A New Introduction To The Study Of Text And Discourse Discursivism and Ecologism ROBERT ALAIN DE BEAUGRANDE Published for Free Use On the Internet July 2004 No Copyright Is Claimed May be Quoted, Translated, Or Downloaded onto CD Without the Author's Permission (A Thank-You Note Would Be Appreciated, Though)
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Contents 0. Getting Started 0.A. Preview: Inclusion for insiders, exclusion for outsiders 0.B. A ‘New Introduction’? 0.C. Laying out the text I. Theory and Practice I.A. Theory and practice in society I.B. Language and discourse as theory and practice I.C. Theory and practice in ‘modern education’ I.D. Theory and practice in ‘modern science’ Notes II. Theory and Practice in Studies of Language II.A. Prescriptive studies of language II.B. Descriptive studies of language: philology II.C. Descriptive studies of language: linguistics II.D. Generative studies of language II.E. Functional studies of language II.F. Discursive studies of language II.F.1. Discursive studies in text linguistics II.F.2. Discursive studies in discourse analysis II.F.3. Discursive studies in corpus linguistics II.G. Deconstructivist studies of language II.H. Theory and practice in the language department
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Notes III. Lexicogrammar in the Study of Text and Discourse III.A. Grammar, Lexicon, Lexicogrammar III.B. A Lexicogrammar of Processes III.B.1. Outer Processes III.B.2. Inner Processes III.C. A Lexicogrammatical of Parameters Notes IV. Prosody in the Study of Text and Discourse IV.A. The spontaneity of real conversation IV.B. Stresses and Tone Groups IV.C. Prosody and Grammar in Clause Types IV.C.1. The Declarative Clause Type for Statements IV.C.2. The Interrogative Clause for Questions IV.C.3. The Exclamatory Clause Type for Exclamations IV.C.4. The Imperative Clause for Commands IV.D. Minor Clause Types IV.D.1. Dependent Clauses IV.D.2. Non-Finite Clauses IV.E. Non-Clauses Notes V. Visuality in the Study of Text and Discourse V.A. Visuality in theory and practice V.B. Mental imagery V.C. Personal images V.D. Facial expressions and gestures V.E. Emotional displays V.F. The Visuality of the Text as artefact V.G. Orthography in Visuality V.H. Punctuation in Grammar, Prosody and Visuality Notes VI. Style in the Study of Text and Discourse VI.A. Theory and practice again VI.B. Ancient studies of style VI.C. Modern studies of style VI.D. Stylistic Parameters VI.E. Manipulating styles VI.F. Analysing a text Notes VII. Discursive Themes of Social Division VII.A. Tracking social discourse VII.B. Modes of speaking 1: Strategies for inclusion and exclusion VII.C. Modes of speaking 2: Strategies for displacement VII.D. Discourse and Counter-Discourse 1: The ‘New Racism’ VII.E. Discourse and counter-discourse 2: Worker safety VII.F. Discourse and counter-discourse 3: Consumer health
VII.G. Discourse and counter-discourse 4: Environmentalism VII.H Discourse and counter-discourse 5: Civil asset forfeiture VII.I Discourse and counter-discourse 6: ‘American interests’ VII.J Discourse and counter-discourse 7: The ‘Patriot Acts’ Notes VIII. The Standards of Textuality Revisited VIII.A The Standards in theory and practice VIII.B Discursive diversity: Seven standards in seven samples VIII.C. Close-Up: Shopping as an ‘Art Form’ Notes IX. A Final Word Notes Data Sources News Sources
0. Getting Started 0.A. Preview: Inclusion for insiders, exclusion for outsiders 1. When I first went to South Africa, I was startled by a hand-written sign-board posted along the roadway near Soweto, whose name stands for ‘South West Townships’, a sprawling conglomerate outside Johannesburg:
[1] STOP NONSENSE FREE ESTIMATES I was stumped. My jet-lagged mind imagined first a weird offer to give ‘free estimates’ for the costs of ‘stopping nonsense’ from being uttered in intolerable profusion, no doubt a welcome service in the upcoming election campaigns; and then, even weirder, an offer to ‘stop’ producing ‘estimates’ that are ‘nonsense-free’ by inserting the usual gobbledygook of legal discourse (VI.31; VII.8). In a lower corner, the signboard named a maker of cement and bricks, which flummoxed me all the more. I had sinister imaginings of nonsense-talkers getting encased in concrete or getting their mouths bricked shut, which seemed a trifle drastic. 2. I was later enlightened by residents of Soweto. A ‘township’ is an ‘informal settlement’ (the official term in the ‘New South Africa’) jerry-built by migrant labourers who were compelled by the byzantine ‘Area Acts’ (in the old South Africa) to live far from their workplaces. Many neighbourhoods are horrendously noisy and crowded,
and in desperation a family builds a wall to shut out the commotion. This construction bears the wryly whimsical name of ‘stop nonsense wall’ — to a cultural outsider a meaningless term, but to an insider a poignant icon in the grinding struggle amid racism and poverty — two violent reductions of human potential entrapped in a vicious cycle (cf. I.38). 3. On the campus of the University of the West Indies in Mona, Jamaica, I beheld this sign by the road: [2] SLEEPING POLICEMAN Stumped again! I imagined a constable who dozed on the job so unremittingly the authorities posted a sign to shame him, but that too seemed a trifle drastic. I was swiftly ‘enlightened’, in the manner of Zen, when my head struck the top of my tiny rental car. The sign was announcing what I had known in the US as a ‘speed bump’ laid across the roadway to slow down drivers who just ignore signs announcing a ‘speed limit’. (In Brazil, we call them honestly ‘spring breakers’.) 4. On a waterfront shop in Alexandria, Egypt, I espied this signboard: [3] EGYPTIAN ANTICS Now I imagined Egyptians performing those wondrously limber postures pictured on the walls of the pharaohs’ temples, where the legs and head are moving off to one side and the shoulders out toward the
front, while the face (in profile) exhibits a wide-eyed smirk strongly at odds with the bodily cramps such eternal contortions should occasion. But this time I knew a better explanation: a simple misprint for ‘antiques’, which serve as icons of Egyptian culture for many outsiders. 5. Three signs showing three brief texts. Taken in total isolation, perhaps absurd. But texts are rarely isolated. They are produced and received in context by cultural insiders so easily as to suggest a circular paradox: you use the text to process the context while using the context to process the text, as if you could know in advance what is being said. But in fact, the two processes run in a dialectical cycle, each side informing and guiding the other (I.1). This cycle is fundamental to human action and interaction, especially for language and discourse (section I.B). 6. Even viewing the three signs from outside these cultures, I knew enough to reject the meanings fabricated by my barmy imagination. Having been a wandering outsider nearly all my adult life has instilled a deep respect for the skills of insiders in their brisk ordinary understanding. Yet those years have also instilled a deep perplexity at the disturbing failure of insiders to understand outsiders. And, in the public sphere, those same years have witnessed a striking increase in world-wide contacts and conflicts between insiders and outsiders. 7. Undoubtedly, our future well-being vitally demands a mode of understanding that supports humane and democratic co-existence among insiders and outsiders in a ‘post-modern’ world of cultural and linguistic diversity. Such is the agenda we might call ecologism, promoting active co-operation in a spirit of genuine respect for each other and for our widest social and ecological environment (I.10). Above all, ecologism enlists text and discourse for promoting the freedom of access to knowledge and society (I.76; II.111, 134, 179). To this end, we can examine the prevailing strategies of discourse and the problems they entail; and pursue alternative ‘ecologist’ strategies such as ‘critical rewriting’. 8. Ecologism can be productively supported by the approach I propose to call discursivism, practicing engagements between our own texts or discourses and others selected for their social relevance (II.114). Our goal is not to achieve completeness, but to work out some non-trivial and nonobvious aspects that advance our ecologist agenda of understanding and enhancing human communication. Discursivism is thus an explicit enterprise for producing discourse about discourse and staging an interplay of discursive positions. In thisIntroduction, the role of the author is accordingly reshaped as an integrator of diverse discourses which interact both as theory, e.g., expounding motives for or against ecologism, and as practice, e.g., adducing discursive positions for or against ecologism. 9. Ecologism is a challenging agenda, but surely not unattainable, for some have mastered it, though perhaps not consciously — philosophers, scientists, artists, mystics, saints, mostly striving against the grain of the times. And the agenda is too urgent to leave untried. This new century, if not already the generation reaching maturity today, may well face the final decision between inclusion and exclusion — and between democracy and tyranny, between people power and money power. Unless we can renew our sense of a common humanity in the twenty-first century, we are doomed to relive and intensify the spiralling confrontations of the twentieth. 0.B A‘New Introduction’? 10. Before proceeding, I would point out that this book is by no means a ‘new edition’ with cosmetic updates and expanded ‘References’; instead, this Introduc-tion differs from the old Introduction to Text Linguistics of 1981 more than resembles it, though the two books share the programmatic concern for authentic and interesting examples and an openness for new issues. Moreover, this book is a more programmatic project for re-inventing the voice of the author, furthering the shift away from the static, faceless, and power-based authority of ‘monological’ academic writing over to a dynamic, personal, and solidarity-based participant in dialogical engagements with a multiplicity of alternative voices.
11. Such a New Introduction must be largely exploratory. I am not ‘introducing’ a long-established field in academic language and linguistics programmes, such as ‘syntax’ or ‘semantics’, though I shall briefly assess each of these. Nor am I ‘intro-ducing’ the more recently established fields of ‘text linguistics’ and ‘discourse analysis’, which by now are amply ‘introduced’, though I shall earnestly engage with their concerns. What I do propose to ‘introduce’ is an ‘ecologist’ agenda for a ‘discursivist’ approach to the ‘study of text and discourse’, a field that accords sustained critical attention to a wide range of real data, guided by systematic strategies of exploration and explanation. Perhaps the broader label Studyin the new title may lighten the self-conscious perplexities inhering in the status of ‘science’ or in the boundaries of ‘linguistics’. 12. The shift in emphasis reacts to dramatic trends in official and international discourse of the last two decades, when operative mantras like ‘globalisation’, ‘privatisation’, ‘rationalisation’, or ‘structural adjustment’ promise ‘a better life for all’ but deliver it only to a powerful few. In the new millennium, the world is so sharply polarised between insiders and outsiders that we simply must declare where we stand. A leading mandate for the ‘study’ advocated here would be to engage with discourses of power and to produce ‘counter-discourses’ of solidarity. 13. Such an Introduction would be unproductive, indeed self-contradictory, unless its own presentation pursues ‘ecologist’ strategies of discourse for freedom of access. This latter concept is so vital to my whole project expounded here that I decided to withdraw the finished book (already in final proofs) from a highly reputable contracted publisher who wanted to make a pricey hardcover (the contract had expressly said paperback!) and am literally giving it away for ‘free’! I hope to see a similar altruism among other colleagues whose published books would cost too much for most of the people whose social and economic disempowerment the ‘critical analysis’ is intended to deconstruct. 14. On the ‘stylistic’ side’, by the same reasoning, my own discourse must remain clear and accessible even when the issues grow complex or controversial. My central terms and ideas should be conscientiously explained, easily understood, and consistently applied (like ‘insider’ and ‘outsider’ in I.11), and should suggest how the diverse issues and problems might be approached with unifying strategies. Meanwhile, the agenda of ecologism remains ‘work in progress’, where ‘progress’ is now straightforwardly re-defined as a movement toward inclusion and equality (I.10). In parallel, discourse itself is ‘work in progress’ in the dual senses that its essence is to seek inclusion and that it can always be rendered more inclusive (clearer, more accessible, more user-friendly, etc.) (I.39). Any doubts I may have had about this parallel have melted away during the protracted reworking of the present volume. 0.C. Laying out the text 15. My terms have been carefully and systematically chosen and defined to establish their essential cores and clear away discursive vagaries and historical baggage, notably for social and political terms like ‘power’ and ‘solidarity’, or ‘left-wing’ and ‘right-wing’. Handled this way, such terms can do more to refine our awareness of essential issues than any ponderous jargon or brittle neologisms. 16. For easy recognition and reference, my primary terms appear in bold type when they are introduced and defined. Terms for language units like ‘Text’ or ‘Utterance’, and linguistic categories like ‘Subject’ are Capitalised throughout, e.g., to distinguish the ‘Subject’ of a Verb from a ‘subject’ taught in school. 17. The paragraphs are numbered consecutively to make cross-referencing more exact than page-numbers can; a reference like ‘(cf. I.1)’ means ‘compare what is said in paragraph I.1’; just plain ‘(I.11)’ means ‘as is also said in paragraph I.11’. 18. Sample texts as data carry consecutive numbers in square brackets; alterna-tive versions of the same text add lower-case letters, e.g., if [1] is compared to [1a], [1b], and so on. Footnotes may provide a complete
reference; or, if the full title appears with the sample, merely author and publishing data. Where just an abbreviated title goes with a sample, the rest can be found in a key for Sources, e.g. Decline for Edward Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, or Souls for W.E.B. Du Bois’ Souls of Black Folk, The.
19. To keep the main text tidy and readable, adjunct material like references and names of cited authors appears mainly in the Notes at the end of each chapter, with just a few abbreviations, e.g., ‘NY’ for ‘New York’ (the city) and ‘UP’ for ‘Univer-sity Press’. The quantity of references has been kept modest, focusing on two types: the fundamental ones for setting the agenda in some field or subfield, such as Trubetzkoy’s Grundzüge der Phonologie or Nida’s Morphology; and the recent and user-friendly ones that could well support the agenda proposed here, such as Joseph Stiglitz’s Globalization and its Discontents or Greg Palast’s The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. Extensive references (1,614, if yer wants to know) can be found in my New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse. 20. Most data samples were gathered from public sources like news media or popular novels. I made extensive use of the Internet (marked with the superscript www) and of large corpora like the British National Corpus (superscript BNC) or my own British and American Writers Corpus (superscript BAWC), so that data cannot be referenced by page numbers. Since Internet postings like the Los Angeles Times or the American Civil Liberties Union can be easily re-accessed with key words in a search engine like AltaVista, I conserved precious space by listing website addresses (URLs) in the footnotes only in important instances. 21. My own spelling and punctuation follow British English. But where relevant for text samples, I reproduce my original sources, e.g., ‘Sandwitch LeRelax’ (name of a snack stall on the beach in Qinitra, Morocco), or ‘SISTHAM REPERING’ (item on an auto mechanic’s bill in Sinai’a, UAE) (cf. V.36). 22. I have tried to maintain an easy-going, user-friendly style without fretting over the prescriptions and proscriptions of purist language guardians about the split infinitive, ‘hopefully’, ‘and’ or ‘but’ starting a sentence, etc. etc. (cf. II.15, 19). They would heartily disapprove of ecologism, as I do of their spurious elitism. I shall indeed argue at various points that much of the advice handed out by those claiming to defend the English language (or ‘King’s English, ‘standard English’, ‘good usage’, etc.) represents either an callous ignorance or a stubborn mistrust of authentic usage, and possibly also a patronising disdain for the everyday conversation of ordinary citizens. The real dangers lie in pompous, evasive, or deceitful language which is designed to disempower those citizens, and which may be quite unobjectionable from the standpoint of purism. I shall present plentiful examples, awarding ‘special attention’ to discourses of power and exclusion either circulating in mass media or being carefully repressed (Chs. VII-IX). 23. Converting from a book in final proofs (in WORD) to a internet web folder (in FrontPage) is an incredibly tedious and sometimes infuriating process fraught with unaccountable if not indeed insidious transmutations of fonts, sizes, margins and so on, during which you will exhaust your vocabulary of foul epithets many times over. This book had been craftily formatted because the publisher who contracted it had strong ideas about length, which led to wee type (the same, however, in all of their books), text squeezed in next to graphics, surreptitious font compressions, and so on. Now that I have the leeway, I enlarged the fonts; I switched from Times to Ariel, and from singe space lines to 150; I tried to hunt down all the line-end hyphenations that were now unnecessary. I converted all WORD graphics -- an incredibly primitive and spiteful sub-program which has not been updated for yonks, and which crashes your program if versions differ -- to freely-spaced jpgs, which I tested after uploading to be sure they show up! So the whole thing would be a lot bulkier to print out, but a lot more readable in a purely visual sense on a computer or CD. (The yellow underlining of certain items like 'rental car' in 0.3 with pointers to commercial websites is somehow insidiously triggered by FrontPage; yet I can find nothing in the HTML code to explain or expunge it. Please don't blame me!)
24. Also, I made a few updatings in content when I uncovered major data while the publisher's 'reviewers' were 'looking at' the book, such as those suggesting that 9/11 might conceivably have been intended by the participating Saudis as a ‘pre-emptive strike’. Proposals have been advanced for the US to invade Saudi Arabia (e.g. by Irwin Stelzer of the Hudson Institute in the Sunday Times). Editor and TV talking head Rich Lowry, in the National Review's new Web log, ‘The Corner’, remarked that his mail was showing ‘lots of sentiment’ for dropping a nuclear bomb on the holy city of Mecca. After all, Lowry pontificated, 'religions have suffered such catastrophic setbacks before’; ‘nuking Mecca seems extreme, of course, but then again few people would die and it would send a signal.’* That it would, Ritchie-Boy — the start of World War III, to be exact — and with Dr Strangeloves like you 'editing' and 'reviewing the nation’, books like this one almost write themselves, especially those listed in IX.7.. Note * http://www.nationalreview.com/thecorner/10503547
I. Theory and practice 1. In broad terms, theory is how matters get represented, how matters get done. The relations between theory could logically be a genuine dialectic,defined here as a dynamic cycle between two
whereas practice is and practice processes guiding
each other along. The practice is theory- driven, and the theory is practice-driven; the theory envisions and expounds the practice; and the practice
specifies and implements the theory (Fig. 1). The output from theory is top- down, whilst the output from practice is bottom-up. The more ‘theoretical’ the operation, the more steady and and precise the ‘practical’ guidance needs to be.2. However, in several scenarios the dialectic goes out of alignment. In one, theory runs ahead of practice, e.g., devising abstract plans and goals from the top down without concrete methods to implement them from the bottom up. So you proceed with partial approximations of a practice: reasoning from previous experience with similar practices, and trying to adapt and implement ones that worked before. The practice can undergo ‘tuning’ and become steadily more effective as the practice catches up with the theory. 3. In the converse scenario, practice runs ahead of theory, e.g., engaging in sundry activities with no sound conception of plans and goals. Here, you proceed on partial approximations of a theory, reasoning from previous knowledge of similar theories, and trying to rethink them for new situations. The theory can undergo tuning and become steadily more rational as it catches up with the practice. 4. In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, e.g., ‘theorizing’ from the top down and disregarding practical consequences or applications. Theorizing becomes itsown goal, and ‘theoreticians’ claim an independent and superior authority over
‘practitioners’ handling practical matters (I.23, 34; II.187). A theory may indeed be valued precisely for its distance from practice. 5. In the converse radical scenario, practice runs away from theory, e.g., using methods that baldly ignore or contradict the professed theory. You invoke a false theory which presents you in a favourable perspective, and disclaim responsibility for your true and unfavourable actions. 6. In the first pair of scenarios, you retain the potential to make theory and practice converge, as when a novice gradually becomes a veritable expert. In many domains, however, a total convergence of theory with practice could only be a state of utopia — an ultimate, unreachable goal. To keep proceeding toward the goal, heartened rather than daunted by the unlimited space for progress, is a hopeful utopia; to abandon your search for the goal in despair is a hopeless utopia.1 Unhappily, the ‘hopeful utopian’ is far more easily transformed into a hopeless one — switching from selfless to selfish, from idealist to cynic, from benefactor to exploiter, from liberator to tyrant — than vice-versa. 7. But in the more radical pair of scenarios, theory and practice cannot converge. Instead, an official theory is publicly declared but does not guide practice, whereas anoperational theory is not publicly declared or is flatly denied but does guide practice. In parallel, official practice is spuriously claimed to be what gets done, whilst operational practice truly gets done but does not get admitted. 8. The present Introduction will be building on the basic terms and concepts just proposed, using a method we might call concentric frames, working inward from general to specific, or outward from specific to general (Fig. 2a-b). Theory and practice constitute the outermost frame; then theory and practice in society; then theory and practice in some institution of society, such as education or science; and finally at the centre, theory and practice in some specific concern of that institution, such as language education or language science.
Each issue is thus situated within concentric contexts, e .g., how a society based on inclusive theory but exclusive practice sustains a corresponding contradiction in science and education despite well-intentioned projects for inclusion. Recovering a genuine dialectic requires making explicit both the ‘theoreticalness’ of human practices and the ‘practicality’ of human theories.
I.A. Theory and practice in society 9. Democracy, the currently dominant official theory of the state, envisions, in abstract terms, universal inclusion and equality for every citizen, and calls for such institutions as free elections and universal education as the operational means. In return, the practices of such institutions specify, in concrete terms, how to implement inclusion and equality, e.g., by conducting voter registration at election time or standard examinations at the end of school terms. A total convergence of theory with practice in a democracy would be perhaps the most obvious utopia. But a ‘democracy’ truly merits the name only as a hopeful utopia that vigorously promotes its theory in its practices, e.g., by means of ‘equal rights legislation’ and ‘equal opportunity employment’. A society that endemically restricts the human rights of women or minorities cannot be a ‘democracy’, no matter how loudly it calls itself so and no matter how many elections and school exams it can boast. 10. The agenda of ecologism upholds genuine democracy through a dialectical convergence between inclusive theories and inclusive practices that promotes the expansion of human potential. We can accordingly define social progress as inclusive practice converging with inclusive theory, versus social regress s as exclusive practice diverging frominclusive theory (Fig.3).2
By these terms, many events or processes labelled ‘progress’ in public discourse do not qualify, such as the ‘economic progress’ benefiting only the top classes of society and neglecting the rest (cf. I.23f; VII.1; VIII.51-54). 11. Four
factors could be
described
of social roles, inclusion produces insiders in a 4).People can naturally
.
in corresponding group,
terms.
whereas exclusion
In
the
factor
produces outsiders (Fig.
occupy both roles as insiders for some groups and outsiders or others. The vital question for ecologism is how these roles can strengthen equality and respect for human rights through the mutual treatment of insiders and outsiders. 12. In the factor of human interaction, solidarity interacts outward on equal levels amongst insiders, whereas power interacts downward on unequal levels against outsiders. Inclusion in a power group can empower the insiders and disempower the outsiders. Whereas solidarity is a restful state promoting human rights and drawing people into supportive co-operation, power is a restless state demoting human rights and impelling people into divisive conflicts, typically over money and property
(Fig. 5). The ecological practice for a power group would be to empower outsiders and resolve conflicts — and not, as commonly occurs, to exploit and foment. 13. In the factor of human potential, actualisation frees you to realise and build your potential in meaningful activities selected by your own free inclination, whereas alienationlimits your potential to meaningless activities dictated by others (Fig. 6). 3
Becoming alienated and disempowered is an inner ‘regress’ that excludes steadily more aspects of your human potential, thus engendering and aggravating inner conflicts among the perpetrators who alienate and the victims who get alienated, and maybe culminating in violence (cf. I.18, 38). 14. The counterpart term ‘actualisation’ is far less familiar, no doubt being rarer in ‘modern’ societies. Becoming actualized and empowered is inner ‘progress’ that includes steadily more aspects of your human potential, and thus reconciles inner conflicts and promotes mutual respect. Ecologism holds that actualisation should be recognised as an essential human right for democracy to advance, especially in adapting the design of its educational systems to reflect more progressive insights on such concepts as ‘intelligence’ (cf. I.57ff, 74). 15. In the factor of ideology, defined here neutrally as a framework of ideas that legitimise what is ‘natural’, ‘normal’, ‘proper’, and legitimise what is not, 4 a left-wing ideologyholds that human rights are inclusive and equal in theory, even though, short of utopia (in the sense of I.6), social conditions create exclusions and inequalities in practice. The borders between insiders and outsiders should be attenuated; conflicts should be reconciled; and the empowerment for actualisation should be actively nurtured. Social progress (in the inclusive sense of I.10) is a sound investment, and constitutes a significant duty of the state and its institutions, as professed for instance by the ideology of ‘socialism’. 16. A right-wing ideology holds that human rights must be exclusive and unequal in both theory and practice, in exact proportion to each individual’s share of wealth and power, no matter how these were
acquired. The borders between insiders and outsiders should be accentuated to keep people in their ‘proper places’; conflicts should be ‘manfully fought’ until ‘victory or death’ to ensure the ‘survival of the fittest’; those who prove ‘unfit’ are wholly to blame for any disempowerment and alienation they suffer. Social progress is a reckless experiment, and constitutes an irresponsible intrusion of the state, as professed for instance by the ideologies of the ‘free market’ and ‘social Darwinism’. 17. The social practices legitimised by left-wing theories are predictably ‘illegitimised’ by right-wing theories, and vice versa; when political power shifts sides, social policies may get abolished or reversed. The right speaks for the economic top (the rich and powerful ‘elites’), and the left speaks for the economic bottom (the ‘working masses’) (VII.1). A different opposition pervades their cognitive and discursive styles. Left-wing theory is complex and intellectual, and respects multiple viewpoints, with the unhappy sideeffects of talking over the heads of the masses and of dividing its own practitioners into clans and factions who debate and dispute when they should unite against challenges from the right. The left argues for resolving social and economic problems and helping the victims — those without homes or jobs, or in jail — because the social order is unjust in alienating human potential; but their arguments are frankly complicated. 18. In contrast, right-wing theory is simplistic and anti-intellectual, and respects only its own viewpoint, thus uniting its adherents into a single faction (or ‘klan’) to attack and silence its immense gallery of ‘enemies’ (cf. VII.27ff). The right advocates blaming social and economic problems on scapegoats who are ceaselessly accused of an evil conspiracy to destroy the sacred values of family, home, and homeland — intellectuals, artists, minorities, gays, immigrants, foreigners, and now Muslims. The right blames the victims of social problems,5saying they richly deserve their sufferings, whereas the social order is just; and the arguments are frankly simple-minded. Indeed, the right converts victims into perpetrators6 — scroungers, anarchists, agitators, terrorists, etc. etc. — and hence into legitimate targets of spontaneous or state-sponsored violence. The discursive reduction of human potential thus legitimises the physical reduction (cf. I.38). 19. Using the four social factors outlined here — with their correlated polarities between insider and outsider, power and solidarity, alienation and actualisation, right-wing, and left-wing — we might tentatively describe three basic stages in social evolution. A pre-modern society (the term ‘traditional’ is too loaded) with a hierarchical organisation (e.g., the Egypt of the Pharaohs) restricts power to an aristocracy of insiders determined by static criteria like birth, rank, and class, and sustains an official rightwing ideology like the divine authority of kings or priests. A few families control the politics and economy, though their ties may be invidious and insidious in scheming for power against each other. The economy centres on slave labour extracted to supply the opulent wants of the elite, such as ornaments, villas, temples, and palaces, enlisting primitive technology. The environment is regarded as a reservoir of vast wealth and as a backdrop for sumptuous rituals that mediate between heaven and earth. Alienation and social disorders are taboo topics, and their agents or critics get persecuted or executed. 20. A pre-modern society with an egalitarian organisation (e.g., the cultures of the Amazon rainforest) attributes little value to criteria like birth, rank, and class. Families have the small size the environment can support, and their ties are strong and durable, e.g., in caring for the young, the aged, and the sick. The economy centres on communal labour, such as hunting in the wild or harvesting in the fields. The environment is regarded as an extended home to be respected and preserved, and perhaps as a home to protective spirits too. Technology is minimal and serves directly essential needs, such as weapons and tools. Alienation and social disorders are rare, and their agents get ritually reintegrated.
21. A modern society mixes hierarchical and egalitarian modes of organisation, and relies on dynamic criteria like education, initiative, and enterprise. Families are smaller than the environment could support and their ties are weaker and more fragile; care for the young, the aged, and the sick is consigned to institutions like ‘rest homes’. The grouping of insiders and outsiders, and the distribution of power, follow the right-wing and left-wing oscillations of state ideology. The economy organises manual (‘blue-collar’) labour into large enterprises, and interposes layers of (‘white-collar’) management to oversee and ‘motivate’ them. In response, labour forms unions to attenuate the social divide between the ‘working class’ and the ‘middle class’, and propagates patterns of inclusive consumption of lower-priced commodities like ‘compact cars’. Unions can also protect jobs during expansions of technology, as when assembly lines get partially mechanised by robots. The environment is regarded as a resource for commerce and industry to exploit, regardless of depletion and pollution. Alienation and social disorders are common, and their agents get isolated in mental wards or prisons, or dumped on the streets. 22. A post-modern society sharpens the tension between hierarchical and egalitarian modes of organisation. The grouping of insiders and outsiders, and the distribution of power, are subject to abrupt and radical changes. Social diversity flows from multiculturalism and multilingualism, but finds expression mainly in superficial ‘life styles’ like fashions in pop music, clothing, and, recently, body-piercing. Few societies have yet seriously faced the diversity by reaffirming equality in human rights, and many quietly or openly seek to deny or repress it, e.g., by drastically restricting immigration. The operational theory of ‘democracy’ juggernauts off to the far right as whole governments and national economies fall under the power of immense multinational banks and corporations. Labour and capital are ‘globalised’ as these power groups circle the planet on the trail of ‘favourable conditions’, which, in the discourse of corporate cynicism, means government incentives, privatisations, abysmal wages, hazardous working conditions, and an absence of labour unions, public health care, environmental safeguards, and (above all) taxes (II.119ff). Workers see their buying power melt away, and much of the middle class sinks down into the ‘working poor’, who are redundant and irrelevant as consumers when the economy shifts over to the exclusive consumption of highpriced commodities like ‘luxury cars’. Families are pressured to reassume social burdens such as care for the young, the aged, and the sick, whilst the ‘social safety net’ is legislated away and social services are shut down because taxes are ‘cut’ and taxable wealth is ‘sheltered’ or ‘moved offshore’. The natural environment gets intrusive competition from the ‘virtual realities’ where alienation is released by ‘vaporising aliens’. Social disorders grow intense, swelling the legions of jobless vegetating in overcrowded prisons or desolate streets. 23. These basic stages, as described here in theory, can assume a variety of forms in practice. Egalitarian pre-modern societies sustained a close association between theoretical and practical knowledge. Modern societies, in contrast, have proliferated theoretical knowledge apart from practical knowledge, and elaborately dissociated ‘theoreticians’ from ‘practitioners’ (cf. I.4, 34). Post-modern societies are managed by tiny groups of publicly inaccessible theoreticians within commerce and technology whose theories and practices equate ‘economic progress’ with rises in executive salaries, stock prices, and shareholder profits, full stop (cf. I.10). 24. Such dissociations perfectly suit a society whose official theories are inclusive and operational practices are exclusive. This unsettling polarity can line up with those of ‘freedom’ versus domination; of ‘equality’ versus discrimination; of ‘economic growth’ of the few versus economic shrinkage of the many; and of ‘peace-keeping’ versus war-mongering. The dissociated society glibly professes the one and lives by the other, all of which burdens the social order with a smouldering underside of social disorder that must eventually erupt (I.32; VII.38).
25. ‘Modernisation’ might be roughly described by the four scenarios in I.2-7. Theory runs ahead of practice, as when a country abolishing colonialism names itself a ‘democracy’ but makes no fundamental provisions to guarantee comprehensive human rights. A new elite supplants the old in battening on the masses whose lives barely improve. Further social inequalities may mirror divisions by region (e.g., urban or rural, coast or interior), education (e.g., A-level or O-level, tertiary or secondary), and profession (e.g., bureaucrat or farmer, manager or clerk). 26. In the converse scenario, practice runs ahead of theory, as when new technologies are introduced with no conception of how they may affect the social order. They typically generate moneyed ‘technology elites’ whose access to global communication and information distances them ever further from the masses. 27. In a more radical scenario, theory runs away from practice, as when post-colonial nations pass legislation granting full ‘official’ status to indigenous languages yet continue to conduct official business and economic activity in the language of the former ‘colonial masters’. 28. And in the converse radical scenario, practice runs away from theory, as when a new ‘democracy’ retains the secret police of the old dictatorship under a new name like ‘information management bureau’. The operational practices are secretly augmented to suppress the publicly legalised opposition. 29. Despite the labels, pre-modernism, modernism, and post-modernism need not form any uniform or precise historical sequence. Substantial leeway inheres in assigning a date to the onset of modernism, and, even more, to its presumed transition into post-modernism. What I am calling ‘modernism’ in hindsight gradually crystallised from a complex of social, political, economic, demographic, and technological trends whose timetables differed appreciably among countries, regions, institutions, or social classes. In the basic ‘Western’ model followed here, these trends generally included migrating from rural to urban regions; decentralising power; expanding commerce and trade; raising efficiency in production; forming new specialisations; and institutionalising national languages. Even these trends have often focused on fairly specific sectors of society, and encountered entrenched resistance from sectors who stood to lose through processes of change, notably the centralist authorities of church and state. 30. Post-modernism in turn is generally associated with such trends as degrading urban centres and migrating to suburbs; transferring state power to corporate power; painfully cutting back social services; globalising commerce and trade; rationalising production and destroying jobs; concentrating new specializations in high technology and communication; and expanding English world-wide over local languages. The focus here has been still more specific, focused on the economic top, and resistance is difficult mount, let alone consolidate. 31. By this account, both modernism and post-modernism have been practices running well ahead of theories; and their retrospective ‘theorisation’ has been mostly undertaken by academics who are not in control of the trends and, if neutralised by ‘conservative’ mass media as ‘fringe radicals’ (VII.30ff), exert little impact on public discourse or private practice. Nor are the vast majority of the world’s citizens, holding no explicit theories at all of those trends, remotely in control of their own practices. They are easily misled to equate ‘progress’ with innovative trends (like ‘digital cameras’ and ‘plasma television’) that are highly exclusive and should thus count as ‘regress’ in the socially oriented sense of I.10. 32. The new millennium seems destined to endure the full strain of post-modernism being injected into societies that still embody a vertiginous mix of pre-modernism and modernism, so that the term ‘democracy’ for a whole society signifies at best a mosaic and at worst a euphemism. Diverse populations live in dramatically disparate stages of evolution — as in the ‘luxury condo’ with ‘high-tech workstations’
surrounded by hovels without running water or electricity. This mixing gets spread all round the world by globalisation, and threatens to foster explosive breakdowns in communication and interaction, and thus in social cohesion, human responsibility, and democratic principle (Ch. VII). 7 33. The response of ecologism might be to promote a lively dialectic of deconstruction and reconstruction by analysing discourse to determine which social practices are implied by the official theory; how they diverge from the operational practices; and how more inclusive alternatives might help theory and practice converge for real social progress (I.10; II.182ff). As ecologist agents, we would also seek convergence between our dual social roles. As theoreticians, our discourse could expound practice-driven theories for social progress, e.g., a theory of text and discourse centred on strategies for enhancing equality (Ch. VI); and to deconstruct impractical theories unsuited for social progress, e.g., a theory of ‘language by itself’ (cf. II.41f). As practitioners, our discourse could model and implement theorydriven practices to take account of new discoveries, and to propose future theories, e.g., classroom methods using new insights into language due to large corpora of authentic data (II.202); and to deconstruct antitheoretical practices which ignore new discoveries and shun contact with theories, e.g., classroom methods preaching purist ‘rules’ far from authentic usage (II.13f, 18f). 34. Finally, we might analyse discourse to show how ‘theoreticians’ and ‘practi-tioners’ possess complementary kinds of knowledge, and deconstruct discourses attributing great knowledge to the former and little to the latter (I.4, 23). We can retrace the devaluing of practical knowledge from divisive historical processes of modernisation, specialisation, and education; and show it to be patently misplaced in a postmodern society whose survival depends on united initiatives in practical knowledge to protect and restore our human and natural environment. I.B. Language and discourse as theory and practice 35. Again in the broadest terms, a language is a theory of cognitive knowledge and social experience (what language users know and live), and discourse is its practice (how they talk about it),8 both sides interfacing the linguistic, cognitive, and social domains (cf. II.84, 111, 143). A text (lower case) would be a communicative event that contributes to adiscourse as a set of mutually relevant texts, usually a conversation; a Text (upper case) would be a communicative unit produced by a discursive event and recorded in some prosodic or visual medium. Any relevant sub-unit, such as a Phrase, Clause, or Paragraph, can be called a Stretch of Text to remind us where it belongs. Still, the Text is not just a series of units but rather a tri-modal system that integrates the sub-systems of Lexicogrammar, Prosody, and Visuality (Chs. III-V). Thus, a text can deploy not just language, but also tone of voice, gesture, facial expression, imagery, photographs, cinema, or some combination of such resources. 36. Here at least, the dialectic between theory and practice, stated to be fundamental at the outset (I.1), is well secured. The practices are richly ‘theory-driven’ because discourse draws upon language as a ‘theory’ — or indeed a vast network of ‘theories’ — for ‘representing’ our ‘world’ and ourselves, and for constructing alternative states of the world, or even, as in literary discourse, whole alternative worlds (II.175, 182). Participants must ‘theorise’ extensively about what words mean, what people intend, what makes sense, and so on. Meanings are especially theoretical entities, like ‘mini-theories’ we can’t prove, though they generally suffice for practice. We understand each other insofar as our language-theories have a parallel construction which becomes tuned during discourse. And this tuning steadily maintains the language in the dynamic process of being both confirmed and constituted by discursive practices (cf. II.21, 157, 178; VI.3, 10.3).
37. By this account, discourse is the most theoretical practice humans can perform, and the most efficient and effective in using the least effort for the most goals. In return, language is the most practical theory humans can devise — an unlimited ‘theory of everything’ offering resources to shape and guide almost any practical activities. Yet language as theory also runs ahead of discourse as practice by foreshadowing some further certainty and precision beyond what is attained on any one occasion. As I shall be showing later on, a ‘critical’ analysis of a text or discourse regularly uncovers some uncertainty and imprecision — a natural reflex of the openness of language for an unlimited range and variety of expressions. 38. By a similar reasoning, language is the most inclusive theory humans can devise, and thus the most ‘progressive’ for integrating people as insiders. The practices of discourse navigate our social relations within the family, peer group, school, and career. Of course, language can exclude people as outsiders, but I submit that doing so turns language against its natural potential. Consider how frankly the discourses of radical exclusion as in racism and colonialism, reduce and debase the language in order to reduce and debase human beings with hatespeak smears like ‘scum’, ‘animals’, ‘savages’, ‘niggers’, ‘coolies’, ‘towelheads’, etc. (cf. VII33ff). Consider too how often a refusal to use language is a glaring act of exclusion or an ominous prelude to violence, which constitutes the ultimate reduction of the human potential of both perpetrators and victims (cf. 0.2; I.13, 18). The essential nature of language, and the fundamental rationale of its very existence, must be inclusion. 39. This reasoning leads to a vision of language being our foremost hopeful utopia with a limitless potential for improving our knowledge and understanding, and sharing them with an ever wider community. Even the single text is ‘work in progress’ in the special sense (proposed here) of moving toward more inclusive theory through more inclusive practice (cf. 0.13; II.134). The utopian challenge to the sensitive speaker or writer is to sustain a clear direction of progress throughout the ‘textual work’ of production until the text is judged sufficiently efficient, effective, and appropriate (cf. II.113). 40. However, inclusion in theory and practice is vitally sensitive to social equality and inequality, as
suggested in Fig. 7.Linguistic equality could advance social equality with the theory that all the world’s languages have equal potential for expressing or communicating relevant any content; none is definitive- ly superior or inferior. Such is firmly sustained by the official theory of linguistics (II.38), which has, however, not generated a really practical programme for social equality through discursive equality. 41. In contrast, linguistic inequality could advance social inequality with the theory that some languages are definitively superior and deserve the most respect. Such was long firmly sustained by the official theory of colonialism, the ideology empowering ‘higher cultures’ to govern ‘lower cultures’, occupy their territories, and extract their labour and resources. The indigenous peoples were declared ‘unfit to govern themselves’, their ‘primitive’ or ‘savage’ languages being unsuited for ‘expressing civilised ideas’. Forced to communicate with their ‘colonial masters’ on earthy matters, they improvised varieties that came to be known as ‘pidgins’ and ‘creoles’. 9 Even after independence, these remained the practical media fordiscursive inequality between the ‘masses’ and the ‘standard’-speaking ‘elites’
.42. I would accordingly describe social equality and inequality as the leverage points deciding whether and whom the dialectic between language as theory and discourse as practice empowers or disempowers. Yet by an ironic reversal, inequal-ities in language and discourse are being exploited today as justifications for social inequality, such as denial of employment. 10 Now that other modes of discrimination are prohibited, speakers of ‘inferior’ languages or varieties are routinely disempowered and deprived of the right to be heard. Should they manage to switch to ‘superior’ ones, they may find themselves alienated from friends and family.11 43. Evidently, the official theory of linguistic equality presently fails to guide practices of discursive equality, whilst operational theory guides practices of both linguistic and discursive inequality. The ecologist agenda seeks practical theories of equality to guide practices toward linguistic and discursive equality. On the ‘theory-side’ of language, we can help to design practical models for rendering the supposedly superior languages or varieties more reliably teachable and learnable to promote inclusion in socially strategic domains of discourse, such as access to new technologies. In parallel, we can help to design practical models for exploiting the capacities of the supposedly inferior ones to accommodate those domains, such as technical terminologies, which should improve public attitudes. On the ‘practice-side’ of discourse, we can help to map out inclusive strategies which favour social equality and reconcile inequality, and which deconstruct undemocratic attitudes about superiority and inferiority. 44. Expressed in terms of the social factors aired for theory and practice in I.A, we should explore how strategies of discourse include hearers or readers as insiders, or exclude them as outsiders, or do both at once, e.g., by addressing a group of outsiders who aspire to become insiders although only a select few will be genuinely included, as in higher education (I.49, 55). 45. Further, we can explore how strategies of discourse either promote solidarity for joining with others on equal terms; or else promote power for controlling others on unequal terms; and how such strategies either empower people to actualise their potential, or else disempower them to be alienated by others. We may expect solidarity in friendly conversations; empowerment in user-friendly presentations of special knowledge; and disempowerment in strenuously technical presentations. Even purporting to objectively ‘speak the truth’ or ‘report the facts’ can be an unobtrusive and effective move for discursive power. 46. A key question in our explorations is whether the participants in discourse must choose between moves of including or excluding, between solidarity or power; or can remain neutral. Isolated Words or Phrases can seem neutral, but longer and richer Stretches of Text rarely are, due to the agenda of intentions and the factor of attitudes.12 Ostensibly neutral discourse may prove to be camouflaged discourse of power. Still, inclusion and exclusion could be relative rather than total, and could be intended or accepted to varying degrees in discourse. Or, those moves could remain largely below our awareness whilst enacting unequal roles, such as parent and child, employer and employee, master and servant, landlord and tenant, bureaucrat and citizen. 47. For its agenda of promoting the solidarity that unites and deconstructing the power that divides, ecologism can derive its firmest grounds for a hopeful utopia from the fundamentally inclusive essence of language (I.38f). We are not bending language and discourse to some private politics or personal philosophy for our own advantage; indeed, we would probably reap greater material benefits from dryly ‘academic’ or purely ‘theoretical’ studies. We are merely progressing toward an ecological ambience where language and discourse are steadily more empowered to actualise their natural potential for inclusion. 48. Furthermore, I would argue that many implicit human theories resemble language in implying a hopeful utopia and endlessly seeking some higher certainty, finality, or completeness. Science, philosophy,
and religion are three monumental utopian theories for intellectual and spiritual discovery; and democracy is one for the social order. To widen our chances for improving human lives, we must strive to acknowledge and revitalise the ‘utopian’ dimensions of democratic societies as conceived by their founders and articulated in their constitutions. I.C. Theory and practice in ‘modern education’ 49. Among the institutions in a society, education is an eminently cognitive, social, and linguistic enterprise. Yet its authority is served by appearing as a pre- dominantly cognitive enterprise whose linguistic and social domains are secondary or incidental (cf. I.58, 77; VII.55). In official theory, education includes all cognitive outsiders who ‘lack knowledge’ by converting them into cognitive insiders who ‘possess knowledge’; in operational practice, inclusion is mostly secured for linguistic insiders whose home language or variety is approved in schooling; and for social insiders who hail from secure, well-to-do families. The discrepancy reflects the historical legacy whereby private education for insiders furnished the enduring model for education at large. The dominant pre-modern methods since antiquity have featured rote memorisation and repetition of authorised information, such as ‘classic’ texts — an approach to ‘education’ with remarkable longevity (I.53, 59f, 64, 74, 108; II.200). 50. To appraise cognition more precisely, I would propose a key distinction. Knowledge is more dynamic and integrative. Its content is characteristically practical, and naturallyacquired from lived experiences and directed intuitions among a cultural community. The operations for storing, retrieving, and using it are relatively effortless. When not in active use, it can undergo spontaneous evolution and elaboration in mental storage and generate more of itself. New knowledge being entered can reverberate through associated prior knowledge and update its specifications. Or, old knowledge can be creatively modified and adapted for unfamiliar or novel applications. 51. By contrast, information is more static and compartmentalised. Its content is characteristically theoretical, and consciously acquired from specialized activities. The operations for storing, retrieving, and using it are relatively effortful. When not in active use, it can undergo spontaneous conflation or degradation. New information being entered is unlikely to be integrated with prior information unless the mutual associations are expressly constructed. And old information can be difficult to modify or adapt to unfamiliar or novel applications. 52. A pre-modern society is mainly knowledge-based, oriented toward manual labour and the production of essential commodities in harmony with the environ-ment (cf. I.19). But as specialisation leads toward the modern society, information steadily intensifies until the society is mainly information-based, and information emerges as a commodity for sustaining wealth and power. 13 Today, the constant production of information closes the circle by enforcing a heavy reliance on ‘information technology’, without which you are doomed to the status of outsider. 53. The emphasis on memorisation and repetition in education essentially fosters methods that treat knowledge as information — static, compartmentalised, theoretical, and consciously acquired. This trend too has intensified during the evolution of ‘modern education’, so that new knowledge in the sciences and the arts has, with a routine time lag, been converted to information for uses in education. The more ‘modern’ the latter becomes, the greater the volume of information being ‘taught’ which is distinct from knowledge and is unlikely to become knowledge. Instead, it degrades over time and becomes inaccessible. 54. A dualism arises in the relation between the theory and practice of education itself — what it believes to be doing and what it is doing — and the relation between the theoretical information it values and the
practical knowledge it devalues. The official theory of ‘modern education’ is left-wing and functionalist in its ideology, holding that all learners deserve and receive the ‘same’ chances for success within the ‘same’ curriculum, which equips them all to be ‘well-informed citizens’ in practical life (but cf. I.58). The schools should work to ensure success; learners with problems should receive special help to include them in the process. Yet the operational theory of modern education is more often right-wing andformalist, holding that only the ‘superior’ learners merit the ‘benefits of education’, which should be chiefly academic and theoretical, set apart from practical life. A wide-ranging scale of success and failure is judged normal and natural, as in the social Darwinism of ‘survival of the fittest’ (cf. I.16); learners with problems should be sternly warned or severely punished, and, should they fail to ‘improve’, excluded altogether. As in other domains of society, the practices legitimised by the left are ‘illegitimised’ by the right, and vice versa (I.17); and spiralling conflicts over matters of policy can stymie any real progress in the system and thus result in a default victory for the regressive right. 55. Insofar as a modern society sustains inclusive theories but exclusive practices (I.24), education takes on the split functions of including insiders and excluding outsiders along much the same lines as society itself. The split drives the operational right-wing theory known as the hidden curriculum: 14 converting selected outsiders into insiders by a process so difficult and arbitrary as to leave a significant portion of aspiring learners either included only along the margins or else excluded as life-long outsiders, whilst representing the process as eminently fair. Flagrantly undermining the official theory of democracy, the curriculum must be kept hidden, where it can unobtrusively deflect left-wing projects to render education more inclusive and democratic. 56. The hidden curriculum favours practices of testing to yield moderate rates of high success and low failure, and to place a large contingent in the middle as ‘average’, which is invidiously interpreted as ‘mediocre’ or even ‘inadequate’. As long as a modern society refuses to grant equal merit that entitles equal benefits in adult life in such areas as employment, wages, or housing, the schools and colleges are obligated to make children appear unequal at ages when their human potential is still rudimentary and emergent. A profound reorientation is demanded: [4] Schools [should empower] children whose different talents are developing at different speeds to have experiences which will boost their confidence and give them a taste of success — rather than seeing themselves labelled as comparative failures in the ‘three Rs’, [lest they get] ‘switched off’ education before they even reached secondary school, especially from ‘challenged’ families (Tim Brighouse, in BBC News). Children get thoroughly tested and ranked long before they can actualise the linguistic, cognitive, and social skills that constitute genuine merit in the real world; and many whom the tests dump at lower ranks become alienated and cease to strive for such skills, engulfed in a monstrous waste of human potential (I.62): [5] They are catalogued, measured and deemed wanting the moment they enter school; they are tested before they are instructed. The teacher becomes a judge; the class’s standing in reading and arithmetic is a yardstick of collective failure; and the fear of inadequacy pervades the classroom, suffocating teacher and pupil alike.15 Even successful learners may be encouraged by testing to focus on vacuous but easily testable topics, like doing ‘long division’ or reciting historical dates. 57. The emphasis on testing strategically rationalises success or failure as products of the merit of the individual learners, who are confronted with massive information and left to their own devices about how to absorb it for testing. In one account, merit is decided by your individual intelligence and aptitude, which you
have derived chiefly from nature or genetics and so cannot really control (VII.51). In the other account, merit is decided by your diligence and obedience, which you can and jolly well ought to control. To paper over the patent incompatibility between the two accounts, schooling might piously assume that intelligence is the material cause of diligence, or that diligence is the direct proof of intelligence. 58. Yet substantial evidence suggests that, barring cases of severe physical or mental disability, young children entering school are all fairly equal in their cognitive abilities and potential — their real intelligence and aptitude. Where they are manifestly not equal is in their linguistic and social abilities. Camouflaging the hidden curriculum behind an image of fairness therefore accords with representing education more as a cognitive enterprise than as a linguistic or social one (I.49). The ‘same’ information gets presented in the ‘same’ lectures or textbooks to all prospective learners who do the ‘same’ tasks, tests, and so on (cf. I.54) — all of which might in reality be experienced as radically different among learners from disparate linguistic and social backgrounds. 59. Due to this latent contradiction between sameness and difference, the estimates of ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’ inferred from rigid, uncreative test-taking skills are more properlyproducts of schooling than its preconditions.16 The hidden curriculum requires education not merely to manifest and confirm differences in ‘merit’ (the official theory), but also to devise and entrench them (the operational theory). Social uniformity and neutrality are simulated by constructing a special cognitive and linguistic framework remote from social life. In such schooling, a formalist approach whereby abstract theoretical information, preferably facts and figures, gets learned for its own sake with utmost precision, is favoured over afunctionalist approach whereby concrete practical knowledge is learned for its human interest and its applicability in later life. In parallel, the academic or technical discourse that is valued above ordinary conversation foments commun-icative bottlenecks and encourages memorizing and reciting the discourses of lectures or textbooks without needing to genuinely understand them. Learners are challenged to assimilate themselves to an artificial sheltered environment, where some will feel socially unwelcome or displaced. The conventional social values for this assimilation emphasise courtesy, punctuality, neatness, and cleanliness; the cognitive values emphasise verbal and mathematical skills; and the linguistic ones emphasise Standard English with punctilious spelling, punctuation, and penman-ship. The heavily mainstream middle-class orientation of these values is tacitly deemed universal and unquestionable, and conspicuous defiance may lead to denying ‘merit’ and forfeiting the ‘benefits of education’. 60. The emphasis on testing also imbues the whole system with a negative orientation. Arbitrary theoretical norms or standards are imposed from the top down to distinguish between ‘right and wrong answers’. Evaluation routinely assigns an equally arbitrary number of ‘points’ to each answer on the test, and subtracts the ‘lost points’ from the total. Since most modern societies have a decimal mentality, the standard total is ‘100’, and the ‘grades’ are descending blocks of 10: ‘90-100’ for ‘excellent’, ‘80-89’ for ‘good’, ‘70-79’ for ‘average’, ‘60-69’ for ‘poor’, and ‘59’ and below for complete ‘failure’. Especially when learners didn’t know just what information would be tested, they recite memorised discourse from textbooks or lectures, or fudge and guess in hopes of hitting on the ‘right answer’. Yet the ‘grade’ concocted out of these chancy practices is solemnly construed to reveal how ‘good’ or ‘poor’ the learners themselves are. In effect, products of alienation undercut the prospects for actualisation (cf. I.13f, 56, 61f, m 68, 82). 61. To produce clear distinctions in merit, tests and problems need to present substantial difficulties and provide ample opportunities for wrong answers. In cognitive terms, testing demands not just a theoretical capacity like ‘intelligence’, but a practical capacity to operate near the threshold of overload. This condition sets in when the demands upon physical or mental processing overtax available resources, and performance enters degradation, notably affecting the rapid and precise recall of complex information. Learners who do quite well in a relaxed, co-operative, and actualising environment with the freedom to check and revise their
work might well suffer overload and do quite badly in a high-pressure, isolating, and alienating environment. 62. And such is just the typical ambience of the conventional examination, especially a large-scale test for a whole school term. It is too long and laborious to be done with real safety or thoroughness in the time allowed; anxieties run high, given the threat of failing; the test takers are often jaded or exhausted from swotting and cramming; help from classmates is sternly forbidden, as is the use of even rudimentary aids, such as dictionaries or pocket computers. Quite plausibly, the results seriously underestimate real abilities; the test situation shears off or flattens out potential peaks of success and produces artificially deflated scores. Yet those same scores are certified to be the best indicators, if not the onlyindicators, of the learners’ ‘achievement’, or indeed of their ‘potential for achievement’. The very examinations treated as the key to classifying young people as ‘high achievers’ or ‘low achievers’ are the tools most prone to misrepresent them. The ‘low’ ones can marshal no effective defence against the alienating image, which they are left to accept and internalise until they ‘tune out’ or ‘drop out’— which, I maintain, betokens a monstrous waste of human potential (I.56). 63. If all learners were totally equal at the start, a high-pressure testing system running near overload would produce random results, with ‘merit’ being accorded or denied by pure chance, like throwing dice. But if learners are equal only in their cognitive potential, the results will mirror inequalities in their social and linguistic background (I.70). In official theory, children from the ‘lower classes’ of society are ‘free to rise up by achieving merit’. In the operational practice, doing so essentially demands assimilating yourself to mainstream middle-class culture and language at the risk of being alienated from your home culture and language (I.42). 64. The precise and detailed quantification of ‘merit’ is managed through the ‘grading system’, which entails several right-wing administrative theories abetting the hidden curriculum. The theory of the ‘right answer’ holds that the every item of ‘school knowledge’ (i.e., information) corresponds to a single ‘right answer’ clearly distinguished from all ‘wrong answers’; and that teachers or test-markers are fully ‘informed’ to judge the distinction. The practice accords undue reverence to the exact wording of the answers and so to the rote memorisation of educational discourse — a pre-modern method in a modernist setting (I.49, 53, 59f; II.200). 65. The theory of the ‘grade average’ holds that fluctuations among the individ-ual grades of a learner should be balanced out, the low ones bringing down the high, and the high bringing up the low. This theory ignores a basic imbalance. A low grade may be merely accidental when learners are feeling too tired, anxious, or distracted to perform at their true potential, and so succumb to overload. A high grade, on the contrary, demands deliberate and concentrated effort and a staunch resistance to overload, and is therefore a far better indicator of learner’s potential. So when grades are averaged, minor accidents can cancel out major achievements. 66. The theory of the ‘grade curve’ holds that the results of a test or assignment should be spread across a consistent pattern: some ‘high grades’ near the top, some ‘low grades’ near the bottom, and a cluster of ‘average grades’ near the middle (cf. I.68). In rigorous practice, pretexts may be invented for giving lower grades than the learners actually earned. When a large portion performs near the top, their grades may get squeezed and manipulated downward — a travesty of fairness the learners will readily perceive and resent. And, as I have noted, being ‘average’ may be taken to mean not ‘normal’ or ‘typical’, but ‘mediocre’ or ‘inadequate’ (I.56). 67. The cycle of right-wing reasoning is completed by the theory of ‘grade inflation’, holding that a ‘balanced’ grade curve is natural and necessary; a notable proportion of high grades thus indicates not the success of learners in performing the test, but the failure of teachers in not maintaining ‘high standards’ and ‘discipline’. The term ‘inflation’ artfully hints that teachers have been artificially pumping the grades up to
levels not justified by performance. But the conventional procedures of grading by high-pressure tests under conditions near overload would actually foster grade deflation by scoring learners below their real potential (cf. I.69). If so, progressive teaching methods to support the actualisation of that potential will naturally produce results falling significantly over the statistical mean within an otherwise alienating programme. Such methods do not burden assess-ment with an unfair inflation but rather free it from an unfair deflation. 68. Whereas ordinary examinations and their grades implicitly claim to deter-mine personal ability, ‘aptitude tests’ bearing anagrams like ‘SAT’, ‘PSAT’ and ‘NMSQT’ do so explicitly. These are advertised to provide an objective and accurate measure of general human potential that reflects how well you will succeed in ‘higher education’ and beyond in your future profession. For some years, applicants to prestigious universities in the US were compelled to undergo these tests, and the results could decide whether and where you would be admitted. To encourage schools in using the tests, the dominant ‘Educational Testing Service’ (ETS) charged not them but the captive test-takers, amassing annual profits over $100,000,000 whilst listing itself as a ‘non-profit organisation’. 17 69. Progressive research on the ETS tests themselves has roundly invalidated its advertisements. The tests predict academic success marginally better than throwing dice; they are (no surprise) biased toward mainstream middle-class culture; they exaggerate abstract theoretical reasoning in ‘math’ and ‘verbal skills’; they are far longer than even the speediest freak can finish; the wrong answers are subtracted from the right answers rather from the total of possible answers; the questions are craftily designed to fool or mislead the unwary; and the scores can be suspiciously improved after expensive special coaching. All these findings reveal that the tests unlikely are to produce a reliable assessment of human aptitude; and that the results are even more unfairly deflated than conventional examinations. 70. A comparison with athletic sports might be helpful. There, novices participate in situated learning18 with experts on a playing field. The criteria for success or failure are clearly defined, e.g., strength, speed, or distance in lifting, throwing, running, and scoring. Efforts can be strategically focused, e.g., practicing key movements and doing exercises to strengthen key muscles. Positive achievements are clearly recognised among both novices and experts, and a rewarding sense of progress is sustained. Even when your team loses a match, you have their support and the will to go on and surpass yourself in another match. Moreover, the rules of competition sports strictly prohibit and penalise unfair advantages, such as ingesting steroids; and unfair disadvantages to harm your opponents, such as inflicting bodily injuries. 71. Academic education, in contrast, abounds with advantages for insiders and disadvantages for outsiders, depending whether your home language variety resembles the preferred academic variety; or whether your family can afford a high-powered home computer or a private tutor. The more education strives to be ‘standardised’ and to discount the rising cultural and linguistic diversity of post-modern society, the more this unfairness serves to divide insiders from outsiders — in effect, confirming how society has already divided their families (cf. I.55). 72. We might predict that learners who come from alternative or non-traditional cultures and whose language variety is judged ‘non-standard’ will excel frequently in practical athletics but rarely in the more theoretical and academic subjects. Similarly, they will regard sports as the most promising channels to professional success in later life and the safest arenas to offset disadvantages in their academic schooling. And the evidence confirming these predictions is incontrovertible. 73. So far, I have highlighted the more regressive right-wing currents in conven-tional education because they most glaringly point up the disparities between its official theories and its operational theories and serve the ‘hidden curriculum’ of preparing children to acquiesce in social inequality within an official ‘democracy’ (cf. I.54f). Moreover, these currents are largely responsible for the ‘educational crisis’
periodically castigated in the public media, with right and left in their usual deadlock. Right-wing commentators hotly deny the very existence of the hidden curriculum, and attribute the crisis to irresponsible teachers and learners refusing to respect the core values of hard work, diligence, obedience, and so on; the solution is stricter discipline, harsher punishments, and frequent expulsions. Left-wing commentators highlight the alienation engendered by the hidden curriculum, and attribute the crisis to forceful resistance within a broader social and economic crisis when a diploma no longer promises social rewards. 74. Whatever the causes, the schools incur greater risks as the social division between the few insiders and the many outsiders grows explosively wide and acute. Alienating right-wing methods, such as rote memorisation and repetition, still predominate among large public schools in poorly funded inner-city districts, where many learners come from families of outsiders and are destined to stay outside.19 Meanwhile, progressive left-wing methods have gained in small private schools, with projects that are more learner-centred, creative, interactive, and responsive to cultural differences. Model schools like the Harvard Project Zero20 and programs like LOGO21 prove that learners who were once classified with ‘low intelligence and aptitude’ by conventional schools are capable of impressive success after trading an alienating environment for an actualising one. These practical findings corroborate the theory that ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’ are more the products of schooling than its preconditions and can be significantly enhanced through progressive practices that fulfil the official democratic theory of education. 75. The issues raised in this section should indicate why education deserves a central place on the agenda of ecologism. Progress toward inclusion and equality can only be achieved if the majority of our young people have not spent their formative years being been channelled through a system that legitimises exclusion and inequality, engenders alienation, disengagement, cynicism, or frank hostility, and endangers the general credibility of social institutions and civic responsibility. 76. In an ecologist agenda, the process of ‘getting educated’ does not consist merely of acquiring specialised information and then reciting it on tests or parading it in the technical discourse of insiders. Instead, the process must work to convert specialised information into relevant knowledge and integrate it with general knowledge for communicating with outsiders whose interests are at stake, e.g., citizens menaced by environmental pollution. A ‘highly educated’ person is not one who hoards specialised knowledge for personal status, but one who can share it to empower others. By this definition, communicating knowledge, and not just hoarding information, is the crucial measure of how ‘educated’ anyone deserves to be considered (II.112, 209). Knowledge is one possession that you increase for yourself by giving it to others; explanation for them can bring clarification and renewal for you (I.49, 84; II.113). Such could be the benefits of practices for ‘progress’ toward a convergence with an ecologist theory of education for promoting free access to knowledge and society.
I.D. Theory and practice in ‘modern science’ 77. Among the institutions of modern society, science is an eminently cognitive, linguistic, and social enterprise. Yet even more than education (I.49), it is typically represented as a predominantly cognitive enterprise whose linguistic and social dimensions are secondary or incidental; the term ‘science’ itself is emblematically derived from the Latin ‘scientia’, meaning ‘knowledge’. If this representation lends education an aura of fairness (I.58), it lends science an aura of authority. 78. As evidence of a cognitive emphasis, I would cite the collocations — typical word combinations we shall explore later on22 — in the British National Corpus (BNC), a data bank of 100 million words of contemporary British English texts (II.153ff). There, the Modifier ‘scientific’ often appears with cognitive
terms, such as ‘knowledge’ (160 occurrences), ‘theory’ (95), ‘understanding’ (24), ‘thinking’ (19), ‘thought’ (16); ‘research’ (250), ‘study’ (84), ‘investigation’ (57), ‘inquiry’ (24), ‘discovery’ (44); ‘evidence’ (114), ‘data’ (36), ‘observation’; (9), ‘principle’ (33), ‘idea’ (27), ‘concept’ (17); ‘objectivity’ (13), ‘fact’ (20), ‘truth’ (12), ‘proof’ (13). Occurrences are rarer with linguistic terms, such as ‘paper’ (68), ‘language’ (12), ‘terms’ (12), ‘communication’ (9); ‘writing’ (7); ‘lecture’ (5), ‘discussion’ (4); and with social terms, such as ‘work’ (58), ‘activity’ (39), ‘achievement’ (8); ‘cooperation’ (20), ‘collaboration’ (2). Intriguingly, ‘scientific’ never occurs in the BNC with ‘responsibility’, nor with ‘error’ or ‘mistake’. 79. The cognitive emphasis fits the public image of science as an enterprise producing ‘scientific theories’ that can be tested and proven ‘true’ or ‘false’ apart from the language of the discourses that express them and from the social status of the theoreticians that advance them. The practices feature calculating or observing ‘scientific data’ which your theories purport to explain or even predict, rather than deploying your powers of persuasion or your leverage and prestige. But if, as I assert, all human activity integrates the cognitive, linguistic, and social (cf. I.35, 49), this decorum merely camouflages the real power of persuasion and prestige. 80. The reputation of science as the ‘most theoretical’ domain in society is somewhat misconceived. The ‘theoreticalness’ of science is undeniably the most explicit and formal, but far less complex and elaborated than the implicit and informal theories members of society hold about the general organisation of the world. The most theoretical entity of all is in fact our language, and discourse is the most practical test, but not a proof (cf. I.B). And whereas the scope of most scientific theories is expressly limited, the scope of language is unlimited (I.37). 81. The term classical science23 has been used for ideology holding that the theory and practice of science constitute ‘objective’ explorations of ‘classical reality’ fully governed bydeterminacy and causality, such that any phenomenon can be explained by a sole ‘valid theory’ — the heavyweight institutional equivalent of the sole ‘right answer’ in education (cf. § I.64). The influential family of related ideologies includes realism: the real and concrete is more valid or true than the ideal and abstract; empiricism: all knowledge is derived from sensory experience; positivism: statements have meaning only if they can be verified or falsified; physicalism: scientific explanations should refer only to observable prop-erties of physical objects; unified science: all sciences should be unified within the purview of physics plus formal logic; mechanism: all biological process should be described in terms of physics and chemistry; and behaviourism: humans and animals are to be studied through observable and measurable behaviour. In their more radical discourses, these ideologies are characteristically assertive, reductive, or exclusive, witness the foundational discourse quoted in [6]. [6] physical language is the basic language of all science [and] a universal language comprising the contents of all other scientific languages. […] Closely associated with physicalism is the doctrine of the unity of science: that there are no logical distinctions 24 to be drawn between the different branches of science. (Rudolf Carnap) On the opposite side are arrayed such ideologies as idealism: the ideal and abstract is more valid or true than the real and concrete; and mentalism: human knowledge and activity are based upon representations in the mind. But these are more at home in philosophy than in science proper. 82. The 20th century saw the downfall of classical science among scientists, due to challenges from general relativity, quantum theory, chaos theory, superstring theory, and so on. But the classical image persists in public discourse and education to sustain the authority of experts and teachers. Science is ‘taught’
in the schools as ‘information’ reserved for especially ‘smart’ people’ who become ‘experts’ and either cultivate pure theory free from practice, or else turn science into policies the society must accept. 83. The most discussed version of classical science is normal science, wherein a dominant ‘paradigm’ informs both theory and practice. The currently accredited theory sets the approved framework for ‘theorising’ and the suitable practices for solving specific types problems we might call ‘puzzles’, like sets of prefabricated pieces to assemble. Every puzzle solved implicitly reconfirms the theory; mean-while, the theory elides unwelcome or potentially disruptive issues. The cognitive aspects follow well-fenced channels, while the linguistic aspects obey the terminology propagated for the theory, and the social aspects favour the ‘scientific community’ sharing the paradigm. So all three aspects sustain the theory regarding high technology, funding agencies, editorial boards, conference calendars, university programmes, and so on. Insiders find normal science reassuring and rewarding, whereas outsiders (my own customary role) find it complacent and myopic. 84. In an ecologist account of science, ‘theory’ would be a representation of nature designed to yield explanation, whilst ‘practice’ would be the objects and events of nature that constitute the data to be explained. This account sees a genuine dialectic wherein the theory explains current data and predicts future data by means of theory-driven, top-down input, whereas the data either confirm or refute the theory by means of data-driven, bottom-up input (Fig. 8).
By highlighting ‘explanation’ and not just ‘knowledge’ or ‘discovery’, this account reunites the cognitive aspects with the linguistic and social aspects of science as dynamic activity. Achieving knowledge is just preliminary to communicating it to society; knowledge is the main possession you increase for yourself by sharing it with others (I.76). Science constitutes an eminently ‘hopeful utopia’ (in the sense of I.6): despite occasional grandstanding about the ‘end of science’ or the ‘final answer’, the space for new discoveries is inexhaustible. However, I detect isolated strains of hopeless utopia in my own science of linguistics, as in the pronouncement that ‘speech cannot be studied’ ‘for we cannot discover its unity’ (see II.40). 85. A second dialectical cycle relates a ‘theory-driven’ explanation giving input from the top down and highlighting calculation, with a ‘data-driven’ explanation giving input from thebottom up and highlighting observation (Fig. 9).
These terms can be broadly understood as general processes of ‘tuning’ by humans or machines (or both operating in co-ordination). As complementary cognitive moves, calculation uses prior data to tune current data, whilst observation uses current data to tune prior data; the tuning can deploy qualifying, quantifying, calibrating, adjusting, reformulating, and so on. How these cognitive moves and their outcomes can be efficiently and effectively represented in discursive moves is a complex issue which scientists have rarely resolved, preferring the notion that the ‘findings speak for themselves’, or relying on narrowly prescriptive conventions, e.g., organising the text into sections called ‘method’, ‘results’, ‘discussion’, and so forth. 86. For observable phenomena, a third dialectic relates the ‘material substrate of matter and energy with the ‘data substrate’ of information. The material substrate manifests anddetermines properties, such as the quantities and polarities of subatomic particles like neutrons, protons, and electrons, whereas the data substrate registers and identifies those properties, such as the atom identifying an element as hydrogen or lithium (Fig. 10).
This dialectic operates in distinctive ways for each science. Some sciences like physics have a ‘sparse domain’ with general and uniform constraints whereby material and data are related by ‘hard coupling’ (e.g. in a collision of particles); others like anthropology have a ‘rich domain’ with specific and diversified constraints, where material and data are related by ‘soft coupling’ (e.g. in a cultural festivity). In sparse domains, the material tends to be elementary and its observation less informative, so calculation is prominent; in rich domains, the reverse holds. 87. The respective sciences might thus be described on a scale from ‘sparse’ toward ‘rich’. Fig. 11 shows a selection of the ‘natural sciences’ to the left, and of the ‘human sciences’ to the right.
Implicitly at least, each natural science refers in its foundations to the sparser one(s) to its left: physics referring to mathematics, chemistry to physics, and biology to chemistry and physics. This referral can reinforce institutional authority, insofar as mathematics and physics seem the most austere and impregnable to challenge, and less implicated in sensitive ecological and commercial issues than chemistry and biology (cf. I.97).
88. Mathematics plainly has the sparsest source domain, its data concerning quantities and relations. It studies virtual objects or events having a pure data substrate and no material substrate and thus not being manifested or observed as real objects or events, such as the lines, planes, and solids in Euclidian geometry, or the polynomial and linear functions of calculus. So its theories are consummately abstract; and, before supercomputers introduced simulations, its practices ranked calculation far above observation. However, its practices of representation and measurement can apply to most observed phenomena of the other sciences, e.g., for dimensions and frequencies; and doing so can be an eminent cognitive strategy for certifying the ‘realness’ of manifest objects. 89. Physics has a richer domain, though still a relatively sparse one, its data concerning the most elementary forms of matter and energy. Its phenomena, such as mesons and baryons, or fermions and bosons, are manifested as real objects; the material substrate is hard-coupled to the data substrate such that an elementary particle is directly determined by sparse information like mass, charge, and spin. Observation relies on high technology like photo-ionization spectroscopy or laser interferometry, which heralds an impressive rise in accuracy and reliability; and theoretical calculation grows increasingly indispensable. Some phenomena, like the positron, i.e., the positively charged twin of the negatively charged electron, were calculated before they were ever observed; others, like the graviton, i.e., the particle responsible for the force of gravity, have only been calculated, and physicists yet hope to observe them. Still others, like the elementary quarks strongly ‘glued’ together by gluons, can be calculated but never observed in principle, or at least never isolated; so physics tries to circumvent nature by creating something similar we can observe (I.110). 90. The dialectic of material and data portrayed back in Fig. 9 is intriguingly confirmed in recent models of the interaction between ‘matter particles’ (the fermions) and ‘messenger particles’ (the bosons). The four fundamental forces in the universe can be recalculated as ‘interchanges of messenger particles’: photons for the electromagnetic force; gluons for the strong force holding the nucleus of the atom together; W and Z bosons for the weak force regulating radioactive decay; and gravitons for gravity. 25 91. Physics is the science whose ‘theoreticalness’ is most prominent and may account for its pre-eminent status. Theory has been pushed the farthest, surpassing the boundaries of scientific observation in the conventional sense. There, the functions of confirming or refuting are taken over by calculation, with the referral to mathematics made quite explicit. In particular, ‘superstring theory’, sometimes hailed as the ‘theory of everything’ or the ‘end of physics’, could be tested by direct observation only at Planck energy of 1028 gigavolts, as compared with the roughly 100 gigavolts attainable today. 26 But, startlingly enough, the conditions are amenable to calculation, and to the degree of precision needed to determine the properties of ‘strings’ twenty powers of ten times smaller than a proton. 92. Chemistry has a domain with an internal transition from sparser data on its ‘inorganic’ side more allied with physics, over to richer data on its ‘organic’ side more allied with biology. Its phenomena, such as elements and compounds, or polymers and proteins, are manifested as real objects in nature; the coupling of material and data is not so hard, thanks to ‘emergent properties’, e.g., those of water as compared to hydrogen and oxygen; and observation is usually much more tractable. The most significant referral to physics exploits the latter’s capacity to describe matter and energy in previously unimaginable dimensions of size and speed. Whereas in physics high technology extends calculation and observation for increasingly tiny particles, in chemistry it extends the famous periodic chart with a sequence of increasingly heavy ‘transuranium’ and ‘transactinide’ elements at the top end, where the ‘mass numbers’ (i.e., total numbers of neutrons and protons) become immense. 27 They are fabricated by practices adapted from physics, mostly by bombarding lower-mass elements like lead or plutonium with neutrons or ions. So great was the success that the need for new terminology fomented problems. At first the new elements received names of early
pioneering scientists (einsteinium, rutherfordium), then of more recent scientists (seaborgium, meitnerium), and finally just Latinate versions of their atomic numbers (ununquadium at 114, ununhexium at 116). As the numbers rise, the properties become purely theoretical, predicted from the lower elements of the same series (seaborgium from tungsten, meitnerium from iridium). Observation must contend with extremely short halflives — for ununhexium, only 0.0006 seconds. Ghostly ununoctium at 118 (half life of 0.0001 second) turned out to be a false observation and was booted out of the periodic table in 2001 (good job it wasn’t named after anybody).28 93. Chemistry also devises novel methods of observation, using ‘femtosecond’ technology. In keeping with the term — a ‘femtosecond’ being one quadrillionth of a second — the technology deploys ultrafastpulse lasers for accurate observation of chemical processes in real time, even capturing the motions of atoms within molecules.29 Moreover, these lasers can control and modify the processes as well as observe them. In ‘photoexcitation’, the pulses deposit large amounts of energy in a molecule, leading to ‘photodissociation’ 30 — the reverse of the celebrated ‘photo-synthesis’ — when the molecule flies apart into fragments, which can then recombine into a mutated molecule. 94. In practical applications, chemistry manifests immense diversity and ingenuity. New technologies treat its elements and compounds like ingredients in a vast cookbook of novel substances with extraordinary properties and commercial uses, for which discursive evidence abounds. As of July 2003, the Internet searched through AltaVista for the key words ‘industry’ or ‘industries’ together with ‘chemical’ returned 137,880 results and with ‘chemistry’ 3320; compare just 48 with ‘physical’ and 41 with ‘physics’; or again 562 with ‘biological’ and 143 with ‘biology’. One website named InnoCentive offers cash rewards for industrially viable solutions to arcane-sounding problems in chemistry, e.g., ‘can you synthesize this protected unnatural amino-acid in its enantiomerically pure form?’ 31 And the commodities produced by chemistry and offered on the Internet are beyond all count. Still, website discourse indicates that consumers aren’t eager to know just how many chemicals they consume; no website advertises ‘chemical beauty aids’, a ‘chemical shirt’, or a ‘chemical breakfast’, even though many such items contain chemical products. 95. Biology has the richest source domain among the natural sciences. Its data concern the least elementary and most complex forms of matter and energy, living things; the coupling of material and data is quite soft, because the emergent properties include ‘life’ itself. Its phenomena, such as plants and animals, are naturally manifested as real objects, and observation is normally straightforward. Yet like chemistry, biology keeps enhancing its powers of observation by exploiting the resources of physics for operating in infinitesimal dimensions. For example, the CAT (‘Computed Axial Tomography’) scan takes numerous twodimensional images created by electromagnetic radiation (x-rays) in a rotating cylinder and generates a three-dimensional image of the human lying inside. Whereas ordinary x-rays just show bones and large organs like the heart with any accuracy, the CAT scan gives precise images of soft tissues such as muscles, organs, nerves, and blood vessels.32 96. The really daunting frontier for calculation and observation in both biology and chemistry may lie in ‘nanotechnology’, where theory and practice proceed on the scale of the ‘nanometer’, i.e., one billionth of a meter. As on the even smaller scale of femtotechnology, new molecules can be constructed by manipulating their atomic composition. The foremost practical product comes from ‘dry’ nanotech-nology based on surface science and physical chemistry, namely the carbon molecule called the Buckyball (after Buckminster Fuller), and forming ‘nanotubes’ with superconductivity and superstrength (more than 100 times as strong as steel at less than one fourth the weight). ‘Wet’ nanotechnology, based on biological systems existing primarily in water environments, focuses on how human cells are constructed and how they could interact in practice with ‘nanomachines’ or ‘nanites’, tiny computers that might combat diseases or reverse ageing. 33
97. Even more than chemistry, biology figures in website discourse as a topic of attention and application, and a fiercely disputatious one. Evidently, a spectrum of social groups become vocal when ‘life’ is at issue. Left-wing ideology opposes the genetic manipulation of food plants to resist parasites and drought, fearing harmful side-effects to human consumers.34 Right-wing ideology opposes cell cloning of humans, ostensibly reserving for their ‘God’ the sole prerogative to create life. Both sides tend to drift from scientific issues into political ones and from cognitive issues into social ones, until scientific issues may be judged by people who lack knowledge of research, not by validity but by popularity or expedience (cf. VII.79). 98. Because they address the essential organisation of matter and energy, these four natural sciences, more than the others like geology, astronomy, or meteor-ology, have decisively shaped the modern conception and discourse of ‘science’. They interact so extensively that moving among them might be analogous to translating among distinct but closely related languages, especially when formulas are used; or to moving among different levels of the same language: the particles of physics (like Phonemes), the atoms and molecules of chemistry (like Morphemes), and the nucleotides of biology (like Words) all acquire suitable meanings in combinations and contexts. The analogy seems singularly apt for the DNA sequence in the human chromosome, where billions of pairs of just four phosphate nucleotides with ‘letters’ (A for adenine, C for cytosine, G for guanine, T for thymine) ‘spell out’ detailed ‘instructions’ for the growth and life of the organism.35 Devastating diseases, like myeloid leukaemia, Di George syndrome, and schizophrenia, all linked to chromosome 22, are like malevolent ‘messages’ spelling out cancer, heart disease, and mental derangement; we can only rewrite or delete them once we manage read them. 99. The ratios of sparse to rich among the natural sciences apparently correspond to trade-offs between ‘simple’ and ‘complex’. The sparser the science, the more it deals with simple components participating in complex events. Physics deals with the very simplest components of matter and energy, e.g., all electrons being identical, or all photons, and so forth. The complexity is concentrated in the methods for relating calculation to observation by means of physical events, e.g., to isolate electrons and track their behaviour. As physics moves downward in scale, this complexity rises sharply, e.g., in requiring linear accelerators to bombard atoms with ions and knock out extremely short-lived subatomic particles. Isolating the apparently most basic particles, the quarks and their gluons that ‘glue’ them together, would also be the most complex operation, if it can be done at all. So physicists are colliding atoms stripped of electrons into each other at staggeringly high energies, squeezing the protons and neutrons together and trying to make them melt into a ‘quark-gluon plasma’ so hot they can’t stick together. This superhot goo is theorised to occur in the core of neutron stars (where it obviously can’t be observed), which are ‘so dense that a piece the size of a pinhead would weigh as much as a thousand jumbo jets’. 36 Its theoretical significance lies in representing a state of matter and energy fairly close to the aboriginal state of the universe shortly after the ‘big bang’. 100. Chemistry deals with somewhat more complex components and maps the relations and transitions between elements and compounds, whereby emergent properties are gained (I.92). A reaction such as ‘catalysis’ to cause or speed up chemical changes is rather complex in itself but can rely on simple components. The famous ‘Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction’ 37 uses an acid catalyst to convert bromate or bromide ions into compounds of bromine, as in this simple ‘recipe’: [7] sulfuric acid + malonic acid + cerium ammonium nitrate + sodium bromate => carbon dioxide + dibromoacetic acid + bromomalonic acid + water. 38 Yet the reaction is wondrously complex, producing a ‘chemical oscillator’, observable in colours switching back and forth for quite some time. Each colour is engendered by a component reaction, the one being less fast and efficient than the other, and each, at a certain level of concentration, creating the conditions that ‘catalyse’ the other — a self-organising process of ‘autocatalysis’. Instead of being uniform or random, the solution thus manifests ‘periodic behaviour’. Its theoretical significance lies in representing the automatic
production of complexity, which at some primordial stage must have enabled the evolution of inorganic matter into organic and created the basis for life systems. 101. Biology in turn deals with substantially more complex components in simpler reactions. Each cell contains microscopic assembly sites called ‘ribosomes’ that glue amino acids together with ‘peptide bonds’ (a bit like quarks and gluons) to manufacture protein molecules. These are at first long, thin molecules, but they quickly and spontaneously fold into distinctive shapes.39 This complex shape prepares a simple chemical reaction, as in digestion, that fits the protein molecule into a receptor site precisely shaped for it. In effect, the function of the protein is anticipated and determined in folding its shape, like forming a key to switch an operation on or off. The organisation is achieved before the start of the reaction, which can in turn be simple; no complex sorting and searching are needed, as they would be if the protein molecules themselves were simpler. Here again, a self-organising process helps sustain life systems in automatic operation. 102. Now, extending this account at the sparse end, we might say that mathe-matics deals with the simplest components of all, numbers and symbols, in events of pure calculation whose apparent complexity is the product of abstraction (referring to pure relations rather than objects) and compression (representing relations, quantities, values, and so on in symbols and formulas). Mathematics is essentially a language (or set of languages) that acquires generality and precision by abstracting away from all the physical, chemical, and biological properties of real objects and events. For example, the well-known ‘Chapman-Kolmogorov equation’ expresses the probability of transitions between any two ‘states’ in a sequence called a ‘Markov chain’, which is a radically simple system. 40 The set of possible is states is fully fixed and fully known, as are their frequencies of past occurrence; the only relevant data for a state are its position and timing inside the chain; the states are discrete and so cannot form even the simplest blends or combinations. And since each state is related only to the ones right before and after it, the system does not build a history or memory. Even causality is suspended because we don’t consider why one state leads to the next but only how probable it might be to do so; thus the system appears ‘stochastic’, that is, constituted by a random sequence. An equation might appear complex, e.g.: [8] p(x3,t3|x1t1) = òdx2 p(x3,t3|x2t2) p(x2,t2|x1t1)41 where p is the probability, x is a state, t is a time, and ò is the ‘integral’ for the ‘differential function’ between the two ‘variables of state and time’. But, as I have said, the complexity is a by-product of compression. The equation states that the probability of getting to state 3 at time 3 from state 1 at time 1 equals the differential function between the probability of getting to state 3 at time 3 from state 2 at time 2 and the probability of getting to state 2 at time 2 from state 1 at time 1. Decompressing (or ‘deconfining’) into ordinary discourse reveals the deeper simplicity of the statement. The real complexity begins when the equation gets fitted to a real system, e.g., to express the probabilities of a machine failing at a given time, which is a causal event, e.g., due to heat or fatigue in the materials. 103. Extending the account at the rich end brings us to the human sciences. Their superior richness over the natural sciences has in the past been under-estimated by projects like ‘unified science’ to force them into the same ‘classical’ mould (cf. I.81; II.35). All the same, the discourse of the human sciences might well progress by taking seriously the status of human beings as biological, chemical, and physical entities. For example, the origin of human language might be accounted for not as a sudden invention by Caveman Og but rather as a gradual evolution from the internalised chemical and biological codes into externalised linguistic codes.42 Or, the operations of language and cognition could be explored in relation to recent discoveries in biology about patterns of neurotransmission, e.g., their effects on mental attention and concentration. 104. My scale of trade-offs plausibly suggests that the human sciences all exceed biology in dealing with processes that appear simple because enormous complexity is built into the human system, e.g., by
cognition, socialisation, and language acquisition. However, I would not see any comparably systematic scale of referrals or trade-offs among the human sciences, which is why Fig. 11 shows the three of them vertically rather than horizontally. We might say that they represent alternative branchings of divergent but equal complexity, each one viewing human beings in its own perspective. Moving among them might again be like translating among distinct but closely related languages. 105. They are most comprehensively related in referring to society, as is attested by the popular alternate term ‘social sciences’ and by the firm establishment of fields like ‘social anthropology’ and ‘social psychology’.43 Yet their differences are attested by the insecurity of most other fields generated by applying one of them to another. Judging from the Internet, ‘sociological psychology’ and ‘sociological anthropology’ are too rare to count as established fields; the same holds for ‘psychological sociology’ and ‘anthropological sociology’. All but the last of these have an isolated academic presence as a single university course or research project on the Internet, whereas ‘psychological anthropology’, which ‘investigates the psychological conditions that encourage endurance and change in social systems, with the goal of better understanding the relationship between culture and the individual’,44 is a stable subfield with its own journal, its own society inside the American Anthropological Association, and plentiful university courses. Applying psychology to anthropology, e.g., in ‘cross-cultural perspectives on the human mind’,44 seems reasonably straightforward; nor can we be surprised at the success of the younger and smaller subfield of ‘cognitive anthropology’ that ‘investigates cultural knowledge’ ‘embedded in words, stories, and in artefacts’.45 In contrast, trying to apply either anthropology or sociology to psychology might stumble over the latter’s tendency to isolate its studies from culture and society (I.108). 106. Historically, all three sciences shown in Fig. 11 were consolidated in the 19 th-century Europe, substantially later than the natural sciences, mainly respond-ing to the sweeping social evolution of ‘modernisation’ and to the ensuing social change and stress. Anthropology assumed that culture might be reassessed by studying pre-modern societies (in the sense of I.19), most expediently ones under the domination of European colonialism whose methods of exploitation were also being modernised. The early anthropologists went to live and work in the society under study, aspiring to move from being total outsiders over to commanding insight into the cultural world-view of insiders. The aspiration is laden with paradox, since you can never erase your own cultural memories; as if in compen-sation, many have assumed that ‘Western science’ is the transcendent cognitive, linguistic, and social framework capable of understanding and describing all cultures. 46 Moreover, anthropological work has unintentionally opened some societies to contact and modernisation if not destruction through Western culture. 107. Sociology began as the study of both pre-modern and modern societies, and gradually became focused on the latter. Whereas anthropology has highlighted the uniformity of society, sociology has highlighted the diversity, especially between social classes. The outlook was thus more overtly political in raising the capital question of whether class divisions are natural and just (right-wing ideology) or unnatural and unjust (left-wing ideology) (I.17f); and applications were more prone or indeed intended to influence public policies, which may merely conceal class divisions (right-wing) or may seek to reconcile them (leftwing). The outcomes have remained uncertain, probably because the social theories of sociology have largely run ahead of social practices in modern societies (cf. I.25). 108. Psychology seems to have stemmed from a curious dual alliance: a humanist one in philosophy, and a medical or clinical one in psychoanalysis. In early stages, both sustained an active interest in culture and society. Later on, mainly in North America, the field became more self-conscious about its scientific status and its disciplinary boundaries, and set about creating a strenuously sparse ambience of ‘laboratory experiments’ abstracted away from culture and society (I.105). By implication, the psychological traits under study are universal to humankind if they prove to be ‘statistically significant’ — a key referral to mathematics. Radical behaviourism, which made its own key referral to biology, even proposed to study
traits that are universal to both humans and animals, famously, dogs, cats, and rats. Education in turn referred to behaviourist psychology, introducing ‘scientific’ labels like ‘conditioning’ and ‘reinforcement’ for the familiar routines of rote memorisation, repetition, and evaluation (cf. I.49). 109. I find the terms ‘human science’ and ‘social science’ also being applied in university programmes to fields like economics, business administration, geography, and political science, as well as to subfields like government, public affairs, international relations, industrial relations, social welfare, and environ-mental science. Each of these fields approaches the ‘human’ situation from its own standpoint of theory and practice and seeks to influence the theory and practice of society in its own ways. They seem closer to sociology than to anthropology or psychology; and, aside from economics, they are less self-conscious about the criteria for ‘science’. They are predominantly practical insofar as they were expressly created to direct and support applications. However, their own theories can still run well ahead of social practices outside the academic setting, especially when science conflicts with powerful corporate interests (cf. VII.78f, 88). 110. Such applications return us to the social and discursive aspects of science, which bear upon the complex and circuitous motivations of society for supporting science. The populace may still be optimistic that ‘scientific progress’ leads to ‘social progress’. But if the latter designates a movement toward greater inclusion and equality (I.10), recent advances in science are noticeably leading to ‘social regress’ toward exclusion and inequality through expensive ‘high technologies’ and exclusive ‘banks of information’. And cynical uses of science gave us the fiercest threats to human life imaginable — chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons. 111. Moreover, the content of science is largely an exclusive commodity, due mainly to two factors. First, science is ‘taught’ in many schools as a denatured aggregate of facts and figures, theories and experiments, that does not relate it meaningfully to ordinary knowledge and seems reserved for ‘exceptionally smart’ learners (cf. II.139).47 Indeed, science best serves the preference of schooling for abstract theoretical information over concrete practical knowledge (cf. I.59). Science teachers involuntarily abet the hidden curriculum of a significant portion of aspiring learners getting only marginally included or else entirely excluded (I.55). 112. Second, the discourses of science are often gratuitously jargonised (cf. VII.8), for example in economics, e.g. [9]. From studying the wider text, I concluded that [9a] was probably meant. [9] The pooling effect enables capacity purchasers to take advantage of the disparate temporal requirement for flexible capacity and avoid the cost of capacity constrained operation and low asset utilization that often face firms to which capacity is dedicated. (Coordination of Global Manufacturing) [9a] A pool of competing providers with flexible capacity helps purchasers save time and money when operations would otherwise be constrained and assets insufficiently utilized. Both factors sustain the exclusive power of ‘experts’ who invoke ‘sound science’ when imposing policies and measures upon the whole society (cf. VII.88). 113. On the bright side, access to the knowledge of science is becoming more inclusive, thanks to Internet websites such as Physics 2000 designed at the University of Colorado, whose goals include [10] to make physics more accessible to students and people of all ages and to counter its current negative image; to demonstrate the connection between modern technology and earlier basic research; to foster an appreciation of the accomplishments of 20th century physics, as we approach the year 2000. www I am also encouraged by the signal increase in outstanding popular books on sciences like physics, biology, and astronomy, useful for marshalling public interest and support to meet the soaring costs of scientific
technology. I surmise that the authors come away from the writing experience with a clearer under-standing of their own science (cf. I.76; II.113). 114. But I am most encouraged by the resolve of scientists to deal with social and ecological issues beyond the confines of conventional of ‘normal’ science. The Committee of Concerned Scientists is ‘an independent organization of scientists, physicians, and engineers dedicated to the protection and advancement of the human rights and scientific freedom’, 77 witness the discourse of [11] addressing ‘an alarming development’ in Turkey’s ‘educational system’: [11] A Statute [of] High School Education Institutions states that ‘proof of un-chastity’ is valid cause for expulsion of females from the formal educational system. Deeply troubled by these incursions on the human rights of women, we wrote to governmental authorities concerned, pointing to violations inherent in these regulations of several international human rights instruments to which Turkey is a State Party. www As we shall see in VIII.90f, ‘concerned scientists’ are also taking a firm stand against the destruction of the environment, recognising that science is the most powerful institution for resolving the problems created by the abuse of scientific knowledge. The options have never been so clearly drawn as they are today between ecological action and anti-ecological inaction, between sustenance and violence, and ultimately between humanity and inhumanity (Ch. IX).
