International Journal of Literary Linguistics (IJLL)
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Review: Susanne Riecker, Reflections on Fictionality: The Poetics of Henry V (2023)
No full textAs this is a review, there\u27s no abstract
“The identical horse of knowledge”: Mapping and Meaning for the Reader in Animal Autobiographies around 1800
Get PDFIn this paper, we propose an analysis of how the subjective interpretation of a fictional text is brought about on the basis of combining the formal approach to the pragmatics of fiction with literary analysis. Our corpus is the anonymously published horse autobiography Memoirs of Dick, the Little Poney from 1799/1800. In the autodiegetic narrative, Dick the pony speaks as a hurt animal, critically observes human behaviour with satiric intent, and inscribes himself into an abolitionist discourse. We will show how the co-existence of several possibilities to read and understand the text or, more formally, how Meanings for the Reader (MfR) is foregrounded by the genre of animal autobiography and aims at the (self-)recognition on behalf of the reader
Review of Martin J. Gliserman, Graphic Criticism: Semantics, Neurology and Cultural Transmission
Get PDFGraphic Criticism: Semantics, Neurology and Cultural Transmission – A Study of 100 Classic Anglophone Novels, offers a new way to engage with familiar texts through data visualisation, thereby making a significant contribution to literary methodology. The book shifts between identifying longitudinal patterns in novels written and published between the eighteenth and twentieth centuries, offering close qualitative readings of these texts across four semantic categories: “Raw Universe, Human Body/Being, Built World, [and] Socially Constructed World” (19). Martin Gliserman’s approach demonstrates the ways in which canonical novels continue to generate new material and provides a method of analysis which could be extended by recent technological developments in text mining. Gliserman has long held a fascination with longitudinal research and the digital humanities but does not provide a precise date for this research project; it seems much of the data collection was undertaken in the 1990s and early 2000s (xxiv and 27). The book traces literary tradition(s) and variances over time, identifying the “constraints” operating on texts and through which the writer engages with the reader (38, original emphasis). Limited to one hundred novels, one might question the selection of the corpus which was to some extent dictated by the availability of digitised texts (27), and as a result many works fell outside the scope of this project. Meanwhile, the works of several authors have been included twice across the corpus (67). Increasing the size of the sample would strengthen the statistical evidence supporting Gliserman’s longitudinal observations. With freely accessible online databases of digitised texts, one could now introduce the same “conceptual hierarchies” (13-9) to a more extensive and representative collection of novels. Furthermore, automation through artificial intelligence technologies (AI) could streamline projects such as this, allowing visualisations to be produced at greater speeds, perhaps with greater specificity
Disnarration and the performance of storytelling in Taylor Swift’s folklore and evermore
Get PDFIn a similar way to dramatic performances and plays, song lyrics establish a complex discourse structure whereby listeners are placed in a position to overhear ‘the pretence of a conversation constructed to convey the performer’s meaning’ (Nahajec 2019: 25; see also Short 1996: 169). In Swift’s songwriting, listeners are positioned not only to eavesdrop on the narratives presented, but are also invited to conceptualise and enact particular roles and scenarios in the discourse. This paper offers a stylistic analysis of songwriting and narrative structure across Swift’s oeuvre to identify how disnarration strategies are used to build stories in her two sister albums written and produced during the Covid-19 pandemic, folklore (2020) and evermore (2020). Specifically, this study examines how disnarration characterises the albums’ narrators, establishes narrator-narratee relationships and invites listeners to adopt a participatory role in the meaning-making process. Through close analysis of four songs across the two albums, this paper builds on developing studies of the stylistics of songwriting (see West 2019), and argues that disnarration strategies foreground particular themes within the discourse, such as nostalgia, wistfulness and regret, and contribute to the fictionalisation and self-aware storytelling characteristic of these albums’ storyworlds
Bare Root Infinitives in German: Facets of Meaning in Poetry and Non-Literary Discourse
Get PDFThe aim of this paper is to show how linguistic and literary studies can benefit from a joint work about linguistic structures in poetry. Firstly, the analysis of poetry has an important impact on linguistic theory as it leads our attention to specific structures and meanings that so far have not been considered. Secondly, a close linguistic analysis can reveal hitherto overlooked facets of meaning which have a great significance for the overall interpretation of a poem.
We focus on Bare Root Infinitives (BRIs) in German. As they lack the features for tense, mood, person and number, they are more flexible in meaning than finite forms. When looking at poetry, besides the well-known deontic and bouleticmeanings (cf. Reis 1995, 2003; Gärtner 2014) a third meaning that we call reactive meaning stands out. Remarkably, this reactive meaning can also be found in everyday language. Its specific semantic properties show that a semantic analysis of BRIs in the style of Kaufmann (2012) is adequate: modality, but not non-referentiality, is a “hard-wired” semantic property of BRIs. The specific case study of the poem ‘muster fixieren’ (‘fixating patterns’) by Nico Bleutge reveals how the restricted context of the poem interacts with the different interpretations of BRIs to arrive at a complex text interpretation.
