary code. When this material is subjected to linguistic patterning, to specific choices and combinations of a more or less regular nature, it adds to the primary code another, secondary, one. The secondary code is created by the writer, often within the specific work, but the writer is part of a tradition and participates in the whole paradigm of conventions that determine what is literature and what isnt. The purpose of this double encoding is to elicit in the reader an aesthetic and emotional response.

The literary message does not arise in the normal course of social activity; it is not the product of a communicative situation with a face-to-face interaction or with a pragmatic purpose. The I of the literary message does not refer to the social persona such as we know our interlocutors to be.

Example:

This Is Just To Say I have eaten the plums

by William Carlos Williams

that were in the icebox

and which you were probably saving for breakfast

Forgive me they were delicious so sweet and so cold

Pluralism: The functional approach to literary language (Roman Jakobson) (to be developed in Lecture 2)