Notes to Chapter I
1 I owe the conception of the two ‘utopias’ mainly to José Antonio de Ortega y Gasset, ‘Miseria y esplendor de la traducción’, in Obras Completas (Madrid: Revista del Occidente), vol. V, 1966, 431-52; and Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed (London: Penguin, 1972). 2
I was pleased to find the same contrast of terms in Jim Hightower’s vastly entertaining screed There ‘s Nothing in the Middle of the Road but Yellow Stripes and Dead Arma-dillos (NY: Harper, 1997), p. 284.
3 The familiar term ‘alienation’ is aptly derived from Latin ‘alius’ meaning ‘other’ — like being forced to act like somebody else than who you want to be. The distinction between ‘actualisation’ versus ‘alienation’ comes from ‘third force psychology’. Its main texts are Karen Horney, Our Inner Conflicts (NY: Norton, 1945); and Neurosis and Human Growth (NY: Norton, 1950); and Abraham Maslow,Toward a Psychology of Being (NY: Nostrand, 1968); and Motivation and Personality (NY: Harper and Row, 1970). 4 See especially Teun van Dijk, Ideology: A Multidisciplinary Study (London: Sage, 1998). 5 Well described by William Ryan in Blaming the Victim (NY: Knopf, 1976). 6 I am rendering the German term and concept ‘Opfer-Täter-Umkehr’ in Ruth Wodak, Wir sind alle unschuldige Täter (Vienna: Österreichische Nationalbank, 1989). 7 See Hans-Peter Martin and Harald Schuhmann, Die Globalisierungsfalle: Der Angriff auf Demokratie und Wohlstand (Reinbeck bei Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1997); Joseph Stiglitz. Globalization and its Discontents (NY: Norton, 2002). 8 Compare M.A.K. Halliday, Language in a Changing World (Sydney: Australian Assoc-iation of Applied Linguistics, 1994).
9 My own account is in my New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1997), section VI.C 10 Several ominous judgements were reported by Susan Emlet Crandall, ‘Speaking freely: A constitutional right to language?’, CATESOL Journal, Fall issue 1992, 7-17. 11 See Signithia Fordham, ‘Racelessness as a factor in black students’ school success: Pragmatic strategy or pyrrhic victory?’, Harvard Educational Review 58/1, 1988, 54-85. 12 Compare Dwight Bolinger, Language: The Loaded Weapon (London: Longman, 1980). 13 See now Carl Shapiro and Hal R. Varian, Information Rules: A Strategic Guide to the Network Economy (Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1999). 14 See John Taylor Gatto, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling (Phildelphia: New Society, 1991); and Eric Margolis, The Hidden Curriculum in Higher Education(London: Routledge Falmer; 2000). 15 Vera John and Eleanor Leacock, ‘Transforming the structure of failure’, quoted in Rajiv Rawat, ‘The Return of Determinism? The Pseudoscience of the Bell Curve’, Cornell Science & Technology Magazine 3, 1995, 10-13. 16 For a detailed discussion of ‘intelligence’ and ‘aptitude’ as products of education, see my New Foundations (sections VII.E-G) (Note 9), and references there. 17 For a no-nonsense exposé of the ETS, see Allan Nairn, The Reign of ETS: The Corporation That Makes Up Minds (Washington, DC: Ralph Nader, 1980). 18 See Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, Situated Learning: Legitimate pation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990).
Peripheral
Partici-
19 On the inequalities of private and public schools, see Jean Anyon, ‘Social class and school knowledge’, Curriculum Inquiry 11/1, 1981, 3-42. 20 See Howard Gardner et al., Multiple Intelligences: The Theory in Practice (NY: Basic Books, 1993). 21 See Seymour Papert, Mindstorms: Computers, Children, and Powerful Ideas (NY: Basic Books, 1980). 22 On ‘collocations’ as typical combinations of lexical items, compare II.66, 153ff, and Note 156 to Ch. II. Where applicable, these figures include Singular and Plural forms. 23 The term ‘classical science’ has also been used for the sciences of ‘classical’ antiquity, such as Ptolemaic astronomy; and for early modern science (17 th to 19th centuries). 24 Translated from Syntax als Methode der Philosophie, 1934 Lecture to the ‘Vienna Circle’, some of whose antiquated adepts attended my own public lectures to the Vienna Language Society in the 1990s and made wondrously pedantic comments. 25 I follow Murray Gell-Mann’s wonderfully readable The Quark and The Jaguar (London: Little, Brown, 1994).
26 See Norma Sanchez and Antonino Zichichi (eds.), String Gravity and Physics at the Planck Energy Scale (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1996). 27 The classic work is Glenn Seaborg, The Transuranium Elements (NY: Addison Wesley, 1958); see now Lester R. Morss and Joachim Fuger (eds.), Transuranium Elements: A Half Century(Washington DC: American Chemical Society, 1992). 28 ‘Element 118 disappears two years after it was discovered’, reported on Physics Web, 02/08/2001. 29 Compare Claude Rulliere (ed.), Femtosecond Laser Pulses: Principles and Experiments (NY: Springer, 1998). 30 See Reinhard Schinke, Photodissociation Dynamics: Spectroscopy and Fragmentation of Small Polyatomic Molecules (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1995). 31 www.innocentive.com. ‘Enantiomeric’ has two isomers as mirror images of each other. 32 See Jonathan Dine Wirtschafter, Magnetic Resonance Imaging And Computed Tomog-raphy (San Francisco: American Academy of Ophthalmology, 1992). 33 Compare K. Eric Drexler, Nanosystems (NY: Wiley, 1992); ‘Scoring with Buckyballs’, Scientific American 02/04/1997; and Erika Jonietz, ‘Buckyball Cures’, Technical Review.www 34 See especially Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We’re Experts (NY: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001). 35 Jerry Bishop and Michael Waldholz, Genome (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1990). 36 CERN, ‘ALICE – A Large Ion Collider Experiment.www See now Ulrich Heinz and Maurice Jacob, ‘Evidence for a new state of matter: An assessment of the results from the CERN Lead Beam Programme’’.www 37 For the original sources, see Selbstorganisation chemischer Strukturen (Leipzig: Geest & Portig, 1987). 38 Niall Shanks and Karl H. Joplin, ‘Redundant complexity’. www 39 David Brown, ‘Deciphering the message of life’s assembly’. www See now Roger H. Pain (ed.), Mechanisms of Protein Folding (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000). 40 See Osamu Watanabe (ed.), Kolmogorov Complexity and Computational Complexity (NY: Springer, 1992). 41 Joerg Lemm, ‘Chapman-Kolmogorov-Gleichung’.www 42 Compare Gerald Edelman, Bright Air, Brilliant Fire (NY: Basic Books, 1992). 43 The UNESCO volume by Pierre de Bie et al., The University Teaching of Social Sciences (Paris: UNESCO, 1955) indicates that sociology and anthropology can be academically integrated, along with social psychology, the latter being quite a different enterprise from psychology proper. 44 ‘An introduction to psychological anthropology and cross-cultural perspectives on the human mind’.www Compare Philip K. Bock (ed.), Psychological Anthropology (West-port, CT: Praeger, 1994).
45 Roy D’Andrade, The Development of Cognitive Anthropology (Cambridge: CUP, 1995), p. xiv. 46 See Clifford Geertz, Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1988). 47 For a critique of these methods, see Papert, Note 20. For evidence from extensive observation of classroom practices, see Jay Lemke, Talking Science (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1990). II. Theory and practice in studies of language
1. If language is the theory and discourse is the practice (I.B), then, barring physical or mental disabilities, a whole society could be included in cognitive and linguistic terms, though of course not with equal stores of knowledge. But in social terms, this potential is overlaid by complex attitudes about included persons knowing and speaking the language ‘better’; their discourse is received with attention and respect, whereas excluded persons suffer the opposite treatment. So the prospects for social inclusion may be enhanced by language study, broadly defined here as organised activities for engaging with samples or features of language in order to actualise your own understanding and control of the language. 2. In theory, language study would apply systematic strategies of exploration and explanation; but in practice, the respective approaches have fluctuated widely in methods and goals, as we shall see. Moreover, the whole enterprise has often addressed the nature and organisation of language without a realistic theory of how language skills develop, and how they can be described, targeted, or promoted. Instead, many studies have been unsystematic, impressionistic, or unfocussed, focusing on issues of marginal relevance for language skills, such as ‘deviant’ or ‘ungrammatical sentences’ no one is likely to say anyway (II.78). 3. This chapter will portray some major approaches to language study from the standpoint of ecologism by exploring their relations between theory and practice. Although the approaches may not be cleanly separated, and may have appeared in combinations or oscillations, they do appear distinctive in their intentions, ideologies, and histories, and in their implicit or explicit definitions of ‘language’. They cover much of the potential spectrum of language study and may therefore help us judge our own prospects for future studies from a retrospect on past studies.
II.A. Prescriptive studies of language 4. Prescriptivism1 can designate an approach for ‘prescribing’ how a language or variety should be used. A ‘language’ is implicitly defined as a system that expresses degrees of status, cultivation, and education within a community of speakers or (more importantly) writers. Ideologically, prescriptivism resonates with idealism, which holds that the ideal and abstract are more valid or true than the real and concrete (I.81). Historically, it originated as a pre-modernist project attuned to exclusive theories of birth, rank, and class, whereby the language variety of included ‘elites’ could help to justify their privileged status above the ‘masses’. Insofar as the variety was an idealisation, it was rarely anyone’s native language or home variety, and had to be mastered through zealous study. It was mainly deployed in prestigious texts and discourses for occasions of power, such as ceremonies for kings, priests, or honoured guests. 5. In principle, then, prescriptivism leads toward constructing and maintaining a more theoretical (ideal) variety for use in ‘high culture’ and distinct from the more practical (real) variety or varieties in
everyday use. The distinguishing criteria have been partly theoretical, such as elegance, balance, and logic; and partly practical, such as observation of prestigious usage. Theory has understandably run well ahead of practice, and in some issues and approaches away from practice. 6. Once the prestigious texts had been duly recorded, specialists were assigned to study and determine their precise form and meaning and to deter changes or errors, or influences from less prestigious varieties or languages. The sacred texts of Hinduism and Islam, such as the Vedas and the Qur’an respectively, underwent meticulous studies of Sanskrit since the 5th century BC,2 and of Arabic since the 8th century AD.3 Especially for language sounds, crucial in texts to be recited, those descriptions attained a degree of precision not achieved in Europe until the science of language was reinvented as ‘modern linguistics’. 7. Still, Europe had a venerable tradition of studying prestigious texts from the periods of ‘high culture’ in two ‘classical languages’: Greek mainly in the 5th and 4th centuries B.C., and Latin mainly from the 1st century B.C. up to the 2nd century A.D.4 These texts were more secular than sacred, ranging across poetry and drama, mathematics, philosophy, medicine, natural science, history, and govern-ment. Several projects of study emerged. The formal organisation of words and word-patterns, but also sometimes of language sounds, was studied in grammar, which we can call traditional grammar to distinguish it from ostensibly ‘modern’ notions of ‘grammar’. The functional organisation of discourse, especially of persuasive types, was studied in rhetoric. And the creative and ornamental organisation of discourse was studied in poetics. In theory, these three projects might be usefully integrated, as writers like Aristotle indicated (VI.4); but in practice, they have coexisted rather uneasily. Grammar sustains social divisions most arbitrarily, and has predominated: its forms are harder to control, yet easier to distinguish between ‘correct’ versus ‘incorrect’ (cf. II.10, 13, 189). 8. The theoretical drift of prescriptivism was intensified when ‘classical’ Greek and Latin were no longer based on a real population of native speakers yet persisted as idealised languages of power. Of the two, Latin was favoured for historical, geographical, and political reasons, such as being the direct ancestor of the ‘Romance’ languages in Europe and the idiom of Rome and its church as an enduring power centre. Latin was accordingly long retained for use by the church, state, and law, and by academic studies in fields antedating the ‘humanities’ and the ‘sciences’ of our own times. By the account back in I.41, the practices of social inequality matched a theory of linguistic inequality asserting the superiority of classical languages, and of the high cultures they represented, over local languages and popular cultures. Ordinary people with no Latin were excluded from power, unable to sustain public discussion and negotiation or to advocate social inclusion and equality. Similarly, they were excluded from access to knowledge by a mode of education where Latin was the medium of instruction and scholarship. Primacy was given to Latin grammar as a subject matter, which bequeathed us the tradition of Britain’s ‘grammar schools’ right up into recent times (my emphasis): [12] In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, ‘grammar’ meant Latin grammar. For Bishop William Wykeham, in the foundation charter of his College at Winchester, it was ‘the foundation, gate, and source of all the other liberal arts.’ (James Ball)5 [13] Grammar schools were most proud of helping boys to win awards at Oxford or Cambridge, urging ever-growing numbers of them successfully through public exami-nations, encouraging that sense of discipline and order. (Harry Judge)6 The notion that gifted intellectuals are identified or even fostered by studying ‘grammar’ seems embedded in British folk-wisdom.
9. Ironically perhaps, the shift into ‘modern’ culture was animated by the ostensible ‘renaissance’ (rebirth) of ‘ancient’ culture. From the 15th and 16th centuries onward, though in some regions much later, administration, trade, colonisation, and technology gathered momentum and stimulated the modernisation and diversification of European societies and of their methods of production and distribution. These trends favoured wider social inclusion and the displacement the ‘classical languages’ by the ‘modern languages’. To be sure, usage was still uncertain and perplexed some newly included groups, such as recently created aristocrats, the rising bourgeoisie, and successful immigrants. A contingent of ‘experts’ arose to dispense advice on usage, initiating an obdurate prescriptive tradition that has survived until this very day. 10. Even more ironically, then, these ‘modern languages’ were deemed to need ‘cultivation’ by analogy to the classical languages, especially if, like French, they descended from Latin. So theoretical varieties of the modern languages were duly reconstructed from the top down on extrinsic criteria of authentic or supposed resemblances to ancient languages that had themselves become partially theoretical, as I remarked in II.5-8. And due to its apparent formality, traditional grammar proved more amenable here than did rhetoric and poetics (cf. II.7). 11. By a further analogy, the theory of ‘cultivated language’ ran distinctly ahead of the practice in the modern languages too. The practices closest to the theory were achieved by highly ‘educated’ writers whose works were solemnly admitted to a ‘canon’ of the (aptly named) ‘classics’. Some consciously modelled their style on works in the ‘classical languages’, e,g., French dramas of the 17th century, or epic poems influenced by the Aeneid (VI.10.8.2). The new ‘classics’ in turn set standards for those who aspired to ‘high culture’ as a means or symbol of power. 12. Still, these approaches to the study of language have oscillated between prescriptive (how the language should be used) and descriptive (how the language was used by powerful or educated people). These two approaches combine uneasily if the prescribing implies the language is often not used as it ought to be; and so theory again runs ahead of practice, except perhaps for people who self-consciously aspire to power or, like governesses, must communicate with powerful people. 13. The term language guardians can cover whoever holds the theory that language needs to be purified and protected from usages variously derided as ‘bad’, ‘wrong’, ‘ignorant’, ‘vulgar’, and so on. Their central practices are to promulgate rules of two complementary types: to prescribe ‘good’ usage (like the ‘prescrip-tion’ from a doctor) and to proscribe ‘bad usage’ (like the ‘proscription’ of a heresy). And here again, grammar has proven the most effective implement, being the most complex and least controllable factor in language (cf. II.7, 10). 14. The sustaining ideology might be called purism, advocating a crusade to ‘purify’ language. Historically, its most influential institution in the world has been the redoubtable Académie Française, whose founding statutes of 1634 declared its own theory: to ‘give explicit rules to our language and to render it pure, eloquent, and capable of treating the arts and sciences’.7 The Académie’s proposals for reference works are an allegory of how far in historical time theory can run ahead of practice. Its ‘dictionary’ was published after 60 years (in 1694);8 its ‘grammar’ after 298 years (in 1932); and its ‘rhetoric’ so far not at all. In 1998, a website9 was opened which gives advice on the French language and extols its membership of ‘immortals’, who ‘offer a faithful image of the talent, intelligence, culture, and literary and scientific imagination upon which the genius of France is founded’. ‘Their moral authority in matters of language is rooted in usages, traditions, pomp’[and ceremony?][= ‘faste’] (my translation).
15. The moralising overtones of purism are at times egregious. A panel of authors and editors,10 when asked to judge the use of the Adverb ‘hopefully’ to mean ‘it would hoped that…’, gave these responses: [14] It is barbaric, illiterate, offensive, damnable, and inexcusable. [15] I have sworn eternal war on the bastard adverb. [16] This is one that makes me physically ill. [17] an abomination, and its adherents should be lynched. Grammatically, this ‘hopefully’ shares the form and function of fully accepted Adverbs like ‘fortunately’ or ‘happily’ — expressing the speaker’s attitude about the future — and so cannot be an ‘error’. I find it attested both in casual speech[18] and in formal writing[19]: [18] ‘That’s really all you could ever ask for, isn’t it, a long and healthy life? — And hopefully, a happy one too.’ (Denise Bulger in the Liverpool Daily Post) [19] Hopefully, if the management information system in an organization is one that reflects control and accountability,[…] then the accounting information thereby generated should demonstrate the attainment of value for money from public services.11 Those self-righteous authors who ‘swore eternal war’ and called for ‘lynchings’ had better stockpile weapons and rope for a long campaign. 16. Ferocious responses like[14-17] are so far beyond all proportion and reason as to signal acute social stress being displaced onto spurious conflicts among language varieties. Right-wing ‘economic policies’ like Thatcherism and Reaganism, have left behind an underemployed or unemployed class of citizens whose de facto exclusion can be tied to their language varieties and to their exclusion from language study, even portending social problems like ‘hooliganism’: [20] Norman Tebbit, later Chairman of the Conservative Party, claimed that the decline in the teaching of grammar had led directly to the rise in football hooliganism. Correct grammar was seen by him as part of the structures of authority, such as respect for elders, for standards of cleanliness, for discipline in schools… (Brian Cox)12 Ominously, this Tory tall-tale would cast us English teachers as conspirators abetting public violence. Still, I love to imagine what football hooligans would do with Lord Tebbit if he sternly confronted them to administer grammar lessons. 17. Historically, the prescriptivism and purism of language guardians originated as a pre-modern project, which must grow more irrational and reactionary with the passage of time. Language guardians unleash the confrontational right-wing discourse I shall call ‘flakspeak’ (VI.26f), with smears like ‘illiterate’, ‘barbaric’, and ‘bastard’. Yet strong motives sustain their campaign. It exploits the aspiration or at least subservience to power, which, as I said, can require studious conformity with prescriptive and proscriptive rules (II.13). On a deeper level of awareness, the campaign resonates among groups who feel anxious or threatened by modernisation at large. They justly view language and usage as sensitive barometers of variation and change, and unjustly attack certain usages to release resentment against groups who are in tune with new trends, mainly the youth, or against groups who are to be targeted for exclusion, mainly minorities and immigrants.
18. And most importantly, dispensing advice about ‘good’ and ‘bad’ usage remains a gigantic and lucrative business; and nowhere better than for English, with its immense and diverse population of speakers, its voracious borrowing from other languages, and its key value as the main medium of ‘global modernisation’. Since the 16th century, but with real intensity since the latter 18th century, English speakers aspiring to social status, refinement, and ‘correct’ usage have been regaled with edifying reference works, some bearing quaint, picturesque titles, such as: [21] A Dictionary Interpreting all such Hard Words, whether Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, Spanish, French, Teutonick, Belgic[Dutch?], British[Celtic?], or Saxon as are now used in our refined English Tongue (1656) [22] The young lady’s accidence; or, A short and easy introduction to English grammar designed, principally, for the use of the fair sex (1799) Even today, our societies are riddled with language guardians — authors, clerics, grammarians, academics, journalists, politicians, bureaucrats, and schoolteachers, along with ordinary citizens who upbraid their children, sneer at their neighbours, or write indignant Letters to the Editor of the Times. They sport no formal qualifications, but only the conviction that their own variety of the language is the best model for everybody (cf. II.32, 87). They prey on the social insecurities of the public to sell handbooks on ‘errors’ with alarmist titles, the peak so far in sheer quantity and effrontery being 1001 Pitfalls in English Grammar.13 Their right-wing crusade is a discordant counterpoint to the untrammelled tonalities of contemporary conversation, like a turgid gush of tenacious and embarrassing anachronisms. 19. To drum up public demand, language guardians expediently prescribe what most people do not say (like ‘if I were he’) and proscribe what most people do say (like ‘hopefully’). Since the rules need not represent actual usage, anyone can freely invent them, and apparently no one can entirely get rid of them. Some advice is so wrong-headed you have to wonder why anyone ever believed it, such as ‘never begin a sentence with “And” or “But”‘, which survives in the ‘grammar checker’ of Microsoft Word 2000, as does (need I say?) the ban on ‘hopefully’. For the record, my own British and American Writers Corpus (hereafter BAWC), now at some 65 million words, shows 29,973 Sentences beginning with ‘And’, e.g.[23]; and 49,917 with ‘But’, e.g.[24]; the figures I find in the BNC at 100 million words are 80,101 for ‘And’ and 102,454 for ‘But’. ‘But’ is more frequent because its function of introducing contrary content encourages a division between Sentences. [23] Little of beauty has America given the world[…]; the human spirit[…] has expressed itself in vigor and ingenuity rather than in beauty. And so by fateful chance the Negro folk-song — the rhythmic cry of the slave — stands to-day as the sole American music. (Souls)bawc [24] Analogy would lead me to the belief that all animals and plants have descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. (Origin)bawc Mercifully, the rule is not much in favour nowadays among the Internet sites warring against ‘errors’ in English; purist language guardians mistrust the Internet anyway (see[170] in II.183). We still find some moderate claims about the usages being ‘less formal’[25]. [25] Contrary to what your high school English teacher told you, there is no reason not to begin a sentence with ‘but’ or ‘and’; in fact, these words often make a sentence more forceful and graceful.[Yet doing so] does make your writing less formal (Jack Lynch, ‘Grammar and Style Notes’)www But authentic data banks disagree. Among the resolutely formal texts where these usages abound
I find Milton’s Areopagitica, Locke’s Essay Concerning Human Understanding, and Bertrand Russell’s Proposed Roads to Freedom. 20. Just because the ‘rules’ don’t need to represent actual usage, they manifest disturbing inconsistency and variation among the language guardians. Ironically, avowed defenders of the ‘standards’ of the language may patently disagree about what those ‘standards’ might be. School pupils are hardly edified by facing fresh batches of ‘rules’ from English teachers, whose collective inclination to mark ‘errors’ for obscure reasons can reach daunting intensities.14 This unsettling situation acutely endangers the credibility not just of the guardians but of English teachers in general. The most enduring effect is to convince ordinary speakers that, for reasons they don’t understand, their own usage is ‘not good English’ — this too in fine collusion with the hidden curriculum (cf. I.56). 21. The genuine motors of contested usages are the variation or change that are natural, indeed inevitable, processes in the life of a language, which is always in the process of being confirmed and constituted by discourse (I.36). Alternate usages co-exist; one displaces another; an innovation gains popularity; new ideas must be expressed; and in-groups display their solidarity: [26] When certain groups want to create an identity, they create their own language.[…] Research carried out by Dr Tony McEnery — in conjunction with the website Student World — found that UK campuses have a language of their own,[offering] words for getting drunk,[such as] ‘trollied, klangered, bazeracked, wombled’;[…] and for sex, like ‘lancing, jousting, getting jiggy with it, parking your bus, having a boff’. (Student slang leaves parents dazed, BBC World News) The evolution of such a system cannot be controlled, let alone purified, by the language guardians even if they were granted all the power of the state and its institutions — an authority no society seems eager to confer. 22. So the purist crusade cannot succeed, as the history of English has abundantly proven. But the guardians probably don’t expect to win. Their deeper agenda is rather to empower themselves and disempower others whose social or educational status, as reflected in their usage, offers a pretext for denying them equal rights and opportunities, especially to youth, minorities, and immigrants (II.17). This right-wing agenda favours not accurate, workable rules you can easily follow, but artificial, troublesome rules you must struggle to follow. 23. If the pre-modern agenda of prescriptivism seems outmoded in modern societies shaped by democracy, it must seem far more so in post-modern societies shaped by multilingualism and multiculturalism. Once again ironically, the more the inclusive theory of democracy gets put into practice to accommodate rising diversity, the more likely it becomes that social exclusion will be practiced on the pretext of languages or language varieties as surrogates for gender, race, religion, or tribe (I.42) — whilst producing ominously similar outcomes. 24. These outcomes markedly distinguish the exclusive projects of prescriptivism and purism from the inclusive projects of ecologism. The problems ecologists see in language and discourse are not in isolated usages being ‘bad’, ‘wrong’, ‘ignorant’, or ‘vulgar’ (cf. II.13, 15), but in selections and combinations of usages not being genuinely efficient, effective, or appropriate, though mostly correct or grammatical by conventional norms (cf. II.130). Our own advice is not prescriptive in the mode of traditional grammar (‘you must say it this way and not that way’), but more consultative in the mode of traditional rhetoric (‘if you want that effect or emphasis, you can try saying it this way’) (II.134, 206). Our agenda faces the supplementary challenge of deflecting the counter-productive impact of
prescriptivism that has undermined so many people’s confidence in own abilities to use their language competently and creatively — another waste of human potential (I.56, 62). II.B. Descriptive studies of language: philology
25. Descriptivism can designate an approach for ‘describing’ how a language or variety is actually used. A ‘language’ is defined here as the system shared within a community of native speakers and (less importantly) writers. Ideologically, descriptivism resonates with realism, which holds that the real and concrete is more valid or true than the ideal and abstract, and is thus the diametrical antithesis of prescriptivism resonating with idealism (cf. II.4). Historically, it originated as a modernist project for describing languages in terms of their long-range evolution. As such, the project can relate to partly prescriptive studies of a predominantly historical character, such as the ancient Sanskrit and Arabic studies of sacred texts (II.6); in fact, Sanskrit led philology to uncover the family relationship between the ‘Indic’ and the ‘Germanic’ languages (II.27).15 Yet far too little data survives of the general usage contemporary with those early studies to judge how far they were also descriptive. Plausibly, sacred texts could encourage an idealisation of the language, although the description of language sounds had to be thoroughly realist. 26. Seen from a European standpoint, the most substantial roots of descriptivism in language studies were in philology,16 consolidated as an academic field in the 19th century and still established today as a general heading for language studies in some European universities. Its focus was mainly historical, working with old languages whose documentation is spotty at best. A crucial parallel to practice versus theory was made between the ‘attestation’ of forms and patterns as direct evidence like manuscripts or place-names, versus the ‘reconstruction’ from indirect evidence, like earlier forms conjectured from later forms. These two resources sustained the study of language ancestry,17 concerned with Old English (or ‘Anglo-Saxon’), Old French, Old High German, Old Norse, Old Irish, Old Church Slavonic, and so on (cf. II.33). Some studies reflected a rising interest in their modern counterparts, and a quest for ethnic, regional, and national identity among language groups long submerged in moribund ‘empires’, e.g., the Czech national revival of the 19th century.18 27. Language ancestry prompted the comparative study of language families.19 Some had long been informally recognised: the ‘Romance’ languages like Italian, Spanish, and French; the ‘Slavic’ or ‘Slavonic’ languages like Polish, Czech, and Russian; or the ‘Germanic’ languages like German, Dutch, and English. Now, philology launched systematic projects for uncovering the detailed organisations and relations within and among these families as far back as could be traced. These families were shown to belong to a far older and larger family stemming from the entirely reconstructed language called ‘IndoGermanic’ (later ‘Indo-European’) to signify the relatedness between Indic and Germanic languages (II.25). Some scholars have even suggested that all the world’s languages evolved from a single ancestor20 — the most inclusive possible theory of language, though hardly a practical one to verify when so much early evidence is missing. 28. These studies in language ancestry might seem to imply ironic similarities with the study of the ‘classical’ languages described in II.7, but the implications were in fact quite different. Unlike Greek and Latin, these ancestral languages were not judged superior to the modern ones; nor subjected to idealisation; nor seriously advocated for use as official languages of power; nor proposed as models for purifying their modern descendants, as had been done, say, with Latin for French (II.10). Prescriptive
notions of ‘cultivation’ and ‘correctness’ would be baldly irrelevant anyway for extinct language communities. 29. Moreover, philology must be meticulously descriptive for languages where the native speakers have all disappeared, and where the preserved attestations are limited or uncertain. Philologists face vast labours just to establish the evidence and sort out the bewildering variations and inconsistencies among scribes, chanceries, or regions. If their studies centre on prestigious texts of ‘high culture’, then because these have been most carefully and plentifully preserved. But in principle, philol-ogists welcome all attestations of a language in authentic data — poems, songs, incantations, homilies, riddles, edicts, histories, letters — whatever survived the ravages of time and the vandalisms of church, state, and countless wars. 30. The descriptive and realist dependence of philology upon attestation was strongest in dialectology,21 the study of contemporary regional varieties generally referred to as ‘dialects’. As far as I know, here was the first academic field instating the principle that a ‘language’ in the ordinary sense is more precisely a family of varieties. Most studies have briskly equated the whole ‘language’ with a presumed ‘standard’ variety spoken in a dominant court or city and deployed for prestigious texts and for discourses of power. Other dialects had remained in the shadows, so that even for Classical Greek and Latin, despite their plentiful attestation, we have inadequate notions of how the languages were used for everyday conversation in different regions. Besides, dialects hold no interest for the language guardians in a prescriptive approach, who mistake variation and change for forces of ‘error’ and ‘corruption’ (cf. II.21f); dialects would be studied in order to ‘standardise’ and ‘purify’ them, which would probably destroy them instead. 31. On the side of practice, a living dialect is a real variety to be described from authentic data, using methods for ‘elicitation’ from informants, i.e., native speakers animated to supply examples (cf. II.42, 58). For philology, each dialect is a valid and self-sufficient system determined by its geography and history — an early theory of linguistic equality (I.40). And if old languages and language families are studied in written samples, current dialects are studied in spoken samples, some of which have rarely been written and are not easily captured by standard orthography. 32. On the side of theory, philology proposed that the evolution of language obeys regular ‘laws’, perhaps by analogy to the evolution of species in biology. In a famous demonstration, the ‘Germanic’ branch manifested two massive and regular ‘sound shifts’ affecting specific consonants and accounting for hosts of correspon-dences between languages with a common ancestry, e.g., between German and English. Clues of this ancestry may be traced in these two samples of heroic lays composed by unknown poets at roughly the same time,22 one from Old English[27] about the combat between famous warrior Beowulf and the ‘hoard-warding worm’ or dragon, and one from Old High German[28] (‘high’ because spoken in the higher regions of the south) about the combat between the old warrior Hildebrand and his deluded son Hadubrand. I provide first piece-by-piece translations, using cognate Words and Word-pieces even if they don’t fit modern usage, and then idiomatic translations. To suggest some links between the languages, I have supplied cognate words from the respective other language in square brackets.23
‘Hatred was aroused, the warder of the [treasure] hoard recognised the man’s speech. Nor was their time to conclude peace. First came forth the breath of the monster out of the stone cave and hot sweat of battle; the earth resounded.’
‘Then they let the [lances of] ash wood clash in sharp combat, so that they remained fixed in the shield; then they rode together[i.e. against each other], split their shields and struck devastatingly[ upon] their white shields until their[shields of] linden wood were shattered, embattled with weapons.’ The most striking resemblance may be in the rhyme and metre, since both poems were recited or sung rather than read. Quite unlike the modern notion of rhyme, sounds recur at the start of words rather than the end, the effect being stronger than for modern alliteration. The metre (‘Stabreim’ in German) divides every line into halves, each with two stressed syllables where the repetition of sounds is clustered. All these features suggest a close affinity at the time, not merely of languages but of cultures — perhaps a topic for ‘comparative stylistics’ (cf. VI.10.2, 82). 33. For our agenda, a key point about philology was the reconciliation between theory — reconstructing a language through law-like correspondences — and practice — deducing the language from preserved attestations. When possible, the theory was directly data-driven by actual evidence, e.g., when reconstructing ‘Indo-European’ by comparing a comprehensive range of attestations in its many descendants.20 The sudden discovery of a very early language that confirms a theory is a momentous event, e.g., when Hittite, spoken in an empire in Cappadocia from the 18th to the 13th centuries B.C., confirmed the theory of laryngeal sounds.24 Had the data refuted the theory, philologists would have promptly revised it — a step against which some recent ‘linguistic theories’ are effectively immune (II.85). II.C. Descriptive studies of language: linguistics
34. As if it were itself subject to the evolution it describes, philology evolved into a resolutely descriptivist and modernist ‘science of language’ under the term linguistics, which our discussion can term descriptive linguistics.25 It arose in some isolated approaches in the latter 19th century and was widely consolidated in the 20th, probably aided by several trends: the solid advances in phonetics for describing the sounds of diverse languages and varieties at high degrees of precision; and the rising interest in ‘strategic languages for administering colonial empires or conducting global warfare with more efficient means (cf. I.41, 106). 35. Moreover, linguistics profited from the advance of ‘science’ at large and the establishment of new sciences in institutions and universities. Considerable influence emanated from the ideology of unified science,26 an optimistic project to ‘unify’ all the sciences plus philosophy by merging two strikingly contrasting ideologies: radical realism upon the model of physics, and radical idealism upon the model of formal logic (I.81). The contrast may have remained inconspicuous because both fields display formal equations, although in physics they refer to the essential forces of nature and the behaviour of matter and energy, whereas in logic they refer to abstractions like ‘possible worlds’ (cf. II.94). So whenever you switch from physics over to logic, your objects of inquiry switch from real to ideal, or from actual to virtual, and the observation of properties becomes irrelevant. 36. Under such influences, the young science of ‘descriptive linguistics’ might undergo contrary pressures toward either realism or idealism, as manifested in the lasting contest between the ideologies of physicalism27 versus mentalism.28 Unhappily, the contest was less dialectical than confrontational; each ideology firmly claimed sole authority and denounced the other, like negative campaigning in dirty politics. The concept of ‘language’ in turn suffered two converse reductions: to a concrete array of
physical objects or events, or else to an abstract array of meanings or ideas. For realism, which favours practice, ‘language’ is manifested as what we hear and read; for idealism, which favours theory, ‘language’ is an underlying system that is not manifested at all. So the dialectic between language as theory and discourse as practice (section I.B) has been largely obscured. 37. Notably in the early stages, the new science remained allied with philology, where some eminent linguists had been professionally trained anyhow. This alliance might have encouraged reconciling theory with practice, as philology had done (II.33); and a similar success was achieved in fieldwork linguistics (II.58). But unified science would hardly address historical issues, which do not fit into the physics of particles, forces, and interactions on either infinitesimal or astronomical time scales; or into the logic of ‘propositions’ and ‘sentences’ that are always and everywhere either true or false (cf. II.70). 38. At all events, descriptive linguistics founded its own academic identity by making two programmatic turns. It soundly repudiated prescriptivism and tradition-al grammar as unscientific;29 and it stoutly avowed the linguistic equality whereby all the world’s languages or varieties have equal potential for expressing or communicating whatever might be required, and none is inherently superior or inferior (cf. I.40; II.31).30 The avowed goal was to describe languages as they are actually used, and not as some guardians assert they ought to be used. Descriptive methods were to be kept clearly distinct from evaluative (cf. VI.10.10.1). 39. But, all too precipitately, linguistics also turned against descriptive philology by radically sidelining the historical emphasis. Language would henceforth be described as a static ‘synchronic system’ in its current state and in a programmatic dichotomy with the ‘diachronic sequence’ in its historical evolution.31 This shift recast the question of what type of system a language might constitute, and two distinct theories (or groups of theories) proposed their answers, some resonating with realism or physicalism, and others with idealism or mentalism. 40. Even more influential was the programmatic dichotomy, under various pairs of labels like French ‘langue’ versus ‘parole’,32 between language representing the static system, versus discourse representing its dynamic manifestations. The ‘true and unique object of linguistics’ was roundly declared to be ‘language studied in and for itself’.32 By contrast, ‘speech cannot be studied’, ‘for we cannot discover its unity’; it is but a ‘heterogeneous mass’ of ‘accessory and accidental facts’32 — a linguist’s hopeless utopia (cf. I.6). In my terms, this dichotomy flatly disconnects the dialectic between theory and practice, and the outcome has had to be divisive and counter-productive. In particular, the practices of linguists are left in the vacuum of ‘studying language’ but not ‘speech’, i.e., producing theory-driven, top-down input without recourse to data-driven, bottom-up input — ultimately, science explaining only its own abstractions (cf. II.85). We seem to pursue the truly arcane question of what language is like when nobody’s using it. 41. Because these two dichotomies idealise ‘language’, they resonated with idealism and mentalism. Neither the ‘synchronic system’ nor ‘language by itself’ exists in the world of real experience; they are entities which linguistics postulated rather than discovered. They were further split between mentalism and physicalism when ‘the source material of language’ was ‘pictured’ in another dichotomy: as ‘two parallel chains, one of concepts’, i.e., the ‘signifieds’; and ‘the other of sound-images’, i.e., the ‘signifiers’; and ‘the bond between the signifier and the signified’ was declared ‘arbitrary’.33 Having exiled discourse (‘speech’) elided the fact that the processes of associating meanings with sounds during the use of language are by no means arbitrary, but precisely controlled. ‘Arbitrariness’ expediently trun-
cated the challenge to explain how these processes of association operate even in simple discourse, not to mention language learning, poetry, or translation. 42. However, some major approaches in descriptive linguists effectively disregarded these prim dichotomies and applied a resolutely realist theory. There, a ‘language’ is defined as the concrete system of speech activities shared within a community of native speakers, which I consider the most essential and general theory within descriptivism (II.25). The practice of linguists would concentrate on observing and recording a corpus of utterances from informants in authentic situations, rather like dialectology (II.31). This theory need not compel a choice between physicalism and mentalism (II.36), but can underwrite an informal compromise. Physicalist outlooks have dominated phonetics, the study of the articulation and audition of speech sounds, whilst mentalist outlooks have dominated grammar, the study of the forms and patterns of phrases and sentences. 43. Still, some descriptive linguists declared their official allegiance to unified science (cf. II.35). Applying physicalism to language favoured the ideology of behaviourism, where speech figured as ‘verbal behaviour’,34 and utterances as pairs of a ‘stimulus’ by the speaker and a ‘response’ by the hearer. ‘Speech’ was thus breezily alleged to constitute ‘cause-and-effect sequences exactly like those we may observe in the study of physics’.35 44. A descriptivist and realist theory might rationally procure data by identifying the units in a language system, and the ‘distinctive features’ determining their various positions in the system. A radical implication is that the system is constituted only by the distinctiveness among the units, with each unit defined precisely by how it differs from all others (cf. II.170).36 The units also occupy distinctive positions within ‘structures’, defined in turn as ‘systemic’ (system-based) relations between units. This approach has duly been dubbed ‘structuralism’,37 and has been adopted and adapted as a general method of description not just in linguistics but in neighbouring fields like anthropology and literary studies, where the originally literal model became prominently metaphoric. Its linguistic origins fostered a latent formalism despite some functionalist practices, and a resulting over-emphasis on static units rather than social and historical processes, and on general or universal ‘oppositions’ rather than individual or social experiences. 45. To procure data on the most basic level, descriptive (or structural) linguistics proposed to isolate systems of ‘minimal units’ that cannot be analysed any further. Each system was consigned to a ‘level of description’ for study by a corresponding subfield within linguistics. Phonology38 was the subfield accredited for the study of minimal distinctive sound-units called Phonemes, these being theoretical units corresponding to Speech Sounds as practical units. By drawing on Phonetics,39 the most realist domain of language study (II.34, 42), the Phonemes can be concisely defined by ‘distinctive features’ specified as locations and events of articulation. Modelling the terms upon Latin, a Phoneme can be ‘labial’ for the lips, ‘nasal’ for the nose, ‘dental’ for the teeth, ‘palatal’ for the palate, and so on. A ‘stop’ occurs if the air stream is blocked; a ‘fricative’ if it passes with friction; an ‘affricate’ if it is briefly blocked and then passes with friction; ‘resonant’ if it passes with humming; and so on. If the vocal chords vibrate, the Phoneme is ‘voiced’; if not it is ‘voiceless’. Such a system is relatively straightforward to observe and define by correlating with the human vocal anatomy. Each language has its distinct system, wherein the repertory of Phonemes is relatively compact. 46. The practices for the notation and segmentation of Phonemes have enjoyed material assistance from Graphology, the unofficial ‘level’ of written language corresponding to the Phonology of spoken language (V.29). Its theoretical units are the Graphemes that represent Phonemes, whilst its practical
units are, in most languages, the Letters. The relation between theoretical and practical is solid in some languages like Czech, Hungarian, or Spanish, but badly skewed in others like English and French. So the international phonetic alphabet offers a single system for accurately transcribing the sounds of virtually any language. Not surprisingly, the vowels need more phonetic letters than do the consonants, especially for a language like English with about 20 distinct vowel sounds. 47. The practices further identify Phonemes as those minimal units which are capable of distinguishing between words with different meanings. The routine test is the ‘minimal pair’, two words that differ in a single prospective Phoneme. Thus, ‘pin – bin’, ‘pin – pun’, and ‘pin – pit’ suffice to show the presence of distinct Phonemes in three positions, conventionally written with the letters of the phonetic alphabet between square brackets, thus:
(The inverted ‘e’ is widely called by the borrowed Hebrew term ‘schwa’, and roughly indicates the sound of 'uh' as in 'huh?' It’s so common in English, we really ought to have our own letter for it.) 48. However, such methods can encourage a confusion of theoretical units with practical units. When speech has been transcribed with the phonetic alphabet, the Phonemes seem to be right there for us to inspect. Yet despite their realistic basis in articulation, the Phonemes are not in the stream of speech, nor actually uttered or heard; they are mental and physical targets to which the actual Sounds get fitted during the acts of uttering or hearing. Besides, those acts produce more features than those defining the Phonemes, such as those relating to the ‘prosody’ or ‘intonation’ (Ch. IV). And of course adjustments are needed for the individual speaker’s voice, whose qualities make it recognisable even without seeing who it is. 49. Morphology40 was in turn the subfield accredited for the study of minimal meaningful form-units called Morphemes, these being theoretical units corres-ponding to Words and Word-Parts as practical units. The Word-Parts can be handily identified by four respective positions. The Stem is the core or central part of a Word and best indicates its meaning. The Prefix is ‘previously fixed’ before the Stem; the Infix is ‘internally fixed’ inside the Stem; and the Suffix is ‘subsequently fixed’ after the Stem. Some descriptions also use the term Ending as a separate element tacked on at the end as required by the Grammar, e.g., to make a Singular Noun into a Plural. Morphemes are conventionally written between slash-marks, as in these typical illustrations:
Here, the ordinary alphabet can serve, showing that the shapes of isolated Morphemes as theoretical units can differ from their shapes as practical units in combinations (e.g. /ity/ + /s/ => ‘ities’). Moreover, the conventional orthography of English preserves more information about Morphemes than would a phonetic transcription, e.g., the consistent Word Stem ‘gnos’ (know) in ‘gnosis’and ‘gnostic’ . 50. Like for Phonemes, the methods for identifying the Morphemes work well enough by segmenting language samples. You subdivide an utterance into the smallest units that have meanings until no more divisions can be made. Perhaps influenced by their own transcriptions, some thrifty linguists even conceived of Morphology being built directly on top of Phonology, and the Phonemes being the constituents of the Morphemes. But the two units are too disparate. Sounds are not the building-blocks of meanings nor do they total up into meanings. Rather, Sounds are the means whilst meaningful forms are the ends; and the forms of language are in turn the means whilst the meanings of language are the ends (II.94).41
51. Besides, worse problems impend in identifying Morphemes than Phonemes. The most obvious problem is the vast quantity of Morphemes for all the Word-Stems in the vocabulary. The preferred solution has been to give a reasonably complete description of the repertories of Prefixes, Infixes, and Suffixes (and, where appropriate, Endings), but of only a modest selection of Stems. The problem of quantity is just postponed, and turns up even worse in Lexicology (II.61). 52. A closely related problem is the apparent absence, in languages like English, of a theoretical system of distinctive features for Morphemes to apply to practical units as nicely as the system of Phonemes applies to Sounds. Instead of balanced pairs like[p] and[b] or[pIn] and[bIn], we find hosts of unbalanced single items without the formally logical counterpart — ‘youthful’ without ‘*ageful’, ‘dislike’ without ‘*dislove’, ‘overkill’ without ‘*underkill’, ‘beforehand’ without ‘*after-hand’, and countless others. 53. A less obvious problem is that the knowledge of various speakers is far less uniform for Morphemes than for Phonemes. The Morphology of English is decidedly unsystematic; the recognition of Morphemes may depend on extra knowledge of French, Latin, or Greek, or of some specialised field like biology or medicine. Many speakers might not detect the Negative Prefix (borrowed from Latin) ‘in‑’ across its changing forms, e.g., ‘in‑capacity, im‑munity, ir‑relevance’, or its coincidental resemblance to the Directional Prefix ‘in‑’ meaning ‘into’, e.g., ‘in‑vade’, ‘im‑pact’, ‘ir-rupt’. Where the linguists’ description finds multiple Word-Parts, ordinary speakers might find only the whole Word. 54. A still less obvious problem resides in the definition of Morphemes as ‘minimal meaningful units of form’. We can identify a unit as meaningful without being confident in defining its meaning. What meaning should we offer for ‘of’ to cover examples like ‘fond of society’, ‘think too well of herself’, ‘the want of Miss Taylor’, ‘his horror of late hours’ (all in Emma)? Or of the Suffix ‘‑ity’ across ‘quality, ability, reality, personality, jollity, eternity’ (all in Lord Jim)? 55. Explaining the meaning of Morphemes might well lead beyond the official limits of descriptive linguistics. Considering the etymology and history of expressions oversteps the limits upon ‘synchronic’ description (II.39). Tracing Morphemes to the languages from which they were borrowed, such as the many Prefixes from Latin into English, oversteps the structuralist concept of each language constituting a system on its own terms. 56. Moreover, Morphemes often do not just have meanings in themselves, but also delimit or derive meanings in context. This point is obvious for an item so common and flexible as ‘of’, but applies to many items that are much less so, as corpus linguistics can testify (section II.F.3). The ‘minimal’ status of Morphemes renders them cumbersome and roundabout units for description and analysis, and suggests they may not play a dominant role in active communication. Even a morphologist must continually start from whole Stretches of Text. 57. As for Phonemes and Sounds (II.48), Morphemes are easily confused with the Words and Word-Parts in a transcribed Utterance, whereby the function (e.g., the English Noun-Plural Morpheme) gets confused with the form (e.g., the written Letter ‘‑s’). In fact, a function in English need not demand a form, e.g. in Plurals like ‘deer’ and ‘sheep’, which has sometimes been called a ‘Zero Morpheme’.42 Comparing English to highly ‘inflected’ languages, we might say that the function of Singular for Nouns, and of Person for Verbs everywhere but the Third Person Singular of the Present carry ‘Zero Endings’. Formless too are Number and Gender for Articles and Adjectives. So the Morphemes as such are also not in the data.
58. Despite these various problems, Phonology and Morphology have undeniably provided a realistic practical basis for descriptive research in fieldwork linguistics,43 which discovers and describes a language through direct observation of its uses for communication among native speakers. In effect, the ‘theory’ of the language is painstakingly extracted from the evidence of practices. This research continues the tradition of dialectology in philology by relying on ‘attestations’ of language, and on data elicited from ‘informants’ (cf. II.31).44 But rather than the well-known languages of Europe (as in dialectology,) fieldwork turned to the lesser-known languages of Africa, Asia, the Americas, and the Pacific. These are vastly more challenging, since their organisation may not be known in advance and may differ radically from European languages. In such a situation, identifying units of sound and form in recorded utterances constitutes a solid contribution. 59. Fieldwork brings to light interesting linguistic resources to express cultural patterns, such as Morphemes adapted for telling stories. Sample[30] comes from a story in Juba Arabic, a creole spoken in the southern Sudan, telling what befell a rogue elephant who had destroyed a bird’s nest and offspring, ignoring its protests and lamentations (parp: functions like a Present Participle).45 [30] Fil
gum zalaan ma huwo wa sibu huwo gi
kore. Uma
ta ter
ruwa le
elephant arose angry with her and left her parp cry mother of birds went to reyiis ta gurubaat u
gum worii le huwo gisa. Gurubaat ruwa le fil
chief of hawks and arose told to him story hawks dugu dugu fil.
Fil
u
bada
went to elephant and began
ainu ze de u bada kore u gum jere gi
arfau
peck peck elephant. Elephant saw like this and began cry and arose ran parp raise adaan to kebiir gi ears his big
durbu kueen to fi wataa
parp pound feet
his on earth.
‘The elephant got angry with her and left her crying. Then the mother bird went to the chief of the hawks and told him the story. The hawks went to elephant and began pecking and pecking him. The elephant saw that and began to cry out and ran off, raising his big ears and pounding the earth with his feet.’ Here we have Morphemes for marking the functional Aspect I call Trajectory (cf. III.93): the Inchoative ‘bada’ for an Action just starting, and the Durative ‘gi‑‘ for an Action continuing over time. The marker ‘gum’ highlights main actions in the story line, apart from its lexical meaning ‘arise’. 60. Such success led fieldwork to consider describing a whole language by ‘structural’ methods dealing in units and distinctive features. But fieldworkers observe many practical factors not organised in structures of Phonemes or Morphemes, and hence sidelined by structuralist linguistics, such as the communal activities and household affairs of daily life. Exploiting these factors frees descriptive linguistics from its official boundaries determined by secure correspon-dences between the theoretical and practical units defined to be minimal and hence most basic. Only the practical units can be observed; their theoretical functions and relations, and the motives for their selection and combination, must be inferred. 61. If descriptive linguistics simply moved from smaller toward larger units, the next level might be for the subfield of Lexicology,46 the study of Lexemes as theoretical units corresponding to Words and Expressions as practical units. Yet linguistics has hesitated to make this move, and for compelling reasons. On the side of theory, the Vocabulary of a language hardly appears to correspond to any system
of productive Lexemes with distinctive features comparable to the system of Phonemes. Moreover, the sheer quantity of items, evaded in morphology (cf. II.51), cannot be so easily set aside again. The status of the Lexeme itself has remained fairly shadowy; perhaps it could be an outline for a group of words made from the same Stem, e.g., ‘rest, restful, restive, restless, restlessness’ (all in Babbitt). Yet many Vocabulary items are isolated from any such group, such as ‘boffin’ for a scientist (unrelated to ‘boff’ for a joke) or ‘hooch’ for liquor (unrelated to ‘hooch’ for a thatched hut). And the relevant groupings in the use of lexical resources are the sets of choices likely to be considered together, like ‘claim, argue, assert, maintain, vow’, which are not usually related by form or formation. 62. On the side of practice, in contrast, the vocabulary is wondrously useful for an unlimited range of goals and functions, far exceeding the practices of any one speaker or writer. And the introduction and evolution of vocabulary are practice-driven too; few expressions are confirmed on theoretical grounds alone. Some pedant seems to have devised ‘exsert’ (jut out) and ‘inhume’ (bury) as logical antonyms of ‘insert’ and ‘exhume’, and I find almost no authentic uses. 63. Still, to conjecture that vocabulary is where practice most vigorously runs ahead of theory would be premature. Vocabulary is the practical side of the overarching theory that expressions do correspond to reasonably consistent meanings shared among a community. The theory cannot be proven because meanings cannot be directly observed, only their effects. Meanings are like mini-theories about how the world is organised and what people do. Yet how we grasp each other’s meanings despite all the differences in our knowledge and experience is a question that official theories about language have yet to settle. 64. The field of Lexicography,47 concerned with compiling dictionaries, certainly began as practice running ahead of theory. Early dictionaries were mainly collections of words that attracted the compiler’s notice. The methods for deciding which words to include and how to define them were largely improvised. Emphasis fell upon erudite and antiquated items, presumably on the theory that people would not know them, but without considering whether people would want to know them, like ‘psychrophilic’ (thriving at low temperatures), ‘monopsony’ (one buyer and many sellers), or ‘borborygmus’ (intestinal rumbling caused by gas) in Webster’s dictionaries. In addition, a special dictionary jargon was cobbled together for defining them, as in these examples (again from Webster’s): [31] Versicular: of or relating to versicles [32] Tricotyledonous: having three cotyledons These suggest a user erudite enough to know the meaning of ‘versicles’ (phrases sung in public worship) and ‘cotyledons’ (first leaves on a seed plant embryo), yet ignorant enough to miss Adjectival Suffixes like ‘-al’ and ‘-ous’ or the Prefix ‘tri-’. 65. At all events, descriptive linguistics did not achieve a correspondence of theory and practice in Lexicology, and research preferred to focus upon the subfield of Syntax,48 defined as the arrangement of Words and Word-Parts in Phrases and Sentences. If we draw a close parallel to ‘Phoneme’ and ‘Morpheme’, the central unit would be the Syntagmeme, but defining that unit is far more difficult. It cannot be minimal, and it lacks a reliable set of distinctive features. I find the term rarely used in published English research, though I do find the partly analogous term Tagmeme, defined as the relation between a syntactic slot and the class of items that can occupy it (II.136).48 66. The problems facing Syntax are rather the reverse of Lexicology or Lexicography: theory has tended to run far ahead of practice and at times entirely away from practice. In the early stages, some thrifty
linguists thought of building Syntax directly on top of Morphology,49 the Morphemes being the constituents of Words, which in turn are the constituents of Phrases (cf. II.49). But here too, the units are too disparate, even though the numerous Words that cannot be subdivided also correspond to Morphemes. In theory, the Word differs from the Morpheme as a unified target which is more likely to be uttered alone, e.g. ‘Run!’ (Tom Sawyer) and which typically appears in Collocations with other Words, e.g. ‘the moon was waxing’ (Jane Eyre), not ‘inflating’ or ‘mushrooming’ (cf. II.153). In practice, the Word is (somewhat narrowly) considered the decisive unit for learning a language, organising and producing utterances, compiling dictionaries, and so on; and its meaning is usually more tractable to define than that of the Morpheme (cf. II.54). 67. Perhaps too, the move to Syntax naturally entails a move away from the practical units of Phonology and Morphology, and toward more theoretical concepts of language (II.77). Certainly, such a trend flourished in generative linguistics, which I shall shortly review. There, Syntax became so theoretical as to push Phonology to the margins and dispense with Morphology (II.81). 68. To balance theory with practice, descriptive Syntax would presumably require some correspondence between theoretical and practical units, as had been achieved in Phonology and Morphology (II.45ff). Instead, the units of the Phrase and the Sentence, and far less often the Clause, were casually treated as both kinds of units, apparently without registering the latent dualism and its problems. For the standard (or ‘canonical’) theoretical Sentence in English, the ‘syntactic structure’ of ‘Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase’ (or ‘NP + VP’ for short) is constituted quite differ-ently than our practical Sentence ‘the moon was waxing’. No matter how much detail we add to the structure — e.g. to specify Verbs like ‘wax’ that regularly occur in the Progressive Aspect, not in the Simple Tense (my data do not show ‘the moon waxed’) — we do not yet explain the construction of the Sentence, e.g., that ‘moon’ and ‘wax’ are highly likely to occur together, and here were chosen to anticipate why Jane could ‘plainly see’ Mr Rochester ‘at so late an hour’. 69. And so Syntax steadily drifted away from observing practical structures toward accounting for theoretical structures in terms of each other. For some linguists, the account should be given entirely upon formal principles without recourse to the meaning of language (cf. II.79).50 We might compare the relations among sentence structures within a single text or discourse (e.g. ‘satisfied customers’ ‘you will be satisfied’).50 But the method was soon expanded for all sentence structures in a ‘language’ or ‘grammar’, and the stage was set for ‘generative linguistics’ (section II.D). 70. When descriptive studies turned to the subfield of Semantics,51 the study of meaning, theory ran away from practice altogether. A hopeless utopia was invoked to impose a highly literal and sceptical ‘science of semantics’: [33] The total communicative content of an utterance[…] is too complex to be accounted for[by] systematic theory.[…] We must rather[...] isolate what is strictly said before we can explain circumstances, conventions, and whatever else.[So] the boundary between what does and what does not bear logically on the truth of what is strictly said must be the boundary between the science of semantics and the science of the further effects obtaining in a speech-exchange. (David Wiggins)52 This might be the semantic version of the old dichotomy between language and discourse, but with a special twist. Here, meaning by itself (determined by ‘truth’) for ‘the science of semantics’ gets separated from meaning in context (determined by ‘circumstance’ and ‘conventions’) for the (clumsily phrased) ‘science-of-the-further-effects-obtaining-in-a-speech-exchange’. But if meaning is a theory or a set of ‘mini-theories’ (II.63), these must be tested by practices in ‘speech-exchanges’ in order to
determine what anything or anybody ‘means’. Even ‘truth’ depends on context and circumstance, with fuzzy borders to ‘falsehood’ and ‘tale’[34-35]. [34] Your bait of falsehood takes this carp of truth; And thus do we of wisdom and of reach[…] By indirections find directions out.[…] If circumstances lead me, I will find Where truth is hid, though it were hid indeed. (Hamlet) [35] By this marriage all little jealousies, which now seem great[…] Would then be nothing. Truths would be tales, Where now half-tales be truths. (Antony and Cleopatra) Moreover, semantic analysis of ‘what is strictly said’ symptomatically turns out rather offhand in practice, as in this foray into the meaning of ‘bachelor’: [36] Intuitively, does the following pair mean the same: (a) ‘bachelors prefer redheads’; (b) ‘girls with red hair are preferred by unmarried men’? Yes. (You may not have agreed, but it’s not too important.) (Semantics: A Coursebook)53 To a more disciplined inspection, these don’t ‘mean the same’: ‘redheads’ are not just ‘girls’, but also ‘women’; and that is important, thank you. 71. In parallel to ‘Phoneme’ and ‘Morpheme’, theoretical units were proposed like Seme, Sememe, or Semanteme,54 plus the semantic features they would have. But these theoretical units are ostensibly ‘universal’ and thus peculiar to no language, and so would hardly correspond to specific practical units, which they must in order to communicate. The proposed ‘features’ like ‘Human’ for the meaning of ‘bachelor’ in the evergreen example (cf. II.94) are just Words with meanings that depend on their contexts of use. In authentic data, both a bachelor and a husband can be only ‘half human’, the ‘feline’ Mr Carker resembling a ‘cat’[37], and a ‘revolting husband’ from Sylhet in Bangladesh resembling a ‘tree’[38]. [37] feline from sole to crown was Mr. Carker,[…] sly of manner, sharp of tooth, soft of foot,[as he] looked down at Mr. Dombey, half human and half brute (Dombey) [38] The man is often horribly old with a crooked face while his wife is a young girl of astonishing beauty.[…] He may be like a banana tree or a coconut tree, half human in appearance, revolting in every way, but caring for him is still a woman’s duty if he’s her husband. (Asian Women in Britain) A ‘bachelor’ is a social, not just ‘semantic’ category, and in a setting like Victorian England, might be regarded not as a prime case for semantics but as an anomaly: [39] A bachelor is a man who shirks responsibilities and duties (Socialist) [40] What’s a bachelor? A mere nothing — he’s a chrysalis. He can’t be said to live — he exists. (Gondoliers)
The ‘complexity’ of the ‘total communicative content of an utterance’ is exactly what makes meaning ‘systematic’. And a Semantics that ‘isolates’ away from it loses not merely its human relevance but its principal resource. 72. Theory and practice have also been perplexed in the subfield of Pragmatics,55 defined as the study of the uses of language — perhaps a paradox in a discipline which has, since its inception, set up dichotomies (like ‘langue’ and ‘parole’, II.40 ) to separate language from use. If Pragmatics were to be yet another descriptive ‘level’ of units, Pragmemes might be theoretical units corresponding to Speech Acts as practical units. The ‘Pragmeme’ would in turn be determined by its pragmatic features, which might encode distinctions concerning conditions of use, such as intentions and goals, or traits and states of the participants, such as beliefs and emotions. However, I hardly find these terms documented anywhere. Besides, goals or emotions are not features of theoretical units, but of practical units like the text or discourse (e.g., insincere promise); and they are not ‘distinctive’ in determining the places of units in an orderly system like the Phonemes. 73. But after all, Pragmatics emerged from the philosophy of ‘ordinary language’56 rather than from linguistics proper. It was embraced by linguistics to resolve intractable problems fomented by a Semantics that, as we saw, wanted to ‘isolate truth from circumstances’ and ‘conventions’[48]. Similarly, the Speech Acts most studied have seemed fairly abstract and well-defined. A favourite is the Performative, a speech act that is constituted by uttering it (III.91), such as ‘promising’ to perform an action57 by using the ‘Performative Verb’ ‘promise’[41]. However, authentic data suggest that Performatives are a rather special case, and even ‘promising’ is more variable in context than ‘speech act theory’ would indicate. Speakers can ‘promise’ Actions which they could scarcely perform[42], or which are not in their own power[43]. Besides, ‘I promise you’ can just be giving assurance[44], or even making a threat — a quite different speech act[45]. [41] I promise that I’ll be there at two o’clock. (invented example) [42] I promise thee that my Heart will dilate to shed with abundance the influences of its love upon all those who pay to it these honors (Religious Experience) [43] I promise you that if you persevere with aerobic walking, the psychological benefits alone will make you want to get out every day. (Walking Diet) [44] I haven't done anything wrong — I promise you. I'm just homeless, that's all. (Furniture) [45] if you kill my husband, or anyone else, then I promise you that your brothers will die, on the tarmac in front of that plane. (Skyjack) Like other linguistic units, a ‘speech act’ is best defined in the context of situation. 74. In retrospect, descriptive linguistics has achieved its greatest successes where it balanced theory with practice, most effectively in fieldwork by analysing corresponding systems of minimal units. In my view, this work is the most impressive and enduring success in modern linguistics, documenting over a thousand previously undescribed languages (cf. II.58). Sadly, many are nearing extinction, as children abandon the idioms of their parents, and families are displaced from their communities. In February 2000, UNESCO estimated that a language disappears every two days and nearly half of the roughly 6500 languages spoken today are endangered. Ecologism harmonises with UNESCO’s view: ‘each language reflects a unique vision of the world and shows how the community resolves its problems with the
environment’; ‘at the disappearance of a language an irreplaceable part of our knowledge of the thought and of the vision of world is lost’.58
II.D. Generative studies of language
75. Generativism can designate an approach for relating language to the intuitive knowledge of speakers and to the mental capacities of humans at large. (Among various definitions of the term, this one seems dominant.) Historically, it purported to originate as a consummately modernist project more advanced than descriptivism, but ideologically it resonates partly with the ‘pre-modernist’ project of idealism in 17th century Europe,59 which addressed ideas more than language; and partly with the early modernist project of formal logic of the 20th century, one pillar of ‘unified science’ (I.81). Now, the ideology of mentalism, which had long before sponsored the dichotomies between ‘synchronic’ versus ‘diachronic’ and ‘langue’ versus ‘parole’ (II.40f), gained ascendancy. 76. Formal logic, as the term indicates, mainly concerns relations within and among arrays or strings of forms. This concern fit the centrality accorded to Syntax by generative linguistics60 when a ‘language’ was defined as a system (or ‘grammar’)61 of formal rules for generating an ‘infinite set of well-formed sentences’.62 This arcane definition should attract linguists who want to explain why the system of a language always remains open, and the set of instances is never complete; and who like to believe that the regularities in a language are due to ‘rules’, and that the sentence is the primary linguistic unit and the longest unit for linguistic study.63 In return, the definition implied some incisive evasions. ‘Generate’ does not at all mean ‘produce’ a sentence, but just means ‘assign it a structural description’ with no regard for its production; so despite the polemics,64 the ‘generative’ approach was after all a rarefied or diluted ‘descriptive’ approach. Besides, terms like ‘rule’ and ‘sentence’ carry different senses in formal logic than in studies of language. And an ‘infinite set’ in the strict sense of mathematics would eventually produce every combination, however wildly improbable, just as, in the familiar parable, a roomful of chimpanzees randomly pecking at with typewriters would, in infinite time, write the complete works of Shakespeare.65 By implication, the act of comprehending a sentence could require infinite processing time to search an infinite set of possible combinations. 77. Undeniably, generativism has sharply veered toward more theoretical con-ceptions of ‘language’ (II.67), until the term no longer designates a medium for real communication. Instead, the term designates an ‘internal’ and ‘universal’ system anchored in some mental or genetic human potential, of which any one language like English merely constitutes an ‘external’ instance.66 The relation might seem comparable to the relation between a language (or ‘langue’) and an individual discourse (or ‘parole’), but I doubt it. ‘Internal’ versus ‘external’ relates two fairly abstract systems, whereas ‘language’ versus ‘discourse’ relates an abstract (virtual) system with a concrete (actual) system (cf. II.113). 78. Meanwhile, the practices of generative linguists have been mainly argumentative, advancing large claims on the basis of small data sets,67 usually isolated, invented sentences, like ‘sincerity may frighten the boy’ adduced for ‘observing that the rules of grammar impose a partial order in terms of dominance’: [46] we can define the degrees of deviation[by] substituting a lexical item in the position of ‘frighten’.[…] Thus we should have the following order of deviance: (1) ‘sincerity may virtue the boy’; (ii) ‘sincerity
may elapse the boy’; (iii) ‘sincerity may admire the boy’. This seems to give a natural explication… (Noam Chomsky, Aspects)68 Expressions like ‘observe’ and ‘natural’ are incongruous for an approach declaring that ‘knowledge of the language, like most facts of interest and importance, is neither presented for direct observation nor extractable from data by inductive procedures of any known sort’.69 Anyway, the ‘rules’ are precisely not observable, and even the original sentence is hardly natural. None of the 295 occurrences of ‘sincerity’ in the British National Corpus appears at the start of a sentence; and precious few are Subjects of an Active Verb with a Direct Object, such as: [47] Butler’s earnest sincerity made him a popular hero and leader, especially among the oil-field workers (Campaign for the Preservation of Rural Wales)BNC Moreover ‘sincerity’ in the BNC data nearly always relates to active agents like the Trinidadian workers’ rights advocate Tubal Uriah Butler in[47]. The ‘deviant’ versions (i-iii) don’t support an ‘explication’ of ‘grammar’ because, whatever their status in any theory, they are equally gibberish in practice. And a linguistics that formulates a ‘hierarchy’ to rank gibberish is like a meteorology that ranks the ‘deviance’ of windless hurricanes, parched cloudbursts, and sizzling snowstorms. 79. Among the largest claims, advanced with no data, was that ‘Syntax’ or ‘Grammar’ — the two terms evasively used interchangeably — is ‘autonomous’ and ‘independent of meaning’.70 This claim handily promised to suspend, at a stroke, the tough problems of accounting for meaning, such as those I pointed out in descriptive Morphology and Semantics (II.54ff, 70ff). A transformational grammar71 would only present a set of ‘rules’ for ‘transforming’ any one sentence structure into another, prospectively without changing its meaning. The paraded example was the ‘passive transformation’, which ‘transforms’ a riveting sentence like ‘the man hit the ball’ into ‘the ball was hit by the man’ (but cf. II.126). 80. In such a ‘grammar’ ‘describing the structure’ of any given sentence equals using ‘rules’ that fit it into the total set of ‘well-formed sentence structures’ in a ‘language’. In contrast to the distinct correspondences between theoretical and practical units in Phonology and Morphology (II.45, 49), the ‘sentence’ evidently doubles interchangeably in both roles (II.68), although the artificiality of invented data camouflages this practice. In theory, a modest set of rules should apply to the total set via ‘transformations’ from a minimal set of maximally simple structures sometimes called ‘kernels’72 — perhaps vaguely inspired by the minimal Phonemes and Morphemes of descriptive linguistics? In practice, generative linguists would work out the set of rules and confirm their applicability. 81. But this practical work must have seemed unattractive, and, as far as I can discover, was never achieved for any language. Moreover, few generative linguists seem to be seriously pursuing it nowadays. Instead, many are pursuing luxuriant elaborations on the theoretical side. The practical but untenable claims were quietly shelved that Syntax is independent of meaning, and that all sentences are ‘transformed’ from a base of ‘kernels’. A more encompassing scheme was pro-posed under fresh labels, having a base with a ‘deep structure’, and any actual sentence with a ‘surface structure’. The ‘deep structure’ gets ‘generated’ and then ‘submitted to the semantic component for semantic interpretation’, whilst the ‘sur-face structure enters the phonological component’ for ‘phonetic interpretation’.73 Morphology simply didn’t appear. Later on, a ‘pragmatic interpretation’ was also postulated,74 but was not integrated into official generative theory, doubtless because pragmatics deals with language use (II.72). 82. And precisely language use had been set aside by another large claim, namely that ‘linguistic theory’ in general and a ‘generative grammar’ in particular should describe ‘competence, the speaker-hearer’s
knowledge of his language’, in a programmatic dichotomy with ‘performance, the actual use of language in concrete situations’; ‘only under the idealization’ of the ‘speaker-hearer’ ‘is performance a direct reflection of competence’, but not ‘in actual fact’.75 Moreover, this ‘com-petence was attributed to an ‘ideal speaker-hearer in a completely homogeneous speech-community, who knows its language perfectly’.75 ‘The study of competence abstracts away from the whole question’ of ‘why speakers say what they say, how language is used in various social groups, how it is used in communication’.76 These claims expediently dismissed all the problems of language variation due to such factors as social class, education, and culture; and culminated in the trenchant claim that the ‘observed use of language’ ‘surely cannot constitute the subject-matter of linguistics’ as a ‘serious discipline’.75 We might well recall the early pronouncement that ‘speech is a ‘heterogeneous mass’ of ‘accessory and accidental facts’ (II.40). Overtones of hopeless utopia resound again, when we are told that ‘from the point of view of the theory’, ‘much of the actual speech observed consists of fragments and deviant expressions’.77 83. Such claims might further imply that young children, who are exposed only to ‘performance’ and ‘observed use’, should encounter severe problems in learning their ‘language’, which they don’t. So the ‘grammar’ was also claimed to represent a ‘genetic’ capacity of human beings, whereby a ‘language’ is ‘acquired’ through an ‘innate language acquisition device’ programmed to select the ‘grammar’ of the native language from a ‘universal grammar’.78 As evidence, the straightforward fact was adduced that young children acquire their native language without being expressly taught, and can soon produce and understand many sentences they have never heard or seen. But this fact does not prove that children acquire their language by unconsciously filtering down from a ‘universal grammar’ of ‘deep structures’. Far more plausibly, they acquire it from experiencing a great deal of text and discourse in meaningful situations that display the creative openness of the language. The ‘acquisition device’ papered over the patent unlearnability of the types of ‘grammar’ (or ‘syntax’) that generative linguistics has consistently pro-pounded; one idealisation was devised to salvage another. 84. Whether the concept of ‘ linguistic universals’79 can be linked to substantive evidence might depend on which aspects of language are addressed. Doing so would be easiest for ‘phonological universals’ reflecting the construction of the human vocal apparatus, than for ‘semantic universals’ invoked as a presumptive basis for semantic units and features (cf. II.71). An ecologist approach would postulate a dialectic between universality and diversity in linguistic, cognitive, and social evolution. Universality would rest more on theory, and diversity more on practice; cognitive and social parallels can favour linguistic parallels, but easily may not, as any sensitive learner of a foreign language can confirm. 85. All in all, generative studies have emphatically reversed the realism and behaviourism instated by descriptive studies, and promoted a radical idealism and mentalism. By now theory (language) has run much further away from practice (discourse) than in the early dichotomy of ‘langue’ and ‘parole’, yet the key problem is the same: the practices of the linguists themselves are left in a vacuum, enjoined to ‘study language’ but not ‘actual speech’ — to produce a theory without observing the practices, and to create theory-driven, top-down input without recourse to data-driven, bottom-up input (cf. I.84) — like a science providing explanations of its own abstractions (II.40). We cannot look for data from an ‘ideal speaker-hearer’ or a ‘completely homogeneous speech-community’, since neither can ever exist. In effect, a ‘theory of language’ in the generative sense is immune to refutation (cf. II.33).80 ‘Language’ is defined a priori to be just what the theory states it is, no matter what masses of the evidence indicate it is. 86. These waves of idealisation are utterly unlike the idealisations of prescriptivism and purism. A generative grammar aspires to describe ‘competence’, whose ‘rules are ‘unconsciously’ and ‘automatically’ applied; a sample is ‘ungrammatical’ if its structure cannot be described. A prescriptive
grammar aspires to intervene in performance, and with ‘rules’ that need to be applied with conscious effort; sam-ples are ‘ungrammatical’ if some language guardian objects to them. 87. Nonetheless, dismissing the ‘observed use of language’ as the ‘subject-matter of linguistics’ (II.82) makes the generativists resemble the prescriptivists in offering their own variety of the language as the sole model (II.18), which they access by ‘intuition’ and ‘introspection’. Indeed, the offer is far more radical when the linguists represent both the ‘ideal speaker-hearer’ who ‘knows the language perfectly’, and the entire ‘speech-community’ if the latter is indeed ‘completely homogeneous’ (cf. II.82, 85, 116, 144). 88. Matters were aggravated by the generativist reservation that speakers are not ‘aware of the rules’, nor even able to ‘become aware’ of them, nor are their ‘statements about their intuitive knowledge’ ‘necessarily accurate’; ‘any interesting generative grammar will be dealing, for the most part, with mental processes’ ‘far beyond the level of actual or even potential consciousness’.81 This reservation should logically weaken the reports given by generative linguists making ‘state-ments’ or presenting ‘rules’. Otherwise, they would need superhuman powers of introspection, apparently conferred by academic degree in linguistics (cf. II.145 ). 89. Taken together, these theoretical and practical moves characterise generativism as an updated premodern project closer to idealism than to formal logic. Over the years, theories have traversed a bewildering gallery of technical transmutations with portentous names, leading to a ‘minimalist program’82 that defiantly advertises doing as little possible. Obviously, such an approach offers no substance or support for the ecologist agenda advocated in this book, such as social or educational applications; and we are bluntly told that ‘your professional training as a linguist’ ‘just doesn’t help you to be useful to other people’.83 II.E. Functional studies of language
90. Functionalism84 can designate an approach for describing how a language ‘functions’ in a broad sense. A ‘language’ can be defined as a system of related choices that helps determine each other’s probabilities of being selected or com-bined in discourse. (Here too, among various definitions of the term, this one seems dominant.) Ideologically, functionalism resonates with realism, but not with physicalism or unified science. Historically, it is allied with philology in its Eastern European approach (II.104) and with ethnography in its British (and later Australian) approach (II.108). The two approaches have shared some principal concepts but were long hindered in active co-operation by the spiteful politics of the Cold War. In contrast, the approaches summarised in II.C and II.D were more concentrated on the continent of Western Europe and in the United States. 91. To clarify the wider context for functionalism in language study, I turn to a long-standing contrast between two ideologies I have reserved for the discussion. The ideology of formalism85 holds that any complex phenomenon is best described in terms of its forms. Formalism is a key ideology of power, e.g., in encouraging bureaucracy, the law, and education to impose gratuitous formality upon action and discourse (I.54, 59; VI.31; VII.8). Racism and sexism are formalist too in discrim-nating against humans by their facial and bodily shapes (cf. VII.D). 92. Formalism also pervades modern linguistics: Phonemes and Morphemes correspond to forms in transcribed sequences of speech; Phrases and Sentences are treated as ‘formal strings’ or converted into alternative ‘formalisations’ (e.g. ‘deep structures’, ‘parse trees’). Moreover, linguists periodically
expropriate from mathe-matics and formal logic, whose ‘formality’ and ‘rigour’ foreshadow a welcome respite from the luxuriant complexities of human language. 93. The major problem in applying formalism to language study lies in the ‘sparseness’. ‘Formalizing’ language data and devising ‘formal rules’ or ‘features’ is not so much an explanation as a reduction and rarefaction. Once a formal model has been adopted, its minor formal resemblances to a real language like English are exploited, whilst its major functional disparities are disregarded. So the practices of formalist analysis centre on resolutely replacing one set of forms (e.g. sentence structures) with another set of forms (e.g. phrase markers), whilst discounting most real functions. ‘Transformational grammar’ does virtually nothing else (II.79). 94. A ‘formalist analysis’ of meaning seems pointedly ironic, given the ancient and basic opposition between form and meaning, which are related as the means and the ends (cf. II.50). To paper over the irony, a standard practice in ‘formal analysis’ is to insert unanalysed English expressions into some formalism, e.g., as ‘semantic features’ with plus or minus signs [48], or as bracketed values for sets[49] (M = world model, g = value assignment in lambda calculus). [48] bachelor : + adult + human + male – marriedwww [49] The interpretation of a verb phrase is a characteristic set, e.g., we could define a world in which john smokes but mary doesn’t with I(“smokes”= {ájohn, 1ñ, ámary, 0ñ}.www [48] represents an ostensibly orderly and tractable meaning of the sort that feature analysis prefers, e.g., kinship terms, animal taxonomies, and colour names. We could just as well set up a whimsical though nicely balanced taxonomy of Bangladeshi husbands for sample[38] in II.71, where the ‘revolting’ ones come in two species, resembling either a ‘banana tree’[38a] or a ‘coconut tree’[38b]. [38a] husband banana tree :+ half human + revolting + short + squat + glabrous + green-skinned [38b] husband coconut tree:+ half human + revolting + tall + slender + hairy
+ brown-skinned
Besides, as I remarked, ‘human’ is not a feature, but another Word with its own meaning, whilst ‘bachelor’ is a social construct and might even be ‘+ married’[50] (II.71).[49] ‘defines’ a strange ‘world’ indeed, populated by just two people, one of them doing just ‘one’ activity, and the other doing ‘zero’; don’t bother asking how they get seated in restaurants or travel in trains. In real data, the distribution of activities might be a much more meaningful demonstration of ‘philosophy’[51]. [50] There are men whom a merciful Providence has undoubtedly ordained to a single life, but who[…] have flown in the face of its decrees. There is no object more deserving of pity than the married bachelor. Of such was Captain Nichols. (Moon and Sixpence) [51] She screams very loud, and falls into hysterics: and he smokes wery comfor-tably ‘till she comes to agin. That’s philosophy, sir, ain’t it? (Pickwick) At least we know why and how Tony ‘Veller’ smoked, and why his good lady did zero, passed out on the floor. 95. The converse ideology of functionalism holds that a complex phenomenon is best described in terms of its functions. In various disciplines, functionalism has served in relating reality (including the body) to mind in philosophy;86 machine architecture to information processing in the theory of computation;87 social struc-ture to social organisation in social anthropology;88 physiological or cultural needs to
institutions in ethnography;89 curriculum to policies in political science.91
society in education;90 and national to international
96. In linguistics, functionalism has been impeded by some contrary principles: the dichotomy between language and discourse; the isolation of ‘language by itself’ from cognition and society; the sterile quest for ‘abstractness’ and ‘universality’; the subdivision of language into ‘levels’ or ‘components’; the sentence as the largest unity of study; and so forth. The preferred languages of functionalist study seem to have relatively flexible word-order or word-shape, such as Czech or Chinese. 97. The major problem in applying functionalism to language study lies in the ‘richness’ unconfined by data so exuberant you hardly know where to start or stop. Functionalism can engage with the vast variety and subtlety inhering in the relations between forms (which are usually manifested in the data) and functions (which must usually be inferred). And far more than forms, functions resist isolated, exhaustive treatment; they typically interact or interlock, so that choices tend to be made in groups, and the ‘functionality’ pertains to the group as a whole (cf. II.153ff). Functional explanations must therefore rely on plausible inferences, not logical proofs. But in return, plausibility can be enhanced by testing against the evidence in very large corpora of authentic data, rather than against the handfuls of invented data adduced by formalism (cf. I.33; II.19, 29, 31, 71, 73, 78, 103, 126). 98. As a further problem, the ‘functionality of forms’ can be guided by historical and social evolutions for which little conclusive evidence is at hand. At present, for example, Western European languages typically have distinctive forms for the Familiar and Polite Address. The oldest attested pattern I know of was the contrast between the Second Person Singular and Plural, the latter being the Polite form for a single addressee (e.g. English ‘thou, you’, German ‘du, Ihr’, French ‘tu, vous’, Spanish ‘tu, vosotros’, Italian ‘tu, voi’, Portuguese ‘tu, vós’), possibly with honor-ific elaborations: [52] if I were as tedious as a king, I could find in my heart to bestow it all on your wor-hip (Much Ado about Nothing) [53] Er scheint mir, mit Verlaub von euer Gnaden, wie eine der langbeinigen Zikaden (Faust) [54] Monseigneur, je vais chercher la mitre, si Votre Grandeur le permet. (Le Rouge et le Noir) [55] Dios haga a vuestra merced muy venturoso caballero y le dé ventura en lides. (Don Quixote) [56] Buona notte a vostra signoria! (La Bohème) [57] Beijo com humildade a santíssima mão de Vossa Excelência Reverendíssima, senhor bispo. (Rio de Janeiro no tempo dos vice-reis) WWW But this old pattern has not remained stable. English has largely dropped it, whereas Italian, Spanish, and German have introduced Third Person forms for the Polite, Italian and Spanish distinguishing Singular and Plural (‘lei, loro’, ‘Usted, Ustedes’), and German using only Plural forms for everybody (‘Sie’) after dropping the Familiar Singular ‘Er’ and ‘Sie’ used especially for social inferiors. Most varieties of Brazilian Portuguese have disavowed their European ancestry by dropping the entire Second Person and substituting the Third for both Familiar (‘você, vocês’ ironically contracted from the honorific ‘Vossa(s) Mercê(s)’) and Polite (‘o/a Senhor/a, os/as Senhores/as’). 99. A functional explanation for these evolving forms would point to the social motives for distinguishing friends or family from strangers or persons of respect. But we can hardly hope for proof of why and how these specific forms were adopted and successfully disseminated despite the multitude of affected
usages; yet neither should we invoke the ‘arbitrariness’ brandished by formalism to foreclose questions about relating function to form (cf. II.41). As a plausible hypothesis, some rising urban power group wished to influence social relations through alternative ‘forms of address’ and commanded the resources to disseminate them, whereas the older forms might persist much longer in rural or isolated communities; but testing the hypothesis would require very large data samples from the transition periods. An interesting counter-drift in Brazilian Portuguese is the hybrid usage of the old Second Person Pronoun ‘tu’ with the current Third Person Verb-forms borrowed from ‘você’: [58] Tu vai ser grande, mo fio. Tu vai ser uma espécie de orixá. (Por Mares Nunca Dantes)92 Language guardians denounce the hybrid with great fury and little effect, since this form has valid social functions, such as signalling close solidarity. 100. Whether or not we can marshal conclusive evidence, functionalism asserts that the functions drive the evolution and operation of a language, and that relevant functions motivate suitable linguistic forms, along with communicative resources such as intonation, facial expressions, gestures, and so forth (Chs. IV-V). Lord knows, the single Pronoun ‘you’ in no way indicates that speakers in England are not conscious of social distinctions between ‘superiors’ and ‘inferiors’. They get the message across well enough, and without edifying tomes like the one entitled [59] The friendly instructer, or, A companion for young masters and misses: in which their duty to God and their parents, and their carriage to superiors and inferiors, are recommended in plain and familiar dialogues. (1814) But in early 19th century, the rising bourgeoisie was evidently (and understandably) insecure about watching their language and usage in a changing society. 101. As yet another problem, the forms in actual discourse tend to be multi-functional, such that the functions can radiate some overlap or indecision that reverberates into our description. These BNC data ([60][63-64] from recorded conversations) show the Interjection ‘oy’, now in the Concise Oxford Dictionary. [60] Tim: Oy mum. Do you want a straw mum? Dorothy: Would you not shout at me. Tim: What? Dorothy: Don’t shout at me. Tim: Do you want a straw please? [61] her reactions momentarily startled me[…] as she hollered, ‘Oy, Richard!’ at the top of her voice across the car-park. (Hospital Circles) [62] From the constable came a shout of, ‘Oy, you, stop that!’ (Season Murder) [63] Richard: That’s the one I put on, oy! Oy! Ah! Jonathan: Oy! Helen: ah ah,[laughter] he can’t put them on him properly! [64] There’s three large windows in it, and a door. And erm the roof is this erm stuff it’s just like er plastic moulding. But it’s double glazed. Bloody oven in there! Oy oy oy oy! As a Word-Class, most Interjections are purely functional, as for getting attention[60], hailing an old friend[61], warning a hooligan[62], reacting to difficulties[63], or lamenting distress[64]. Other people may be ‘startled’ by a quiet aunt yelling[61], or amused by the failure of Richard (age 2) to get his gloves on[63]. The stern rebuke of ‘mum’ Dorothy in[60] led Tim (age 3) to quiet down and add the ‘please’ which mums love to hear but which sounds odd for an offer instead of a request.
