Making the reader feel

1
Making the reader feel

• Syntactic iconicity in poetry.
• Lesley Jeffries
• University of Huddersfield

2
Broadcast by Philip Larkin

• Giant whispering and coughing from
• Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
• Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
• 'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
• A snivel on the violins

3
Broadcast by Philip Larkin

• Giant whispering and coughing from
• Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
• Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
• 'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
• A snivel on the violins

4
Broadcast by Philip Larkin

• Giant whispering and coughing from
• Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
• Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
• 'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
• A snivel on the violins

5
Broadcast by Philip Larkin

• Giant whispering and coughing from
• Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
• Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
• 'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
• A snivel on the violins

6
Broadcast by Philip Larkin

• Giant whispering and coughing from
• Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
• Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
• 'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
• A snivel on the violins

7
Broadcast by Philip Larkin

• Giant whispering and coughing from
• Vast Sunday-full and organ-frowned-on spaces
• Precede a sudden scuttle on the drum,
• 'The Queen', and huge resettling. Then begins
• A snivel on the violins

8
Doorsteps

• She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
• First she smoothed already-softened butter
• on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
• Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
• halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
• herringboned across a doylied plate.

9
Doorsteps

• She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
• First she smoothed already-softened butter
• on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
• Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
• halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
• herringboned across a doylied plate.

10
Doorsteps

• She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
• First she smoothed already-softened butter
• on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
• Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
• halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
• herringboned across a doylied plate.

11
Doorsteps

• She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
• First she smoothed already-softened butter
• on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
• Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
• halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
• herringboned across a doylied plate.

12
Doorsteps

• She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
• First she smoothed already-softened butter
• on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
• Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
• halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
• herringboned across a doylied plate.

13
Doorsteps

• She used it to pare to an elegant thinness.
• First she smoothed already-softened butter
• on the upturned face of the loaf. Always white,
• Coburg shape. Finely rimmed with crust the soft
• halfmoon half-slices came to the tea table
• herringboned across a doylied plate.

14
Dulce et decorum est

• Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
  through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we
  turned our backs And towards our distant rest
  began to trudge.

15
Dulce et decorum est

• Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
  through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we
  turned our backs And towards our distant rest
  began to trudge.

16
Dulce et decorum est

• Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
  through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we
  turned our backs And towards our distant rest
  began to trudge.

17
Dulce et decorum est

• Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
  Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed
  through sludge, Till on the haunting flares we
  turned our backs And towards our distant rest
  began to trudge.

18
Robbing Myself

• The front room, our crimson chamber,
• With our white-painted bookshelves, our patient
  books,
• The rickety walnut desk II paid six pounds for,
• The horse-hair Victorian chair I got for five
  shillings,
• Waited only for us.

19
Robbing Myself

• The front room, our crimson chamber,
• With our white-painted bookshelves, our patient
  books,
• The rickety walnut desk I paid six pounds for,
• The horse-hair Victorian chair I got for five
  shillings,
• Waited only for us.

20
Robbing Myself

• The front room, our crimson chamber,
• With our white-painted bookshelves, our patient
  books,
• The rickety walnut desk I paid six pounds for,
• The horse-hair Victorian chair I got for five
  shillings,
• Waited only for us.

21
Müller (1999394)

• The study of iconicity provides an ideal field of
  research for linguists and literary critics alike
  and may thus help to bridge the gulf between the
  two disciplines which has steadily widened in the
  course of the twentieth century.

