Language and style

This chapter looks at literary language, and discusses where it overlaps with, and where it differs from ‘ordinary’ language. It also discusses the language of advertising and newspaper language.

‘Philosophy will clip an angel’s wings,’ according to the nineteenth-century poet, John Keats. Likewise, many have been unwilling to dissect literature, fearing analysis would destroy its magic.

But literary language is not a bizarre confection of angel-dust. Instead, it overlaps strongly with various other types of language, including everyday language. At one time, literature was thought to break linguistic ‘rules’. Nowadays, the belief that ‘real’ rules can be firmly specified and divided from ‘broken’ rules has faded: language is flexible and fuzzy-edged.

In addition, the label ‘literature’ has been reassessed. Literature is ‘highly valued writing’, and non-literature is ‘lowly valued writing’ – just as a flower is a desired plant, and a weed an unwanted one. The judgement varies, depending on the judge: values alter from generation to generation. What is prized in one century may be condemned in the next. And at all times, ‘good’ literature merges into ‘bad’, with no firm divide-line.

[]() Style and stylistics

The linguistic analysis of literary []()language is known as stylistics. This is a somewhat misleading term: the word ‘styles’ was once applied to different varieties of language, such as the language of religion, or of legal documents. But these varieties are now often known as registers (Chapter 10). Meanwhile, the words style and stylistics have acquired the somewhat specialized, narrow usage of linguistics applied to literature.

[]()Insight

Stylistics is a term used for the linguistic analysis of literary language.

Literary language often deviates from everyday language, even though it is in no way deviant. Typically, certain features have been highlighted, or foregrounded, often by making them strange. Foregrounding has two intertwined meanings. On the one hand, it involves bringing forward literary usages against the background of expectations about ordinary usage. On the other hand, certain features are made prominent or foregrounded within a text. As the term foregrounding suggests, literary language is intentionally compared with the visual arts, where an artist is likely to emphasize some aspects of a painting over others.

[]()Insight

In literary language, certain features are foregrounded (highlighted), that is, brought forward for special attention.

A poem about the wind is likely to differ from, say, a chat about the weather. But poetry cannot be too peculiar, or readers and listeners would simply ‘turn off’. Only a small and predictable proportion of language can be varied. Let us consider this further.

[]() The same bright, patient stars

‘And still they were the same bright, []()patient stars,’ said Keats in his poem ‘Hyperion’. And in literary language the phonology, morphology and (mostly) the syntax are the same bright, patient stars. They may sometimes deviate from the norm, but do so relatively little.

Take phonology. ‘Be wery careful o’vidders \[widows] all your life,’ says Mr Weller in Charles Dickens’ Pickwick Papers, his Cockney accent signalled primarily by the switch of v and w. Non-standard accents are usually represented, as here, via only occasional changes to the normal spelling.

Inflectional morphemes – meaningful chunks of words which alter the relation of a word to the rest of the sentence (Chapter 6) – are rarely altered, except in comic verse:

_Tell me, o octopus, I begs,\ Is those things arms, or is they legs?_

Ogden Nash

Syntax may deviate more than morphology, though any deviation is likely to be minor, as:

_About the woodlands I will go\ To see the cherry hung with snow_

A. E. Housman

_And like a dying lady, lean and pale,\ Who totters forth, wrapped in a gauzy veil_,

Percy Bysshe Shelley

_I see a lily on thy brow,\ With anguish moist and fever dew;_

John Keats

In these examples, the syntactic []()variation is trivial: the bold phrases and words would be in only a slightly different position in ordinary conversation: ‘I will go about the woodlands’, ‘Like a lean and pale dying lady’, ‘brow moist with anguish and fever dew’. Major contortions are rarely found, they would disrupt comprehension too much.

[]()Insight

Phonology, morphology and syntax do not normally undergo major alterations in poetic language: such changes would affect comprehension too greatly.

[]() Ways with words

Words are the wool out of which literature is knitted. Yet these are mainly existing ones, used in novel ways: brand new words are relatively rare in serious writing.

[]()Insight

Novel use of existing words is the main linguistic characteristic of literary language.

A bunch of oldish words are sometimes thought of as poetic, such as quoth, fain, behold, as also are some conventional abbreviations: o’er, ’twas, ne’er. Yet these have always been sparsely used, and most are now unusual even in literature.

Writers are like knitters trying to invent new patterns. They avoid obvious sequences such as black despair, green fingers or purple patch, and devise new, original combinations. ‘And then the lover/ Sighing like a furnace …’, said Shakespeare; ‘Birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills’, described Dylan Thomas of his childhood. A thrush sings, with ‘Its fresh-peeled voice/Astonishing the brickwork’, wrote the poet Philip Larkin.

These examples contain []()so-called tropes, an old technical term from rhetoric for ‘figures of speech’ which involve meaning. These are traditionally connected with poetic meaning. Let us consider the main ones further.

[]() Twisting words

The name trope comes originally from the Greek word for twisting or turning. Simile is possibly the most straightforward. It involves an explicit comparison of two unlike things, as in ‘Fame is like a river’ (Francis Bacon).