102. These problems and data point up a characteristic effect of functionalism: raising linguistic issues steadily expands into social and cognitive issues. Such is a natural reflex, since discourse communication and interaction, like most human activities, are linguistic, social, and cognitive (I.48ff, 61). Even a large set of linguistic data like the BNC at 100 million words keeps delivering fresh questions along with its answers. The interjection ‘oy’ occurs some 80 times in the BNC, and we must gather and sort the functions from the rich contexts. No doubt other functions don’t happen to occur in the data base, especially if we also look at, say, Australian English. Our conclusions must be reserved and provisional, always open to review from fresh data. Meanwhile, we can seek clues that the Participants hold similar notions about the uses of ‘oy’. 103. Authorities widely concede that constructive interaction between the ideol-ogies of formalism and functionalism has been rare in the past; the prospects for reconciling them are periodically aired,93 but seem doubtful to me. The two diverge sharply on substantive issues, and in discursive style. Formalism has been more trendy, ranking theoretical innovations over practical progress and adducing small quantities of invented data, whilst functionalism has been mainly consistent, retaining its theoretical frameworks to extend practical progress and consulting large quantities of authentic data. And the most noted of all formalists has, in print, harshly belittled more functionalist academics and scientists — accusing us of ‘theoretical pretentions’ ‘no intellectual depth’, ‘no sophistication’, ‘careerism’, and ‘very poor moral judgement’; our work is ‘banal’, ‘puerile’, ‘dogmatic’, ‘reactionary’, ‘obscure’, ‘of marginal human significance’, and ‘hardly worth discussing’; and we are like ‘low-level clericals’ and ‘collectors of butterflies’.`94 This is not the discourse of reconciliation, but the flakspeak of confrontation. 104. The Eastern European approach to functionalism, sometimes called the Prague School after its main regional centre,`95 was developed by linguists whose native languages (e.g. Czech, Slovak, Russian) are more overtly functional than formal in their organisation (cf. II.97). Since word shapes are more distinctive (e.g., Nouns with Case Endings), word order can be more flexible than in Western European languages favoured by formalism; and no free-standing ‘standard sen-tence form’ can be set up as a norm in the manner of the English ‘Noun Phrase + Verb Phrase’. Instead, word order conforms to degrees of ‘knownness’ and ‘focus’. Sample[65] implies that meeting Charles is known, and the Location deserves focus;[65a] treats Wenceslas Square as the famous Location it is in Prague (National Museum, monument of Jan Hus, etc.) and focuses on whom I met there. [65] Ja jsem potkal Karla na Václavském náměstí.96 I past met
Charles at Wenceslas Square
[65a] Ja jsem potkal na Václavském náměstí Karla I past met
at Wenceslas Square Charles
By describing this flexibility, the ‘Prague School’ approach has acquired the designation functional sentence perspective,97 though (again unlike formalism) the approach is by no means limited to the isolated sentence. Czech sentences are rather constructed within a ‘functional context perspective’. 105. ‘Prague school’ functionalism has been descriptive in predominantly comparative and historical modes,98 probing the organisation of a language at one stage by comparing and contrasting it with another stage or with another nearby. This approach was happy to utilize the results of philology, rejecting the dichoto-mies between ‘synchronic’ versus ‘diachronic’ and ‘langue’ versus ‘parole’,99 along with the formalist treatment of each language as a closed system.
106. The following explanation may characterise the procedures of the Prague School approach in the discourse of its founder: [66] English can be said to have the accusative object in many instances where Czech and German have the dative (compare[…] pomáhat někomu’, ‘jemandem helfen’, with ‘to help sombody’). How can this widespread use of the accusative be accounted for?[…] When French verbs were taken over into English, they preserved their constructions, which often contained the accusative and thus differed from the older Germanic constructions.[…] English took over the French verbs ‘aider quelqu’un’[and now has] ‘to aid somebody’.[Or,] the predominance of the accusative object may have been due to the tendency to express the syntactic relation by mere juxtaposition. (Vilém Mathesius, Functional Analysis)100 The forms that function as Objects of a Verb in ‘present-day English’ are examined in relation to historical change. Formalism would merely incorporate the dative or accusative into the notation as arbitrary in both form and position. 107. The comparative approach naturally noticed that ‘functional sentence perspective’ affects languages in differing ways, in accord with the factor of communicative dynamism,101 i.e., the degree of interest and informativity of sen-tence elements. The logical strategy puts the Theme with lower dynamism early and then places the Rheme102 with the higher dynamism later on, just as you would set the stage before bringing on the main characters. But this strategy is less pervasive in English, French, and German than in Czech and Slovak, as illustrated by parallel passages from the Book of Luke (2:8-9) in the New Testament:103 [67a] And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night. And, lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them, and the glory of the Lord shone round about them [67b] Or il y avait dans la même contrée des bergers, qui couchaient dans les champs et gardaient leurs troupeaux pendant les veilles de la nuit. Un ange du Seigneur se présenta á eux; la gloire du Seigneur resplendit autour d’eux [67c] In der Gegend dort hielten sich Hirten auf. Sie waren in der Nacht auf dem Feld und bewachteten ihre Herde. Da kam ein Engel des Herrn zu ihnen und die Herrlichkeit des Herrn umstrahlte sie [67d] V té krajině nocovali pod širým nebem pastýři a střídali se na hlídce u svého stáda. Najednou u nich stál anděl Páně a sláva Páně se kolem nich rozzářila [67e] V tom istom kraji boli pastieri, ktorí v noch bdeli a strážkili svoje stádo. Tu zastal pri nich Pánoj anjel a ožiarila ich Pánova sláva In all five versions, the first Clause opens by specifying the Place (in the same country), which had been recently mentioned (‘Joseph went up from Galilee into Judaea’, 2:4), and reserves the position of high dynamism for the shepherds, who are being mentioned for the first time in the Book of Luke (and, in a literal rather than figural sense, for the first time in the New Testament). Their activity of ‘keeping watch over their flock by night’ being highly predictable, can be relegated to a Participial Modifier (English) or a Relative Clause (French). The English and French[67a-b] place both the ‘angel’ and the ‘glory’ at the very start of their Clauses; the German does the same except for the brief obligatory displacement with initial ‘da’ followed by Verb, then Subject. The Clauses end with Pronouns of low dynamism (‘them, eux, ihnen – sie’). The Definite Article in the English text (‘the angel’) might suggest this is the same angel Gabriel who announced the miracle to Mary (Luke 1:26-38), but the French and
German texts (as well as a modern English text I consulted) all have the Indefinite Article. Czech and Slovak use no Articles at all, but positioning the angel (‘anděl, anjel’) near the end of the Clauses could signal the same function of Indefiniteness as well as high dynamism. The Slovak version[67e] gets the angel the latest after the Lord (‘Pánoj anjel’ versus Czech ‘anděl Páně’), and is the only version to put the glory (‘sláva’) at the very end of the next Clause, thus being more attentive to dynamism than[67d]. The parallel effect would be marked in English, though not at all odd: [67f] And, lo, there came upon them the angel of the Lord, and round about them shone the glory of the Lord. To my ear, this yields a more impressive cadence by exploiting the strategy of End Weight, which I shall discuss in relation to Prosody (IV.15-19). 108. The British approach to functionalism, whose regional centre has since expanded to Australia, has often been called systemic functional linguistics,104 seeking to describe the organisation of a language as a network of interrelated choices.105 These linguists too have rejected the stodgy dichotomies of the formalists, not just between ‘langue and parole’,106 but between grammar (not ‘syntax’) and lexicon as constituents of the lexicogrammar107 (Ch. III). Moreover, they situated the text as a system at the centre of their work.108 109. To illustrate the procedures of the British approach, I cite a sample text[68], and a well-known discourse analysis by the founder[69]. [68] The bushes twitched again[...] The man turned sideways in the bushes and looked at Lok along his shoulder. A stick rose upright and there was a lump of bone in the middle[...] The stick began to grow shorter at both ends. Then it shot out to full length again. The dead tree by Lok’s ear acquired a voice. ‘Clop!’ His ear twitched and he turned to the tree. By his face there had grown a twig. (William Golding, The Inheritors) [69] The picture is one in which people act, but do not act on things; they move only themselves, not other objects.[…] The syntactic tension expresses this combination of activity and helplessness[in a] reluctance to envisage the ‘whole man’ participating in a process.[…] The transitivity patterns are the reflection of[…] the inherent limitations of understanding, whether cultural or biological, of Lok and his people, and their consequent inability to survive when confronted with beings at a higher stage of development. (M.A.K Halliday, Explorations)109 Thus, when the Neanderthal Lok watches a person from a more advanced tribe shooting an arrow at him, the event is expressed as a series of natural processes performed by a ‘stick’ and a ‘twig’. These choices deliberately omit the connection between ‘stick’ and ‘twig’ in a single weapon of bow and arrow, plus the causes and effects involved, e.g., bending and releasing the bow, seen head-on as a stick ‘growing shorter at both ends’ and then ‘shooting out to full length’. Lok’s perception of a ‘dead tree’ suddenly ‘acquiring a voice’ and ‘growing a twig’ projects the Neanderthals’ archaic and mystified world-view, dooming them to a destruction they can neither understand nor resist. 110. Even these terse sketches might indicate how the two approaches to functionalism have surpassed formalism in coordinating theory and practice. The functional analysis in[68] of sample[69] again points up the widening from linguistic into cognitive and social issues (II.104), noticing how the lexicogrammar can mirror a conflict between two whole societies at the dawn of human history, foreshadowing the domination of one society by another with more advanced weapons technology. Such analyses hold
considerable potential for an ecologist agenda to deepen the relations between theory and practice not merely in linguistic domains but in cognitive and social domains as well. II.F. Discursive studies of language 111. Discursivism110 can designate an approach for practicing ‘discursive engagements’ with other texts or discourses to explore their linguistic, cognitive, or social constitution (I.35). A ‘language’ is defined as a vast ‘virtual system of available options’ (a ‘theory of everything’, as it were) in a genuine dialectic with a ‘text’ defined as an ‘actual system of selections and combinations’; a ‘discourse’ is defined as an actual multi-system of related texts (cf. I.35ff). Ideologically, discursivism resonates with ecologism, which sees text and discourse as resources for free access to knowledge and society (0.7; I.76). Historically, it is emerging as a post-modernist project committed to inclusive multilingualism and multi-culturalism. Like functionalism, with which it shares key interests, it has evolved on two distinct sides, namely text linguistics and discourse analysis, which I believe to be converging (cf. II.119). 112. Discursivism stands firm upon being frankly explicit about its own social, ideological, and academic orientation and consciously positioning the ‘voice’ of the author who shares knowledge as a charter of ‘being educated’ (I.78, 84; II.209). Moreover, the voice too is shared and ‘polyphonic’, seeking ‘intersubjectivity’ through contact with a wide spectrum of alternative or contrasting voices and viewpoints in their own words rather than just paraphrasing or summarising them all. Discursive diversity benefits from post-modernism and multiculturalism at the present stage of political and economic history, when they engage in counter-discourse against the discourses of right-wing governmental or corporate power-brokers who fear diversity will bring pressure to share. 113. Discursivism does not aspire to completeness of description or analysis, which in the past has imposed drastic restrictions on both the data and the description (0.8), e.g. ‘syntax independent of meaning’ (II.69, 79). For ecologism, completeness is a ‘hopeful utopia’ to work toward without attaining; we can always say more about a text, compare or contrast it with more alternative versions or with other texts, or trace it further back to its sources or forward to its effects, and so on. The realistic aim is to pursue the exploration until we have captured some non-trivial and non-obvious aspects of interest and relevance for our agenda of understanding and enhancing human communication (0.8). If we view texts as ‘work in progress’ (I.39), our own discourse can further the ‘progress’ by broaden-ing inclusion and exploiting the inclusive essence of language (cf. I.38f, 47). In theory, then, discourse remains an open process that can ‘progress’ through multiple discursive engagements, as when explanation clarifies and renews its own content (cf. I.76, 113); our success in this ‘progress’ is the real foundation for whatever authority our work may attain. 114. In practice, we should expressly apply the ‘ecologist strategies of discourse’ we are seeking to describe. So I adopt user-friendly, ordinary language as far as I can, and technical language only as far as is genuinely required. I also build balanced or parallel patterns, as when I introduce each approach to ‘studies of language’ in this chapter by suggesting how it ‘defines language’ and where it might be situated ‘ideologically’ and ‘historically’ (II.4, 25, 75, 90, 111). 115. The texts and discourses we describe can be chosen for their relevance to a discursive theme concerning some significant issue or problem in current public discourse. One such theme would be corporate cynicism, where ‘social benefit’ is a ‘doublespeak’ term for ‘private profit’: [70] The Council for Nuclear Safety showed more than 1000 workers in Harmony Gold Mines[…] have received an annual radiation dose five times higher than it should be. ‘Essentially, these workers were
being fried.’[…] ‘They are not provided with protective clothing or even instruments that would allow them to measure radiation levels.’ ‘Mining has a social benefit and we can’t make it so costly that workers’ jobs are at risk’, said Anglogold representative Johan Botha. ‘So perhaps you say radiation will kill you, but no jobs will also kill you.’ ([Johannisburg] Mail & Guardian, 01/03/99) In the less cynical corporate discourses of the past, the ‘representative’ would express ‘surprise’ and ‘regret’, however insincere, and promise some ‘investi-gation’ or ‘remediation’. But the ‘new cynicism’ offers a brutal choice between being ‘killed’ by ‘radiation’ or by starvation (‘joblessness’). The ‘workers’ being black Africans and the spokesman being a white Afrikaner encapsulates the sinister history of gold mining in South Africa. 116. In Tanzania, African workers in gold mines didn’t need to wait around for radiation to kill them (first reported by Amnesty International): [71] Ten of thousands of small-time prospectors[…] held legal claim stakes to their tiny mine shafts.[…] In August 1996,[…] bulldozers, backed by military police firing weapons, rolled across the goldfield, smashing down worker housing, crushing their mining equipment and filling in their pits.[…] About fifty miners were still in their mine shafts, buried alive. (Best Democracy)111 In the corporation’s cynical response, the incident was ‘a complete fabrication of a bunch of greedy, lying Black Africans trying to shake them down’ — a version ‘backed by the World Bank’, which had ‘granted the biggest loan guarantee in its history’ to ‘develop the site’; an actual videotape of ‘a worker going into a pit to retrieve bodies’ was said to show ‘bodies of ne’er-do-wells killed by local resi-dents, or victims of mine accidents distant in time or place’. 111 An ‘internationally respected expert on human rights and the environment, Tanzanian lawyer Tundu Lissu’, who called for an ‘investigation’, was ‘charged by the Tanzanian government with sedition’ — this action too ‘supported by the World Bank’.111 117. And the ‘social benefits’ of gold mining may be granted not just to workers, but to all residents in an ‘area’[72]. In fact, all forms of life in the region may embrace a golden opportunityto be ‘killed’[73]. Corporate cynicism again re-sponded, this time from the boss of the Australian company running the mine[74]. [72] Mining Awareness produced a leaflet that drew attention to the problems of blasting, dust, chemicals, silting, erosion, water supply, pollution of the area and waste disposal associated with gold mining.112 [73] An enormous ‘toxic bullet’ of deadly cyanide that accidentally overflowed a dam at a Romanian gold mine has contaminated 250 miles of rivers in Hungary and Yugoslavia, killing millions of fish, shutting down water supplies and leaving a trail of aquatic devastation that will require years to repair. (NGO Coalition To Save Our Rivers)www [74] the only fish I’ve seen are the four fish held up by two 14-year-old boys that were described as ‘Environmental Experts’. (Brett Montgomery) www The Romanian disaster was accidental, though foreseeable from a string of similar incidents at the site (cf. VII.62). But unleashing toxic waste seems planned to become policy in the globalisation sponsored by the same World Bank, witness an internal memo from its Chief Economist, Lawrence H. Summers[75]. [75] Just between you and me, shouldn’t the World Bank be encouraging more migration of dirty industries to the LDCs[less developed countries]?[…] Under-populated countries in Africa are vastly under-
polluted.[…] The economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable: a country with the lowest wages[loses the least in] foregone earnings from morbidity and mortality.113 Such data point up how the discursive theme of corporate cynicism can challenge not just discursivism and ecologism, but the well-being of whole societies. 118. Discursivism aspires to be a ‘progressive’ enterprise for producing discourse about discourse and staging a productive interplay of discursive positions. The present Introduction is a programmatic attempt to enlist discursivism in such a project, ranging across the Internet and large corpora from discourses of literature, philosophy, history, politics, economics, science, and technology. II.F.1 Discursive studies in text linguistics 119. The immediate ambience for discursive studies has been partly mounted by text linguistics and discourse analysis. Though I am inclined to see their concerns converging today,114their histories have been mostly divergent. As befits its name, ‘text linguistics’ came more from inside linguistics proper, and so was more allied with formalism. Discourse analysis, at least in English research, came more from outside, especially from ethnographic fieldwork studies of previously undescribed languages and cultures (II.58), and has thus been more allied with functionalism. They gradually converged as text linguistics recognised the text to be primarily a functional unit and only secondarily a formal unit. 120. Text linguistics115 seems to have a diffuse history because much early work did not circulate widely, or bore diffuse designations, such as ‘linguostylistics’ 116 or ‘functional sentence perspective’. 117 The field gained a modest identity during the 1960s and 1970s, concentrated at a few institutions across Eastern and Western Europe. The ‘cold war’ hindered the study of texts from consolidating research in the Soviet Union, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, and Poland in the ‘East’, and Finland, Spain, Italy, Holland, West Germany, and Austria in the ‘West’. A further hindrance was the dominance of ‘Linguistics Departments’ so focused on the ‘sentence’ as to regard ‘sentence linguistics’ (as we then called it for contrast) as a tautology or pleonasm, and ‘text linguistics’ as an oxymoron or casuistry. 121. Ironically, the text was admitted chiefly to relieve some pressures arising when formalist linguistics expanded from syntax toward semantics and, more guardedly, pragmatics. In theory, the text was at first just a sequence of sentences; and in practice, it was reached roundaboutly by going ‘beyond the sentence’. Proposals were duly advanced for ‘text syntax’, ‘text semantics’, and ‘text pragmatics’ like the theoretical and abstract ‘components’ postulated for the sentence, with the syntactic one ‘generating’, and the other two only ‘interpreting’ (II.81), as if a text could be an empty syntactic shell waiting to be filled with meaning and purpose. 122. Viewed in retrospect, the contact with authentic texts eventually had to drive a shift of emphasis in text linguistics from theory-driven toward practice-driven concepts of the ‘text’, and from top-down to bottom-up concepts of ‘language’. In theory, working up from the bottom might eventually arrive back at the top, perhaps at the degrees of generality and abstraction that formal linguistics deemed so essential for ‘scientific research’. In practice, this movement did not occur. Instead, we gradually acknowledged that the richer and more interesting aspects of texts, both for theory and practice, are situated in more specific and concrete issues of textuality and intertextuality. 123. By this route, text linguistics arrived at the conception of the text as a communicative event intended and accepted as a contribution to a discourse, defined in turn as a set or series of relevant texts in any communicative medium (I.40). Here, both text and discourse are practical units, which obviates the need
for an expressly theoretical unit like the texteme118 to be a theoretical unit ‘above’ the other ‘-emes’ described in II.3 and corresponding to the text as the practical unit. In our dialectical account where language is the theory and discourse is the practice (I.40ff), the units in the ‘virtual system’ of the language remain theoretical until they get put into practice within an actual system;119 and the context of the practice can act through a dialectic back upon the theory, notably when the usage is creative or novel. The major bridge between language and text is the intertext, a large set of texts which manifest shared strategies of selection and combination, but which were not intended as contributions to the same discourse (II.158f). 124. A favoured topic in early work was ‘pronominalisation’ 120 (also called ‘anaphora’ 121 or ‘reference’122), which mainly organises various relations among Nouns and Pronouns within a Text. Pronominalisation is surely a ‘grammatical’ and ‘linguistic’ issue, but is not limited to the single sentence. In sample[76], ‘Good’ Mrs Brown is introduced with the Noun Phrase ‘the old woman’ and functions as the Topic Agent for the Paragraph; the Pronoun ‘she’ makes the Subject of a series of Sentences detailing her repugnant exterior in a Thematic Sequence: ‘ugly –red rims – eyes – mouth – miserably dressed – face – uglier’. The consistent Cohesion easily identifies the Female Pronouns with the correct person. [76] The old woman took her[Florence] by the wrist.[…] She was a very ugly old woman, with red rims round her eyes, and a mouth that mumbled and chattered of itself when she was not speaking. Shewas miserably dressed.[…] She seemed to have followed Florence, for she had lost her breath (Dombey) More delicate textual functions of pronominalisation apply to these data about the same ‘old woman’ in a later scene of the novel: [77] ‘It’s my handsome daughter, living and come back!’ screamed the old woman,[…] dropping on the floor before her, and still rocking herself to and fro with every frantic demonstration[…] ‘Yes, mother,’ returned Alice.[…] ‘Get up, and sit in your chair. What good does this do?’ ‘She’s come back harder than she went!’ cried the mother. ‘She don’t care for me!’[…] ‘Of course I have come back harder. What else did you expect? I don’t know who began to harden me, if my own dear mother didn’t’, she returned, sitting with her folded arms, and knitted brows, and compressed lips as if she were bent on excluding, by force, every softer feeling from her breast. The ‘daughter’ refers to her ‘mother’ with Second Person Pronouns, but the mother dramatises Alice’s rebuke of ‘frantic’ emotional displays by using the Third Person Pronoun, as if calling on an unseen compassionate audience to witness the ‘hardness’ we also witness from Alice’s bodily posture ‘excluding every softer feeling’. In response, the daughter sarcastically assigns the credit for the ‘hardening’ to the Third Person Noun Phrase ‘my own dear mother’. 125. Centring on the text means downgrading the sentence from the obligatory theoretical unit of language to the preferred practical unit of written discourse, normally defined in English either by punctuation (starting with a capital Letter and ending with a Period) or by grammar (at least one Independent Clause). We can now address any relevant Stretch of Text, whether or not it counts as a sentence in some ‘grammar’. We might finally explore the cognitive and social functions that can favour ‘complete sentences’, e.g., compensating for ‘hearing loss’[78], or meeting an ‘attainment target’ in education[79]; or else disfavour them, e.g., taking lecture notes[80], or calling for an urgently needed ‘scalpel’[81]. [78] Never use only one word; always use the complete sentence; always talk at normal pace, without exaggeration (Hearing Loss) 123
[79] Pupils should be able to[…] produce, independently, pieces of writing using complete sentences, some of them demarcated with capital letters and full stops or question marks (National Curriculum English) www [80] To summarise a lecture you need to[…] record the main points as they are made. Do not worry about writing in complete sentences. (People in Organisations) 124 [81] In this surgical context, the words are sufficient as pointers to required meaning.[…] By the time the surgeon had produced his complete sentence, the patient might well have bled to death: a victim of syntax. (Aspects of Language Teaching) 125 Having to point out where ‘complete sentences’ are obviously inappropriate indi-cates how far they are routinely overrated. Oddly, sample[79] implies only ‘some complete sentences’ need the orthographic signals of a written sentence. 126. By downgrading the sentence, we also downgrade the status of ‘grammati-cality’, obviating the formalist projects for a sentence-based ‘text grammar’,126 which foundered on the problems of defining the ‘grammatical text’ as opposed to the ‘ungrammatical text’ or ‘non-text’. In retrospect, we can recognise the notion that the text is a grammatical unit as a gross category error. Once we define the text as an event (I.40; II.123), the ‘non-text’ must be a ‘non-event’ that does not or cannot occur; we could not describe the properties non-texts have, but only ones properties they lack and real texts have. So we would launch a quixotic quest for impossible properties by excluding every property any text is found to possess. How baffling that might prove can be gleaned from the myriad texts whose proper-ties are hardly ‘grammatical’ in any theoretical or formal sense but do make them appropriate to their communicative functions, as in a newspaper header[82], a telegram[83], or a notice in an ‘agony column’ (charged by the word!)[84]. [82] LOVE-TUG KIDS SNATCHED BY ‘DANGER MAN’ DAD Terrified tots dragged away in gun drama (Daily Mirror) [83] HELLO DARLING. BACK IN BLIGHTY. 14 DAYS LEAVE. TRY JOIN. REPLY MY HOME. LOVE LESLIE. (Enigma Variations) [84] My lady sleeps. She of raven tresses. Corner seat from Victoria, Wednesday night. Carried programme. Gentleman answering inquiry desires acquaintance. (Agony Column) In a practical and functional sense, these texts are grammatical, plainly telling who ‘snatched’ and ‘dragged’ whom[82], who got ‘back to Blighty’ (nickname for England among soldiers overseas) for ‘14 days’ of ‘leave’ and ‘love’ with whom[83], and who has ‘raven tresses’ and ‘carried a programme’[84]. Such texts display the grammatical option of ‘Non-Clause’ Patternswhich lack Subject and Predicate but which can well be appropriate, efficient, and effective (section IV.E) 126. Here, ‘grammar’ is not a mainly theoretical construct, as in formalism and generativism, but a dialectic of theory and practice, as in systemic functional linguistics. So the grammar should be described dialectically by continually relating theory to practice and adducing not sparse invented data like the pedestrian and predictable[85], much cited in formalist linguistics but not found in any large corpus I have queried, but rich authentic data like the sprightly and unpredictable[86] about Uncle Josh Weatherby trying golf for the first and last time in his life. [85] The man hit the ball.
[86] So I whaled away at that little ball, and by chowder I hit it. I knocked it clear over into Deacon Witherspoon’s pasture, and hit his old muley cow, and she got skeered and run away,[and] never stopped a-runnin’ till she went slap dab into Ezra Hoskins’ grocery store, upsot four gallons of apple butter into a keg of soft soap, and sot one foot into a tub of mackral, and t’other foot into a box of winder glass.(Punkin Centre) Ironically, data expressly designed to be ‘grammatical’ fail to reveal the real power of the grammar. The failure worsens if we invent ‘ungrammatical’ non-data, e.g.: [85a]*Hit man ball the the. [86a] *I whaled that I’d muley slap Deacon glass into butter foot skeered. We have our hands more than full enough with real data. 127. So text linguistics logically shifted the conceptual centre from ‘grammaticality’ over to textuality. 127 Three perspectives crystallised in the ‘seven standards’ of textuality: 128 (a) thetext itself as process and product in Cohesion and Coherence; (b) the participants, usually the producer(s) in Intentionality, and the receiver(s) in Acceptability; and (c) the broader context in Informativity, Situationality, and Intertextuality. For a brief review, here’s Uncle Josh again, whose sally into riding a ‘bisickle’ fared no better than playing golf: [87] I got on that durned masheen and it jumped up in the front and kicked up behind, and bucked up in the middle, and shied and balked and jumped sideways.[…]. Wall, I lost the lamp, I lost the clamp, I lost my patience, I lost my temper, I lost my self-respect, my last suspender button and my standin’ in the community. I broke the handle bars, I broke the sprockets, I broke the Ten Commandments, I broke my New Year’s pledge and the law agin loud and abusive language. (Punkin Centre) Cohesion can subsume the all the practices of connecting units and patterns for which the Lexicogrammar provides the theory,129 and we can retire the cumbrous notion of ‘text syntax’. The Agent first is the ‘masheen’ and ‘it’ as the naughty two-wheeled perpetrator, and then Uncle Josh as ‘Í’, the hapless victim; each is the Subject of a series of Verbs. Coherence can subsume the means for connecting meanings and concepts,130 and we can retire ‘text semantics’ too, e.g., relating ‘lamp’, ‘clamp’, ‘handle bars’, and ‘sprockets’ as parts of the ‘masheen’ (hence the Definite Article); and recognising a Thematic Sequence like ‘jumped up – kicked up – bucked up – shied – jumped’, all making the ‘bisickle’ a metaphorical horse; or ‘in the front – behind – in the middle – sideways’. Intentionality subsumes the conditions that the text producer intends to perform an event as a text, and Acceptability subsumes the conditions that the text receiver accepts the event as a text, which this author whimsically commented on: [88] The one particular object in writing this book is to furnish you with an occasional laugh, and the writer with an occasional dollar.[…] In Uncle Josh Weathersby you have a purely imaginary character, yet one true to life.[…] Take him as you find him, and in his experiences you will observe there is a bright side to everything. Situationality subsumes the connections between the text and the context of situation, e.g., Josh being impelled by mishaps to utter ‘loud and abusive language’ and ‘break the Ten Commandments’, the easiest one to ‘break’ on a bicycle out of control doubtless being to ‘take the name of the Lord in vain’ (Exodus 20:7). Informativity subsumes the degrees to which the text or some of its aspects are unexpected, interesting, or stimulating, e.g., the pointedly motley rosters of things that got ‘lost’ or
‘broken’, some literal and some figurative (cf. VI.20). And finally, Intertextuality subsumes the connections between the current text and previously experienced texts, e.g., other tales about the misadventures of Uncle Josh, and, more generally, the ‘tall tales’ of rural America (VI.46). Integrate the five standards except Cohesion and Coherence, and we can retire ‘text pragmatics’. 128. My proposal for using the standards of textuality to retire from the linguistics of the text the fields of syntax, semantics, and pragmatics follows from their predominantly theoretical and non-dialectical status in general linguistics, which has applied them largely to invented data (II.78). An authentic text shows genuine theory progressing into genuine practice; an invented text shows pseudo-theory regressing into pseudo-practice. And this contrast is vital for grasping the complex relation between language and discourse. 129. In return, a vibrant challenge for text linguistics might be to determine how many of the issues addressed by those three fields can be productively absorbed into a general study of texts and textuality. At least some issues were plausibly artefacts of self-imposed limitations in trying to do syntax without semantics, and semantic without pragmatics; and of the blinkered dichotomies like ‘competence’ and ‘performance’, or ‘grammar’ and ‘lexicon’, and so forth. Emblematic moves toward abstraction and idealisation have drained away the practical precision and determinacy of language in use and fomented the compensatory elaboration of theoretical schemes of ‘underlying rules’, ‘structures’, ‘features’, and so on, whose relevance for exploring text and discourse is doubtful. We need a practical theory to validly represent the theories of practice sustained by discourse participants themselves — the theory that makes people ‘competent’ in their language. 130. Since the seven standards are for describing texts, design criteria were proposed for evaluating texts: how far the text is efficient in getting readily produced and received[89],effective in promoting intentions and goals[90], and appropriate to the context, the participants, and the situation[91] (II.24, 129; VIII.31-42). We find these criteria being expressly favoured and recommended, especially in educational settings[92-94]. [89] What were habitually his final meditations? Of one sole unique advertisement to cause passers to stop in wonder, with all extraneous accretions excluded, reduced to its simplest and most efficientterms (Ulysses) [90] Wedgie[Tony Benn] then made what I found a very effective speech (Cabinet)131 [91] Sir Pitt congratulated his brother warmly upon the peaceful issue making appropriate moral remarks upon the evils of duelling (Vanity Fair)
of the
affair,
[92] Croce[…] attacks the idea of applying rhetorical or critical terms to the unique act of aesthetic expression.[Yet for] the student,[…] the ineffable is to be transformed into ef-ficient communication[…] an essay, or an examination answer. (Exploding English)132 [93][We] use a unique management process model designed to improve the effectiveness of your writing projects[…] that is consistent with your objectives. (Night Owl)www [94] Pupils should consider the notion of appropriateness to situation, topic, purpose and language mode and the fact that inappropriate language use[may suggest being] pompous or inept or impertinent or rude. (National Curriculum English)www
131. Unlike the standards of textuality, which apply by definition to all authentic texts, these criteria may not be met or only weakly, partly because they are rarely cultivated in education or the professions, and partly because they don’t serve the intention of insiders who disempower outsiders (cf. VII.5ff). In academic discourse, a strenuous style can bid for power, as in this‘definition’ of a ‘dune’[95] in the discourse of geography (unidentified Internet website). [95] A dune is defined as a body of coarse sand shaped by ambient wind conditions and the grain-by-grain deflation of sand. The text is inefficient and inappropriate for learners, having (a) obscure specialised terms like ‘ambient’ meaning ‘in the environment’, and ‘deflation’ meaning ‘erosion’; (b) gratuitous specifications like ‘ambient conditions’ (where else could ‘winds shape dunes’, in a tea cosy?) and ‘grain-by-grain’ (how else would sand move, in clumps?); and (c) no relevance to ordinary knowledge, which would interpret ‘deflate’ as ‘remove the air from inside’ — nonsense here. Besides, ‘body’ is an oddly organic term for an object that easily changes or disintegrates; and ‘coarse sand’ is plain wrong — the sand in dunes by my home in Arabia was fine enough to enter around closed windows. In the same strenuous style, rainfall was a ‘precipitation event’;extreme dryness in a small area was ‘localized hyperaridity’; and sand grains that blow away again from their dune ‘became wind re-entrained’. 132. The ecologist alternative might be called critical rewriting, which converts discourse into a userfriendly counter-discourse, as shown in[95a]. Other stretches of the same text could be rewritten as shown for[96-98] into[96a-98a]. [95a] A dune is defined as a mound of sand shaped by the erosion of wind and the motion of sand grains. [96] Mesoscale dune wavelength is strongly correlated with sand grain size. [96a] On medium-sized dunes, the waves get longer when the sand grains are bigger. [97] Transverse dunes are characterized by low length:width ratios and marked asymmetry, where windward slopes are much gentler than the slip faces associated with lee slopes. [97a] Dunes formed at a right angle to the wind are very long but very narrow. They rise gently on the side facing the wind and drop sharply on the other side. [98] Barchans are crescentic dunes confined to directionally-constant annual wind regimes;[…] where sand is sparse, barchans become the expressed dune morphology. [98a] Barchans are crescent-shaped dunes appearing only where the wind blows in one direction all year and especially if sand is sparse. The motive for this inefficient wind regime of academic hot air might be to compensate for the author’s confessed inability to explain the formation of dunes: [99] How dunes first form and then replicate are issues that remain unclear. [100] the formation mechanism of dune characteristics remains hypothetical 133. Evidently, this design of academic discourse trades off empowering the writer who expends less effort (high efficiency) with disempowering the readers who expend more (low efficiency). The text may be
effective to get insider status, and may be judged appropriate even among audiences dazed by it. After all, the most trivial statements can be dressed up to sound like specialised knowledge: [101] Life goes on. [101a] Animate vivification perseverates in durational protractedness. [102] As time goes by, people get older. [102a] The serial accumulation of elapsing temporality is significantly correlated with a linear increment in the human aging process. [103] The sky is blue. [103a] The atmospheric encirculation of our planetary ambience imparts an ocular wave-length chromaticity between 450 and 500 nanometres. Academic discourse is rarely so extreme, nor do academics expressly harbour such disempowering goals. Rather, we work in a system in which strenuous prose gets rewarded and published by academic journals who expect it too. 134. In this ‘introduction’, textual design will be a recurring theme, relating to ecologist strategies of discourse that promote free access to knowledge and society (0.7; I.76; II.111). These strategies can suggest guidance that is not prescriptive or proscriptive (‘you must say it this way and not that way’, or else!) but rather consultative (‘if you want that effect or emphasis, try saying it this way’) (II.24). If I have surmised that the design of any text can always be improved in the ‘hopeful utopia’ of unlimited space for ‘progress’ (0.13; I.39), then because writing away on this Introduction for more than five years has compelled me acknowledge it. II.F.2. Discursive studies in discourse analysis 135. For discourse analysis,133 presenting a fluent history is even more difficult than for text linguistics, not just because (as with text linguistics) much early work did not circulate widely or figured under diverse designations, such as ‘tagmemics’ and ‘ethnomethodology’; but also because discourse analysis is resolutely ‘multi-disciplinary’, and its diversity grows with its popularity. 134 In early stages (up into the 1960s), work was focussed outside Europe on non-European languages and cultures. Linguistics was exploited more as a practical and functional enterprise than a theoretical and formal one, which distinguished discourse analysis from text linguistics until the trends I have summarised favoured convergence.135 136. To suggest the diversity of discourse analysis, I briefly compare four influential approaches, all more practice-driven and data-driven than theory-driven, though in differing respects.Fieldwork on lesserknown languages is allied with anthropology and ethnography, but also with linguistics through practical applications of Phonology and Morphology (II.58).Tagmemics136 extends the repertory of ‘structural units’ to the Tagmeme, a unit described by the relations between a position (or ‘slot’) and the items that can occupy it in a discourse, whether these be linguistic, cultural, or behavioural (cf. II.65). This approach led to such cogent discoveries as paragraph markers in spoken discourse and story-line markers in folktales. In a stretch of text in a Waorani folktale from Eastern Ecuador told by Dayuma about discovering cassava as a food[104], a hunter finds many tapir tracks near a cassava patch and wonders why out loud. The cassava answers him and says how to remove, cultivate, and prepare it, which he does, undaunted by a talking plant, and to the grief of the tapirs. The marker ‘ay’ appears seven times
introducing the respective instructions in the process (p = person, par = participle, fut = future, inf = inference, ast = assertive, idt = identifier).137
‘Then the cassava spoke: “Take me. […] When you carry me to the house, peel off my skin, then cook the inside (stomach) of the cassava. Then eat it.’ Waorani uses Morpheme markers for ‘assertive’ to indicate an Independent Clause in the Declarative, and for ‘inference’ to indicate what is known only by hearsay, e.g., from a story told by the ancestors. Its Morphemes build words efficiently, e.g., ‘ay‘ [see-much => then] and ‘kēwē’ [live-always => cassava]. Such folktales fill the cognitive function of explaining or personifying familiar animals and plants, and the social function of binding the community, especially ones like the Waorani under pressure from multinational oil companies and Christian missionaries. 137. Ethnomethodology is an approach to the study of social activity, including discourse, mainly in wellknown languages, and allied to sociology and philosophy (as phenomenology). 138 Though again more practical than theoretical, it explores the ‘theories of practice’ people apply to everyday life as commonsense reasoning, which highlights the ‘theoreticalness’ of human practices (cf. I.8); in return, less work has been done in elaborating abstract academic theories. A special tool is ‘breach studies’, 139 where ordinary practices are disrupted to see how people react and possibly do ‘repairs’. In one study, 140 the order of sentences was scrambled, turning[105] into[105a]. The test persons tried to restore the original order and were interviewed about their reasoning, giving responses like[106] and[107]. [105] The second man was unlike the others. He was broader and shorter. There was much hair on his body an d his headhair was sleek as if fat had been rubbed in it. The hair lay in a ball at the back of his neck.He had no hair on the front of his head at all so that the sweep of bone skin came right over his ears. Now for the first ti me, Lok saw the ears of the new men. They were tiny and screwed tightly into the sides of their heads. (Inheritors) [105a] A. He had no hair on the front of his head at all so that the sweep of bone skin came right over his ears. B. There was much hair on his body and his head-hair was sleek as if fat had been rubbed in it. C. They were tiny and screwed tightly into the sides of their heads. D The man was unlike the others. E. Now for the first time, Lok saw the ears of the second new men. F. He was broader and shorter. G. The hairlay in a ball at the back of his neck. [106] The new / it’s / you’d probably say that / you know / ah / his ears / and this is what the ears were like / but you wouldn’t make a des- / re- / people’d rarely make a description of the ears and then say ‘these are the ears’ [107] Well it[the opener] had to be D or E because they were the only sentences which had nothing to do with any of the others / well which others could follow from
Such data can shed light on our claims about the Cohesion and Coherence of texts by comparing them to the accounts provided by discourse participants. The dis-ruptions in[105a] range from the less subtle, e.g., the mysterious Pronouns ‘they’ (screwed hairs??) and ‘he’ (Lok? second man?) to the more subtle, e.g. ‘no hair at all’ (as if it were expected) before ‘much hair’ (why it would be expected). 138. The historically related approach of conversation analysis is allied to soci-ology but opposed to philosophy (as speech-act theory).141 It is even more thor-oughly practice-driven and data-driven and does not disrupt ordinary practices. Only authentic recorded discourse is accredited, and not, say, conversations in ‘imaginative written texts’. Applying a brisk functionalism, analysts stress that the interactional categories of utterances are not reliably signalled by their linguistic form. 142 We must consider the position of an utterance in a conversation, especially as part of a adjacency pair with another utterance. In this interchange[108] (BNC data) (/ = short pause // = longer pause), mumsy Ruth evidently guesses from experience that son Paul (age 12) is going to be reluctant. She correctly hears Paul’s questions as evasions leading to a refusal, which the slacker eventually confirms, blaming the job for just not being ‘worth doing’. The subject is dropped and somebody else defuses the standoff by reading out some sports news, which triggers a discussion about whether to go to Wembley to see a match. [108] Ruth: Paul I’d like you to do a job Paul: I’ve done a job / I’ve been round to Merle’s Ruth: no / I’d like you to do a proper job / I’d like you to take a sponge // and I’d like you to clean the paintwork on the stairs // please. Paul: what about touching up? // I’ll touch up Ruth: I’ve done the touching up Paul: so why does it need? Ruth: you won’t help will you? // Paul: I don’t feel that it’s worth doing. Kevin: ‘Trophy holders Palace are now just three steps away from another trip to Wembley.’ If functionalism starts from the linguistic and moves toward the social, conversation analysis does the reverse. Here, the social setting indicates the relevance of Ruth’s cautious Declarative ‘I’d like you to’ (rather than the Imperative) being uttered four times whilst describing the ‘proper job’ in a sequence of steps and tacking on ‘please’ at the end after an unpromising pause. 139. The discourse analysis of schooling 143 has been thoroughly functionalist too, allied with sociology and pedagogy. The data predictably show a tightly controlled organisation specific to the social setting of the classroom, where the teacher guards the initiative in soliciting specific information. The data below were observed in a ninth grade General Science class in a New York City high school (Tr = teacher, St = a student).144 In[109], teacher and students talk in repetitive circles until the desired technical term is finally (if awkwardly) produced. In[110], the teacher first refuses permission to speak to a student who can’t see the blackboard, and then spitefully declares the intent to ‘flunk’ him anyway. [109] Tr: What kind of a wave motion is sound? St: It’s — it’s a wave motion. Tr: Sound is a wave motion. What kind of wave motion? St: Sound wave. Tr: Sound is a wave. What kind of wave? St: VibrationTr: What kind of vibration?[eventually:] St: Oh / um / uh / long / lonj-itud-inal wave. Tr: Eugene is correct[Others comment, whistle.] [110] Jimmy: Hello there! Tr: No! If you coulda answered this question, I’da said yes.[…] Jimmy: I can’t s ee.[…] Tr: Tough. T-u-ff.[…] It doesn’t make any difference where I put you. As of right now, you have aflunking mark. If you change your way of living, you’ll pass. In an ecologist standpoint, two aspects complement the linguistic ones: the cognitive inefficiency in fishing for the exact answer which the teacher insists on and which the student merely parrots (with difficulty)
out of a notebook[109]; and the social confrontation between the teacher and individual students[110]. The teacher must be unaware of the pungent irony in asking students to accommodate the middle-class values of the school system by ‘changing their way of living’ (cf. I.71) — and in personifying an ugly vindictive stereotype. 140. A dramatically different approach to discourse analysis began as analyse du discours 145 in France, allied to sociology and anthropology, and later branching out into philosophy, pedagogy, rhetoric, and political science on an international scale. This approach defines discourse in the broadest sense for all modes of human expression, including discourse in the usual sense along with manifestations of social institutions, the human body, clothing, commodities, and so on. Here, the theoretical decidedly dominates the practical in the special sense of imposing ingenious theoretical interpretations upon practical objects or actions, viz.: [111] Cars today are almost the exact equivalent of the great Gothic cathedrals: the supreme creation of an era, conceived with passion by unknown artists, and consumed in image if not in usage by a wholepopul ation which appropriates them as a purely magical object.[…] It is obvious that the new Citroën has falle n from the sky inasmuch as it appears at first sight as a superlative object;[…] one can easily see inan obj ect the best messenger of a world above that of nature: at once a perfection and an absence of origin, a cl osure and a brilliance, a transformation of life into matter… (The New Citroën, 1957)146 If our own mode of discourse analysis works from a centre of linguistic data outward into widening cognitive and social circles (II.102, 110), this mode seem to revolve around an absent centre. How the data (in this case the commodity) relate to the analysis is a bit mysterious, yet the discourse of the analysis itself radiates certitude (underlined items); in the same text I find ‘of course’, ‘obviously’, ‘it is certain’, ‘it is well known’, and always for what’s far from obvious. Still, the 1957 Citroën was a tangible practical object; in the more recent versions of this approach, the interpretation becomes hermetic and even the object seems to be absent, though the certitude remains (e.g., ‘we can clearly see’ in[112]). [112] We can clearly see that there is no bi-univocal correspondence between linear signifying links or archi-writing depending on the author, and this multireferential, multidimensional machinic catalysis. Thesymmetry of scale, the transversality, the pathic nondiscursive character of their expansion: all these dimensions remove us from the logic of the excluded mi ddle and reinforce us in our dismissal of theontological binarism (Felix Guattari, in le Figaro) 147 In cognitive or social terms, this mode of discourse analysis is hard to situate. Any ecological potential would require becoming more accessible to the society whose discourses it purports to analyse. 141. Among the youngest and most vigorous approaches is critical discourse analysis, 148 devoted to ‘the analysis of linguistic and semiotic aspects of social processes and problems’ (Ruth Wodak). 149 The analysis engages with discourse to pursue such factors as cultural allegiances, ideologies, power relations, and political factions. In its own way, it uncovers the ‘theoreticalness’ of social and discursive practices as reflexes of underlying ideologies: [113] I view social institutions as containing diverse ideologicaldiscursive formations[which] ‘naturalise’ ideologies, i.e., win acceptance for them as nonideological ‘common sense’.[…] To ‘denaturalise’ them isthe objective of a discourse analysis which adopts critical goals
[and] shows how social structures determine properties of a dis-course and how discourse in turn determines social structures (Norman Fairclough)150 Yet ‘critical thinking’ inherently reaches out for ‘solidarity’: [114] True dialogue cannot exist unless it involves critical thinking, which discerns an individual solidarity between the world of humans, admitting of no dichotomy between them,[and] perceives reality as process and transformation[…] for the sake of continu-ing humanization.[…] (Paulo Freire, Pedagogy of the Oppressed)151 [114] profoundly resonates with ecologism in its utopian hope for ‘humanization’. 142. For the future, a vital path for discourse analysis, and for text linguistics too, might be to integrate these several approaches, and to cultivate alliances with disciplines who share an interest in text and discourse: semiotics, ethnography, cognitive psychology, and computer science, but also ‘interdisciplines’ like cognitive science, discourse processing, social psychology, rhetorical psychology, constructivism, and post-modernism. Despite their diversity, these could all gain from an ambience of transdisciplinarity:152 not just the sharing across borders that sustains ‘interdisciplinarity’, but a comprehensive and unifying design intended from the outset to serve multiple disciplines. II.F.3. Discursive studies in corpus linguistics 143. Descriptive and discursive approaches to language study have in recent years been forcefully boosted by corpus linguistics,153 a corpus being a large and strategic collection of authentic text and discourse (cf. I.78, II.19, 42, 78). Ideolog-ically, this field is a renewal of realism flowing back over the eroded alluvium of idealism in language study. Historically, the field is allied with philology and fieldwork linguistics in accrediting only authentic data which are attested by actual occurrence as linguistic, cognitive, and social facts (cf. II.29, 31, 97, 103). 144. Although corpora are not new, their use is revolutionised by computer technology providing ready acc ess to knowledge about language from samples that would be laborious, if notimpossible, to cull and acc ess by hand. We now command unprecedented facility in such operations as collecting data, resolving their meanings and uses, and assessing their relative frequencyor typicality. We are freed from overburdening our own intuition and overgeneralising our personal knowledge of the language by inventing our own data. We are thus securely repositioned in the language community from which academic or formalist approaches would isolate us as privileged embodiments of the ‘ideal speaker-hearer’ (II.82, 85, 87). 145. The time seems auspicious to assess definitions of ‘language’ that expressly link theory and practice. In the broadest definition, a ‘language’ is, or is in, the set of possible discourses it can serve to produce. As theory, the definition is incontestable, since no set of discourses can display the exhaustive or complete uses of a language; but as practice it poses intractable difficulties by invoking a partially virtual set that can never be fully accessed, whether by a linguist, a native speaker, or a whole community. In a narrower definition, a ‘language’ is, or is in, the set of actual discourses it has served to produce. This is less sound in theory and only marginally more tractable in practice, since many discourses are unrecorded and inaccessible. 146. In a still narrower definition a ‘language’ is, or is in, a very large subset of the discourses it has served to produce. This is again is less sound in theory but finally tractable in practice, allowing one accessible set of actual discourses to stand in for the partly inaccessible set of possible discourses. Now our
principal problem lies in the optimistic and ultimately improvable assumption that our subset genuinely represents the whole set. In theory, the subset should offer a scale model of the whole set, smaller in size yet matching its proportions, units, and features; our own practices may presuppose such a theory, whilst running far ahead of it. Still, the same theory is apparently the basis for the ‘discursive competence’ of native speakers, even highly skilled ones; each one relies on the experienced subset of discourses they have produced or received — their ‘personal intertext’ (II.158). 147. We thus trade the notion of the ‘infinite set’, which has had a muddled history in the theory and practice of modern linguistics (II.76), for the ‘represent-ative subset’, which is a practical entity currently seeking a theoretical account. We transform ‘intuition’ into an interpreter of authentic data rather than a creator of invented data (cf. II.87, 144). Intuition continually supplies plausible ‘mini-theories’ about what is meant or intended and discards implausible ones, e.g. for: [115] Pancakes to sell for grave flags (University Herald) [116] Insecticide sprayed on judge’s oral ruling (Spokane Chronicle) [117] Progress slow in beating death (Miami Herald) [118] Congress votes for running trains over union workers (Courier and Journal) Although such mini-theories are not strictly provable, their validity can be tested on the quality and quantity of the data at hand. Intuition is opportunistic, springing into action upon contact with data; and its reliability rises along with the quantity of the data. It therefore gains substantial power when assessing a large corpus of data and not just fudging isolated data like ‘sincerity may virtue the boy’ (cf. II.78). 148. For the present, the concept of the representative subset must remain intuitive. We can only guess at the relative importance and proportions of various text types produced in a language like English. No doubt any subset incurs some partly accidental conditions of data collection; and spoken data require the labours of recording and transcription, especially if we try to represent the Prosody of speaking (Ch. IV), or the Visuality of the situation (Ch. V). 149. Still, we can take heart at finding that each substantive increase in the size and variety of the corpus readjusts our qualitative as well as quantitative image of the language. Making a corpus, say, ten times larger does not merely multiply the data by ten, e.g., 10 occurrences in a corpus of a million words becoming 100 in a corpus of 10 million. Discourse data have a curiously ‘fractal’ aspect in that further contours of precision emerge as we raise the delicacy of our analysis through larger corpora , yielding finer details and more exact proportions. A large ‘tagged’ corpus like the BNC allows us to distinguish among styles, registers, media, genders, age groups, and social classes. For example, the item ‘illiberal’ never occurs there in spoken discourse, imaginative writing, or the discourse of women; it occurs only in the written discourse of men of fairly high status. It turns the slippage in the converse term ‘liberal’ to accuse ‘liberals’ of presumed inconsistencies: [119] It is the Civil Liberties people who are being illiberal and intolerant by presenting evolution as fact when it is only a theory. (In Good Faith)154 The item is readily associated with discourses of contested power, where ‘liberals’ are pelted with truly unbelievable hatespeak from ‘conservatives’ (VII.33). 150. Undeniably, describing the quality of data in large corpora presents daunting challenges to both theory and practice. We might propose a basic cline for data between rich, where the constraints of the
linguistic context suffice to determine the meaning, e.g.[120], versus sparse, where they do not or only loosely e.g.[121] (cf. II.126). Historically, ‘dogsbody’ was a pejorative term for junior naval officers doing everything for the senior ones, and for their bilious food, like soaked sea biscuits. But BNC data show that neither meaning is current today, when the term designates a menial job or job-holder fielding a miscellany of trivial tasks. [120] ‘But who wants to work in a solicitors?’ ‘Be fun!’ ‘Yeah but they treat you as a skivvy. Make coffee, make tea, general duties.’ ‘General dogsbody!’ (conversation)BNC [121] While ‘real police work’, crime, was almost non-existent, other dogsbody incidents could provide a measure of relief. (Mersey Beat) Corpus data enable us to cross-contextualise from rich over to sparse, as when we use[120] to determine the meaning in the context for a constabulary[121] (e.g. hunting down the drunk and disorderly). We can apply the same strategy when the meaning is creatively or uniquely recontextualised, e.g., for a ‘bowl’ and a ‘computer’ that got used for all sorts of odd jobs[122-23]. [122] What about the kitchen bowl? Poor dogsbody, its hard enamel is chipped like a dalmatian. (Martian Sends)BNC [123] That minicomputer was sent naked into the market with no software as the ultimate dogsbody product, a computing resource for any whim that needed one. (Unigram x)BNC For the ‘skivvy’ in[120], BNC data show it more focused on domestic chores: [124] A skivvy was vital if the evening was to be a success. Someone had to go round with the coals, wash up, sweep, scrub, polish, fetch and carry. (First of Midnight) [125] I’m just the skivvy round here! Cook the din-dins, put the cat out, clear up the junk on the great man’s desk (End of the Morning) In authentic data, richness forms a dynamic trade-off with unpredictability, whereby meanings in context can be grasped after the fact though they cannot be predicted before the fact. 151. Rich authentic data can also provide reliable evidence for the evolving meanings of lexical items, such as ‘smash and grab’, originally a no-brainer robbery where you ‘smash’ the window, ‘grab’ the loot, and run like hell[126]. [126] Police have praised three people who detained a suspect following a smash and grab raid at an Essex jeweller’s shop. The thief[…] smashed a hole in the shop window using a hammer and grabbedabout £3,000-worth of gold jewellery before making off on foot. (East Anglian Daily Times) I ran across data covering police visitations with ‘sledgehammers’[127], snappy football tactics[128], or pigging out[129] (where nothing gets ‘smashed’). [127] A major heroin dealing ring was believed smashed today after police made a series of early-morning raids in Liverpool.[…] 55 officers, some carrying sledgehammers, launched their ‘smash and grab’ raids on homes in the Everton and Kirkdale areas. (Liverpool Daily Post) [128] At the County Ground, it was daylight robbery; a smash and grab raid by Charlton. They had 3 attacks and scored 2 goals. The alarms in the Swindon defence failed to ring. (television news)BNC
[129] At British Petroleum’s annual meeting last year, there were protests about a ‘smash and grab’ raid by one group who scoffed too many sandwiches. (Daily Telegraph) I also found data tracking the more mechanized trend of the ‘ram raid’, where a car or a lorry is driven through a shop window[130]. Among the more imaginative implements in the data were a ‘mechanical digger’ operated by a ‘builder’[131]; and an earthy ‘wheelbarrow’ propelled by a putative gardener[132] (who else collects ‘green wellies’?). So far, the meaning seems to have evolved just a little, e.g., in one wryly literal use[133] and in one football victory[134]. [130] Ram raiders smashed a stolen BMW car through the window of an exclusive boutique, stealing thousands of pounds worth of clothes. (Liverpool Daily Post) [131] A builder appeared before Chelmsford magistrates yesterday following investiga-tions into an attempt to ram raid a cash dispenser with a mechanical digger. (East Anglian Daily Times) [132] A thief staged a ram raid on a shop with a wheelbarrow. He loaded the barrow with paving stones before running straight through a plate glass window,[and] escaped with gardening equipment worth£300 and three pairs of green wellies. (Northern Echo) [133] Police are investigating a ram raid after a farmer reported a Suffolk ram had been stolen from his field at Grove Farm, Bradbury. (Northern Echo) [134] Ramraid: Swindon and Derby in a six-goal sizzler.[…] The Live match Swindon against Derby County[…] brought 6 goals and the man of the match award for Glenn Hoddle. (television news) BNC [134] puns on the nickname of the ‘Rams’ for the ‘raided’ Derby team. 155 152. Authentic data also provide good evidence for innovative items as they emerge. A new class of fiction has ostensibly debuted as ‘aga-sagas’ and displaced ‘bonkbusters’[135] (‘blockbusters’ with copious ‘bonking’). A London bookseller has provided the recipe[136]; perhaps readers who yearn in vain for ‘rural bliss’ relish seeing it plunged into ‘crisis’. [135] The talk at this week’s London International Book Fair at Olympia was of ‘Aga-sagas’, so-called because they feature the type of characters whose homes would be incomplete without an Aga.[…] Agasagas have taken over from the steamy sex bonkbusters of the Eighties. (Scotsman) [136] the writer[is] advised to create a family living in rural bliss with a gaggle of children then land them in a crisis, preferably involving the central character in an affair with an older/younger man/woman. (same) According to data in the BNC and on the Internet (but in none of my dictionaries), an ‘aga’ is a massive heat storage cooker, fuelled by oil, gas, coal, or wood, and a prestigious symbol of ‘rural bliss’, effusively lauded by its devotees, viz.: [137] I can’t imagine life without one[…] The whole appeal of the Aga is to do with lifestyle and[…] it has become the focal point of the kitchen. (Belinda Marshall)www 153. Surely the most significant new discoveries in authentic data are the pervasive regularities that are more specific than the language yet more general than the text. Colligations are regular combinations of grammatical selections, whereas Collocations are regular combinations of lexical 156 selections. Both can reveal the vitality of Attitudes: Ameliorative for good or approved, and Pejorative for bad or disapproved (cf. VI.34ff). The Colligation of Passive with the Auxiliary ‘get’ is
consistently for bad things getting done to people, collocating in my data with ‘humiliated, corrupted, fired, kicked, choked, drowned, murdered’ and so on. Disapproval also goes with the Colligation Demonstrative + Noun + ‘of’ + Posses-sive Pronoun[138-39], which can be reinforced with a suitable Modifier[140-41]. [138] ‘That brother of mine’, she said, ‘is an asshole.’ (The Edge) [139] When Faye had one of those turns of hers, awful things happen. (Good Terrorist) [140] ‘Where did you go?’ ‘To that vile city of yours! It's filthy!’ (Furniture) [141] Forgive my not rising, but I dare not move out of this chair until this wretched hair of mine is dry. (Hidden Flame) But with the Indefinite Article, approval wins out: [142] My own mother used to make steak-and-kidney pudding. It was a great favourite of ours too, especially mine. (Maggie) [143] A friend of mine, a dear friend, ran from one end of the back line to the other and had his picture twice on the same photograph (Bury the Dead) 154. For Collocations, I’ll look at the lexical expression ‘overcome’. In my British and American Writers Corpus (BAWC), it usually means ‘suffer adverse effects of an overly intense emotion’, a common occurrence in English novels. The major Collocates ‘emotion’ and ‘feeling(s)’ appeared either to the right as the Subject of an Active Verb[144] or else to the left as Agent of Passive Verb[145]. [144] her emotion overcame her speech, and she retired to her apartment, to think, if in the present state of her mind to think was possible. (Udolpho) [145] Young Decoud felt overcome by a feeling of impatient confusion. (Nostromo) Here again, Attitudes emerged: just a few Ameliorative Collocates like ‘admiration, delight, happiness’, against a host of Pejoratives like ‘anguish, despair, gloom, grief, misery, nausea, pain, repugnance, shame, sorrow, terror’. Other groups of Collocations in BAWC data included exhaustion, e.g., ‘fatigue, weariness, drowsi-ness, sleep, slumber’; and booze, e.g., ‘wine, porter, liquor, bottle, intoxication’. 155. In a historical perspective, the Emotions predominating for ‘overcome’ in the BAWC, featuring imaginative writing from the mid-18th to the early 20th centuries, yielded in BNC data from the 1980s and 1990s to more mechanical causalities like noxious fumes[146], physical forces[147], and sports events[148]. [146] A disabled woman was rushed to hospital after she was overcome by gas fumes at her council house. (Northern Echo) [147] The centrifugal force at the edge of the nebula overcame the gravitational force exerted by the mass, and a ring of material broke away. (Fate of the Dinosaurs)157 [148] Milton United overcame their Reading Senior League opponents at Fairmile in the Berks and Bucks Intermediate Cup (Radio Oxford)BNC 156. Widening our scope to social factors, we might surmise that the cultures among readers of the older imaginative writing mistrusted strong Emotions, partic-ularly Pejorative ones, which ‘overcome’ people
and undermine their self-control or their power to act or speak. Within the Narrative, the expression could carry the communicative function of delaying or deflecting the sequence of actions whilst inviting readers to be vicariously ‘overcome’ (like Miss Morland in Northanger Abbey reading Mrs Radcliffe’s Udolpho). BNC data indicate that this function has receded in imaginative writing today; even in the fervid world of Mills and Boon I found no woman ‘overcome by emotion’ (cf. III.71). 157. The qualities of authentic data as briefly reviewed lead me to conclude that the relation between language and discourse is not the one represented in conven-tional linguistics. The hoary injunction to ‘study language by itself’ and disregard ‘speech’ oddly implied that language is an extremely ordered system which somehow produces extreme disorder — a‘heterogeneous mass of accessory and accidental facts’ (II.40). Corpus data, in contrast, show language to be a system of virtual order guiding the system of actual order in discourse, notheterogeneous but variegated. Aside from scripted situations, e.g., reciting a memorised lesson, the order of discourse is always in the process of being constituted, and its precision is sustained by trading off richness to handle unpredictability (I.36; II.21; VI.3). 158. A corpus is an intermediary entity between language and discourse. It might termed an intertext ,158 a large set of texts which manifest similar strategies of selection and combination but which were mostly not intended to be contributions to the same discourse (II.123). Daunting questions arise that should be tackled in earnest: how far any one text presupposes other texts that set up genres or registers, introduce terms, determine standards of currency, and so on; how each discourse participant builds up a ‘personal intertext’ , the large set of texts which he or she has produced and received and which provides the foundation of his or her ‘discursive competence’ (II.146); and why communication is rarely blocked by the necessary uniqueness of each personal intertext, which must be an adjustable and expandable system with fuzzy boundaries. 159. A large corpus could in turn be called an interpersonal intertext uniting samples from many personal intertexts, each of which it far exceeds in variety as well as size. When you access the corpus you are implicitly accessing the pooled competence of the community of contributors, and may verify, adjust, or revise your competence. The corpus can thus attenuate the basic partiality of any one speaker’s knowledge of the language. For me at least, corpus work is always a learning experience, e.g., for words in the BNC like ‘skive’ for skipping lessons in schools[149], or work at a workplace[150]; and ‘naff’ for being hopelessly dull or out of fashion[151-52].159 [149] I just couldn’t face yet another day of taunts, kicks and bag-snatching so I skived off school. (The Chocolate Teapot) 160 [150] Most of us do a full week’s work; it’s only the skivers that don’t. (TV news) BNC [151] There are hundreds of ineffectual, half-hearted, derivative, dull, inexperienced, outdated and naff groups out there (New Musical Express) [152] the show’s triumph has been its appeal not just to the unaddressed, naff masses, but also to a fashionable audience of discerning clubbers (Sky) In my work as a language teacher, corpus data hold great potential for advising my students. When one of them in Arabia wrote[153], I objected to the Verb, only to find data proving me wrong like[154]. [153] The woman follow the oxen to broadcast seeds
[154] The second method is to broadcast the seeds together with not more than 1 kg. to the acre of rape and turnips in late June or early July. (Smallholding) I don’t mind such episodes because I define both a ‘linguist’ and a ‘language teacher’ not as the expert who knows all the facts of language and usage, but as a competent language user who knows how to find and interpret facts. 160. Though unwieldy and at times distasteful, the Internet is a mine for colourful expressions like ‘shmatte’ for old clothes[155] and ‘mungy’ for muggy, dark and damp[156], which I also found with ‘soil’, ‘water’, ‘smell’, and ‘photo’. [155] Remember when a stray pen streak on a shirt was reason enough to hand it over to Goodwill? Today, thick ink tags can mark a formerly doomed shmatte as the latest in cool: graffiti glam. (Phoenix.com)www [156] During the winter it's pretty dry. But with the spring thaw and subsequent showers, everything takes on a mungy, mildewed smell. (Future Shoes)www So far, participation in the discourses of the Internet is your own decision in most countries, but not, say in the United Arab Emirates, where ‘offensive’ websites are blocked by the sole authorised provider, including all ‘adult education’ pro-grammes — by some silly confusion with ‘adult movies’, I suppose. 161. Appropriate software extends the corpus into an interpersonal hypertext . Whereas a hypertext161 is an intertext whose component texts have explicit links, a corpus has implicit links created on the spot by the query specifications. However, specific links can be prepared by ‘tagging’ the data, as when the BNC is allows searches by region, age, gender (of producer or target audience), social class and modality.162 Of course, interpreting the findings can be problematic, as when in written discourse, men used Verbs of violent Action decidedly more often than women did, e.g. ‘smashed’ (338 to 124), ‘grabbed’ (544 to 342), ‘punched’ (149 to 43), ‘kicked’ (491 to 291), and ‘killed’ (2559 to 1111). My most puzzling finding so far was theproportion of Female to Male Pronouns at 54.72% in the BNC and at 55.77% in the BAWC, two utterly different corpora. (What’s more, it’s 55.33% in the collected comedies of Shakespeare.) 162. Such findings resemble small islands formed by the tips of immense submarine mountain ranges, and their exploration leads into deep waters. Just to handle the quantities of data we already have will consume the labours of large research teams for a long time to come. I hardly ever launch my concordance programs without running across some unexpected and perplexing regularity, such as the uniformly Pejorative Attitude associated with the Passive colligation of Pronoun + be + ‘to be’ + Past Participle. In BNC data, the sinister inconveniences to which ‘I am’ (or ‘you are’, ‘he/she is’ etc.) ‘to be’ subjected include ‘hounded, demoted, despised, cut out, punished unfairly, investigated, arrested, prosecuted, convicted, incarcerated, imprisoned for life, chained hand and foot, hanged’. In BAWC data, I am to be ‘abandoned, humbled, persecuted, trampled upon, devoured, condemned’, and ‘hanged’ all over again — and, for bad measure, ‘boiled alive’, ‘burned at the stake’, and ‘buried at sea’. Ouch. II.G. Deconstructivist studies of language 163. By my account, prescriptivism is a pre-modernist project; descriptivism is a modernist project; generativism is a mixed pre-modernist and modernist project (II.4, 25, 75); and discursivism reflects the historicity of the discourses it engages. Now we might weigh the prospects when studies of language move toward post-modernism , 163 sometimes bearing this programmatic label. Whereas the shift from pre-modernist to modernist consolidated our theory to guide new practices in Phonology and
Morphology , and accredited the study of language as a science, the shift from modernist to postmodernist has dispersed both theory and practice, and on occasion opposed science as an imposition of power and exclusion. 164. Both shifts sought a resolute break with the past, but differed sharply in their motivations. The first shift aimed to develop new methods and assemble data to dispel the prescriptive orientation. The second shift is unfocused and elusive. The methods and data of post-modernism seem hardly prescriptive or descriptive; and its discursive strategies are highly eccentric, or, more precisely, ‘ex-centric’, moving away from a centre no longer in evidence (cf. II.140). The term itself seems to announce some defiance of modernism, aspiring to some theory for transcending and moving beyond it, with a touch of paradox, like trying to look back on ourselves from some future that would no longer be ‘modern’. So far, I see little consensus about how such a theory should be put into practice. Indeed, the notion of ‘consensus’ comes under spirited attack as a modernist construct deployed for the exclusion of alternative concepts and cultures.164 165. Ideologically , I see some indicators (noted below) of a radical idealism wherein the ideal not merely dominates but ultimately erases the real, yet makes no claims to be valid or true. Historically, it might be associated with mystical modes of textual commentary, such as the Rabbinical hermeneutics, the Kabala, and the criticism of the Romantic era; but some authorities may not relish the association. 165 166. Perhaps one salient point might be seen in [157] the effacement of the older (essentially high-modernist) frontier between high culture and so-called mass or commercial culture, and the emergence of new kinds of texts infused with the forms, categories, and contents of that very culture industry so passionately denounced by all the ideologues of the modern.[… ] Postmodernism[is] a cultural dominant: a conception which allows for the presence and coexistence of a range of very different, yet subordinate, features. (Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism)166 Whilst modernism underwent specialization and proliferated theories (I.23), the ‘high culture’ prospered which post-modernism displaces from the centre. 167. I also see traces of a radical realism responding to diversity by 167 168 welcoming multiculturalism and multilingualism . These are now the de facto states of most societies in operational practice — endorsed by official theories of equality but undermined by operational theories of discrimination (cf. I.24). They derive special significance as products of postcolonialism , 169 following the colonial occupation, first by Europe and later by the United States, of most of the world’s regions and the ensuing patterns of exploitation, displacement, and migration. 168. Post-structuralism , 170 like post-modernism, signals a programmatic break with the past, but a more specific one turning against the ‘structuralism’ adapted from descriptive linguistics to describe discourse, culture, or art with methods mostly inspired by phonology and morphology (II.44). Its own programme is ambivalent in retaining some pungent discursive methods of structuralism whilst supplanting the formalist claims to objectivity, truth, and rigour, with subjectivity, scepticism, and free play (French ‘jouissance’); and some prominent practitioners have been active in both approaches. 171 The discourse of structuralism aspires to be scientific, convergent, and centripetal, invoking a static, deterministic conception of meaning; the discourse of post-structuralism aspires to be innovative, divergent, and centrifugal, invoking a dynamic self-interrogating conception of meaning. A project of the latter discourse could be
[158] to write a history of discursive objects[which] deploys the nexus of regularities that govern their dispersion.[…] In analysing discourses themselves, one sees the loosening of the embrace, apparently so tight, of words and things, and the emergence of a group of rules proper to discursive practice;[we] no longer treat discourses as groups of signs (signifying elements referring to contents or representations) but as practices that systematically form the objects of which they speak. (Michel Foucault, Archaeology of Knowledge) 172 Such a project navigates exactly on the reverse side from linguistic structuralism, which describes language by stable systems of units (or ‘signifiers’) with distinc-tive features (or ‘signifieds’), and discounts discursive practice. A reversal subverts the dichotomies between language and discourse (e.g. ‘langue’ and ‘parole’) and between timeless and historical (e.g. ‘synchronic’ and ‘diachronic’) (II.39f), whilst repositioning language as a system for the ‘formation’ of discursive ‘objects’. 169. However, post-modernism and post structuralism may produce a singularly strenuous discourse. The elusive and multiplex qualities they attribute to language are acted out with strategies that could exclude many readers, e.g.[159-60]. [159] Our complex, metastatic, viral systems, condemned[…] to eccentricity and indefinite fractal scissiparity, can no longer come to an end. Condemned to an intense metabolism, to an intense internal metastatis, they become exhausted within them-selves and no longer have any destination. (Jean Baudrillard)173 [160] The poet/philosopher’s fascination with the Abrahamic adventure is symptomatic of a desire to write a philosophical commentary that makes a soaring exit from the generality of the word. Commentary, grounded in speculative thought, sets off to travel beyond itself, towards the outside of thought, which, paradoxically, coincides with the deepest, unfathomable interiority of Abraham’s untellable secret. (Dorota Glowacka)174 Ironically, the post-modern ‘effacement’ of the border between ‘high culture’ and ‘mass culture’[157] foreshadows here a new and more hermetic border sealing off an even higher culture for an elite circle of writers and readers. 170. Deconstruction175 is a major post-modern and post-structuralist arena of theory and practice coming from a critique of philosophy and linguistics, and loosely grouped around some radical ideas. If language is a system constituted entirely by the differences among its units, as some early linguists asserted (II.44), then any one unit is determined by referring to another, which is in turn referred to what it differs from, and so on without end. Applied to meaning, ‘difference’ coincides with ‘deferral’ for the emblematic pun in the French term différance. [161] The signified concept is never present in and of itself, in a sufficient presence that would refer only to itself.[…] Every concept is inscribed in a chain or in a system within which it refers to the other, to other concepts, by means of the systematic play of differences. (Jacques Derrida, Margins of Philosophy)176 But to call language a pure system of differences is to mistake it for a system of numbers; and numbers by themselves lack meanings comparable to words. At most, such a system might be compared to the system of Phonemes of Phonology with their ‘distinctive features’ (II.44), though even these need not always differ from each other in the articulated stream of speech, and they certainly don’t ‘defer’. 171. Deconstruction also propounded a vastly expanded and more ontological than strictly linguistic conception of ‘writing’ (French ‘écriture’) as the concern of a new ‘science of writing’
called grammatology, in which ‘linguistics-phonology would be only a dependent and circumscribed area’.177 This new science might even derive ‘science’ itself from discursive practice by [162] look[ing] for its object at the roots of scientificity.[…] Writing is not only an auxiliary means in the service of science and possibly its object — but[…] the condition of the possibility of ideal objects and therefore of scientific objectivity.[…] The concept of writing should define the field of a science.[…] A science of the possibility of science? (Jacques Derrida, Of Grammatology)177 A key step would be to ‘deconstruct’ the ‘metaphysical presupposition’ of modern linguistics that speech is primary and writing is merely derivative’. 178 But I hold this ‘presupposition’ to be effectively moot, an artefact of successes in Phonology and Phonetics, whereas written language has tacitly dominated the rest of linguistics, especially ‘generative’ Syntax. Besides,published discourses of deconstruction about ‘grammatology’, as well as ‘différance’, ‘dissemination’, and so on, seem rather to imply the impossibility of established science, which is after all a mainstay of the trendily disparaged ‘Western metaphysics’.179 172. The most forceful impact stems from the radical ideas of deconstruction in discursive practices. To ‘deconstruct’ a discourse can be to produce a counter-discourse that engages with its texture and probes how its implicit assumptions or presuppositions contradict or subvert its explicit exposition, argument, or narrative — not just because the speaker or writer was inconsistent, deceptive, or misled, but because discourse at large asserts a dialectical potential that subverts closure. Yet this process is hard to grasp, and deconstruction must be defended against being misunderstood or misrepresented: [163] Deconstruction is not synonymous with ‘destruction’.[…] The deconstruction of a text does not proceed by random doubt or arbitrary subversion, but by the careful teasing out of warring forces of signification within the text itself. If anything is destroyed in a deconstructive reading, it is not the text, but the claim to unequivocal domination of one mode of signifying over another. A deconstructive reading[…] analyses the specificity of a text’s critical difference from itself. (Barbara Johnson, The Critical Difference) 180 173. Along related lines, radical deconstruction has assailed the conception of ‘literal meaning’ by asserting that ‘all language is figural’: ‘the only literal statement that says what it means to say is the assertion that there can be no literal statements’. 181 Rephrased in my terms, the inescapably theoretical status of meaning, noted in I.36 and II.63, was here propelled into an absolute and exitless quandary, like a paradoxical, self-defeating thought-experiment. 174. In its more radical ideas, deconstruction is difficult to situate in respect to the other approaches reviewed in this chapter. Formalism in linguistics was attacked by ‘grammatology’, much as the structuralist projects were repudiated by post-structuralism. But I see slim chances for functionalism after a ‘text’ was defined as a ‘generative, open-ended non-referential grammatical system and as a figural system closed off by a transcendental signification that subverts the grammatical code’.181 Rhetoric may profit from the interest in figural meaning, 182though the concept has been so expanded as to seem vacuous. 175. The major if unexpected institutional home of deconstruction has been literary criticism. I see a rich potential in deconstructive practices for ‘literary alternativity’: the freedom of literature to produce alternative worlds and discursive modes that refine our sensitivity toward our ordinary world and discourse. Deconstructors prefer evasive and ambiguous literary texts, e.g., the ethereal poetry of Shelley[164-65] and the self-adumbrating narratives of Rousseau[166].
[164] Figures ever new rise on the bubble, paint them how you may; We have but thrown, as those before us threw, Our shadows on it as it past away. (Triumph of Life) [165] The word ‘parasite’ does not appear in the Triumph of Life. That poem, however, is structured throughout around the parasitical relationship[…] The word ‘parasite’, for Shelley, names the bridge, wall, or connecting membrane which at once makes this apocalyptic union possible, abolishing difference, and at the same time always remains as a barrier forbidding it. (J. Hillis Miller, ‘The critic as host’)183 [166] [Rousseau’s] entire effort has been directed toward freeing himself, by reflection, from the burden of his own empirical contingency.[…] He has indeed transcended his actual self into a language, a work that now exists outside himself.[But when] he starts to reflect upon the work that he has created, he realizes that it only records his failure really to transcend his own selfhood. (Paul De Man,Romanticism)184 Literature also fits a deconstructive definition of ‘language’ as a ‘mosaic or tapestry whereby each discourse unravels and reweaves itself out of other discourses’. 185 176. On the side of realism, deconstruction has aided a different ‘post-modern’ critique of discursive practices to analyse and resist the social and discursive domination and exclusion submerged in regressive ideologies of the ‘normal’ and the ‘natural’. The foremost arena is unmistakably feminism, 186 looking to ‘recon-struct a more just vision of society’[167] and a ‘nonhierarchical theory’[168]. [167] The massive task ahead[is] to deconstruct the male-dominated media world, and reconstruct a new and more just vision of society where women and men are equal partners,[by] promoting the use of inclusive language and endeavouring to unmask the patriarchal cultural patterns that maintain male bias. (Action)BNC [168] Feminism has been a catalyst for analytical practice. Feminists in the 60s and 70s deconstructed our culture to find their way and called for a non-hierarchical theory. This is emerging in the 90s with[…] Reconstructive Post-Modernism;[…] the agenda for the 90s is rooted in daily life, and Postmodernism is in harmony.[…] Deconstruc-tivism has led to the recognition of what is valuable. (Women’s Art)187 Highly consequential are these dual moves of ‘deconstruction’ and ‘reconstruction’, which are vital to the ‘critical’ agenda in ecologism too (I.33). The deconstructive move seeks out the deeper texture of a discourse within the economy of values, intentions, and presuppositions whereby it seeks to position itself to its audience as normal, natural, and authoritative. The tensions and contradictions emerge that arise not merely from an author’s limits and biases, but also from the impulse to impose closure upon the openness of language and the intertextuality of discourse. The reconstructive move exploits those two factors to generate a counter-discourse. 177. Perhaps the term reconstructivism would fit an approach emphasising the dynamic diversity and multiplicity of language and discourse, and completing its deconstruction with ‘critical rewriting’ (cf. VIII.43ff), thus dismissing the static unity and uniformity postulated in the linguistics of structuralism and the philosophy of formal logic and positivism. Despite the differences in strategies, this emphasis is
shared with discourse analysis and corpus linguistics, where it spontaneously emanates from contact with authentic data; and the prospects for productive interaction seem auspicious today. 178. Reconstructivism can lend renewed force to the ecologist principle that language is always in the process of being constituted in discourse (I.36; II.21, 157) by complementing the specific closure described for rich data with the general openness that underwrites the multiple recontextualisation for generating richness. Moreover, we may become more sensitive toward the systematic limits upon closure, not merely in literary and poetic discourse, but, more surprisingly, also for the discourses of politics, bureaucracy, advertising, philosophy, and even science, including linguistics. And here the utopian space for ‘progress’ towards inclusion and equality remains unforeclosed and indeed guaranteed by the essential nature of language and discourse (I.38). 179. We might also tap post-modernism for our social and cultural agenda of deploying language and discourse to broaden the access to human knowledge and experience (0.7; I.76; II.111, 134). Our agenda too hails the ongoing multilingual and multicultural evolution of society; and respects the value of ‘mass or popular culture’, and of the many modes of expression which have been repressed or marginalised by the predominantly monolingual and monocultural discourses of modernism. The discourses of the ‘other’, such as minorities, immigrants, gays or lesbians, mental patients, the disabled, the jobless, and the homeless, long denied a serious voice of their own, are now confirmed as valid narratives and testimonies of our times, meriting serious engagement in both theory and practice.188
II.H. Theory and practice in the language department 180. reviewing the theories and practices of various approaches to language study, we might examine the theories and practices in those institutions where language is expressly studied, e.g., in the ‘departments’, ‘programmes’, or ‘centres’ of higher education. To stay within my own range of professional experience, I shall only deal with ‘English departments’, since conditions probably vary along with languages. Simplifying considerably, we could model their conventional organisation divided into two distinct
programmes, as in Fig. 12. The literature programme features lower-division practical surveys of more accessible literature, such as the ‘modern American novel’, and upper-division theoretical exercises in literary criticism of more erudite literature, such as ‘metaphysical poetry’. The language programme features lower-division practical skills such as ‘expository writing’, and upper-division
theoretical linguistics such as ‘syntax’. A similar dual organisation has been imported into recently opened English departments such as I have known in Africa, Arabia, and Southeast Asia, without serious assessment of which varieties of English are available or needed. 181. Historically, the two programmes were not so polarized as long as the clientele was small and the history of English loomed large, with literature as the main source of evidence, and philology as a practical guide to language change. Skills and linguistics really took hold in the 1960s and 1970s, whilst the clientele grew large and diverse, and linguistics grew more theoretical, as I have described. Roughly during the same period, the study of literature also grew more theoretical and less historical, though not in the same directions as linguistics. 182. Ideologically, the division shown in Figure 12 mirrors two distinct projects. The literature programme is a project for acculturation189 to induct learners into the ‘high culture’ of literature and poetry, and presumably to enhance taste, sensitivity, and intellectual breadth and depth. The prospects should be bright if literature is approached in a mind-set of openness and freedom as an accredited domain of discourse for presenting alternative worlds in order to enhance our understanding of our own world and the human situation — a principle I called ‘alternativity’ (II.175). If communication in general tunes the linguistic knowledge of the participants (I.36), literary communication tunes their cultural knowledge, particularly of the past. 183. The language programme in turn is a project for standardisation, 190 encouraging learners who are native speakers to acquire fluency in ‘Standard Written English’ for strategic use in education and future careers. The ‘standards of usage’ are mostly just demonstrated in ‘model essays’ for learners to ‘describe’, ‘admire’, and ‘imitate’ [169]; yet imitation as a method is not well accounted for in theory nor well organised in practice. Besides, prescription and pro-scription may grow virulent as pretexts to ‘take off points’ [170] instead of providing a sensitive and helpful evaluation. [169] In each essay, identify one passage/paragraph that you particularly admire, and be able to comment on its excellence. […] How would you describe the style: serious/ academic, light/breezy, tongue-in-cheek, businesslike, satiric? […] What one element could you most successfully imitate in your own essay?www [170] [The paper] needs to be written in a formal style. Street talk, sloppy grammar, etc. is unacceptable. Avoid the Internet (ycch!). […] Use active voice (not passive). […] Avoid writing in second person (‘you’). Avoid clichés and idioms. Avoid ‘his/her’. […] Avoid typos. I'll take off ten points for each one. (writing a research paper)www Websites like [170] point to the alienating negative orientation, like education at large, of describing ‘good writing’ in terms of what you must ‘avoid’ (cf. I.60f). 184. Most fundamentally, the two projects view ‘teaching’ and ‘learning’ as straightforward activities in a direct causality. But our results raise questions about whether the content has been rendered teachable and learnable: whether we can reliably enable learners to assimilate an unfamiliar culture and language variety, and how this may affect their linguistic, cognitive and social development (cf. I.42, 63). Simply bringing learners into contact with selected texts to be described, evaluated, or imitated, in order to produce acculturation and standardisation seems to me like practice running far ahead of theory. As in other areas of education, the responsibility for relative success or failure rests on the individual learners (cf. I.57), who confront model texts and are left largely to their own devices and initiative in learning how to read with appreciation and write with skill.