22
Fischer (1999346)

• only in imagic iconicity, is there a straight
  iconic link between the verbal sign and the image
  or object (), as for instance in onomatopoeia.
  Diagrammatic iconicity is more like a topographic
  map, where the relation between objects or
  concepts in the real world (as we see it) can be
  deduced from the relations indicated on the map

23
Onomatopoeia

• quack, moo, baa
• squawk, squeak, squeal
• clap, slap, thwack, bong, ting
• whistling wind
• the knock of sailing boats on the net webbed wall
  (Dylan Thomas)

24
Imagic iconicity tube line
25
Diagrammatic iconicity tube map
26
Direct experience of language

• Sound
• Sight
• Linearity time (and space)

27
Müller (2001305)

• What the linguistic structure imitates is not
  external reality, but a subjective perception or,
  rather, conception of reality, a mental structure
  which is related to external reality but does not
  merely imitate or copy it. Rhetorical features,
  for instance, schemes like asyndeton and climax
  or different forms of word-order, are structuring
  and ordering devices, which point to the
  structure and activity of the mind and to
  cognitive and epistemological processes

28
Müller (2001319)

• In this as in many other cases in rhetorical
  speech it is just the deviation from the iconic
  norm which manifests iconicity most
  conspicuously. This is iconicity, to be sure, on
  a level different from the mere miming of
  external reality. It is non-objective or, to use
  Tabakowskas term once more, experiential
  iconicity.

29
Müller (2001406)

• But even then Collins uses protracting syntactic
  devices, an adverbial phrase and a passive
  construction which shifts the agent of the action
  to a prepositional phraseThe following
  one-sentence paragraph describes the
  protagonists physical reaction to the eventyet
  again not without the use of suspense-increasing
  syntactic devices (inversion of the word order,
  the use of adverbial elements, parenthesis)This
  is indeed a supreme example of the art of
  creating suspense.

30
The Unprofessionals

• 2nd year stylistics of contemporary poetry class
• Mixed lang/lit students
• Mostly (not all) 19-20 years old
• Almost complete consensus
• One exception!
• Different to my own reactions

31
Explanations?

• Firstly my interpretation of The
  Unprofessionals may have been based on textual
  cues which my students missed.
• Secondly, they (and I) may have been reacting to
  an unambiguous narrative from their (my) own
  experiential perspective.
• Finally, there may be textual cues to both
  interpretations, which we reacted to differently
  because of our age, experience or background.

32
Readers iconicity?

• Conceptual iconicity
• Could information structure provide a better
  basis than syntax for explaining syntactic
  iconicity?
• Emotional iconicity
• Is a reader-based approach one way to describe
  the iconic effects of syntactic deviance?

33
Syntax iconic meaning?

• Readers reactions to deviation in syntax based
  on expectations of information structure.
• The basic strands of these expectations are
  related to old and new information and
  complexity/length of clause elements
• Is this another natural iconicity?

34
English information structure

• There will be clause structure
• Subjects will be relatively short
• Predicators will be arrived at fairly quickly
• Adverbials will be relatively few in number and
  short, particularly before Subject and
  Predicator
• The focal point will be longer than the earlier
  elements, and will bring in the new information
• Optional clause elements of any length will occur
  late in the clause, preferably after the focus,
  and certainly after the Predicator They will not
  be excessively long or numerous
• Deviations from this norm will have effects.

35
1st stanza

• When the worst thing happens,That uproots the
  future,That you must live for every hour of your
  future,

36
1st stanza

• When the worst thing happens,That uproots the
  future,That you must live for every hour of your
  future,

37
1st stanza

• When the worst thing happens,That uproots the
  future,That you must live for every hour of your
  future,

38
1st stanza

• When the worst thing happens,That uproots the
  future,That you must live for every hour of your
  future,
• A three-line adverbial clause, with no sign of
  the main clause so far

39
2nd stanza

• They come,Unorganized, inarticulate,
  unprofessional

40
2nd stanza

• S P
• They come,Unorganized, inarticulate,
  unprofessional
• Short main clause with simple elements, cutting
  through long adverbial clause of previous stanza

41
2nd stanza

• S P
• They come,Unorganized, inarticulate,
  unprofessional
• The presence of these people is a (syntactic)
  relief, but they turn out to be bumbling and
  ineffectual
• Non-obligatory clause elements
• Note 3-part list of multi-syllabic words and
  unprofessional used as adjective here.

