Ojv1, lesson 2, 2015

Integrated Integrated Language Language Skills Skills 11

Introduction to Textual Analysis, LESSON 2 1

What are words “made of”?

• Structure (morphology, suffixes, prefixes, case markers, etc) • Content (meaning and referential relations) • Lexical Relations (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms, etc.)

• Grammatical Relations (syntactic templates, textual structure) 2

Words and meaning Lexical ambiguity: say what you mean, or mean what you say?

– This looks at the way users of text can exploit the capacity of words to carry more than one meaning.

– Polysemy

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Examples • You know, somebody actually complimented me on my driving today. They left a little note on the windscreen; it said, 'Parking Fine.' So that was nice."

(English comedian Tim Vine) • "'Do you believe in clubs for young people?' someone asked W.C. Fields. 'Only when kindness fails,' replied Fields."

(Quoted by Graeme Ritchie in The Linguistic Analysis of Jokes. Routledge, 2004)

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Syntactic (grammatical) ambiguity – The presence of two or more possible meanings within a single sentence or sequence of words.

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Examples: • The professor said on Monday he would give an exam.

• The chicken is ready to eat.

• Visiting relatives can be boring.

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• A lady with a clipboard stopped me in the street the other day. She said, 'Can you spare a few minutes for cancer research?' I said, 'All right, but we're not going to get much done.'

(English comedian Jimmy Carr)

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Metaphor: life’s a beach and then you fry – This explores the way metaphor operates within text, and looks at some of the effects of metaphoric language.

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What is it? • Metaphor is a figure of speech which makes an implicit, implied or hidden comparison between two concepts that are poles apart from each other but have some characteristics common between them. • In other words, a resemblance of two contradictory or different objects is made based on a single or some common characteristics.

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• In simple English, when you portray a person, place, thing, or an action as being something else, even though it is not actually that “something else,” you are speaking metaphorically. “He is the black sheep of the family” is a metaphor because he is not a sheep and is not even black.

• However, we can use this comparison to describe an association of a black sheep with that person. A black sheep is an unusual animal and typically stays away from the herd, and the person you are describing shares similar characteristics.

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• Furthermore, a metaphor develops a comparison which is different from a simile i.e. we do not use “like” or “as” to develop a comparison in a metaphor.

• It actually makes an implicit or hidden comparison and not an explicit one.

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Common Speech Examples of Metaphors • Most of us think of a metaphor as a device used in songs or poems only, and that it has nothing to do with our everyday life. In fact, all of us in our routine life speak, write and think in metaphors.

We cannot avoid them.

• Metaphors are sometimes constructed through our common language. They are called conventional metaphors. Calling a person a “night owl” or an “early bird” or saying “life is a journey” are common conventional metaphor examples commonly heard and understood by most of us. Below are some more conventional metaphors we often hear in our daily life: 14

• • • • •

My brother was boiling mad. (This implies he was too angry.)

The assignment was a breeze. (This implies that the assignment was not difficult.)

It is going to be clear skies from now on. (This implies that clear skies are not a threat and life is going to be without hardships) The skies of his future began to darken.

(Darkness is a threat; therefore, this implies that the coming times are going to be hard for him.)

Her voice is music to his ears. (This implies that her voice makes him feel happy) 15

Literary Examples of Metaphors • Metaphors are used in all types of literary texts but not often to the degree they are used in poetry because poems are meant to communicate complex images and feelings to the readers and metaphors often state the comparisons most emotively. • Here are some examples of metaphor from famous poems.

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Example #1 “She is all states, and all princes, I.” • John Donne, a metaphysical poet, was well-known for his abundant use of metaphors throughout his poetical works. In his well-known work “The Sun Rising,” the speaker scolds the sun for waking him and his beloved. Among the most evocative metaphors in literature, he explains “she is all states, and all princes, I.” This line demonstrates the speaker’s belief that he and his beloved are richer than all states, kingdoms, and rulers in the entire world because of the love that they share.

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Example #2 “Shall I Compare Thee to a summer’s Day”, • William Shakespeare was the best exponent of the use of metaphors. His poetical works and dramas all make wideranging use of metaphors.

• “Sonnet18,”also known as “Shall I Compare Thee to a Summer’s Day,” is an extended metaphor between the love of the speaker and the fairness of the summer season. He writes that “thy eternal summer,” here taken to mean the love of the subject, “shall not fade.”

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Functions • Using appropriate metaphors appeals directly to the senses of listeners or readers, sharpening their imaginations to comprehend what is being communicated to them.

• Moreover, it gives a life-like quality to our conversations and to the characters of the fiction or poetry.

• Metaphors are also ways of thinking, offering the listeners and the readers fresh ways of examining ideas and viewing the world.

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Idiomatic language: flogging dead crocodiles and keeping your feet under water • Here, you will look at some set structures of language having specific meanings that don’t necessarily relate to the individual words within the structure.

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Call me an artist: I draw attention!

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Costs an arm and a leg!

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Denotation and connotation: what are words worth? – This looks at the emotional loading that many words carry, and the way producers of text can exploit this capacity of language to make texts effective.