185. Still, the two projects might function smoothly if the population of learners are native speakers of English whose cultural and linguistic backgrounds provide a sound working basis for literacy and fluency. Those favourable conditions may have held prior to the radical demographic changes brought on by modernisation and immigration, especially since the Second World War, when societies requiring a wider range of knowledge and skills sponsored a drastic expansion of ‘higher education’. As the cultural and linguistic backgrounds of the learners diversified, the prospects for acculturation and standardisation turned problematic. 186. Three options would be open. English departments could simply retain and pursue the same two projects, disregarding demographic change; or adapt the projects to changing circumstances; or adopt newer projects.191 To judge from my own experiences with universities in various parts of the world, especially where the population is not fluent in English, most departments have favoured the first option, adapting their projects or adopting new projects only modestly, sporad-ically, or cosmetically under pressure from social, political, or administrative agents. No matter what role English might actually play in the society, the educa-tional bureaucracy soldiers on with the conventional methods of acculturation and standardisation. In the official theory, the main determinant of success or failure is still how ‘diligently’ the individual learner ‘performs’ (cf. I.57). But in the opera-tional theory, the main determinant is how far the learner’s cultural and linguistic background fits the conventional methods originally developed for a modest and uniform population of native speakers. When the fit is unbalanced, the whole ‘English programme’ resembles a ladder with the lower rungs missing (II.200). 187. The uneven evolution of English departments has left them uneasily positioned for integrating their own programmes internally, and integrating them externally into the whole university and the broader society. [171] At a time when a good public image is essential for universities, English is unable to explain itself in ways immediately intelligible to the outsider, is notoriously riven with doubts and disagreements that prevent it from having a shared sense of purpose, and may at intervals erupt into crises. (Exploding English)132 On the internal front, the staff has routinely been split between the ‘senior’ level teaching the more theoretical studies, and the ‘junior’ level teaching the more practical studies, with scanty co-ordination between the two levels — yet another divide between ‘theoreticians’ and ‘practitioners’ (I.4, 23). On the external front, the connections have remained tenuous to other language-related departments (e.g., speech, mass communication, journalism, French, German) and still more to the social sciences or the natural sciences. Such English departments still overlook their potentially vibrant relevance in providing English for effective communica-tion and education. Some departments seem instead to be training their graduates just for a profession or career working in the literature programme of a university English department too, whereas they need contingent training to teach English in primary or secondary schools, which gets left up to the faculty of education. 188. The literature programme of today initially confronts a population of learners with little authentic experience in reading literature. Lower-level ‘survey’ courses accordingly offer a shallow, more practical introduction to a broad gallery of literary works. A few students move up to the deeper, more theoretical studies as ‘English majors’, but most of them are just fulfilling US university ‘requirements’; acculturation through literature is evidently regarded as a mandatory service of higher education. Yet the service can be a meaningful success only in an academic ambience which promotes creative individual
response, rather than just ‘assigning readings’ and using mechanical ‘quizzes’ to check who’s doing them. 189. The centre of the programme is ‘literary criticism’ or ‘interpretation’ as a set of discursive practices chiefly addressed to resolving putative questions and problems in specific literary works within an (until recently exclusive) ‘canon’, and expatiating on historical and biographical issues related to works and authors. Aside from occasional pioneering studies, 192 the ‘theory of literature’ had remained largely intuitive and implicit in critical practices until the 1960s, apparently holding that acculturation naturally results from the ‘appreciation’ of ‘great works’ (or ‘high culture’, ‘English letters’, ‘classic books’, etc.); and that English departments know which are the ‘great works’, and which ‘interpretation’ is valid for each one — the literary equivalent of the ‘right answer’, the pro-modern ballast of ‘modern education’ (I.64; II.192). The latter’s agenda of assimilating to mainstream culture (II.59, 63) was faithfully sustained as well: [172] In English classes, […] ‘literature’ [is] a canon of OK books, along with a normative or correct way of reading them: an official interpretation, authorized by what-ever school of scholarship or criticism is momentarily in the ascendant. […] The claim to full cultural American citizenship depends not just on speaking the right dialect but on distinguishing, as the unlettered cannot, between what is really ‘literature’ and junk, schlock, mere entertainment. (Leslie A. Fiedler, ‘Teaching English’) 193 The ‘authorized interpretations’ are mediated in lectures or textbooks for the learners to diligently reproduce or using their own devices, in essays or exams composed in a suitably ‘formal’ style. The outcome is then judged partly by validity and partly by style, including those lower-level ‘mechanical skills’ of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, which, though wholly irrelevant to literature, are the safest issues for telling what is or is not ‘correct’ (cf. II.7; V.37, 40). 190. Problems are heightened by historical distance. Highly respected literary texts, such as the Iliad or Antigone, which may seem pre-modern to us, must have seemed modernist to their first audiences, e.g., in working though the mythical past from the vantage point of the historical present; or even post-modernist, e.g., in deconstructing the power relations between the divine and the human and inverting their hierarchical opposition, as for the ignoble gods versus noble warriors of the Iliad. But these larger issues tend to be neglected when literary studies gets distracted by the mechanics of the quest for the single ‘valid interpretation’ through historical reconstructions, explication of allusions, and even poor translations. 191. As a matter of theory, this quest has not been supported by any of the literary authors I have spoken to or read about. On the contrary, their consensus has been to see the essence of literature in its inclusive openness to free interpretation, befitting the principle I call ‘alternativity’ (II.175, 182). The literary experience should be a process of actualisation wherein the reader actively shares the ‘textual work’ of constructing the world of the text, the characters, the culture, and the historical and geographical setting; for the great work, the process is never exhausted — a hopeful utopia — which is why it can be endlessly reread. An interpretation can be rendered more plausible if it helps to situate the text in its cultural or historical context, e.g., by referring us to some contemporary notions of astronomy or anatomy reflected in Elizabethan drama. But to call it simply ‘valid’ implicates a premature closure that excludes as ‘invalid’ the responses of ordinary audiences, say, to a performance of Henry VI or All’s Well That Ends Well, even though Shakespeare’s plays skilfully resist a single reading, e.g., to decide who’s ‘good’ and who’s ‘evil’.
192. As a matter of practice, confronting learners with ‘valid interpretations’ beyond their own scope can distort the literary experience as a process of alienation. What you ‘learn’ is that your own skills of interpretation are woefully inadequate, and that literature is too academic and esoteric to read on your own in later life — a hopeless utopia. Here, practice not merely contradicts intentions of literary authors, but does them a signal disservice by alienating their potential readership. 193. Unlike some older colleagues, I favour using filmed versions in parallel with reading the works, which can bridge an immediacy of experience that print alone may not provide. Such a film counts as a ‘visual interpretation’ with its own methods and priorities of meaning-making, with no claims to be ‘right’ or ‘valid’. Presenting alternate films of the same text and discussing the contrasts helps to highlight openness, e.g., which version of a character seems more or less likeable. 194. Or, texts can be selected that motivate creative response. In one project, a first-year US college class was given texts of pop songs, which brings multiple several advantages. They are familiar and less intimidating than the poetry of ‘high culture’, which may have been ‘taught’ in alienating ways in secondary school. They are easily to obtain, so that learners picked their own as the course proceeded. And some are quite profound, being the contemporary equivalent of poetry readings of more ‘literate’ (or ‘literary) eras. Songwriters like Leonard Cohen have explicitly made this point, reinforcing it with the restrained musical environments of his early albums. In the most famous of these, Suzanne, the song’s heroine has ‘a place by the river’, which seems to have triggered an analogy to the water imagery relating to Jesus in the New Testament, when he ascended to heaven [173] or counselled the woman of Samaria at Jacob’s Well [174]. [173] And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up straightway out of the water: and, lo, the heavens were opened unto him, and he saw the Spirit of God (Matthew 3:16) [174] the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life. (John 4:14) The song text directly invokes the celebrated miracle of ‘walking on water’, recounted in Matthew 14.2233 as a test of the disciples’ ‘faith’: [175] And Jesus was a sailor When he walked upon the water And he spent a long time watching From his lonely wooden tower And when he knew for certain Only drowning men could see him, He said, ‘All men shall be sailors, then Until the sky shall free them!” But he himself was broken Long before the sky would open, Forsaken, almost human,
He sank beneath your wisdom like a stone. (Suzanne) The interpretation of my student Dennis Carrillo, working alone and with no outside materials, included these comments: [176] He spent a long time paying penance for our sins (wooden tower = cross). His chosen few were desperate sinners who sorely needed his advice. A ‘drowning man’ is dangerous and avoided by others, could represent loneliness. […] Jesus died way before he saw his vision fulfilled (almost human = had a demise). You rationalized him into non-existence. He ‘sank’ as sailors who lose control do, like a ‘stone’, as we evolved from the tablets of the covenant we abandoned as we advance in science and technology. This is of course no model of professional (or professorial) ‘criticism’, but it does manifest a heartening creativity and self-reliance of response. He also drew a link between Jesus and Suzanne in the next and final verse: ‘Now Suzanne (like a saviour) leads you (like you wanted) to the river (where you’ll be a sailor)’. 195. The language programme too confronts a population of learners with little authentic experience, this time in academic or ‘formal’ writing. Much schoolwork on the primary and secondary levels involves the English language in episodic and passive modes, such as copying from blackboards and notebooks and giving short answers or just ticking boxes in multiple-choice tests. When required now to compose and organise extended prose, the learners justly feel unprepared. As in literary studies, they may be alienated by concluding that that their own skills are woefully inadequate and the required skills unattainable — another hopeless utopia (II.192). The alienation is strongest if their home varieties of language are mainly oral and do not equip them for the different media of formal written English. Moreover, mere orthography may present dire obstacles and expose them to the patronising and pedantic ministrations of teachers who mistake weak literacy for ‘low intelligence’. 196. To offset lack of experience, lower-level ‘skills’ courses offer a practical initiation to ‘composition’ or ‘expository writing’, or, for ‘non-traditional’ learners, ‘basic writing’. 197 This latter group was evidently being admitted on the theory that they should and could fully adapt to the conventional discourses of higher education. Yet most English staff were blankly unprepared to facilitate this task, lacking familiarity with these home varieties, or regarding them as pitifully ‘incorrect’. They had been expressly trained for ‘teaching literature’ to mainstream learners, and they tended to reduce ‘teaching composition’ or ‘basic writing’ to the ‘remediation of errors’, among which such technicalities as ‘sentence fragments’, ‘comma splices’, and ‘subject-verb agreement’ were painfully belaboured — not because they are vital for communication but because they are easy to mark. Students justly felt alienated to be channelled into ‘remedial’ courses (secretly mocked with epithets like ‘bonehead English’); and to be ‘graded’ or ‘marked’ by criteria implying the absolute ‘incorrectness’ of their home language varieties. 197. The upper-level ‘linguistics’ courses hardly brightened the picture. Follow-ing the tendencies in the field outlined in sections II.C and II.D, ‘descriptive’ or ‘generative’ studies ranked theory over practice, treating ‘language’ as an abstract, uniform system. Instruction was mostly lectures on theoretical topics like ‘phonemic features’, ‘syntactic transformations’, or ‘analytic propositions’. In place of authentic data, illustrations were typically brief, isolated bits of invented data that do not reflect natural fluent English, like ‘the man hit the ball’ (II.79). 198. If the literature courses train you to work in literature programmes (II.187), linguistics courses train you to work in linguistics programmes. Yet the demand for this latter training is acutely uneven, as I
found by surveying all the postings from 1999, 2000, and 2001 of ‘Jobs Topics’ on Linguist List Website.195 Among the 1,896, job openings, applied linguistics plus TEFL and TESOL had 527, applications to computers and engineering (which may not even be offered in linguistics programmes) had 537. By contrast, the figures for the mainstream areas were: Phonetics 70, Phonology 137, Morphology 23, Syntax 139, Semantics 92, and Pragmatics 27. Slim pickings. 199. These figures strongly counsel language and linguistics programmes to concentrate on language teaching and limit or phase out purely theoretical specialisations. English promises to remain the preeminent language of power, though difficult to learn and patently unsystematic in its Orthography and Morphology, whilst its Grammar and Vocabulary are littered with inconsistencies, exceptions, and special cases. All the better for business. 200. Moreover, we might contend with the problems inherited from lower-division schooling, where ‘English’ is a compulsory subject with authoritarian teaching and passive learning, such as memorizing samples just to pass the next ‘exam’ — yet another recourse to the ancient method of rote memorisation (cf. I.49) — and then forgetting them. As one of my students in Arabia wrote, ‘I spent nine years learning English without learning it’. Such students naturally struggle to compensate by cobbling their own English, e.g. in essays on teacher education [177], literature on film [178], social classes [179], varieties of English [180], and even Shakespeare [181]. They are merely befuddled by academic courses requiring them to discuss syntax [182-83] or semantics [184-85] (native speakers of Setswana). [177] The right caring of schooling process by provision all causing of educated generation that can comply with theirselves. [178] Miss Raymond looks smelly [= smiley] face but speaks in pride ways. She collects her hair in the back. Her teeth look when she talks, and she owns angry tone. She is a liar person who lied to disappear her ignorant. [179] If anyone dressed by the name footman he will be shame that they don’t even want to wear their clothes. In the US was not respect and tricker man and swindle person. [180] When the British colony found in Jamaica a new of the English language began. The people there use a Pidgin in a bar named Bar Bados. Those Jamaican people for strength English when they speaker their language. [181] Shakespeare considers one of the greatest writers in the history of English effected on the language. His vocabulary more than 39 words. He invited many words like in his books and nice plays likeMutter and Mutter. [= Measure for Measure] [182] In linear order, some words belong together with others but not with others. [183] If an utterance breaks down it shows it is an acceptable sentence. [184] ‘My unmarried sister is married to a bachelor’. This sentence may nullify a marriage. [185] ‘His typewriter has bad intensions’: The expression is metaphorical. The sentence may be interpreted to mean that the typewriter has bad attitude of making mistakes. Such programmes surely resemble a ladder with the lower rungs missing (II.186). Successful learners come from the contingent of insiders with access to outside resources such as videocorders, satellite television, Internet, or overseas travel.
201. If university departments hope to compete with burgeoning private schools, significant measures (discussed on my website at www.beaugrande.com)777 should be taken to secure their future: (1) determine the social, educational, and profess-sional needs for English within the society; (2) describe any local varieties of English which the learners are likely to encounter outside the classroom; (3) develop reliable methods to assess the current degree of fluency among a given group of learners; (4) develop methods that build directly upon that degree of fluency; (5) create the conditions for learners to discover English at their own pace and initiative; and (6) provide easy access to large sets of authentic data. 202. My own projects accordingly make increasing use of concordance software for browsing large corpora.196 For instance, students get multiple occurrences of the same term in rich contexts, and infer the meanings, shown in [186-93] for a task at the University of the United Arab Emirates. They not merely experience more authentic English but hone their skills for inferring from context. [186] he tried to raise her self-respect with fine clothes and flattery (Wuthering) => elegant [187] Harriet was short, plump, and fair, with a fine face (Emma) => delicate [188] I heard rain strike earth in fine needles of water (Ulysses) => thin [189] Mr Elton has not such a fine air and way of walking as Mr Knightley. (Emma) => dignified [190] ‘A fine husband you are!’ said Mrs Glegg scornfully. (Floss) => worthless [191] Don’t trust them fine-talking men from the big city. => smooth, flattering [192] I shall come and see your mother some fine day. (Little Women) => some indefinite future day [193] we get a fine day, and then down comes a snapper at night. (Madding Crowd) => cool and cloudy Thinking a ‘fine day’ is ‘cool and cloudy’ [193] makes perfect sense in Arabia’s Empty Quarter, one of the hottest and sunniest deserts on earth. And a ‘snapper’ (i.e., cold snap) makes no sense at all there. 203. The organisation of English departments sketched here has been gradually moving away from its narrow conventions, though at uneven rates. In the ‘literature programme’, studies have migrated toward an explicitly theoretical plane, emblematically called ‘literary theory’ or ‘theories of literature’, seeking to define what constitutes a ‘literary text’ and what characterises the writing and reading of ‘literature’ as discourse. The repertory has become impressively diverse, covering aesthetics, poetics, formalism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, feminism, marxism, and psychoanalysis. The ‘canon’ has broadened to admit ‘non-canonical’ or multicultural literatures, e.g., the works of minorities and immigrants, and ‘mass culture’, as well as English (or ‘Anglophone’) literatures produced in Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. Some English departments have indeed been catapulted to the intellectual forefront of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, whilst the social sciences scramble to keep up. 204. Reciprocally, studies in the ‘language programme’ have migrated toward a more practical plane, some adopting the term ‘discourse analysis’. Here too, the repertory is impressively diverse, covering face-toface conversations, telephone conversations, interviews, business transactions, labour negotiations, science textbooks, technical manuals, e-mails, Internet chat sites, and — now programmat-ically treated as discourse — literature. Instruction features discussions where teachers and students interact in
analysing substantive sets of authentic language samples in rich contexts, including authentic corpus data (Ch. VI-VII). 205. An incisive concept for the times is critical literacy,200 working in hearty alliances with critical discourse analysis and deconstruction: [194] Literacy […] is as much about ideologies, identities and values as about codes and skills. Critical literacy provides us with ways of thinking that uncover social inequal-ities and injustices. It enables us to become agents of social change. We deconstruct the structures and features of texts. […] As we examine the underlying values and consider the ways in which we, as readers and viewers, are positioned to view the world, we are able to develop opposing interpretations. (Tasmanian Statement on English) 197 An alliance with ecologism might be equally strategic. 206. These recent developments signal an auspicious opportunity to renew English departments and to reintegrate us into the university and the society. We could regain a genuine dialectic between theory and practice by providing broadly inclusive forums for dealing with real communicative issues and problems. We would be devoted to helping students from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds to actualise their potential and manage the communicative require-ments of their education and their desired future careers. Our approach would be consultative rather than prescriptive, offering relevant advice rather than enforcing irrelevant rules (cf. II.24, 134). 207. In parallel, we could inaugurate a vigorous programme of substantive research compiling and assessing authentic practical data from the languages and language varieties all across the society for which ‘education’ is, in theory, to be provided. After gauging the prevailing degrees of linguistic uniformity or diversity, we could finally estimate how the communicativedemands of education are experi-enced by the respective groups, and could implement practical strategies for rendering those demands more inclusive and appropriate. Also, we could finally achieve a consensus about the practical strategies for efficient and effective reading and writing, and about our own methods of communicating with apprentice readers and writers from diverse backgrounds. 208. By rights, ‘language departments’ belong at the centre of education as a communicative enterprise. Our most immediate concern should be to work with the students’ home languages and varieties, and build upon the skills they already command. So a multilingual region or society requires a centre coordinating multi-ple languages and varieties so closely that fluency in one supports rather than impedes fluency in another. Inside the university, the centre should sustain wide outreach into every domain of specialised education where language skills are essential, e.g., by providing strategic, data-based modules in ‘language for academic purposes’ and ‘language for professional purposes’.198 209. Within an ecologist agenda, such language centres could have a compelling responsibility. If, as I maintain, the process of ‘getting educated’ consists not merely of acquiring special knowledge but also of communicating it (I.76, 84), then a language centre should assume the pivotal role in mediating and highlighting this process, actively supporting the linguistic and discursive training of ‘educated’ persons to share knowledge with the people who vitally need it. Notes to Chapter II 1 Compare Glendon F. Drake, The Role of Prescriptivism in American Linguistics, 18201970 (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1977); Edward Finegan, Attitudes toward Language Usage (NY: Teachers College Press, 1980); and Deborah Cameron, Verbal Hygiene (London: Routledge, 1995).
2 Pānini, Astadhyayi, published in English translation with explanatory notes by S.D. Joshi and J.A.F. Roodbergen (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1991); compare George Cardona, Panini: A Survey of Research (The Hague: Mouton, 1976). 3
Al-Khalil ibn Ahmad al-Farahidim, Kitab al-’ayn: aw mu’jam fi al-lughan al-’arabiyah, published in facsimile in Arabic (Baghdad: Matba’at al-’Ani, 1967), but I can trace no English translation. See now Karin C. Ryding (ed.), Early Medieval Arabic: Studies on al-Khalil ibn Ahmad (Washington DC: Georgetown UP, 1998).
4 Representative works include Diomedes, Grammatica for Greek; and Donatus Ortigraphus, Ars Grammatica for Latin. Ancient studies were often commentaries on discourses, e.g., Aristotle on Homeric epic, and St. John Chrysostomos on the New Testament, and hence forerunners of text linguistics and discourse analysis. 5
Where needed, data sources carry author’s name or a short title (e.g. Eyre for Jane Eyre) explained in a Key on pages 365-68; or else superscripts: BAWC for my own British and American Writers Corpus, BNC for the British National Corpus, and www for the Internet. No page numbers can be supplied for electronic archives. [12] is from Stockport Grammar School 1487-1987 (Congleton: Old Vicarage Publications, 1987).
6 A Generation of Schooling (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1984). 7 English version cited in Robert L. Cooper, Language Planning and Social Change (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1989), pp. 10f. 8
9
A new edition of Dictionnaire de l’Académie is now gradually coming out in separate volumes, regarding which the Académie says it has ‘hardly varied in its principles: respect for good usage imposes itself more than ever’ (my translation). www.academie-francaise.fr.
10 Quoted in Sidney Greenbaum, Good English, his Inaugural Lecture at University College London in 1984, p. 14. 11 J. Blackwell Glynn, Public Sector Financing Control (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1993). 12 Cox on Cox (Sevenoaks, Kent: Hodder-Stoughton, 1991). 13 By Vincent Foster Hopper and R.P. Craig (Hauppauge, NY: Barrons, 1986). 14 See S. Greenbaum and J. Taylor, ‘The recognition of usage errors by instructors of freshman composition’, College Composition and Communication 32, 1981, 169-74. 15 See William Jones, Discourses Delivered Before the Asiatic Society (London: Arnold, 1824), whose key lecture was held in Calcutta in 1786. 16 Fundamental works in philology are Jakob Grimm, Deutsche Grammatik (Göttingen: Dieterichsche Buchhandlung, 1822-37); Franz Bopp, Vergleichende grammatik des sanskrit, send, armenischen, griechischen, lateinischen, litauischen, altslavischen, gothischen und deutschen (Berlin: F. Dümmler; 1833); and Wilhelm von Humboldt, Über die Verschiedenheit des menschlichen Sprachbaus (Berlin: Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1836). An early survey in English, ‘The History of Modern Philology’, New Englander and Yale Review 16/63, 1858, 465-511, covers earlier scholar-ship too. A recent
survey is Bernard Cerquiglini, In Praise of the Variant: A Critical History of Philology, transl. Betsy Wing (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1999). 17 Fundamental works in language ancestry include Rasmus Rask, Angelsaksisk spro-glære tilligemed en kort læsebog (Stockholm: Wiborgs, 1810); August Leskien, Handbuch der altbulgarischen (altkirchenslavischen) sprache (Weimar: H. Böhlau, 1886); and Wilhelm Braune, Althochdeutsche Grammatik (Halle: Max Niemeyer, 1891). See also Grimm’s fine work (Note 16) on the ancestry of Germanic languages. 18 See Hugh Lecaine Agnew, Origins of the Czech National Renascence (Pittsburgh: U of Pittsburgh P, 1994). 19 A fundamental work was Friedrich Karl Christian Brugmann and Berthold Delbruck, Grundriss der vergleichenden Grammatik der indogermanischen Sprachen (Strass-burg: K.J. Trubner, 1886-1900). 20 Compare the account in Joseph Greenberg, Indo-European and Its Closest Relatives (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 2000). 21 Fundamental works in early dialectology include Johann Christoph Adelung, Grammatisch-kritisches Wörterbuch der hochdeutschen Mundart (Leipzig: Breitkopf, 1793-1801); and Johann Andreas Schmeller, Die Mundarten Bayerns grammatisch dargestellt (Munich: M. Hueber, 1821). 22 The composition dates of both texts are disputed: Beowulf perhaps in the 7 th or 8th centuries, though the sole manuscript dates from about 1000 A.D; the Hildebrandslied perhaps around 770 and then copied over into another dialect around 820 (II.138). 23 Texts from Friedrich. Klaeber (ed.), Beowulf (Lexington, MA: D.C. Heath, 1922); and Wilhelm Braune, Althochdeutsches Lesebuch (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 1902). 24 These laryngeals had been postulated by Ferdinand de Saussure, in Mémoire sur le système primitif des voyelles dans les langues indo-européens (Leipzig: B.G. Teubner, 1879). Fittingly, Hittite has been ‘comparatively’ described by Edgar H. Sturtevant, Comparative Grammar Language (Northford, CT: Elliot’s Books, 1957).
of
the
Hittite
25 An overview is in Martin Joos (ed.), The Development of Descriptive Linguistics in America, 19251956 (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1966); and in Chs I-V of my volume Linguistic Theory (London: Longman, 1991). 26 Otto Neurath, Niels Bohr, John Dewey, Bertrand Russell, Rudolf Carnap, and Charles Morris, ‘Encyclopedia and unified science’, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science 1/1, 1938, 1-75. On use for language study, see Leonard Bloomfield, ‘Linguis-tic aspects of science’, International Encyclopedia of Unified Science I/4, 1949. 27 As in Leonard Bloomfield, Language (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1933), and Kenneth L. Pike, Language in Relation to a Unified Theory of the Structure of Human Behavior (The Hague: Mouton, 1967 [originals 1945-64]). 28 As in Ferdinand de Saussure, Course in General Linguistics (NY: McGraw-Hill, 1966 [original 1916]), and Edward Sapir, Language (NY: Harcourt, Brace, & World, 1921).
29 Bloomfield, Note 27, pp. 6f, 500, 496, decried the ‘grammarians’ of ‘our school tradition’ for ‘ignoring actual usage in favour of speculative notions’ and for promulgating ‘fanciful dogmas’, ‘doctrines’, and ‘rules’ that ‘prevail in our schools’. 30 Compare Benjamin F. Elson of the Summer Institute, ‘Linguistic Creed’. www 31 Saussure, Note 28, p. 184. 32 Saussure, Note 28, pp. 13, 232, 9, 14. Roman Jakobson, in Main Trends in the Science of Language (London: Harper, 1970), pp. 20f, noted that the Saussurian dichotomies ‘reflect’ ones made around 1880 by the Kazan school, such as Jan Baudouin de Courtenay and Mikołai Kruszewski, who are credited with originating the concept of the phoneme (Note 38); Jakobson cites Baudouin’s ‘jazyk’ and ‘reč’. 33 Saussure, Note 28, pp. 104, 67. 34 Modelling language as verbal behaviour was strongest in Pike’s Unified Theory (Note 27). On the feebler model in B.F. Skinner, Verbal Behavior (NY: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1957), see my Text Production (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1984), pp. 57ff. 35 Bloomfield, (Note 27), p. 33, who forcefully advocated the ideology of mechanism. 36 Compare Saussure, Note 28, p. 120: ‘in language there are only differences without positive terms’. 37 Compare Claude Lévi-Strauss, Anthropologie structurale (Paris: Plon, 1958); Josué Harari (ed.), Structuralists and Structuralism (Ithaca: Diacritics, 1971); and Francois Dosse, History of Structuralism(Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1997). 38 Phonology probably began with Mikołai Habdanc Kruszewski, Über die Lautabwechs-lung and Jan Ignacy Niecisław Baudouin de Courtenay, Otryvki iz lektsii po fonetikie i morfologii russkogo jazyka both published by the University of Kazan in 1879 and 1882 but little known in the West, where the classic work has been Nikolai Trubetzkoy, Grundzüge der Phonologie (Prague: Czechoslovakian Ministry of Education, 1939). 39 The foundations of phonetics were laid in Alexander Melville Bell, A new elucidation of the principles of speech and elocution (Edinburgh: self-published, 1849); his inventive son Alexander Graham Belloffered the world Visible Speech: The Science of Universal Alphabetics (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co., 1867). Compare also Kenneth Lee Pike, Phonetics: A Critical Analysis of Phonetic Theory and a Tecnic for the Practical Description of Sounds (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1943). 40 For me the classic work is Eugene Nida, Morphology: The Descriptive Analysis of Words (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1949). Pike’s work cited in Note 27 was a landmark too, but its publication as a whole was rather delayed. 41 For a more detailed account, see my New Foundations, cited in Note 13 to Ch. I, pp. 42f. 42 Compare Dieter Kastovsky, Old English Deverbal Substantives Derived by Means of a Zero Morpheme (Tübingen: U of Tübingen PhD thesis, 1968).
43 See now Paul Newman and Martha Ratliff (eds.), Linguistic Fieldwork (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001). 44 See previous Note, and the section on ‘Field techniques’ in Nida’s work (Note 40), pp. 175-91. Pike was a master of the practice, but his Unified Theory says regrettably little about it. Compare also Alan Healey, ‘Handling unsophisticated linguistic informants’, Linguistic Circle of Canberra Publications, Series A, No. 2, 1964. 45 Juba data reported by Richard Watson in Robert E. Longacre et al., Storyline Concerns and Word Order Typology in East and West Africa (Los Angeles: UCLA Dept. of Linguistics, 1990), pp. 160ff. The source describes them in somewhat different terms. 46 See Olga Akhmanova (ed.), Lexicology: Theory and Method (Moscow: Moscow State U, 1972); Julie Coleman and Christian Kay (eds.) Lexicology, Semantics, and Lexicog-raphy (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000). Books on Lexemes are rare indeed. 47 On Lexicography, see now Iurii Derenikovich Apresian, Systematic Lexicography (Oxford: Oxford UP, 2000); Reinhardt R.K. Hartmann, Teaching and Researching Lexicography (London: Longman, 2001). My views are in ‘Text linguistics, discourse analysis, and the discourse of dictionaries’, in Ad Hermans (ed.), Les dictionnairés specialises et l’analyse de la valeur (Louvain-la-Neuve: Peeters, 1997), 57-74. 48 On descriptive Syntax, see Zellig Sabattai Harris, Methods in Structural Linguistics (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1951). Books on Syntagmemes are also rare, at least in English. The Tagmeme was curtly defined by Bloomfield, Note 27, p. 264, as a ‘minimal meaningful unit’ which sounds the same as the Morpheme; Pike’s own definition of the ‘tagmeme’ was sometimes obscure: ‘a verbal motifemic-slotclass-correlative’, Note 27, p. 195. 49 Opposed by Pike, ‘A problem in the morphology-syntax division’, Acta Linguistica 5, 1949, 125-38. 50 Zellig Sabattai Harris, Methods in Structural Linguistics (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1951); and ‘Discourse analysis’, Language 28, 1952, 1-30 and 474-494. 51 The standard overview is John Lyons, Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1977). 52 ‘On sentence-sense word-sense and difference of word-sense’, in Danny D. Steinberg and Leon Jakobovits (eds.), Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1971), p. 20f. For a thorough deconstruction, see my ‘Linguistics as discourse: A case study from semantics’, WORD 35, 1984, 15-57. 53 By James Hurford and Brendan Heasley, (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1983), pp. 28f. 54 Bloomfield, cit. in Note 27, p. 264, called ‘sememes’ the meanings of morphemes’, but didn’t elaborate. Nor did Louis Hjelmslev in his 1957 paper ‘Pour une sémantique structurale’, finally published in hisEssais linguistiques II (Copenhagen: Akademisk Forlag, 1973, 96-112). On the semantic features for ‘bachelor’, see Jerrold Katz and Jerry Fodor, ‘The structure of semantic theory’, Language 39, 1963, 170-210. A rebut-tal is in Dwight Bolinger, ‘The atomization of meaning’, Language 41, 1965, 555-73. 55 The major papers are handily assembled in Steven Davis (ed.), Pragmatics: A Reader (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991). 56 Notably, John Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1962); on the Performative, see p. 69.
57 Lyons, Note 57, p. 738. 58 See the UNESCO Red Book On Endangered Languages at the website of The International Clearing House for Endangered Languages, maintained by the Department of Asian Languages at the University of Tokyo www.tooyoo.l.u-tokyo. ac.jp/ichel/ichel.html. 59 For the link to 17th century idealism, see Noam Chomsky, Cartesian Linguistics (NY: Harper & Row, 1966); and for the link to logic, see his Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory (Cambridge: M.I.T. dissertation, 1955). 60 The ‘standard’ works are by Noam Chomsky (who is pleased to call them so), i.e., Syntactic Structures (The Hague: Mouton, 1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1965). For a thorough deconstruction of this ‘research’ and its subsequent evolution, see my treatise ‘Performative speech acts in linguistic theory: The rationality of Noam Chomsky’, Journal of Pragmatics 29, 1998, 1-39. 61 Perhaps generative linguists equate ‘language’ with grammar’ because they show little interest in the rest of language? 62 Chomsky, Structures, Note 60, pp. 13ff. 63 See my paper ‘Sentence first, verdict afterwards: On the long career of the sentence’, WORD 50, 1999, 1-31. 64 Detailed in my paper in Note 60. 65 Quoted now in ‘Brainy baboons tackle the PC’, BBC World News 15/10/2001. 66 Noam Chomsky, Knowledge of Language (NY: Praeger, 1986). 67 I found just 24 sentences cited or ‘transformed’ in Aspects. 68 Note 60, pp. 149 and 152. 69 Chomsky, Aspects, Note 60, pp. 18f. 70 Chomsky Structures, Note 60, p. 17. 71 Chomsky Structures and Aspects, Note 60; yet the conception originated with his teacher Zellig S. Harris, e.g., ‘Co-Occurrence and Transformation in Linguistic Struc-ture’, Language 33/3, 1957, 283340. Compare also his paper on ‘The transformational model of language structure’, Anthropological Linguistics 1/1, 1959, 27-29. 72 Chomsky Structures, Note 60, pp. 46f. 73 Chomsky Aspects, Note 60, pp. 16, 135, 141. 74 Teun van Dijk, Text and Context: Explorations in the Semantics and Pragmatics of Discourse (London: Longman, 1977). 75 Chomsky, Aspects, Note 60, pp. 3f. 76 E. Dresher, and N. Hornstein, ‘On some supposed contributions of artificial intelli-gence to the scientific study of language’, Cognition 4, 1976, p. 328.
77 Chomsky, Aspects, Note 60, p. 201 78 Chomsky, Aspects, Note 60, pp. 25, 47. 79 Compare Emmon Bach, and Robert Harms (eds.), Universals in Linguistic Theory (NY: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1970); Bernard Comrie, Language Universals and Linguistic Typology (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1989); Dietmar Zaefferer (ed.), Semantic Universals and Universal Semantics (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1992). 80 Compare Louis Hjelmslev, Prolegomena to a Theory of Language. (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1969 [original 1943]), p. 18: ‘linguistic theory’ ‘cannot be verified — confirmed or invalidated — by reference to existing texts and languages’. 81 Chomsky, Aspects, Note 60, p. 8. 82 As in G. Webelhuth and D. Lightfoot (eds.), Government and Binding Theory and the Minimalist Program (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995). 83 Chomsky, ‘Language, politics, and composition’ (interview), in Gary Olsen and Irene Gales (eds.), Interviews: Cross-Disciplinary Perspectives on Rhetoric and Literacy (Carbondale: Southern Illinois UP, 1991), 61-95, here p. 88. 84 Even just in linguistics proper, citing works on functionalism is tricky because diverse approaches have appropriated the term, including formalist ones seeking camouflage. My own surveys are ‘Function and form in language theory and research’, Functions of Language 1/2, 1994, 163-200; and ‘On history and historicity in modern linguistics: Formalism versus functionalism revisited’, Functions of Language4/2, 1997, 169-213. On bridging the linguistic concept with social research, see now Phil Graham, ‘Widening the context for interdisciplinary social research: SFL as a method for sociology, anthropology, and communication research’, Paper delivered at the University of Queensland for the Annual Conference of the Australian Systemic Functional Linguistics Association, 1-3 October, 1999. 85 Formalism is also associated with studies of language in poetics and the narrative; see now Andrzej Karcz, The Polish Formalist School and Russian Formalism (Rochester: U of Rochester P, 2002). For critiques in other domains, see Morton Gabriel White’s classic, Social Thought in America: The Revolt Against Formalism (NY: Viking 1949); and Jay F. Rosenberg, Beyond Formalism: Naming and Necessity for Human Beings (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1994). 86 Compare Hilary Putnam, Mind, Language, and Reality. (Cambridge, Cambridge UP, 1975); Ned Block, ‘Troubles With Functionalism’, in C. Wade Savage (ed.), Percep-tion and Cognition: Issues in the Foundations of Psychology (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1978), pp. 171-84. 87 Compare Allan Newell, Unified Theories of Cognition (London: Harvard UP, 1990). 88 Compare Don Martindale (ed,) Functionalism in the Social Sciences: The Strength and Limits of Functionalism in Anthropology, Economics, Political Science, and Sociology (Philadelphia: American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1965); George W. Stocking (ed.) Functionalism Historicized: Essays on British Social Anthropology (Madison: U of Wisconsin P, 1988).
89 Compare Bronislaw Malinowski, A Scientific Theory of Culture (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1944); Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown; Structure and Function in Prim-itive Society (London: Cohen and West, 1952). 90 Compare Robert Dreeben, On What Is Learned in School (Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley); Michael Apple, Education and Power (Boston: ARK, 1985). 91 Compare Ernst B. Haas, Beyond the Nation-State: Functionalism and International Organization (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1964); David Mitrany, The Functional Theory of Politics (NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1976). 92 By Geraldo Carneiro (Rio de Janeiro: Editora Objetiva, 2000). 93 In 1995, a ‘Linguistics Symposium’ called for papers that ‘speak to the relationship between linguistic functionalism and formalism’. The proceedings later appeared, edited by Mike Darnell et al.,Functionalism and Formalism in Linguistics: Case Studies (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1999), offered at Amazon for $118 to $171. I didn’t find the paper titles attractive enough for that kind of money, and some sounded downright ominous. 94 All sources are given in my paper on Chomsky’s discourse cited in Note 60. 95 Some contributors also worked in Brno, Ostrava, and Bratislava. Daneš and Firbas have told me that Prague School work was suspected by repressive governments, first by the ‘Nazis’ and then by the ‘Communists’, especially after the Soviet invasion of 1968, when some were dismissed from their posts and forbidden to publish. 96 Vilém Mathesius, A Functional Analysis of Present Day English on a General Linguistic Basis (Prague: Academie Věd, 1975 [published in Czech in 1961, but composed much earlier]), p. 159. 97 Classic works include Mathesius, Note 96; František Daneš, (ed.), Papers on Function-al Sentence Perspective (Prague: Academie Věd, 1974); Jan Firbas, Functional Sentence Perspective in Written and Spoken Communication (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1992). A good guide is Jan Firbas and Eva Golková, An Analytic Bibliography of Czechoslovakian Studies in Functional Sentence Perspective (Brno: Pyrkyn UP, 1976). 98 See Mathesius, ‘On linguistic characterology’, Actes du Ier Congrès International des Linguistes, 1928, 56-63; and his book cited in the Note to 85. 99 Mathesius, ‘On some problems of the systematic analysis of grammar’, Travaux du Cercle Linguistique de Prague 6, 1936, 95-107; Bohumil Trnka, ‘On the linguistic sign and the multi-level organization of language’, Travaux Linguistiques de Prague 1, 1964, 33-40. 100
Mathesius, Note 96, p. 124f.
101 Jan Firbas, ‘On the concept of communicative dynamism in the theory of functional sentence perspective’, Sborník prací Filosofické Fakulty Brněnské Univerzity A 19, 1971, 135-44. 102 I sorted out Theme and Rheme and similar pairs in ‘The heritage of functional sentence perspective from the standpoint of text linguistics’, Linguistica Pragiensa 34/1-2, 1992, 2-26 and 55-86. 103 For the New Testament citations and their discussion I am indebted to Jan Firbas, ‘On the thematic and rhematic layers of a text’, in B. Wårvik, S.K. Tanskanen and B. Hiltunen (eds.), Organisation in
Discourse. Anglicana Turkuensia 14, 1995, 59-71. I replace the modern English translation in his discussion with the King James Version. 104 The name of the approach is not altogether felicitous, since linguistics is in general ‘systemic’ and others approaches are ‘functional’; but the combination is an enduring international trademark. 105 Classic works include Michael Halliday, Intonation and Grammar in British English (The Hague: Mouton, 1967), and his Introduction to Functional Grammar (London: Arnold, 1985, second revised edition 1994). A useful guide is the Select Bibliography of Systemic Function Linguistics maintained by John Bateman on the Internet at www.fb10.uni-bremen.de/ anglistik/langpro/bibliographies/index.htm 106
Halliday, Explorations in the Function of Language (London: Arnold, 1973), p. 67.
107 Halliday, ‘Linguistics as metaphor’, in Anne-Marie Simon-Vandenbergen, Kristin Davidse, and Dirk Noël (eds.), Reconnecting Language: Morphology and Syntax in Functional Perspectives (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1997), 3-27. See now G. David Morley, Syntax in Functional Grammar: An Introduction to Lexicogrammar in Systemic Linguistics (London: Continuum, 2000). 108 Compare Ruqaiya Hasan, ‘Text in the systemic-functional model’, in Wolfgang Dressler (ed.), Current Trends in Text Linguistics (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978), 228-46; Michael Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan,Language, Context, and Text (Geelong: Deakin UP); James R. Martin, English Text: System and Structure (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1992); and Mohsen Ghadessy (ed.), Text and Context in Functional Linguistics (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1999). 109 ‘Linguistic function and literary style: An inquiry into the language of William Golding’s The Inheritors’, in his Explorations, Note 106, pp. 121-38. 110 As far as I know, the term ‘discursivism’ in the sense proposed here is an innovation; nor can I locate a single reference to ‘discursive linguistics’, which would be debarred anyway by the (in)famous dichotomy between ‘langue’ and ‘parole’. 111 Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy (London: Plume 2003) pp. 93f, 318, 321f. As of this writing (October 2003), lawyer Lissu has been arrested and released on bail, whilst his lawyers have lodged a ‘constitutional reference’ averring that the charges violate the Tanzanian Bill of Rights. I am indebted to Vincent Sauri of the Lawyers Environmental Action Team in Tanzania for this update. 112 Tara Jones and Robert Allen, Guests of the Nation: People of Ireland versus the Multinationals (London: Earthscan Publications, 1990). 113 Quoted in the Economist, ‘Let them eat pollution’, 8 February 1992, p. 66. Summers admitted the memo was his, but insisted it was ‘ironic’ — true enough, but in a sense no corporate cynic could remotely appreciate. 114 Compare the programmatic equations in the title of Walter A Koch (ed.), Strukturelle Textanalyse. Analyse du recit. Discourse Analysis. (Hildesheim: Olms, 1972). 115 As for overviews, my ideas on text linguistics are of course given in this Introduction, and the previous Introduction of 1981; a far wider scope is presented in my volume New Foundations for a Science of Text and Discourse (Note 9 to Ch. I); and see now Klaus Brinker et al. (eds.), Linguistics of Text and Conversation: An International Handbook of Contemporary Research (NY: de Gruyter, 2000). 116
Olga Akhmanova, Linguostylistics: Theory and Method (The Hague: Mouton, 1976).
117
See Note 97.
118
Walter A. Koch, Das Textem (Hildesheim: Olms, 1973).
119 I originally owed the crucial conception of ‘virtual system’ and actual ‘system’ to Peter Hartmann, Theorie der Sprachwissenchaft (Assen: van Gorcum, 1963). Later, I found a similar conception in systemic functional linguistics; see References in Note 108. 120 The classic work was Roland Harweg, Pronomina und Textkonstitution (Munich: Fink, 1968). Most other work has had a decidedly narrower scope. 121 John Hinds (ed.), Anaphora in Discourse (Champaign, IL: Linguistic Research, 1978); see now Simon Botley and Anthony Mark McEnery, Corpus-Based and Computa-tional Approaches to Discourse Anaphora (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000). 122
Michael Halliday and Ruqaiya Hasan, Cohesion in English (London: Longman, 1976).
123
By Rosemary McCall (London: Robert Hale, 1992).
124
By E. and K. Sallis (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1990).
125
By H.G. Widdowson (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992).
126 Teun van Dijk, Some Aspects of Text Grammars (The Hague: Mouton, 1972). 127 The term ‘textuality’ in the sense used here (and not, say, in post-modernism or in cyberspace) was perhaps launched in my previous Introduction to Text Linguistics with Wolgang Dressler (London: Longman, 1981). 128 The ‘seven standards of textuality’ were also launched in the previous Introduction of 1981, though drawing upon a partial formulation in Horst Isenberg, ‘Überlegungen zur Texttheorie’, in Jens Ihwe (ed.),Literaturwissenschaft und Linguistik: Ergebnisse und Perspektiven (Frankfurt: Athenäum, 1971), 150-73. See Ch. VIII for a reassessment. 129 A far more specific concept of cohesion covering a gallery of patterns linguistics had usually overlooked, was offered by Halliday and Hasan (Note 122). 130 A more specific concept of coherence, not derived from authentic data, was given in Irene Bellert, ‘On a condition of the coherence of texts’, Semiotica 2, 19 70, 335-63. 131
By Peter Hennessy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990).
132
By Bernard Bergonzi (Oxford: Clarendon, 1990).
133 On discourse analysis, see now Teun A. van Dijk (ed.), Discourse As Structure and Process: A Multidisciplinary Introduction (London: Sage 1997); Moira Chimombo and Robert Roseberry, The Power of Discourse (Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum, 1998); James Paul Gee, An Introduction to Discourse Analysis (London: Routledge, 1999); Linda Wood and Rolf Kroger, Doing Discourse Analysis: Methods for Studying Action in Talk and Text (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin, 2000); Stefan Titscher, Michael Meyer, and Ruth Wodak, Methods of Text and Discourse Analysis (translated by Bryan Jenner) (London: Sage, 2000); Penny Powers, The Methodology of Discourse Analysis (Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett, 2001); and Deborah Schiffrin, Deborah Tannen, Heidi Ehernberger Hamilton (eds.), Handbook ofDiscourse Analysis (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001).
134 Whereas the English term ‘text linguistics’ appears on 1,316 Internet Websites (Alta-Vista query), ‘discourse analysis’ appears on 16,454. For French, ‘linguistique de/du texte’ is at a mere 142, whilst ‘analyse de/du discours’ is at 2,151. For German, though, the proportions are modestly reversed: ‘Textlinguistik’ is at 3,311, and ‘Dis-kursanalyse’ at 2,817. 135 When I submitted a proposal to Longman for the old Introduction to Text Linguistics around 1977, they’d just signed a contract for Coulthard’s Introduction to Discourse Analysis, and I had to prepare a statement showing they were not the same field! 136 The classic work is of course Pike’s ‘unified theory’ (Note 27). Compare Pike’s Linguistic Concepts: An Introduction to Tagmemics (Lincoln: U of Nebraska, 1982); Kenneth Pike, Evelyn Pike, Wallace Chafe, and Johanna Nichols, Text and Tagmeme (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1983). 137 See Mary E. Holman, ‘The function of ‘ay ’, “then” in Waorani’, and Thomas W. Holman, ‘Waorani verb affixes’, both in Evelyn Pike and Rachael Saint (eds.), Workpapers Concerning Waorani Discourse Features (Dallas. SIL, 1988), 17-22 and 57-69; story text on pp. 120ff. 138 See Roy Turner (ed.), Ethnomethodology (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1974), with Harold Garfinkel’s paper, ‘The origins of the term “ethnomethodology”’ on pp. 15-18. 139
H. Mehan and H. Wood, The Reality of Ethnomethodology (NY: Wiley, 1975), 107-13.
140
A.W. McHoul, Telling How Texts Talk (London: Routledge, 1982), pp. 38f, 44ff.
141 On conversation analysis, see Harvey Sacks, Lectures on Conversation (ed. Gail Jefferson) (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995); Paul Ten Have, Doing Conversation Analysis: A Practical Guide (Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press, 1998). George Psathas, Conver-sation Analysis: The Study of Talk-InInteraction (London: Sage, 1995). On its critique of speech act theory, see Emmanuel Schegloff, ‘To Searle on conversation: A note in return’, in Herman Parrett and Jef Verschueren (eds.), On Searle on Conversation (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1992), pp. 113-28. 142 Emmanuel Schegloff, ‘On some questions and ambiguities in conversation’, in Wolf-gang U. Dressler (ed.), Current Trends in Text Linguistics (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978), 81-102. 143 The classic work was John McHardy Sinclair and Malcolm Coulthard, Towards an Analysis of Discourse (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1975). Compare now Heidi Riggenbach, Discourse Analysis in the Language Classroom (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1999); and Courtney B. Cazden, Classroom Discourse (London: Heinemann, 2001). 144
Lemke, Note 44 to Ch. I, pp. 245f.
145 Compare earlier work in Dominique Maingueneau, Initiation aux méthodes de l'analyse du discours (Paris: Hachette, 1976) with ‘post-modern’ work in Yves Boisvert, Le monde postmoderne: analyse du discours sur la postmodernité (Paris: L’Harmattan, 1996). 146
In Roland Barthes, Mythologies (transl. Annette Lavers) (NY: Hill and Wang, 1972).
147 Quoted by Alan Sokal and Jean Bricmont, Intellectual Impostures (London: Profile Books, 1999). See also Note 173. 148 On critical discourse analysis, see Jay Lemke, Textual Politics: Discourse and Social Dynamics (London: Taylor & Francis, 1995); Norman Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis (London:
Longman, 1996); Ruth Wodak, Disorders of Discourse (Reading, MA: Addison Wesley, 1996); Michael Toolan (ed.), Critical Discourse Analysis (Lon-don: Routledge, 2002); Ruth Wodak and Michael Meyer (eds.), Methods of Critical Discourse Analysis (London: Sage 2002). Continual updates are posted at the websites ‘Critics List’ at listserv.linguistlist.org/archives/critics-l.html and ‘Language in the New Capitalism’, at www.uoc.es/humfil/nlc/LNC-ENG/lnc-eng.html. On the latter topic, see also James Paul Gee, Glynda Hull, and Colin Lankshear, The New Work Order: Behind the Language of the New Capitalism (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997). 149
Disorders, Note 148, p. 15
150
Note 148, p. 27.
151
Freire, Note 1 to Ch. 1, p. 64.
152 To judge from the Internet, where ‘transdisciplinary’ finds 9457 websites, ‘transdisciplinar’ (Spanish and Portuguese) 2070, and ‘transdisciplinarity’ 1372, the idea has caught on. The Proceedings of the First World Congress of Transdiscipli-narity, edited by José Manuel Ferreira for Hugin Editores in Lisbon, has evidently not come out. Compare now Basarab Nicolescu, ‘The transdisciplinary evolution of the university: Conditions for sustainable development’; www Julie Thompson Klein (ed.), Transdisciplinarity: Joint Problem Solving among Science, Technology, and Society (Basel: Birkhäuser, 2001); and Rosalind Boyd and Alberto Florez-Malagón (eds.), Social Sciences and Transdisciplinarity: Latin American and Canadian Experiences (Montreal: McGill UP, 1999). 153 On corpus linguistics, see J. McH. Sinclair, Corpus Concordance and Collocation (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1991); Douglas Biber, Corpus Linguistics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998); Graeme D. Kennedy,An Introduction to Corpus Linguistics (London: Longman, 1998), and Elena TogniniBonelli, Corpus Linguistics at Work (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2001). 154
By Stewant Lamont (Edinburgh: St Andrews, 1989).
155 Being the ultimate football ignoramus who never even heard of Glenn Hoddle or Slim Jim Baxter until I installed the BNC, I am indebted to P.B. King for this point. 156 These terms were coined by J.R. Firth, but only with a handful of examples; see Selected Papers of J.R. Firth 1952-1959, ed. Frank R. Palmer (London: Longman, 1968). Today, the evidence for both is overwhelming, though some authors use the terms more narrowly, e.g., ‘collocation’ only for the exact words. 157
By Antony Milne (Bridport, Dorset: Prism Press, 1991).
158 Though lagging well behind ‘hypertext’ (Note 161), the term ‘intertext’ is popular in postmodernism, much of whose discourse falls into this category. On the Internet, it’s also a trendy name for services and businesses, e.g., ones that do translation. 159 Deborah Cameron, in Feminism and Linguistic Theory (London: Macmillan, 1992), pp. 114f, cites ‘skive’ and ‘naff’ when she remarks that ‘the quest for usage does not begin in the pub or on the bus but in libraries’; ‘you will find few words whose source is a text written by somebody working class, black, or for that matter female’. 160
By David Lawrence (London: Scripture Union, 1992).
161 The term ‘hypertext’ was apparently coined in the 1960s, in an unpublished paper by Ted Nelson entitled Literary Machines, for ‘an ongoing system of interconnecting documents’. Today it is ubiquitous on the Internet and in discourses about the Internet. 162
See Guy Aston and Lou Burnard, The BNC Handbook (Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1998).
163 Citing sources for post-modernism is the most difficult of all: it is vertiginously diversified, and some discourses are programmatically obscure (II.180), reflecting a deep mistrust of well-fenced definitions. Perhaps you could consult Charles Jencks, What Is Post-Modernism? (London: Academy Editions, 1996); and Pauline Marie Rosenau, Post-Modernism and the Social Sciences: Insights, Inroads, and Intrusions (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP, 1992); plus the works cited in Note 166. 164
E.g., N. Rescher, Pluralism: Against the Demand for Consensus (Oxford: Clarendon, 1995).
165 Susan Handelman, The Slayers of Moses: The Emergence of Rabbinical Interpretation in Modern Literary Theory (Albany: State U of New York, 1983). In an interview, Derrida declared her line of the argument (and Habermas’ use of it) ‘very problematic’; see Florian Rötzer, Französische Philosophen im Gespräch, (Munich: Klaus Boer, 1986), p. 74. 166 Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, Or, the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (Durham, NC: Duke UP, 1992). On the alignment with popular culture, compare also Jim Collins, Uncommon Cultures: Popular Culture and Post-Modernism (London: Rout-ledge, 1989); Dominic Strinati, Introduction to Theories of Popular Culture (London: Routledge, 1995); Gustavo Esteva, Grassroots Post-Modernism: Remaking the Soil of Cultures (London: Zed Books, 1998); and Sylvia Harrison, Pop Art and the Origins of Post-Modernism (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2001). 167 Compare Charles Taylor and Amy Gutmann, Multiculturalism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1994); Peter McLaren, Revolutionary Multiculturalism: Pedagogies of Dissent for the New Millennium (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1997); George Katsiaficas and Teodros Kiros (eds.), The Promise of Multiculturalism: Education and Autonomy in the 21st Century (London: Routledge, 1998); and Cynthia Willett (ed.), Theorizing Multiculturalism: A Guide to the Current Debate (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998). 168 Compare John R. Edwards, Multilingualism (London: Routlege, 1994); Tove Skutnabb-Kangas (ed.), Multilingualism for All (Lisse: Swets & Zeitlinger, 1995); Guus Extra and Jeanne Maartens (eds.)Multilingualism in a Multicultural Context: Case Studies on South Africa and Western Europe (Tilburg: Tilburg UP, 1998); Jan Blommaert (ed.), The Politics of Multilingualism and Language Planning(Anvers: Universiteit Antwerpen, 1995). 169 Compare Ngũgĩ Wa Thiong’O, Decolonizing the Mind: The Politics of Language in Africa. (Nairobi: Heinemann, 1986); Ian Adam and Helen Tiffin, Past the Theorizing Post-Colonialism and Post-Modernism (Calgary: U of Calgary P, 1990);
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Chris Tiffin and Alan Lawson (eds.), De-Scribing Empire: Post-Colonialism and Textuality (London: Routledge, 1994); Harish Trivedi and Meenakshi Mukherjee (eds.), Interrogating Post-Colonialism: Theory, Text and Context (Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Study, 1996); and Pal Ahluwalia and Paul Nursey-Bray (eds.), Post-Colonialism: Culture and Identity in Africa (Commack, NY: Nova Science Publishers, 1997).
170 Post-structuralism is somewhat easier to situate. Compare Josué Harari, (ed.), Textual Strategies: Perspectives in Post-Structuralist Criticism (Ithaca: Cornell UP, 1979); and Madan Sarup, An Introductory Guide to Post-Structuralism and Postmodernism (Athens, GA: Georgia UP, 1993). 171 Compare Harari’s edited volume cited in Note 171 to his earlier Structuralists and Structuralism (Ithaca: Diacritics, 1971). 172
Translated by A.M. Sheridan Smith (New York, Pantheon, 1972).
173 Quoted by Sokal and Bricmont (Note 147), who remark: ‘one finds in Baudrillard’s works a profusion of scientific terms, used with total disregard for their meaning and, above all, in a context where they are manifestly irrelevant’. See also Richard Dawkins. ‘Postmodernism disrobed’, Nature 394, 1998, 141-43. 174
‘Sacrificing the Text: The Philosopher/Poet at Mount Moriah’. www
175 Deconstruction is barely easier to define than post-modernism (Note 167). You might consult a collection of original sources, e.g., Martin McQuillan (ed.) Deconstruction: A Reader (London: Routledge,2001). My volume Critical Discourse (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1988), Chs, 12-15, details my own responses to several versions. Derrida says he ‘wished to translate and adapt to my own ends the Heideggerian word Destruktion or Abbau’ (see Note 180) and picked the term deconstruction ‘spontaneously’, but then found it the Littré dictionary, meaning, among other things, ‘disarranging the construc-tion of words in a sentence’. See his ‘Letter to a Japanese Friend’, in David Wood and Robert Bernasconi (eds.) Derrida and Differance (Warwick: Parousia, 1985), 1-5. 176 Translated by Alan Bass (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1972), p. 11. 177
Translated by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (Baltimore: John Hopkins UP, 1976).
178 See also Jacques Derrida, L’Écriture et la différance (Paris: Seuil, 1967). And contrast Saussure, Note 28, p. 23f: ‘the linguistic object is not both the written and the spoken forms of words; the spoken forms alone constitute the object’. 179 The attack on ‘Western metaphysics’ seems to have emanated from Martin Heidegger (whose philosophising I find frankly unreadable), e.g., in his 1957 lecture on ‘The Ontotheological Constitution ofMetaphysics’. See now Iain Thomson, ‘Ontotheology? Understanding Heidegger’s Destruktion’ of Metaphysics’,’ International Journal of Philosophical Studies 8/3, 20 00, 297–327. And compare Note 175. 180
(Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1981).
181
Paul De Man, Blindness and Insight (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1983), pp. 136, 133.
182 Paul de Man, ‘The rhetoric of temporality’, in Charles Singleton (ed.), Interpretation: Theory and Practice (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1969), 173-209. 183
In Harold Bloom et al., Deconstruction and Criticism (NY: Seabury, 1979), pp. 232, 237.
184 Paul de Man, Romanticism and Contemporary Criticism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins UP, 1993), p. 49. 185 As in J. Hillis Miller, ‘Ariachne’s broken woof’, Georgia Review 31, 1977, 44-60.
186 Classics of feminism include Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Women (NY: G. Vale, 1845); Simone de Beauvoir, Le deuxième sexe (Paris: Gallimard, 1968); Kate Millett, Sexual Politics(NY: Ballantine, 1970). See now bell hooks, Feminism Is for Everybody: Passionate Politics, and her Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (both Cambridge MA: South End Press, 2000); and Patricia Hill Collins, Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment (London: Routledge, 2000). 187
S. Townsend, in Women Artists’ Slide Library 1992.
188 See especially Henry Giroux, Border Crossings: Cultural Workers and the Politics of Education (London: Routledge, 1992). 189 Recent studies of acculturation have focussed on the social identities of diverse groups in a multicultural society, e.g., George E. Pozzetta (ed.), Assimilation, Acculturation, and Social Mobility (NY: Garland, 1991); Bill Ong Hing, To Be an American: Cultural Pluralism and the Rhetoric of Assimilation (NY: NYU P, 1997). Special concern naturally goes to descendants of prominent immigrant groups who value their home cultures, viz. Hope Landrine, African American Acculturation: Deconstructing Race and Reviving Culture (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 1996); and Franklin Ng (ed.) Adaptation, Acculturation, and Transnational Ties among Asian Americans (NY: Garland, 1998). The role of literature programmes in acculturation has been mainly discussed for foreign languages, viz. Ming-Sheng Li, ‘English literature teaching in China: Flowers and thorns’, The Weaver: A Forum for New Ideas in Education 2, 1998, posted at www.latrobe.edu.au/www/graded/MSLed2.html. Among those who have thoroughly deconstructed native-language acculturation into ‘high culture’, Leslie Fiedler stands out in What Was Literature? (NY: Simon and Schuster, 1982); compare Note 193. 190 Compare James Milroy and Lesley Milroy, Authority in Language: Investigating Language Prescription and Standardisation (London: Routledge, 1991) versus John Honey, Language is Power: The Story of Standard English and Its Enemies (London: Faber and Faber, 1997); and also Alastair Pennycook, The Cultural Politics of English as an International Language (London: Longman, 1994). 191
See now especially Namulundah Florence, bell hooks’ Engaged Pedagogy: A Trans-gressive
Education for Critical Consciousness (Westport, CT: Bergin & Garvey, 1998); and Marilyn MartinJones, Multilingual Literacies: Reading and Writing Different Worlds (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2000). 192 For example, Leo Spitzer, Linguistics and Literary History (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1930); René Wellek, and Austin Warren, Theory of Literature (NY: Harcourt, Brace, and World, 1956); Northrop Frye, Anatomy of Criticism (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1957). On the two latter works, see also my volume Critical Discourse. 193 ‘Teaching English’, ADE Bulletin Sept. 1980, 6-10. For Fiedler, ‘the traditional course in freshman composition or rhetoric’ ‘represents the true climax and final horror in the process of linguistic acculturation’ (same). 194 The classis work is Mina Shaughnessy, Errors & Expectations (NY: Oxford, 1977). Compare my paper ‘Using a “write-speak-write” approach for basic writers’ (with Mar Jean Olson), Journal of Basic Writing 10/2, 1991, 4-32. 195 Maintained by Michigan State University and Wayne State University at linguistlist. org/issues/indices/jobs.
196 Compare for example John Sinclair, ‘Large corpus research and foreign language teaching’, in Robert de Beaugrande, Meta Grosman, and Barbara Seidlhofer (eds.), Language Policy and Language Education in Emerging Nations (Stamford, CT: Ablex 1998), 79-86; Guy Aston, 1995, ‘Corpora in language pedagogy: Matching theory and practice’ in Guy Cook and Barbara Seidlhofer (eds.), Principle and Practice in Applied Linguistics (Oxford: Oxford UP 1995), 257-70; Simon Botley, Julia Glass, Tony McEnery, and Andrew Wilson (eds.) Proceedings of Teaching and Language Corpora 1996 (UCREL Technical Papers Volume 9); and Alan Partington, Pattern and Meanings (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 1998). 197 Compare Danny K. Weil, Towards a Critical Multicultural Literacy: Theory and Practice for Education for Liberation (NY: Peter Lang, 1998); Colin Lankshear (ed.) Critical Literacy: Politics, Praxis, and the Postmodern (Albany: SUNY, 1993); Heather Fehring and Pam Green (eds.), Critical Literacy (Norwood: Australian Literacy Educators’ Association, 2001); and Lettie Ramirez and Olivia M. Gallardo,Portraits of Teachers in Multicultural Settings: A Critical Literacy Approach (Boston: Allyn and Bacon, 2001). 198 Compare my own project in ‘User-friendly communication skills in the teaching and learning of Business English’, English for Specific Purposes 19/4, 2000, 331-350.
II. Lexicogrammar in the Study of Text and Discourse III. A Grammar, Lexicon, Lexicogrammar 1. Many studies of language have made a division, in both theory and practice, between ‘grammar’ (or ‘syntax’) and ‘lexicon’ (or ‘vocabulary’). Since classical antiquity, ‘traditional grammar’ has been a privileged domain of study — once for acquiring Latin or Greek as the foundation of a ‘liberal’ or ‘humanistic’ education, and later for cultivating ‘good usage’ in one’s native language (cf. II.A). In contrast, vocabulary has been a subsidiary miscellany, hardly meriting serious study. Similarly, the study of foreign languages has stressed learning ‘grammar’ from formal rules over learning ‘vocabulary’ from informal lists. 2. The operational theory might be that communication occurs when grammar furnishes a set of readymade patterns with slots to plug in vocabulary items.1 The theory took on visualform in one ‘descriptive’ model of modern linguistics allied to realism (cf. II.C). The linguistic sequence was shown in a vertical ‘axis of selection’ and a horizontal ‘axis of combination’ (Fig 13). 2
This model implied that picking the words — the contribution of the lexicon — might be a distinct operation from putting words in order — the contribution of grammar. So, formalist linguists feltreassured about describing the orderly ‘grammar’ (or ‘syntax’) apart from the seemingly disorderly ‘lexicon’ (cf. II.61).
3. ‘Grammar’ had a yet higher status in the theory and practice of ‘generative’ models of language, whose alliance to idealism looked to a general or even univer-sal system of order (II.75, 85). A ‘transformational grammar’ would formulate the ‘rules’ for ‘transforming’ one sentence structure into another with the same lexical items and the same meaning (cf. II.79f). 3 Or, a ‘generative grammar’ would formulate the ‘rules’ for ‘deriving’ the ‘surface structure’ of a sentence from its ‘deep structure’ (II.81)4 and leading to a ‘string’ with ‘insertions’ from ‘an unor-dered list of lexical formatives’ 5 — the old plug-in model with a new terminology. 4. ‘Functional’ models of language, in contrast, integrate the lexicon and grammar within the concept of the Lexicogrammar (II.108),6 which is a theory of the lexical and grammatical organisation of a language, and functions in a dialec-tical relation to the practices of selection and combination. Every fluent speaker of a language ‘knows the lexicogrammar’ in some version as theory, and, barring disturbances that might be shortterm (like getting confused or interrupted) or long-term (like suffering from memory loss or aphasia), everything you say in practice has an integrated ‘lexical’ and ‘grammatical’ organisation. The grammar specifies the types and patterns of combinations that guide and prefer various lexical selections while discourse is being realised. 5. The Lexicogrammar thus constitutes a ‘systemic’ theory designed to steer the transition between the ‘potential system’ of the language and the ‘actual system’ of a text or discourse (cf. II.111). Due to its range and variety, a complete instantiation of the theory in practice is a ‘hopeful utopia’, endlessly flexible and adaptive, never finalised in a fully complete or perfected state. Yet the practices are subject to richer constraints than are generally recognised. Typical grammatical combina-tions can be termed Colligations, such as ‘try’ + Possessive Pronoun + ‘hand at’ + Noun or Participle, meaning ‘casually engage in an activity’ [195-196]; typical lexical combinations can be termed Collocations, such as ‘posh’ with a businesses like ‘hotel’ [197],or ‘shop’, ‘ restaurant’ ‘nightclub’, ‘bistro’ (BNC data) (cf. II.153). [195] At the Centre, ordinary people can try their hand at computers. (New Scientist) [196 Dorset offers a perfect opportunity to try your hand at windsurfing. (Outdoor Action) [197] BBC bosses ordered prostitutes out of a posh hotel — so they could film actresses playing hookers. (They Came from SW19) Obviously, these two types of combinations can interact. The Participles collocat-ing with the Colligation ‘try your hand at’ betray family resemblances, such as leisure activities (BNC data): ‘boating’, ‘sailing’, ‘painting a scene’ ‘decorating china’, ‘rock climbing’, ‘clay pigeon shooting’, ‘rowing on dry land’ (huh?). 6. The resources of the Lexicogrammar can be envisioned along a scale of Delicacy that is higher toward its more lexical end and lower toward its more grammatical end (Fig. 14).
Delicacy can slide up and down the scale to suit the context, enabling Grammar and Lexicon, as well as Colligation and Collocation, to ‘slide into’ each other. The higher the Delicacy, the more specific and detailed are the constraints upon selec-tion and combination. For example, the English Verb ‘bereave’ occurs in the British National Corpus (BNC) at high Delicacy: almost exclusively in the Past Participle and in the meaning of ‘having suffered the death of someone close’ [198], and collocating with a delicate range of Nouns, the most frequent being ‘people, person, family, relatives’ as in [199]. The form ‘bereft’, though technically an alternate Past Participle of the same Verb and defined by some dictionaries in the same meaning, is rarely used this way, but rather colligates with ‘of’ to mean ‘lacking’ and collocates with a range of missing items, as in e.g. [200], also including ‘trees, speech, fun, ideas, talent, hope, decency, carpets, roofs, lambs, servants’ (BNC data), none of these being frequent by itself. [198] Could death education ever go this far as to teach the bereaved how to dig a grave and incidentally earn a discount? It is happening in New Zealand (Embalmer) [199] A mother who lost her twin daughters has set up a counselling agency to help bereaved families. (Northern Echo) [200] people find their homes bereft of light bulbs and toilet rolls. (Belfast Telegraph) 7. The concept of the integrated Lexicogrammar supersedes the dual-axis model shown in Fig. 13. The selection of a particular word at one point in a sequence relates to what was or will be chosen in relevant combinations at varying distances, such as ‘bereaved’ relating to ‘death – bereaved – grave’ [198]. Many such selections also derive substantial Delicacy from social attitudes, e.g. what people ought to have and how they are talked about when it gets denied or taken away. 8. Typical usage is thus not well described by a ‘grammar’ at low Delicacy, e.g., just listing all the forms in the ‘Conjugation’ of English Verbs. Individual forms may be used in distinctive ways. In BNC data, the Verb ‘consume’ in the Present form has mainly an Active function with a Human as Subject and a commodity as Object, like food [201]. The Past form ‘consumed’ is more likely to be a Participle in a Passive function [202]. The Present Participle ‘consuming’ is typically a Modifier for something that overrides or preoccupies, like ‘passion’ [203]. [201] Japanese consume the nutritious legume as tofu (bean curd). (New Scientist) [202] Some 16 billion lb of fat is consumed by Americans in an average year. (Business) [203] The survival of the Everglades is now Florida’s consuming passion. (Economist) 9. Describing the Lexicogrammar of English thus requires substantial Delicacy in applying conventional terms, e.g., the ‘Content Words’ of Nouns, Verbs, Adjec-tives, and Adverbs, and the ‘Function Words’ of Articles, Auxiliaries, Prepositions, Conjunctions, and Interjections. These terms provide a ‘heuristic front end’ on a description relating general classes of forms to specific instantiations of functions. III.B A Lexicogrammar of Processes 10. So I shall propose a set of lexicogrammatical terms within a scheme of Processes, Participants, and Circumstances, having three basic Processes at the top. The State is some condition of a Participant, as when a Human is ‘fat’, ‘short’, or ‘bald’ [204]; or else some Circumstance of a situation, as when the Time is ‘about midnight’ [205]. The Event is a change in some Participant, such as a ‘mortar exploding’ [206]; or in
some Circumstance, such as ‘night falling’ [207]. And the Action is an Event brought about by some Agent, e.g., a ‘trooper shooting the Lieutenant’s horse’ [208], or ‘a conman stealing cash’ [209]. [204] But he’s fat! And short. He wears the hat because he’s bald! (Nudists) [205] About the same time I heard gunfire. It was about midnight. (Guardian) [206] A mortar exploded in the distance. (Assassins) [207] There was no electricity, either, but as night fell they lit candles. (Boat House) [208] A trooper shot the Lieutenant’s horse (Sharpe) [209] A conman stole cash from a restaurant manager — then demanded a lift into town (Belfast Telegraph) As in [206-09], a State, Event, or Action can be expressed in a Clause; the Clause Core consists of Subject and Predicate, and normally functions as the Topic occupying theForeground of the Clause (what the Clause is mainly about). Or, a State, Event, or Action can be expressed as a Modifier of a Participant occupying the Background of the Clause. To see the contrast, we can reassign the Processes by converting between Predicate Verb and Participial Modifier: [210] A short fat man was putting two handsome ladies on a car (Dubliners) [210a] The man putting two handsome ladies on a car was short and fat. [211] Whisky, meat, and fish, valued at £250, were stolen from a bungalow (Alton Herald) [211a] The whisky, meat, and fish stolen from a bungalow were valued at £250. In a Non-Clause, the Topic is assigned without a Clause Core, as is common in newspaper headlines [212] or telegrams [213] (see section IV.5). [212] Thatcher furious with ‘trendy’ Experts (Mail on Sunday) [213] My father proposed to her by telegram. ‘Very keen marry you.’ (Tales I Tell) 11. The three basic Processes are of course clusters of more Delicate Processes and mainly just indicate the typical organisation of Participants. A State may have only one of these as its Medium [214] (III.21); or just a Circumstance [215]. For an Event, the key Participants in the Active are the Cause (as Subject) that initiates the change (as Verb Phrase), and theAffected (as Object) that undergoes the change [216-17]. For an Action, the Participant of Agent initiates the change upon the Affected, with or without intention or control [218-19]. [214] Primo de Rivera was still alive (Franco) [215] it was the last week in February (conversation)BNC [216] a hurricane drove floodwaters over Lake Okeechobee’s southern edge (Economist) [217] an explosive device wrecked the car of the Spanish consul-general (Keesings) [218] Joe Calzaghe knocked out Dean Francis with a smart left (Daily Telegraph) [219] The Admiral had unwittingly detonated the explosive (Clubbed) Real data are of course often less straightforward than these examples suggest.
12. Deciding which Processes to recognise in describing the Lexicogrammar of English is not easy, and traditional ‘grammars’ have operated at low Delicacy. Thus, they recognised ‘Transitive’ and ‘Intransitive Verbs’, whilst failing to grasp Transitivity as a property of Clauses, not just Verbs (III.87). Moreover, they tended to rigidify and oversimplify by postulating ‘rules’ where actual data merely indicate preferences. 13. Yet operating at high Delicacy leads to bulky and complex descriptions. Ultimately, every Verb collocates within one or more Processes in its own way, e.g. ‘see’ versus ‘look’ among Perceptive Processes (III.31f). I propose to recognise a Process in terms of form, function, and meaning, only if it shows distinctive lexicogrammatical characteristics, such as whether or not it readily appears in plausible Affirmative or Negative Commands. I shall use the Clause Core of Subject and Predicate to demonstrate each Process clearly and consistently, and supply one or more Prototypes to serve as heuristic examples. III.B.1 Outer Processes 14. Now, we can distinguish between Outer Processes that impinge upon the environment and could be observed or detected from outside, such as ‘bringing’ or ‘jumping’, versus Inner Processes that do not and could not, such as ‘knowing’ or ‘hoping’. In general, Outer ones commonly form Commands, as in [220-21], whilst Inner ones rarely do, as in [222-23]. [220] Waiter! Bring back the pudding! (Alice) [221] Jump, George! Jump! Oh, jump! (Lord Jim) [222] Know me to be what I am — a cold, hard man. (Eyre) [223] Do not hope to get at any good author’s meaning without those tools. (Sesame) 15. Two essential factors for relating Participants to Processes emerge from practical tests I call Colligations of Denial. In Denial of Intention, you’d say you ‘didn’t mean to’ do or be something; in Denial of Control, you’d say you ‘couldn’t help’ doing or being it. These Colligations can sort out Processes and Verb Phrases at some Delicacy, witness [224-27] rather than, say [224a-27a]. [224] It’s alright, Josie, I didn’t mean to break your arm (conversation) BNC [224a] ??It’s alright, Josie, I couldn’t help breaking your arm [225] I didn’t mean to bite your head off. (Garden of Desire) [225a] ??I couldn’t help but bite your head off. [226] He couldn’t help noticing that the man didn’t have a thumb. (Crow Flies) [226a] ??he didn’t mean to notice that the man didn’t have a thumb [227] Tolkien could not help seeing a part of himself in Saruman (Road to Middle-Earth) [227a] ??Tolkien didn’t mean to see a part of himself in Saruman. The social function of pleading to be excused leads to Denials of Intention for Actions you could hardly have ‘meant’ to do anyway, like ‘spilling the soup’ [228], ‘causing a kerfuffle’ [229] or ‘being an idiot’ [230]. [228] She found Will mopping up the remains of his soup from the stone-flagged kitchen floor. ‘Sorry, misses, didn’t mean to spill it’ (Shoemaker’s Daughter)
[229] I thought we were on for charades. I didn’t mean to cause a kerfuffle. (Dynmouth) [230] I didn’t mean to be an idiot! (conversation) BNC An alternate plea to be excused for not doing something can use the Affirmative ‘meant to’ (having the Intention but not acting on it), often followed by ‘but’ to introduce an expedient impediment to Control. [231] I’m so sorry. I meant to be at the station, but these people came to look over the house and I couldn’t get away. (Distance Enchanted) [232] I meant to phone up this morning for an appointment for Doctor, but I forgot all about it. (medical consultation)BNC My data show no uses of an Affirmative like ‘could help it, but did it anyhow’. 16. Dispositive Processes have the Prototype ‘doing to’ and apply not just in the narrow everyday sense of ‘get rid of’ (like ‘disposing of waste’) [233], but also in the broader sense of ‘have at your disposition and deal with’ (like ‘disposing of funds’) [234]. The Prototype Clause Core has ‘Disposer’ as Subject, ‘Disposition’ as Verb Phrase, and ‘Disposed’ as the Affected Direct Object. The Affected may undergo substantial change, e.g. getting ‘broken’ [235], or even cease to be itself, e.g. getting ‘scoffed’ (devoured) [236]. [233] The Soviet Union disposed of nuclear waste from COMECON countries. (Economist) [234] the Shah no longer disposed of the sort of funds as he had done (Shah’s Last Ride) [235] Cheeky thieves broke the window of Anthony Gordon outfitters (Northern Echo) [236] she’s scoffed a Picnic bar, now she’s scoffing a bloody Crunchie! (conversation)BNC Many Dispositives form Commands, Affirmative [237-38] or Negative [239-40]. [237] On the first unsatisfactory answer, ‘Break his jaw’ is the order of the judge. (Decline) [238] Throw that gun away, and the torch, too (Jimmy) [239] Do not break any blisters on the burn (Scotsman) [240] Do not throw rubbish onto an open fire in the living room. (One’s Company) When Dispositives have Pejorative effects, Intention can be explicitly denied [241-42]. Denying Control is less plausible, as in [241a-42a]. [241] I didn’t mean to offend the memory of your mother. (Ulysses) [241a] ??I couldn’t help offending the memory of your mother. [242] I’m sure the sentry didn’t mean to prick your niece in the — quite so — with his sword. (Phoney War) [242a] ??the sentry couldn’t help pricking your niece in the — quite so — with his sword. 17. In their Transitivity, most Dispositives offer a clear choice between the Active with Disposer as Subject and Disposed as Object, versus the Passive with Disposed as Subject and Disposer as an Agentive Adverbial [243-46]. In the Dispositive of ‘making do’ — sometimes called ‘Ergative’ — a Disposing Agent ‘makes’ another Disposing Agent perform a Dispositive [247]; or ‘has’ them do it [248]; or ‘has’ it done without mentioning the other Disposing Agent [249].
[243] 150 youths threw stones at New Barnsley RUC [police] station (Belfast Telegraph) [244] Several smoke bombs were thrown by Catholic youngsters (Politics in the Streets) [245] I just devoured a whole packet of Mr Kipling’s Cakes (True Confessions) [246] 200 hot dogs were devoured by the hungry hikers and bikers (TrailFlash)www [247] She took off her things, and made him do the same. (Chatterly) [248] I will have the servants throw you in the street (Dark Star Passing) [249] Don’t be nervous, or I’ll have you executed on the spot. (Alice) The Dispositive is an expansive Process whose Pattern of Subject occurs in other Processes hardly suggesting Actions of ‘doing to’ (cf. III.27, 42, 51).