Keywords: bare root infinitives, semantic-pragmatic interface, poetry, modality, pragmatic enrichment, semantic
Rapport-management strategies in conflict situations: A pragmatic reading of Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground
Get PDFChuka Ononye (University of Nigeria)
The (mis)management of rapport amongst groups in Niger Delta (ND) communities has become a significant issue, which Ahmed Yerima’s Hard Ground (HG) depicts as having the capacity to aid or control the conflicts in the region. Linguistic studies on Yerima’s drama from the perspective of pragmatics have tended to use pragmatic acts to identify the discourse value of proverbs and functions of characters’ utterances but have not accounted for the politeness strategies utilised for rapport management, especially in conflict situations. This article, drawing on a rapport management model of politeness and aspects of speech act discourse, identifies the face, sociality rights, and interactional goals that characterise the conflict-motivated dialogues sampled in HG, and reveals the rapport management (RM) strategies through which these are managed in the text. Three conflict situations can be observed as prompting different RM strategies: cause-effect identification (CEI), militancy support (MSP), and disagreement (DSG) situations. CEI is marked by incriminating (involving eliciting and informing acts) and exonerating (including complimenting and acknowledging acts) strategies; MSP is indexed by strategies of persuasion (realised with face-enhancing/threatening acts), whereas DSG is typified by requesting (featuring explicit head acts and alerters) and blaming strategies (including insulting and threatening, aggravating moves). Generally, the requesting, blaming, and exonerating strategies are largely used by the ND youth in HG to probe, threaten, or disagree on specific issues, while the incriminating and persuasion strategies are mainly employed by the women to indict, influence, and predict future actions. The study of RM in the conflict situations depicted in the play sheds light on the often neglected cause of conflicts in contemporary Africa
“A style which defies convention, tradition, homogeneity, prudence, and sometimes even syntax”: Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence
Get PDFCombining the methods of stylistics and literary criticism, this essay takes a fresh look at two texts that have been analysed ad nauseam: Henry James’s The Portrait of a Lady and Edith Wharton’s The Age of Innocence. I use James’s late style as a touchstone to compare and contrast the two texts. Analysing syntax by means of close textual analysis of the novels’ opening paragraphs as well as metaphorical language, employing the corpus analysis programme AntConc to survey the entire texts, I aim to show that James’s 1881 text anticipates his late style and Wharton’s 1920 text appropriates it to suit her own agenda. However, in respectively anticipating and appropriating this style, James and Wharton create different effects. James intensifies his female protagonist’s “world of thought and feeling,” creating a fictional world with literary equality for both genders, while Wharton subverts gender roles in a scathing critique of Gilded Age society, which did not allow for this other “world of thought and feeling”. In addition to positioning both novels as inherently feminist and progressive, this essay compares Wharton’s writing to James’s, but without presupposing the latter’s influence on the former. Instead, acknowledging the fluidity of style, I hope to put forward a convincing case that there are subtle differences that make these authors’ styles Jamesian and Whartonian, respectively
\u27You don\u27t mind my calling you Harry?\u27 : Terms of address in John Updike\u27s Rabbit tetralogy
No full textThis paper examines the use of address terms in John Updike\u27s Rabbit books ((Updike 1995). As will be argued, the data provide a unique, long-term perspective on how an individual is addressed in American society. The first part of the analysis provides a comprehensive overview of the great variety of address terms used towards the protagonist, Harry Angstrom, in the decades covered by the books. In a second step, the paper focuses on two important side characters to examine how their address behavior changes through the course of the series. The main aim of the paper is to demonstrate the great potential of fictional data for the study of address terms and, vice versa, how the study of address terms can contribute to a more profound understanding of a literary text
Narrative Structures in Cross-linguistic Perspective: English, Hobongan, and Daqan
Get PDFIt has been noted (Perkins, 2009; Zwaan 1999; Zwaan and Radvansky, 1998) that causality, character, location, and time are the four main aspects of narrative discourse, even if not attended to in equal ways—for example, in English, character is highly ranked, and the locational/spatial components have often been underestimated. However, this is not a universal ranking. In a partial report on field work conducted in Borneo in 2012-2015, I note typological patterns in stylistic preferences within a selection of short narratives in English, Hobongan, and Daqan (the latter two are Austronesian). The strategies identified in the languages, by which the rankings of the various types of narrative information are foregrounded or backgrounded, include focus particles (Hobongan), specificity of description, or lack thereof (each), what component is most involved in driving the narrative forward (each), and frequency of information given about different components of the narrative (each). For example, English narratives center around a character or characters, and a great deal of specific information is given about such characters. In Hobongan, by contrast, the characters are backgrounded relative to the locational information provided, which is given specific description and is marked repeatedly as the focus of the narrative. In Daqan, still another pattern can be identified, that of a given duration providing the justification for and coherence throughout a narrative. It is suggested that analyses of the stylistics of information in narrative be included in typological categorizations and linguistic descriptions of languages, and that such analyses need, as much as possible, to be informed by an understanding of preferred patterns in different languages
‘To imagine a language means to imagine a form of life?’: A Discourse Analysis of English and German Reader Responses to Neutral Language in The Cook and the Carpenter
No full textDespite several decades of linguistic research and activism, neutral/inclusive language use is far from the norm in English and German. In this article I explore whether the encounter with neutral terminology in June Arnold’s novel The Cook and the Carpenter can prompt readers to question dominant practices and consider alternatives. Based on narrative research, my premise is that fiction can create familiarity with new terms and thereby support linguistic change. I frame my investigation with Wittgenstein’s notion that ‘to imagine a language means to imagine a form of life’, and put it to the test with a discourse analysis of English and German reader responses. The results of my study show that Arnold’s novel stimulates fruitful debate of the issue of gender and language. Based on my findings, I propose the text’s integration into linguistics education in order to further promote neutral/inclusive language use