Linguistics in the Study and Teaching of Literature

Literary texts include linguistic form, as well as specialized literary forms (some of which also involve language). Linguistics can offer to literary studies an understanding of these kinds of form, and the ways by which a text is used to communicate meaning. In order to cope with the great variety of creative uses of language in literature, linguistics must acknowledge that some texts are assigned structure by non-linguistic means, but the boundaries between linguistic and non-linguistic explanations for literary language are not clearly drawn. The article concludes with discussion of what kinds and level of linguistics might usefully be taught in a literature classroom, and offers practical suggestions for the application of linguistics to literature teaching

Is literary language a development of ordinary language?

Contemporary literary linguistics is guided by the 'Development Hypothesis' which says that literary language is formed and regulated by developing only the elements, rules and constraints of ordinary language. Six ways of differentiating literary language from ordinary language are tested against the Development Hypothesis, as are various kinds of superadded constraint including metre, rhyme and alliteration and parallelism. Literary language differs formally, but is unlikely to differ semantically from ordinary language. The article concludes by asking why the Development Hypothesis might hold

Symmetric and asymmetric relations, and the aesthetics of form in poetic language

This article asks how the properties of symmetry and asymmetry, as aesthetic properties, are realized in literary language. I will argue that language makes available many kinds of asymmetry, and that the asymmetry often holds between two elements which are at the same time in a symmetric relation. This coincidence of an asymmetric and a symmetric relation between the same linguistic elements may be one source of the aesthetics of literary language

Arbitrary innovations and literary universals

The possibility of literary universals comes from the possibility that the forms and other aspects of literary texts are shaped by external factors such as psychology and the sociocultural functions of literature. Psychological factors include limitations on memory and processing, along with psycholinguistic factors (which might allow linguistic universals to have an influence on literary universals)

Poetic form as meaning in Walt Whitman's Leaves of Grass

The poetic forms of Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, including its lineation and various rhythmic and syntactic patterns, are implied rather than inherent; that is, the poetic forms hold of the text as the contents of a set of implicatures, which mutually reinforce one another, and which hold somewhat loosely and with a certain degree of strength. This includes the division of the text into lines, and the presence of rhetorical groups, parallel sections, and rhythmic sequences; Whitman’s idiosyncratic punctuation contributes to this loose form. Form is not just attributed as a meaning of the text, but is also meaningful in the poem, whose ‘leaves of grass’ – both the sheets of the book and the lines of the poem - are on the one hand sheets of papyrus and on the other hand manifestations of the democratic spirit. The meaningfulness of the poetic form is enabled by its attributed status

Verse

In this chapter I look at verse by drawing on hypotheses about the psychology of language processing, and how verse might be processed in a distinctive way (for example, how the verse line might have a distinctive status in working memory). I look at how the added forms such as metre and rhyme create markedness, and how this might force increased interpretive efforts, and how form itself can be the content of interpretations. I will suggest that verse can be seen as a device for manipulating processing effort, making it easier in some ways, more difficult in others, with interpretive and emotional effects

Rhythm requires poetic sections

This is a proposed as an absolute (implicational) universal, and comes from Fabb and Halle (Meter): Where a text has a sustained regular rhythm, it is also divided into sections of determinate length. Texts with a regular rhythm (sustained over a long stretch of the text) are called metrical. The rhythm need not be periodic, and can vary; it is regular in the sense that it includes a range of variations which are overall subject to a set of rules. In other words, metres are found in poems, defined as texts which are divided into poetic sections. The following definition is from Fabb

Processing effort and poetic closure

Smith (1968) argues that poems may end with formal changes which produce an experience of closure in the reader. I argue that formal changes do not directly cause an experience of closure. Instead, changes in poetic form always demand increased processing effort from the reader, whether they involve new forms, shifts from more to less regular form, or from less to more regular form. I use relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson 1995) to argue that the increased processing effort encourages the reader to formulate rich and relevant thoughts, including the thought 'this poem has closure'. Closure is thus the content of a thought rather than a type of experience. I further argue that 'closure' is a term whose meaning cannot be fully understood, which makes the thought 'this poem has closure' into a schematic belief of the kind which Sperber shows has great richness and productivity. This is one of the reasons that the thought 'this poem has closure' achieves sufficient relevance to justify the effort put into processing the end of the poem