–
Verb
–
Object
18. Productive Processes have the Prototype ‘making’ in the basic sense of ‘producing a Thing’. The Prototype Clause Core in the Active has Producer as Subject, Production as Verb Phrase, and Product as the Direct Object [250-51]; in the Passive, the Product is Subject and the Producer, if mentioned, appears in an Agentive Adverbial after the Verb Phrase [252-53]. [250] The Torquay shop makes a new flavour of ice-cream every day of the year. (Punch) [251] Oliver Stone is making a movie about the life of Jim Morrison. (The Face) [252] Today the Queen’s official cars are made by Rolls-Royce. (Doll’s House) [253] One in five pairs of socks sold in Britain is made by Sherwood (Daily Telegraph) 19. At higher Delicacy, in the ‘creating’ Prototype, a Creator works in individual or idiosyncratic ways toward a Creation to be contemplated, e.g., a work of art [254-55]. In the‘manufacturing’ Prototype, a Manufacturer works in cooperative, businesslike ways toward a Manufactured Product to be used or sold [256-57]. Again, both Active and Passive are freely available. [254] Seurat was a pointillist who filled his canvas with dots. When he stood back, he could see that he had created a superb landscape with figures. (Hansard) [255] The Way to St. Bernard was created in response to a commission from the Abbey of Cîteaux in France. (Alton Herald) [256] Associated Windows manufactures double glazing and mirrors. (TV news)BNC [257] These lamps were manufactured by the Komárov Ironworks in 1867. (Prague) ‘Manufacturing’ predominates for the Prototype ‘making’ [258-59], which would hardly collocate with Products being works of art like ‘poems’, ‘paintings’, ‘sculptures’, ‘symphonies’, and so on. The only examples I find in the BNC are for trendy ‘artists’ using techniques that resemble manufacturing [260-61]. [258] he makes furniture (Longshot) [259] I make movies, sweetheart. That’s my job. (Masai Dreaming) [260] Richter makes paintings of photographs (Belfast Festival)
[261] we’ve had people making sculptures out of scrap from the motorway. (Fox News) For the manufacturing type, Passives can deploy the ‘by’-Pattern to express not merely the Agentive Producer [262], but also the Means [263], or another Process [264]. [262] The bride’s off-the-shoulder dress was made by her mother. (Wedding) [263] Most washbasins are made from vitreous china (Do It) [264] Cork tiles are made by compressing the bark of the cork tree into a block (Do It) Dispositive or Ergative Productives of ‘making produce’ like [265] are uncommon. [265] The industry of the inhabitants has made these countries produce a greater quantity of human subsistence. (Population) 20. The Affirmative and Negative Commands in my data are few and are all of the ordinary ‘making’ or ‘manufacturing’ type [266-67], and not the ‘creating’ type illustrated by invented data in [268-69]. [266] Make a soap solution adding a small quantity of ammonia (Centuries of Ink) [267] Do not make coffee with boiling water. (Delicatessen) [268] *Poet Laureate, make a festive poem for Queen’s Birthday. [269] *Make another hit album for your fans, Bono. Denials of Intention or Control like [270-71] are not plausible for genuine Productives and do not appear in my data. [270] *Her mother didn’t mean to make an off-the-shoulder dress but she ran out of cloth. [271] *Seurat’s brushes were so tiny that he couldn’t help making pointillist paintings. 21. Enactive Processes have the Prototype of ‘moving’, usually Intentional [272-74] but maybe not [275-76]. Here, the Prototype Clause Core has ‘Enacter’ as Subject, ‘Enactment’ as Verb Phrase, and Circumstance like Place as Adverbial. [272] They all moved off together down the tawny dust of the road (Cameron) [273] The stout man ran into the cottage (Brownie Stories) [274] Two men who fled after bungling a raid on a shop jumped into a getaway car only to find a policeman at the wheel. (Independent) [275] The Laird was so overcome by grief that he fell down a staircase (Warm Welcomes) [276] Jimbob skidded on a banana skin some thoughtful fan had thrown on the stage. (NME) [277] He stumbled over graves and bumped into headstones (short story) Rather than Active or Passive, the Transitivity is Medial, with the Enacter as the Medium. A few Process Verbs offer a choice between Dispositive [278-79] or Enactive [280-81], the latter omitting the Humans who guided the Process. [278] Then the Doctor sailed the ship right round the rock. (Dolittle)
[279] The terrorists then loaded a mortar launcher into the skip and drove the lorry into the council yard, just one hundred metres from the Police Station. (British Army) [280] The ship sailed out into the blue sea, under the blue sky (Kwaidan) [281] Sixty vehicles, including six lorries, drove into each other in the dense fog. (Today) 22. The function of the Medium as Subject is clearest for the Prototype of the bodily ‘behaving’ [282-88], which often lacks Intention or Control. [282] Again she laughed and cried, and I laughed with her. (Frankenstein Unbound) [283] He smiled and frowned in the way she loved. (Armada) [284] Mr Cottle blushed and then snorted into a handkerchief. (Forest Night) [285] McGillicuddy coughed and spluttered at the innuendo (Sharp End) [286] She sneezed. The cocaine flew in all directions. (Freelance Death) [287] The chaplain just stared back, and belched like a thunder clap. (Poisoned Chalice) [288] I yawned during sex — and my husband is furious. (Relationships)www ‘Behavings’ too can emulate the Dispositive Clause Pattern of Subject – Verb – Object (cf. III.17). Collocations prefer a body part for the Affected, e.g., blow your nose’ [289], ‘clear your throat’ [290], ‘shake your head’ [291]; or else a bodily event, as in ‘give a snort’ [292], ‘let out a gasp’ [293], ‘shoot a glance’ [294]. [289] Breeze blew her nose fiercely on an earthy handkerchief (Distance Enchanted) [290] She cleared her throat, damning it for its sudden huskiness. (Viking Magic) [291] She shook her head, in amazed disbelief at his stupidity. (Lock) [292] Barbara Coleman gave a snort of disgust. (Guilty Knowledge) [293] The young private at the wheel let out a gasp of surprise. (Ratking) [294] Angela shot a glance to the side of the room where her cousin was dozing. (Topaz) But unlike genuine Dispositives, the Medial flavour of Enacting bodily Processes hardly allows for Passives like ‘*her nose was blown’, or ‘*a glance got shot’. 23. Alternately, a Dispositive Enactive can be Ergative when some Enacting Agent is ‘made’ to perform [29598]. Some Processes are shared between the two Enacting Agents, such as ‘marching protesters’ [299] or ‘walking a dog’ [300]. Even if you rudely ‘frogmarch’ somebody [301], you have to march along behind. To my surprise, I found some isolated Passives for ‘being marched’ [302]; and dogs, and even distances, ‘being walked’ [303-04]. [295] Many years before he had made Daniel Miller run for cover (Hide and Seek) [296] I’m going to make you laugh. Then I’m going to make you cry. (Forgotten Fire) [297] The sharpness of the cold made her cough. (Her Living Image) [298] The smoke reached Amanda and made her sneeze (creative writing)BNC
[299] Warders in riot gear marched the protesters to a segregation block. (Daily Mirror) [300] With extra time on his hands he walked the dog by the Manse. (miscellanea)BNC [301] Some jobsworth steward frogmarched me out of the hall. (Jane Armstrong) www [302] the men were marched in by wives to be fitted out by the tailor (Circle of Friends) [303] all our bitches were walked individually. (Rottweilers) [304] At the Sponsored Dog Walk held in Hyde Park in June, up to 20 miles each was walked by dogs and owners (Worldwide Fund for Nature)BNC Some Enactive Verbs suggest aimless Motion, e.g., ‘loitering’ [305], ‘faffing about’ [306], or ‘pottering around’ [307]. [305] Five or six teenagers loiter in front of a newsagent, drinking shandy. (Deliria) [306] he keeps faffing around with the details, he still hasn’t given it to us (conversation) BNC [307] He’d been pottering around in the big old half-ruined sheds on the other side of the quarry. He hadn’t really got any aim in mind (Diggers) 24. The Distribution of Commands for Enactives is uneven. If done with Intention Affirmative and Negative Commands are plausible [308-11]. Negative Commands to mind your manners would dominate for ‘bodily behaving’ [312-14] — especially ‘laughing’ and ‘crying’, whose social significance may render them hard to ‘bear’ [316-17]; Affirmative Commands are sarcastic challenges, e.g., from a bloodthirsty pirate [318] or a sadistic schoolteacher [319]. Dispositive or Ergative Enactives could be Negative [320-21] or Affirmative [322]. Negative too are Commands about aimless Motions as prompts to discourage idleness [323-24]. [308] Run! run! as fast as you can! You can’t catch me, I’m the Gingerbread Man! (Tell Children) [309] Rush to your local bookstore (Jam!) www [310] Don’t run away, whatever you do. (Furniture) [311] Do not rush out and buy the fish yet!! (Starting a New Aquarium)www [312] Don’t keep coughing so, Kitty! Have a little compassion on my nerves. (Pride) [313] During a talk, don’t belch into a microphone (PhreakNIC)www [314] Don’t sneeze into your hand and then shake someone’s hand (Cyber Scene)www [315] Don’t blow your nose in Sweden, or you could end up being slammed against a wall by macho drug squad cops. (John Yates)www [316] ‘Don’t you laugh!’ she cried. ‘I can’t bear your laugh.’ (Price She Paid) [317] ‘Don’t cry!’ said Henchard, with vehement pathos, ‘I can’t bear it.’ (Casterbridge) [318] Laugh! Before an hour’s out, ye’ll laugh upon the other side. (Treasure Island) [319] ‘Cry! Now cry! That’s the next thing to do.’ And Lucy lifted her pinafore to her face and collapsed into a heaving, sobbing little bundle. (Samaritan)
[320] Your old man a hero? Don’t make me laugh! (Paper Faces) [321] Don’t make me cry, get me high, and reply to Sky. (Sky) [322] Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, the Muppets from Lord Grade’s ATV (TV news) BNC [323] Don’t faff around with discount rates (Mark Nelson) www [324] Don’t loiter. Shirking won’t do for me. Make haste! Go along! (Bleak House) For socially significant Enactives like ‘laughing’ and ‘crying’, Denials of Intention or Control are plausible [325-28] Others sound odd, like ‘sneezing’ [329-30] and ‘belching’ [331-32], and examples are rare. [325] She said, ‘You think we’re a pack of fools, don’t you?’ ‘He said quickly, ‘No. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to laugh at you.’ (Tortoise by Candlelight) [326] She didn’t mean to cry, but tears came so easily these days (No Enemy) [327] She couldn’t help laughing at the absurdity of the whole situation. (Stolen Heart) [328] She couldn’t help crying all the while the wedding went on. (Korea Working Women’s Network) www [329] I didn’t mean to sneeze! It’s just this awful cold. (Getting a Bug)www [330] He couldn’t help but sneeze as the dust particles rose (Coming Home)www [331] I swear I didn’t mean to belch while talking. (Tom Fulp)www [332] Belching problem? Can’t help but belch? (Estee)www 25. Developmental Processes have the Prototypes of ‘growing’ or ‘becoming’ that occur without deliberate Intention or Control. The Prototype Clause Core has ‘Developer’ as Subject, and ‘Development’ as Medial Verb Phrase. The clearest Prototype would be the natural evolution of a living organism [333-38]. [333] Mr Earnshaw grew old and ill (Wuthering) [334] Ronald Reagan only became senile after he left office (Betty Bowers)BNC [335] Edward Bawden was born and died in Essex (Guardian) [336] After 48 hours the egg has developed into a free-swimming larva. (Embryo) [337] His depression and headache began to fade. (Taped) [338] Stool frequency decreased and bile acid absorption increased after treatment. (Gut) 26. A few Developmentals like ‘grow’ occur Medial [339], Active [340], and Passive [341], plus a Dispositive Developmental of ‘making grow’ [342].
in
[339] Early potatoes grow well on light sandy soils. (Decisions in Geography) [340] On these terraces farmers grow potatoes, apricot and almond trees (school essay)BNC [341] Early potatoes are grown mainly in Cornwall, Kent and the South Western coastal areas of Wales and Scotland. (Potato Marketing Board)BNC
[342] ‘One side will make you grow taller, and the other side will make you grow short-er.’ ‘One side of what?’ ‘Of the mushroom’. (Alice) 27. Developmentals too can occasionally emulate the Dispositive Clause Pattern (cf. III.17, 27, 43, 51): the Developer is the Subject, whilst the Development is distributed between Verb Phrase and Object, [343] the old man recovered his health and strength again. (Tales from Shakespeare) [344] tortoises get gout if they’re brought to a cold climate too young (Like Out) [345] Most people I know who have gone through a divorce lose weight — I did — which helps with meeting other women. (BBS Archive)www 28. Developmentals beyond the Developer’s control seem odd in Commands like [346-48]. Adverts apparently Commanding you to Develop like [349-50] are actually smarmy Commands to Dispose of your money. The Command format is intended to suggest that the Development will indeed happen. [346] Do not die just yet (Green Mansions) [347] ‘Don’t ever get old’, he said to Jane. (Jane’s Journey) [348] Cook, Queen of the Nullarbor. Get sick, our hospital needs you. (sign at a railway station in Australia) BNC [349] Get 20 years younger with Reliv ReversAge. (James Hanson)www [350] Take control of your life, become a happier person. Price: $9.00. (Loyalty Builder)www Since Developmentals are not performed with Intention or Control, Denials like [351-54] are implausible or gratuitous, and thus uncommon. [351] Some children did not mean to be born at all. (KnowWare)www [352] I don’t dislike the little fellow. He couldn’t help being born (The Door)www [353] she didn’t mean to die, but life doesn’t give us do-overs (TeenInk)www [354] There’s nothing to forgive. She couldn’t help dying. (Kaleidoscope)www
III.B.2 Inner Processes 29. The Inner Processes differ substantially in their Lexicogrammar from the Outer Processes. As we shall see, some are paired between greater Intention or Control, e.g., ‘looking’ or ‘finding out’, versus lesser, e.g., ‘seeing’ or ‘thinking’. 30. Perceptions are sensory Actions whose Prototype Clause Core has ‘Perceiver’ as Subject, ‘Perception’ as Verb Phrase, and ‘Perceived’ as Object. The key functions are to represent the proverbial ‘five senses’, though the Lexico-grammar accords them unequal frequencies. ‘Sight’ ranks the highest, and ‘hearing’ rather lower, and the other three quite low. For a rough test, the basic Verb forms in the BNC are: ‘see’ at 115,100, ‘hear’ are 13,079, ‘touch’ at 2431, ‘smell’ at 1108, and ‘taste’ at 672. However, part of the differences is due to expanded meanings, like ‘see’ for ‘understand’.
31. When Intention or Control do not apply, the Prototypes for sight and hearing are of course the basic ‘seeing’ and ‘hearing’ [355-56]; and where those factors do apply, the Prototypes could be ‘watching’ and ‘listening to’ [357-58]. [355] Turning, he saw a barn owl, flying parallel to him (Forest of the Night) [356] He heard a man’s gruff voice and a loud slap, followed by lilting laughter. (Frankie) [357] I watched London nightlife pass by. I watched the party-goers, the punks, the pimps, the prostitutes, the princely and the poor. (Furniture) [358] We listened to the swish as the salvoes passed overhead. (Invasion) Negatives with First Person or Second Person Pronouns as the Subject can signify that some Process is not ‘seen’ or ‘heard’ just because it is improbable [359-62]. [359] He’s a nice boy, but somehow I don’t see him making it to the top. (City of Gold) [360] the music deserves to be heard, and I don’t hear anybody else doing it (Guitarist) [361] You don’t see cyclists wearing those doctor’s masks. There are no more warnings, on polleny days, for asthmatics and hay-fever sufferers. (Time’s Arrow) [362] you don’t hear bus companies threatening to stop those services. (Northern Echo) 32. Another well-attested Prototype for the sense of sight implying less Intention and Control than ‘watching’ but more than ‘seeing’ is ‘looking at’ [363]. ‘Looking’ tends more than those two Verbs to convey a further Intention, such as Cognition [364] or Emotion [365]; or to assume expanded meanings like ‘consider’ [366] or ‘inspect’ [367]. The same Verb has a Subject as Developer in Developments like ‘looking ill’ [368] or ‘looking older’ [369]; or a Subject in the function of a perceived Affected of some Dispositive [370-71]. The Colligation ‘look like’ carries mainly Pejorative Attitudes, as in [372-73]. [363] she looked around at the men on offer, braying nightclub fools mostly. (Stone Cold) [364] She looked at him earnestly, wanting to re-establish understanding. (First of Midnight) [365] They looked at each other quizzically, trying to decide how much emotion the other was prepared to invest (Three Times Table) [366] The clubs looked at the situation and felt it was time to change. (Clive Rowlands)BNC [367] the operations director says he’ll look into the air-conditioning problem (Profitboss) [368] In spite of Corfu he looked very ill to-day (Portrait) [369] She looked a good deal older, but her eye was as bright as ever (Portrait) [370] He was immediately ashamed of the outburst. She looked stricken (Rich Pass) [371] She looked defeated, quite unlike her normal self (Traffic) [372] Brummie men look like lopsided oafs, gnomes, hobgoblins. (Birmingham Magazine) [373] Kevin Coley looked like a pig with a thatched, blond tea cosy on its head. […] His wife […] in her spotted dress looked like a Sherman tank with measles (Polo)
33. For the sense of hearing, the Medial similar to ‘looking’ is ‘sounding’, e.g. [374-75]. ‘Sounding like’ is popular, also mainly Pejorative, e.g. [376-77]. [374] The policewoman sounded very wretched, almost distraught (Best Man) [375] ‘Really?’ Karl sounded intrigued. ‘Hans, you sound exhilarated’. (Bury the Dead). [376] the jerky bumbling words sounded like the raving of a madwoman. (Best Man) [377] The wind […] sounded like a squadron of Concordes, absolutely blood-curdling. (Today) 34. Dispositive or Ergative Perceptives occur for sight and hearing. The common meaning is like ‘cause’ or ‘compel’ for ‘watch’ [378] and ‘listen’ [379]; ‘enable’ for ‘see’ [380] and ‘hear’ [381]; and ‘lend an appearance’ for ‘look’ [382]. [378] Take the food away from him, tie him up and make him watch us eat (Circus Boys) [379] She had listened to several parties, but had made them listen in return (Portrait) [380] Thomas first made her see the city in all its architectural wonder. (Memory and Desire) [381] we can make ourselves hear music in white noise (Mysteries of Science) [382] The mask made me look terrifying and professional like a commando. (Not Company) 35. The other senses for Perceptions, as indicated by the BNC frequencies in III.30, are far less favoured, and less prone to assume expanded meanings. The Prototype ‘touching’ in its basic usage is mostly Active with a Human Agent or a human body part as Subject [383-84]; non-Humans figure in the Active’ [385]; or the Medial [386]. Negatives can mean complete remoteness from something [387]. The Passive is mostly for making someone feel a kindly Emotion [388]. [383] Susan touched the man’s shoulder. The fabric of his jerkin was rough (Nudists) [384] His fingers touched hers and his heart gave a jolt (Latchkey Kid) [385] As the boat touched the far bank, the leopardess stepped ashore (Kingdoms East) [386] Suddenly, catastrophe struck. The plane touched down, bounced up again, slewed sideways and skidded along the runway, breaking up as it did so (Ayrshire Heritage) [387] Everyone in her orbit knew she never touched alcohol. (The Prince) [388] I had been touched by his kindness to my aunts (Woman of My Age) The Dispositive or Ergative of ‘making touch’ can narrow [389] or expand [390]: [389] A Japanese policeman claims the devil made him touch a woman (Ananova)www [390] Failure made Jackie touch rock bottom (IndiaInfo)www 36. The Prototype of ‘smelling’ is more inclined than ‘seeing’, ‘hearing’, or ‘touching’ to imply an Attitude. Like ‘looking’, it occurs in Active with Perceiver as Subject [391-92], or Medial with Perceived as Subject [393-94], and with either Ameliorative or Pejorative Attitude; Passives like [395-96] are not frequent. Pejorative dominates the unaccompanied Medial [397-98], and the Medial Colligations ‘smell like’ [399] and ‘smell of’ [400].
[391] She smelled the clean tang of his breath (Finishing Touch) [392] I smelled sweat and the drink on his breath. (Freely Sing) [393] The chestnuts smell real good — all hot and nutty. (Bayswater) [394] The hallway smelled beery and unclean. (Dark Dance) [395] the sweet aroma of barbecue was smelled for miles (Houston Livestock Rodeo)www [396] It was 7-8 ft tall with a broad back. A rancid stench was smelled (Bigfoot Sightings)www [397] Paulette put his foot on her lap, tugged off the boot. […] ‘God, you smell!’ (Sharpe) [398] You always find some good in people. I can’t stand them. They smell. (Sweet Dreams) [399] His damp swimming costume […] smells like the bottom of a restaurant slop bin. (Lucker) [400] The air smelled of rotten straw, damp, and an overpowering stench (My Enemy) The Dispositive or Ergative of ‘making smell’ is for the Medial: [401] some brands of diesel now have additives to make them smell sweeter. (Daily Telegraph) [402] Fags make you smell like ash-trays, play havoc with yer tongues. (miscellanea)BNC The expanded meanings of ‘smelling’ as having a ‘hunch’ or ‘presentiment’ turn out Pejorative [403-04]; disapproval is implied even when the Perceived by itself might seem Ameliorative, like ‘advantage’ [405] or ‘profits’ [406]. [403] I smell a con […] as surely as I smell a knocked off car, a crooked log book. (Be an Actor) [404] ‘Keep your head down, Laz’, he advised. ‘I smell big trouble.’ (Suburban Dead) [405] It just shows you how pushy the educated classes can be when they smell an advantage (Awfully Big Adventure) [406] Thomas smelled a bigger profit from the up-and-coming developers (Cry Alone) 37. The Prototype ‘tasting’ has a Lexicogrammar similar to ‘smelling’ in offering both Active [407-08] versus Medial [409-10], yet (rarely) Passive too [411]. However, Attitudes favour Ameliorative, as if eating is more pleasurable than sniffing, even for a ‘cold meal’ [412] or ‘egg and chips’ [413]. Still, the Colligations ‘taste like’ and ‘taste of’ are usually Pejorative in the data [414-15]. [407] He tasted all the bread in the sandwiches and approved the menu. (Belfast Telegraph) [408] Corbett tasted the thick heady ale, pronounced himself satisfied (Prince of Darkness) [409] His tea tasted excellent, and there was nobody to disturb him. (Ghost Stories) [410] The tea tasted horrible but at least it gave me the chance to think. (Furniture) [411] Each parcel of butter is tasted with a long scoop (Omelette) [412] Although the meal was a cold one, it tasted delicious. (French Encounter)
[413] The egg and chips tasted wonderful, everything was great. (Vets Might Fly) [414] The cigarette tasted like engine grease filtered through sawdust. (Forestalled) [415] Nopps’ apricot brandy tasted of petrol, mixed with creosote and hair oil. (Not Company) In expanded meanings, ‘tasting’ is undergoing an Event [572] or an Emotion [573]. [416] No visiting country has tasted victory in a competitive match in Dublin during Jack Charlton’s remarkable tenure as Republic of Ireland manager. (Belfast Telegraph) [417] Hogan told me you had…tasted the joys of connubial bliss. (Dubliners) The Dispositive or Ergative of ‘making taste’ is mainly Medial [418], but I found some Actives too like [419]. [418] We have dozens of ways of making lobsters taste different. (Other Side) [419] Poison, however, is a different matter. That’s why I make my chaplain taste what I eat and drink. (Poisoned Chalice) 38. Commands for Perceptions naturally prefer Verbs with Intention and Control. I find ‘watch’ and ‘listen’ as genuine Perceptions in Affirmative and Negative [420-23], but also in expanded meanings: ‘watch’ for ‘be warned about’ [424], and ‘listen to’ as ‘be convinced by’ [425]. For the frequent ‘looking’, I find actual vision [426-27], plus the expanded meanings of ‘considering’ in the Active [428] or ‘appearing’ in the Medial for Emotions [429]. I find ‘see’ and ‘hear’ as genuine Perceptions only rarely, and nearly always Affirmative [43031]; and occurring in Commands for other Processes, such the Dispositive the Ergatives of ‘seeing’ that some Action gets done [432] or ‘seeing to it’ that it gets done [433]. [420] Watch your fish carefully at feeding times (Fishkeeping) [421] When walking, look up; fix eyes on a distant spot; do not watch your feet. (Hearing Loss) [422] Listen to the wind among the pines! Yours is a glorious country. (Room With a View) [423] I’m raving, I know; don’t listen, Mary; go on with your work. (Night and Day) [424] ‘Oh, you daft loony, you call yourself a sergeant?’ ‘Watch your mouth, Private No-body.’ (Sergeant Joe) [425] ‘General Clinton’, I cried, ‘do not listen to his lies.’ (Ballantrae) [426] Just look what a mess you’re making — I’ve got to clean that up. (Dandelion Days) [427] ‘Don’t look out of the window, little boy’, he shouted. ‘Look at the book.’ (Love of a King) [428] Look at all the money in the country if we only worked the old industries (Dubliners) [429] Look happy — other people are waiting to be friendly. (Hearing Loss) [430] Isn’t he perfectly beautiful? Just see the dimples in his elbows. (House of Dreams) [431] I will not be interrupted. Hear me in silence. (Pride) [432] See that execution be done without fail on Master Ridley (Gladstone) [433] Please see to it that Miss Asshe receives my note. (Dark Star Passing)
The other three senses have comparatively few Commands, and mostly in their straightforward meanings and in the Affirmative: [434] Touch the hand of a gentleman! (Little Dorrit) [435] Touch me at your peril! or I will forget you are my mother’s son. (Sybil) [436] Smell my hot goathide. (Ulysses) [467] Look at the water. Smell it! That’s wot we drinks. (Bleak House) [438] ‘Taste the wine again, Jane.’ I obeyed him. (Eyre) [439] We call it ‘Tres de Mayo’ coffee. Taste it. (Nostromo) 39. For Perceptions, Denials of Intention like [440-45] are rare in my data. Denials of Control are more common [446-50] [440] I didn’t mean to see this band, but I couldn’t help but notice all the people on stage and their wacky outfits. (Nub Records)www [441] I didn’t mean to watch it, but we ended up in front of a TV (Jim Bassett)www [442] If he gets upset because he thinks that you were listening in to his private conversa-tion, tell him that you didn’t mean to hear it (Ask Margo)www [443] I didn’t mean to listen, but they’re so loud. (Wu Fei Duo)www [444] She didn’t mean to sound brusque. Perhaps he just made her nervous. (Season for Murder) [445] I didn’t mean to touch you! It was an accident, I swear. (Twisted Candy)www [446] You made sure you draped yourself where I couldn’t help seeing you. (Two Can Share) [447] He slept in a room opposite, with his door ajar. He couldn’t help hearing the row. (No Enemy) [448] The bed was so narrow they couldn’t help touching at the shoulders (WaxWorks) www [449] I couldn’t help smelling the sweet smell from the apples. (Xiaochun)www [450] The hungry guests couldn’t help tasting the masterpieces (Russian Journal)www 40. The most incontestably Inner Process is Cognition, whose Prototype Clause Core has the ‘Cogniser’ as Subject, ‘Cognition’ as Verb Phrase, and ‘Cognised’ as Object. Like the Perceptions of sight and hearing, the Verbs divide according to Intention or Control. Without them, the Prototype would be ‘knowing’ as ‘having knowledge’ [451-52] or ‘being acquainted with [453-54]. With them as ‘obtaining knowledge’, the Prototypes would be ‘learning’ [455-56] or ‘finding out’ [457-58]. The choice between Affirmative and Negative is fairly open. [451] Gardeners know the value of a really sharp knife for pruning. (Gardeners World) [452] The villages do not know the cause of this illness. (Developing World) [453] Everybody in Meadow Brook knew the Bobbseys. (Bobbsey) [454] I did not know the uncle well, but he knew my husband (Mother without a Mask)
[455] James Kilpatrick learned the skills of breeding horses (Ayrshire Heritage)BNC [456] In prison, if you do not learn stealth, you die. (City of Dreams) [457] After one fall too many, he went to the doctor and found out the truth. (Daily Mirror) [458] the system analyst has not found out the user requirements. (Information Systems) More general or superficial Cognition uses Colligations with ‘about’ [459-60] or ‘of’ [461-62], meaning roughly ‘be/become informed about’ or ‘aware of’. [459] In Darwin’s lifetime, physicists did not know about radioactivity (Problems of Biology) [460] They learned about selling, pricing, negotiating, licensing (Atomic Energy Authority) [461] FAMILY knew of whole streets where women went out to work and men stayed at home and neglected the children. (Women and Social Policy) [462] Pupils do not learn of the social and political implications of scientific discoveries. (Gender and Subject) 41. The Prototypes ‘think about’ [463] and ‘think of’ [464] imply more Control than ‘knowing’ but less than ‘finding out’. These can mean ‘contemplate’ [465], but also ‘have an opinion of’, usually Pejorative [466]. Colligations with ‘all’ [467] or ‘nothing but’ [468] can suggest exclusive or obsessive thinking. ‘Think of’ also occurs in expanded meanings for ‘have an idea’ [469] or ‘show consideration for’ [470]; when the Subject is the Impersonal Pronoun ‘one’, the Objects are Things or Humans coming readily to mind for a Topic [471]. [463] He thinks about football rigorously (Sunday People) [464] In the midst of his own sorrow and pain and torment, he thinks of this dying thief (sermon) BNC [465] You know what the Church thinks about marriage and divorce. Divorce is wrong in the eyes of God! (Love of a King) [466] he’s just a parasitical, sexually frustrated man. That’s what I think of him (Suburbia) [467] Take Frau Grossman, all she thinks about is finery and food. (Lying Together) [468] Thought about nothing but cars for about nothing but polo. (Polo)
the
first
twenty-five
years of
his life,
now he thinks
[469 Then the gaffer thinks of a tactical plan for Elland Road (Today) [470] A Brownie thinks of others before herself and does a good turn every day (Brownie Stories) [471] Other tyrants have astutely combined populism and magic: one thinks of Papa Doc and Idi Amin. (Independent) 42. The Transitivity of Cognitive Processes is peculiar. ‘Knowing’ in Actives like [451-54], and in Passives with the Cogniser having ‘by’ [472] or ‘to’ [473] hardly seems to constitute an Action like ‘doing to’ or ‘being done to’. Also, uses without the Cognised can have a Medial flavour like Enactives [474-75]. [472] Mr Lear was known by everyone as ‘a lovely person and a gentleman at all times’. (Northern Echo) [473] This document was known to Naval Intelligence and to the FBI. (FlyPast)
[474] ‘So what’s changed?’ Deep down he knew. (Sharp End) [475] All these constituents needed fusing and moulding into a unity in his mind. He thought and meditated; (Ramsey) 43. ‘Knowing’, ‘learning’, and ‘finding out’ followed by a Dependent Clause imply that the Clause expresses what somebody holds to be the truth [476-78]; ‘thinking’ certainly does not [479], especially in the Colligation ‘I thought’ to indicate ‘it was supposed to be settled, but I see now it isn’t’ [480]. [476] I know that you killed two people. I know that you’re in love with someone (Conjure Me) [477] I learned that a geriatric cowboy had become President of the mightiest nation on earth (Redundancy of Courage) [478] I found out that I came a poor second to the real love of her life — money. (Bay of Rainbows) [479] I’ve done my best. I thought that was what I was being paid for. It seems I was wrong. (creative writing)BNC [480] ‘Have you seen Antoinette?’ ‘I thought I told you I gave her the boot.’ (Collector) 44. I find Dispositive or Ergative Cognitions for ‘making know’ [481], ‘making learn’ [482], and, most of all, ‘making think’ [483-84]. [481] By his youth […] he made me know that I was growing old (Green Branch) [482] When I was eighteen my father made me learn cards. (Nottingham Oral History) BNC [483] Her undeniable sincerity appeared to make Mike think. (Driven by Love) [484] The computer has been taught fishing tricks: it jiggles the line to make the squid think the bait is alive. (New Scientist) 45. Commands for Cognitions are highly selective. I found very few for ‘know’, only Affirmative, and mostly in strenuous style [485]. Affirmative Commands for ‘learn’ and ‘find out’ are mainly found in discourses offering advice or services, and, like ‘become’ in III.28, imply confidence in achieving the result [486-87]; Negatives like [488-89] are rare indeed. In expanded meanings, ‘just think’ by itself [490] and ‘think of it’ [491] are for ‘imagine something impressive’; ‘think about’ is for ‘consider’ [492]; and ‘think of’ is for ‘be considerate of’ [493]. ‘Don’t think about’ can be a forceful warning not to do something [494]. Commands of Cognitives with a Dependent Clause are not common and again seem to me strenuous style [495-97], except for ‘don’t think’ [498]. [485] Know the temptation ere you judge the crime! (Mary Barton) [486] Learn To Fly at Trade Winds Aviation Flight Training Center (Directory of Flight)www [487] Come to Harrods and find out the colours and fashions to suit your individual style. (Harpers & Queen) [488] Don’t Learn Safety By Accident! (Safety Posters)www [489] Do not learn your lines, as this can make the talk rather stilted (People in Organsations) [490] Just think, we’ll have practically a whole day together (Phoney War)
[491] Think of it: a little over £20-a-week per member of the family. (Guardian) [492] ‘Think about marrying me.’ ‘You are crazy!’ (Sons of Heaven) [493] Don’t be so selfish, Andrew. Think of poor Magnus. (English Crime) [494] And don’t even think about trying to double-cross me. (Assassins) [495] Know that our griefs are risen to the top, and overflow their banks. (Pericles) [496] Learn that I am supplanted in heaven. (Golden Age of Myth) [497] Look upon my grave. Think that I might have been as honest and as happy as you! (Dombey) [498] Don’t think for a second that you can breeze through this game (Zzap 64!) 46. Denial of Intention like [499-500] are rare indeed, Denials of Control like [501] are uncommon too, except for ‘think’ [502]. [499] She wouldn’t be asking something personal if she didn’t mean to know. (Danielle)www [500] While I was looking for this picture for you guys, I accidentally learned stuff that I didn’t mean to learn. (Oakiefanoakie)www [501] As a diplomat in countries so high on Washington’s national security agenda, Walker couldn’t help knowing something about spying. (LA Times) [502] As he waited, he couldn’t help thinking about that first night. (Rain) 47. Aspirations are Inner Actions whose Prototype Clause Core in the Active has ‘Aspirer’ as Subject, an ‘Aspiration’ as Verb Phrase, and the ‘Aspired’ either as Object or else as Infinitive for another Process; in the Passive the Aspired is Subject and the Aspirer is an Agentive Adverbial. The leading Prototype would be ‘wanting’, which is enormously frequent in current usage, e.g. [503-06]. [503] David Mellor wanted a fancy shell-shaped sink in ‘Whisper’ pink (Daily Mirror) [504] I desperately wanted to go on the circuit — I find the life terrifically exciting. (Clare Wood in the Guardian) [505] The Dallas Cowboys running back is wanted by the Minnesota Vikings (Independent) [506] the one van was wanted to go to Wicken on a Saturday again. (Suffolk Archive)BNC Also frequent are the Ergatives of ‘wanting’ someone else to do something, with an Infinitive in the Active [507] or the Medial [508]; or something to get done to someone else, with Infinitive in the Passive [509]. [507] The old scoundrel wanted Mary to burn one of the wills (Middlemarch) [508] Ardent for liberty, he wanted the bishops to behave fiercely (Ramsey) [509] the prosperous merchants and bankers, whose taxes paid for the police, wanted the traffic kept moving, burglars put behind bars, footpads eliminated. (Patently Murder)
48. The Prototype ‘wishing’ is less frequent and adaptable. The Active with a Direct Object is strenuous style [510], except with an Indirect Object too [511]. Far more often, you ‘wish for’ something’ [512]; or ‘wish to do’ something [513]. [510] he wished his thriving, yea, and in a lesser way, he wished the same to Roger (Well) [511] Elizabeth wished her all imaginable happiness. (Pride) [512] When persecution died down, many wished for restoration (History of Christianity) [513] She wished frantically to go faster, and the broomstick sped away (Brownie Stories) Some potential Dispositive or Ergative Colligations are compressed, e.g., wishing somebody dead [514] or yourself somewhere else [515]. The preferred Colligations are ‘wishing’ someone to do something [516], or something to get done [517], or again ‘wishing that’ something would happen [518] cf. xxx). [514] All the same, that night Gaily had wished her dead. (Gentleman and Ladies) [515] Ruth heartily wished herself back in New York. She was bored at Millfield. (Appleby) [516] Mrs Mantini wished her to dust the furniture, burnish the coal scuttle, and clean the windows. (Dark Dance) [517] If you wish interest to be paid to another account, advise your branch (Midland Bank)BNC [518] he wished that Elaine would open her eyes, but she was blind drunk (Ladykiller) Vigorous praise or enthusiasm can be expressed with the Colligations ‘couldn’t wish for’ + Comparative [519]; or ‘Superlative + ‘could wish for’ [520]; or with ‘every’ [521] or ‘all’ [522]. [519] We couldn’t have wished for better weather — perfect sunshine (Wedding Speeches) [520] You’re the most marvellous lover anyone could wish for. (Sudden Death) [521] Gibraltar Point contains almost every type of habitat a discerning bird could wish for. (Birdwatcher) [522] Emma was given all the consequence she could wish for (Emma) 49. The Prototype ‘hoping’ has a Lexicogrammar like ‘wishing’ but the Inten-tion and Control are weaker, Colligating with ‘for’ used plus a Direct Object [523], or ‘to’ plus Infinitive for another Process with the same Agent [524-25]. The Progressive turned up rather frequently [523, 525] [523] Mozart was hoping for another court appointment under the new emperor (Mozart) [524] Lakatos hoped to give rules for eliminating research programmes (Thing Called Science) [525] New York City Ballet was hoping to have its first London season (Cranko) Because ‘hoping’ is weaker, the parallel Colligations for praise and enthusiasm tend to come out fainter [52627]. [526] A 1-1 draw was the best they could have hoped for from this match. (TV news) [527] There you have it. Not a pretty death, but as peaceful as she could have hoped for, given the circumstances. (My Idea of Fun)
The ‘draw’ and the ‘death’ weren’t welcomed, but were all you could have expected. 50. The Prototype ‘needing’ is a more peculiar Aspiration. It can be close to ‘wanting’ with the Aspirer or ‘Needer’ as Subject, plus an Object [528] or an Infinitive [529] as the Needed. But often the ‘need’ is merely assessed by the speaker or writer; the Subject is not an Aspirer [530], and indeed might deny the need [531], such as bodily punishment [532]. The latter usage occasionally occurs with ‘want’ as well, despite the paradox [533-34]; I find no such uses of ‘wish’ or ‘hope’. [528] I need you, darling, both physically and spiritually (Enigma) [529] She needed to be the centre of attention and her clothes showed it. (Jane’s Journey) [530] the Government needs to give a higher priority to the quality of life (Independent) [531] My God, the world needs criticizing today…criticizing to death. (Chatterly) [532] An occasional child needs a whipping and would be improved by it. (Avonlea) [533] he’s a naughty boy and he wants a smacking (conversation)BNC [534] The capricious creature probably wanted a whipping to bring her to the understand-ing of the principle called mastery, which is in man. (Egoist) ‘Needing’ and ‘wanting’ are also parallel in colligating with a Participle [535-536]. [535] the skirt, however, needed hooking at various angles (Voyage Out) [536] Harriet only wanted drawing out, and receiving a few, very few hints. (Emma) 51. Like Cognition, Aspiration has a peculiar Transitivity, unlike Actions of ‘doing to’; or ‘being done to’ (cf. III.17). Passives do appear for ‘wanting’ [505-06] (III.47), but rarely for ‘wishing’ [537-38]. Passives for ‘hoping’ are in my data with ‘it’ as Subject, and mostly in official or bureaucratic discourse [539]; mentioning the Aspirer is rare [540]. Passives for ‘needing’ are the most frequent [541], colligating with Prepositional Phrases of ‘for’ [542] and Infinitives of ‘to’ [543]. [537] The Longbourn party […] had to wait for their carriages, which gave them time to see how heartily they were wished away (Pride) [538] my daughter was once was wished Happy Birthday (conversation)BNC [539] In Bonn it is hoped that there can be orderly change across the border (Independent) [540] The island itself — its people and their occupations, its geology, fauna and flora, its architecture — would, it was hoped by the parents, widen horizons (Tomorrow) [541] Diaghilev was convinced that another truly Russian ballet was needed (Ballet-Maker) [542] Tenors are needed for Northwich and District Festival Choir (Liverpool Echo) [543] Care and skill are needed to handle cask beer when it reaches the pub. (CAMRA) 52. Dispositive or Ergative Aspirations are common for ‘making want’ [544], less so for ‘making wish’ [545], and least for ‘making hope’ [546] and ‘making need’ [547]. [544] The horrors of war made them want to prevent conflict. (High Places)
[545] The mockery made her wish she’d said nothing. (Gemini Girl) [546] I sat thinking of Rima with just a tinge of bitterness in my thoughts which made me hope that she would miss me as much as I missed her (Green Mansions) [547] But misgiving had made her need me more than I needed her. (Letters in the Dark) 53. Commands are implausible for these Prototype Aspirations. I found none for ‘want’, though I might invent some in a suitable Mills & Boon style [548-549] (cf. xxx). I did find ‘wish’ and ‘hope’ [550-553], but less often than I would have guessed. Samples for ‘need’ I would again have to invent [554]. [548] *’Please, darling, want me!’ she hoarsed fiercely into his heaving sternum. [549] *’Don’t want what you can’t have’, he mirthed, with his soul-snaring sneer. [550] ‘There is no dishonour in wishing I had here some two scores of my gallant troop’. […] ‘Wish for whom thou wilt’ (Ivanhoe) [551] That would be the greatest misfortune of all! To find a man agreeable whom one is determined to hate! Do not wish me such an evil. (Pride) [552] It’s gonna be bloody Christmas before we know where we are. Hang your stocking up, hope for the best. (conversation)BNC [553] ‘The way you’ve listened gives me some hope.’ ‘Don’t hope too much’. (Portrait) [554] * 'Oh Ludovico, need me like I need you’, she concupissed, her nipples pointing ballistically at his. 54. Denials of Intention are mighty scarce [555-558]. Denial of Control is a bit more plausible for ‘want’, ‘wish’, or ‘hope’ [560-561]; but not for ‘need’ [562]. [555] Damn it, I didn’t mean to want you. Love’s an addiction (Heart’s Ease)www [556] I didn’t mean to wish her away. I — I didn’t know they were the words! (Bigess)www [557] He didn’t mean to hope anything bad on his mom (Beverly)www [558] ‘I didn’t mean to need you’. ‘Well, I didn’t expect to need you, either.’ (GH in Review)www [559] He couldn’t help wanting the impossible (Crystal Gardens)www [560] I couldn’t help wishing that a priest would show up (Ateni)www [561] He couldn’t help hoping for some more personal contact. (Harvard’s Education)www [562] She didn’t want to know if there was another woman, but she couldn’t help needing to know. (Shadows of Hope)www 55. Representive Processes are concerned not with Events and Actions but with the States and Circumstances. The Prototype Clause Core has ‘Represented’ as Subject and ‘Representation’ as a Verb Phrase that typically includes a Complement or an Adverbial. The Transitivity is fundamentally Medial. 56. Existential Processes are the simplest, the Clause Core only expressing some Human or Thing in the role of ‘Existent’. The Prototype has ‘there’ plus a form of the Verb ‘be’ (nearly always Simple rather than Perfect or
Progressive) in the Present [563] or Past [564]. Less prototypical Verbs with Existential ‘there’ include ‘exist’ itself [565] and, particularly in stories, ‘live’ in the Past [566]. [563] there is only one species of brown trout in Northern Europe (Global Ecology) [564] There were many good Germans but they were singularly ineffective in restraining the bad Germans. (War and Social Change) [565] it was suggested, by Leverrier in France and by Adams in England, that there existed a previously undetected planet in the vicinity of Uranus. (Thing Called Science) [566] Once upon a time, in the heart of Russia, there lived an old peasant woman called Babushka. (Brownie Stories) The Item ‘there’ is an anomaly in the Grammar of English Word-Classes. It is distinct from the Adverb ‘there’ meaning ‘at that place’, as in [567]. In casual style, it acts like a Singular Pronoun Subject in the Contraction ‘there’s’, whether the technical Subject is Singular [568] or Plural [569]. I found just a few Plurals when the Verb was clearly separated [570], or with a series of Singular Subjects [571]. [567] There was the stile before me — the very fields through which I had hurried. (Eyre) [568] I use a bath oil in my bath — there’s an American one I like. (Clothes Show) [569] There’s loads of shops with their lights on and traffic and people (Bayswater) [570] There isn’t many old parish’ners like her, I doubt. (Floss) [571] There is hospitality, and cordiality and good fellowship, (Mountain Woman) Perhaps ‘there’ is a unique ‘Existential Dummy’ supplied to occupy the position before Existential ‘be’. 57. In Circumstantial Processes, Circumstances are expressed in Clause Cores rather than in Adverbials where they usually go. One Prototype called the ‘Cleft’ is divided (‘cleft’) between two Clauses to put focus on the Circumstance (VI.22). In the Independent Clause, the Subject is the Circumstantial Dummy Pronoun ‘it’ and the Verb is ‘be’ in the Simple Present or Past, plus Subject Complements as Circumstances of Time or Place; the Dependent Clause tells what was or happened then or there. [572] There are reported minor clashes with security forces on Saturday evening, but no notable casualties. It was on Sunday that the scenes turned ugly. (Guardian) [573] It was at the door of this overgrown tavern that the London coach stopped (Pickwick) Commands like [574-75] are infrequent, except being ‘on time’, ‘not late’ [576-77]. [574] Be at the corral, with the buggy, at three. (Roaring Camp) [575] Don’t be at home or away without quick help! (Safety Kit)www [576] Just be on time, hit the lines and say the marks! (Hollywood Rogues) [577] Now run along like a good girl and don’t be late tomorrow. (Where There’s Life) My data show minimal Denials of Intention [578-79] and Control [580-81].
[578] Martin sat perched on the edge of a gilt-framed armchair, looking as though he did not quite mean to be there. (Jerusalem) [579] You didna mean to be late, […] but your aunt’s been worrited to-day. (Adam Bede) [580] Amy can’t help being there. She hasn’t anywhere else to go. (English Crime) [581] I piled two disco-bleared daughters into the car and drove [to] Barkway — a village which can’t help being close to Royston (Fishkeeping) 58. A peculiar Lexicogrammar applies to Circumstances of Weather, whose Prototypes ‘being cold’ and ‘being hot’ also prefer Simple Verbs [582-83], whereas the Prototypes of ‘raining’ and ‘snowing’ prefer the Progressive [584-85]; the Simple indicates a common weather condition [586-87]. Even though the Subject cannot be an Agent, an apparent Direct Object can occur [588-89]. [582] it was bitterly cold as I covered my bagpipes and rubbed my frozen fingers (Invasion) [583] The air was full of mosquitoes. It was very hot and sticky (Pacific) [584] It is raining in Tromsø. The sky is the colour of lead shot, with the Arctic Ocean dark and morose below it. (Artic Odyssey) [585] it was snowing, it was like a fairy tale, clean and soft (Gate-Crashing) [586] The region’s intense greenness is the giveaway that it often rains. (Best) [587] I will come in after breakfast every day […] even when it snows (Legacy of Love) [588] The problem was, it was raining sleet outside. (Rain) [589] It was snowing a blizzard, and we got lost (End of the Morning) With no Agent, Commands like [590-91] sound odd; the handful for ‘not raining’ or ‘snowing’ are facetious [592-93]. I find no Denials of Intention or Control like [594]. [590] *Oh, don’t be midnight already! [591] *Don’t be Monday morning yet, don’t! [592] Don’t Rain on My Parade (Funny Girl) [593] Let it Sun, Let it Rain, Just Don’t Snow (Bad Samaritan)www [594] *It didn’t mean to rain on your birthday, but the humidity was so high it couldn’t help but rain. 59. Identification is a Process that assigns an Identity, frequently a familial, social, or institutional role. The Prototype Clause has the ‘Identified’ as Subject Entity, ‘be’ as Verb, and ‘Identity’ as Subject Complement. [595] May I present to you a member of my wife’s family. He is my wife’s brother. (Saigon) [596] Mischa is my father’s oldest friend (Relic) [597] Evelyn Matlock, whom you have met, is the housekeeper. (Taste for Death) [598] Winston Churchill was the President of the Board of Trade (Ideas in Action)
Dispositive or Ergative Identification is for ‘naming’ or ‘electing’ somebody into a role, which is expressed by just a few Verbs. The Active has Identifier as Subject. Identified as Object, and Identity as Object Complement [599-600]; the Passive has the Identified as Subject [601-02]. [599] If I’d been a ranch, they would have named me the Bar-Nothing. (Rita Hayworth in Gilda) [600] Phi Kappa Phi elected her President in 1921. (Helen Bishop Thompson) www [601] Gary Drake was named the Grand Finals Player-of-the-Tournament (Tennis World) [602] Maynard Jackson Jr. was elected the first black mayor of Atlanta in 1973. (USA Today)www 60. Commands are highly selective, and would be plausible only for an Identity which can be deliberately assumed or assigned, as in [603-604] but not, say, in [595a-596a]. [603] Please be my wife, be one with me (Dru Hill)www [604] Oh Rose, please, please be my friend. Please take the ring, please! (Twist of Fate) [605] I have bigger, tiara-holding hair and red lipliner always at the ready. Please elect me your 1999-2000 Homecoming Queen. (Courtney Beebe in the Montana Kaimin)www [595a] *Kindly be my wife’s brother. [596a] *Please, Misha, be my father’s oldest friend I can find no Denials of Intention like [603a] or of Control like [596b]. [603a] *She didn’t mean to be my wife, but she married me by mistake in a dimly lighted chapel. [596b] *Misha couldn’t help being my father’s oldest friend because he was his only friend. 61. Attribution is for Representing some inherent trait or property. The Prototype Clause has ‘Attributed’ as Subject, ‘be’ as Verb, and ‘Attribute’ as Subject Complement [606-09]. [606] Aldebrand is very tall and thin, but immensely strong and fit (Warhammer Armies)BNC [607] She was middle-aged, thin as a bean-pole, with a mouth puckered up with spite. (Topaz) [608] Mrs Binks was very fat and a filthy dress hung shapelessly on her. (Vets Might Fly) [609] His face was white, his skin scrofulous, his teeth decaying. (Suburbia) Attributes make odd Commands, either Affirmative [610] or Negative [611]. I find no Denials of Intention like [606a]. Denial of Control seems a bit more plausible [612], but somewhat trivial. [610] Seattle photographer seeks models 18-35. Please be slender (Models)www [611] First off don’t be fat or short. I sadly am both. (Tidus)www [606b] *Aldebrand didn’t mean to be very tall and thin, but his DNA was unrelenting. [612] If we had such a custom in Japan, we couldn’t help being fat. (New Zealand)www
62. Evaluation is for Representing a Value according to the Attitude of the speaker. The Prototype Clause has the ‘Evaluated’ as Subject, ‘be’ as Verb, and the ‘Value’ as Subject Complement for Ameliorative [613-14] or Pejorative [615-16]. Children are doubtless well sensitised to the difference by their elders [617]. [613] he was always so charming to me — so nice. (Over the Edge) [614] people are extremely kind and extremely generous. (Save the Children)BNC [615] Lawson was rude and arrogant — exactly what a chancellor should be. (Economist) [616] She was mean and horrible, snide, self-righteous and unkind. (Three Times Table) [617] Mum had told him that whenever he was good she liked him but that when he was bad, she didn’t. (Mr Tom) Commands are mostly Affirmative for Ameliorative and Negative for Pejorative: [618] Always be polite — even if the customer isn’t. (Retailing) [619] ‘Don’t be rude, dear’, said his mother placidly. (Room with a View) [620] ‘Be reasonable!’ pleaded Geoffrey. ‘Men aren’t saints!’ (Damsel) [621] Don’t be unreasonable about the service and rant and rave (Canoe Travel)www [622] Be wise, for wisdom availed Daniel in the den of lions (Ivanhoe) [623] Don’t Be Stupid, You Know I Love You (Shania Twain) Intention is naturally denied for the Pejorative Values [624-25]. I found just a few Denials of Control [626-27]. [624] I didn’t mean to be rude, but it’s so comfortable to say all I think (Little Women) [625] I’m sorry master, I didn’t mean to be stupid. (Feathered Circle)www [626] Chloe couldn’t help being rude. She wanted to hit him! (Vicious Circle)www [627] Stupidity is not a sin, the victim can’t help being stupid. (Adventurers)www 63. Possession is a fuzzy Process, vacillating among Identity or Attribute (what is said to be yours), Disposition (what you can do with it), Cognition (what you believe is yours), and Aspiration (what you want to have). The Prototype Clause with ‘Possessor’ as Subject, ‘have’ as Verb Phrase and ‘Possessed’ as Object, is for a straightforward relation of ‘having tangible property’ [628-629]. Verbs like ‘own’ and ‘possess’ are less common, though more consistent for this relation [630-631]. [628] I have a Knitmaster machine. (Machine Knitting Monthly) [629] When three hundred of the richest people on Earth have wealth equal to the bottom three billion people on Earth, extreme affluence is built on the back of extreme poverty. (Ralph Nader, Crashing the Party) [630] Republican gubernatorial candidate William E. Simon Jr. owns stock in a natural gas company accused of taking advantage of California. (LA Times) [631] Hades possessed a magic helmet which made him invisible. (Myths, Gods and Fantasy)
64. By form at least, the Transitivity of Possession appears Active, though rarely counting as an Action; and some Verbs have corresponding Passives, such as ‘own’ (common) [632] and ‘possess’ (rare) [633], but apparently not ‘have’ [634]. However, a Medial version is common with Possessed as Subject, ‘be’ as Verb, and a Possessive as Subject Complement [635]. [632] the vacant land was owned by Liverpool City Council (Town and Country) [633] in the seventeenth century, the church was possessed by Daniel Disney (East Lindsey) [634] *A Knitmaster machine is had by me. [635] The pictures were Douglas’s and the furniture was mine (Art Newspaper) 65. Dispositive Possession has the important Prototypes ‘giving’, ‘getting’, and ‘taking’. ‘Giving’ is widespread in the Active with Giver as Subject, Giving as Verb, Receiver as Indirect Object, and Given as Direct Object [636]. The Passive may have the Given as Subject with the Giver formatted in an Agentive Adverbial [637]; or else or the Receiver as Subject, which leaves the Given as a Noun Phrase whose role in the Clause Core is ambiguous [638] — perhaps a relic of an older Subject when the present-day Subject was a Fronted Indirect Object, as in Biblical style [639]. ‘Getting’ principally occurs with the Getter as Subject and the Gotten as Object [640-41]. Yet the Verb ‘get’ also serves for Giving with the Giver as Subject and the Getter as Indirect Object, implying that the Given as Direct Object first had to be secured by the Giver [642-643]. ‘Taking’ has as Prototype the Taker and Subject, Taking as Verb, and the Taken as Direct Object, possibly with the Giver in an Adverbial with ‘from’ [644]. [636] Frederick then gave her a palace of her own. (Stonehenge to Stonewall)www [637] This bell was given to the Dean of St. Paul’s by William III. (Big Ben)www [638] she was given a crystal vase and luggage as a leaving present. (Glenpatrick News) [639] there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power (Revelation 9:3) [640] he gets some unemployment money (conversation)BNC [641] my friend got a house at Westerhailes Park eleven months ago (Radio Forth)BNC [642] We got her a flat in the same block as ours (Woman) [643] Geoff’s mum got me a piece of cheese last week from Superkeys. (conversation) BNC [644] She took the glass from Sarah. ‘It’s cognac.’ ‘The kind Napoleon liked’. (Freely Sing) 66. ‘Selling’ has the Prototype of Seller as Subject, Selling as Verb, and Sold as Direct Object; if specified, the Buyer is Indirect Object [645], and the Price appears in an Adverbial of Means with ‘for’ [646]. ‘Buying’ has the Prototype of Buyer as Subject, Buying as Verb, and Bought as Direct Object, and optionally a Receiver as Indirect Object [647] and a Price again in a ‘for’ Adverbial [648-49]. Like Giving, both ‘selling’ and ‘buying’ have various options in the Passive for the Subject: the Sold [649], the Bought [650], or, rarely, the Receiver [651-52], this last Pattern again leaving an ambiguous Noun Phrase for the Sold or the Bought. [645] Kenelm had then sold my father a pair of eighteenth-century cupboards. (Authors) [646] He had sold a Rolls-Royce for about £28,000 (Daily Telegraph) [647] A niece of Miss Vine’s bought her a new budgerigar. (Dynmouth)
[648] Vicki bought a birthday card for nanny (conversation)BNC [649] A converted broom cupboard opposite Harrods was sold for £36,500. (Best) [650] A new tractor was bought in 1957, the first for 30 years (Henley Golf Club)BNC [651] The story behind Michelle’s tank was that she was sold a four footer (Fishkeeping) [652] He was bought a few drinks by workmates and took off on his own, round various bars, to finish the job properly. (Misfortunes of Nigel) 67. The Possessive of ‘having’ is rare in Commands like [653-54]; for Medial Possessive, I only find the quaint ‘be mine!’ [655]. The Active Imperative ‘have’ usually occurs for other Processes, such as Dispositive [656], Enactive [657], and Perceptive [658]. But Dispositive Possessives are naturally popular in Commands, such as [659-62]. [653] Imagine. . .Have all the money you need! (MATCU)www [654] If you don’t want the seat, don’t have it (Bummel) [655] I never felt love’s holy thrill till I saw thee! Be mine! (Artemus Ward) [656] ‘Come in and have some tea’, a cut-glass voice invited. (Dandelion Days) [657] Go to the rose gardens, have a walk along the sea front (Trade Union Congress)www [658] Have a look under the arch: a sculpted scene of the Good Pastor (Normandy)www [659] I heard the captain say, ‘Give the men an extra glass of grog’. (Coral Island) [660] Get legal verifiable accredited degrees. No study, no exams. (Belford ‘University’) www [661] Dai Huang followed her. ‘Sell me your daughter’, Li Lu’. (New Internationalist) [662] ‘Buy me a dram and I will tell you all about it.’ I did and he did. (Tales of the Loch) I found only one occurrence each of Possession in a Denial of Intention [663] and a Denial of Control [664]. Dispositive Possession was more frequent [665-66]. [663] I’m just happy to be rid of a stock that I didn’t mean to own in the first place. (It was a result of a spinoff.) (Joe Williams) www [664] I was put in possession of a gentleman’s house in this parish here, that everybody would suppose couldn’t help having money if he tried. (Sketches by Boz) [665] When the French put shares up for sale the English couldn’t help buying them and soon had the majority share in the Suez Canal (Imperialism in Africa)www [666] parents in rural areas couldn’t help selling their cattle to afford the tuition fee (Argus)www 68. In general, the Representative Processes are hardly used in Dispositives like ‘making be’. All I found was one facetious Circumstance of Weather [667], plus a handful of Values [668-69]. [667] If she didn't know better she’d have said he’d sabotaged her jeep and made it rain this way, just so he could enjoy some amusement at her expense! (Garden of Desire)
[668] Besides, I can maybe make Colley be good to my father. (Little Lower) [669] Kuke is the cutest guy ever, please don’t make him be bad. (Shadows of the EU)www 69. Expressive Processes serve to ‘express’ your ‘inner’ States and Events, guided by the cognitive and social norms of culture and language. The Prototype Clause Core in the Active has ‘Expresser’ as Subject, ‘Expression’ as Verb Phrase, and ‘Expressed’ as Direct Object [670-71]. The Passive has ‘Expression’ as Subject and ‘Expresser’ in an Agentive Adverbial [672-73]. [670] World War II field commanders expressed a wish for horse-troopers. (US Cavalry)www [671] The Israeli Prime Minister expressed his shock at the incident. (Independent) [672] the view was expressed by some that the training of recruits was premature. (Nelson Mandela) [673] no sympathy was expressed by male members of the group as to the comparative hardness of the women’s lives (Psychic and Political Dimensions) 70. In Emotive Processes, the Expression consists of a movement (an ‘ex-motion’, so to speak) from an inner State or Event of the body or mind toward an outer display of face, gesture, or tone of voice (V.5), which may entail Intention or Control, or may not. Several Clause Cores might qualify as Prototypes. One has the ‘Emoter’ as Medium for the Subject, the Medial ‘be’ as Verb, and the ‘Emotion’ as an Adjective Subject Complement [674-76]; another has the Medial ‘feel’ for the Verb [676-77]. Or again, a Past Participle with a form like the Passive links up to ‘be’ [678-79]. As these data indicate, Emotives contrast quite clearly between Ameliorative (like ‘happy’) and Pejorative (like ‘sad’), the latter being more com-mon in my data, especially among the Participles. [674] I was happy in London, free, mistress of my self and my pocket. (So Very English) [675] I am sad for the suffering of the Iraqi people. (Economist) [678] Then she said she felt happy enough to skip the Ecstasy experiment (Independent) [677] I felt sad, depressed, utterly miserable. My aunt had about a month to live. (Gorbals) [678] Aloysia had even more potential talent. Mozart was enraptured. (Mozart) [679] I was saddened and grieved and distressed by the fact that everybody turned against him at the end. (Peter Grimes) Less common in my data is the Active option of an Emotion as a Noun Object of ‘feel’ [680-81]; and still less the corresponding Passive [682-83]. Sometimes the Object is a Bodily Event suggesting but not specifying an Emotion [684-85]. [680] We feel happiness when we pray to Allah (Adel Sadeq)www [681] Russians feel sadness and pride as Mir splashes down (Associated Press) www [682] A general air of happiness was felt throughout the entire ship (Small Step)www [683] The sadness was felt by all people in the village. Their beloved Chief has passed in the night. (Native American Story)www
[684] His gaze swept boldly over her and she felt a rush of warmth right through her veins. (Lover’s Charade) [685] she felt an explosion of fire sweep through her entire body (Castle of Desire) 71. Dispositive Emotions of ‘making feel’ are readily found, sometimes with a Human Agent [686, 688] but more often a Cause [687, 689]. Where the Modifier clearly indicates the Emotion, the Verb ‘feel’ can be omitted [688-89]. [686] my mum made me feel happy about having large breasts (How Do I Look?) [687] The sun made Endill feel sad but excited at the journey ahead. (Endill) [688] I have been in to see my mother. You have made her happy, Jenna (Healing Fire) [689] Puppy love isn’t such a silly thing. Its made her sad and lonely (Donna Grayson)www In the woolly Mills and Boon world of women irresistibly attracted to muscular males, Emotions lend the vital organs an astounding mobility: [690] His voice held a caressing note which flipped her heart over in her chest. (Calypso’s Island) [691] As he strode towards her, she felt her heartbeat do a funny little dance. (Battle for Love) [692] The kiss […] was a sensual onslaught that made her brain whirl. (Healing Fire) [693] her stomach leapt inside her, remembering that dance (Conspiracy of Love) [694] she could feel her nipples tingling, tightening to aching points thrusting proud and carmine under the caressing gaze (Calypso’s Island) Unlike characters in Victorian novels (II.156), these women could hardly be ‘overcome by emotion’ if they are unimpaired by such anatomical convulsions. 72. Predictably, Commands are Affirmative for Ameliorative Emotions [695] and Negative for Pejorative ones [696]. [695] Here are twenty thousand pounds. Be happy! (Copperfield) [696] Rosa, please, please, don’t be unhappy. I’ll help you, I will. (Lost Father) I found few examples of Denials for Intention [697], but many for Control [698-99]. [697] I didn’t mean to sound sad. I didn’t mean to be sad. (Sweet Misery)www [698] people could not help feeling happy as a large victory had been won that day (Jynx) www [699] I could not help feeling sad in the face of relentlessly fleeting time. (Li Wei-Huang)www 73. Communicative Processes deploy Texts to display and impart significance. One Prototype Clause Core has Communicator as Subject, Communication as the Verb of ‘saying’ and a Noun Phrase for the Communicated Text as the Direct Object [700]. But the preferred Prototype has the Communicated Text as a Framed Clause, i.e., a Dependent Clause telling what was communicated, whilst the Independent Framing Clause of ‘saying’ may come before [701] but commonly after [702-05]. A Noun for the Communicator goes after the ‘saying’ [703] more than before [703]; a Pronoun goes before [704] more than after [705]. 9
[700] John Major said a lot of silly things. (New Statesman) [701] Then the butler said, ‘Everything is at your disposal’. (Father Brown) [702] ‘You’d better get on with that index’, said the high official (Mayfair) [703] ‘Appearances are against me, Mr, Sheridan’, the beautiful intruder said. (Certain Hour) [704] ‘Thy own hand has slain thee, and for my sake’, she said. (Golden Age of Myth) [705] ‘Oh well, you never know’, said she. (Under the Sea) The Prototype of ‘telling’ is more likely to have a Noun Object [706], and, when used as a Frame, prefers that the Receiver be specified [707]. [706] she told a vivid tale implicating several people in the murders. (New Scientist) [707] Bristoll told the King that he will impeach the Chancellor of High Treason (Pepys) 74. A Direct Text has the actual wording set off from the Frame by Quotation Marks [701-05]. An Indirect Text, with no Marks, fits the wording (such as Tense and Person) to the Frame. [701a, 707a] Converting between Direct and Indirect Text has limits, as in [708-08a], and excludes Direct Texts that follow the ongoing interaction among speakers, as in [709-10] versus [709a-10a]. [701a] Then the butler said that everything was at their disposal. [707a] Bristoll told the King, ‘I shall impeach the Chancellor of High Treason’. [708] ‘You’re a pretty creature, anyhow’, said Dick. ‘You think so, do you?’ said Clarissa (Voyage Out) [708a] Dick said Clarissa was a pretty creature, anyhow. ?She said he thought so, did he? [709] ‘My God’, he told her, ‘you look awful’. (Kenneth Williams) [709a] *He told her that his God, she looked awful. [710] ‘Ah!’ snarled the Russian. ‘You see, I was right!’ (Adversary) [710a] *The Russian snarled ah, she saw, he was right. Also blocked from conversion to Indirect are Texts where the Framing Verb is a bodily Enactment involving the mouth [711-12] versus [711a-12a]. [711] ‘It was kind of you to walk me home’, she smiled. (Maggie) [711a] *She smiled that it was kind of him to walk her home. [712] He tried, and couldn’t open it either. ‘That’s odd’, he frowned. (Maggie) [712a] *He frowned that it was odd he couldn’t open the door. 74. Gist Texts do not represent what was actually said but indicate the content: [713] The report presents the truth about conditions in what is, probably, the poorest (financially) of all the countries I have visited. (African Primary Schools)
[714] Gedge explained the reasons why the group had become a magnificent obsession. (Wedding Present) Label Texts merely indicate a particular sort of Communication without indicating either words or content: [715] Don Bennett lavished high praise on my finding and training of pathfinders (Hamish) [716] The relaxed atmosphere breeds bantering conversation. (Independent) [717] The mixture of cheap jokes and pretentious philosophising becomes increasingly hard to stomach (Daily Telegraph) [718] French farmers staged an anti-British protest at Calais at the weekend, throwing stones and hurling insults at Britons coming off ferries (Today) Dispositive Texts occur in the Active for doing something, usually Pejorative, to somebody, again without representing the words or content: [719] The Headmaster had shouted at him so loudly he was deaf for a week. (Endill) [720] Kylie, said press reports, lost her cool and screamed at the intruders. (Kylie) [721] The sledger cursed the dogs and swore at the television crew (Arctic Odyssey) [722] She slandered her husband, her friends, and her own self. (Amnesty) Enactive Texts occur in the Medial for producing speech or writing, also usually Pejorative, using yourself as Medium, whilst words or content are devalued. [723] Cassie talked and talked until her throat ached and her mouth was dry (Strawberries) [724] I lay on the floor on my stomach, scribbling away and laughing (Deborah Moggach)BNC [725] I tramped round the room, blabbering with the excitement. (Midsummer Killing) [726] Mrs Thatcher ranted and raved. It was typical of the way she conducts Cabinet Government. (Observer) 75. The Passive can omit an irrelevant Communicator [727], Subject is the Circumstantial ‘it’ for ‘saying’ [728], or the Receiver for ‘telling’ [729].
e.g.,
if
the
[727] A story was told whose smear value demands immediate publication (Punch) [728] It was said that the poet Shelley had been here to sail paper boats. (C.S. Lewis) [729] I was told one flight was full, and left the gate to mooch around (Independent) The Dispositive or Ergative of ‘making say’ rarely has one Human Agent acting on another [730]. More often, the Process expresses a factor ‘making people say’ what they otherwise might not [731]; or some uncertainty about what factor could possibly have done so [732]. Also, a Reflexive use occurs when people compel themselves to say something they would rather not [733]. And ‘making tell’ can be used for two Human Agents [734], maybe implying compulsion. [730] his mother made him always say what he thought (Possession) [731] ‘She’s strong’, said Rachaela. It was instinct which made her say it. (Dark Dance)
[732] ‘There’s nothing.’ What on earth had made him say that? He sounded as if he were denying an affair. (Like Out) [733] ‘Take care of your baby’, Birdy made herself say cheerfully. ‘Jerk’, she said, after they hung up. (Nobody’s Girl)www [734] There are two men on her. They’ll find the book. They’ll make her tell them where it is. And then they’ll kill her. (Heathen) 76. As we saw for Cognition (III.43), some types of Communication imply the truth [735-736], whilst others entail no such implication [737]. Especially uncertain are the things ‘told’ to a court [738]. [735] He admitted that Ipswich had been fortunate to beat Newcastle (Daily Telegraph) [736] The board confirmed that Les Jones is to continue as Britain’s team manager (Guardian) [737] Reagan claimed that US presence in the Lebanon was ‘vitally important to the security of the United States and the Western world’. (Intelligence Game) [738] Today his closest friends told the court he was always honest. But according to the prosecution, the Cheltenham magistrate is a blatant liar. (TV news) The British press plays it safe by Framing court proceedings (III.79). 77. Communication readily ‘expresses’ Emotions: [739] She shut herself in out of the drizzling rain, and expressed her delight with every-thing. The roads were quaint, [and] wasn’t Dublin just beautiful! (No Enemy) [740] Indian and Inuit leaders expressed anger over the result of the referendum. (Keesings) [741] All those attending the lobby have expressed their outrage at the deepening crisis in housing (Leeds Diocesan Catholic Voice)BNC [742] Peers expressed their sorrow at the separation of the Prince and Princess of Wales (Today) Emotion also animates the popular media (plus Mills and Boon, natch) to some curious Verbs of saying: [743] ‘I have my connections’, he gleamed. (Imajica) [744] ‘There is no such thing as a good morning’, she grumped. (Roman Spring) [745] He came back to the dressing room in tears. ‘What do you think?’ he blubbed. (Kenneth Williams) [746] ‘Where are you going?’ he grated hotly, his eyes alive now, glittering dangerously. ‘To Steve, of course’, she rasped bitterly. (Love or Nothing) [747] ‘What big blue eyes you have’, husked Lucenzo. (Mask of Deception) Mercifully, these too cannot be converted to Indirect: [743a] *He gleamed that he had his connections. [746a] *He grated hotly where she was going, and she rasped to Steve.
78. On the other side of Communication, ‘hearing that’ and ‘reading that’ often occur without the Communicator [748-51] and vagueness can increase with ‘somewhere’ [752-53]. On the whole, what is ‘read’ carries more authority, that what is ‘heard’, especially when citing the Bible [751] or ‘taking as read’ [754]. [748] I heard that his family once had money, but lost it in some way. (Seasons of My Life) [749] I had heard that in the South things are better (English Crime) [750] I read that the US is in the grip of Japanophobia following the purchase of Columbia Pictures by Sony. (Independent) [751] We read that the apostles in Jerusalem sent Peter and John to them. (Church Planting) [752] I heard somewhere that Frank Worthington claimed to sleep with a different woman before every match (Leeds United)BNC [753] I read somewhere that your body is warmer in the winter if you shave your legs. (Well-Woman)www [754] Need to have it ratified by the Board. But you can take it as read that you have the contract. (Nudists) A Communicator can be ‘heard’ (but apparently not ‘read’) as an Agent of ‘saying that’ [755], and yet be left unspecified [756]. The interesting variation of ‘hearing oneself say’, suggests speaking without firm Intention or Control [757-58] — rather the opposite of ‘making oneself say’ (III.75). [755] I distinctly heard you say that some of my designs weren’t quite suitable. (Miracles) [756] You sometimes hear people say that it is not worth eating differently (Get Slim) [757] ‘Oh dear’, Ianthe heard herself saying, feebly, she felt, but it was difficult to know how best to express her sympathy. (Unsuitable Attachment) [758] I heard myself saying that I had got so smashed I was sick. (Sexual Health)www 79. Emotions again figure as effects of what you ‘hear’ or ‘read’ [759-60]. Anger can be expressed by just exclaiming that you ‘heard’ something [761]. Fearful warnings are issued ‘not to let someone hear’ what you just said [762]. [759] I am happy to hear that the UN security council has eased some sanctions against Iraq. (James McKenna)www [760] I’m terribly sad to read that Michael Kelly has been killed in Iraq. (Virginia Postrel) [761] ‘Dratted animal! He ought to be shot.’ The old woman bed flashed her a look. ‘I heard that!’ ‘You were meant to’, snapped Araminta instantly. (Hidden Flame) [762] ‘Bit of a slut, if you ask me.’ ‘Don’t let Barney hear you say that’. (Finishing Touch) Like ‘told’ in [738], British legal proceedings can be reported as what was ‘heard’: [763] Fireman Richard Pearson loved putting out fires so much that he started 11 of them himself, a court heard yesterday (Today) Such Frames handily allow publishing courtroom data without judging the potential validity or truth of the Communications (III.76).
80. These then are the Processes I would propose to recognise for a functional Lexicogrammar of English, summarised in Table III.1 Process
Prototypes
Clause
Transitivity
Commands
Core
Denial of Denial of Intention Control
Outer Processes Dispositive
‘doing to’
Disposer,
Active,
Disposition,
Passive
many
yes
few
no
less
Disposed Productive
Enactive
‘making’,
Producer,
Active,
‘creating’,
Production,
Passive
‘manufacturing’
Product
‘moving’, ‘behaving’
Enacter,
Medial
selective
yes
no
yes
Enactment, Circumstance
Developmental
‘becoming’,,
Developer,
‘growing’
Development
Medial
phoney
no no
selective
rare
no
‘changing’ Inner Processes Perception
‘seeing’
Perceiver,
Active,
‘watching’
Perception,
Passive,
‘looking’
Perceived
Medial
selective
‘hearing’ ‘listening’ ‘touching ‘smelling’ ‘tasting’ Cognition
Aspirations
‘knowing’,
Cogniser,
Active,
highly
‘learning’,
Cognition,
Passive,
selective
‘finding out’
Cognised
Medial?
‘wanting’,
Aspirer,
Active,
implausible
no
few
yes
‘wishing’,
Aspiration,
‘hoping’,
Aspired
Passive
Representive Processes Existential
‘there being’
Existent
Medial
no
Circumstance
Medial
uncommon
no
no
‘existing’ Circumstantial
‘being somewhere’,
few
very
very
few
‘being sometime’ ‘raining’ ‘snowing’ Identification
Attribution
‘being
Identified,
somebody’
Identity
‘being some way’
Evaluation
Possession
Attributed,
Medial
highly
no
no
no
no
no
selective Medial
Attribute
‘being good’
Evaluated,
‘being bad’
Value
‘having’,
Possessor,
‘owning’,
Possessed
‘being mine or yours,’
Medial Ameliorative
yes
no
Pejorative Active rare Passive
no
Medial
rare
no
rare
no
no
no
no
‘giving and getting’, ‘selling and buying’ Expressive Processes Emotive
Communicative
‘being happy’
Emoter,
Medial
Ameliorative
‘feeling sad’
Emotion
Medial
Pejorative
‘saying’,
Communicator,
Active
‘telling’
Communication,
Passive
‘talking’
Communicated
few
many
Medial
Table III.1 To be sure, each one could be described at higher Delicacy as a cluster of Processes, steadily revealing more interactions between Lexicon and Grammar. Even the sturdier Prototypes go separate ways in some
lexicogrammatical preferences, notably the ‘five senses’ for Perception and the variegated Texts for Communication. 81. Still, this rough outline was derived from attested and authentic samples of English in large corpora and the Internet, covering a wide span of times, regions, and varieties. Moreover, it may serve for discussion and analysis of text and discourse in later chapters, complementing the Standards of Textuality, especially with Colligations for Cohesion and Collocations for Coherence.
II.C A Lexicogrammatical of Parameters 82. The term Parameter, which has been variously used for a set of variables in form or function (e.g. in mathematics), might be enlisted to further specify our Lexicogrammar of Processes as they are expressed in Clause Cores. In contrast to some languages, English often identifies the Parameters not by grammatical forms but by lexical indicators, so conventional ‘grammar’ has overlooked some and treated others by stilted analogies to Latin ‘grammar’ as ‘tenses’, ‘voices’, or ‘moods’. Yet within the integrated Lexicogrammar, these Parameters are normally selected for each Clause of actual English discourse (III.94) — and even in invented sentences — but do not attract notice when they are unmarked, i.e., chosen when there is no good motive to choose otherwise (see VI.14). 83. The scheme I would propose has seven Parameters, shown in Table III.2. It was also fully revised in 2006 to circumvent Explorer. Items connected by commas apply only vertically to the heading, not horizontally straight across.
Polarity has the two terms of Affirmative and Negative. Logically, they might seem evenly balanced and decisive, like yes and no, or + and -, or (for computers) 1 and Ø. Yet they differ about implying that the Process would be reasonable or expected. The Affirmative is unmarked and non-committal, e.g. [764], whereas a marked emphatic version with a Stressed Auxiliary ‘do’ suggests an unexpected Process [765]. The Negative mostly denies an expected Process [766], whilst its marked version emphasises the denial with Stressed Negation [767] or Multiple Negatives [768-69]. Having two Negatives cancel each other by pure ‘Denial Words’ (like ‘no, not, never, none’) is rare and sounds strenuous [770-71]. The preference is for one of the denials to occur in a different item, such as a Negative Prefix, denying a plausible denial, e.g., that the voice of Emma Woodhouse ought not to have been ‘steady’ [772]; or that they were not ‘civil’ because they did not ‘like each other’ [773]. [764] I was chased around by a fearful goblin with a layer cake for a head. (Green Gables)
[765] Percy: Upon my honour, Sir, I did not mean to be uncivil. Johnson: I cannot say so, Sir; for I did mean to be uncivil. (Boswell) [766] I wonder I did not dream about poor Mrs Farfrae, after thinking of her so (Mayor) [767] You have probably entirely forgotten a conversation between us one evening at Barton Park’. […] ‘Indeed’, answered Elinor, ‘I have not forgotten it.’ (Sense) [768] Arthur: I don’t want no cucumber Richard: I don’t want none (conversation)BNC
you
don’t want no cucumber? Arthur:
no
[769] ‘Where are the soldiers?’ ‘Gone. Ain’t nobody outside at all. […] An’ dere ain’t nary soul ‘bout dis place — all run away.’ (Oliver Horn) [770] Few Nobles come, and yet not none. (French Revolution) [771] Even if I had dared hope to be efficiently hushed up, I couldn’t have not fled. (Dandies) [772] Her voice was not unsteady (Emma) [773] Neither of them was very civil. They did not dislike each other, but they each wanted to be somewhere else. (Longest Journey) 84. The Parameter of Degree, expressed by Modifiers of a Process or (more often) of a Participant or Circumstance, has one central value plus two higher and two lower values. The central value is unmarked and is known as the Positive (though ‘posited’ might fit better). The Higher Comparative is mainly a Modifier plus the Comparative Adverb ‘more’, and theHighest Superlative with the Superlative Adverb ‘most’. Conversely, the Lower Comparative is mainly the Comparative Adverb ‘less’; and the Lowest Superlative has the Superlative Adverb ‘least’. Here are the data for the Degrees of Processes occurring more or less ‘forcibly’: [774] masterless men are forcibly prevented from producing the food they need. (Socialist) [775] But in the great Sperm Whale, […] you feel the Deity and the dread powers more forcibly than in beholding any other object in living nature. (Moby) [776] The thing that struck me most forcibly when I saw Niagara Falls was, where in the world did all that water come from? (Abraham Lincoln) [777] a superstitious conscience is less forcibly bound by the spiritual energy, than by the outward and visible symbols of an oath. (Decline) [778] Courtney Love’s character, along with David Chapelle’s disco-pimpin’ cab driver, are the strongest, perhaps because they are the least forcibly acted. (Dallas Mercury) And here are the data for the Degrees of Participants who were more or less ‘glamorous’, a term beloved by the military with its gaudy garbs and gadgets. [779] Sheen was the first Australian fighter pilot to taste combat in Europe. He commented, ‘a fighter pilot is not always as glamorous as it sounds’. (Air Force News) [780] The Merchant Service are invariably overshadowed by their more glamorous allies in the Royal Navy. (Liverpool Echo)
[781] Become a Navy Fighter and serve your country in the most glamorous and noble of all military positions (Navy Blue Press) [782] Young men were flocking into the RAF, hoping to become Fighter Pilots, or one of the slightly less glamorous Bomber boys. (One WAAF’s War) [783] The Pioneer Corps was the least glamorous sector of the army (Policeman Smiled) For shorter, commoner Modifiers, the higher values can take simpler forms with the Comparative Ending ‘-er’ and the Superlative Ending ‘-est’, whereas the lower values lack the option. Yet usage appears unstable. I find a scattering of alternative forms even where I would expect only the simple ones, e.g., for ‘ugly’ [784-87]. [784] the Rollers were all hideously ugly, wonky, Scottish and gonky. Only the Glitter Band and Leeds Utd were uglier. (NME) [785] People in Liverpool have more humour. […] Manchester is more ugly. (The Smiths)www [786] Topping the bill will be the ugliest band ever to get to No 1 — Dr And The Medics! (Belfast Telegraph)BNC [787] HC Cobras is the coolest, roughest, hardest and most ugly team of the Swedish traditional sport called Hockey Bockey (HC Cobras)www For some Modifiers, one form is more frequent though the other is not odd, e.g. ‘clever-er’ over ‘more clever’ [788-89], or ‘more ‘common’ over ‘commoner’ [790-91]. [788] Mr Clinton is cleverer than Mr Kinnock. (Daily Telegraph) [789] That Devil is more clever than he is thought by some (Dracula) [790] Shop bought cosmetics tend to be designed for the more common skin types (advert)www [791] On sites rich in fossils, collectors often become bored with the commoner animals (New Scientist) Also, Regional English may pick the simpler form for long Adjectives [792-95]; or may even combine both forms [796-97]. [792] And the nearer we got the nervouser and nervouser all three of us become. (Danny) [793] nobody could be gratefuler and lovinger than what they was to Tom Sawyer (Detective) [794] he is the peaceablest, patientest, best-temperedest soul in the world! (Dombey) [795] Uncle Silas he preached them the blamedest jumbledest idiotic sermons you ever struck; […] but the people never let on but what they thought it was the clearest and brightest and elegantestsermons that ever was (Detective) [796] The king said it was all the more homely and more pleasanter for these fixings (Finn) [797] you injure me in one of the most delicatest points in which one man can injure another. (Pickwick) Such instabilities might amuse speakers of languages which have largely settled in favour of the Adverbs (like French) or the Endings (like German).
85. The Parameter of Tenses has traditionally called the Simple Tenses by the terms Past [798], Present [799], and Future [800], principally defined relative to the time of the discourse, although not too strictly. The Aspectual Tenses (or ‘aspects’) deserve more precise terms: Predecessive (or ‘perfect’) for before a time [801], Progressive (or ‘continuous’) for extending over time [802], and Successive for soon after a time [803]. [798] In the summer of 1981, Mrs Thatcher was at her lowest ebb (People’s Peace) [799] Mrs Thatcher is not regarded as a warm or compassionate person (Thatcherism) [800] Thatcher will never be short of a few bob — she’s worth an estimated £9.5 million. (Mirror) [801] Enoch Powell recalled that Margaret Thatcher had been called the ‘Iron Lady’ and rather liked the description. (Ministers Decide) [802] Thatcher is working hard to become a ‘Teflon Prime Minister’ [who] blames everyone but herself when things are going wrong. (Independent) [803] The Prime Minister is going to borrow to fund tax cuts. (Neil Kinnock)BNC By applying the options recursively, the full scheme for ‘do’ in the Active of the Third Person Singular might look like this: Present: does Present Progressive: is doing Present Predecessive: has done Present Predecessive Progressive: has been doing Present Successive: is going to do Present Successive Progressive: is going to be doing Present Successive Predecessive: is going to have done Past: did Past Progressive: was doing Past Predecessive: had done Past Predecessive Progressive: had been doing Past Successive: was going to do Past Successive Progressive: was going to be doing Past Successive Predecessive: was going to have done Future: will do Future Progressive: will be doing Future Predecessive: will have done
Future Predecessive Progressive: will have been doing Future Successive: will be going to do Future Successive Progressive: will be going to be doing Future Successive Predecessive: will be going to have done Table III.3 Tenses of English The more elaborate Patterns become steadily more marked and less common. I had to dig hard for real samples of Present Successive Progressive [804], Future Predecessive Progressive [805], Future Successive [806], and Future Successive Predecessive [807] (this last evidently facetious). [804] Feasts are going to be cropping up as we move through the year (Fairs) [805] Your increased metabolic rate will have been burning up another few hundred calories when you have finished walking. (Walking Diet) [806] We just came home and will be going to have some well-deserved sleep (NetAlive)www [807] This talk will be going to have covered the basics of objects and their syntax. (Hey, can anyone help me with English time-travel tenses?) (MathNews)www Tenses aptly show how formal consistency within the Grammar can over-elaborate options that are grammatical but tend to be go unused. 86. The tendency is rather to simplify, notably by expanding the unmarked Simple Present for Processes for narrated past time [808] and expected future time [809], the latter also using the Present Progressive [810]. [808] Mrs. Inglethorp returned earlier than he expected. Caught in the act, and somewhat flurried, he hastily shuts and locks his desk. (Affair at Styles) [809] Simon Courtauld’s ‘Out of Town’ column returns next week. (Daily Telegraph) [810] My mother-in-law is arriving on Christmas Eve and we are all attending midnight service (Today) In some lexicogrammatical Processes described in III.B, such as Perception and Cognition, some Verbs implying Intention or Control prefer Progressives [811-812], whereas others prefer Simple [813-14]. [811] She was listening to her husband [hardly: hearing] [812] Dad was looking at the fireplace. Mum was looking at Vern. (Gate-Crashing) [hardly: seeing] [813] In France, the government understands the need for cultural things. (Art Newspaper) Paris is a fascinating place, one of the best in the world, and it is frightening New York [hardly: is understanding] [814] She knows all the folly and all the wickedness of my former life (Wildfell) [hardly: is knowing] However, preferences can be modified in delicate contexts, e.g.: [815] She studied it carefully as though it were some unfamiliar object she was seeing for the first time. (Sons of Heaven) [816] Right now she was hearing as though from a long way off, the sounds somehow muffled. (Maggie)
[817] that’s how I felt, that you were getting into it, you were understanding how the bits tied together (GCSE chemistry tutorial)BNC [= coming to understand] Choices can also reflect how long an Action, Event, or State normally lasts (III.93). 87. The term Transitivity can supplant the traditional but abstruse term ‘voice’, which was narrowly applied to Verb forms, whereas the discursive concern is the roles of Participants in the whole Process. The Active is the least marked and assigns the functions of Agent or Cause to the Clause Subject [818-19], whereas the Passive assigns them to an Agentive Adverbial [820-21]. [818] sooner than anyone thought possible, the Russians exploded an atomic bomb. (Fifties) [819] He crossed out the sentence. Black marks obliterated every word. (Hide and Seek) [820] Seconds after I passed through the Patt intersection en route to the Shaare Zedek Medical Center, Bus 32 was exploded by a young suicide bomber. (Nathan Cherny)www [821] all traces of its natural colour were obliterated by ink-stains. (Pickwick) The Medial has the putative Agent or Cause as the Medium of the Event [822-23] (cf. III.21, 70). In a few Patterns, the Agent or Cause is not expressed, whilst the Medium is the Affected — ‘dinghy’ in [824] and Theo van Gogh in [825]. [822] Amiss exploded with laughter. (Clubbed) [823] A huge bomb exploded in the centre of Portadown today (Belfast Telegraph)\ [824] I had to get the dinghy afloat. I couldn’t carry her, but she dragged easily enough (Death in the City) [825] Theo did not provoke easily, but he could defend himself. (Van Gogh) 88. The Reflexive merges the roles of Agent or Cause and Affected Entity [826]. An Affected can occupy the role of self-acting Agent, e.g., to avoid naming the real Agent [827]. TheReflexive may suggest that the Agent obeyed self-interest [828-89] or acted unwisely [830]; or was not in control [831]. [826] The Bride strips herself, glowing with pleasure (Big Glass) [827] The bacon done burnt itself up (Cross Creek) [828] Eck made his way to Rome and got himself appointed papal nuncio. (Roads That Move) [compare: was appointed] [829] General Noriega had himself declared formal head of government by his self-appointed National Assembly (Guardian) [compare: was declared] [830] Mitchum also frisked drunks and got himself arrested on a vagrancy charge. (Hollywood Rogues) [compare: was arrested] [831] The Soviet President this weekend risks finding himself an unwilling player in a domestic political drama (Independent) Whereas some related languages in the Germanic and Romance families have Reflexives for ordinary Human Actions like sitting down [832-35], English often prefers the Medial [836-37]. A Reflexive choice may suggest the Action was more deliberate, e.g. [838-39].