Metaphor is perhaps the best known trope, once defined by the Greek philosopher Aristotle as ‘the application to one thing of a name belonging to another’. For example, ‘Fame is a food’ (‘Fame is a food that dead men eat,’ once said by the poet Austin Dobson), when fame is clearly not something which can be literally devoured.

Metaphor is sometimes assumed to be fundamentally poetic in nature. And poetry does indeed teem with metaphor; but so does everyday speech. Metaphor is an inevitable part of day-to-day language, as in:

• []()Pauline’s a gold-digger.

• []()Felix tried to get his ideas across.

• []()Marigold shot down his arguments.

• []()That marriage is dead.

• []()Students shouldn’t be spoon-fed.

• []()Henry is fighting a grim battle with illness.

And so on, and so on. It is impossible to do without it, especially in areas where drama is low, such as finance:

• []()The dollar tumbled to a new low\.

• []()Will our bubble economy go pop?

Yet many everyday metaphors []()are stale: clichés such as black mood, white lie are sometimes even labelled ‘dead metaphors’. Poetic metaphors are fresh. And more often than in ordinary conversation, they conjure up a whole novel scene, as in Shakespeare’s famous line:

• []()Sleep, which knits up the ravelled sleeve of care.

Here sleep does not relate to only one word; instead a whole knitting scenario is envisaged.

Quality rather than quantity, then, is what distinguishes poetic metaphors from everyday ones.

[]()Insight

Good metaphors are both novel and appropriate: they surprise the reader but do not seem bizarre.

[]() Gluing it all together

_The moan of doves in immemorial elms,\ And murmuring of innumerable bees._

Lord Alfred Tennyson

These lines of Tennyson are often quoted as an instance of ‘poetic’ writing. They attempt to reproduce the sound of doves cooing and bees humming, technically, onomatopoeia. This drowsy hum effect has been created above all by repetition, in this case mainly of the sounds m and r.

Repetition is a glue which helps a work of literature to hang together as a whole, or cohere. Of course, real-life conversation is enormously repetitious, as: ‘Football, football, everybody keeps talking about football.’ The planned and patterned nature of literary repetition is what distinguishes it from everyday repeats.

Rhyme and metre are types of repetition strongly associated []()with poetry. In rhyme, the ends of words are repeated, as:

Percy Bysshe Shelley

Poetic metre may at first sight seem artificial, with recurring types of foot (unit of rhythm). Yet poetry does not use bizarre, invented beats. Instead, it is ultimately based on spoken language. Large chunks of it are written in the dum-di dum-di ‘Monday, Tuesday …’, ‘bread’ n’butter’ pattern widely found in everyday speech, as in:

_Tyger! Tyger! burning bright\ In the forests of the night …_

William Blake

– though various other metres are found, some quite complex ones.

Poetic metres differ from spoken speech rhythms primarily in that they are more repetitious, and more consistent, even though an intentional sudden breaking of the metrical pattern can create a special effect, as when a boat rushing over the waves (dum-di, dum-di, dum-di) suddenly thumps up against them (dum, dum, dum):

_Dirty British coaster with a salt-caked smoke stack\ Butting through the channel in the mad March days …_

John Masefield

[]() Saying it again, but subtly

Henry W. Longfellow

These lines from ‘Hiawatha’ contain obvious repetition. Yet much of literature hangs together via less obvious []()repetitious devices. ‘Hiawatha’ continues:

Firs and pines are both types of tree, and a collection of trees makes up a forest. The poet assumes that the readers know all this. Or:

Rudyard Kipling

These lines seem straightforward, yet closely connected words help to link them together, as road and path, trees and woods, rain and weather.

Yet repetition, or near-repetition, plays only a partial role. Above all, successful literary works have an underlying structure – and so do many other forms of language, as will be outlined below.

[]() Searching for the skeleton: poems, news

Words are like the flesh on an underlying skeleton. The bones vary in their rigidity. Some verse is tightly formed: sonnets have a fourteen-line structure, and limericks a five-line one, as:

Edward Lear

Other written forms have a less []()obvious structure. Take newspaper reports. It is fashionable to moan about ‘journalese’. Yet this is unwarranted. The vocabulary and style are straightforward: trainee journalists are advised to follow the ‘rules’ of clear writing proposed by the writer George Orwell, which include:

• []()Never use a long word where a short one will do.

• []()If it is possible to cut out a word, always cut it out.

• []()Never use a passive where you can use an active.

And so on.

What is complex is the structure underlying the news stories. New information is placed first within a what-where-(when)-who-how-(why) summary, a so-called hard news formula whose purpose is to orient the reader fast as to what happened, where it happened, who was involved, how it occurred, and why it happened – though when is often missing, because news is assumed to be new and recent, and why is not always known. For example:

• []()At least 26 people were killed and more than 200 injured when a huge car bomb ripped through the centre of Omagh, County Tyrone, yesterday afternoon.

A huge amount of important information is tightly packed into that first sentence, which provides a concise account of the whole event – a summary that only skilled journalists can easily write, and the headline is commonly written from that summary.

