Chapter-03 Literature as Discourse

Discourse in form of lecture or conversation, group discussion between two or more people represents speaker’s knowledge but not in literature. In literature ungrammatical language makes sense and can be interpreted through its code and context.

Code and Context:

Sometimes linguistic analysis may not give you the comprehensive meaning then literary criticism may help it out to comprehend it. Deviations in literature are not random but they are patterns. And deviations cannot be understood in isolation but partly understood by linguistics (grammar rules etc.) and partly by

context, in which they appeared, so that means literature can only be understood as whole We understand a language through its code which is grammatical structure; unless we know the grammar we cannot understand a language. In the same way every piece of literature has a different code of its language, through some rules we derive a code out of literary text and we apply that code to

analyze whole literary piece.

Thorne’s proposals are applied particularly to e e Cumming’s poem “Anyone lived in a pretty town” which he treats as corpus of a different language, is the extreme deviance of which made it favorite text for linguistic analysis.

Anyone lived in a pretty how town

(with up so floating many bells down)

Spring summer autumn winter

He sang his didn’t he danced his did

If we analyze this poem, ‘anyone’ is a common noun in grammar but in the code of poem it is used as proper noun so to understand these deviations we need to understand literal characteristics of it as well.

“Anyone” is used as proper noun and auxiliaries “didn’t” and “did” are treated as common noun in reference to “anyone” in the poem. It is because he talks ‘anyone’ in general who lives in that very town. These deviations may lead us to the interpretation that writer’s past life is consisted of enjoyment.

In the code it does not happen all that time that all natural objects are given +animate and +human features but sometimes they present as they are, For example: “Winds stampeding the fields” “The blunt wind that dented the balls of my eyes” (By Ted Hughes).

In this poem the poet wishes to express violent animacy of wind that house taken on roots and windows come alive.

We may say that winds in the poem is animate but inanimate in general phenomena, and poet can’t simply ignore literal meaning and bring an entire new meaning of the word. For example a word may give different meaning in a context but in the same poem it retains its original characteristics as well. E.g. in

Browning’s poem “The Sullen wind was soon awaken/ It tore the elm-tops down for spite” since the ‘Wind’ is taken as +human as it awakens, but at the same time it retains its inanimate characteristics as in next line “it tore elm-tops” use of ‘it’; which is a pronoun used for both animate and inanimate.

It is clear now that making rules cannot give whole meaning; but they are still English words and forms a part of language system, for instance, ‘anyone’ is a common noun also an indefinite noun. Similarly ‘did’ is a common noun in the code of the poem which is verb +past +activity.

It is clear now that literary text does not depend on reader’s knowledge or code as they are common. In short neither standard grammar nor devised code can work as whole for the meaning of a poem. It is suggested that an interpretation of a literary work as piece of discourse involves correlating of linguistics item and then context or background where it occurs.

Significance VS Values

Meaning in code is known as Significance and meaning in context is known as Value. A word in a dictionary can give different meaning; but context makes it clear that which meaning is being referred to, that is why readers do not refer to dictionary after every word they read in the text. The value of a word becomes significance with the passage of time; for example the word Band has different meanings like group of people, group of musician, group of people sharing same interest etc. it also has a value which can be understood by the context. For example ‘Rocking band is coming to the concert” in this sentence we come to know what value is referred. Like there are many words which got their significance

later e.g. earlier word freeze was used for salary but later became famous as stopping something.

Expression like Break up may be associated with concrete words to the non-native speakers.

The ability of language a user is to give new values to words in a discourse. Grammarian sometimes says as if it is only poets, children, and foreign learners who do not conform to the rules of language code. The answer of questions, how a poet differ from others? Is that no expression randomly occurs in ordinary

discourse but they are pattern in reoccurring sound (phonological), structure (syntactic aspect) and meaning (semantic aspect)

1) Phonological Patterning

 “On the bald streets breaks the black day” in this line phonological pattern is used (alliteration) /b/ sound is repeated to make rhyme scheme which shows desolation of the poet, through alliteration mood of the poet is conveyed.

Their stanzas of stifling scandals

Cause the masses to curse

(Dasylva’s Songs of Odamolugbe)

This is an example of alliteration. The sound stanzas and scandals are the poet’s deliberate selections. The sound effect created by such selection gives the reader a deeper sense of understanding the enormity of corruption and insincerity in the Nigerian society. It is the insincerity of the rulers that ‘cause’ the masses to ‘curse’.

2) Semantic Patterning

 “The way a crow/stuck down on me/ the dust of snow/ from a hemlock

tree” through these lines death and desolation is presented for example Crow represents black and black is dark and evil. Hemlock is associated with poisoned tree, and dust of snow associated with Christian funeral ceremony “dust to dust” so through these meanings successfully conveyed theme of death in the poem.

3) Syntactic patterning  

for example in lines from Alexander Pope

See how the world its venterans rewards!

A youth of frolics, an old age of cards;

Fair to no purpose, artful to no end,

Young without lovers, old without a friend…

Through structure of the poem writer has conveyed his message for example synonyms and antonyms are used, youth=old, love friend. Young=old, fair=purpose, through these we can interpret that fairness is associate with youth and the art is associated with old age.

Look at this sentence: “He went home”. The pattern of the sentence is SPA (S – Subject, P = Predicator, A – Adjunct). A poet can violate the order of the above sentence in the form below:

“Home he went” (This has ASP pattern). The item “home” occurs in the initial position of the sentence to

foreground it. This is deviation for a specific effect.