[832] Den Wedel nimm hier, und setz dich in Sessel! (Faust) [833] Nous nous assîmes tous autour de la table de fer.(Swann) [834] A la sombra de unos árboles se sentaron y comieron allí .(Don Quijote) [835] Tinha-se sentado numa cadeira ao pé da mesa (Dom Casmurro) [836] ‘Can you spare a moment?’ I nodded. He sat in the chair in front of my desk (Nudists) [837] Back in his small room, Sandison lay down on the bed and slept (Truth of Stone) [838] When I get on that plane, I’ll just sit myself in a corner and concentrate. (TV news)BNC [839] Back in his room, he carefully laid himself down on the bed. (Rain) 89. The Reciprocal combines two or more Agents acting on each other: [840] they scratched and bit and fought each other (Other People’s Blood) [841] Polish, Czechoslovak and Hungarian reformers met one another at secret border meeting points (Economist) The more common Reciprocal Processes in my data include Dispositive (‘chase’, ‘confront’, ‘clasp’), Perceptive (‘look at’, ‘see’, ‘stare at’), Enactive (‘face’, ‘smile at’, ‘grin at’) and Communicative (‘communicate with’, ‘argue with’, ‘shout at’). Reciprocity tends to imply some message or feeling when ‘staring’ and ‘smiling at’ [842-43], or just ‘facing’ and ‘looking at’ [844-45]. [842] They stared at each other for a moment, measuring each other up. (Isvik) [843] They smiled at each other with complete understanding. (Healing Fire) [844] They faced each other, their hatred bristling and crackling. (Strawberries) [845] They stood and looked at each other, as if they could never have enough, till he said at last: ‘There isn’t a minute that I don’t long for you’. (Dark Flower) 90. Clause Type concerns the formatting of discourse actions when a Process is expressed as a full Clause Core, affecting the relation among speakers and hearers and the expected mode of action. As Major Types, the Declarative functions as a Statement [846]; the Interrogative as a Question [847]; the Exclamatory as an Exclamation [848]; and the Imperative as a Command [849]. [846] Navarre shall be the wonder of the world. (Love’s Labour) [847] Wherefore was I to this keen mockery born? (Midsummer) [848] Fie, cousin Percy! How you cross my father! (Henry IV) [849] Throw your mistempered weapons to the ground (Romeo) These four Major Types have mostly been described with distinctive forms, but the functions need not fit. The Declarative form, as the unmarked choice, can carry the other three functions of Question, Exclamation, or Command: [850] You’ll pay me the eight shillings I won of you at betting? (Henry V)
[851] Thou art the best o’ the cut-throats! (Macbeth) [852] I crave our composition may be written, and sealed between us. (Antony) I shall suggest later that the more vital distinctions are in the Prosody (IV.14). 91. The Minor Clause Types include the Dependent [853] and the Relative [854], both signalled by Dependent Conjunctions; the Conditional for a Process contingent on some condition being met, e.g. [855]; the Contrafactual when the Process is distinctly hypothetical or fictional, e.g. [856]; and the Optative for wishing that something would occur, e.g. [857]. [853] I’ll ne’er be drunk whilst I live again, but in honest, civil, godly company (Merry Wives) [854] Here comes the Queen, whose looks bewray her anger (Henry VI) [855] Thou shalt buy this dear, if ever I thy face by daylight see. (Midsummer) [856] If he were twenty Sir John Falstaffs, he shall not abuse Robert Shallow (Merry Wives) [857] Would I were as deep under the earth as I am above! (Troilus) In older English, the Optative resembled a Command with a Subject in the Third Person, perhaps like an old ‘Subjunctive’, e.g., the isolated ‘be’ in Dependent Clauses Framed by Verbs like ‘command’ [858], but now mostly with Auxiliary + ‘be’ [859]. Clauses framed by the Verb ‘wish’ can use forms resembling the Past [860] or Past Perfect [861] but lacking a corresponding Present [860a] or Present Perfect [861a]. An older special form displays ‘were’ in the Singular [862]. [858] the king commanded that the mirror be conveyed to the courtier’s palace; (Devil’s) [859] The deity commanded that the Moonstone should be watched night and day (Moonstone) [860] Corbett wished he was back in his chamber at Leighton Manor (Prince of Darkness) [860a] *Corbett wishes he is back in his chamber at Leighton Manor [861] Ruth hated America and wished that it had never been discovered. (Appleby) [861a] *Ruth hates America and wishes that it has never been discovered. [862] she sank back on to a wicker sofa drumming her heels on the ground and yelling and shouting that she wished he were dead. (Murder Makes an Entrée) The Performative coincides with the act of expressing [863-64] (II.73). [863] We thank you for the patience and good humour you have all shown (Medau) [864] I’d like to compliment you on such a brill and fabbo magazine (ZZAP! 64). Non-Finite Clauses have a putative Subject, but the accompanying Verb is not Finite, being usually a Present or Past Participle (IV.4.2): [865] She being down, I have the placing of the British crown (Cymbeline) [866] Kent banish’d thus? And France in choler parted? (Lear) Finally, Non-Clauses stand alone without a Pattern of Subject plus Verb:
[867] Fine word — ‘legitimate’! (Lear) [868] Slander to the state! (Measure) [869] Away with him; better shame than murder. (Merry Wives) However, Non-Clauses can get grammatical support from nearby Clauses (IV.E). 92. Belief concerns how strongly it is (or should be) believed that a Process can happen or be done. In the middle range, Possible can happen in the plausible order of events, e.g. [870];Capable applies if the Agent has the required capacity, e.g. [871]; and Permissible applies if the Agent is authorized, e.g. [872]. At the high end of the ‘probable’, Certain applies if there is no doubt, e.g. [873]; Necessary applies if an Agent has no alternative, e.g. [874]; and Obligatory applies if the Action is strictly required, e.g. [875]. At the low end of the ‘improbable’,Impossible applies if the Process cannot happen, e.g. [876]; Incapable applies if the Agent is unable, e.g. [877]; and Impermissible applies if the Action is forbidden, e.g. [878]. [870] these weapons have been long loaded, and some accident may happen in the dis-charge. (Deerslayer) [871] I can cut him off with a shilling if I like. I can make him a beggar (Vanity) [872] Florence, you may go and look at your pretty brother, if you like (Dombey) [873] Allen is certain that somebody must have seen the caravan (Alton Herald) [874] How hard it was to turn down those stiff sheets; you simply had to tear your way in. (Garden Party) [875] Diana was forced to spend lunchtime with Prince Charles at the official home of Prime Minister Hyun Soong-Jong and his wife. (Today) [876] You could never grow a carnation which had all the colours of the Union Flag (Brownie Stories) [877] She was dead tired, but she couldn’t fall asleep. (Take Back Plenty) [878] You may not allow any other person to occupy the premises. (Business Lease) Although ‘may I’ is deemed good manners by language guardians for Questions about Permissibility [879], ‘can I’ is quite acceptable to everybody else [880]. [879] ‘May I get you a drink, Miss Fanshawe?’ ‘Better not.’ (Best Man) [880] ‘Can I offer either of you a drink?’ ‘Nothing for me’. (Assassins) German seems to be keeping its distinction between ‘darf ich…?’ and ‘kann ich…?’, but here in Northeastern Brazil, we only say ‘posso…?’ 93. Trajectory concerns the internal organization of a Process. Inchoative is just starting [881], Completive is just finishing [882], and Tentative is only being tried [883]. Durative lasts over time [884], but Punctative takes just a moment in time [885], and Frequentive is repeated or customary [886]. Context can be decisive; in [887], a sequence of normally Punctative Actions is made Frequentive. [881] the log is just commencing to start inching down (Great Notion).
[882] Richard Harris gave up drinking at exactly 11.20 pm on 11 August 1981 at the Jockey Club. (Hollywood Rogues) [883] When Columbus reached America he had been trying to find India (Wave) [884] you are getting on in years. (Time of the Butcherbird) [885] He burst into the yard, tripped over a duck (On the Edge) [886] she kept running to the door and looking over the banisters to see if she could get a glimpse of Mr. Rochester (Eyre) [887] The soldiers […] were always tripping over something or other, and whenever one went down, several more always fell over him. [And] whenever a horse stumbled, the rider fell off instantly (Alice) The choice of Simple Tense versus Aspectual Tense can depend on Trajectories: [888] Mr Pickwick rushed forward [not: *was rushing] with fury in his looks. [889] he crashed [not: *was crashing] with a thud on the floor (Harmattan) [890] no one will admit it but England is turning into a third-world country. (Big Glass) [not: *turns] [891] Your jaw is beginning [not: *begins] to fold (Time of the Butcherbird) No doubt, Trajectory appears too ‘lexical’ to merit thorough coverage in traditional and formal ‘grammars’ of English. 94. Despite their diversity, the seven Parameters briefly presented in III.83-93 share several factors. They all situate Processes holistically within a perspective or context: how or when or whether it occurs or did occur, how it relates to other actual or expected Processes, and so on. I surmised in III.82 that Parameters are normally selected; but due to the sparseness of the signals in English, this selection may be inconspicuous in isolated sentences when unmarked combinations are selected, as we can see from data invented by linguists. For Actions, they prefer Affirmative – Past – Active – Declarative – Certain – Punctative, as in the evergreen ‘the man hit the ball’ (cf. IV.36, 82). For States, they prefer Affirmative – Present – Medial – Declarative – Certain – Durative, as in the evergreen ‘the cat is on the mat’. 95. These preferences for Tenses suggest a second shared factor: a selection in one category can constrain what would be the unmarked selection in another. Whereas Frequentive prefers Probable (what happens a lot must be likely, e.g., because the doer is in the habit) [892], Tentative prefers Improbable (an Action begun but not finished, or tried but not managed) [893]. The most constrained Clause Type is the Performative, which chooses for Affirmative, Certain, and Punctative or Completive. It would lack social authority if uttered as Possible, Durative, and so on [894]. [892] The Messenger kept skipping up and down, and wriggling like an eel. […] ‘He’s an Anglo-Saxon Messenger — and those are Anglo-Saxon attitudes.’ (Alice) [893] Tweedledee was trying his best to fold up the umbrella, with himself in it. […] But he couldn’t quite succeed. (Alice) [894] I now pronounce you man and wife. (Song Twice Over) [not: *perhaps I may pro-nounce/*I keep on pronouncing, etc.]
The Imperative Clause Type prefers Present and Certain, whereas its Polarity, Transitivity, and Trajectory depend on the Process types. The Optative and Counterfactual, in contrast, preclude Certainty, 96. For some Parameters, the mutual constraints are sparse. The Interrogative is neutral about Tense, Transitivity, and Trajectory, but correlates Belief with Polar-ity. An Affirmative Interrogative suggests what is Improbable [895], whereas a Negative suggests what is Probable [896]. [895] Is that how you show your resentment, by stripping off naked in front of me? (Love or Nothing) [896] ‘He was murdered; isn’t that what you all think?’ ‘Yes. You know we do.’ (Sons of the Morning) Such mutual preferences and constraints indicate that the Parameters constitute an integrative system, much like the Lexicogrammar itself. Others might be proposed, including some I cover under Stylistic Parameters (section. VI.D). And still others I am only gradually seeing emerge from data, such as the tendencies of certain Verbs to colligate heavily with Pronouns for Subjects, as if the Process is expressed mainly when the identity of the Participants has been established. But those I must reserve for future studies, or this book will never get finished. Notes to Chapter III 1 One method strikingly featuring this theory was C.K. Ogden’s The ABC English. (London: Paul, Trench, and Trubner, 1932), with a revolving wheel of vocab-ulary to ‘sentences’.
of Basic plug into
2 Compare especially Roman Jakobson, ‘Poetry of grammar and grammar of poetry’, Lingua 21, 1968, 597609. 3
Chomsky, Structures, cited in Note 60 to Ch. II.
4
Chomsky, Aspects, cited in Note 60 to Ch. II.
5
Ibid., p. 84.
6 See above all Michael Halliday, An Introduction to Functional Grammar: Second Revised Edition (London: Arnold, 1994), whose description motivated my own in section III.2; also Ch. IV of my New Foundations (cited in Note 9 to Ch. I). 7
See again Halliday, cited in Note 6.
8 See Ruqaiya Hasan, ‘The grammarian’s dream: Lexis as most delicate grammar’, in Michael Halliday and Robin Fawcett (eds.), New Developments in Systemic Linguistics (London: Pinter, 1987), pp. 184-211. 9 The frequencies for these Frames at the end of the sentence are strikingly uneven in my corpora. In the BNC: ‘said she.’ at 6 versus ‘she said.’ at 4876; and ‘said he.’ at 45 versus ‘he said.’ at 9673. In the BAWC: ‘said she.’ at 508 versus ‘she said.’ at 2330; and ‘said he.’ at 1079 versus ‘he said.’ at 4111. 10 See again reference in Note 8.
IV. Prosody in the Study of Text and Discourse IV.A The spontaneity of real conversation
1. The spontaneous nature of real conversation instils into its Grammar and Prosody some classes of events that generally escape attention but would count as incongruities if represented in written texts. I shall illustrate some of the more distinctive classes here with transcribed data from the BNC. In a restart, a Pattern is begun more than once [897-99]. In areplay, a whole Pattern re-occurs [900-02]. [897] I think there’s I think there’s quite a few [898] if you, if you, if you want to get into it you might find you want to do them all [899] You play two leagues, were they, were they two leagues? when I, when I was play-ing pool we played in the Tuesday league and the Thursday league [900] How many questions are you gonna have in it Dad? How many questions are you gonna have in your quiz? [901] I’m a bit torn cos I in a way that’s what I ought to be doing even though the welfare business in a way that’s wh that’s what I ought to be doing [902] I didn’t send a message, no I’m sure I didn’t send a message chasing them In a shift, a Pattern is begun but then abandoned for another [903-05]. In a cutoff, the Pattern is abandoned, and the speaker trails off or gets interrupted [906-08]. [903] me and this other mate he’d a, did a, I can, I can remember him saying something about I’ll race yuh [904] It’s just a very good way of er teaching chi- I mean children will I mean that’s the kind of experience [905] got a couple of oak trees, there in the corner you’ve got, ‘cos our fence you’ve got that, my house is there right, road down like that [906] people have got a, yeah [907] you’re going to avoid chance like this and or whoever you [908] he’s got god knows what he hasn’t got wrong with him, but he has sort of In a blend, competing Patterns get mixed [909-11]. In a repair, an undesired choice gets replaced by a desired one: [912-14]. [909] I can’t avoid not being at that governor’s meeting [avoid being + not be] [910] I couldn’t help from crying [help crying + keep from crying] [911] you’ve got a fencing like that and with got trees all around it. [with trees + has got trees] [912] I can take her up to Bristol er Cardiff next week [913] we’d all sit down and do nothing while the old erm, the mod people had obviously it [914] had the top been specially glazed ehm, ehm, what I mean, barred? Some speakers are egregiously prone to these events (from Bush Jr):11 [915] This is a — any strike’s a tough — tough situation, but this one happens to come at a — or a lockout is a tough situation, or no work is a tough situation — is to come at bad time.
[916] I hope investors, you know — secondly, I hope investors hold investments for periods of time — that I’ve always found the best investments are those that you salt away based on economics. [917] There’s what they call ‘actionable intelligence’, to which our military has responded on a quick basis is improving. [918] the person who runs FEMA [Federal Emergency Management Agency] is the first voice, often times, of someone whose life has been turned upside down hears from. His supporters react to Bush Jr like her ‘hearers’ to mad Ophelia: his ‘speech is nothing, yet the unshaped use of it doth move the hearers to collection; they aim at it, and botch the words up fit to their own thoughts’, which ‘make one think there might be thought, though nothing sure, yet much unhappily’ (Hamlet IV, v, 7-12). 2. Written Texts represent such incongruities only for explicit purposes, e.g.: [919] She hid her face from him. Mungo was embarrassed. ‘I…I’m…There’s no need to…’ he stammered. There was a pause. (Forest of the Night) [920] ‘Do you want to go?’ ‘No. I mean, yes. No, I —’ his voice faltered. Then broke. […] ‘Is it — about’ she hesitated. ‘Is it about — your mother?’ (Diamond Waterfall) The distinction doubtless abets the common complaint, elevated to official theory in formalist linguistics, that ‘actual speech’ is ‘deviant’ (II.82). But we might just as well complain that written conversations deviate from the spoken reality. 3. At all events, I feel uneasy about having to rely mostly on written repre-sentations of speech in describing the Prosody of English. I should have been much happier if I had been able to consult a large corpus of real conversation with a detailed prosodic mark-up. I am also uneasy about having to rely on the Prosody of my English, as distinct from the many ‘Englishes’ that sustain their own Prosodies. I hope that the issues raised here, such as Stress and Pitch, are relevant to multiple varieties, but I can certainly advance no general claims.
IV.B Stresses and Tone Groups 4. The acoustic shape and flow conferred upon spoken discourse by the voice, whether actually uttered in speaking and hearing, or mentally perceived in writing and reading, can be termed Prosody;1 Its early study began in rhetoric [921].2 [921] Skill consists in employing the voice for each emotion, [and the] speech rhythms for each subject-matter. (Aristotle, Rhetoric) Prosody has remained marginal in the more ‘formal’ approaches to the study of language, as reviewed in Chapter II, which consigned speech to phonetics and phonology; and in the teaching and learning of English as a native or foreign language, which have focused on ‘pronunciation. 3 Like the Lexicogrammar, Prosody owes its proper recognition to ‘functional’ models of language (cf. III.4). 4 5. Prosody might be described along four continuous Parameters, which can complement the more discrete Lexicogrammatical Parameters in III.C. Stress ranges between stronger andweaker; Pitch ranges between higher and lower; Volume ranges between louder and softer; and Pace ranges 5 between slower and faster. A value on one Parameter may describe a particular manner of speaking, perhaps to
evoke the speaker’s condition or intention, such as ‘high’ for defiance [922], ‘low’ for condolence [923], ‘loud’ for boldness [924], ‘soft’ for disappoint-ment [925], ‘slow’ for reminiscence [926], and ‘fast’ for belligerence [927]. [922] ‘Deceit is not my fault!’ I cried out in a savage, high voice. (Eyre) [923] ‘It’s Phipps’, the constable said, in a low voice. ‘He’s dead’ (English Crime) [924] She said loudly, to cover the noise of her heart, ‘I’m not frightened.’ (Carrie’s War) [925] His voice faded away. […] ‘Oh’, he said softly. ‘So Rachel was right.’ (Edge) [926] ‘I’ve read many stories of people taken but not returned’, the Bookman said slowly, as if thinking of a distant memory. (Endill) [927] ‘I am going through with that [inquiry]. Only’ — and there he spoke a little faster — ‘I won’t let any man call me names outside this court’. (Jim) In authentic speech, these four Parameters naturally interact with each other, and more consistently than do the Lexicogrammatical Parameters (cf. Ch. III). 6. Further, Stress in English occurs in at least three degrees.6 Strong Stress, shown here with a raised Mark !, is articulated with the most force, and so tends to be higher, louder, and slower as well. Weak Stress, shown with a lowered and inverted mark ¡, is articulated with less force. Unstressed, shown with no mark, is articulated with the least force. admittedly, these three levels of Stress are not abso-lute, but relative to each other within the speech contour of a speaker, language variety, or utterance; we might say ‘stronger’, ‘weaker’, and ‘least Stress’. For demonstration, and always with the reservation that Prosody is sensitive to individual interpretation, my own performance of two renowned opening lines from Shakespeare’sHenry V [928] and Richard III [929] might run like this: [928] ¡Oh, for a ¡Muse of !Fire to as·¡cend the ¡bright·est !heav·en of in·!ven·tion [929] ¡Now is the !win·ter of our ¡dis·con·!tent ¡made !glor·i·ous !sum·mer by this !sun of ¡York Where relevant, the bounds between Syllables can be marked with a raised dot ·, though Stress can affect neighbouring Syllables as well. 7. Types of Stress can be further shown in their interactions with Pitch and Pace, using arrows as visual aids. Certain Stress, typical for Statements, has a slow fall and can be either Strong spoken with enthusiasm [930] or else Weak without it [931]. Uncertain Stress, used in some types of Questions, has a slow rise, either Strong for excited [932], or Weak for calm [933]. Both Certain and Uncertain may also have the stressed Syllable at a slower Pace than the unstressed ones.
Spiked Stress, typical of short, sharp Inter-jections and Commands, has a fast fall [934]. For some speakers like myself, and in fairly isolated Stress positions, a subtle and brief compensatory movement may occur, drawn as dotted arrows as distinct from solid arrows for the principal movements. 8. Minor variations with the slowest Pace include Deliberative Stress for ‘deliberating’ what to say, with a long fall and long rise [93536]; and Evaluative Stress, when ‘evaluating’ what’s sogood or bad, with a long rise and long fall [93738].These two variations, which some speakers may consider overdone, are especially prone to spread across several Syllables.
9. In English, a Word spoken by itself and having more than one Syllable shows Stress on at least one [939]. With four or more Syllables, Strong Stress often goes to one and Weak Stress to another [940]; or Syllables get compressed to make fewer, as in !in·ter·est·ing => !in·trest·ing. A Phrase can assign Strong Stress to a key item near the end, e.g., the Noun in a Noun Phrase [941] or the Process Verb in a Verb Phrase [942], with only Weak Stress elsewhere. Yet Strong Stress may fall later if the Phrase continues, such as with a Post-Modifier of the Noun [943], or an Adverb of the Process Verb [944], whilst the Noun or Verb just gets Weak Stress. [939] ‘Was I very bad?’ ‘!Aw·ful’. (Ruddigore)
[940] EN·¡VI·RON·!MENT·AL·ISTS. Friends of the Earth propose green taxes (Autocar) [941] An ex·¡treme·ly at·¡tract·ive !plant. (Aquarium Plants) [942] Until she was sixteen they had been ¡con·stantl·y !mov·ing (Healing Fire) [943] I particularly noticed one ¡young ¡wom·an of ¡hum·ble !dress (Sketch Book) [944] Moran rose and ¡went out·!side. (Amongst Women) Longer Sentences with longer Words can accordingly show an elaborate pattern of stressed and unstressed Syllables, as in [945]. [945] !Am·nes·ty ¡In·ter!na·tion·al is ¡in·de!pend·ent of all !gov·ern·ments, po·¡lit·i·cal !fac·tions, ¡i·de·!ol·o·gies, ¡ec·o·!nom·ic !in·ter·ests and re·¡lig·ious !creeds. (Amnesty) 10. The principal unit of organisation for Prosody is not the Clause, as in the Lexicogrammar, but the Tone Group7 spoken as an integrated sequence, usually assigning one Strong Stress near the end, and being set off by perceptible pausing in the Pace, however slight, before and after it. The Utterance is spoken as an integrated sequence that constitutes a contribution to a discourse — the spoken counterpart of the written Sentence (cf. II.125). Just as a Sentence may consist of a single Clause, an Utterance may consist of a single Tone Group, as in [946]; or of several, as in [947]. I signal a Pause with an upright line | for a shorter one and two || for a longer one, again relying on my individual interpretation. [946] ‘You re·!fuse?’ || ‘Of course I re·!fuse.’ || ‘I think you are extremely !fool·ish.’ ||’In-· !deed!’ (Piccadilly) [947] Well, | here’s a boy that’s been a regular !fel·low — | raised in A·!mer·i·ca — | done work on a !news·pap·er — | suddenly taken off to !Eng·land (Piccadilly) Making a Tone Group coincide with a Clause, as in [948], is a handy strategy to match Prosody with Lexicogrammar. But coinciding with a Non-Clause, as in [949], can serve strategic functions too, such as conveying Emotions (cf. IV.5). [948] Today’s my only !chance. || Aunt Caroline has gone a·!way. || Father will be busy in the !gar·den (Damsel) [949] ‘I am the receiver of confessions.’ ‘Oh !my! || Yes, | high !church. || !Why, | in the name of !God!’ (Wingless Bird) 11. A whole Tone Group or Utterance manifests a prosodic contour. 8 Its most characteristic feature in English is the fluent rhythm arising from the distribution of Stresses separated by unstressed Syllables whose Pace is accelerated as they become more numerous — usually one, two, or three, as in [950-51] (VI.24).9 [950] !Bless·ed is ¡he that !read·eth, | and ¡they that ¡hear the !words of this !proph·e·cy, | and ¡keep those ¡things which are !writ·ten there·!in: | for the !time is at !hand. (Revel-ation 1:3) [951] It is a !truth ¡u·ni·!ver·sal·ly ac·!knowl·edged, | that a ¡good !for·tune ¡must be in ¡want of a !wife. (Pride)
a !sin·gle ¡man
If all Syllables were paced the same, the effect would be disfluent and mechanical.
in
pos·¡ses·sion
of
12. The dominant Pitch contours in English are either falling from the first Stress in the Tone Group down to the End [952]; or rising steadily from the Front up to the End [953].10 A falling Pitch contour can carry along the falling Certain Stress, whereas a rising contour can carry along the rising Uncertain Stress (IV.4). In return, a steady contour requires fitting the falling or rising Stresses to the Pitch level at various places. So in a falling contour, an earlier Strong Stress will get higher Pitch than a later one [952], whilst in a rising contour, just the reverse occurs [953]. These Stresses, displayed here for clarity as short arrows just above the longer contour arrows, can remain distinctive with a louder Volume and a slower Pace.
13. Graphic displays of Prosody in fine detail are hindered by a trade-off: the more precise and elaborate the display, the more unwieldy it is to produce or interpret, and the more it will be influenced by individual differences in spoken performances, speech habits, language varieties, etc. Just displaying all four Parameters of Pitch, Stress, Volume, and Pace needs a graphic like [954] for Strider’s threat to the hobbits in The Lord of the Rings. I am assuming three Tone Groups with a short rising Pitch on the opening unstressed Syllables and then a longer falling Pitch starting from the first point of Stress and arriving at a Strong Stress for End Weight. The first two Tone Groups move toward louder Volume and slower Pace; the final one is quite slow and unites falling Pitch with increasing Volume.
And of course the same sequence could still be uttered with other Prosodies.
IV.C Prosody and Grammar in Clause Types 14. Though most conventional ‘grammars’ of English have not properly acknowledged it, the Prosody of Tone Groups interacts richly with the Grammar of Clauses to determine Clause Types. 12 The four Major Clause Types, traditionally mislabelled ‘sentences’ (IV.64), each have a formal term and a functional term: the Declarative for Statements, the Interrogative for Questions, the Exclamatory for Exclamations, and the Imperative for Commands.13 These pairs of terms are not just synonyms; the forms have these functions only as their unmarked options. The Declarative form also serves the functions of Question, Exclamation, or Command, though typically with special effects (III.90; IV.32, 46, 58). IV.C.1 The Declarative Clause Type for Statements
15. The Declarative Clause, used mainly for Statements conveying moderate Certainty, is unmistakably dominant. In the Grammar, its unmarked options include Subject + Verb + Object [955]; Subject + Verb + Adverbial [956]; and Subject + Verb + Subject Complement [957]. Relatively infrequent, though unmarked in itself, is Subject + Verb + Object + Object Complement, as in [958]. [955] the Banker endorsed a blank check (Snark) [956] the principal failing occurred in the sailing (Snark) [957] their Captain looked grand (Snark) [958] Mrs Guest’s wardrobe plan has made her a best dressed icon. (Harpers & Queen) For the Prosody, the unmarked option is naturally a falling Pitch contour, beginning at high Pitch on the first Stress near the Front and leading toward a Strong Stress at low Pitch near the end of the Tone Group — the strategy of End Weight [959-60]. More marked is Mid Weight with a contour rising up to a Certain Strong Stress on a focused part of the Statement, e.g., ‘voice heard’ in [961] or ‘stones’ in [962]; the rest of the Tone Group picks a falling contour. As seen in IV.12, other Stresses make the Pitch level fit their sites, the earlier ones being higher, e.g. in [959]. The distinctions between stressed and unstressed, and between Weak and Strong Stress, are thus supported by Volume and Pace. In solemn discourse like the Holy Bible, Stresses are carefully measured, even for the opening Syllables of a Tone Group. For visual clarity I show the Pitch contours in double-line arrows, the Strong Stresses in thicker single-line arrows, and the Weak Stresses in thinner singleline arrows.
16. Several motives can favour End Weight. One relates to Cohesion: signaling the upcoming boundary of a prosodic unit like a Tone Group and often a grammat-ical unit like a Clause too [960]. A Strong Stress at End Weight functions like the period of the written Sentence, though more agile. In return, Strong Stress can go on unimportant Items that in other positions would not merit it, as in [963-65]. [963] I reckon he was glad to die when he !did. (Posthumous Papers) [964] ‘No, St. John, we are not friends as we !were.’ (Eyre) [965] The defence in general is 200% better than at the start of the !year. (Leeds United)
17. Another Motive relates to Informativity. A natural strategy for arranging the Declarative Clause gives End Weight and Strong Stress to what is new or unpredic-table, e.g. the first ‘horse’ in [966] and the ‘hand’ and ‘voice’ in [966]; and to use the Front with Weak Stress for what is already mentioned, like the second ‘horse’ in [966], or predictable, like the ‘face’ for the owner of the ‘hand’ and ‘voice’ [967]. This common strategy was described in ‘functional sentence perspective’ as the unmarked option of ‘communicative dynamism’, which applies far more consistently in a language like Czech than in English (II.107).14 As a corollary, the [966] Beneath was a high-colored poster of a girl on a !horse. The ¡horse was standing on its hind feet (Lazy A) [967] she felt a light !hand on her shoulder, and heard a !voice close to her saying, `Maggie!’ The ¡face was there — changed, but all the sweeter (Floss) Subject of the English Clause seems less important than the Predicate (cf. IV.85). 18. End Weight may be overridden to emphasise a contrast, even for otherwise unimportant Items, such as a Pronoun like ‘you’ versus ‘I’ in [968], an Auxiliary like ‘wouldn’t’ versus ‘would’ in [969], or a Preposition like ‘under’ versus ‘above’ in [970]. Also, Items in End position which got Strong Stress before are prone to get Weak Stress, like ‘God’, ‘waters’, and ‘firmament’ in [970]. [968] I know what I’m talking about; and !you’ll know pretty soon, too! (Willows) [969] ‘What would he !do?’ said the girl, looking, with breathless interest, into her face. ‘What !would·n’t he do, you’d better ask’, said Cassy. (Cabin) [970] !God moved upon the face of the !wat·ers […] ‘Let there be a !firm·a·ment in the midst of the ¡wat·ers, and let it di·!vide the ¡wat·ers from the ¡wat·ers.’ And ¡God !made the ¡firm·a·ment, and di·¡vid·ed the ¡wat·ers which were !un·der the ¡firm·a·ment from the ¡wat·ers which were a·!bove the ¡firm·a·ment. (Genesis 1:2, 6-7) 19. Contrast also uses ‘alternative Pitch’, where the prosodic contours rise, the fall; the contrasting alternatives are linked by ‘or’ [971] or, less readily, ‘but’ [972]. Each Conjunction rises up to the Stress that starts off the falling Pitch
In the first Pitch contour, the Strong Stress for End Weight carries rising Uncertain Stress and in the second carries falling Certain Stress. The uncertainty reflects the indecision between the two alternatives. 20. A decisively marked option for the Statement is Front Weight, with a Strong Stress at high Pitch to start a falling Pitch contour, placed on an Item near the Front of a Clause where it wouldn’t normally go, e.g., an Object as Noun [973] or Pronoun [974], or a Modifier for a Subject Complement [975], or a Past Participle for a Passive [976]; the End of the Clause may in turn get only Weak Stress, as shown here. Probably too, Volume gets louder and the Pace is slowed or paused to set off the Fronted Item, especially if two Pronouns go side by side [974]. Still, End Weight can apply as well when another Strong Stress fits near the End [977-78]; even so, Front Weight keeps the focus of the Utterance (cf. IV.44).
[973] Such mortal !drugs I ¡have; but Mantua’s law is death to any he that utters them. (Romeo) [974] !Me she had not ¡seen (Zenda) [975] Tiger looked about him for signs. !Few they ¡were. (Voice of the City) [976] She meant to be obeyed — and o·!beyed she ¡was. (Professor) [977] Such a !braz·en !dog sure never my eyes be·!held. (Stoops) [978] En·!vi·roned he was with many !foes (Henry VI) 21. A curious interaction between the Grammar and Prosody of English occurs in the Tag, a maximally short and simple Tone Group whose function suits the Clause Type being ‘tagged’. The common Look-Back Tag comes just after the end of the Clause to reaffirm or modify the function, whereas the uncommon LookAhead Tag comes before to anticipate. Most Tags are Colligations of a Pronoun Subject with a Pro-Verb like ‘be’ or ‘do’, one of the two items taking Weak Stress; the minimal Informativity of content indicates almost ‘pure function’. 22. In the Look-Back Tag Statement, these two Pro-Forms reaffirm whilst looking back to Subject and Verb Phrase of the Clause Core; the Pronoun gets Weak Stress (or Strong Stress for extra emphasis), and the ProVerb ‘be’ or ‘do’ is Unstressed. In the Clause being ‘tagged’, a Strong Stress can give End Weight. [979] I went to the Classical master, though. He was an old !crab, | ¡he was. (Alice) [980] You’re really !mor·bid, | ¡you are. (Jubilee Wood) [981] They liked a bit o’ !fun, | ¡they did. (Treasure) [982] You admired him from your heart only this !morn·ing, | ¡you did. (Madding) A short version in casual or regional spoken English has just a Look-Back Pro-noun Tag, again occupying its own Tone Group and taking Weak Stress; this looks back to the Subject which can be highlighted as the Agent or Medium [985-88]. [983] I’m not one for com!puters, | ¡me. Me eldest’s got one but I never could get used to it. (prose) BNC [984] You couldn’t beat a fucking !carpet, | ¡you. (Payback) [985] it’s a wonder he ain’t fat as a !pig, | ¡him. He never stops (conversation)BNC [986] Oh my God! this’ll mean trouble. They’re a rough !lot, | ¡them. (Wingless Bird) 23. As a converse option, the Look-Ahead Pronoun Tag functions to announce some Topic and to look ahead to the Pronoun Subject inside the Clause. This Tag is likely to merit Strong Stress in its own Tone Group, whilst the following Pronoun Subject takes Weak Stress; and a Pause separates the two Pronouns. [987] These people can take many blows, but !I, | ¡I am fragile as a butterfly. (Harpers) [988] my neighbours are barbarians, and !you, | ¡you are a thousand miles away (Magus) [989] However conspicuous the outward achievement, !he, | ¡he himself, Magnus Der-rick, had failed, (Octopus)
[990] Jay was blessed with that summer and the sunshine of Astrid’s love. But !she, | ¡she shed her loves in autumn like the trees. (Jay Loves Lucy) This Pattern is distinct from one where a Pronoun with Strong Stress is the Subject rather than a Tag, and is followed by a Noun or Noun Phrase Appositive with another Strong Stress, to contrast one identity with someone else’s [991-92]. [991] Farfrae would be suggesting such improvements in his damned luminous that in spite of himself, !he, | !Hench·ard, | would sink to the position of second fiddle (Mayor)
way
[992] Hannah had never had a chance; [whereas] !she, | !Re·becca, | had enjoyed all the privileges (Sunnybrook) 24. The Look-Back Noun Tag places a Pronoun in the Subject of the Clause and looks back to it in the Tag with a Noun or Noun Phrase as the Subject of the Pro-Verb. Since Identity is already anticipated, the Noun deserves Weak Stress. [993] He changed his name by deed poll, | the ¡fath·er did. (Ulysses) [994] Yes, she looked very nice, | Jo·¡an·na did. (Firs) [995] He had a large circle of relations, | ¡that ¡man had. (House of Dreams) [996] She’s pretty patient, | Ma·¡rie is. (Bayswater) A regional variation places the Pro-Verb of the Tag ahead of its Subject: [997] He’s as strong as a moor pony, | is ¡Dick·on. (Secret Garden) [998] He was perfectly sober, | was the ¡Ad·mir·al. (Jungle) [999] Mind, he was rather a wild card, | was ¡Gran·da, | rather too fond of strong drink. (Seasons of My Life) [1000] He hates cold kipper, | does ¡Bid·well. (Expert Witness) And a short version merely supplies the Noun Phrase, usually with Weak Stress: [1001] They think I’m blimming Mary Poppins, | ¡that ¡lot. (Lucker) [1002] ‘She’s left her hair loose, | the ¡lit·tle ¡tart’, said Perdita contemptuously (Polo) 25. The Grammar of the Declarative as the dominant Major Clause Type has had many studies, whereas the contours of Prosody for the function of Statement has had only a few, and Statement Tags almost none. 15 These disparities may reflect the inclinations of linguists and grammarians to favour ‘formal’ written English, where the role of Prosody superficially seems unimportant (cf. IV.4).
IV.C.2 The Interrogative Clause Type for Questions 26. For the Interrogative Clause, mainly used in Questions conveying Uncertainty, the unmarked option is also End Weight, but for another reason. Normally, the Front of the Clause is used for establishing that a Question is being asked, and signalling what kind, whilst the End specifies what is being asked about. Questions often have rising Uncertain Stresses but either a rising or falling Pitch contour.
27. In the Question-Word Question (versus the Anglocentric term ‘wh-’ Question) is named for the Word at the Front. End Weight just keeps rising to Certain Strong Stress and puts the whole Question in focus, e.g., to ask about for the motive behind a ‘made difference’ [1003], or of a known ‘killing’ of a known victim. 1004]. Mid Weight rises up to a Certain Strong Stress on the specific part of the Question being asked about. e.g., ‘winter’ as distinct from other seasons [1005] or the identity of that ‘fire-eater’ who’s just left [1006]; and the rest of the Tone Group picks a falling contour, as in Statements like [961-962].
28. Pronoun Question-Words such as ‘who’ and ‘what’ ca n e followed directly by the Process Verb; the Adverb Question-Words such as ‘why’ or ‘where’ take an Auxiliary or ‘be’ and then Subject and Process Verb [1003-04]. Either type can have Strong Stress for End Weight, rising for the one [1003-04]. falling for the other [1005-06]. 29. I would also interpret a more reserved, gentler version (as if to say ‘okay, we both know about this, so what’s the deal?’) falling all the way from a Strong Stress on the Question Word, and only Weak Stresses
afterward. An isolated Question-Word spoken as a Tone Group with surprise or emphatic Spiked Stress with the Pitch either rising fast [1009] or falling fast [1010].
fear
might
get
an
In contrast, an isolated Question-Word Question which the speakers themselves go on to answer can receive Uncertain Strong Stress, with the Pitch starting low and rising high [1011-15].
30. Uncertain Strong Stress also goes to Question-Words in short, abrupt, or surprised Questions about some Expression in the Turn of a previous speaker, e.g., a Person [1016], Thing [1018], or Action [1018].
31. The Yes-or-No Question expects an Affirmative or a Negative answer and uses no Question Words. The unmarked option has an Auxiliary (or ‘be’), and then Subject and ProcessVer b, the latter extended by various Colligations such as Affected Object [1019], Adverbial of Circumstance [1020], or Subject Complement of Identity [1021]; all these can take End Weight with Uncertain Strong Stress fitting the rising Pitch contours which carries along any subsequent Syllables, as shown. Having the Process Verb at the Front instead of an Auxiliary, once an unmarked option in older English, is now archaic or literary, as in Shakespeare [1022]. As always, the Pitch contours and Stresses are displayed here with distinctive arrows.
32. When the Yes-or-No Question has a Declarative form, the Uncertain Strong Stress is quite vital [102324].16 More than the Interrogative form, the Declarative form may suggest that the Topic of the Question is not just undecided but dubious, e.g., having been the ‘friend’ of a person whose ‘whereabouts the police are ‘tracing’ on suspicion of ‘having killed her husband’ in [1023]; or ‘not caring for the conversation’ of a ‘smirking muscle man’ mafioso who makes his hearer ‘feel very afraid’ in [1024].
33. As for Statements in IV.19, ‘alternative Pitch’ applies for Questions too: one Pitch contour rising from the front, and o ne falling after a Stress in the middle.
The term This-or-That Question might fit a choice between alternatives linked by ‘or’, giving rising Uncertain Stress to all but the last one, which gets falling Certain Stress, whether with two choices [1027], or, less commonly, three [1028] or even four [1029]. This Pattern can also appear with ‘and’ linking two genuine alternatives, e.g. [1030]. As we see, a Question-Word may or may not appear.
34. Tag Questions are the only Tag regularly described in ‘grammar-books’ on English,17 with functions unlike the Tag Statements reviewed in IV.21. Whereas there we had two Statement Clauses with the same function of affirming, here we have one Statement Clause and one Question Clause with contrasting functions. The unmarked Look-Back Tag Questionhas the form of an Interrogative Yes-or-No Question following a Statement in Declarative form. This Tag too is a minimal Clause with just the Subject as Pro-Noun and the Predicate as Pro-Verb; as befits a Question, the unmarked order is just the reverse of the usual Statement Tag and places the Pro-Verb with a Weak Stress before the Unstressed Pro-Noun. In compensation, as with Tag Statements, the position within the Statement just before the Tag Question usually has a Strong Stress for End Weight. 35. The Tag Question is a popular Pattern for mildly encouraging confirmation from the audience about what should be Certain or Uncertain. Here, Certainty and Polarity interact by contraries. A Negative Tag after an Affirmative Statement encourages a ‘yes’ Answer [1031-32], whereas an Affirmative Tag after a Negative Statement encourages a ‘no’ Answer [1033-34]. Two Affirmatives, however, suggest a more pointed Uncertainty [1035-36]; and suitably emphaticProsody can even suggest scepticism or challenge, while the Pronoun gains Weak Stress too [1037-38]. A Negative Tag without contractions (technically ‘correct’ for the First Person Singular) gives one Weak Stress to ‘not’ and one to the Pro-Verb [1039-40]. [1031] ‘I’m a !sod, | ¡aren’t I?’ he said flatly. ‘Yes’. (Strawberries) [1032] ‘This uncertainty is hard on the !nerves, | ¡isn’t it?’ ‘Yes. It is.’ (Hand in Glove) [1033] ‘I’m not exactly a gibbering !wreck, | ¡am I?’ ‘No’ (Love by Design) [1034] ‘It’s not really the height of the concert season, | ¡is it?’ ‘No’ (committee meeting)BNC [1035] ‘This is the !room, | ¡is it?’ said the gentleman. (Pickwick) [1036] ‘It’s all !right, then, |¡is it?’ asked Marie anxiously. ‘Coming round to your house like this?’ (Lock) [1037] How dare you! So I’m an object of !pit·y, | ¡am ¡I? (Killing Frost) [1038] That’s your !er·rand, | ¡is ¡it? What! he con·!doles with me, | ¡does ¡he? (Vanity) [1039] It’s a funny old !world, | ¡is it ¡not? (Punch) [1040] I am treating you very !bad·ly, | ¡am I ¡not? (Healing Fire)
36. An uncommon type of Look-Back Tag Question occupies a separate Utter-ance coming after a Question Clause and reaffirming the Questioning. When the Uncertainty is intense, the Auxiliary earns Strong Stress [1041-42]. [1041] Are you just kidding me on? || !Are you? (medical consultation)BNC [1042] And is he Liverpool? || !Is he? (conversation) BNC More common and less intense, ‘is that it?’ seeks to confirm something doubtful and disquieting, such as refusing to ‘marry’ [1043] or being a ‘thief’ [1044]. [1043] But you’d never marry me because I ain’t good enough, is ¡that !it? (Rich Pass) [1044] he had been shocked […] ‘Now you are a thief? Is ¡that !it? I don’t understand.’ (Good Terrorist) Or, a Look-Back Tag Question in another Conversational Turn takes the Pattern of a Pro-Verb Auxiliary bearing Strong Stress plus a Pro-Noun. Both Affirmative and Negative can signal some interest, curiosity, or scepticism [1045-46], whose force increases when Strong Stress combines with slow Pace and high Pitch [1047-48]. [1045] ‘Mr Pickwick, sir, I have sent up my card.’ ‘!Have you?’ (Pickwick) [1046] ‘I don’t believe I know your name!’ ‘!Don’t you? My, that’s funny!’ (Babbit) [1047] ‘Captain Cuttle’s at home, I know,’ said Walter. ‘!Is he?’ replied the widow lady. ‘Indeed!’ ‘He has just been speaking to me’, said Walter. ‘!Has he?’ (Dombey) [1048] ‘They don’t want him to go.’ ‘!Don’t they?’ I said, curiously. (Darkness) The Pronoun in the Tag can either fall down to low Pitch to indicate your interest in what was said; or take on rising Pitch to indicate you feel doubtful. 37. The Double Look-Back Tag is realised by a left-right mirror-image Pattern. First comes a Statement Tag with falling Pitch, unstressed Pronoun, and Auxiliary at Strong Stress; then comes a Question Tag with rising Pitch, Interrogative Auxiliary at Weak Stress, and the same unstressed Pronoun. In my data, the Tags are either both Affirmative [1049-50] or else both Negative [1051-52]. [1049] ‘And I detest your three chairs and a bolster.’ ‘You !do, ¡do you?’ (Stoops) [1050] ‘He’s shocked at the way your father goes on in’. ‘Oh, he !is, ¡is he?’ (Pickwick) [1051] ‘My name isn’t Betsy, ma’am.’ ‘It !isn’t, ¡isn’t it?’ ‘No; it is Grace.’ (Cash) [1052] ‘I wouldn’t give a dern for spunk-water.’ ‘You !would·n’t, ¡would·n’t you?’ (Sawyer) The double Tag can signal deeper Uncertainty than the single Tag about the State-ment in the previous Turn. 38. Some varieties of English may appreciate the functions of Question Tags but find the range of forms rather unwieldy. South African English generalises the Tag Questions ‘is it?’ [1053] or ‘izzit?’ [1054] and ‘isn’t it?’ [1055] for all Persons and Tenses.18 The British Negative Tag ‘innit?’ (= ‘isn’t it’), though popular, occurs in my data almost entirely in matching Third Person Singular after an Affirmative [1056], and rarely in other Persons [1057]; or after a Negative [1058]. [1053] I now can get into Agricultural College, ¡is it?
[1054] ‘Ag, shame’ said the Afrikaner. ‘You want a Little England, ¡iz·zit?’ (Zululand)www [1055] Things are going to be awright, ¡isn’t it? (Butcherbird) [1056] Even her name’s funny, ¡in·nit? (Sweet Promises) [1057] they’re dissolvable plastic ¡innit? (conversation)BNC [1058] it’s a load of cobblers, it’s frigging wrong. It’s not fair. Innit? (conversation)BNC One might feel reminded of the handy general Tags in other languages, like French ‘n’est-ce-pas?’, Portuguese ‘não é?’, or German ‘nicht wahr?’ 39. The simplest option of all in spoken English would be the brief Question Tags with Uncertain Weak Stress, like ‘what?’ or ‘eh?’, mostly indicating that the Statement is barely uncertain and hardly needs to be confirmed. [1059] We’ll have a gallop down to Lambs Dell and then up to home, ¡what? (With You) [1060] And it’s all in God’s purpose and plan, ¡eh? (Three Times Table) The Look-Ahead Tags ‘what?’ and ‘how’ with Uncertain Strong Stress can signal that a Yes-or-No-Question is called for and forthcoming: [1061] From out of the hide trailed the pink blanket. ‘!What, are you stopping up here nights?’ (Jubilee Wood) [1062] ‘I’d like tae know how she’s getting on’. ‘!How, are ye thinking of going tae Lon-don? (Might Have Been) 40. The Prosody for Question Tags is sampled below. The whole Utterance may have rising Pitch, whether the Clause before the Tag is an Affirmative or Negative Statement [1063-64]; the Tags put Uncertain Weak Stress on the Pro-Verb, and don’t rise so high as the Statements. But if Tag is a separate Utterance [1041] or Turn [1045], the Pro-Verb may take an emphatic Uncertain Strong Stress higher than the preceding Tone Group. The Double Tag has one falling Pitch down toward a Certain Stress, and one rising Pitch up from an Uncertain Stress [1051]. A Strong Stress mostly occurs near the end of the Tone Group ahead of the Tag.
Prosody thus helps Tags with simple forms to serve such strategic functions as encouraging confirmation in some interactions and resisting it in others. 41. Like the Declarative, the Interrogative has received considerable attention in studies of English; but the picture has been more balanced both for Pitch contours and for Question Tags (cf. IV.25). Here for once, ‘formal’ written English has not been so overweening. IV.C.3 The Exclamatory Clause Type for Exclamations 42. The Exclamatory Clause for Exclamations conveying notable Certainty is the Major Clause Type least studied in conventional descriptions or ‘grammars’ of English. It may be deemed unsuitable for ‘formal’ usage; or it may ruffle (what’s left of) ‘British reserve’. Besides, it is most strongly linked with Attitudes and Emotions, mainly Pejorative ones like indignation or surprise; in BNC data, I find ‘exclamation(s) of’ in Collocations with Items like ‘horror, disgust, fury, regret, frustration,’ And the Exclamation is the disaffected Major Clause Type in ‘formal style’. 43. The two most distinctive options are signalled by Exclamation-Word Exclamations, which favour Front Weight over End Weight. One option starts with the Exclamation Word ‘what’ getting Weak Stress, low Pitch, and slow Pace. Then follows a Noun Phrase at high Pitch starting a falling Pitch contour and put-ting at least one Certain Strong Stress on the earliest suitable Item [1065-66], this bearing the focus of the Attitude or Emotion; with more than one Strong Stress, as in [1067], the greatest Volume goes to the last (on ‘cloud’). The stressed Item may be the Subject of an Active [1065], but is more often a part of the Predicate, such as an Object [1066], or a Subject Complement [1067], followed by the real Subject (mostly as an unstressed Pronoun) and then the Verb with Weak Stress that stays away from End Weight. In the other distinctive option, the Exclamation Word ‘how’ at Weak Stress, low Pitch, and slowPace is followed by an Adjective [1068], or an Adverb[1069], or a Noun Phrase [1070]. all of these again at high Pitch starting a falling Pitch contour, taking Certain Strong Stress, andbearing the focus of the Attitude or Emotion. Then come Subject and Verb, one or both taking Strong or Weak Stress. The Pitch contour is thus much the same as for the Exclamatory form with ‘what’.
The curious fact that in various related languages, the same Set of Items (e.g., English‘what’ and ‘how’, German ‘was’ and ‘wie’, or Italian ‘che’ and ‘como’), can serve as either Question-Words and ExclamationWords may suggest residual traces of a functional affinity within an implicit mirror image balance between notable Uncertainty and notable Certainty. But I see no way so far to decide this conjecture. 4. The two options may have other Pitch contours. Once again parallel to Questions (shown in IV.29), a more reserved, gentler version can start with ‘what’ or ‘how’ at highest Pitch for Front Weight and then a falling contour to an End with Weak Stress [1065, 1068-69]. Conversely, less reserve can be shown by assigning Strong Stresses to suitable items for both Front Weight and End Weight, as in [1070-71], and may
occur in between as well [1072], fitting their Pitch to the contour and exploiting the Volume and Pace to stand out. Yet Front Weightprobably still occupies the focus of Attitude or Emotion, and is both stronger and higher than any Strong Stress later on; and the Pitch contour steadily falls after the Front.
Yet with either ‘what’ or ‘how’, just End Weight wins if a Subject and Verb follow [1073-74].
45. A third major option for Exclamations does not have the distinctive Exclamatory form but rather a form like the Interrogative in a Yes-or-No Question (IV.31) — still another parallel. Naturally, the function of an Exclamation demands a different Prosody, balancing Front Weight against End Weight. The Negative predominates, mostly with a Certain Strong Stress on the Auxiliary or ‘be’ at the start for Front Weight, and a more emphatic Certain Strong Stress for an intense End Weight that now bears the focus of the Attitude or Emotion [1075-76]. The less common Affirmative is more likely to put Weak Stress on the Auxiliary, and an Emphatic Strong Stress both on the Subject and on the End Weight [1077-78]. In all of these, the Pitch contour is falling from the first Strong Stress until the End. Both Polarities express high Certainty, but the Affirmative can signal surprise or indignation too. Neither need require a response of confirmation
46. The function of Exclamations can take the form of Declarative with more emphatic Strong Stress than Statements, using Mid Weight: ending one falling Pitch begun at the Front, and starting another one at Strong
Stress [1079-80]. We might try to describe these as ‘emphatic Statements’ rather than ‘Exclamations’; but, as with Questions (IV.32), the Declarative form can suggest something special. Here, the Attitude or Emotion is not focused on the content of some Noun Phrase or an Adjective with Strong Stress but directed at the entire Utterance, e.g., ‘they’, immigrants with Swedish heritage (of all people), being smeared as ‘ghastly hired girls’ as a pretext for denying them proper wages in [1079]; or ‘you’, a woman pretending to a be princess (of all people) being a unmasked as a ‘swineherd’s daughter’ in [1080]. 47. Exclamations can enhance Front Weight by fronting Items that mostly come near the End, an option for Statements too (IV.20). Here too, the Strong Stress gets high Pitch to start a falling Pitch contour; Volume is louder; and Pace is slower. [1081] Roland gave me a new tennis racquet […] !Thor·ough·ly !spoilt I was! (letter)BNC [1082] Like !drownd·ed !rats, we was! Not a dry stitch on (Diggers) But unlike Statements, the Fronted Item can readily be linked to a Relative Clause by ‘that’ [1083-84]. Here too, earliest Strong Stress occurs at high Pitch. [1083] !Stu·pid !block·head that I was! (Wildfell) [1084] !Shame·less !daugh·ter of a domineering sire that she was! (Egoist)
With no Independent Clause, this Pattern might not count as a genuine Sentence. The Fronted Items could be Subject Complements for the Pronouns in the Relative Clause. Or, they might be Non-Clauses carrying a Dependent Clause (cf. IV.87). 48. Exclamation-Word Exclamations are nearly always Affirmative rather than Negative, e.g., not [1066a, 1068b]; in apparent exceptions like [1085-87], ‘what’ and ‘how much’ are not Exclamation-Words but Objects of Verbs. Options with Interrogative form can be Negative [1085-87], e.g. in literary style; yet all of these are still Affirmative in function, e.g., that ElinorDashwood was ‘tempted to forgive’ a great deal, and that Little Paul Dombey was the ultimate in ‘beautiful Cupid’-ity. [1066a] *What sense you don’t talk! [1068a] *How normal those trees didn’t look! [1085] What have I not suffered! (Wrongs) [1086] How much could it not tempt her to forgive! (Sense) [1087] Is he not beautiful Mr. Dombey! Is he not a Cupid, Sir! (Dombey) Nor do we find two Exclamations linked by ‘or’ as undecided alternatives using a rising and then falling Pitch contour [1065a], an option that is open to the other three Major Clause Types (IV.19, 33, 66). [1065a] *What !mad·ness pos·¡sessed her! or what !non·sense she ¡talked Evidently, the function of Exclaiming requires that something be decidedly the case. 49. If the Exclamation Mark is a fully reliable indicator, the function of Exclaiming is quite expansive, available for emphatic versions of the Statement [1088], the Question [1089], or the Command [1090]. [1088] ¡You !shan’t be be·!head·ed! (Alice) [1089] ¡What !is ¡mon·ey after all! (Dombey) [1090] ¡Be !warned and !fly! (Pompeii) But the function is distinct from the non-emphatic versions of each. [1088] is like a promise; [1089] expects no answer; and [1090] conveys a special urgency. And all have a Strong Stress near the Front that they would not as Statements. 50. The expansive nature of Exclaiming is also indicated by Framing Verbs (in the sense of III.73). ‘Stating’, ‘questioning’, and ‘commanding’ largely agree with the Framed Clause Type [1091-93]. But the Verb ‘exclaiming’ can be a Frame for an Exclamation [1094], a Question [1095], or a Command [1096] too. [1091] ‘And the rain’s stopped at last’, Maggie stated. (Maggie) [1092] ‘Will Maisie’s father set you on?’ George questioned. (Fields in the Sun) [1093] ‘Put the fawn down and move back’, Yanto commanded. (Yanto’s Summer) [1094] ‘What a nice priest you are!’ exclaimed the robber. (Kwaidan) [1095] ‘Why didn’t you say so before?’ exclaimed the Bookman. (Endill) [1096] ‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she exclaimed. (Waters of Eden)
51. Tag Exclamations after Exclamation-Word Exclamations like [1097], with Strong Stress on the Pro-Verb, are quite uncommon, probably because no further emphasis is needed. The preferred option is a Tag Question [1098-99], which requires no confirmation (though it would be welcome) but asserts firm conviction. [1097] What a start it is, !isn’t it! (Pickwick) [1098] What a gentleman he is, !isn’t he? (Mayor) [1099] How well she looks, !doesn’t she? (Pickwick) Tags for the option beginning with the Auxiliary [1076a] could hardly occur in the same Turn; they might appear in another Turn [1076b], though I found none in my data. Instead, I find Exclamations in the form like the Declarative being followed by Negative Tags in a form like Interrogative: either in the same Turn seeking con-firmation [1100-01], or in a later Turn giving confirmation [1102-03]; and both Tags can put Strong Stress on the Verb or Auxiliary and Weak Stress on the Pro-Verb. Affirmative versions are less common and point away from confirmation toward scepticism [1104] or uneasiness [1105]. [1076a] ‘*¡Does !she ¡look !aw·ful, ¡doesn’t she!’ [1076b] ‘¡Doesn’t she ¡look !aw·ful!’ ‘*!Doesn’t she!’ [1100] I !am !awful, ¡aren’t I! (Jane’s Journey) [1101] But it !is i!ron·ic·al, ¡isn’t it! (Damsel) [1102] ‘Now you can see the castle.’ ‘It’s !won·der·ful!’ ‘!Isn’t it!’ (Jimmy) [1103] ‘Your horse !is a fine !fel·low!’ said Clara. ‘!Isn’t he!’ (Sons) [1104] ‘He was Minister for Education in the late Government’. ‘Oh, !was he!’ they say, and dismiss Mr Wood as a nonentity and me as a pedant. (English Character) [1105] ‘I’ve been to the lawyer about my divorce’. She gave a shudder. ‘!Have you!’ (Chatter) Or, a warmly confirming Tag in a later Turn can have a Declarative form with Pronoun before Pro-Verb: [1106] ‘They are both in a very melancholy position, and that’s true!’ ‘¡They !are!’ (Mayor) [1107] ‘For he is an orphan boy!’ ‘¡He !is!’ (Pirates of Penzance) I found just a few Affirmative Tag Exclamations as separate Utterances in the same Turn after an expressly marked Affirmative Exclamation, with Strong Stress going on the Pro-Verb [1108-09], as if to say ‘don’t deny it!’ I find more Tags included within the same Utterance, where Weak Stress goes on the Pronoun [1110-11]. [1108] You’re a pure boy! You !are! (They Came from SW19) [1109] I know you cared! You !did! I saw your expression. (Hermetech) [1110] We tried it once and we got the wrong ruddy film, ¡we did! (conversation)BNC [1111] You look as if you’ve been in a concentration camp, ¡you do! (Her Living Image) 52. For a Look-Ahead Tag, ‘why’ as Tone Group with Weak Stress plus a Pause can anticipate an Exclamation with an Exclamation-Word [1112-13], Interrogative form [1114], or Declarative form [1115].
[1112] ¡Why, what a precious old sea-calf I am! (Treasure) [1113] ¡Why, how very black and cross you look! (Wuthering) [1114] ¡Why, isn’t that splendid of them! (Paper Faces) [1115] ¡Why, he’ll soon be Mayor! (Mayor) 53. All in all, Exclamations do far more functional work in discourse than fits their marginal treatment in descriptions of English and conventional ‘grammar-books’ which equate the whole language with some ‘formal’ or ‘educated’ variety
IV.C.4 The Imperative Clause Type for Commands 54. The Imperative Claus for Command is quite distinct in form by its restricted Lexicogrammar: mostly a Human Agent not expressed as Subject; only Second Person; and only Present Tense. The unmarked option for the Affirmative starts with the Process Verb; the Negative starts with the Auxiliary plus the Negation ‘don’t’ or ‘do not’ and then the Verb. The unmarked Pitch contour is falling toward End Weight [1116-17].
Process
55. For either Polarity, Certain Stress fits the Weight attributed to the Process (VI.17-22). A Process judged important or unpredictable gets Strong Stress and confers Front Weight [1117]; otherwise, Weak Stress occurs if another Item can take Strong Stress, mostly leading to End Weight [1118]. So in a short Affirmative or Negative Command, the Verb gets Strong Stress in any case [1119-20]. [1117] ‘!Stop this ¡joke!’ shouts Ali. (Mother without a Mask) [1118] Next time you get a blister, ¡don’t ¡stop the !game—¡stop the !pain. (advert)BNC [1119] !Stop! !Turn! !Shout! (Fields in the Sun) [1120] Don’t !think at all. !Sketch! (Woodworker) 56. The function of soliciting compliance encourages options for emphatic Com-mands. At Lower Weight, one option adds the Second Person Pronoun ‘you’ with Weak Stress to Affirmative [1121] or Negative [1122]; the Process Verb may get Weak Stress too. At Higher Weight, another option places Strong Stress on the Auxiliary ‘do’ or ‘don’t’ or on the ‘not’ of ‘do not’, and Weak Stress on the Process Verb [1123-25]. Affirmatives with both of the options can mark a contrast between speaker and hearer, but mostly in literature [1127]. [1121] she said angrily, ‘Now ¡you just ¡lis·ten to !me’. (Vets Might Fly) [1122] !Don’t ¡you let her ¡know what you’re !up to, mind. (English Crime)
[1123] !Do be pre·¡pared for some honest advice, though. (Hair Flair) [1124] ‘I’ll come round and make sure you’re all right’ ‘No, !don’t, !don’t ¡do that!’ I said, too urgently. (LShaped Room) [1125] Now, ¡do !not ¡let them lure you to the !hus·tings (Middlemarch) [1126] You have her father’s love, Demetrius; let me have Hermia’s; ¡do !you ¡mar·ry !him. (Midsummer) [1127] I have now told you everything. […] ¡Do !you in turn be as ¡frank with !me. (Sherlock Holmes) At Highest Weight, Strong Stresses can be multiplied, perhaps like this: [1128] ‘I say, !give ¡her !your !arm!’ young Newland nervously hissed (Innocence) [1129] A shrill scream sounded above me! ‘For God’s sake, !don’t !touch the !beam! (Fu) 57. As in Statements and Questions (but not in Exclamations) Commands can join in alter native Pitches, one Pitch contour rising and the other falling (cf. IV.19, 33, 48). If you dont enter the room, then leave it [1130]; if you don’t ‘expound’ the riddle of Shakespeare's King Antiochus, then ‘receive the sentence’ to ‘cancel off your days’ [1131], which to the modern ear sounds like Prince Pericles is a newspaper subscription.
. 58. Just as the Question and Exclamation can take on a form like Declarative, so too can the Command, and again something special can be suggested (cf. IV.14, 32, 46). Unmarked options include ‘you will’ [1132] or ‘will not’ [1133], and ‘you must’ [1134] or ‘must not’ [1135]; and ‘you’ are enjoined to do or not to do what is expressed by the following Infinitive with a Strong Stress. [1132] You will please to !tell her that her show of devotion for my daughter is disagreeable to me. (Dombey) [1133] You will not !speak to him on any pretext — and — Richard, it will be at the peril of your life if you speak to her (Eyre) [1134] You are killing her […] with your devilish moods and mysteries. You must !stop. Do you hear? You must !give her up. (Blue Flower) [1135] He attempted to pass. ‘You must not !go! she exclaimed energetically. (Wuthering) These data suggest high-handed, pompous Commands, such as would hardly be used in ordinary dealing with friends or family, and so seem highly marked.
59. Whilst the modern Imperative is just Second Person, Commands might be wanted for the other Persons too. In older usage we find a Command as a Process Verb with Strong Stressand a Subject in First Person [1136] or Third Person [1137]. Today, we find unspecified Agents like ‘everybody’ [1138] or ‘somebody’ [1139]. [1136] here !sit we down; take you your instrument, play you the whiles! (Shrew) [1137] !speak any man with us, and we will obey. (Self-Reliance) [1138] Everybody keep !still a minute. (Penrod) [1139] I could hear Susan screaming ‘Somebody !help me’. (Today) Such restrictions can be offset by Commands with ‘let’ like [1140-41], which will be described later on as a Pattern within Non-Finite Minor Clauses (see IV.78). [1140] Let each bring his spoil to our chosen place of rendezvous (Ivanhoe) [1141] Let everybody leave this room, while I am talking to the queen (Irish Fairy Tales) 60. The Tag Command is none too frequent and I haven’t found it in ‘grammar’-books. The basic options are simply the Pro-Verbs ‘do’ [1142-43] in the Affirmative, and ‘don’t’ [1144-45] in the Negative, both in a separate Tone Group following the Command Clause and taking Certain Strong Stress. [1142] Relax, Charles dear soul, and stop wilting, !do. (Phoney War) [1143] Put me down as a nutter, !do. (Lee’s Ghost) [1144] ‘Don’t talk to me, you aggravating thing, !don’t!’ (Pickwick) [1145] ‘They are so beautiful!’ said Mrs Kenwigs, sobbing. ‘Oh, dear’, said all the ladies, ‘don’t give way, !don’t.’ (Nickleby) The ‘do’ in a separate Tag can add the Pro-Noun ‘it’ as a Direct Object for Affirmative [1146] or Negative [1147]; Strong Stress probably occurs on ‘do’ or ‘don’t’ in a falling Pitch contour. [1146] Save him, save him! […] !Do it, Heyling, !do it (Pickwick) [1147] ‘Oh, Tom, don’t lie — !don’t do it.’ (Sawyer) A Tag Command in a later Turn by another speaker can encourage or discourage obedience [1148-49], but I find very few instances. [1148] ‘Do sit down, Hilda,’ said Connie. ‘!Do!’ the man said. (Chatterly) [1149] ‘O Priam, yield not to him!’ ‘Do !not, dear father.’ (Troilus) As Framing Command Tags, we might count ‘see’ or ‘remember’. [1150] She’s been telling tales behind my back! Well, I won’t stand for it, see! (Stolen Heart) [1151] Moderation in all things, remember! (Wildfell) 61. The Look-Ahead Tag Command placed in front to anticipate a Command may encourage or discourage in advance [1152-53], though I found few instances. Sample [1154] is a rare one with both Look-Ahead and LookBack Tags.
[1152] !Do! Kill thy physician, and the fee bestow upon the foul disease. (Lear) [1153] !Don’t, Maggie, my dear — don’t look so ugly! (Floss) [1154] Do stop your dogs digging there! […] Oh, call them off! !Do! !do! — Oh, !don’t, !don’t! Don’t let them dig! (WouldBeGoods) 62. A mild Command can take a Tag Question of ‘will you?’ [1155] and ‘won’t you?’ [1156]; or, in casual speech, ‘willya?’ [1157] and ‘wontcha?’ [1158]. [1155] Just strike a match, will you? (Brown) [1156] Be very good to him, won’t you? (Little Women) [1157] Hey Ed, get my bag, willya? (Travellin’ Riverside Blues)www [1158] Lay off the Spider King, wontcha? (Internet chat)www These Affirmative and Negative Tags animate compliance to do what is commanded whilst hinting at greater freedom to decide than for a plain Command. 63. Commanding is the most problematic of the four Major Clause Types because of power relations it might imply, and the loss of face if the speaker is disobeyed or for the hearer meekly obeys. Prosody is essential for regulating the degrees between the mild Commands for simple or easy compliance, with Weak Stresses, soft Volume, and a shallow falling Pitch contour in [115960]; and forceful Commands for immediate or unconditional compliance, with Strong Stresses, loud Volum e, and a steep falling Pitch contour [1161-62].
Conversely, speakers of English have a fine repertory outwardly polite and modest ways of getting you to do things without seeming to utter Commands, e.g.: [1163] ‘Perhaps, Mary’, she said tentatively, ‘you wouldn’t mind giving us some tea?’ (Night and Day)
of
[1164] I wonder if you would be so kind as to cast a professional eye over the experimental laboratories for me. (Lucifer Rising) Obedience can be made to seem an act of refined courtesy that honours the hearer. IV.D Minor Clause Types 64. Minor Clause Types do not themselves serve the essential functions of the Major Clause Types of Stating, Questioning, Exclaiming, or Commanding. Instead, their unmarked function is to constitute the Background of the Processes expressed for such functions by the Major Clauses constituting the Foreground . So terms like ‘declarative’ and interrogative’ must accurately apply to Major Clauses, and not, as in traditional grammars, to whole ‘sentences’ (IV.14). A term like ‘declarative sentence’ must mean: a ‘sentence that coincides with a declarative clause’. IV.D.1 Dependent Clauses 65. A Dependent Clause is a Minor Type with Subject and Predicate, ‘depending on’ an ‘Independent Clause’ as a Major Type in the same Sentence and with an essential function. Thus, [1165] States the ‘thinking’, not the ‘having a break’; [1166] Questions the ‘staying’, not the ‘retiring’; [1167] Exclaims about ‘being miserable’, not ‘offending’; and [1168] Commands the ‘discarding’, not the ‘using’. [1165] You’ll think more clearly after you’ve had a break. (Waters of Eden) [1166] Are you going to stay in London after you’ve retired? (Furniture) [1167] How miserable you were when you had offended her! (Idle Fellow) [1168] Always discard a swab after you have used it once. (Taking Good Care) Also due to Foregrounding, the reactions to a Statement address the Major Process, not the Minor Process. Thus, the reacting speakers deny the ‘blackballing’, not the ‘trying to join’ [1169]; ‘disagree’ with the ‘being important’, not with her ‘having hope’ [1170]; disbelieve the ‘standing ready’, not with the ‘putting’ or ‘turning’ [1171]; and are ‘glad’ about a man ‘being a goodcobbler’, not about his ‘looking very young’ [1172]. [1169] ‘Your husband was blackballed when he tried to join the Country Club.’ ‘That’s not true!’ (Crime) [1170] ‘It’s important she should have hope.’ ‘I don’t agree.’ (Woman of My Age) [1171] ‘These parties stand ready to take the mills off your hands at the value I put upon them when I turned them in.’ ‘I don’t believe you!’ (Lapham) [1172] ‘Though he may look very young he’s a good cobbler.’ ‘Glad to hear it.’ (Shoe-maker’s Daughter) 66. When the two Clause Types occur together, which is of course the unmarked Pattern for ‘dependency’, both a Dependent Clause and an Independent Clause prefer a falling Pitch and End Weight. In a separated Prosody, the weight or length of each Clause may justify assigning it its own Tone Group, set off by a pause in between, no matter which comes first. [1173-74]
Sometimes alternative Pitch contours, with one rising and one falling, as we have seen for Major Clauses (IV.19, 33), can be shared between Minor and a Major Clause [1175-76]; thanks to the distinct contrast in Pitch, no pause may be needed.
One plausible effect is to invite comparison between Minor and Major Process, e.g. between two Agents who ‘moved’, or between who’s to be the ‘Beauty’ and who the ‘Beast’. 67. Sometimes too, the separation between Clauses is so clear in the Prosody that the Dependent Clause is treated as an Utterance in its own right. The most common one occurs in answering a Question from another speaker [1177-78]. Or, the same speaker may express an afterthought [1179-80]. [1177] ‘Why hasn’t she told him?’ ‘Because she has come to her senses.’ (Longest Journey) [1178] ‘When shall we give Bleak House its mistress, little woman?’ ‘When you please’. (Bleak House) [1179] Besides, he may have been driven over the edge by her carryings-on. Because carry on she did. (Crime) [1180] ‘She is a jolly companion to be with, amusing, restful — interesting.’ ‘I think that is a fair description. When she cares, that is. When she is in good form.’ (Secret Place s) These separated Clauses are disdained as ‘sentence fragments’ by most teachers of ‘formal writing’ (cf. IV.81), a subject-matter that rarely addresses Prosody. 68. In an integrated Prosody, both Clauses constitute a single Tone Group, provided that the weight or length is plainly low for the Minor Clause [1181-82] or for the Major Clause [118384], again no matter which comes first.
69. Integrated Prosody is most logical when the Minor Clause is integrated also into the Grammar of the Major Clause. The Minor Clause can be Framed in various Patterns [1185-88].
But here too, weight and length may call for separated Prosody:
70. The four Major Clause Types can serve as integrative Frames, most clearly with the prototypical Verbs, though with the falling Pitch typical of Statements:
In return, a Major Clause Type that is not a Frame can integrate a Minor Clause Prosody, as for a Question [1194], an Exclamation [1195], and a Command [1196].
into its own
71. Framing Statement Tags can retroactively contribute a Communicative Frame reaffirm a Statement [1197], or a Question [1198], or a Command [1199].
to
[1197] Rearmament is a mistake, I tell you. (Maggie Jordan) [1198] How could anyone abuse a wee child like that, I ask you. (Inside the RUC) [1199] Just be thankful you haven’t got longer hair, I’m telling you. (conversation)BNC 72. Extremely popular as retroactive Cognitive Framing Tags are ‘you know’ and ‘you see’ (in the sense of ‘understand’, not ‘look at’), which more feebly reaffirm the Statement. ‘You know’ can suggest that ‘you’ are aware and are just being reminded [1200]; ‘you see’ can suggest that the speaker is making something clear [1201]. Yet placed at the Front as an ordinary Frame in the same Tone Group, ‘you know’ can indicate that Statement is fully certain [1202], whilst ‘you see’ can indicate that the Statement is confirmed by visual evidence [1203]. [1200] You’ve got to live your life too, you know, said Keith with a grin. (Furniture) [1201] That quietness was typical of us; we had a strong sense of etiquette, you see. (Ready) [1202] You know we have settled all that already. We talked it all over last night. (Emma) [1203] Be calmer. You see that I am composed (Dombey) 73. Conversely, Framing Question Tags retroactively Frame a query about what the hearer ‘would say’ or might or ‘know’ or ‘see’ about what was just said. Affirmative Tags follow Questions, leaving some Uncertainty [1204-06]; Negative Tags follow Statements, anticipating confirmation [1207-09] (cf. xxx). [1204] Could the two attacks be linked, would you say? (Edge) [1205] When does that policy terminate, do you know? (insurance training)BNC [1206] But I don’t choose to sell myself, do you see? (Hidden Flame) [1207] That smacks of carelessness, wouldn’t you say? (Out of the Storm) [1208] We are all terminally ill, dear boy, don’t you know? (Lee’s Ghost) [1209] I could better bear disgrace in solitude, don’t you see? (Hidden Flame) As Negative Frames, ‘know’ and ‘see’ function the same for Questions as they do for Statements — showing Certainty [1210] and pointing to evidence [1211]. [1210] Don’t you know that Venice is packed with visitors? (Mask) [1211] Don’t you see that you’ve frightened him away? (Howard’s End) Similar functions also apply for the short, popular Cognitive Framing Tags ‘you know?’ and ‘you see? They hardly require confirmation (maybe an obliging nod). Again, ‘knowing’ is for what is reminded; ‘seeing’ is for what is clarified. [1212] ‘You can’t be too careful, you ¡know?’ Patrick nodded. (Another Time) [1213] You had to carry your lamp in your teeth, you ¡see? (Nottingham Oral History)
Framing Exclamatory Tags seem to appear only after Statements. [1214] You’re a bloody old copper, I must say! (Windsor Blue) [1215] I’m terribly sad that it happens, but it shouldn’t happen, you see! (conversation)BNC [1216] You’ve a strenuous day ahead of you, you know! (Distance Enchanted) 74. Far more could be said on the functions of Dependent Minor Clauses, but my brief review should at least indicate why the terms ‘declarative’, interrogative’, and so on apply to Independent Clauses, and not to whole Sentences. The decision for a Minor Clause is strategic to express a Process that is not stated, questioned, exclaimed, or commanded, but supplies the Background for a Major Process that is.
IV.D.2 Non-Finite Clauses 75. Non-Finite Clauses are Minor Clauses having a Subject and a Non-Finite Verb and usually depending on a Finite Clause nearby.19 They mainly occur, like other Minor Clauses, to supply the Background in a Sentence, juxtaposed with a Major Process occupying the Foreground (cf. IV.64). The Non-Finite Verb could be a Present Participle for Active [1217] or Medial [1217] to express what is happening then; or a Past Participle for Passive [1219] to express what has happened before then. Pronouns functioning as Subject can occur in the forms of either Subject or Object [1220-21], a variation perhaps encouraged by the absence of a Finite Verb. [1217] Seeing the peril past, all the bystanders burst into derisive laughter. (Ben Hur) [1218] the ¡parson ar·!riving, and the ¡horses being !rea·dy, the squire departed (Jones) [1219] The ¡work !fin·ished, the ¡dead !bur·ied and the ¡site !cleared, Batty Green revert-ed to a sullen silence (Wainwright) [1220] he lifted a little silver crucifix and held it out to me, ¡I being !near·est to him (Dracula) [1221] he called to give me advice about the old wheat, ¡me being a !widow (Middlemarch) The preferred Prosody has Strong Stress for End Weight [1218-21], and a falling Pitch contour much like the Finite Minor Clause [1222-23].
76. A Non-Finite Clause can be loosely linked with a Finite one by ‘and’ or ‘what with’, maybe implying an ironic or distressing relation between Processes: a Present Participle in an Active [1224] or a Medial [1225], Past Participle in a Passive [1226], or Infinitive for what is about to happen [1227]. Again, we see the Pronoun in the function of Subject in the form of Subject or Object. [1224] And here’s me dyin’ to go and him havin’ all the chances, and him hating books (conversation)BNC
[1225] The atmosphere is now different, what several fighters going to South Africa (Daily Telegraph)
with the cricketers playing internationally
and
[1226] his master bolted with his place, and him blamed for it! (Dombey) [1227] What! I love, I sue, I seek a wife, […] and I to sigh for her! (Love’s Labour’s Lost) 77. A Non-Finite Clause can be Framed with suitable Framing Verbs for Communicative Processes like ‘describe’ [1228], ‘declare’ [1229], or ‘proclaim’ [1230]. [1228] I described the gorgeous Babylonian harlot riding forth in her chariots of gold (Parish) [1229] These men declare, with alarmed countenance, the brigands to be coming (French Revolution) [1230] This German Socialism […] proclaimed the German nation to be the model nation (Manifesto of the Communist Party) Similarly, the Object of Verbs for Perceptive and Cognitive Processes can also be the Subject of a Non-Finite Clause: [1231] I beheld the roof burning. (Volcanoes) [1232] Bernice found her eyes caught by flashes of light (Deceit) [1233] Herr Nordern felt his hand tremble. (Bury the Dead) [1234] She knew her beloved Catherine to have so feeling a heart (Northanger) [1235] she believed him to be really taking comfort in some society (Emma) 78. A useful Non-Finite Clause makes up for the Imperative form limiting Commands to the Second Person (cf. IV.52). Here, the Command is formed with ‘let’, whose Object is also the Subject of an Infinitive expressing the Action or Event the Command is intended to motivate. ‘Let’ rates only Weak Stress, whilst End Weight mainly decides if the Infinitive rates either Strong Stress (e.g. ‘disband’ in [1236]) or Weak Stress (e.g. ‘disperse’ in [1236], ‘do’ in [1237]). The Pitch contour is usually a falling one, much as for ordinary Commands.
In a few data, the speaker commands some Second-Person Audience to perform (or not perform) an Ergative of ‘letting do’ in the Affirmative [1238] or Negative [1239], as distinct from ordinary ‘allowing’ [1240-41]. [1238] most gracious Duke, with thy command let him be brought forth (Comedy of Errors) [1239] Don’t let the ultrasophisticates put you off the guided city tour. (Beaten Track) [1240] ‘She had better go out of the room.’ ‘Let her stay’, said Madame Merle. (Portrait)
[1241] Look out, he’s turning! Don’t let him get away! (Sawyer) More often, the plausible reading is merely a Non-Finite Command that the Direct Object Agent should act without anyone in particular ‘letting’ them. Affirmatives like [1242-43] are common in my data, whilst Negatives like [1244-45] are rare. [1242] Let the child who broke her slate come forward! (Eyre) [1243] Let the guilty tremble, therefore, and the suspect, and the rich (French Revolution) [1244] Let the Roman senator not despise the poor Pompeian. (Pompeii) [1245] don’t let the honourable gentleman forget that we now have one point four million more in work in the UK than we had ten years ago. (House of Commons) Occasionally, the intention is sarcastic defiance, implying it will hardly be done or else to no purpose, and the Prosody caries louder Volume and slower Pace: [1246] ‘Let him dare to force you!’ I cried. ‘There’s law in the land.’ (Wuthering) [1247] Let him do his spite. My services, which I have done the signiory, shall out-tongue his complaints. (Othello) And in exuberant discourse, the doing may be one the speaker cannot realistically command at all: [1248] let the whole of creation share this sublime happiness. (Joy Bringer) [1249] Let the sky rain potatoes; let it thunder to the tune of Greensleeves (Merry Wives) [1250] Let ugly Darkness, with her rusty coach, smother the earth with never-fading mists (Tamburlaine) 79. A Non-Finite ‘let’ Command may propose the audience to join the speaker in acting together [1251]. The unmarked Object of ‘let’ is then the First Person Plural us’ [1252], whereas I found just a few instances of ‘you and me’ [1253]. Again, the Infinitive takes Weak Stress or Strong Stress. [1251] ¡Let us ¡all !slip into our !beds, and !be ¡there when she comes in (Pan) [1252] ¡Don’t ¡let us !talk about it any more (Dorian) [1253] Let ¡you and ¡me ¡have a !story !club all our own (Green Gables) In regional usage, the popular Contraction ‘let’s’ (‘let + us’) may get additional Objects despite the contracted Pronoun, hence ‘let’s us’ (Strong Stress) [1254], or ‘let’s you and me’ [1255] and ‘let’s me and you’ (Weak Stress) [1256]. [1254] ‘Go ‘long home and get laughed at.’ […] ‘Let’s !us ¡go, too, Tom.’ (Sawyer) [1255] ¡Let’s ¡me and ¡you !bunch our !com·mis·sar·y de·!par·tments and make a !stew (Options) [1256] ¡Let’s ¡you and ¡me ¡go ¡down to the !cir·cus (Punkin Center) 80.
