Literary Text Analysis: Approaches & Linguistics
Approaches to English Literary Texts
Approaches to English literary texts involve the critical examination of significant and representative passages from literary works written in Britain, the United States, or any other English-speaking country. There are three major approaches:
- a) Linguistic analysis of the text: The text is considered self-contained, and its structure and meaning are analyzed.
- b) Reading and feeling the text: This traditional approach, used in many British and American universities, seeks the ‘literary meaning’ of a text by appealing to the reader’s moral, social, and psychological judgment and sensitivity. It examines plot and character, assuming that we not only think but also feel and have emotional reactions.
- c) Theoretical criticism of the text: This covers approaches where the critic adopts a specific viewpoint outside of literature, such as historical, biographical, psychological, sociological, or ideological perspectives (e.g., post-structuralism, deconstruction, Marxist and Feminist criticism, and post-Modernism).
Language and Literature
Currently, there are three ways to view the relationship between linguistics and literature:
- (a) Language through literature
- (b) Language in literature
- (c) Literature as language
The purpose of language through literature is to use the linguistic resources of literature (vocabulary, syntax, etc.) to improve students’ mastery of the English language. Here, the study of literature is collateral, with literary texts playing a supportive role.
The chief aim of language in literature is to achieve a deeper understanding of the literary work, with linguistics playing a cooperative role.
Literature and Linguistics
During three centuries, linguists aimed to standardize and systematize their national languages. The Age of Enlightenment in the eighteenth century saw the peak of rationalist grammar, such as Port Royal. The linguistic studies of the nineteenth century led to another period of remoteness. Three scholarly movements focused on the linguistic analysis of literary phenomena: Slavic Formalism, Stylistics, and the Anglo-American New Criticism. Stylistics was notably cultivated within Romanistics, alongside Russian and Czech Formalism and the New Critics.
Linguistic Paradigms (I): Literature in Structuralism
Stylistics of Connotation and Stylistics of Choice
The analysis by Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss of Charles Baudelaire’s “Les Chats” is considered an exemplary investigation into linguistic poetics—the verbal structure of a literary composition. This research exemplifies the taxonomical methodology of structuralism, addressing various units and components across linguistic levels:
- (a) The rhyme pattern (masculine or feminine) of the sonnet
- (b) The link between rhymes and selected words
- (c) The syntactic parallelism between pairs of quatrains and tercets
- (d) The semantic aspect of grammatical animate subjects
- (e) The structure of nominal groups with determiners
- (f) The use of epithetical adjectives
- (g) The stylistic effects of the liquid consonants /l/ and /r/
- (h) A lengthy characterization of all categories in the sonnet (not fully listed here)
Linguistic Paradigms (II): Literature in Generativism
Stylistics of Deviation
Generativism also cultivates poetics, but its theoretical sources are found in the Chomskian dichotomy of grammaticality/acceptability, rather than structural features. Any deviation from the norm implies a structural regularity that must be outlined before explaining the deviant language. The study of these deviations has led to stylistics of deviation, which differentiates between literary and non-literary language.
Linguistic Paradigms (III): Literature in Pragmatics
Pragmastylistics
Pragmatics, also known as ‘suprasentential linguistics,’ considers discourse a linguistic unit beyond the sentence. It has attracted scholars for several reasons:
- a) Its emphasis on language use, discourse, or language in action/context.
- b) The prominent role given to participants in the communicative event, especially the receiver, leading to its nickname ‘the other’s linguistics.’
- c) Its interdisciplinarity, drawing insights from cognition, sociology, psychology, and computer science.