HOUSE vs. HOME 26

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Denotation refers to the literal meaning of a word, the "dictionary definition."¨ For example, if you look up the word snake in a dictionary, you will discover that one of its denotative meanings is "any of numerous scaly, legless, sometimes venomous reptiles¡having a long, tapering, cylindrical body and found in most tropical and temperate regions.“

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Connotation, on the other hand, refers to the associations that are connected to a certain word or the emotional suggestions related to that word. The connotativemeanings of a word exist together with the denotative meanings. The connotations for the word snake could include evil or danger.

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Linguistic determinism/ Linguistic relativity – Is our perception of the world influenced, or even controlled, by the language that we speak?

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• Benjamin Lee Whorf a well-known linguist used the Hopi language to exemplify his argument that one's world-view is affected by one's language and vice-versa.

• Among Whorf's best-known claims was that Hopi had “no words, grammatical forms, construction or expressions that refer directly to what we call “time.”

• Whorf's statement has been misunderstod to mean that Hopi has no concept of duration or succession of time, but in fact he meant only that the Hopi have no conception of time as an object or substance that may be divided and subdivided.

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Word and Sense • Most users of English would assume that words are the smallest units of language to carry meaning.

• This, however, is not necessarily the case, which makes questions such as ‘What is a word?’ even more difficult to answer.

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Look at the following sentence: The plogs glorped bliply.

1. What do the words in this sentence mean?

2. How many plogs were there? One or more than one?

3. What were they doing?

4. Were they doing it now or in the past?

5. How, or in what way, were they doing it?

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• Most speakers of English will have very little trouble answering these questions.

• There was more than one plog, because this word carries the plural marker ‘s’.

• ‘Glorped’ is marked as a verb by the use of the past tense marker ‘ed’, so the reader knows what the plogs were doing, and the fact that they were doing it in the past.

• Finally, the reader can tell how or in what manner the plogs were glorping—bliply—because the word carries the adverb marker ‘ly’.

• Just a brief look at text can establish that units smaller than words are carrying meaning. These units are morphemes.

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Words may be made up of one or more morphemes: • One morpheme dog, elephant, establish, child • Two morphemes dog s, establish ment, child ish • Three morphemes dis establish ment, child ish ness.

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• In theory, there is no limit to the number of morphemes a word can have, but logic and comprehensibility mean that there tends to be an upper limit, and six morphemes is about it for English. – Antidisestablishmentarianism (28 letters) 35

• Meaning therefore exists in units of language smaller than the word, in morphemes.

• Users of English frequently use the term ‘word’ when, strictly speaking, they are referring to morphemes.

• For this reason, linguists prefer the term ‘lexeme’ to the term ‘word’.

• Lexeme refers to a unit of meaning that may be smaller or larger than the traditional term ‘word’ implies.

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Activity 1 • The examples of text below all apparently intend one meaning, but give another. Try to identify the word(s) that have caused the difficulty, and say why this has happened. • These examples are all from letters sent to housing departments.

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1. I request permission to remove my drawers in the kitchen.

2. Will you please send a man to look at my water. It is a very funny colour and not fit to drink.

3. The person next door has a large erection in his back garden which is unsightly and dangerous.

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• In the activity above, some of the words used in these letters have synonyms, or are polysemes.

• ‘Drawers’ is synonymous with ‘part of an item of furniture’ but is also synonymous with ‘item of women’s underwear’.

• ‘Water’ can mean any amount of water from the flow from a tap to the ocean; but also by association ‘urine’.

• ‘Erection’ can mean ‘building’ or ‘sexual arousal’. If the producer of a text intends one meaning, but the context in which a word is used implies another, the result is confusion, because the text becomes ambiguous.

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Activity 2 • Look at the following newspaper headlines. They are all ambiguous in that there are at least two potential meanings for each one. • Try to identify the word(s) that have caused the problem, and say why the problem has arisen.

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• EIGHTH ARMY PUSH BOTTLES UP GERMANS • MOUNTING PROBLEMS FOR YOUNG COUPLES • FIELD MARSHALL FLIES BACK TO FRONT 41

Activity 3: TOP 10 MEDIA MANIPULATION STRATEGIES

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2.

3.

4.

What is the text about?

What is its main purpose?

Who is the intended audience?

What is the dominant tone/atmosphere of the text?

5. How would you characterize the language? Is it dominantely formal or informal?

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Explain the following words from the text: • • • • • • • •

succumb sludge landfill incinerator adverse detriment dismantle dropper

• • • • • • •

precariousness deferring resignation circuit grafting compulsion inhibit

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Activity 4 Write a short description of a city scene. It can be any time of day, it can be busy or deserted; you can focus on small detail or give a more general description.

Use metaphor to ‘code’ into your description some comment on modern urban society. It can be anoptimistic comment about progress and development, it can be a pessimistic comment about the decay of such a society, or any other kind of comment you feel you would like to make. The important thing is to use metaphor to describe the scene in a way that carries the message you are trying to get across to your reader.

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Example I was surrounded by tower blocks that punched the sky and loomed over me, threatening and dark.

Cars snarled at each other and tussled for space on the roadways, veering round each other, hooting and shouting. The stink of their battle filled the air.

The market square bloomed in green. The voices of the traders mixed with the busy chatter of the birds, swooping and diving over the city centre.

The sun shone on the clean buildings, the bright colours, and the people, who carried the joy of this city on their backs, their faces turned up to the lifegiving wash of the light.

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