42
3rd stanza

• They come sheepishly, sit with you, holding
  hands,From tea to tea, from Anadin to
  Valium,Sleeping on put-you-ups, answering the
  phone,Coming in shifts, spontaneously,
• Two main clauses, elaborating on earlier one
  they are still a comfort, though sheepish.

43
3rd stanza

• They come sheepishly, sit with you, holding
  hands,From tea to tea, from Anadin to
  Valium,Sleeping on put-you-ups, answering the
  phone,Coming in shifts, spontaneously,
• A string of non-finite adverbial clauses further
  elaborating what these people do when they
  arrive. Verbs in progressive form.

44
4th stanza

• Talking sometimes,About wallflowers, and
  fishing, and whyDealing with Kleenex and
  kettles,Doing the washing up and the shopping,
• Continuing the string of adverbial clauses with
  ing verbal forms

45
5th stanza

• Like civilians in a shelter, under
  bombardment,Holding hands and sitting it
  outThrough the immortality of all the
  seconds,Until the blunting of time,
• This last adverbial clause introduced by
  adverbials

46
5th stanza

• Like civilians in a shelter, under
  bombardment,Holding hands and sitting it
  outThrough the immortality of all the
  seconds,Until the blunting of time,
• The main elements of this last clause

47
5th stanza

• Like civilians in a shelter, under
  bombardment,Holding hands and sitting it
  outThrough the immortality of all the
  seconds,Until the blunting of time.
• This last adverbial clause also followed by
  non-obligatory adverbials (PPs)

48
Iconicity in the poem

• iconicity - a direct reflection of the dynamics
  of the situation in the information structure of
  the syntax.
• juxtaposition of subordinate clauses and main
  clauses may cause the reader not just to perceive
  but to actually experience the feelings of
  frustration and resignation described.
• ongoing presence of the vacuously active
  unprofessionals, against such a bleak
  background, is, perversely, rather comforting
• tension between what they actually do and the
  fact that they are there continuously reflects
  both sides of the discrepancy noted in class.

49
Unprofessionals good or bad?

• Noun / adjective
• Syntactic relief and frustration
• Continuity of presence of the unprofessionals
• Schematic knowledge cultural difference and
  local practice?
• Personal experience

50
Conclusions

• There may be some value in taking norms of
  information structure and length/complexity of
  clause elements as a basis for syntactic analysis
  of poetic syntax.
• This may provide deeper insights into the
  readers more unconscious responses.
• Our definitions of iconicity need further
  development, to encompass different kinds of
  mimesis relating to different aspects of
  communicative process.

51
References

• Fischer, O., (1999) On the Role Played by
  Iconicity in Grammaticalisation Processes in
  Nänny, M. and Fischer, O. (Editors) 1999345-374.
• Jeffries (1993) The Language of Twentieth
  Century Poetry Basingstoke, Macmillan.
• Jeffries, L. (2001) Schema theory and White
  Asparagus cultural multilingualism among readers
  of texts, Language and Literature 10(4) 325-43.
• Jeffries, L. and McIntyre, D. (2010) Stylistics.
  Cambridge Cambridge University Press.
• Jeffries, Lesley (2001) Schema affirmation and
  White Asparagus cultural multilingualism among
  readers of texts. Language and Literature, 10
  (4) 325-343.

52
References

• Jeffries, Lesley (2008) The role of style in
  reader-involvement Deictic shifting in
  contemporary poems. Journal of Literary
  Semantics, 37 (1) 69-85.
• Müller, W. (1999) The Iconic Use of Syntax in
  British and American Fiction Nänny, M. and
  Fischer, O. (Editors) 1999393-408.
• Müller, W. (2001) Iconicity and rhetoric. A note
  on the iconic force of rhetorical figures in
  Shakespeare Fischer, O. and Nänny, M. (Editors)
  (2001 305-322).
• Nänny, M. and Fischer, O. (Editors) (1999) Form
  Miming Meaning. Philadelphia, PA, USA John
  Benjamins Publishing Company.