Compared to Dependent Clauses, Non-Finite Minor Clauses generally
function
more
distinctly
as
Background. Apparently, the choice of Non-Finite reflects an Intention to mention one Minor Process setting the scene or circumstances for the Major Process in a Finite Clause (IV.58). However, the Non-Finite
Commands just reviewed reverse the priorities, with ‘let’ often merely a dummy Process, and the Minor process by its form is the Major Process by its function. IV.E Non-Clauses 81. Surely the most neglected among the frequent Patterns in the real Grammar of English is the NonClause ,20 a discourse unit which serves the functions of a Clause without having the form of Subject plus Verb. In speaking, it occurs as an Utterance in a distinct Tone Group, and usually with at least one Strong Stress; in writing, it occurs as a Sentence beginning with a capital letter and ending with a Period. School ‘grammars’ would spurn it as a ‘sentence fragment’ , a heinous error indeed (cf. IV.67). Linguistic ‘grammars’ would retailor it into a Clause that happens to be ‘subjectless’ or ‘verbless’ (or both), or which, for obscure motives, has undergone ‘ellipsis’ but is still ‘understood’ as a Clause (cf. IV.103). Both moves obey staid notions of English Grammar modelled on formal written English. 82. In authentic discursive practice, Non-Clauses are essential as functional and prosodic units. One recent survey found them to constitute more than one third of all units in a sample of English conversation. 21 They are natural products of cooperative interaction, as in [1257-58] (BNC data). [1257] Ruth: you’ve got some imbeciles coming! Paul: Who are they? Ruth: [laugh-ing] Well mainly the children. Paul: Dunno them. Ruth: Your cousins. [1258] Margaret: Do you remember that great big jumble sale they had that raised over a thousand pounds? They had under the erm, Richard: What the Scouts? Terence: multi-storey? Margaret: Yeah.Richard: Four or five years ago now. Written English too can produce abundant Non-Clauses [1259], especially when representing conversation [1260]. [1259] John Major is now being exposed for what some of us always warned that he was. A fake. A flake. A wimp. A phoney. (Daily Mirror) [1260] ‘I thought it was appalling’, she said. ‘What d’you mean, appalling?’ ‘The noise. The dirt. The mindless, repetitive work.’ (Nice Work) 83. In respect to position, the Look-Ahead Non-Clause points forward to a Major Clause, as in [1261]; the Look-Back Non-Clause points backward, as in [1262]; and the Free Non-Clause stands alone without pointing to any nearby Clause, as in [1263]. [1261] My noble father. He is looking down on us now (Man and Superman) [1262] Something of a surprise. You being here. And in your cab. (Suburban Dead) [1263] They found him in a trance. […] ‘Glorious, stirring sight!’ murmured Toad. (Willows) 84. In the organisation of Conversational Turns among several speakers, a Non-Clause can point ahead to the next Turn [1264]; or, far more commonly, it points back to the previous Turn [1265]. Or again, it can share a Turn with a Clause [1266] or with another Non-Clause [1267]. [1264] ‘ You and I —’ ‘We shall always remember him’, I said, hastily. (Darkness) [1265] ‘You sound very dull’, Katharine remarked. ‘Merely middle class’. Denham replied. (Night and Day) [1266] ‘But that’s you. Your handwriting.’ (Chung Kuo)
[1267] ‘Sorry’, I shouted. ‘My fault. Should have spotted it myself’. (Uncle Albert) 85. The balance favouring the Predicate over the Subject in the English Clause, noted respecting Informativity back in IV.17, may suggest why the Subject is more often missing in Non-Clauses than the Verb, and is easier to leave out in context [1268-69]. Even so, Non-Clauses without a Verb, as in [1270], are no rarity. [1268] Gets a bit lonely since our accident, you know. Can’t get about. (Samaritan) [1269] ‘What do you think they does?’ ‘Don’t know.’ ‘Gets up a grand tea drinkin’. (Pick-wick) [1270] But Baldwin and Mrs B. are wonderful. Never a word of bitterness or complaint. (Constitutional Texts) 86. All four of the Major Clause Types reviewed in IV.C.1-4 have corresponding Major Non-Clauses. A NonClause Statement can range from a single Word [1271] to an extensive Phrase [1272]. Each usually has at least one Certain Strong Stress, often for End Weight , and is set off by longer Pauses conventionally marked in written English with periods and highlighted here with double upright lines. Stylistic effects can be quite impressive [1273-74]. [1271] She took herself off for long walks to ponder snow. || !Cold. || !Chill. || !Freez·ing. || !Wet. || (I Believe in Angels)
in
the
ice
and
wind
and
[1272] She was nothing to him. || Just another !wor·ship·per in a long string of !sub·jects. (Undo) [1273] The !door, her !moth·er coming. || !Sway·ing, !skel·e·tal, and her face like !snow. || !Clutch·ing something wrapped in !pa·per. || !Red on her !face and her !coat. (Lying Together) [1274] The damp, yellow-brick !school·build·ing in its !cin·der·y !grounds. || The State !Bank, | !stuc·co masking !wood. || The !Farm·ers’ National !Bank. || An Ionic !tem·ple of !mar·ble. (Main Street) The series of Non-Clauses in [1273-74] nicely invoke a disjointed series of visual impressions, e.g., for the spectral materialisation of the ‘mother’ in [1273]; or for the iconic representation ofthe ‘planlessness’ of Gopher Prairie in [1274], where ‘each man had built with the most valiant disregard of all the others’ (Main Street). 87. Several indicators suggest that such Non-Clauses do count as Statements and not just fortuitous leftovers. They can have their own Topics, as in news headlines: [1275] Baker’s hard man ‘soft’ on grammar (London Standard) [1276] Sri Lanka rebels in sea suicide (BBC World News) Also, they can have a Minor Clause depending on them (cf. IV47), though such usages are uncommon in my data, e.g.: [1277] A fever. Which took Thérèse by the throat and shook her (Daughters) [1278] The winter. When things would be quieter maybe on the farm. (Oral history)BNC And they can be loosely linked with ‘and’ to a nearby Clause, much like the Non-Finites shown in IV.69, but without any Verb form: [1279] He was forever ill-treating her, and she too proud to complain. (Sherlock Holmes) [1280] At a Labour conference you get Gerry Adams turning up at a fringe meeting, and he the leader of Sinn Fein (Independent)
[1281] It’s funny you should be calling on her, and you a respectable young lady (Ridgeway) 88. A simple function of a Non-Clause Statement is to echo or repeat, e.g., to emphasize what you just said [1282]; or to show you have taken in what someone else has said [1283]; or to indicate some reservation about it [1284]. [1282] ‘In game-playing I always win. Always’, he emphasised. (My Heart) [1283] ‘I could rent a place like this next year. In September.’ ‘September’, she repeated and listened to the rain. (same) [1284] ‘You write novels?’ ‘Oh yes. That is, I want to write them’. ‘Novels’, she repeated. ‘Why do you write novels?’ (Voyage Out) A more elaborate function is to supply an Item or Pattern that might otherwise have been integrated into a nearby Clause, such as a Modifier [1285], Direct Object [1286] or Adverbial [1287]. But sometimes no plausible format for integrating is readily indicated, though low Cohesion does not impede Coherence [128889]. [1285] The barmaid caught my eye in the mirror. Beautiful. (Other Country) [1286] I have various packets. And the tin of milk. And a plum. And a peach. (Like Out) [1287] It just took off like a rocket from there. Every night. All the time. (Living with Heroin) [1288] He was beautiful, your brother. Always a fair price. Always there. (Payback) [1289] ‘What was the job, sir?’ ‘Secretary of a trade association. Widgets and gaskets, that sort of thing. (Clubbed) Common too are Free Non-Clause Statements whose main function is to comment on something in the communicative situation: [1290] They found Mr. Jarvis greasing a cat’s paws with butter. […] ‘A fine animal’, said Psmith. (Psmith) [1291] He took from De Gautet a bottle which he carried, and put it to his lips. ‘Hardly a drop! he cried discontentedly, and flung it in the moat. (Zenda) [1292] Grace appeared. ‘Time for a break, boys.’ ‘Ah, relief’, Byron said. (Undo) [1293] Mac eyed George’s retreating back till he had turned the corner. ‘A nice pleasant gentleman, Mr. Bevan’, he said. (Damsel) 89. Like the separated Dependent Clauses reviewed in IV.67, Non-Clause State-ments are popular for answering Questions. [1294] ‘Who is Glinda?’ inquired the Scarecrow. ‘The Witch of the South’. (Oz) [1295] ‘What’s the matter with him?’ ‘Just crazy drunk’. (Jungle) [1296] ‘Are you drunk?’ ‘Tolerable sober, my angel’, returns Mr. Bucket. (Bleak House) [1297] ‘Where is the book?’ ‘In the laboratory.’ (Egoist)
By contrast, full Clauses might sound quite inappropriate. Even in carefully composed discourse like [1298], they could create an irritable or pedantic impression; and in casual talk like [1299] from BNC data, they could seem baldly out of place. [1298] Algernon: What brings you up to town? Jack: Oh, pleasure, pleasure! […] [compare: Pleasure brings me up to town.] Algernon: Where have you been since last Thursday? Jack: In the country. […] [compare: I have been in the country since last Thursday] (Earnest) [1299] Ruth : Have you got two tens you want to change for a twenty, Paul? Paul: No sorry. [compare: No, I am sorry that I have not got two tens I want to change for a twenty.] 90. Non-Clause Statements can be strategically positioned near the Item they look toward in a nearby Clause. A Look-Ahead Non-Clause Statement might look toward a Subject [1300] more naturally than toward an Object [1301]; a Look-Back Non-Clause Statement might look toward an added Object [1302] more naturally than to an added Subject [1303]. [1300] A very fierce-looking man, Don Carlos. He asked me for a cigar in a most familiar manner. (Nostromo) [1301] James Cardiff. You remember him. Chap with red hair (Nudists) [1302] He went away, taking his men with him. And the guns of course. (WouldBe) [1303] Tildy came — a midnight beauty, with starry eyes and tapering limbs. And her brother, correspondingly homely. And then the big boys. (Souls) Similarly, Non-Clauses in the function of Adverbials, such as Place or Time, are typically Look-Back Statements [1304-05], resembling the unmarked position of Adverbials in a complete Clause. [1304] You must come here at once, Lord Wisbeach. To-night. To-day. (Picadilly) [1305] We’re still in the office block. In the basement. (Darkfall) 91. Non-Clause Statements can also be followed by Tag Statements such as Pronoun + Pro-Verb [1306-07], or Demonstrative + Pro-Verb [1308-09], or just Demonstrative [1310-11] (cf. IV.18). The Non-Clause carries a Strong Stress, whilst these Tags probably prefer Weak Stress. [1306] Scientific !gen·tle·man, | ¡he was. (Adversary) [1307] My God! Mean as !muck, | ¡they are. (Rag Nymph) [1308] Sweaty !work, | ¡this is. (Green Behind) [1309] Good drop of !gin, | ¡that was. (Ulysses) [1310] A gay old !grand·pa, | ¡this. (Octopus) [1311] Took some !do·ing, | ¡that. (Chickens) In Prosody, the Pattern of Non-Clause plus Tag has two falling Contours separated by a short Pause, one with Strong Stress for End Weight and one with Weak Stress on the Pronoun [1312]. In a clear prosodic contrast,
a Statement Clause with a Fronted Subject Complement has one long falling Contour with Front Weight and End Weight, as shown in [1313]
92. Once more like Major Statements, Non-Clause Statements can be followed by Framing Tags (cf. IV.69). [1314] Sober serious man with a bit in the savings-bank, I’d say. (Ulysses) [1315] ‘Same suit’, said Tuppe. ‘Same man, I’m telling you.’ (Ultimate Truths) [1316] They’re particular at the National Gallery. Government show, you know. (Adversary) [1317] She often said she’d like to visit. Slumming. The exotic, you see. (Ulysses) 93. Non-Clause Questions are abundantly attested. With greater intensity than Non-Clause Statements, LookBack Questions repeat specific Items to indicate some reservation [1318-19]. The repeated Items may be included in a Non-Clause Question-Word Question with ‘what’ [1320], ‘where’ [1321], or ‘who’ [1322]. [1318] ‘That was brave.’ ‘Brave?’ She echoed the word incredulously. ‘Brave?’ (Lover’s Charade) [1319] ‘You can stay the weekend.’ Robyn stared aghast. ‘Stay the weekend?’ (Garden) [1320] You ought to get ready’, she said. ‘Get ready for what?’ (Bury the Dead) [1321] ‘I want a ticket to California, please.’ ‘California where?’ (Alternative Assembly) [1322] ‘Have they taken him to prison yet?’ ‘Taken who to prison?’ (Affair at Styles) 94. The omission of the Subject in Questions works better when the Agent or Medium of the Process Verb would be the hearer [1323-24], than if it would be the speaker [1325-26]. [1323] Found the lost ball? Good man! Want any tea? (Room with a View) [1324] ‘Coming back to dinner?’ his wife called after him. (Awakening) [1325] This chick on the stool looked like Cleopatra. ‘Buy you a drink?’ I said. (Money) [1326] I began to question to myself exactly what I was doing. Give you an example? (Whirlpool) The hearer can also be expressed as a Pronoun with no Verb but with a Modifier [1327], Complement [1328], or Adverbial [1329]. [1327] ‘You engaged?’ said an American soldier who asked me to dance. (Enigma) [1328] ‘The barbies. I should’ve tested them.’ ‘You a pharmacist?’ (Payback) [1329] ‘You in bed?’ he asked, his forehead twitching. (Howard’s End)
95. Among the Question-Word-Questions, those with ‘why’ are most likely to be Non-Clauses, e.g., with a Noun Phrase [1330] or an Adverbial [1331]. [1330] Why cucumber sandwiches? Why such reckless extravagance in one so young? (Earnest) [1331] Stooping, Mr. Schofield discovered his son squatting under the piano, near an open window. ‘Why under the piano?’ (Penrod) 96. On occasion, a Look-Back Non-Clause Question follows up a Major Clause Question to test a prospective Answer. A Noun Phrase may be supplied to look back to the Subject as Agent [1332], a Subject Complement as Identity [1333], an Object as Possession [1334], or a State as Attribute [1335]. [1332] Who said twopence? The gentleman in the scarecrow’s hat? (Marigold) [1333] What do you think I am? A busted bookkeeper? (Babbitt) [1334] What do you aim to achieve? A cash income? (Smallholding) [1335] Dear Duchess, and how is the Duke? Brain still weak?’ (Husband) 97. Like the Tag Statements in IV.91, Tag Questions can link to Non-Clauses: [1336] A nervy little thing, isn’t she? (Paper Faces). [1337] ‘Good fighters, are they?’ ‘Renowned.’ (Chung Kuo) [1338] Left ‘em in the back of a cab, did she? (Just Another Angel) [1339] I don’t think I’ve seen your books in the shops. Sell well, do they? (Raven) So too can Framing Tag Questions like those shown in IV.72: [1340] A Special Forces pub, do you think? (Ultimate Truths) [1341] A woman’s writing, would you say? (Patently Murder) [1342] ‘He is grieving very deeply.’ ‘For his child, don’t you see?’ (Chymical Wedding) 98. Non-Clause Exclamations are abundant too, probably because Exclamations most readily dispense with Clause format, putting Strong Stress for Front Weight: [1343] ‘What a funny !nose!’ ‘Not so funny as yours, madam’. (Blue Fairy) [1344] As usual they are talking politics. How !tire·some! (Awakening) Moreover, most Non-Clause Patterns can function as an Exclamation, such as a Noun Phrase [1345], a Modifier [1346], a Verb Phrase [1347], an Adverbial [1348], and of course an Interjection [1349]. [1345] Hook stood shuddering, one foot in the air. ‘The crocodile!’ he gasped. (Pan) [1346] Cape Breton an island! Wonderful! (Macaulay) [1347] I stayed there. Never lost an inch! (conversation)BNC [1348] ‘Would you induce Mr. Lexman to lecture at my house?’ ‘At Portman Place!’ (Twisted)
[1349] Holmes whistled. ‘By George! It’s attempted murder at the least.’ (Sherlock Holmes) Only a few Non-Clause Exclamations are Look-Aheads, typically a Noun Phrase about to be repeated in another Non-Clause Exclamation [1350-51]; on occasion, it can point ahead to the Subject of an upcoming Clause [1352] [1350] Sir John cut in fiercely. ‘A lie! A lie to save that foul villain’s neck!’ (Sea Hawk) [1351] he began to tremble, then to sob like a child, and at last spoke, through his tears: ‘A sail! A sail—and heading towards us!’ (Miss Bartram’s Trouble) [1352] Good rider! He’s through it again. (Western World) Far more numerous are Look-Backs, which, like the Non-Clause Questions in IV.93, can repeat Items for emphasis or challenge. [1353] ‘she’d better give me your married name.’ I was reeling with shock. ‘Married!’ (West of Bohemia) [1354] ‘Matilda is a genius.’ At the mention of this word, Miss Trunchbull’s face turned purple and her whole body seemed to swell up like a bullfrog’s. ‘A genius!’ (Matilda) [1355] ‘I never saw such a gun in my life. It goes off of its own accord. It will do it.’ ‘Will do it!’ echoed Wardle, with irritation (Pickwick) The Look-Back can also supply Patterns that could have been integrated into the foregoing Clause as a Subject [1356] or an Object [1357]. [1356] How you must miss her! And dear Emma, too! (Emma) [1357] Beware the Jabberwock, my son! The jaws that bite, the claws that catch! (Alice) Numerous too are Free Non-Clauses for exclaiming about the situation: [1358] Anna stared over the sweep of lawns. ‘A waterfall!’ she exclaimed. (Warning) [1359] She looked into the circle of their cabal, and saw what had occupied them. ‘A doll’s tea party!’ she exclaimed. (Sign for the Sacred) These include the Evaluations of one’s audience as ‘you’, usually Pejorative: [1360] ‘You thankless dog!’ gasped Mrs. Brown. ‘You impudent insulting dog!’ (Dombey) [1361] You witless weed! You empty-headed hamster! You stupid glob of glue! (Matilda) 98. Interjections are in the main Non-Clause Exclamations whose functions strongly outrank their forms, which can thus be diverse, e.g., using Sound-Words. [1362] By God! Yes, I’ll beat her yet. Oh lord! I feel sick. (House of Women) [1363]’I want to be a naturalist — like you.’ ‘Humph! — Well! — Dear me! — You don’t say!’ murmured the Doctor. (Dolittle) [1364] Yuck! I am filthy! All bloody! (Oxford English programme) BNC
[1365] ‘My man’s very angry.’ ‘Phew!’ said the bullocks. ‘He must be white!’ ‘Of course he is,’ said Vixen. ‘Huah! Ouach! Ugh!’ (JungleBook) 99. Non-Clauses taking Strong Stress can be followed by Tag Exclamations putting Weak Stress on the ProVerb (cf. IV.51). [1366] ‘!Mar·vel·lous, ¡isn’t he!’ ‘He certainly spoke well.’ (Maggie) [1367] That’s the sew·er rats. !Aw·ful, ¡isn’t it! (conversation)BNC Framing Tags can occur as Exclamations too: [1368] Wonderful weather, Lady Deverill! !Per·fect, ¡I’d say! (In Sunshine) [1369] Did you see the hands of your boy? !Wom·an’s ¡hands, I ¡tell you! (Deliria) 100. Non-Clause Commands lack only the Finite Verb needed for the status of a Clause, no Subject being required. Also lacking most functions of Statements, Questions, and Exclamations as Non-Clauses, they are less abundant. On the Affirmative side, lone Adverbs or Adverbials may be Enactive Commands to move somewhere [1370-71], or Dispositives to move something or someone [1373]. Emphatic Strong Stress can be signalled in writing with Exclamation Marks. [1370] ‘¡Up·!stairs. I will not have you two bickering.’ ‘But I wasn’t —’ ‘Up·!stairs!’ (On the Edge) [1372] ‘Have you a passport?’ asked the rat. ‘Out with your passport!’ (Blue Fairy) [1373] Maggie Thatcher rules! ¡Down with the !poor! ¡Up with the !rich! (conversation)BNC 101. Negative Commands can be formed with Participle or a Noun Phrase following ‘no’ [1374-75], or, in a few Colligations ‘not’ [1376] or ‘none’ [1377]. [1374] Now shut yer eyes. No peeking! (Twist of Fate) [1375] Shamlou’s smile vanished. ‘No questions!’ (Sons of Heaven) [1376] ‘Not a word, boy!’ he pursued in a whisper (Copperfield) [1377] None of that nonsense! (Wuthering) 102. The status of Minor Non-Clauses is unclear. They would plausibly be introduced by a Dependent Conjunction but lack either a Subject or a Verb needed for Minor Clauses. I find just a few like [1378-79] actually marked off as separate units; apparently, the Conjunctions discourage separation. [1378] If he does lean on Graham again after tomorrow, then I’ll stand up and be counted. After tomorrow. If necessary. (Meddlers) [1379] She searched the attic, and found a hammer lying between a sewing machine and a stuffed bird. As if in readiness. (Dark Dance) In exchange, I find many integrated units where a Process is expressed by a Present or Past Participle sharing its Subject with the Major Clause it depends on (VI.28), e.g., for one Action or Event setting the Background for another (cf. IV.75) [1380] When dressed, I sat a long time by the window looking out (Eyre)
[1381] If asked, she would have said that Charlotte was her special friend (Barchester) [1382] While speaking, Mrs Plornish shook her head, and wiped her eyes (Little Dorrit) [1383] Although despairing, I could not give over. (Backward) I find similar units without a Conjunction — just a Participle sharing the Subject. [1384] Finding her advance thus baffled, Glinda bent her brows in deep thought (Oz) [1385] Arriving in the river Tiber, the serpent glided from the vessel (Golden Age of Myth) [1386] Caught red-handed, Bad Eye made a full confession. (Circus Boys) [1387] Released, and set at ease, up she rose (Professor) When the Subject of the Major Clause cannot logically be shared with the Minor Non-Clause, grammarians are prone to censure a ‘dangling modifier’,22 even though the intended sense is rarely in doubt. [1388] One leg was shorter than the rest, but a shell put under restored the level. When fixed, she rubbed the table down with sweet-smelling herbs. (Golden Age of Myth) [1389] While in hospital, my company made me redundant. (She) 103. A Minor Non-Clause may have no Verb but a potential Subject that relates to the Subject of the Major Clause, e.g., as a body part [1390-91]; or a Subject with an Adverbial, also relating in some such way [139293]. [1390] She was sitting with her ‘partner’ at the end of the barn, her eyes wide, her thoughts, no doubt, elsewhere. (Octopus) [1391] But Li Yuan held on, his teeth gritted, his face determined. (Chung Kuo) [1392] General Tilney was pacing the drawing-room, his watch in his hand (Northanger) [1393] Emmeline would sit and brood over the child, a troubled expression on her face and a far-away look in her eyes. (Blue Lagoon) Describing these Patterns as Minor Non-Clauses seems to me preferable to calling them ‘subjectless Clauses’ or ‘verbless Clauses’, which sounds contradictory, like a ‘wordless phrase’; or dramatically bloating the concept of ‘ellipsis’ as a mechanism which has ‘omitted’ or ‘deleted’ some ‘implied’ Items which ‘we’ — ordinary hearers or grammarians? —’postulate’, ‘recover’, or ‘understand’ (IV.81). 23 104. For my part, I have essayed to offer some plausible grounds for recognising the category of Non-Clauses in the Prosody and Grammar of English. They are amply attested in authentic data, and are often better adapted to their discursive functions than full Clauses would be (cf. IV.89). And while they are typical of spoken English, written English provides frequent examples, which should remind us that Prosody is an essential factor in both media. Notes to Ch. IV 1 The alternative term ‘intonation’ roughly corresponds to ‘prosody’, which has a handy Modifier ‘prosodic’ (as compared to the stodgy ‘intonational’). Compare K.L. Pike, The Intonation of American English(Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1945); Michael Halliday, Intonation and Grammar in British
English (The Hague: Mouton, 1967); David Crystal, Prosodic Systems and Intonation in English (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1969); Dwight Bolinger, Intonation and Its Uses: Melody and Grammar in Discourse (Palo Alto: Stanford UP, 1989); Paul Tench, The Roles of Intonation in English Discourse (Bern: Peter Lang, 1990). A useful comparison of admittedly diverse models is in the revised edition of Alan Cruttenden, Intonation (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997). 2 Quirk et al., Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language (London: Longman, 1985, p. 150) warn that ‘the meaning attached by linguists to “prosodic” is based on the use of this term in traditional rhetoric but with considerable difference in emphasis and specialization’. 3 Welcome exceptions include David Brazil, Malcolm Coulthard, and Catherine Johns, Discourse Intonation and Language Teaching (London: Longman, 1980); Barbara Seidlhofer and Christiane Dalton,Pronunciation (Oxford: OUP, 1994) Ch. 7; and Dorothy M. Chun, Discourse Intonation: From Theory and Research to Practice (Amsterdam: Benjamins, 2002). 4 The decisive impetus may have come from the challenge of describing ‘tone languages’ like Mazatec (Pike). Chinese (Halliday), or Hausa (Tench), then reflected back onto English. 5
Quirk et al. Note 2, pp. 1591ff, similarly recognise ‘pitch’ and ‘stress’; my ‘Volume’ would be their
‘loudness’ (an unbalanced term), whilst my ‘Pace’ would be their ‘duration’; their ‘rhythm’ doubles for Stress and Pace. Compare also Seidlhofer and Dalton, Note 3, pp. 33f, who cite D.B. Fry, ‘Experiments in the Perception of Stress’, Language and Speech 1, 1958, 126-52. 6 Quirk et al., Note 2, pp. 1590ff, distinguish between ‘primary’ and ‘secondary stress’, but limit the latter to being ‘often relevant’ whereas I find the distinction omnipresent. 7
See now especially Halliday, Note 105 to Ch. II, pp. 295ff.
8 Halliday’s corresponding term ‘tone’ seems to me unduly compressed; he also intro-duces ‘key’ as ‘the system of tone choice’ (Note 105 to Ch. II, p. 302) 9 Halliday calculated that each added syllable increases the timing by only 1/5 of the pace of the stressed syllable (Note 105 to Ch. II, p, 293). 10 In one British ‘corpus of conversation’, Quirk et al. (Note 2, p. 1602) report falling Pitch in 51% of the Tone Groups and rising in 20.8%. 11 The most perceptive treatment of Bush Jr’s dysfunctional English Miller, The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder (NY: Norton, 2002).
is
Mark
12 Welcome exceptions are Halliday (1967) (Note 1) and Quirk et al. (Note 2). Compare Douglas Biber, Stig Johansson, Geoffrey Leech, Susan Conrad, and Edward Finegan, The Longman Grammar of Spoken and Written English (London: Longman, 1999), which claims to ‘closely follow’ Quirk et al. (Note 2, p. 7), yet just mentions intonation and Prosody in passing as ‘information lacking in the transcriptions’ of its data corpus; we are reassured that ‘for many purposes of grammatical research, the absence of prosodic information may make comparatively little difference’; and are offered the recourse of calling it ‘semantic or pragmatic’ instead of ‘grammatical’ (pp. 1041-42). 13 The confusion between clause and sentence is still hedged by Quirk et al., who distinguish these paired sets of terms as the ‘grammatical categories’ for ‘types of clause or simple sentence’, versus the ‘logical or semantic status of an utterance’ (Note 2, p. 78). Yet a footnote to this remark describes ‘utterance’ as a ‘pragmatic and
communicative function’. The Longman Grammar finally resolves the issue with its brisk account of ‘Major Types of Independent Clauses’ (Biber et al., Note 12, Section 3.13). 14 See Jan Firbas, ‘On the concept of communicative dynamism in the theory of functional sentence perspective’, in Sborník prací Filosofické Fakulty Brněnské Univerzity, A 19, 1971, 135-44. 15 Though Quirk et al. overlook them, the Longman Grammar briefly recognises them as ‘declarative Tags’ (Biber et al. Note 12, pp.139f), whereas my term refers to function (Statement) rather than form. Some even have what might superficially seem to be Interrogative form, such as [1021-22]. 16
Quirk et al., Note 2, pp. 804, in fact use the term ‘declarative question’.
17
E.g., Quirk et al., Note 2, pp. 777-82, 810-14.
18
Data from the Corpus of South African English were kindly sent by Linda Williams.
19 Quirk et al., who do not recognise Non-Clauses at all, allow for the Non-Finites to be ‘with or without a subject’ (Note 2, p. 993), which I find incompatible with the basic definition of the clause (IV.103). 20 As a notable exception, the data-based Longman Grammar (Biber et al., Note 12, pp. 1101f) recognises ‘non-clausal units’ and their parallel functions to the Major Clauses, though under inconsistent labels, e.g., ‘assertive’ versus ‘declarative’, or ‘directive’ versus ‘imperative’. 21 Biber et al., Note 12, p. 1071. Non-Clauses made up 38.6%, and Clauses 61.4%. But for Non-Clauses, the average length was 1.95 words compared to 7.52 words in Clauses. 22 For Quirk et al. (Note 2, pp. 1121ff), this is simply an ‘error’ or ‘infringement’ that may ‘suggest an absurd interpretation’, but I find their invented examples rather skewed. 23 Quirk et al. (Note 2, pp. 883f, 996). They propose no less than seven variants of ‘ellipsis’ with steadily diminishing assurance — ‘strict’, ‘standard’, ‘situational’, ‘structural’, ‘weak’, ‘virtual’, and ‘quasi-‘ (889f).
V. Visuality in the Study of Text and Discourse V.A. Visuality in theory and practice 1. The visual aspects in the presentation and reception of text and discourse in the broadest sense can be designated Visuality. I have taken surprisingly long to recognise it as a principle factor of Texts — presented here for the first time, in fact — completing the triad with the factors of Lexicogrammar and Prosody. The quantity and quality of studies addressing Visuality have been far less than befits its vital role in human interaction. Still less than Prosody, Visuality does not fit into the ‘formal’ approaches to language study reviewed in Chapter II, where Phonetics and Phonology highlighted the acoustic factors of language. Even written language, the most ‘linguistic’ mode of Visuality, was left aside because ‘the spoken forms alone constitute the object of linguistics’1 and some linguists even averred that ‘writing is not language’. 1 So like Prosody, written language was only addressed in earnest by some ‘functional’ models of language. 2 2. On the side of practice, studying the Visuality of Texts can be difficult. Traditionally, popular books offer appealing ‘illustrations’ by trained artists, whereas images in non-commercialised academic publications were until recently limited to black-and-white graphics of letters, numbers, and lines. Today, desktop publication has reined in such problems, but in the meantime the Internet has transformed the style and dynamics of images so
dramatically that any compre-hensive study of the Visuality of Texts would need to be posted on the Internet too. This brief chapter merely seeks to map out some issues worthy of further study. 3. On the side of theory, semiotics 3 could offer a more congenial home than mainstream linguistics. Its broad conception of the sign (or ‘signifier’) envisions at least three relations to its ‘referent’ (or ‘signified’).4 A relation that is merely conventional, as when the word ‘desert’ designates a type of arid climatic region, pertains to the symbol; this approximates the narrow notions of the ‘sign’ in linguistics, which dubbed the relation ‘arbitrary’ (II.41) and so elided the currents of history and etymology, as when the ancients bestowed the Latin name ‘Arabia Deserta’ on the Empty Quarter in Arabia that undoubtedly seemed ‘deserted’. A relation that is associated within common experience, as when I observed a ‘sandstorm’ while landing in Abu Dhabi (near the Empty Quarter) and vividly envisioned the desert, pertains to the index. A relation of perceptible resemblance, such as the Webdings graphic
to invoke a desert, pertains to the icon.
4. This triad of relations favours Visuality, as common textbook examples indicate, such as the word ‘locomotive’ (symbol), the smoke of the locomotive (index), and the picture of thelocomotive (they still smoked \when those books were written) on a railroad crossing (icon). A visual icon is easier to adduce than an acoustic one, witness routine usages of the term.: [1394] Madonna ruthlessly and determinedly made herself an icon, flirting, taunting, toying with sexual and religious imagery (NME) Some other ‘icons’ in BNC data are (or were) 'singers', but their persons rather than their sounds were probably the chief iconic factor, e.g., John Lennon, Debbie Harry, and (of course) Elvis. Also, the doomed grins or glowers of ‘icons’ Marilyn Monroe and James Dean confront us in every visual medium.
5. For our studies, a key question might be how these various semiotic signs relate to texts in general 5 and to their Visuality in particular. To describe the ‘text’ as a ‘complex sign’ or a ‘supersign’ suggests it might be symbolic, indexical, and iconic all at once, but does not map out the spectrum of its Visuality as an actual system being seen, read, or imaged. A text should be more ‘readable’ when it also easier to visualise, e.g., my version [97a] versus the original [97] back in II.132. [97] Transverse dunes are characterized by low length:width ratios and ry, where windward slopes are much gentler than the slip faces associated with lee slopes.
marked
asymmet-
[97a] Dunes formed at a right angle to the wind are very long but very narrow. They rise gently on the side facing the wind and drop sharply on the other side. Presumably, Visuality is a holistic factor that can help you ‘get the picture’. 6. Not surprisingly, semiotic definitions of the ‘text’ have been mostly practical and synergetic, if not indeed serendipitous, e.g.: [1395] By ‘text’ we mean: magazines, newspapers, books, poetry, literature, film and music, religious settings and gatherings, and high-street shopping iconography, [plus] newer texts such as the Internet,including ecommerce websites. (Timothy S. French)www What unites or distinguishes these diverse ‘texts’ in semiotic terms remains a richly data-driven issue for multidisciplinary research on text and discourse. 6 V.B Mental imagery 7. One decisive factor in the Visuality of the text is mental imagery, comprising sensory images that pass before the ‘mind’s eye’ while listening or reading. Extensive commentary and study have produced diffuse results,7 ranging from more theoretical or technical discussions8 to practical or therapeutic counsel on training through imagery, e.g., to ‘cure both physical and emotional problems’: [1396] This book contains instructions for evoking the appropriate imagery to cure afflictions ranging from acne to warts, and including cancer, haemorrhoids, and scoliosis. 9 We also find popular books touting mental imagery for better performance in sports like racing, tennis, golf, and martial arts. So the prospect of controlling your mental imagery must have a frank appeal. The obscurity and elusiveness of the underlying processes allow it to be advertised with miraculous powers as a cure-all. 8. I would rather regard it as an adventitious and residual activity within the hugely complex and interconnected organisation of mental storage. The interplay of conscious and unconscious generates involuntary ‘streams of consciousness’ by spreading activation. 10 Even if the memory exactly records every image, as some studies of ‘eidetic imagery’ assert,11mental images can be endlessly creative like an improvised video, even (or especially) while you listen to or read stories of exotic places or remote periods of history. 9. These qualities complicate the study of mental images evoked by discourse. They cannot be observed or recorded by anyone else; and reporting them interposes the discursive layer of the reports attempting to stabilise an immensely dynamic fiend of operations that are transitory, combinatory, and recombinatory all at once. Although an image appears holistic like a picture, the visual object cannot be the only unit of processing and is perhaps not even a privileged unit. Conceivably, the image is constructed or composed on each occasion rather than simply trotted out of storage as a whole; 12 and these processes are always in motion. Perhaps a similar account may apply to the meaning of discourse better than the staid metaphor of looking up words and definitions in a mental dictionary. 13 The ‘meaning’ of an image resides in the process; the ‘meaning of meaning’ may do so too. 10. Leaving the theoretical issues aside until some means to test them with data can be devised, I will briefly describe a practical project I ran with mental imagery. As I have long recommended, literature in the curriculum is likely to be afford cultural enrichment only in an ambience that welcomes open, creative response (II.193f). If literary texts indeed createalternative worlds (II.187), they should activate especially elaborate mental imagery, and many authors warmly encourage it.
11. As usual, Shakespeare may excel all other authors in English, not for sheer quantities of imagery but for creative associations that deconstruct the commonality of English collocation (cf. VI.10.9.3.). In sample [1397] from Richard II, Sir Thomas Mowbry, whom the king has banished for life, mourns having to ‘forego his native English’, which was not a ‘world language’ in 1399. (To offset problematic vocabulary for a class of first-year US students, I annotated the text as shown.) [1397] The language I have learnt these forty years, My native English, now I must forego; And now my tongue’s use is to me no more Than an unstringed1 viol2 or a harp; [1 without strings 2 violin] Or like a cunning3 instrument cased up4 [3 refined, requiring skill] Or, being open, put into his hands That knows no touch to tune the harmony. Within my mouth you have engaoled 5 my tongue, [5 locked in jail] Doubly portcullised6 with my teeth and lips; [6 a iron grating over a castle gate] And dull, unfeeling, barren ignorance Is made my gaoler to attend on me. In terms of Style, the imagery relies on a simile between the tongue and a musical instrument, and then a metaphor between the mouth and a gaol, both richly reflected in the images I obtained. In terms of Lexicogrammar, Cognition gets severed from Communication and then personified as a Dispositive Agent (‘gaoler’) of Non-Cognition (‘ignorance’). Prominent Parameters are lexicalised Negative Polarity and Incapable Belief (‘forego – no more – unstringed – cased up – no touch – engaoled – unfeeling – barren – ignorance’) 12. I asked the students to read the text attentively and write down any mental images they registered. Predictably, they reported images of a person going ‘to a foreign country’. But many images were more creative: the person is ‘losing his voice’ or totally ‘mute’; is ‘affected by insanity’; ‘is in a situation where he/she is ignorant and flabbergasted’; ‘must now give up his way of life’; ‘has perfected his/her profession and has no more room to grow’; ‘has lost the desire to learn’; ‘is trapped by a lack of education’; or is ‘not using his God-given talents’. Or, ‘the person is frustrated with language and the inability to communicate with others’; ‘he can create thoughts but can’t relate them through words’; or he lives in a ‘society’ that ‘doesn’t use the language correctly’ or ‘doesn’t find what he has to say pertinent’. Or again, learners reported images from the domain of their home and schooling, such as a family with ‘my mother and father strongly urging me to keep my alien opinions to myself’; ‘a strict Catholic school where I can’t express myself freely’; or a classroom ‘trying to learn a foreign language’ while ‘my teacher has imprisoned my tongue’. (Spot on, that last.) 13. In other reports, a person was ‘being silenced by a government’ and ‘no longer has the freedom of speech’ and is ‘constantly watched and followed’. The person might be speaking for ‘the American Indian’ or ‘for prisoners of conscience being held worldwide’; or is being ‘held hostage’ by ‘terrorists’. One image featured ‘a prisoner in a jail in a foreign country’; he has his ‘hands tied’ and ‘a cloth over his mouth’; he ‘speaks words to guards’ who are dressed ‘in dull earth tones and square hats’ and ‘pay no attention’.
14. Shakespeare’s thematic references to the human mouth elicited images of ‘a large tongue out of its mouth, on the floor’; ‘a tongue tied down by a piece of rope’; ‘a deflated, shrivelled tongue lying lifeless at the bottom of a mouth’; and ‘a mouth full of metal bars and locks’. Extended series of imagery occasionally indicated a free-flowing ‘stream-of consciousness’ response, e.g.: [1398] A lone man in roomful of instruments. The man picks them up and tries to play them; he fails. He throws them against the wall, breaks the strings on a violin and bends the neck of a sax. He sits alone with a pile of broken instruments and the room slowly turns into a cell. Outside are millions of people and he calls out, but they don’t understand. [1399] I see a little frail old man walking slowly down the ramp from a ship to the docks. Milling around the marketplace are dark-skinned people dressed in flowing white robes and turbans. Some carry heavy baskets on their heads. The murmuring of the crowds makes no sense to the elderly man, like a bird chirping. He is drawn to a music-maker painstakingly threading a fiddle. The old man smiles and tries to speak but his teeth have become bars. In retrospect, I wish I had continued the project. But until I finally recognised Visuality as a principle factor of Texts, I saw no theoretical frame for integrating mental imagery. V.C Personal images 15. In the purview of semiotics, the personal image of the producer or the receiver of discourse draws upon a triad: as a visual symbol for a personal identity with a legal name, personal data, and a life history; as a visual index of ethnicity, and of style and fashion in apparel, coiffure, or cosmetics; and as a visual icon for some socially recognised type(s). This triad is normally focused only on ‘prominent’ people like Naomi Campbell or David Bowie. But it can make the personal image into a carrier of potentially complex meanings for almost anyone, even before you say anything, and can set an elaborate context for what you do say. 16. At all events, ‘modern’ societies seem to believe in the power of personal images, as when advice and training are marketed by commercial ‘consultants’ [1400-01]. [1400] Image Self Analysis offers a review of the components that create an individual’s personal and professional image: body language, appearance (styles, lines, designs, colors that flatter various body types) and verbal communication. (Karen Mack) [1401] When we live in a society that is 67% visual, 25% vocal, and 8% verbal, image is everything. […] Image represents a visual impression of who you are, your lifestyle and profile. […] Having professional image advisers (hair stylist, make-up artist, designer, personal shopper, stylist, personal trainer, choreographer, transportation service and image consultant) is just as important as having good attorney. (Fashion Word) Among the ‘body types’ to be ‘flattered’ in [1400] (with the aid of ‘optical illusion’) are ‘full-figured women’, portly men’, and ‘petite individuals’. I also found a website for a university course that helps you ‘learn how to look years younger by applying basic makeup’: ‘camouflaging wrinkles and lines, evening out skin color, and covering broken capillaries and dark circles around the eyes’. 14 17. Counsel is of course profuse for interviews, viz.: [1402] If you have trouble maintaining eye contact, you may be subconsciously telling your interviewer that you are not an honest, confident, self-assured professional. If you habitually slouch when seated, this may indicate a sloppy, disinterested attitude. (Being Interviewed)
By such standards, a traditional Prussian officer would fare the best. 18. In the context of this chapter, the term ‘verbal image’ seems intriguing, but I didn’t find it in the BNC or BAWC, and the Internet gave spotty results. One college writing course treats ‘description’ as ‘a verbal image of a setting, people, events — anything that includes an author’s realm of vision’ 15 (not the reader’s?); I notice a similarity to the definition of ‘describe’ in Webster’s New World Thesaurus (Third Edition, 1997), which includes ‘convey a verbal image of’. Another course vows to enhance ‘vocal and verbal images’ by ‘identifying the five elements of speech’,16 which are not explained and are unknown anywhere else on the Internet. Hmm. 19. A few websites do treat the ‘verbal image’ in a sense akin to the present discussion as the discursive projection of a person [1403] or a business [1404]. [1403] I have finally discovered the real me spiritually, emotionally and physically. I like my verbal and nonverbal image. (Kristel Jenkins, Miss Virginia)www [1404] Everything that is said during the advertisement is validated by the managers’ professional visual and verbal image. […] Establish what elements of your dress, behaviour and surroundings will fulfil the four dimensions of Credibility, Likeability, Personal Attractiveness, Dominance (Cap Online) www But these sources do not explain in any depth what they mean by ‘verbal image’, e.g., how on earth you can talk to sound both ‘likeable’ and ‘dominant’. 20. So I must turn to the indirect evidence of discourse data indicating partici-pants’ beliefs and attitudes toward the significance and value of images, e.g., whether they appear ‘aggressive’ [1405], ‘cutesy’ [1406], or ‘made up’ and ‘smiley — like a woman should’ [1407]. (Say what, Fay?) [1405] The image is of an aggressive radical tilting against many of the most powerful and conservative (even Tory) interests in British society. Indeed, this is Mrs Thatcher’s image of herself. (Thatcherism) [1406] Waterman wore the expression of a father seeing his daughter metamorphosing from girl into woman before his very eyes […] as he stood on the balcony above the stage where Kylie was ridding herself forever of her cutesy image. (Kylie) [1407] I used to think that you should always be yourself but now I like to be made up, smile and look like a woman should. Looking good on your book jackets means that more people will read you. (Fay Weldon, of all people, in the Scotsman) Even appalling smarm like [1407] probably points up a cultural consensus about personal images and their public value, especially for a woman smiling [1407-09]. [1408] Thérèse, lowering her lashes like a lacy brown veil and trying not to smile too obviously, did not look modest. It was the same look she’d directed at the men all through lunch and they’d loved it. (Daughters) [1409] The recipient was tall and blonde, with an air of glacier-like sophistication. […] Then the woman smiled, and it changed her face completely. ‘Dear Luke’, she said fondly. (Hunter’s Harem) 21. Large corpora may shed some light on common reactions to some specific factor of personal appearance like hair colour, a genetic incident overlaid by rich social implications. 17 In BNC data, the Attitudes are distinctly Ameliorative for red-haired females, who collocate with Modifiers like ‘gorgeous, attractive, goodlooking, dishy, elegant, slender, sexy, carnal, vivacious, fiery’, whereas the males (among them a ‘lout’ and a ‘yob’) collocate with Pejoratives like ‘tubby, stocky, strange, frightful, prowling, screaming, mad as a hatter’.
Both genders came out Ameliorative for ‘blonde’ (or ‘blond’) persons, who collocate with Modifiers like ‘young’ (never ‘old’), ‘beautiful, pretty, lovely, handsome, splendid, attractive, luscious, bosomy, muscled, blue-eyed’. These Collocates cluster in the BNC’s ‘imaginative written’ text type — blondes as iconic commodities in popular fiction. In return, blonde females carry an image as icons of ‘dumbness’ too. Intellectual disempowerment thus offsets sexual empowerment [1410], and even the latter has an ominous backlash [1411]. [1410] The royal women have a second-class place in the Royal Family, and no one more so than the Princess of Wales, Diana, portrayed as a ‘dumb blonde’ (Today) [1411] Despite the hard line taken by the press about the rapists, they were not above sexualising the raped girls [as] a ‘blue-eyed blonde’ in the Sun and a ‘pretty blonde’ in the Daily Mirror, [who might have] brought the rape on themselves. (Sex Crime) Once more, we encounter the widening movement from linguistic into cognitive and social issues that concern the agenda of ecologism (cf. II.104, 110, 140, 156). V.D Facial expressions and gestures 24. The most iconic focus of Visuality is naturally the face, which is sometimes represented as ‘saying’ [1412], ‘speaking’ [1413], ‘telling’ [1414], ‘expressing’ [1415], or ‘revealing’ [1416] — however you contrive to visualise the way ‘benevolent malice’ or an ‘inch of hurt’ might actually look. [1412] his face said plainly enough that it was nothing alarming. (Adam Bede) [1413] Although Dotty had all the words, Dawn’s face spoke volumes (Awfully Big) [1414] every line etched on Britt Ekland’s face told a story of personal anguish. (Today) [1415] His pallid bloated face expressed benevolent malice (Young Man) [1416] her face revealed every inch of hurt and pain and anger that she felt. (Garden) Reciprocally, you can ‘read’ or ‘study’ someone’s face like a text: [1417] he seemed leisurely to read my face, as if its features and lines were characters on a page (Eyre) [1418] She was silent, studying his face, the bitter eyes and the lines of debauchery at his mouth. Once, he had been strong, but the years of competition and jealousy showed on his face and he was losing, losing fast. (Ungoverned) 25. Evidently, a wide range of iconic meanings can be conveyed by facial expressions and gestures.18 [1419] He wrinkled his nose, half closed his eyes, and then he surveyed Alexei as if he was trying to understand a bad joke. (Side of Heaven) [1420] Frank rubbed his cheek thoughtfully with the heel of his fist (Charnel House) An expression or gesture may function as your distinguishing trait: [1421] she smiled, rather falsely, [but] realized that her face felt uncomfortable wearing this expression and reverted to her habitual frown. (Pillars of Gold)
[1422] ‘Strip in the name of the law’ was not what people wanted to read about on Sunday morning, […] he concluded with his characteristic weary shrug. (DISASTER!) Or, your face and gestures may communicate a social role or function: [1423] Beatty [was] the living image of the role-model Hollywood leading man with dark, mysterious eyes, classic features, and a huge mop of hair. (Joker’s Wild) [1424] Tristan was making a big show, running a carpet sweeper up and down, straight-ening cushions, […] the very picture of a harassed domestic. (Vets Might Fly) An impression of ‘exaggeration’ or ‘extravagance’ can arise: [1425] He was mugging terribly, his rubber features running the gamut of exaggerated emotions from wideeyed amazement to crumpled despair. (Lucifer Rising) [1426] the Prince […] indulged in the most extravagant expressions and actions — rolling on the floor, striking his forehead, tearing his hair, falling into hysterics (George IV) 26. An intriguing question for discourse study is how facial expressions and gestures get ‘read’ and evaluated within a culture, social class, relationship, and so on, 19 and how much is either personally inspired or else trained by mass media like cinema, soap operas, and fashion adverts. Such studies, though laborious and perhaps soppy, are at least tractable in ways that studies of mental imagery are not. V.E. Emotional displays 27. Prosody and Visuality interact in the discourse of emotional displays, where speakers can ‘sound’ or ‘look angry’ [1427-28], ‘happy’ [1429-30], and so on. [1427] ‘Now piss off and leave me alone.’ He sounded angry. (Goshawk) [1428] ‘What are you doing here?’ He looked angry enough to whip her (Dark Sunlight) [1429] She sounded happy.20 ‘Dan is being nicer’. (MurderVictims)www [1430] James too looked happy again. ‘A most heavenly thought indeed!’ (Northanger) I find very few occurrences of someone both ‘looking’ and ‘sounding’ either ‘angry’ [1431] or ‘happy’ [1432], perhaps because one implies the other. [1431] ‘You come in here and start killing my people and you have the nerve to ask me what I’m doing here?’ Athena looked and sounded angry. (The Battle)www [1432] The Department of Education’s Director for Charter Schools looked and sounded happy with the tour of the building. ‘It looks fantastic.’ (Barnstable Patriot)www At least, I could find none at all of anyone looking but not sounding ‘angry’ or ‘happy’, and vice-versa. I did find some people with Enactments not matching a displayed Emotion [1433-34] or vice versa [1435-36], but again fairly few. [1433] ‘So we postpone the vacation for a few days.’ Jondy said. She smiled but didn’t look happy (inkyfingers)www [1434] I looked at Bubs, who was crying, but didn’t look sad. (Beast Man)www
[1435] Mr. Cook was happy, but did not smile. (dem)www [1436] ‘I’ll miss you too.’ Mihoshi hugged back, she was sad but didn’t cry (Kiyone’s Leave)www 28. Emotive Adverbs for Communicative Processes like ‘saying’ might implicate either Prosody or the Visuality, or plausibly both. [1437] ‘You’ve put me in an impossible position’, Modigliani said angrily. ‘You know I don’t paint at all.’ (Modigliani) [1438] Will was pleased. ‘Look, Toby, she’s got my eyes’, he said happily. (Life and Times) [1439] ‘That’s our stupidity’, he said sadly as if unburdening himself of a great guilt. (Sharp End) Prosody or Visuality can be highlighted by an Emotive Modifier for a ‘voice’ [1440-42] or a ‘look’ [1443-45]. [1440] ‘Sam’, said Mr. Pickwick, in an angry voice, ‘if you say another word, or offer the slightest interference with this person, I discharge you that instant.’ (Pickwick) [1441 ‘Let there always be peace between us?’ she said, speaking in a happy voice.21 (Shared Roses)www [1442] She has learned to enjoy the friendship of people in the local HIV community. ‘They are always there for me’, she says, in a sad voice. (Unsaid & Undone)www [1443] How dare you climb into my garden and steal my rapunzel like a thief?" she said with an angry look. (Rapunzel)www [1444] ‘I’ll be right there’, Little Bear shouted with a happy look on his face. (Chief Black Bear)www [1445] ‘I do not know why you are here. I have to follow orders’, he said with a sad look. (American Gestapo)www Here, an interesting project would be to study how such Emotional displays are expressed or recognised from various ways of ‘sounding’ or ‘looking’, and especially how far they can or cannot be controlled. As a working hypothesis, ‘angry’ discourse would be higher in pitch and louder in volume, and ‘sad’ discourse lower and softer (IV.5). But representative samples of live data would doubtless again show variations by culture, social class, and relation (cf. V.26). V.F The Visuality of the Text as artefact 29. As I remarked at the outset, Visuality was not easy to accommodate in studies of language and discourse, including mine. To promote a dialectic of theory and practice for this purpose, we might propose a ‘linguistic level’ in the subfield of ‘Graphology’ for written language, corresponding to Phonology for spoken language; its major theoretical units would be the ‘Graphemes’ that chiefly represent Phonemes, whilst its major practical units, in most languages, would be the ‘Letters’ (II.46). The Grapheme would thus be the visual and inscriptive target for the particular or even peculiar realisations in typeface or handwriting. Other Graphemes could have Icons as practical units, such as the poplar ‘emoticons’ like J and L or the icons with useful public information like h (ambulance) and É (telephone). 30. Books and even more, magazines, make strategic use of pictures as Icons on their covers [1446-48], including the authors [1449]. [1446] Cozy images of thatched country inns abound on glossy book covers (Trouble Brewing)
[1447] books in general are nowadays bought on impulse on the design of the jacket alone, [driven by] a narcissistic concern with visual appearance (Semi-Literate England) [1448] Not since the heyday of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis has there been an inter-national icon to match Diana, the Princess of Wales. Her picture on the cover of magazines was enough to guaranteephenomenal sales worldwide. (Times of London)www [1449] A picture of the author on the back flap shows Shteyngart garbed in an outfit right out of Dr. Zhivago (Sara Tan in PopMatters)www 31. Orthographic Letters can take on iconic functions, as when ‘large letters’ signal Pejorative emphasis [1450], ‘large handwriting’ signals ‘confidence’ [1451], and ‘red ink’ signals ‘danger’ [1452]. [1450] students […] give all the facts about an experiment or test but come to an abrupt halt. Tutors are then tempted to write in large letters: ‘SO WHAT?’ (Guide to Success) [1451] Val’s papers were bland and minimal, in large confident handwriting (Possession) [1452] Beneath the black-printed legend […] was a further, even curter message, in official red ink. In black ‘THIS APPLICATION HAS BEEN REFUSED’. In red, the colour of warning and danger, ‘MATTER TERMINATED’. (Foxbat) 32. Graphics can guide Prosody with orthographic means to suggest stronger stress and slower pace, as with italics [1453], bold [1454], underlining [1455], and BLOCK CAPITALS[1456]. (I use small capitals, since the rest have other uses.) [1453] How did 100,000 U.S. journalists sent to cover the 2000 election fail to tell vote theft story? […] The story required a reporter to stand up and say that the big-name politicians, their lawyers and their PR people were freaking liars. (Best Democracy) [1454] You wanna talk smoked? My trigger finger itches when I hear rappin’ fools who be callin’ women bitches (Spanky in Doonesbury) [1455] The interview represents a discussion between a superior and an inferior. (Text and the Pragmatic Aspects of Language) [1456] The crowd grew louder — ‘HAIL TO THE THIEF!’ You could see the Secret Service and Bush’s advisers huddling in the freezing rain… (Stupid White Men) Weight can rise from unconventional orthography, such as repeating letters to sug-gest loud volume and slow pace [1457-58]; paradoxically, Weight can also rise by omitting some letters from certain widely disapproved expressions [1459-60]. [1457] ‘You have known perfectly that I was en-r-r-r-raged!’ It appears impossible for mademoiselle to roll the letter ‘r’ sufficiently in this word (Bleak House) [1458] ‘And he runs awa-a-a-y!’ cried Mrs. MacStinger, with a lengthening out of the last syllable that made the unfortunate Captain regard himself as the meanest of men; […] ‘From a woman! […] He hasn’t the courage to meet her hi-i-i-igh’; (Dombey) [1459] G — d d — n their impenitent souls, may they roast in hell (Mark Twain)
[1460 ] I’m going home to newcastle tomorrow. (If you noticed, the ‘N’ in newcastle was not a capital because the scabby ba****ds don’t deserve it.) (Leeds United e-mail)BNC Unfortunately, the uses of these ‘orthographics’ are not consistent or standardised, and may encounter Pejorative Attitudes, e.g., the disapproved ‘scare italics’: [1461] If you use an unauthorised cleaning materials for your monitor, some dealers void warranties. (advert for a pricey ‘Monitor Cleaner’ for the early PCs) [1462] Krashen would be crazy to say so, that, by the same logic, his ‘theory’ also ‘predicts’ that we could fire teachers22 Still, some matters (and ‘theories’) may be scary enough to warrant them. Also, political commentators justly use italics to enforce a crucial point: [1463] The man at the helm [of the Valdez] would never have hit the reef had he simply looked as his Raycas radar. Bur he could not because it was not turned on. The complex Raycas costs a lot to operate, so frugal Exxon management left it broken (Greg Palast) [1464] In what appears to be a mass fraud committed by the state of Florida, Bush, Harris and company not only removed thousands of black felons from the rolls, but thousands of black citizens who had never committed a crime in their lives. (Michael Moore) Here too, the Weight of content does seem to justify the highlighting.
V.G Orthography in Visuality 33. The most omnipresent factor in the Visuality of the Text is orthography, which has again received less sustained study than it merits. 23 My proposal for a ‘level’ of ‘Graphology’ by analogy to ‘Phonology’ (II.46) is not reflected in current usage of the terms. On the Internet, I found ‘graphology’ ‘defined as the science of determining personality and character traits from their handwriting’; ‘over 300 different personality traits can be analyzed’, ‘giving great insight and knowledge to an individual’s personality and behavior’ (Graphology Associates).www It works in sonorous institutions like the ‘British Academy of Graphology’ (London), the ‘Institut International de Recherches Graphologiques’ (Paris), and the ‘Associazone Italiana Grafoanalisi per l’Étà Evolutiva’ (Torino). Some ‘insights’ include (from Graphology Associates):www [1465] this ‘please notice me’ characteristic is shown in upswept final strokes that flaunt themselves throughout the writing. […] The longer the strokes, the stronger the craving for love and attention. [1466] If the upswept finals appear in the letter d, the writer is probably able to fulfil a need for recognition through literary and cultural abilities. Some ‘insights’ from the handwriting of Tony Blair [1467] and Bill Clinton [1468] sound partly predictable and partly surprising (from British Graphology): www [1467] The wish to enjoy what he does and to avoid unnecessary hassle inclines him to aim to please others and to weigh options wisely. Aggression is not what he seeks, even though he can summon it when necessary: he prefers negotiation. His writing reveals signs of obstinacy in communication, but positively he is also adaptable.
[1468] The close word spacing and rounded forms indicate that he needs people and craves security and closeness to hide an inner emptiness, while the left slant and variable letter spacing indicate that he finds it very difficult to reveal much of himself and is likely find close relationships difficult. […] The long lower zone of letters such as g and y indicate […] strong materialistic and sexual drives. 34, Meanwhile, again on the Internet, ‘Graphemes’ figure as units for ‘correspondence’, ‘conversion’, or ‘translation’ to and from ‘Phonemes’. This activity seems as sober as ‘Graphology’ seems imaginative, and some websites contemplate enlisting computers. The driving issue is of course automatic voice recognition, which was announced to be just around the corner for years; but humans easily distinguish Graphemes a computer does not. Correspondences have become reliable only recently when the computer could apply a detailed profile of the speaker’s voice, plus knowledge about combinations within words. However, voice recognition is still unable to distinguish between sense and nonsense in context. 35. In the teaching and learning of languages, orthography has been mainly a fastidious issue in standardisation (cf. II.183). For English or French, where the relations of Graphemes to Phonemes at times seem phantasmagorical, spelling Sound by Sound is a recipe for disaster, above all for the many Letters that have fallen ‘silent’ in the course of evolution. So a restricted background in reading can make orthography stressful and troublesome. I once arranged a simple test asking elementary public school pupils in Florida to ‘write down as many of the 50 states as you can’. I was not exploring orthography but strategies of knowledge: going in alphabetical order from a memorised list (which soon broke down); or moving across their visual image of a US map, which hangs in many school rooms for kids to peruse as they daydream (which worked better). But the visual images of the names did not seem to be well secured as orthography, and the ones we got included ‘Albemba’, ‘Alksa’, ‘Arozna’, ‘Ieerandna’, ‘Ielllnoy’, ‘Keinteyk’, ‘Soth Carealinen’, ‘Wist Vurginupp’, ‘Wastason’, ‘Calfifurya’/’Callfga’ (California?), ‘Coneiteit’/’Kuneekeen’ (Connecticut?), and ‘Calroda’/’Crittordo’ (Colorado?), 36. Non-natives with little background in reading English produce oddities by reasoning from the native language. A skilled Indian Mercedes mechanic in Sinai’a (UAE) billed me for ‘SISTHAM REPERING’. A snack stall that mysteriously materialised on the sidewalk in front of my beachhouse in Qinitra, Morocco, sported the sign ‘Sandwitch LeRelax’ — two English words connected in the manner of Arabic ‘iDaafah’ (annexation) with the Definite Article ‘Le’ also suggesting a francophone influence, as did the ‘t’ to tell apart the sound of English ‘Sandwitch’ from French ‘sandwich’. As an Arabic pattern it could mean ‘the sandwich of relaxing’, but must have intended to mean ‘relax with a sandwich’. 37. Probably just because English Orthography is so fractious, it has been a specious touchstone for a person’s supposed ‘education’ and ‘intelligence’, and a cause of much exertion in English teaching (cf. V.40). I suspect English Orthography is barely ‘teachable’ like other subject-matters. We can try out helpful tips for the normal placements of ‘long and short vowels’, or ‘single and double consonants’, But much of our Orthography must still be absorbed by extensive exposure to visual discourse, until the valid visual shapes of words can be intuitively and holistically distinguished from invalid ones. 38. Lacking consensual methods, ‘English Composition’ follows the negative orientation of education at large (I.60f; II.183), persecuting invalid Orthography [1469] far worse than a ‘Political Science’ course’ [1470]; and warns of grave dangers for a job application [1471-72]. [1469] Two or more misspelled words will result in a lowering of one letter grade. www [1470] Between 5 and 9 misspelled words will result in a 10 point deduction. www
[1471] Bad punctuation and misspelled words indicate to a prospective employer that you don’t care about the impression you’re making.www [1472] Misspelled words will silently kill your credibility. (Kansas City Job Line)www In the public sphere, risible misspellings plague newspapers pressured by speedy production [147376]. In grotesque cases, chagrined retractions follow [1477- 78]. [1473] High Wind Causes Outrages (Evening Capital) [outages] [1474] Reagan goes for juggler in Midwest (Charleston Gazette) [jugular] [1475] Hijackers threaten to set plan on fire (Evening Independent) [plane] [1476] Panty pests easy to control (Oconto Reporter) [pantry] [1477] It was incorrectly reported last Friday that today is T-Shirt Appreciation Day. In fact, it is actually Teacher Appreciation Day. (Illinois State University Daily Vidette) [1478] Correction. A letter published last Saturday wrote concerning gay sex incidents ‘per annum’ but spelled it ‘per anum’. This error led to our transcription as ‘per anus’. The News regrets the error and is glad to set the record straight. (Huntsville News) Bush Jr’s 1998 Spanish election slogan ‘juntos podemos’ (‘united we can achieve’) was printed in the Houston Chronicle as ‘juntos pedemos’ (‘united let us fart)’ — just the wheeze for a man who gives carte blanche, erm, noire, to industries like Koch belching out toxic emissions (VII.86), and who called the president of Russia ‘Pooty-Poot’ without knowing (one assumes) that such is how the sound-effect of farting is rendered in pop comics like The Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. 39. By now, fractious Orthography is being tamed by word processors designed to instantly ‘auto-correct’ expected misspellings, such as ‘beleive’, ‘charachter’, ‘dollers’, and ‘libarry’ (Microsoft WORD). As a competent speller but a lousy typist, I now apply a pre-emptive strategy by reloading the ‘auto-correct’ tool with short tags that at once convert into all the longer words or phrases I use, e.g. ‘laaa => language’, ‘liiis => linguistics’, ‘psyyy => psychology’, ‘t&p => theory and practice’. ‘Rdbaddd’ types my entire mailing address, fully formatted. WORD in Microsoft Office 2000 hints at this invaluable resource in its ‘Help’, apparently without seeing the encompassing potential: ‘You can also use AutoCorrect’ ‘to store text or graphics you plan to reuse’. V.H Punctuation in Lexicogrammar, Prosody and Visuality 40. Punctuation can be defined as the use of a modest sub-system of Grapheme symbols whose importance far exceeds their visual size. Like Orthography, Punctuation has received little attention in linguistics but a fastidious lot in education. It is less arbitrary, but may seem just as much so from the authoritarian ways it is often ‘taught’. And ‘correctness’ in punctuation may also be misinterpreted as a valid measure of your level of ‘education’ or ‘intelligence’ (cf. V.37). 41. Whoever seeks counsel on the ‘punctuation of English’ will not lack would-be advisors. At the Amazon online bookshop, I find 44 works with Punctuation Guide in the title, collocating with terms ranging from Complete or Ultimate over to Basic, Brief, Quick, Handy, Easy, Simple, and the neologism Unintimidating. In April 2003, I found 3,197 websites via the AltaVista search engine for ‘punctuation rules’. Like the myriad ‘grammar rules’ also promulgated by language guardians (II.19f), the provenance is uneven at best. Some sound merely shallow [1479-80]; or make unworkably vague and obscure
appeals to ‘thought’ or ‘meaning’ [1481-82]; or just don’t reflect the facts of attested usage [1483-84] — much like the ‘rules’ of ‘grammar’, though mercifully less tortuous. [1479] Do not use a colon to introduce a list after the verb ‘to be’ unless you add ‘the following’ or ‘as follows’. [1480] Never use more than one exclamation point. [1481] Use a comma to set off an interruption in the main thought of a sentence. [1482] Do not use commas to bracket phrases that are essential to a sentence’s meaning. [1483] Use a comma to separate two or more adjectives that equally modify the same noun. [1484] Never use a comma before a dependent clause at the end of a sentence. The homage to ‘rules’ seems to correlate with a blinkered disinterest in Prosody: [1485] Never punctuate unless you know a rule. Avoid punctuating by reflex because it sounds good. [1486] Punctuation marks the structure of sentences, not the voice pauses or inflections. After you learn the basic structures of complex sentences [sic], punctuating correctly becomes a matter of applying logical rules. The Survey of English Usage displayed a more informed consensus: 24 [1487] Punctuation practice is governed primarily by grammatical considerations [and] sometimes linked to intonation, stress, rhythm, or any other prosodic distinctions, […] but the link is neither simple nor systematic. [1488] We are dealing with tendencies which, while clear enough, are by no means rules. […] There is […] a great deal of flexibility [and] opportunity for personal taste. Seeming uniformity, the Survey adds, comes from the ‘regular practice of printing organizations’ or ‘publishing houses’ who can ‘impose fairly strict conventions’. 42. Disregarding the key role of Prosody leads to describing Punctuation by treating each Mark in isolation — first the period, then the comma, and so forth, rather like describing grammar by treating first the Noun, then the Verb, and so forth. Such a description obscures the systemic nature of the overarching principles that guide the dynamic choice of marks during the writing process. 43. Video tapes I filmed of students and staff at the University of Florida while they wrote revealed them hesitating or stopping to consider just before selecting or changing a punctuation mark. A Comma got replaced by a Period at the end of [1489]; or a Period got replaced by a Comma in [1490]. (I enclose in pointy brackets, and {inserted material} in curly brackets; an upright line | is for a pause.) [1489] Turn left | , {follow the road}, and turn right into the parking lot of the hospital . [1490] This goes on for | three weeks or so | , and the total grade counts 10%. Evidently, writers assess the need for one mark or another as they move along. 44. My own account will be seek to show punctuation in its relations among Lexicogrammar, Prosody, and Visuality. I shall follow the consistent principles of operation in a linear medium, including print. 25 The pacing principle is most firmly aligned with Prosody: you mark with punctuation the points where a hesitation or pause would occur in the implicit prosodic contour of the written text, as in [1491-92].
[1491] Erika read aloud: ‘On this spot, on the tenth of May, 1933, under the evil spirit of Fascism, the gangsters of the Nazi party burned the noblest works of German and World Literature.’ (Bury the Dead) [1492] Bodie read aloud, ‘One, two, three, four, five — You’ll be all right — You’ll have something to remember, a lot to remember.’ (Professionals 15) Punctuation tends to mark off the end of a Pitch contour from the start of a new one, as shown here for sample [1492].
45. Among the more common usages, a Comma suggests a brief pause [1493], the Semicolon a longer one at the end of a Clause [1494], and a Period a still longer one at the end of a Sentence [1494]. [1493] Nana ran to him beseechingly, but he waved her back. (Peter Pan) [1494] I wished to know if she was unhappy; but I felt it was not my province to inquire. (Agnes Grey) [1495] I was a fool ever to come back here. But I felt stranded. (Chatterley) The length of Pauses could logically suggest varying strengths of Cohesion and Coherence, e.g., tighter for ‘running but waving back’ [1493], looser for ‘wishing but feeling’ [1494], and looser still for ‘being a fool but feeling stranded’ [1495]. 46. Some less common usages for pacing are the Dash and the Suspension Dots, which can signal a stronger hesitation or a postponement or break in Cohesion [1496-97]. Dots may also indicate the voice losing volume and trailing off [1498]. [1494] I found out what made it cold. Twas ice — tons of it — in the basement (Whirligigs) [1497] Then they…I could recount…I disdain to chronicle such victories. (Egoist) [1498] ‘I thought she loved me…and was good…’ Adam’s voice had been gradually sinking into a hoarse undertone (Adam Bede) 47. Pauses can carry auxiliary functions, such as inviting hearers to draw ominous conclusions [1499]; allowing the speaker time to ‘think’ [1500]; or having a Statement treated as a ‘question’ [1501]. [1499] ‘And, if I find you sneakin’ off to the Three Pigeons…’ His pause was more eloquent than his speech (Damsel) [1500] ‘Why now’ — he paused, to think briefly upon his words — ‘I took it for granted you were showing Miss Madden around.’ (Market Place). [1501] ‘I must return to Oxford to-morrow, and I don’t know on which side of the scale to throw in my voice’ He paused, as if asking a question. (North and South)
These can be distinguished from dysfunctional pauses where the speaker just doesn’t manage to sustain Cohesion or Coherence [1502-03] (from Bush Jr).26 [1502] I should have clarified it by my statement. I just clarified it by my — not should have — I just. [1503] There’s an old saying in Tennessee — I know it’s in Texas, probably in Tennessee — that says: Fool me once, shame on [pause] shame on you. [pause] Fool me [long, uncomfortable, agonizing pause] you can’t get fooled again. 48. For the look-back principle, the mark indicates that what’s coming up looks back to what came before. The most prominent are of course the terminal marks of Period, Question Mark, and Exclamation Mark to identify the preceding stretch as a Statement, Question or Exclamation even when the format is the same, either as a Clause [1504-06] or a Non-Clause [1507-09]. [1504] she would say to him gently, ‘You are a child.’ (Lame Prince) [1505] ‘You are a foreigner?’ The voice was sharp, beside Holly’s knee. (Archangel) [1506] You are a fool! I could shake you!’ she cried, trembling with passion (Sons) [1507] ‘I said I was going to be a minister to-day before any of you said anything at all.’ ‘You right’, said Herman. ‘You the firs’ one to say it.’ (Penrod) [1508] ‘I’ve always believed in being broad-minded and liberal —’ ‘You? Liberal?’ (Babbitt) [1509] ‘What do you intend to be?’ ‘A messenger’, answered the hazel-nut child. ‘You a messenger!’(Blue Fairy) In return, a Period after the format of a Question or Exclamation lowers the Weight and suggests a gently falling prosodic contour. [1511] How could she resist. (Pan) [1510] Tuppence beamed upon him. ‘How lovely.’(Adversary) 49. The converse look-ahead principle signals what to expect after the mark, the most distinctive being the Colon that looks ahead to a specification or explan-ation of what went shortly before. A Noun Phrase may describe the upcoming content [1512-13]; or the Colon may point toward some Action or Event [1514-15]. [1512] They lose control over both the revenue and the expenditure, often with catas-trophic results: rent not paid, fuel bills missed, arrears mounting. (Wigan Pier) [1513] The cattle in the district are: 10 asses, 401 oxen, 492 cows (Dr Livingstone) [1514] At this moment the door opened: a fat, furious face looked in. (Sylvie) [1515] Connie heard a low whistle behind her. She glanced sharply round: the keeper was striding downhill towards her (Chatterly) The Dash can also serve for look-ahead when some expectation has been aroused: [1516] One good thing was immediately brought to a certainty by this removal — the ball at the Crown. (Emma)
[1517] he saw what he had been looking for — a puff of white smoke (Whirligigs) A left-hand Parenthesis can look ahead to a specification [1518], commentary [1519], or clarification, which the right-hand one concludes. [1518] his flat […] was a mixture of Victorian (the furniture) and deco (the mirrors, the glass). (Nudists) [1519] the money was good (if you could prise it from the agent) and it widened my working circle (if you survived). (Coward’s Chronicles) [1520] What was the name of Geoffrey Howe’s dog when he was chancellor (when Sir Geoffrey was chancellor, that is, not the dog)? (Punch) 50. The Hyphen looks ahead to a continuation of a Word, but its usage is singularly unstable. You conventionally find it for multi-part Modifiers before a Noun [1521], but you may also find either separation [1522] or fusion [1523]. Sometimes too, the Hyphen looks further ahead to a second hyphen preceding the added part [1524]. [1521] lower-class juvenile delinquents find themselves confronting a legal system which has literally declared war against them (Power, Crime, and Mystification) [1522] There was never a consensus for them, as there was for middle class and lower class opinion. (Third Way) [1523] For white middleclass males, however, pride and dignity has little resonance (Blissed Out) [1524] In the socialist society both upper- and lower-class crime would disappear (Controlling Crime) Here at least, the ‘flexibility’ and ‘personal taste’ noted in [1488] are confirmed. 51. Together, look-ahead and look-back set off a Framed Quote in the sense of III.74 by placing Quotation Marks at the front and the end. A Comma usually looks ahead to the Frame after the Quote, which is the unmarked position, though usage is divided on whether it goes (illogically) before or (logically) after the Quotation Mark [1525-26]; another Comma usually looks ahead if the Quote is resumed after the Frame [1527]. To my surprise, I also found a Comma in addition to other Marks [1528-30], as if it were deemed indispensable. [1525] ‘Climb on my back then, dear master,’ said the horse. (Under the Sea) [1526] ‘Do not stray from the path’, said a notice in the Cheviots (Walking the Dales) [1527] ‘I have travelled widely’, said Goodney, ‘in the world of pornography.’ (Money) [1528] Prince Charles was shown a potion guaranteeing virility […]. ‘How does it work?,’ he asked for the sake of British tabloid papers. (Guardian) [1529] ‘Great God!,’ cried I. (War of the Worlds) [1530] 'The first thing I always do — ', he said. (Bookshop) A Colon too is eminently suited ahead of the Quote, the more so when the type of Quote has been indicated [1531-32]. [1531] It is an old saying: ‘The devil looks after his own.’ (Penitentiaries)
[1532] He was hearing again the question of the night before: ‘The cup my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?’ (Ben-Hur ) \\ Punctuation tends to mark off the end of a Pitch contour from the start of a new one, as shown here for sample [1492] 52. A short Quote may have no other mark ahead of it but a Quotation Mark [1533], especially if it is included in a longer Tone Group [1534].
US usage Prefers doubled Quotation Marks [1535] over the European single marks [1536]. Older usages may set off Quotes with Dashes too [1537]. [1535] “Tom, it was middling warm in it?” “Yes’m.” (Sawyer)
school,
warn’t
it?” “Yes’m.” “Powerful
warm,
warn’t
[1536] She frowned fiercely and said ‘Remember’ terribly sternly. (Garden Party) [1537] ‘And what, sir’ — said Pott — ‘what, sir, is the state of the public mind in London?’ (Pickwick) Suspension dots, as their name might hint, can serve to create some ‘hesitation’ for ‘suspense’ about what to look ahead for. [1538] But when she actually touched her steadily-lived life with him she…hesitated. (Chatterly) [1539] ‘What is it?’ said Maggie, in a whisper. ‘Why it’s... a... new...guess, Maggie!’ (Floss) 53. The listing principle marks off with Punctuation, mainly Commas, a series of three or more Items, most strategically with clear Cohesion and Coherence among them, e.g. Nouns [1540], Verbs [1541], Modifiers [1542], or whole Clauses [1543]. Normally, the Conjunction ‘and’ or, less often, ‘or’ goes before the final Item [1542, 1540], but may be omitted for laconic or literary effect [1544-45], or else placed before each item for effusive effect without Commas [1546-47]. [1540] you showed no surprise, fear, annoyance, or displeasure at my moroseness. (Eyre) [1541] let their motto be: Hunt, shoot, and fight (Eyre) [1542] He was sleeping easily, lightly, and wholesomely. (Golden Road) [1543] Somewhere in the dark a duck was quacking, a cock was crowing, a dove was cooing, an owl was hooting, a lamb was bleating, and Jip was barking. (Dolittle) [1544] Life was made for riding, driving, dancing, going. (Financier) [1545] With this question Plotinus grapples, earnestly, shrewdly, fairly. (Alexandria)
[1546] I’ve been wondering what the people on the receiving end of a Bush lecture on personal responsibility think when they watch Dubya weasel and waffle and bob and weave and blame and deny. (Paul Begala) [1547] The sadness seemed to extinguish her as if she had no real eyes or fingers or genitals or teeth or frownlines or kidneys (Lee’s Ghost) Weighty listed Items can be set off by Semicolons [1549], particularly if they contain Commas [1549]; or by Dashes [1550]; or even by Periods [1551]. [1548] He has a sullen, rebellious spirit; a violent temper; and an untoward, intractable disposition. (Copperfield) [1549] I will talk of things heavenly, or things earthly; things moral, or things evangelical; things sacred, or things profane; (Pilgrim’s Progress) [1550] Closet after closet — drawer after drawer — corner after corner — were scrutinized to no purpose. (Loss of Breath) [1551] John Major is now being exposed for what some of us always warned that he was. A fake. A flake. A wimp. A phoney. (Daily Mirror) 54. Just two Items linked by ‘and’ or ‘or’ shouldn’t need a Comma, and may not be a list [1552-53]. But I do find some Commas there [1554-55], resembling a List. Also, a Comma helps with no Conjunction, as in literary usage [1556-57]. [1552] The tradition gives many convincing pictures of the inwardness and invasiveness of friends and rivals. (Authors) [1553] They sleep on the floor without mattress or bedcover. (Amnesty). [1554] It was true he was footloose, and unmarried. (Cameron) [1555] They sound like pirates, or ruffians. Wild men playing a violent game. (Cameron) [1556] The two poets resemble one another. Each is inexperienced, youthful. (Authors) [1557] The novel makes a mystique of darkness and futility in the course of saying that the whole island is peripheral, arrested. (Authors) 55. The Prosody of a List can use short, matching Tone Groups for its Items, viz.
56. The weight principle concerns how important or informative Items are made to appear, For Prosody, the leading options put the main Strong Stress at the End (unmarked) or the Mid or the Front (more marked) (IV.15-20). For Visuality, the options centre on whether some lexicogrammatical or prosodic unit will be set off by Punctuation and by which Marks. The most striking is the Exclamation Mark giving higher Weight to a
Word [1558], a Phrase [1559], or a whole Clause [1560]. Weight can be enhanced for an inserted Item with Dashes too. [1561-62]. [1558] In great fright, the boy ran for help. ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ he screamed. (Tell Children) [1559] ‘Not coming!’ she shouted in the dusty gloom (Paper Faces) [1560] ‘Oh, she’ll make someone a wonderful wife!’ screeched Jamie. (Jay Loves Lucy) [1561] What would he say when — if! — Lady Merchiston informed him of her plan? (Hidden Flame) [1562] being hard of hearing, […] I bound him to a pirate — you! — instead of to a Penzance)
pilot. (Pirates of
Like the Exclamation itself, the Mark may be deemed unsuitable for ‘formal’ usage (IV.42), and mostly serves in Framed conversation like [1558-62]. 57. The weight principle helps decide if a Dependent Clause is set off by Punc-tuation, mostly a Comma; an Action already known [1563] gets less Weight than one intervening ‘suddenly’ [1564] or as a ‘surprise’ [1565]. The Clause may gain weight being punctuated with a Period like a Sentence [1566]. [1563] Her kiss is hard […] ‘You give yourself away when you kiss like that.’ (Authors) [1564] One night I was going to bed, when suddenly the bristles rose on the dog’s back and he barked uneasily at the window (Prester John) [1565] the scientific gentleman was gazing abstractedly on the thick darkness outside, when he was very much surprised by a most brilliant light (Pickwick) [1566] But my mother always speaks of sleeping in the shelter. When London was bombed. (Strawberries) 58. Also, Weight helps decide whether a given Adverb is set off by Punctuation, and by which Marks: greater for Period plus Exclamation Mark [1567], moderate for Comma [1568], and least for no mark [1569]. [1567] Spirit of the Blitz is out now. Finally! (Skateboard!) [1568] There was then a mighty production of papers, […] and great work of signing, sealing, stamping, inking, and sanding, with exceedingly blurred, gritty, and undecipherable results. Finally, everything was done according to rule (Dorrit) [1569] Finally the woman opened her eyes feebly. (Adversary) The context can contribute Weight too, as when the profusion of officious ‘work’ for travellers passing through French customs was ‘finally done’ [1568]. 59. Punctuation can also indicate lower Weight. Parentheses do so for the inserted content, e.g., to indicate that being ‘true’ hardly mattered when the ‘answer’ was so ‘pompous’ and ‘unsatisfactory [1570]; or to sarcastically suggest that ‘English kindness’ extends to ‘animals’ and (by the way) to ‘women’ [1571]. [1570] we timorously hinted that we should be glad of our meal, the pompous, and true) most unsatisfactory answer was, ‘It will be ready when it is ready’ (Beagle)
(though
[1571] Up until recently the English have had certain virtues assigned: honesty, loyalty, fair dealing, kindness to animals (and women). (So Very English)
Weight can be lowered for Items with a Question Mark in Parentheses, e.g., some naff ‘dancing’ [1572], or some drab ‘noteworthies’ [1573]. Or, scepticism can arise from Parenthesesenclosing ‘(sic)’ [1574], or, more dubiously, ‘(sic!)’ [1575]. [1572] Elvira Flower introduces the Huggies in a polemic of poetic licence and leads the dancing (?) (NME) [1573] Among the noteworthy (?) in attendance was none other than the Right Horrible David Mellor MP, the newly appointed so-called ‘Minister For Fun’ (NME) [1574] this 1972 concert film, interspersed with ‘accidental’ (sic) offstage scenes, is hardly an edifying addition to his memory. (NME) [1575] According to local tradition, she was martyred, her head was cut off, and ‘she picked it up and ran three miles to the nearby (sic!) church to warn the other Christians.’ (East Yorkshire) Conversely, an Exclamation Mark in Parentheses can raise the Weight, e.g., for the spiffing ‘fun’ [1576], or the ‘horrendous photographs’ [1577]. [1576] The venue is the enticingly-named Ruby’s Dance Hall and the fun (!) starts on Nov. 5 (NME) [1577] The competition involved matching the delightful baby photographs to the horrendous (!) recent photographs. (Winfrith Journal)BNC Lower Weight can be indicated by Quotation Marks to imply that someone or something does not merit the designation. [1578] Dubya Bush will enter office as the So-Called “President” and doubtless will earn that sobriquet several times over before he leaves. (Baltimore City Paper) (VII.20) [1579] People are coming to the conclusion that this so-called ‘war on drugs’ has been lost (BBC News) (VII.96) Like the ‘scare italics’ shown in V.32, these too may be merited by scary matters, e.g. a ‘President’ who ‘took office’ through a massive election fraud (VII.19). 60. For the core-and-adjunct principle, the Marks delimit the Clause Core of Subject Noun Phrase and Predicate Verb Phrase, and position their Adjuncts within the Clause or Sentence. Writers are commonly reluctant to place Punctuation that breaks up these two parts of a Clause Core, witness the ‘rule’ back in [1481] proscribing an ‘interruption in the main thought of a sentence’ (V.41). But as for so many ‘rules’, authentic usage is more flexible. Though lists of two linked by ‘and’ or ‘or shouldn’t need any Comma (V.54), two Subjects at times have one to add Weight to the second, whether shorter [1580] or longer [1581]. [1580] His partner, and captain, was Mickey Walker (Guardian) [1581] The sexuality of the past, and the extent of the intimidatory violence, were only very faintly registered. (Authors) The most authorised marks to set off two Independent Clause Cores are the Semicolon [1582], Colon [1583], Parentheses [1584], or Dash [1585]. [1582] She was wearing only a white dress; she would be frozen without a coat. (Patently Murder) [1583] Her limbs lack feeling: she would never have walked. (Race of Scorpions)
[1584] She disapproved of the haphazard selection of foster parents (she would have much preferred the children to go to hostels run on the lines of Bunce Court). (Policeman Smiled) [1585] I should perish — I should throw myself out of window — I should take poison — I should pine and die. (Vanity) Placing only a comma gives a ‘comma splice’ castigated by language guardians on the Internet as a ‘grammar crime’ or ‘outlaw’ crying to be ‘rehabilitated’ (Canterbury Student Services)www — when students produce it, that is, as in [1586-87]. Recognised writers seem unconcerned [1588-89]. [1586] The soil is divided into two types, the first type is topsoil. (Arabia) [1587] The same happens to people, they can learn how to respect each other. (Brazil) [1588] They were fussy, that was all. (Dubliners) [1589] Well, have it your own way, we’ll wait a while longer (Oregon Trail) 61. Whether a Dependent Clause is set off by Punctuation can depend, as we saw, on weight and length (V.56), but with some leeway for differing choices. Largely similar Clauses may take a Comma [1590, 1592] or may not [1591, 1593]. [1590] I will send up and get it for you, if you would like to hear it. (Autocrat) [1591] Please contact Rita as soon as possible if you would like to attend. (Medau Society) [1592] So few men have the strength of their goodness or the courage of their badness, when it comes to a big test. (Lady Bridget) [1593] It’s five hours yet, and I’m afraid she’ll stand me up when it comes to the scratch. (Options) Commas are hardly needed for a Dependent Clause integrated into the Core by functioning like a Subject [1594], Object [1595], or Subject Complement [1596]. [1594] How grossly that power was abused by Swift is well known (Life of Addison) [1595] His father understood the way kids really felt about things (Claims of Feeling) [1596] And the question was how was the matter to be kept quiet (Financier) 62. For Adverbials, higher Weight calls for Commas whilst lower does not, whether before the Core at the Front [1597-98], after the Core at the End [1599-1600], or inside the Core at the Mid [1601-02]. Parentheses can lower the Weight [1603], or Dashes can raise it [1604]. [1597] At least in his judgment of French national psychology, Falkenhayn’s appreciation had been accurate. (Verdun 1916) [1598] At least in Western prisons inmates in solitary had writing materials (Negotiator) [1599] Only organic beings of certain classes can be preserved in a fossil condition, at least in any great number. (On the Origin of Species) [1600] The ushers had their will at least in part. (Ben Hur)
[1601] The related tribes, at least in some cases, are united in a confederacy. (The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State) [1602] The principle proposals at least in this report can be accommodated within the budget (Herts County Council)BNC [1603] They sowed exotic grasses for their animals, […] but then (at least in some cases) found that the grass was overgrazed (Global Ecology) [1604] The sovereign rights of the prince were then taken over — at least in form and principle — by the people at large (Vested Interests) 63. An Appositive as a Noun Phrase Adjunct regularly has Commas around it [1605], as does each one in a list of them [1606]. Or, Dashes appear [1607]. Punctuation can be left out if the Appositive is short and expresses an Identity in the sense of III.59 [1608-09]. [1605] Mr. Rego, the commandant, offered me a guard to Ambaca. (Dr Livingstone ) [1606] the greatest of mortals, that important atom of humanity, that little god upon earth, Johnny Bold her baby, ought to have a house of his own over his head. (Barchester) [1607] They beheld him — their Baker — their hero unnamed — on the top of a neigh-boring crag. (Snark) [1608] Mr Eames the butler put up his hand in rebuke. (English Crime) [1609] My friend the Governor has promised protection to my family. (Ballantrae) 64. Finally, the sorting principle deploys Punctuation to signal relations among Items to resolve any doubt about what goes with what and where. By marking the end of an Item, a Comma can prevent the misreading known as the ‘garden path’: [1610] As Gabriel was watching, the cart stopped at the top of the hill (Madding Crowd) [1611] Already, he could hear, the Major and Mrs Channing had progressed from Glenda Grower to some of the deficiencies of the boarding establishment. (Little Victims) [1612] When Malmsteen hit, everybody was getting very technically geared up (Guitarist) Unintended omission of a Comma can turn out picturesque, as in news headlines: [1613] Excess of vitamins harmful, expensive specialist warns (London Free Press) [1614] Connie Tied, Nude Policeman Testifies (Atlanta Journal) [1615] Garden Grove resident naive, foolish judge says (Orange County Register) 65. Punctuation to set off an Adverbial or a Dependent Clause can direct look-back further than with no Mark. In [1616], the Comma signals that Bob Dylan was doing all the actions andmannerisms ‘just like’ Woody Guthrie, not just ‘slurring’. In [1617], it signals that both ‘wounds’ and ‘monarchy’ were ‘of the church’. In [1619], the Semicolon helps the ‘band’ receive all three Modifiers; in [1619], the Period makes both ‘asking questions’ and ‘getting answers’ into talents of Judi’s. [1616] Dylan returned to Minneapolis later that year a-singing and a-playing, mumbling and slurring his words, just like Woody himself. (Economist)
[1617] To heal the wounds, and restore the monarchy, of the church, the synods of Pisa and Constance were successively convened (Decline) [1618] The Clash (Potential): Stark, fiercesome, bold; just like the band itself. (NME) [1619] She was good at asking questions, he realised, good at getting answers. Just like Judi. (Bad Dreams) 66. Conversely, Punctuation can influence look-ahead. In [1620], all the Actions of the men occurred ‘soon’, and not just the ‘growing bolder’; in [1621], only the ‘falling asleep’ occurred ‘instantly’ whilst the ‘burning’ took some time. [1620] Soon, growing bolder, men stood face to face and spoke of settled plans, gave signs, and openly declared themselves. (Golden Hours) [1621] Instantly the chief of the scullions fell fast asleep, and the goose was burnt to a cinder (Blue Fairy) 67. These seven principles seem plausible guidelines for the Punctuation of English Texts. Unlike the ‘rules’ on websites of language guardians eager to edify the bemused multitudes (V.41), they are not attached to specific items or positions in prefabricated ‘sentences’, but reflect sensitive, dynamic decisions about the status and structure of items or positions, and guide appropriate choices. Notes to Ch. V 1
Saussure, Note 28 to Ch. II, p. 30; Bloomfield, Note 27 to Ch. II, p. 21
2 Josef Vachek, Written Language (The Hague: Mouton, 1973); M.A.K. Halliday, Spoken and Written Language (Victoria: Deakin University, 1985); and Wallace Chafe and Jane Danielewic,. ‘Properties of spoken and written language’, in Wallace Chafe and Jane Danielewicz (eds.), Comprehending Oral and Written Language (NY: Academic, 1987). 3 The foundations were laid by Charles Sanders Peirce , but his vision of a ‘formal doctrine of signs’ equivalent to ‘logic in its general sense’ (Collected Papers, 2, ¶ 227) would seem too restrictive to later semioticians. The most imposing modern surveys I know of are Umberto Eco, A Theory of Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 1978); and Winfried Nöth, Handbuch der Semiotik (Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000). To get started, try Daniel Chandler, Semiotics: The Basics (London: Routledge, 2001). 4 Peirce’s own classification had two further triads which have remained virtually unused; he thus derived nine ‘classes’ of signs and set up arcane combinations like ‘dicent-indexical sinsign’ (like a weathercock), which you won’t find even once on the Internet. Compare the critique in Eco pp. 178ff.; and James Hoopes (ed.), Peirce on Signs: Writings on Semiotic (Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991). 5 I cannot follow when Yishai Tobin argues that ‘an invariant meaning works its way up from sign to system to context to text’, in Semiotics and Linguistics, (London: Longman, 1990), p. 18. Textual meaning is far from a summation of invariant sign-meanings, as most vigorously shown in semiotics by Umberto Eco himself in The Open Work (Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1989), transl. Anna Cancogni. 6 Compare Myrdene Anderson and Floyd Merrill (eds.), On Semiotic Modelling. (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1991). 7 One broad and user-friendly survey Imagery (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989).
would
be Ronald
A.