After the summary, the story consists of a sequence of events, though not necessarily in order of occurrence: the most recent come first. A high level of skill is required to present this information clearly, and in an interesting fashion. []()Eventually comes a final sentence outlining the current ‘state of play’ – though this must never contain crucial information, because it is likely to be cut if space is short.

[]()

<Image src="../images/ch12fg01.jpg" alt="Image" />

Figure 12.1.

[]()Insight

Journalists typically start a story with a so-called ‘hard news formula’ which explains what-where-(when)-who-how-(why).

[]() The language of advertising

• []()Musk. The missing link between animal and man. Earthy, Primitive. Fiercely masculine. (Cosmetic advertisement)

• []()Outspan. The great taste of grapefruit. Cool, refreshing, full of flavour. Wholesome, natural grapefruit – the colour of the sun. Puts the rest in the shade. (Fruit advertisement)

Advertising copywriters, like journalists, have to present their message briefly, and in an eye-catching way.

[]()Insight

There are three major ways in which []()advertisers get their effect. They write it large, they make it short and they make it ‘jingly’.

The magazine advertisements quoted above were printed in larger than usual print, so it was hard not to read them as one flipped through the pages, just as it is hard not to read billboards on the roadside.

Words that are inessential for the meaning are omitted, so most of the ‘sentences’ do not contain a verb. Consider how comparatively dull the result would have been with verbs: ‘Think about musk. It is the missing link between animal and man. It is earthy. It is primitive. It is fiercely masculine.’ If verbs are used in the main message of an advertisement, they are often imperatives:

• []()Drinka pinta milka day.

• []()Go to work on an egg.

• []()Have a break, have a Kitkat.

If they are not imperatives, they are almost always in the present tense, and negatives are rare:

• []()Persil washes whiter.

• []()Oxo gives a meal man appeal.

• []()You can take a White Horse anywhere.

In an extended advertisement, the wording often follows a formula. First, the ‘key’ word, followed by a longer sequence: ‘Musk. The missing link between animal and man.’ Then comes a series of shortish, catchy phrases. Important words are backed up with near-synonyms: ‘Earthy. Primitive’; ‘Cool, refreshing’; ‘Wholesome, natural’. There’s likely to be a pun somewhere: ‘The colour of the sun – puts the rest in the shade.’ It’s easy to think up other examples []()of plays on words in well-known ads:

• []()Better in jams than strawberries. (Car advertisement)

• []()Players please. (Cigarette advertisement)

These strategies are not only used to make people buy particular shampoos or perfumes. They are also utilized by politicians, as in the slogans of political parties:

• []()Let’s go with Labour. (Labour party slogan)

• []()Labour isn’t working. (Conservative party slogan)

But not all ‘advertising’ is so straightforward. Less obvious, and so more dangerous, are some of the other techniques used by politicians, such as the use of metaphor. Subtle and skilful use of metaphor can influence people’s thoughts in a way in which they may be unaware. The arms race is a classic example. Politicians sometimes pretend that their nation is in an athletic contest with other nations, even though this may be entirely in their imagination. Richard Nixon, an ex-president of the USA, repeatedly emphasized how important it was to ‘win’ in the ‘race’ against other countries: ‘This nation cannot stand still because we are in a deadly competition … We’re ahead in this competition … but when you’re in a race the only way to stay ahead is to move ahead.’

[]()Insight

Politicians sometimes make use of advertising techniques to get their message across. Not everyone may recognize the linguistic and political manipulation involved.

These days, nuclear weapons attract a high number of metaphors. These hideously dangerous devices tend to be referred to by politicians as ‘nuclear shields’ or ‘nuclear deterrents’, or a ‘nuclear umbrella’. This leads people to believe that they are genuinely necessary (we all need umbrellas), purely defensive (shields), and even useful in discouraging others from []()warfare (deterrents). These beliefs may, or may not, be true. But the language used in discussing nuclear armaments ensures that the average person does not look beyond the reassuring language, and therefore fails to perceive the potential dangers involved. In an ideal world, everyone would be able to recognize linguistic manipulation, and question whether it was conveying or hiding the truth.

This chapter, then, has pointed out some of the ways in which skilled word weavers – especially poets, journalists and advertising copywriters – get their effect, and how they may manipulate the unwary.

[]()[]()THINGS TO REMEMBER

• []()The linguistic analysis of literary language is known as stylistics.

• []()Literary language highlights particular features. This is known as foregrounding.

• []()Phonology, morphology and syntax do not normally undergo major alterations in literary language: such alterations would affect comprehension too much.

• []()Novel use of existing words is the key characteristic of literary language.

• []()Similes and metaphors are common in literary language, but they are also very common in ordinary speech.

• []()Repetition in poetry, which includes rhythm and metre, helps a poem to cohere.

• []()A hard-news formula: what-where-(when)-who-how-(why) is typically used to get the message across at the beginning of a news story.

• []()Ads are written in large letters; they are also short and jingly.

• []()In ads, puns and imperatives are common.

• []()Politicians typically use the ‘tricks’ of advertising language to get their messages across.