Structuralism, Generativism, and Pragmatics in Literary Analysis
Literature in Structuralism: Stylistics of Connotation and Choice
The analysis forwarded by Jakobson and Lévi-Strauss in “‘Les Chats’ de Charles Baudelaire” is considered to be an exemplary investigation into linguistic poetics, that is, into the verbal structure of a literary composition. The research is a typical sample of the taxonomical methodology of structuralism, which tackles all sorts of units and components on a wide range of linguistic levels:
- The rhyme pattern (masculine or feminine) of the sonnet
- The link between rhymes and selected words
- The syntactic parallelism between pairs of quatrains and tercets
- The semantic aspect of grammatical animate subjects
- The structure of nominal groups with determiners
- The use of epithetical adjectives
- The stylistic effects of the liquid consonants /l/ and /r/
- A lengthy characterization of all the categories present in the sonnet, which we are unable to list here
Literature in Generativism: Stylistics of Deviation
Generativism also cultivates and develops poetics, but this time the theoretical sources of investigation are found not in the study of structural features, attributes, and relationships, but in the celebrated Chomskian dichotomy called grammaticality/acceptability. It goes without saying that any deviation from the norm implies the existence of some kind of structural regularity which has to be outlined before we can explain what the deviant language consists of. The study of these linguistic deviations has brought forth a new line of stylistic research, stylistics of deviation, which is concerned with differentiating between literary and non-literary language.
Literature in Pragmatics: Pragmastylistics
Pragmatics is also known as ‘suprasentential linguistics’, since discourse is considered a linguistic unit that goes beyond the boundaries of the sentence. Pragmatics has captured the attention of many scholars, who have found it very attractive, at least, for three reasons:
- The importance it assigns to language use, that is, discourse or to language in action or language in context.
- The outstanding role given in the analysis of the communicative event to its participants, especially the receiver of the message. This is why it has also been called ‘the other’s linguistics’.
- Its interdisciplinarity, as it derives a good number of its insights from other disciplines, especially cognition, sociology, psychology, and computer science.
Textualization
In traditional grammar, a group of words is called a sentence when it satisfies several conditions (concord, agreement, etc.) and follows all the syntactic, lexical, and semantic requirements contained in the grammar rules.
Cohesion and Coherence
Cohesion refers to the external textual organization, that is, its structural form; both concepts are indissolubly associated and keep the same solidarity between them as the signifier and the signified of a linguistic sign. Cohesion and coherence go hand in hand since they both work together in the arrangement of all the constituents or parts of a text as a hierarchically organized whole.
Connectors: Micromarkers and Macromarkers
Connectors serve to link words, phrases, clauses, or sentences in a text. Their goal is to mark the relations held by the different units of discourse in order to create and maintain cohesion and coherence. Macroconnectors are sentences, phrases, or long stretches of language that orient the receiver of the message.
Textual Repetition and Ellipsis
‘Repetition’ is the recurrence of the same semantic or functional element throughout a text. Ellipsis is the omission of a linguistic element. They produce two complementary effects: agility and security. Based on the principle of safety and the principle of economy, as ellipsis avoids the repetition of elements that are predictable from the context, it gives agility to the text.
Anaphora and Cataphora
This repetition is called substitution. ‘Anaphora’ is a classical term that has two main meanings: as a figure of speech and as a linking device. In the two cases, it is a repetition that contributes to cohesion and coherence. Sometimes, cataphora and anaphora make reference to something that is not in the text but in the context, in its broadest sense.
Isotopy or Content Repetition: Isosemy, Isophony
Isotopy consists of the systematic and motivated recurrence of linguistic components in a text. ‘Content’ in this context should be interpreted in a broad sense encompassing semantic features, syntactic structures, or phonetic traits. As these repetitions are systematic and motivated, they are to be interpreted as fulfilling a linguistic or communicative purpose. Isosemy has been defined as the repetition of underlying semantic features, or semes, some of which may be lexicalized, that is, they may appear as lexical units. Isophony is the repetition of phonological features. This repetition of phonemes, whether segmental (vowels, consonants), or prosodic (stress, rhythm, intonation, etc.).
Textual Progressivity
Textual progressivity makes reference to the constant flow of new information that is being introduced in the passage.
Textual Intentionality
‘Intention’ refers to the general goal of the text, whereas ‘intentionality’ attests to the partiality of the text, as there are no neutral texts or utterances. Intentionality is the non-neutrality of the text, as all texts are biased and motivated. Intentionality refers to the tactics exhibited by the text in order to achieve meaningful effects by heightening some fragments of the text over the others.
Textual Closure
Textual closure refers to the satisfaction of the reader’s expectations, the fulfillment of complete coherence, as closure implies the existence of a definite and stable structure.
Textual Meaning: Utterance, Sentence, Proposition
Context. This is a traditional linguistic category, where one of its functional units is the utterance, that is, a sentence or a group of sentences in context, unlike structuralism or generativism, where its maximal unit is the sentence, that is, a syntactically independent unit that contains at least one finite verb. The meaning of the sentence is sometimes coincident with that of the proposition, but the proposition must have a clearly stated subject and a predicate.
Literal Meaning
In the analysis of the meaning of utterances, some linguists claim the existence of a literal meaning and of a textual meaning. The utterance would be conceived as a set of meaningful layers, the first of which is literal meaning. The immediate question that arises is if literal meaning exists. Although many linguists state that no stretch of language is meaningful unless it is inserted in a context, it is true that there is a long tradition, backed by a good number of scholars, claiming the existence of a literal meaning.
Speech Acts
Every utterance is a speech act, which, in turn, consists of three acts: a locutionary act, an illocutionary act, and perlocutionary acts.
Linguistic Implication or Entailment
Linguistic implications are defined as the propositions arising from a text that the person making the utterance cannot deny coherently. This textual relationship, which comes from logic, is also called entailment. Entailments are very useful as a communicative strategy; everybody makes use of them in the characterization of textual meaning, especially when we want to set limits to the meaning of an utterance. The question “What does it imply?” is constantly used in the negotiation of meaning.
Linguistic (Conventional, Lexical) Presupposition
Linguistically, the presupposed information is characterized by means of a proposition or a series of propositions that the receiver of the message assumes as true, although they were never uttered by the sender. True, in this sense, means that the information must refer to things as they are or as they happen in the real world. Linguistic presuppositions are also called ‘conventional presuppositions’ because they are in accordance with general use or practice. Literary texts are full of them. “He has stopped beating his dog” presupposes that he used to beat his dog.
Pragmatic Presupposition
A pragmatic presupposition is what the receiver of a message has to know for it to make sense. This previous information, which is not stated because it is assumed, is expressed, in the characterization of the textual meaning of an utterance, by means of one or more propositions, which are a part of its textual meaning.
Pragmatic Implication: Implicature
Implicatures differ from linguistic implications or entailments in several points: (1) Implicatures are ephemeral (2) Implicatures may be used to throw hints. (3) The propositions corresponding to some synonymous implicatures do not usually have synonymous entailments.
Non-Linguistic Parameters of Textual Meaning
When we say something, the sense of the message depends on the linguistic message, but also on other facts such as the modulation of the voice, the gestures, and the position we hold in relation with our counterparts are also meaningful components of textual meanings. They are called paralanguage, kinesics, and proxemics.
Discourse Modalities in Literary Pragmatics
There are six modalities of literary discourse: descriptive discourse is used to paint scenes or characters with words; narrative discourse tells events or incidents; expository discourse explains and clarifies; persuasive discourse tries to convince; dramatic discourse lets the characters speak for themselves, and poetic discourse heightens the aesthetic or artistic faculties of a language.