Finke , Principles of Mental
8 E.g., Robert G. Kunzendorf and Anees A. Sheikh (eds.), The Psychophysiology Mental Imagery: Theory, Research and Application (Amityville, NY: Baywood, 1990).
of
9 From an Amazon review by Carol Glatt of Gerald Epstein, Healing Visualizations: Creating Health Through Imagery (NY: Bantam reissue, 1989). 10 The term was established by Allan Collins and Elizabeth Loftus, ‘A spreading-activation theory of semantic processing’, Psychological Review 82, 1975, 407-28. 11 Compare Anna Arnaudo, Eidetic Imagery: Raising More Questions than Answers, posted on the Serendip website (serendip.brynmawr.edu). 12 See David Rumelhart, James McClelland , et al., Parallel Distributed Processing: Explorations in the Microstructures of Cognition (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1986). 13 Saussure, Course (Note 28 to Ch. II, p. 19) wishfully compared ‘language’ to ‘a dictionary of which identical copies have been distributed to each individual’. ‘Identical’ at least they certainly are not. 14
At the University of Memphis.
15
At Illinois State University, Bloomington-Normal.
16
At California State University, Dominguez Hills.
17
Compare Thomas F. Cash and Melissa K. Rich , ‘The American image of beauty: Media representations
of hair color for four decades’, in Sex Roles: A Journal of Research, 29/1-2, 1993; Diana J. Kyle and Heike I.M. Mahler , ‘The effects of hair color and cosmetic use on perceptions of a female’s ability’, Psychology of Women Quarterly 20/3, 1996. 18 See now James A. Russell and Josi-Miguel Fernandez-Dols (eds.), The Psychology of Facial Expression (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1997); and David McNeill (ed.), Language and Gesture(Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2000). Recent re-editions of classic works include Charles Darwin The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, ed. Paul Ekman (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1998); and GuillaumeBenjamin Duchenne de Boulogne , The Mechanism of Human Facial Expression, ed. R. Andrew Cuthbertson (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1990). 19 A lively take is Roger E. Axtell, Gestures: The Do’s and Taboos of Body Language Around the World (NY: Wiley, 1997). See also references in Note 18. 20 I was puzzled that nobody ‘sounded happy’ in either of my large corpora, whereas the expression was found by AltaVista 1326 times on the Internet. 21 By far the most uses of ‘happy voice’ on the Internet were in advice on training your dog. Do dog owners live in forced euphoria to preserve their wrists and shins? 22 In my paper ‘Theory and practice in applied linguistics: Disconnection, conflict, or dialectic?’ Applied Linguistics 18/3, 1997, 279-313, here p. 300. 23 For a detailed survey of substantive research, see my Text Production (Norwood, NJ: Ablex, 1984), section V.1. 24
Quirk et al. (Note 2 to Ch. IV), p 1611.
25 26
I have modified some terms from the account in my New Foundations, section IV.E. See Note 11 to Ch. IV.
VI. Style in the Study of Text and Discourse
VI.A Style in theory and practice 1. In theoretical terms, the style of a speaker or author, or of a text or discourse, is the array of actual choices made from the vast repertory of potential choices. In practical terms, a ‘style’ gets attributed to a discourse [1622] or participant [1623]. [1622] a more colourful, gossipy style of writing took over from the self-consciously poetic late Victorian style. (Sport and the British) [1623] Phrases such as ‘there is no alternative’ […] sum up the spirit of what she feels and argues. The warrior image is aided by her forceful style of speaking (Thatcherism) Yet, as so often in our societies, the relation between theory and practice by no means constitutes a transparent dialectic (cf. I.2ff). Most of the many occurrences of ‘style’ as a Noun (e.g. 10,381 in the BNC alone) do not stipulate the relevant qualities or features, e.g., what renders a style ‘colourful’ as opposed to ‘late Victorian’. For most speakers and writers, theories of ‘style’ have remained implicit, even though projects to render them explicit have a venerable history. 2. In the study of text and discourse, our theory might define a style — along with a genre, register, or text type — as an intermediary system, more specific than the language and more general than the discourse (cf. II.153). Routinely interacting, these systems mediate between the entire potential available to text producers and the individual text to be produced. Such systems appear paradoxical: precise yet flexible, constrained yet adaptable. Copious stylistic criteria guide a search and selection process that rapidly and efficiently terminates in uttering or inscribing combinations of particular choices in Colligations and Collocations. Such a mode of operation could profit from massively parallel distributed processing whereby ongoing searches can interchange partial results.1 3. Evidently, discourse sustains a multiple dialectic between common and uncommon, between general and specific, between habit and innovation — between what is typically said and what is actually said. If so, a language remains in the process of being both confirmed and constituted by discourse (I.36), which is neither totally fixed in advance nor totally free at the moment (cf. I.26; II.21, 157). This design is great to exploit in practice, but daunting to account for in theory. VI.B Ancient studies of style 4. To a modern view, ancient studies of style, notably in the extant writings of Aristotle, suggest an intriguing of the three disciplines mentioned back in II.7. For poetics, he favoured combining ‘strange’ and ‘proper’ choices [1624].2 [1624] The perfection of style is to be clear without being mean. […] That diction […] is lofty and raised above the commonplace which employs […] strange (or rare) words, metaphorical, lengthened, [or] ornamental, […] while the use of proper words will make it perspicuous. (Poetics, 9.4)
For rhetoric to deliver a ‘speech’, he lauded ‘being clear’ over ‘poetic’ [1625], yet kept ‘metaphor’ as one ‘preeminent’ means for being ‘clear’ as well as ‘pleasant’ and ‘unfamiliar’, whilst enlisting ‘beautiful words’ [1626]. [1625] the virtue of style is to be clear, [whereas] poetic style [is] inappropriate to a speech; we should make little use of exotic, compound, and artificial (Rhetoric, 3.2)3 [1626] Metaphor pre-eminently involves clarity, pleasantness, and unfamiliarity; [and] draws from words that are beautiful in sound or in effect or in image (same) For grammar, he rated ‘extended style’ below ‘contracted style’, as if merging my concepts of appropriate and effective with efficient (cf. II.130). [1627] extended style [is] unpleasant because of its unboundedness; [in] contracted style, […] a clause having an end in itself and an easily surveyed magnitude [is] both pleasant and easily learned, [and] can be delivered without drawing breath, as a whole (3.9). And, as noted back in IV.4 and signalled again in [1627], he integrated prosody too. 5. An unexpected and jarring Platonic note intruded when Aristotle expressed reservations that, in respect to ‘the study of style’, [1628] it makes a difference for explanation to speak in one way or another, but not that much; all these things are rather mere display directed at the listener. (3.1) [1629] Justice requires contention from the facts themselves, so that all other aspects apart from demonstration are ancillary. Yet these have a great effect, […] because of the baseness of the audience. (3.1) These reservations might cloud the prospects for a dialectic between theory and practice. Aristotle based the theory upon abstract values (lofty, clear, pleasant, beautiful, etc.) which in concrete practice would be applied by authors and experienced by ‘audiences’. Yet a disparate theory from ancient philosophy, preoccupied with epistemology and ethics, and thus assigning abstract values to truth and truthfulness, instilled some ambivalence about the authenticity of stylistic values versus ‘mere display’ and about the judgements of real audiences. Plato’s own reservations against the ‘imitative poet’ come to mind: [1630] We shall be right in refusing to admit him into a well-ordered State, because he awakens and nourishes and strengthens the feelings and impairs the reason. […] He is a manufacturer of images and is very far removed from the truth. (Republic, 41)4 6. Even so, some dialectic was a professional requirement for an authority on style back then. The theoretician earned a livelihood imparting practical training in ‘style’ aimed at political or juridical benefits by winning the acclaim of ‘audiences’. And these might indeed not share the theories of authors (or orators) about what is ‘clear’ or ‘pleasant’ and might in practice value ‘display’ and ‘effect’ over ‘justice’ and ‘fact’. The theoretician was uneasily entrained in inculcating stylistic and rhetorical skills whilst surmising that they could be unethically exploited.5 7. The Aristotelian tradition was ably continued and elaborated in the treatise of Demetrius whose accredited English title is On Style.6 He recognised four styles and took more care than Aristotle to illustrate them abundantly with celebrated orators and poets. 7 The ‘elevated’ or 'eloquent style' derives ‘impressiveness’ and ‘stateliness’ from ‘repetition’, ‘long syllables’, ‘compound words’, and lengthy complex, and parallel sentences;8 and also from ‘metaphor’, ‘allegorical language’, and ‘onomatopoeic words’. The ‘elegant style’
relies on ‘geniality’, ‘grace’, ‘smoothness’, and a ‘pleasant cadence’. The ‘plain style’ seeks ‘clearness’ and ‘lucidity’ from ‘current words’, ‘familiar diction’, ‘vivid representation’, and ‘homely subject-matter’, ‘shunning ambiguities’ and long sentences, and adhering to ‘the natural order of the words’. And the ‘forcible style’ prefers ‘brevity and energy’, and ‘in many passages harshness’ and ‘vehemence’, plus ‘a discreet use of elaborate language’. Like Aristotle, Demetrius betrayed some inconsistency and ambivalence, namely about both the plain [1631-32] and the elaborate [1633-34]. [1631] Everything ordinary is trivial, and so fails to win admiration. (§ 60) [1632] Diction [that is] grandiose, elaborate, and distinctly out of the ordinary […] pos-sesses the needed gravity, whereas usual and current words, though clear, are unimpressive and liable to be held cheap. (§ 77) [1633] Overloading with figures […] betokens lack of taste and inequality of style (§ 67) [1634] Exuberant and inflated language must not be sought after in a style meant to carry conviction. (§ 221) Similarly, he asserted that ‘metaphors impart a special charm and grandeur to style’, but warned against their being ‘numerous’, ‘far-fetched’, or ‘daring’, or ‘conducing to triviality’ and ‘pettiness’ (§ 78, 83f). 8. Like certain other branches of knowledge and study, such as philosophy and geometry, ancient studies of style have hardly fallen into obsolescence. Indeed, they overshadow modern studies which are more restricted and self-consciously ‘methodical’ and ‘scientific’, and which fail to resolve the ambivalences that perplexed the ancients. Moreover, none has exerted a remotely comparable or enduring impact upon discursive practices in the cultivation of style as have Aristotle and Demetrius, and, through them, their unsurpassable models Homer and Demosthenes. VI.C Modern studies of style 9. Modern studies under the heading of ‘stylistics’ began to congeal in the early 20 th century, when studies of language resonated more with a mentalist psychology than epistemological or ethical philosophy. That ambience featured the ‘affective’, ‘subjective’, and ‘expressive’ aspects of style, 9 thus highlighting the audience over the author or orator. This work would hardly find favour in the ‘modern linguistics’, arising shortly after, which sought its identity first by fencing itself off from neighbouring disciplines and later by falling into line with the formalism, physicalism, and behaviourism of ‘unified science’, which colonised psychology and philosophy too (cf. I.`81). So stylistics did not regain full momentum until the 1960s and 1970s, when these ideologies were receding, and when text linguistics and discourse analysis were also gathering momentum (cf. II.120, 135).10 10. Without a secured academic home of its own, stylistics has understandably been a diffuse enterprise. Perhaps we could roughly map it out with a catalogue of prospective ‘theories’ about the nature of style. 10.1.1. ‘Each language as a whole has its own style.’ This theory would suggest that differences among languages have a stylistic value that should emerge when they are compared or contrasted. Yet practical comparisons of the ‘style’ of other languages with English, as in [1635-36], are not common in my data. [1635] The German version conforms to German style [so closely] that it is generally taken by German speakers to be a very well written ‘original’. (Coursebook on Translation)11 [1636] Had he clothed his thoughts in the half French style of Horace Walpole, or in the half Latin style of Dr. Johnson, or in the half German jargon of the present day, his genius would have triumphed over all faults of manner. (Life of Addison)
During my student days at the Sorbonne, one teacher decried my ‘German style’ of using French with ‘heavy syntax’, though the real cause was more likely my having read literary monuments in ‘classical French’ so resolutely that I took to speaking it in everyday affairs with the Parisians, who seemed peeved or bewildered. 10.1.2. Comparative studies of language might have prospered but for the compartmentalisations or rivalries among language and literature departments, or the notion in ‘general linguistics’ that ‘each idiom is a closed system’ and so ‘in practice forms a unit of study’ (Saussure). 12 Still, ‘comparative stylistics’ has produced fundamental works in continental Europe, 13 whereas ‘contrastive linguistics’ ironically emerged under the aegis of formalism even though formal contrasts are the least interesting, and afforded little support to ‘contrastive stylistics’.14 10.1.3. In practice, at all events, stylistic influences across languages are evident among non-native language learners, e.g., Brazilian Portuguese impacting the English of these São Paulo university students, shown with plausible equivalents:15 [1637] Art delays to be ready. [= art takes time to be achieved] [1637a] Arte demora pra ser pronto. [1638] Sometimes the marriage was just to the woman become a housewife. [1638a] Às vezes o casimento era só para a mulher virar dona de casa. [1639] What about start this modification of thoughts inside your home? [1639a] Que tal começar essa modificação de pensamentos dentro de sua casa? Somewhat depressingly, style has hardly figured in the teaching of English as a foreign language, where the preoccupation with ‘rules’ and ‘correctness’ is prone to foreclose aspects of choice and creativity. 10.2. ‘Each speaker or writer has a unique style.’ If the previous theory implied a small number of general styles, this theory implies a huge number of specific styles. Such a theory might underwrite social and discursive inclusion and actualisation, but risks unduly diluting the concept of style by equating it with raw uniqueness.16 Admittedly, in fine detail everyspeaker or writer makes a unique set of choices. Yet among those choices, only certain ones have significant discursive functions that lend them the status of stylistic indicators, which render a style not just different, but distinctive, as in [1640-41]. [1640] If you write primarily to see, then the style becomes an expression of your personality. […] One’s style must be an outcome of one’s vision of reality. (Hot Press) [1641] Whatever its place in the literary league tables, After undoubtedly entertaining: Carroll’s style has a high gloss, twinkling with near epigrams (lecture)BNC
Silence is
And in practice, most recognition of ‘style’ has been given to literary works selected more for use in the acculturation projects of the schools (II.182, 188) than for any explicit consensus about the indicators of their styles. Otherwise, few of us get much recognition of our ‘styles’, least of all non-native learners of English. 10.3. ‘Each text or discourse has a unique style.’ Here, we raise the number of specific styles still higher, acknowledging that every text or discourse is unique in fine detail; even the same one read aloud twice by the same speaker evinces minor differences in articulation or prosody. But if a language is itself a theory steadily in the dialectical process of being constituted by its practices (I.36; II.21, 157, 178; VI.3), then uniqueness is a
routine by-product of text and discourse. Again, a style should be not merely different but distinctive, as invoked in [1642-43]. [1642] The style of the poem is in many ways seventeenth-century, though there are plenty of resemblances to later hymns (Wordsworth) [1643] The style of the novel [A la recherche du temps perdu] [is] like the structure. […] His long sinuous phrases are designed to enclose the different levels and quirks of reality, just as liquid, spilt on a rough pavement, eventually seeps into every crack and cranny. (Ideas in Action)BNC Yet here too, what qualities render the style distinctive (e.g. ‘seventeenth-century’ or ‘sinuous’) often remains unspecified in practice (cf. VI.1). 10.4.1. ‘Style is an issue of value or attitude.’ In my data samples from British and American Writers, Ameliorative Collocations like [1644-45] are far more common than for Pejorative ones like [1646-47]. [1644] Sechele conducted the prayer in his own simple and beautiful style (Dr Livingstone) [1645] a more correct and elaborate style distinguished the discourse, or at least the compositions, of the church and palace (Decline) [1646] Books are filled with trivial content and banal style, to make them ‘easier to read’. (New Scientist) [1647] A flush suffused her face for such an awkward style of presentation (Wildfell) Attested Adjectives collocating with a good ‘style’ of language included ‘fine, high, glorious, eloquent, grandiloquent, imperious, sublime’; the Nouns collocating with ‘of style’ included ‘clearness, elegance, eloquence, purity, dignity, propriety, energy, tact, graces’. The only Adjectives I found collocating with a bad ‘style’ of language were ‘haughty, mechanical, conventional, vapid, pedantic’ (these last four all in the same sentence); and no Nouns at all. 10.4.2. These proportions suggest a generally Ameliorative view of ‘style’, witness expressions like ‘stylish’ [1648], ‘with style’ [1649], or a ‘style of your own’ [1650]. [1648] Thomas Herbert was at his best reading aloud his own work and delivering stylish penetrating eisteddfodic adjudications in his memorably sonorous voice. (National Bibliography)BNC [1649] the novel speeds along — firing insults and insights with style. (Best) [1650] Eduard Bagritsky’s first poems were in imitation of the Acmeists, a literary group of the early 1900s that advocated a concrete, individualistic realism, stressing visual vividness, emotional intensity, and verbal freshness. Before long, however, he began writing in a style of his own (Odessa Web)www Some data suggest that style can be valued for helping to express ‘thought’ and ‘feeling’ [1651], especially ‘complicated’ ones in ‘simple words’ [1652]. But, like Aristotle’s distrust of ‘mere display’ [1628] (VI.5), some data suggest that a ‘brilliant style’ can also camouflage a lack of ‘knowledge’ or ‘caution’ [1653]. [1651] To use words so true and simple that they oppose no obstacle to the flow of thought and feeling from mind to mind […] is the essence of style (John Galsworthy) [1652] in the lucid style which seemed able to put complicated thought into simple words, musical and measured, he read as he might have read a novel (Human Bondage)
[1653] The work, from its powerful and brilliant style, though displaying little accurate knowledge and a great want of scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation. (On the Origin of Species) 10.5. ‘Style is conveyed by linguistic units and patterns.’ This theory seems uncontroversial if not indeed selfevident. Yet only some units and patterns will qualify as stylistic indicators (VI.10.2), i.e., the relevant ones for determining the style, such as the Figures of Speech in [1654-65]. [1654] A train horned its way northward. […] The landscape trembled by. (Butcherbird) [1655] All men were afraid in a world menaced by the invincible spiders of their own anxieties (Harmattan) Describing the Figures is a challenge I shall take up further on (VI.39-67). 10.6.1. ‘Stylistics is a field inside linguistics.’ This theory should logically follow from the previous one if linguistics is the study of linguistic units and patterns. But the discipline has tended to formulate its methods too narrowly to underwrite a general study of style. 10.6.2. Comments on style in the discourse of the more formal linguists have thus been mainly sporadic and tentative. If ‘style is a technical matter of the building and placing of words’, ‘the major characteristics of style’ are ‘inescapably’ ‘given by the language itself’; ‘these necessary fundamentals’ might ‘point the way to those stylistic developments that most suit the natural bent of the language’, such as its ‘phonetic groundwork’ and its ‘morphological peculiarities’ (Sapir). 17 In this theory, the potential style (of the language) strongly preconditions the actual style (of the text), which led the same linguist to disqualify stylistic influences between languages in the ‘semi-Latin’ of John Milton and the ‘Teutonic mannerism’ of Thomas Carlyle. Later, formal linguistics severed style from the core of language by declaring ‘the rules of stylistic reordering’ to be ‘peripheral’ matters of ‘performance’, not ‘bearing on the theory of grammatical structure’ (Chomsky). 18 10.6.3. By contrast (as usual), functional linguists expansively saw ‘style’ ‘fusing’ the ‘elements of habit, custom, tradition,’ and ‘innovation’ within ‘verbal creation’ (Firth). 19 Indeed, ‘there are no regions of language in which style does not reside’; the ‘central problem in the study of style’ is ‘determining whether any particular instance of linguistic prominence’ ‘is significant’ and ‘motivated’ (Halliday).20 A ‘prominent’ ‘feature’ is ‘foregrounded only if it relates to the meaning of the text as whole’; it may function either as ‘a departure from a norm’ or as ‘an attainment or establishment of a norm’. 20 The ‘deterministic concept’ of ‘deviation’, which focussed ‘great deal of attention’ on ‘ungrammatical forms’ ‘prohibited by rules’ (VI10.11.1), is ‘of very limited interest in stylistics’. 20 10.6.4. Thus, the prospects for integrating stylistics seem brightest for functional linguistics, defining style as a key factor in the dialectical relation between the actual, represented by authentic data, and the potential, represented by Lexicogrammar, Prosody, and Visuality. Aristotelian criteria like ‘familiar’ and ‘strange’ could be clarified by reference to representative corpora, if possible intuitively sorted for their style, such as ‘epic poetry’ (cf. VI.10.8.1ff). 10.7.1. ‘Stylistics is a field inside literary studies.’ This contrasting theory holds the advantage over linguistic s of claiming a longer and more prolific tradition in studying the ‘style’ of literary works and authors, who naturally work to achieve an individual style. If the purview of linguistics has been distinctly narrow, that of literary studies has been distinctly broad, deploying numerous and diffuse terms for designating a particular ‘style’: [1656] In the field of literary writing, […] the term [style] has been applied to the linguistic habits of a particular writer
, [or] to the way language is used in a particular genre, period, school of writing, or some combination of these: ‘epistolary style’, ‘early eighteenth-century style’, ‘euphuistic style’, ‘the style of Victorian novels’. (Style in Fiction)21 [1657] it was written in Eliot’s early style: pleasing, pungent and persuasive. (T.S. Eliot) The really tough challenge awaits in relating these terms to particular linguistic features, e.g., to those rendering a style ‘pungent’ (cf. VI.1). 10.7.2. The uncertain status of ‘style’ indicated by diffuse terms reflects the generally hybrid organisation of literary studies as a wide-ranging project for acculturation (II.197; VI.10.2). Close attention to language and text must share the agenda with the mediation of culture, history, and biography, three domains whose impact on literary works might foster innumerable forms. If literature is a discourse domain wherein the principle of ‘alternativity’ creates alternative worlds to enhance our understanding of our own world (cf. II.175, 182, 191), poetry skillfully applies the same principle to language, whereby the author is all the more motivated to master a distinctive style. In exchange, the relation remains problematic between the style of the literary text and the reality of the author, the more so for authors who recreate themselves as a literary character with a distinctive ‘life style’ too. 10.7.3. As literature evolves through a vast plurality of styles, the potential for fresh innovation is steadily narrowed, at least insofar as imitation is not highly regarded. The historical irony of English literature lies in the early emergence of its unsurpassed (and unsurpassable) masters of style, casting their daunting shadows upon every later stylist who might try write ‘in the style of’ Shakespeare or Milton. 10.8.1. Style’ distinguishes a literary genre’. This theory seems reasonable for some cases, notably the ‘epic style’, as memorably developed by Milton: [1658] Of Man’s First Disobedience […] Sing, Heav’nly Muse, that on the secret top Of Oreb, or of Sinai, didst inspire That Shepherd, who first taught the chosen Seed, In the Beginning how the Heav’ns and Earth Rose out of Chaos: […] I thence Invoke thy aid to my adventrous Song, That with no middle flight intends to soar Above th’ Aonian Mount, while it pursues Things unattempted yet in Prose or Rhyme. (Paradise Lost) In twin series of stylistic indicators, strategic cultural icons oscillate between pagan (‘Muse’, ‘Aonian Mount,’ i.e., Mount Helicon, mythical home of the Muses) and Christian (‘Oreb’ and ‘Sinai’, mountains where Moses was inspired by God’s miracles), to augur a synthesis of ‘Classical’ and ‘Biblical’ cultural and religious traditions. Further indicators reside in the grammatical complexity with its multiple dependencies among the Clauses, which lends the flow a prosodic solemnity for a discourse proposing no less a mission than to ‘justify the ways of God to men’.
10.8.2. Comparative stylistics would be quick to point out that Milton’s epic style, ostensibly for ‘things unattempted yet’, was anticipated by the style of Virgil’s Aeneid. There, the ‘muse’ was famously invoked to aid ‘singing’ of quite different heroics but with similar stylistic indicators such as cultural icons of historical places and a grammatical complexity in Latin that Milton admired and partially emulated. (All ‘epic’ translations in this section are my own.) [1659] Arma virumque cano, Troiae qui primus ab oris Italiam, fato profugus, Laviniaque venit litora […] Musa, mihi causas memora, quo numine laeso, quidve dolens, regina deum tot volvere casus insignem pietate virum, tot adire labores impulerit. [Arms and the man I sing, who first from the coast of Troy came to Italy, exiled by fate, and to the shores of Lavinia. […] Muse, recount me the causes: how offended majesty, or what angered, the queen of the gods impelled to undergo so many misfortunes a man distinguished for piety, to endure so many labours. From there we would acknowledge Homer (both of him), who tersely invoked the ‘muse’ or ‘goddess’ at the start of the Iliad [1661] and the Odyssey [1662]. [1660] mênin aeide thea Pêlêïadeô Achilêos oulomenên, hê muri Achaios alge ethêke [Sing, O goddess, the anger of Achilles, son of Peleus, that brought countless ills upon the Achaeans] [1661] andra moi ennepe, mousa, poluptropon, hos mala polla planchthê, epei Troiês hieron ptoliethron epersen […] tôn hamothen ge, thea, thugater Dios, eipe kai hêmin. [Tell me, muse, of that much-travelled hero who exceedingly far wandered after he had ravaged the famous city of Troy. […] From whatsoever source, goddess, daughter of Zeus, tell those things. Projecting forward again to the 16 th century, the epic style of Luis Vaz de Camões betrays the same lineage, but with the pungent irony of bidding the song of the ‘ancient muse’ about ‘great voyages’ to cease and attend to ‘greater merit’. [1662] As armas e os barões assinalados, Que da ocidental praia Lusitana,
Por mares nunca de antes navegados Passaram ainda além da Taprobana […] E também as memórias gloriosas Daqueles Reis; […] Cantando espalharei por toda parte, Se a tanto me ajudar o engenho e arte. […] Cessem do sábio Grego e do Troiano As navegações grandes que fizeram; […] Cesse tudo o que a Musa antígua canta, Que outro valor mais alto se alevanta. (Os Lusíadas) [The arms and the distinguished barons That from the western shore of Lusitania [ancient name for Portugal] Through seas never before navigated Passed even beyond Taprobana [ancient name for Sri Lanka] […] And also the glorious memories of those kings […] Singing I shall spread everywhere If so much will aid me genius and art. […] Cease of the wise Greek and the Trojan The great navigations they made; Cease all that the ancient muse sings, For other, higher merit has arisen.] An ‘interlingual style’ like the ‘epic’ indicates how a comparative stylistics might offset the usual compartmentalisation of ‘literature programmes’ (VI.10.1.2). 10.9.1. ‘Stylistics should be objective, not subjective.’ This theory reflects the general ambitions of ‘classical science’ (in the sense of I.81) reapplied to language studies and linguistics, and periodically to literary studies. Applying it to stylistics as well has encouraged a recourse to statistics; 22 yet by substituting quantity for quality, statistics is not well equipped to distinguish which of the counted items are stylistic indicators. When Aristotle stressed the infrequent (‘rare’) choices ‘raised above’ the frequent (‘commonplace’) (VI.2), he was probably thinking of the proportions in general usage. A specific author or text might associate frequency with consistency, and infrequency with creativity, but the style is still not described. 10.9.2. A tougher problem is that stylistic indicators are often not single items but combinations and patterns whose frequency is uniformly low and thus look much the same in statistical terms, such as Shakespeare’s ‘to be imprisoned in the viewless winds’ (Measure for Measure) or ‘whose high upreared and abutting fronts the
perilous narrow ocean parts asunder’(Henry V). The apparent simplicity and objectivity of numbers hinder them from capturing the complex and subjective phenomenon of style — they’re the smoke, not the fire. 10.9.3. Moreover, statistics discounts the crucial factor of audience response to style. 23 In The Two Noble Kinsmen, a play of mixed authorship, my intuitive response is that [1663] (pleading for the Duke to give the ‘slain kings’ a proper burial, a ‘grace’ even granted to suicides) is by Shakespeare, whilst [1664] (pleading for the audience not to ‘hiss’ the play, whose ‘story’ came from Chaucer) is definitely not. [1663] Remember that your fame Knolls in the ear o’ the world: […] your actions, Soon as they move, as ospreys do the fish, Subdue before they touch: think, dear Duke, think What beds our slain Kings have. […] Those that with cords’, knives’, drams’ precipitance Weary of this world’s light, have to themselves Been death’s most horrid agents, humane grace Affords them dust and shadow. (I, 1, 133-34, 137-38, 141-44) [1664] Chaucer (of all admir’d) the Story gives, There constant to Eternity it lives. If we let fall the Nobleness of this, And the first sound this child hear, be a hiss, How will it shake the bones of that good man, And make him cry from under ground, ‘O fan From me the witless chaff of such a writer…’ (Prologue, 13-19) My response to both samples is based on prosodic flow, and on lexicogrammatical combinations which are statistically insignificant in my complete corpus of Shakespeare plays, but which are creative in the one sample (e.g. ‘knolls in the ear’) and trite in the other (e.g. ‘hear a hiss’). 10.10.1. ‘Stylistics should be descriptive rather than evaluative’. This theory is a less ambitious correlate of the preceding call for objectivity, and reflects the aspiration of ‘general linguistics’ to establish a science by opposing its descriptive stance to the more traditional evaluative stances (cf. II.38). Yet the close correlate of favouring the description of the most general or even universal aspects of language is hardly conducive to studies of style. 10.10.2. Within the ambience of formal linguistics, descriptive stylistics has predictably been concerned with measuring the proportions of word-classes or clause types, the length or syntactic complexity of clauses and sentences, and, as already noted, the statistical frequencies of individual words. Such research could (and did) confirm — small surprise — that Edward Gibbon’s style is far more complex than Ernest Hemingway’s, 24 but
could not explain why I find Gibbon’s prose stimulating and Hemingway’s tiresome (perhaps because as a teenager I was reading the polished histories of Tacitus, Suetonius, and James Henry Breasted). Nor could it explain how I single out ‘authentic’ Shakespeare inside a play of mixed authorship [1663-64]. Such explanations presuppose being able to show how descriptive categories like ‘frequent’ and ‘infrequent’, or ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ influence how audiences actually evaluate styles. Evidently, I value the infrequent and complex aspects of style more than do the devotees and epigones of Mr Hemingway, who might find them insufficiently macho. 10.11.1. ‘Style is the interplay between norm and deviation’. 25 This theory was also inspired by formal linguistics, though it may sound reminiscent of Aristotle’s counsel that ‘by deviating in exceptional cases from the normal idiom, the language will gain distinction’ (Poetics, 9,4). The analogy from linguistics seems to have been the interplay between ‘grammatical’ versus ‘ungrammatical’ (cf. VI.10.6.4); yet the latter term designates utterances which simply don’t occur, such as ‘sincerity may virtue the boy’ (II.78), and which are accordingly uninformative about issues of style. 10.11.2. Again, the reticence of linguistics about evaluation incurs problems. Obviously, various modes of deviance may have quite disparate stylistic value (or none), nor can value simply increase along with degrees of deviance. Compare:26 [1665] It dropped so low — in my Regard — I heard it hit the Ground — And go to pieces on the Stones At bottom of my Mind — Yet blamed the fate that flung it — less Than I denounced myself For entertaining Plated Wares Upon my Silver Shelf. (Emily Dickinson) [1666] All the sun long it was running, it was lovely the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And the fire green as grass. (Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill) [1667] my father moved through dooms of love through sames of am through haves of give, singing each morning out of each night my father moved through depths of height (e.e. cummings) [1665] is normal in Grammar and mildly deviant in the Lexicon, making abstractions concrete in a self-reproach about an undeservedly noble (‘silver’) esteem for something superficial (‘plated’) — what it was, we are free to imagine. [1666] deviates mildly in Grammar: perhaps ‘sun’ for ‘sunny day’, ‘it’ for ‘childhood activities’;
‘green fire’ for the glow of ‘watery’ dew on the ‘grass’. [1667] deviates most strenuously, but rather gratuitously, like a riddle to be unscrambled to reveal humdrum content, e.g.: ‘my father’s fate was to be loved throughout a stable and generous lifetime; greeting each morning after each night, my father lived to make depths seem like heights’. But what makes me personally hold Dylan Thomas to be the foremost English poet of the 20th century is not any list of deviations but the total effect of the Lexicogrammar, the sonorous Prosody of his recorded recitations, and the measured Visuality of the lines and stanzas. 10.11.3. By contrast, a passage like [1668] doesn’t seem deviant, but would in respect to the norms of poetry as invoked by other lines in the same text like [1669]. [1668] My nerves are bad to-night. Yes, bad. Stay with me. Speak to me. (T.S. Eliot, The Wasteland) [1669] The river’s tent is broken: the last fingers of leaf Clutch and sink into the wet bank. The wind Crosses the brown land, unheard. (same) Far more deviant, in my view, is the text’s literal and peremptory expropriation from other texts, some in foreign languages; a more apt title for The Wasteland might have been The Jumble Sale or Hypocrite Auteur. 10.11.4. Extreme deviance may produce a style too strenuous to bear, viz.: [1670] Many mellow Cydonian suckets Sweet apples, anthosmial, divine From ruby-rimmed beryline buckets Star-gemmed, lily-shaped, hyaline Like the sweet golden goblet found growing On the wild emerald cucumber-tree Rich, brilliant, like chrysoprase glowing, Was my beautiful Rosalie Lee (Thomas Chivers) This deservedly obscure 19 th-century US poet might be suspected of audacious parody, if his (unpublished) volumes did not bear such languishing titles as Phials of Amber Full of the Tears of Love. 27 Rosalie Lee — fittingly rhymes with ‘fiddle-dee-dee’ — or some parts of her, reminded the impassioned speaker of Lebanese pastries (‘Cydonian suckets’ => Sidonian sweetmeats, i.e., from Sidon, a city in ancient Phoenicia, now Lebanon) and ‘sweet apples’ by the bucketful — and what opulent ‘buckets’! Made of emeralds (‘beryline’), ‘rimmed’ with ‘rubies’, ‘gemmed’ with ‘stars’, ‘shaped’ like ‘lilies’ (sloppy to pour, though), ‘glowing’ like ‘chrysoprase’… You see my point. She was a regular pail-faced Tiffany’s. 10.12. ‘Style results from the interplay of unmarked and marked’. This theory is a functionalist correlate of the theory of deviance, but with an incisive difference. Marked choices need not be deviant nor infrequent; they are chosen for strategic motives, whereas unmarked ones are chosen when no such motive applies (VI.14). In [1671], both the Direct and Indirect Objects of the Imperative ‘bring’ are Fronted in marked positions; and
‘shadows brown’ might be something more to ‘bring’, but is more coherent as another melancholy destination for the sun’s ‘beams’. [1671] His flaring beams, me, Goddess, bring To arched walks of twilight groves, And shadows brown, that Sylvan loves Of pine, or monumental oak (Il Penseroso) Whereas ‘deviance’ suggests an event violating or falling outside the system, ‘markedness’ suggests an event refreshing or flexing the system. 10.13.1. ‘Style should be explicitly developed’. Here at last, theory is resolutely allied with practice; but so far, the practices are running ahead of a creditable theory. For example, some advice on ‘style’ tells you to avoid repeating the same words, whereas other advice warns against what H.W. Fowler, beefeater guardian of The King’s English, famously spurned as ‘elegant variation’, which ‘includes all substitutions of one word for another for the sake of variety’. Neither advice will do for all cases: for me [1672] is better style with repetitions, and [1673] without them. [1672] It seems that the woman was a young woman, a revengeful woman; revengeful to the last degree. (Great Expectations) [1672a] It seems that the woman was revengeful female; retaliatory to the last degree. [1673] A downloading in InfoWorld)
a
young maiden,
uploader enhances the enhancements of
and
and
a
a
jealous woman,
jealous lady,
the enhanced protocols
and
and
a
(XERCOM
[1673a] A downloading uploader upgrades the enhancements of the improved protocols 10.13.2. Little help can be expected from the ham-fisted advice on ‘style’ from word-processors like Microsoft WORD. They just rehash the worn-out biases against ‘first person’, ‘passive’, ‘colloquialisms’, and, dear me, yes, ‘sentences beginning with “and”, “but”, and “hopefully”‘ (cf. II.15, 19). The ‘wordiness’ flag is triggered only by stock Phrases, e.g., proposing to reduce ‘actual fact’ to ‘fact’. ‘Unclear phrasing’ was not triggered by ‘my father moved through dooms of love through sames of am’ [1667]! 10.13.3. The unsystematic teaching of ‘style’ is memorably documented by the hugely popular minitextbook Elements of Style (two million copies sold of the first edition alone). 28 Its ‘elementary principles of composition’ offer the usual counsel: ‘active voice’, unity of ‘tense’, ‘definite specific concrete language’, ‘coordinate ideas in similar forms’ (i.e. parallelism), ‘emphatic words at the end of the sentence’, and (ahem) the use of the masculine pronouns ‘embracing both genders’ as a ‘simple practical convention’ which ‘has lost all suggestion of maleness’. But then it wanders off into the threadbare laundry list of ‘misused words’: innocuous expressions are condemned as ‘redundant’, ‘ambiguous’, ‘hackneyed’, ‘feeble’, ‘unconvincing’, ‘pretentious’, etc. etc. Some proscriptions frankly puzzle me, e.g., against ‘factor’, ‘feature’, ‘student body’; ‘insightful’, ‘meaningless’, ‘prestigious’, ‘ongoing’; ‘personally’, ‘currently’, ‘importantly’, ‘respectively’. Predictably though, ‘hopefully’ is spurned as ‘wrong’, ‘silly’, and ‘nonsense’ that ‘offends the ear’. ‘Like’ for ‘the conjunction “as”’ is ‘widely misused by the illiterate’ and even the ‘well-informed’; but ‘if every word or device that achieved currency were immediately authenticated’, ‘the language would be as chaotic as a ball
game with no foul lines’. No suggestion was made how to determine usage except from ‘currency’, nor how to draw the ‘foul lines’. 10.13.4. After the first author of this handbook has adjudicated what is not ‘correct or acceptable in the use of English’, the second author takes up ‘style in the sense of what is distinguished and distinguishing’. The tone grows wistful and apologetic: ‘here we leave solid ground’; ‘these are high mysteries’; ‘there is no satisfactory explanation of style’. Most of the advice seems to me sound enough and resembles my own practices, such as ‘revise and rewrite’; ‘be clear’; ‘do not overwrite’ or ‘overstate’; and ‘avoid fancy words’. The repeated referrals to a ‘matter of ear, a matter of reading the books that sharpen the ear’ justly highlight the role of Prosody that some language guardians mistrust (V.41). 10.13.5 The provision of solid ground and the solution to such high mysteries is evidently on the cards for the doughty National Curriculum English, whose brisk optimism I cited for ‘complete sentences’ and ‘appropriate language’ (II.125, 130). By the age of 16 (when the Curriculum ends), pupils will have been taught to command impressive skills [1674-76] and apply them to at least seventeen distinct ‘forms’ [1677] — some rather literary and unlikely to be relevant to later life. [1674] Pupils should be taught to explain how choice of language and style affects implied and explicit meanings [1675] Pupils should be encouraged […] to develop their own distinctive and original styles [1676] Pupils` writing [will] show control of a range of styles maintaining the interest of the reader throughout. [1677] The range of forms in which they write should be extensive, eg notes, diaries, personal letters, formal letters, chronological accounts, reports, pamphlets, reviews, essays, advertisements, newspaper articles, biography, autobiography, poems, stories, playscripts, screenplays. (their italics) In contrast, the ‘audiences’ and ‘readers’ who shall be interested’ by this multifarious output sound quaintly limited or vague: mainly ‘their teacher’, their ‘friends’, ‘peers’, and ‘family’, and ‘themselves’, plus (inaccessible) ‘imagined audiences’ and ‘large, unknown readerships’. The Curriculum tacitly credits all these people with the high literate skills to appreciate and respond, provided of course they contrive to read it all — a sanguine hope if the Curriculum was devised in the first place to remedy a public lack of skills. Incontestably, England (and Wales) expects that every teacher and learner will do their duty. 10.13.6. I combed the Curriculum in vain for practical specifics on how pupils are supposed to acquire such stylistic virtuosity. All I could find was an apparent reliance on ‘reading’ and ‘responding to styles’ [1678], as if imitation can do the job (II.183). Otherwise, sophisticated results are airily mandated without stipulating the means [1679-80]. [1678] Pupils should be given opportunities to read a wide variety of literature, and to respond to the substance and style of texts. [1679] Pupils should be taught to distinguish tone, undertone [not overtone too?], implications, and other indicators of a speaker’s intentions. [1680] They should be encouraged to write for aesthetic and imaginative purposes; to inform others through instruction, explanation, argument, narration, reportage, description, persuasion and paraphrase; to develop thinking through review, analysis, hypothesis, recollection, and summary.
This Curriculum shares the premature optimism, endemic to language education, of supposing that curricular content is indeed teachable and learnable (II.184), despite mountainous evidence to the contrary. 11. On the whole, the success of modern studies of style and of stylistics remains hard to assess, due to uncertainties about its academic home and status, its methods, and its goals. 29 By comparison, the ancient studies seem refreshingly adventurous, and certainly fostered illustrious stylists. Those times did not carry the ballast of centuries of the fastidious and pedantic meddling visited upon modern English. Regaled with inane demands for conformity and correctness, many speakers of today, and far more the writers, have been rendered self-conscious and fidgety about using their language in public, much less ‘developing their own distinctive and original styles’. Another grievous waste of human potential (cf. I.56, 62).
VI.D Stylistic Parameters 12. If language is an eminently practical theory about how the world of human knowledge and experience is organised (I.35), then style is a still more practice-driven theory about how particular views of the world and of the discourse participants can be mediated by motivated sets of language choices. Influential Stylistic Parameters have the function of winnowing down the plausible choices and proposing ways for cohesion and coherence to crystallise. They aim at taking account of the motives of the text producer and the response of the receiver, such as projecting a ‘verbal image’ that comes across as ‘likeability’ or ‘personal attractiveness’ (VI.19). 13. My review of these Parameters will draw together factors that have in the main variously appeared earlier in this book in discussions of the triad of Lexicogrammar, Prosody, and Visuality, so my treatment here might resemble a modest a wrap-up. Whereas Lexicogrammatical Parameters are more discrete (e.g.. Affirmative or Negative; Present or Past), Stylistic Parameters tend to be more scalar (more or less Weight; smoother or rougher Flow), and Prosody falls in between (e.g. Strong Stress or Weak Stress; Front Weight, Mid Weight, or End Weight). 14. We have repeatedly noticed the Parameter of Markedness applying to options chosen for a distinct motive (cf. III.82ff; VI.10.12).30 For Polarity, the plain Affirmative is least marked [1681] and the emphatic more marked [1682]; the plain Negative [1683] is more marked than the plain Affirmative, and the multiple Negative is still more marked [1684]. Perhaps the most marked is the trendy Negative tacking on ‘not’ in its own Tone Group after an Affirmative Clause [1685-86]. [1681] I want money for the trip to Amsterdam (Van Gogh) [1682] ‘I do want money’, he says with conviction (Crow’s Calling)www [1683] ‘I don’t want money’, said Tony. ‘I want the piano’. (Piano) [1684] ‘I don’t want no money from you’, said Linda, ‘I don’t trust yer’ (Sergeant Joe) [1685] We caught a night bus to Ipoh, arriving at 04:30, très compos mentis (not!) (Jodie)www [1686] One awaits the geriatric Techno of the next century with interest. Not. (NME) For Degree, the Positive is least marked [1687] and the doubled Superlative is the most marked [1688]. [1687] He is a handsome man: tall, fair, with blue eyes, and a Grecian profile. (Eyre)
[1688] he is the most handsomest man I ever saw in my life. (Jones) For Tenses, the least marked are the Simple Present for a continuing State [1689] or a habitual Action [1690], and the Simple Past for a single Action [1691]. The more marked Tenses are the more complex ones like the Future Successive [1692] (cf. III.85). [1689] Our Lord is alive. He lives and all is well. (I Believe) [1690] Tony snores all the time. (conversation)BNC [1691] Biff snorted. (Twist of Fate) [1692] This hotmail-clone will be going to have many more security features. (HOTCLONE)www For Transitivity, the Active and Passive are least marked for a distinctly Dispositive Action in a simple Clause [1693-94]. Markedness can be raised either by elaborating the Circumstances [1695-96] or by formatting something as a Dispositive that does not qualify, such as Emotions [1697-98]. [1693] Flying cow wrecks car. (Today) [1694] I was hit by a flying cow. (Shaun Robinson in Today) [1695] On the very first lap, Darell Waltrip unexpectedly hit the brakes hard in front of Burton and caused significant front-end nose damage to the Caterpillar #22 Pontiac. (Peoria Trader) [1696] Mr Major was hit by an egg thrown from close range by a young man shouting about unemployment with such force that it cut Mr Major’s right cheek, splattered his glasses and dribbled down his dark blue suit. (Daily Telegraph) [1697] Yui blinked away unwanted tears as a new wave of deep sadness and heartbreak hit her bllindside. (Xenogears)www [1698] That new life had barely begun however when the family’s Australian adventure was hit by heartbreak. (Daily Telegraph) The Medial is unmarked as an everyday Attribute or bodily Enactment [1699-1700]. More marked options format the same as if it were Active [1701] or Passive [1702], or have an Agent that would be incapable of the Enactment [1703-04]. [1699] Our house is ugly! (Ex-Etiquette)www [1700] He laughed and hiccupped. (Alteration)www [1701] ‘The Shadow knows’, the voice said, and laughed a laugh that clabbered milk. (Blackout)www [1702] The last good laughs were laughed with Monty Python’s Flying Circus (Bast-wood)www [1703] The path that I walked seemed to laugh at me as I struggled on (Mylander)www [1704] Jo was raised on a sandhill that shook whenever the San Andreas Fault hiccupped. (Jo Clayton)www For Clause Types, the plain Declarative is the least marked [1705], and the Exclamatory more so [1706], whereas some versions of the Optative sound quite marked to us today [1707]. [1705] I sleep now in eternal rest (California Peace Officers Memorial)www
[1706] What a sleep it was, content, peaceful and so happy to be alive! (Jodie) www [1707] Sleep dwell upon thine eyes, peace in thy breast! Would I were sleep and peace, so sweet to rest! (Romeo) 15. The unmarked order of the Declarative Clause in English has the Subject at the Front, followed by the Verb and then, if present, an Object or an Adverbial (cf. IV.15). So [1708, 1710, 1712] are unmarked, whereas the contrasting ones are Marked by fronting an Item ahead of the Subject + Verb, such as an Object [1709], or a Subject Complement as Noun Phrase [1711] or as Modifier [1713] (cf. IV.20). The fronted Item stands out and receives Strong Stress, whereas elsewhere the same Item could get Weak Stress whilst Strong Stress goes to a nearby Item, as we see from the contrasting examples displayed here. [1708] Meg had de·!sert·ed ¡him in his hour of need. (Little Women) [1709] !Him they had de·¡sert·ed, whether in sheer panic or out of revenge (Treasure) [1710] It was a ¡mea·gre !di·et: an annual dinner for Charles’s polo playing friends (Diana) [1711] I drew out my purse; a !mea·gre ¡thing it was. (Eyre) [1712] The State of Illinois, south of Chicago, is an ¡end·less !dump. (Lucker) [1713] !End·less that ¡af·ter·noon was. (Dandies) Intermediate markedness applies to a postponed Subject coming after its Verb, as in [1714-15]. This order ensures a Strong Stress for the Subject at End Weight. [1714] Forth came the !bride and !bridegroom. (Wildfell) [1715] Coming in the opposite direction was an endless !flood of !mo·tor cyclists (Belfast Telegraph) 16. As for Belief, the less marked options are plausibly the non-committal ones like Possible [1716] and Permissible [1717], whereas the more marked options are the contrary, such as Obligatory [1718] and Impermissible [1719]. [1716] Maybe they’re top mountaineers training for a Himalayan expedition (First Fifty) [1717] ‘You may go’, said the King, and the Hatter hurriedly left the court. (Alice) [1718] ‘‘I must, Ludovico — I absolutely must — speak to my aunt before we go back to the flat.’ He looked back at her and knew the strength of her will. (Woman of Style) [1719] Maxwell had insisted that he would under no circumstances take back his former employees. […] ‘Grass will grow on my hands before I consider’. (Independent) Finally, Trajectory is necessarily scalar, e.g. a Durative Process lasting a ‘short while’ [1720] as compared to an ‘eternity’ [1721]; or a Frequentive one happening ‘just two or three times’ [1722] as compared to ‘over and over’ [1723]. [1720] The rain came down in buckets, but it only lasted a short while. (PlayOutside)www [1721] He didn’t know how long they were climbing down for, but the ladder felt like it was going on for eternity. Man, was there an end to this thing? (In the Dark)www
[1722] Professional choirs rehearse just two or three times for a concert (Choir Conductor)www [1723] When this process repeats itself over and over throughout the day, week after week, month after month, year aft er year, the body is predisposed to gaining fat. (GR2 Control)www 17. The Parameter of Weight is higher for items treated as important and worthy of attention, and lower for the rest. A simple option is repetition, either right away [1724] or further on [1725]. The repeated Item may take Strong Stress each time, whether or not visual emphasis by type face is displayed as well [1725]. [1724] I am in !hor·ri·ble, !hor·ri·ble trouble, Sheila. (Return) [1725] This savant said that Mothers held back Civilization through Selfishness. It’s !fright·ful to think about, isn’t it? Simply !fright·ful! (Hermione) Many languages exploit repetition far more than English. 18. Prosody can guide Weight by assigning distinctive ‘stress’ or ‘emphasis’, usually to a Content Word, e.g., a Noun [1726] or a Modifier [1727], but sometimes to a Function Word, e.g., an Auxiliary [1728] or an Article [1729]. [1726] ‘You’re saying that !New·ley worked a double-cross?’ There was an incredulous stress on the name. ‘Not !New·ley.’ Dougal stressed the name too. (Freelance Death) [1727] ‘Rest assured that we’re !dead·ly !ser·ious.’ There was a nasty emphasis on the last words. (Destined). [1728] ‘Just how well !did you know Nicola?’ The gentle stress on the word ‘did’ made it clear Blanche expected there to be more to their relationship (Taped) [1729] ‘Did you know that Mr. Bevan was !the Mr. Bevan?’ ‘!The Mr. Bevan?’ (Damsel) Or, Weight can increase by making the Tone Groups short and thus raising the incidence of Strong Stresses [1730]. Here too, repetition can serve [1731]. [1730] There is no recession, my friends. No !down·turn. No hard !times. wallowing in the loot they’ve accumulated in the past two decades… (Stupid White Men)
The
rich
are
[1731] ‘!Oh! !nev·er, !nev·er, !nev·er! he !nev·er will succeed with me.’ And she spoke with a warmth which quite astonished Edmund. (Mansfield) Interjections attain their Higher Weight by placing Strong Stress on Items of short Length [1732-33] (cf. IV.98). Some have in fact been shortened over time, perhaps to sound less blasphemous, e.g. ‘God blind me’ => ‘blimey’ [1734]; ‘God’s wounds’ => ‘zounds’ [1735]; ‘God rot’ => ‘drat’ [1736]. [1732] Me? Pinch wallets? !Cri·key, what an insult. (Sergeant Joe) [1733] ‘Ian Paisley — !ugh!’ she said with feeling. She had a nice line in ‘ughs’. (Jaunting) [1734] !Bli·mey, he even looks older than me and that’s saying something. (Liverpool Echo) [1735] ‘To tell you plainly, we have been afraid of a son of a whore.’ […] ‘Why, !zounds!’ (Jones) [1736] ‘Oh !drat!’ said Clare. ‘I left my umbrella under the seat.’ (Picturegoers)
19. Visuality can guide Weight by orthographic means [1737-38] (V.32), or by a short Tone Group placed in a separate paragraph [1739-40]. [1737] All these ballots violated Florida law yet they all were counted. Can I say this any louder? Bush didn’t win! Gore did! (Stupid White Men) [1738] Whether I’m in Texas or Florida, when I hear the words Governor Bush, I instinctively respond with a ‘STOP HIM!’ (same) [1739] What state was it that offered Jeb and George a helping hand by sending this bogus list to Florida? Texas. (same) [1740] One testing-company CEO told a gathering of Wall Street analysts that Bush’s education law ‘reads like our business plan’. No surprise. (Bushwhacked) 20. Lexical contributions to Weight can be made with contrasting choices: [1741] Lady Dedlock […] fell not into the !melt·ing, but rather into the !freez·ing, mood. (Bleak House) [1742] the Bellman, perplexed and distressed, said he had hoped, at least, when the wind blew due !East, that the ship would not travel due !West! (Snark) Or, Weight falls on uncommon lexical choices, e.g., the Modifiers in ‘a canary-headed woman’ [1743] or ‘a fish-mouthed woman’ [1744], as compared to the ‘good woman’ or ‘kind woman’(in whom almost ‘no one’ was ‘interested’) [1745]. [1743] her ladyship was a canary-headed woman, and given to flights and tantrums (Parish) [1744] She was a fish-mouthed woman with a hard eye, and as I told my errand her mouth grew fishier and the eye harder. (O’Hara) [1745] She was a good woman, a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka her ten-yearold, was at all interested in her (Babbitt) Similarly, the Weight may go to an unpredictable choice of Object for a common Verb, as when a spaniel with pricey tastes ‘eats’ the family’s ‘money’ [1746], or ‘patients drink’ a yucky medication by the ‘bottle’ [1747], as compared to prosaic-ally ‘eating dinner’ [1748], or ‘drinking a toast’ (after ‘standing and raising your glasses’, no less) [1749]. The placement of Strong and Weak Stresses reflects the difference in Weight. [1746] I couldn’t believe it when Bonnie ate the !mon·ey. […] she once ate a £35 !cheque. (Daily Mirror) [1747] Patients drank a bottle of magnesium !cit·rate each night (Gut) [1748] They ate their ¡din·ner in silent !gloom (Who, Sir?) [1749] stand and raise your glasses and drink a ¡toast to the ¡health of your !hosts (Wedding) Unpredictable too are facetious shifts among Collocations lending incompatible senses to the same Verb [1750], a usage sometimes called ‘syllepsis’.
[1750] In the morning Turpin would take bromo-seltzer, his hat, no breakfast and his departure for the office. At noon Mrs. Turpin would get out of bed and humour, put on a kimono, airs, and the water for coffee. (Whirligigs) Least predictable of all are pointedly unprecedented choices [1751-53]. [1751] He placed his fist, in the mathematical centre of the table, and with it gave a bump or two, as if to ensure that their eyes took in the idea of fistiness (Madding Crowd) [1752] Its low-pitched gables and thatched roof and latticed windows give it quite a story-book appearance, while inside it is even still more once-upon-a-timeyfied. (Three Men) [1753] Having just shelled out for yet another year’s subscription to fabbo Guitarist magazine, I was raisyeyebrowed to see the ‘Postscript’ (Guitarist ) 21. Grammatical and Prosodic contributions can be made by organising Clauses in respect to the placement of Weight. Since the unmarked choice for the Statement or Declarative Clause is End Weight, with a Certain Strong Stress on an Item at or near the End (cf. IV.15; VI.15), this can be heightened by placing contrasting items like ‘alligator’ and ‘crocodile’ [1754]; or by using Frames to describe the intense Weight in Communicative Processes [1755-56], possibly tapping the Visuality of gesture as well [1757]. [1754] I will no longer be housekeeper if you don’t send away that !al·li·ga·tor.’ ‘It’s a !croc·o·dile.’ (Dolittle) [1755] Father appeared at the top of the stairs. ‘Andrew!’ he shouted in that horrible voice which means you’re supposed to do what he says instantly. (English Crime) [1756] ‘That’s what Jagulars always do’, said Pooh. ‘They call “Help! Help!” and then when you look up, they drop on you.’ ‘I’m looking !down’, cried Piglet loudly (Pooh) [1757] ‘Those facts and circumstances, gentlemen, you shall hear […] proved by the unimpeachable female whom I will place in that !box before you.’ Here Mr Serjeant Buzfuz, with a tremendous emphasis on the word ‘box’, smote his table with a mighty sound. (Pickwick) 22. One marked version of the Declarative to guide the assignment of Weight is called a Cleft Pattern, because what might be one Clause gets ‘cleft’ (split) into two Clauses (III.57). In the ‘it’-Cleft Pattern, the first part has the Circumstantial Dummy Pronoun ‘it’ as the Subject of the Verb ‘be’ and a Subject Complement upon which a Relative Clause introduced by ‘who’, ‘when’, ‘where’, and so on depends in the second part. Whilst the unstressed Subject and Verb have very Low Weight, End Weight and Strong Stress enhance the Weight of the Subject Complement, e.g., a Human [1758], a Time [1759], or a Place [1760]. [1758] He was dressed like an American, it was !she who looked English (So Very English) [1759] It was 4:30 a.!m. when I finally said my farewell to the French family (Invasion) [1760] It was in !Ed·in·burgh where boardroom manoeuvring was at its most intriguing. (Hampden Babylon) In the ‘what’-Cleft Pattern, ‘what’ can lead off almost like a Question-Word (suggesting somebody wanted to know), followed by the Subject and Pro-Verb ‘do’, then ‘be’ plus an Infinitive (with or without ‘to’) for an Action; in effect, the first Clause gets Framed like the Subject of the entire Sentence. This Option announces an Action being ‘done’ before specifying it, and the brief suspense lends it more Weight; yet End Weight tends to put Strong Stress on the Target of the Action and assigns Weak Stress to the Action Verb [1761-62].
[1761] What tolerance does is to im·¡part spiritual !in·sight (Philosophy of Gandhi) [1762] In good business, what you do is ¡raise the !mon·ey and then ¡start the !proj·ect. (Country Living) Alternately, ‘what’ can be the Subject of a Verb like ‘happen’ by a Dependent Clause [1763], or (less often) ‘occur’ or ‘take place’ with a Participle [1764-65].
followed
[1763] What happened was I sent away a letter to the Essex Police Force. (Stranger’s Trust) [1764] What occurred was the deepening of its concepts to include racial and hereditary factors. (Dangerous Sexualities) [1765] What took place was a widening and deepening of consumption so that goods previously confined to the wealthier classes came to be purchased next by the middle-income ranks and then, to some degree, by the lower. (Vital Century) 23. The Parameter of Flow centres on the Prosodic Parameters of Stress (stronger and weaker), Pitch (higher and lower), Volume (louder and softer), and Pace (slower and faster) (IV.5), and above all on the placement of Stresses and Pauses. It has mainly been noted for poetry, though in my schooling we only heard about the alternation between ‘stressed’ and ‘unstressed’. Just two options would create a flat sing-song patter, say, for reciting a light-hearted limerick like [1766], with ‘round’ oddly unstressed, then stressed. Higher-quality poetry manifests a varying Flow and distinguishes between Strong and Weak Stress, as in Shake-spearean sonnets like the stanza in [1767]. [1766] There !was an Old !La·dy of !Chert·sey, | Who !made a re·!mark·a·ble !curt·sey; || She !twirled round and !round, | Till she !sunk un·der·!ground, | Which dis·!tressed all the !peo·ple of !Cher·tsey. (Edward Lear) [1767] !Wear·y with ¡toil, I ¡haste me to my !bed, | The ¡dear re·!pose for !limbs with !trav·el ¡tired, || But ¡then be·¡gins a !jour·ney ¡in my !head To !work my !mind, | when !bod·y’s ¡work’s ex·!pired. (Sonnet XXVII) Low Weight for Predictability counsels Weak Stress on ‘toil’, ‘tired’, and ‘work’s’. 24. The Flow of prose has received far less attention than it merits, It is not fully regular and prefers an unmarked Prosody with Stressed Syllables occurring at approximately similar intervals, whether they are separated by one, two, or three Unstressed Syllables; the greater the number, the faster they tend to be spoken (IV.11).31 This tendency has led some sources to call English a ‘stress-timed language’, as opposed to a ‘syllable-timed’ one.32 25. In a deliberate style, an even Flow moves nicely along, as in [1768], allowing for an occasional brief Pause | or a longer Pause ||, and not bunching up either Stressed or Unstressed Syllables.
[1768] ¡For to be !i·dle || ¡is to be·¡come a !stran·ger ¡unto the !sea·sons, || and step ¡out of !life’s pro·!ces·sion | that !march·es in !maj·es·ty and ¡proud sub·!mis·sion ¡toward the !in·fin·ite. (Prophet) An uneven flow does not provide for Pauses, and bunches up either the Stressed Syllables, as in [1769], where the Pace gets slowed down and sounds ponderous; or else the Unstressed Syllables, as in [1770], where the Pace gets speeded up and sounds mumbled. Still, both options for bunching can be exploited for special effects, e.g. to project ‘force’ about the repudiation of tyranny [1771], sarcasm about a parade of foppish actions for the love-sick Lord Berowne [1772], or a profusion of verbosity from ‘journalists’ [1773]. [1769] There is a ¡big ¡old !hump-¡necked !herd !bull ¡right in the middle of his wives and children. (Saigon) [1770] It was recognised that the exclusive pursuit of higher things was very ¡like·ly to be un·re·!mun·er·a·tive ex·¡cept in ¡cer·tain of the more ¡sale·a·ble !arts. (Age of Capital) [1771] The people are mightier than a lord, and […] we — !can — !not — !be — !put — !down.’ Each of the words came out separately with the force of an oak peg hammered into a hole. (Cameron) [1772] Well, I will !love, !write, !sigh, !pray, !sue, and !groan (Love’s Labour Lost) [1773] The journalists […] can more solemnly be said to be practising a modern art of indirection, of the ¡un·in·!tel·li·gi·ble and the in·!ter·min·a·ble (Authors) Such effects should be used in moderation lest they sound obtrusive or ostentatious. 26. Flow can interact with Markedness in the Lexicogrammar for an Item in a marked position, e.g., a Modifier after its Noun with a Strong Stress and a Pause [1774] versus ahead of it with Weak Stress and no Pause [1775]. [1774] Then he worked back down one of the nearly parallel ranges that lie out desertward — a lonely, inhospitable land, | !beau·ti·ful, terrible. (Little Rain) [1775] Vicarage Farm is and grey and chilly but surrounded by ¡beau·ti·ful land. (Guardian) Inside a Sentence, the Flow is more likely to make a Pause before or after a Depend-ent Clause when the latter is long [1776], than when it’s short [1777] (cf. V.57). [1776] the element of statehood was severely tested by the event of Bloody Sunday, | when thirteen demonstrators were killed by British soldiers (Tragedy of Belief) [1777] It was extremely fortunate that she came here when she did. (Crimson) Inside a Clause, Dashes can show where the Flow registers an internal Tone Group set off by Pauses, e.g., between Subject and Verb [1778] or Verb and Object [1779]. [1778] That young man | — you will observe — | had none of these inducements (Jim) [1779] A good sort of fellow, but he demands | — and rightly — | a suitable provision (Howard’s End) 27. Flow can interact with Weight in the Prosody, e.g., by speaking ‘slowly and deliberately’ [1780] or by ‘stretching out the words’ [1781]. [1780] ‘Pooh! Pooh!’ said John Thornton. ‘Buck can start a thousand pounds.’ […] ‘Well’, Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so that all could hear, ‘I’ve got a thousand dollars that says he can’t.’ (Call ofthe Wild)
[1781] ‘I don’t like Condoleezza Rice because she’s a murderer’, McGruder said. [He] repeated the accusation, stretching out his words, ‘S-h-e’-s a m-u-r-d-e-r-e-r.’ (News-max)www Here, the Weight contributes to placing a staggering bet on a sleigh dog [1780] or interpreting unprovoked war for what it is — murder [1781]. 28. Pausing in the Flow can set off other Patterns if at least one Strong Stress occurs, such as a Minor NonFinite Clause sharing its Subject with the Subject of the Clause it depends on [1782-83] (cf. IV.102); or a weighty Appositive [1784]. [1782] Leaving the bed of the !creek, | we marched onwards (Amazons) [1783] Aeneas, | wondering at the !sight, | asked the Sibyl, ‘Why this discrimination?’ (Golden Age of Myth) [1784] Grom the Paunch, | a notorious !Gob·lin king, | sails from the Old World (High Elves) A Pause in the Flow without falling silent can use a Filler that is not an authentic Word. The huge favourite in the BNC is ‘erm’ (47,756 occurrences), e.g. in [1785]. The filler can also function to signal hesitation [1786] or scepticism [1787]. [1785] And erm Tampax were involved for another reason erm the advertisements them-selves caused a great furore because erm Tampax was a fairly new invention (Museum Society)BNC [1786] They called a caucus for lesbian and gay activists and I went along, tentatively saying, ‘I’m an, erm, bisexual, can I come in?’ (Radical Records)BNC [1787] The, erm, legendary Daevid Allen gets ‘em smoochin’ to the softly soulful sounds of Planet Gong. (NME) The Filler ‘um’ or ‘umm’ may betray an impulse to evade the truth [1788-89]. [1788] ‘There’s something I want to see on television’, I lied. ‘What’s that?’ ‘Er, um —' I began. ‘That’s just an excuse.’ (Dandelion Days) [1789] ‘Were you on your skateboard in the garden today?’ ‘Umm — umm — not today.’ ‘Yes you were.’ (conversation)BNC These Fillers can retard the Pace for longer times, mainly by stretching the nasal ‘m’ or the resonant ‘r’, which can be visually rendered by orthography (cf. V.32): [1790] Oliver: Where did you find it? Bill: Ummmmm. I think it was there somewhere (conversation)BNC [1791] He decides, after years of going ‘errrrmmm’ and ‘uuummmm’, that they signed the band because ‘They’re, eerrmmm, different’. (NME) 29. The Parameter of Complexity follows the type, extent, or variety of relations among sets of choices. Lexical complexity may come from combining common choices with uncommon or specialised choices, as in [1792]. Grammatical complexity may come from constructing elaborate Clause Patterns, with multiple dependencies among Finite or Non-Finite Clauses, as in [1793]. [1792] These statistical methods in combination with carefully constructed reference portfolios control well for the new rebalancing, and skewness biases (Stock Returns)
[1793] The objects of the passions are […] so easy to be kept from our knowledge, that the characters of man’s heart, blotted and confounded as they are with dissembling, lying, counterfeiting, and erroneous doctrines, are legible only to him that searcheth hearts. (Leviathan) 30. Widespread belief holds spoken English to be simpler and written English more complex, but authentic usage is flexible. Simple grammar in a spoken series of simple Clauses is of course natural in conversation [1794]; yet speech can attain grammatical complexity by spontaneously building clear patterns of clausal dependencies [1795]. Careful public speech favours lexical complexity [1796]. [1794] We’ve been out this morning | that’s right | we got back in and I was then going to go over to Saint Mary’s church club (conversation)BNC [1795] I must say I don’t think twice now about opening that window whereas before I only did it reluctantly because of all the dust. (conversation)BNC [1796] It seems to me essential to have a constant mutual exchange of experiences between those who are responsible for implementing projects in recipient countries, in order to achieve a synergistic effect. (European Parliament) Reciprocally, many fine writers prefer a simple style, e.g.: [1797] A large part of our goods were still produced on the domestic system. Manufactures were little concentrated in towns, and only partially separated from agriculture. The ‘manufacturer’, was, literally, the man who worked with his own hands in his own cottage. (Arnold Toynbee) 31. Social attitudes are ambivalent. Typically, ‘simple’ is explicitly valued [1798] whilst ‘complicated’ is not [1799]. [1798] It is essential that school-leavers should be able to write a letter in polite, direct, and simple style. (Common Policy) [1799] It is important to avoid using jargon and complicated language. (Anxiety and Stress) Yet complex style can bid for authority, notably in bureaucratic discourse like [1800], where the missing Comma or Semicolon before ‘apart from’ (= except for) even elicits a garden path effect (cf. V.64); compare my [1800a]. [1800] A large proportion of the elderly receiving supplementary benefit are elderly women living alone and apart from those belonging to the very top socio-economic group, such women may be in receipt of supplementary benefit irrespective of the socio-economic background of themselves or their deceased husbands. (Social Policy) [1800a] Elderly people receiving supplementary benefit are mostly widows living alone; and unless they are very wealthy, their socio-economic status, or that of their deceased husbands, may not be relevant. Unhappily, complex style can be exploited to garner authority for dubious discourse moves, e.g., legal discourse for disempowering the ordinary citizen and forcing them into a costly dependency on lawyers [1801-02] (cf. VII.8). [1801] No forbearance or failure by the Employer at any time to require performance of any provision of the Agreement or to enforce strictly the obligations of the Employee or to take action to suspend the Employee or to
determine the Agreement forthwith upon discovering cause therefore shall effect the right of the Employer to do so at any time. (Gleeds Group) [1802] For purposes of Clause 1, material terms of a contract shall not be treated as contingent on the issuance of an FCC tax certificate solely because such terms provide that the sale price would, if such certificate were not issued, be increased by an amount not greater than 10 percent of the sale price otherwise provided in the contract. (provision quietly inserted by Carol Mosely Brown into a Congress Bill) In plain language, your ‘Employer’ reserves the right to ‘suspend’ you for not doing something never ‘required’ before [1801]. And the sale of some television stations owned by gabillionaire Robert Murdoch to the Chicago Tribune was exempted from a ban on tax breaks [1802], handing between $30 and $63 million to Murdoch and $13 million to the Tribune.33 32. Normally, simple style raises Weight [1803-04]. Complex style lowers it, the more so when the speaker ‘rambles on’ [1805] or ‘drones’ [1806], thus discouraging people from listening at all. [1803] ‘And what do you want ‘Whales, dolphins, forests’. (My Heart)
to
do
with
your
life?’
‘Save
things’,
she
said simply.
[1804] ‘Mr Boldwood has shot my husband.’ Her statement of the fact in such quiet and simple words came with more force than a tragic declamation (Madding Crowd) [1805] She rambled on, ‘We had a broken night, too, Little Trevor was sick three times — too many sweeties before bedtime, I expect, so I’m all behind like the cow’s tail this morning.’ (Flood Water) [1806] ‘We were all hoping’, Mr Smith said, droning nasally, ‘that you would be able to consolidate your position here by forming a positive working relationship with the remainder of the road gang, who, in all fairness, I’m sure you’d be the first to agree, have done their very best to, well…’ (Walking on Glass) 33. To integrate complexity, parallelism reuses a grammatical pattern with some lexical changes [1806]. [1807] After a war undertaken by the most stupid [Claudius], maintained by the most dissolute [Nero], and terminated by the most timid [Domitian] of all the emperors, the far greater part of the island submitted to the Roman yoke (Decline) [1808] If you kill inside the country you get in trouble. If you kill outside the country, right time, right season, latest enemy, you get a medal. (Joan Baez) [1809] Cowardice asks the question, is it safe? Expediency asks the question, is it politic? Vanity asks the question, is it popular? But conscience asks the question, is it right? (Martin Luther King, Jr) As we shall see, variations in complexity can readily distinguish styles. 34. The stylistic Parameter of Attitude, which is so pervasive that it might be alternately included among the Lexicogrammatical Parameters, distinguishes between Ameliorative for what is good or approved, versus Pejorative for what is bad or disapproved (cf. II.153f 162; III.32, 36f, 62; V.21, 32). They are most percep-tible in the Lexicon accruing to individual word-meanings, as in [1810-11].34 [1810] the Head of Fashion remembers always amusing and sparky’. (Independent)
her
as
‘an outstanding character,
a marvellous girl,
[1811] On his tomb he ordered the inscription, ‘A wretched, poor and helpless worm.’ (church magazine).
At high intensity, lexical Attitudes may sound insincere or comically overdone: [1812] Viola: Most radiant, exquisite, and unmatchable beauty […] Olivia: I forgive you the praise. Viola: Alas, I took great pains to study it, and ‘tis poetical. Olivia: It is the more like to be feigned; I pray you keep it in. (Twelfth Night) [1813] Begone! thou man of mischief! Remorseless and implacable miscreant! (Wieland) Lexical Attitudes may turn paradoxical, giving badness to ‘do-gooder’ [1814] or ‘goody goody’ [1815], and goodness to ‘badder’ [1816] or ‘baddest’ [1817]. [1814] Sarah is arrogant, muddling and patronising, and quite one of the most utterly tiresome busybody quasi do-gooders I know (personal letter)BNC [1815] The Lady of Light is not a ‘goody goody’ saintly child, irritatingly priggish. (Today) [1816] The Darwin site is back, bigger, badder, and better than ever!!! (Darwin Awards)www [1817] I collected Nazi memorabilia because they were the baddest guys ever and I always liked bad guys. (NME) I have long wondered whether those who mock people like me as ‘do-gooders’ would exult upon being publicly dubbed ‘do-badders’. (Privately, they probably would.) 35. Far less perceptible, and rarely described in conventional studies of language or linguistics, are Attitudes in the Grammar. They hardly emerge until very large corpora provide systematic evidence, as was shown in II.153. One conspicuous Pattern is high in Weight and low in Complexity, namely the short Exclamation to signal some intense opinion or reaction, such as ‘How’ + Modifier + ! In the BNC, Amelioratives include ‘nice, splendid, wonderful, kind, lovely, beautiful, exciting, romantic, delightful, charming’; the Pejoratives include ‘awful, dreadful, disgrace-ful, disgusting, embarrassing, pathetic, rude, stupid, idiotic, naff’. Even Items that could well seem neutral in other contexts can indicate Attitude in this Pattern, such as ‘English’ [1818] or ‘typical’ [1819]. [1818] ‘Therese is a truly extraordinary woman.’ ‘My dear, how loyal, how English!’ (Compass Error) [1819] ‘He beat us to it’, she informed Felipe crossly. ‘How typical!’ (Dark Sunlight) My findings were similar for ‘What a’ + Modifier + Noun + ! Amelioratives included ‘good idea’, ‘nice boy’, ‘lovely room’, ‘happy prospect’, ‘welcome surprise’; Pejoratives included ‘ghastly thought’, ‘crazy approach’, ‘sorry sight’, ‘horrible joke’, ‘heinous offence’. Here too, otherwise neutral expressions can carry Attitudes, such as ‘varied’ [1820] or ‘changed’ [1821]. [1820] What a varied leadership! Their very names speak volumes for the unity which the Spirit creates. (I Believe) [1821] But what a changed Susan! She was as white as a ghost, and her eyes were shadowed as if she hadn’t slept properly for weeks. (Distance Enchanted)
36. Less conspicuous but equally symptomatic of Attitudes is the Demonstrative Exclamation with Demonstrative + Noun + !, rarely for Ameliorative [1822-23] and regularly for Pejorative [1824-25]. The Noun by itself may indicate Attitude [1824-25], but might also be neutral out of context [1826-27]. [1822] She made the courtyard ring with her eerie yodelling welcome. Nora closed her eyes on tears of joy. ‘That noise!’ (Rich Always) [1823] Those flowers! A bigger and brighter bunch each year it seems. (Thrush Green) [1824] That meshuggener! He’s already broken three appointments. (Lucifer Rising) [1825] It was so unfair. Those devils! They hadn’t said anything to him (Walking on Glass) [1826] He looked incredulous and then fiercely angry. ‘That woman!’ he snarled (Garden) [1827] ‘I have not tempted this man on.’ ‘This man! You speak as if you hated him.’ (Dombey) Perhaps the Demonstrative implication of pointing at people influences Attitudes, as also seems to occur for the Colligation of Demonstrative + Noun + ‘of’ + Possessive Pronoun presented back in II.153. 37. An act of pointing may also be implied by the Evaluative Exclamation with ‘you’ + Noun Phrase + !, here too much less often Ameliorative [1928-29] than Pejorative [1930-31]. [1828] How dear the woods are! You beautiful trees! (Avonlea) [1829] ‘You wonderful, clever woman!’ he exclaimed, clasping her rapturously (Double Fire) [1830] ‘David go and blow your nose, you horrible child!’ ‘I’m not horrible!’ ‘Well, alright, you semihorrible child!’ (conversation)BNC [1831] You ignorant little slug! You witless weed! You empty-headed hamster! (Matilda) 38. In the Pattern of the Evaluative Appositive, one Noun Phrase is juxtaposed with another for Ameliorative [1832] or Pejorative [1833], but these are decidedly less consistent than the Patterns pointed out in VI.35-37. [1832] I have had the gratification of making the acquaintance of your daughter, a most estimable lady (Egoist) [1833] Morland, a notoriously untrustworthy man, openly boasted of his skill as a forger. (Missing Persons) A Demonstrative in the Appositive, not too common, can also signal Attitude: [1834] Lanny Wadkins, that American warhorse, made the early running (Daily Telegraph) [1835] Britannia, that unfortunate female, is always before me, like a trussed fowl (Dickens)
39. The most elaborate and widely recognised Stylistic Parameter is Figurality as a scale between Literal, as in [1836] and Figurative, as in [1837]. [1836] The man with the grey suit stopped the omnibus, and got out in Oxford Street. (Moonstone) [1837] He began to feel in their conversations that she did not sufficiently think of making herself a nest for him. Steely points were opposed to him when he bared his bosom. (Egoist)
On the side of practice, contrasting examples like [1836-37] are easily found; and at times writers exploit the contrast for a pun [1838-39]: [1838] Two earth scientists at the University of Illinois have, literally and figuratively, broken new ground by synthesizing a type of clay. (College News) [1839] That the Democrats are vulnerable in the heel, is not merely figuratively but literally true. Their officials scampering away with the public money […] are most distressingly affected in their heels with a species of running itch. (Abraham Lincoln) 40. But on the side of theory, this Parameter has not been captured by a unified, consensual account despite its frequent mention under various labels since antiquity. Such has not even been achieved for literal meaning alone, which should be the most perspicuous sector. Projects for doing so have typically discounted the styles of discourse in favour of speculations about ‘language’ and ‘reality’, drawing either on philosophical conceptions like ‘truth’ or ‘reference’,35 or on psychological ones like ‘sensory perception36 and ‘observation’.37‘Reality’ itself was taken as given for everybody in advance — stable, secured, self-evident, and univocal. 41. Such theorising marginalizes the intentions and goals of discourse participants deploying a range of styles to promote or create particular versions or views of ‘reality’, with no express appeal to truth or observation. ‘Being literal’ is a discursive practice that may not even be privileged, as when it is obviously not the intended meaning, viz.: [1840] New faces sit on boards (Las Vegas News) [1841] Accused rapist finds God in jail (San Antonio News) [1842] Jury is still out on composting toilets (Salem Statesman-Journal) [1843] Genetic Engineering Splits Scientists (Washington Post) The Adverb ‘literally’ appears where the most literal meaning might otherwise not be intended [1844-45]; and even where it could not be intended anyway [1846-47]. [1844] I literally jumped for joy when I heard that key turn in the lock (Where There’s Life) [1845] Those flowers are literally buzzing with honey-making, pollinating bees (Gardeners’ World) [1846] Gladstone was an omnivorous reader, […] and his home in Hawarden literally overflowed with books. (Bibliomaniac) [1847] Smith struck a match and relighted his pipe. […] His eyes were literally on fire. (Fu) Moreover, being ‘literal-minded’ can be Pejorative [1848], if not downright misleading [1849]: [1848] The courts accept that ordinary readers are not literal-minded simpletons. They are capable of divining the real thrust of a comment (Media Law) [1849] To the literal-minded regulators at the Food and Drug Administration, ‘energy’ means calories, [and] any food with calories is an ‘energy’ food. Never mind that no more than one in a million consumers would ever guess that. (Nutrition Action)www So we cannot take ‘literal’ at face value as the foundation for a theory that relates meaning to style.
42. Perhaps we could adopt a practice-driven definition for this Parameter. Consulting the relative proportions in attested usage, we would assess how highly the actual meanings of Expressions in a particular text correspond to their typical meanings, higher for literal usage, and lower for figurative usage. By this account, ostensibly basic meanings as listed in dictionaries need not be more literal. In the BNC, only 74 out of 253 occurrences show the meaning of ‘torrent’ as a rush of ‘water’ (or ‘river’, ‘rain’ etc.). The rest was mostly for an outpouring of pejorative discourse like ‘of abuse’ (20 uses) and ‘of words’ (14), plus ‘criticism, complaints, rebukes, recrimination, innuendo, gossip, lies, foul language, incoherent shouts, defamatory invective, party oratory’.38 43. The traditional approach has been to enumerate ‘figures of speech’, from ancient times down to contemporary textbooks and handbooks like this one: [1850] Any departure from the literal use of words is the figurative use of language. […] The more common figures of speech are allegory, euphemism, hyperbole, innuendo, irony, litotes, metaphor,metonymy, paradox, personificat ion, pun, simile. (Handbook of the English Language)39 Symptomatically, this list is in alphabetical order rather than any logical order. Here, I shall essay to describe these ‘Figures’ with frequent reference to the Stylistic Parameters proposed so far. 44. Being ‘literal’ purports to situate the other Parameters just where the expressed content warrants, e.g., unmarked Clause order and low in Weight for dreary weather [1851], and just the contrary for ‘excited’ behaviour [1852]. [1851] The weather was cold and wet, and wood for fuel was difficult to obtain. (Lewis and Clark) [1852] Osterman got on his feet; leaning across the table, gesturing wildly with his right hand, his serio-comic face, with its bald forehead and stiff red ears, was inflamed with excitement. (Octopus) Literalness seems essentially neutral in regard to the other Stylistic Parameters. 45. One set of Figures might be described as manipulating the Weight decisively higher or lower. Understatement gives significantly less Weight than seems war-ranted, as if to show caution and reserve [1853]. You can reverse the effect by giving High Weight to the act of ‘understating’ itself [1854]. As a strategy of power, official discourse deploys Understatement to avoid Pejoratives that would be more accurate [1855]. [1853] To say that some people are angry these days is an understatement. The are boiling with unhappy, impatient and selfish people just spoiling for a fight. (Star Tribune)
streets
[1854] ‘Himmler […] had no social graces whatever.’ This must be the understatement of the century. (Independent)[1855] Macmillan […] said, with typical understatement, ‘We have not done badly. But we have not done quite well enough.’ That blandly papered over the facts that Britain’s share of world trade had steadily declined, its prices had risen more and its exports less than those of its ex-enemies (Fifties) 46. Conversely, hyperbole gives far more Weight than seems warranted. This Figure is more innocuous than Understatement in being more obvious [1856-57]; and, in rural Usage, it is the essence of the beloved tall tale [1858-59].
[1856] Jerome saw at Rome a triumphant husband bury his twenty-first wife, who had interred twenty-two of his less sturdy predecessors. But the ten husbands in a month of the poet Martial is an extravagant hyperbole (Decline) [1857] The evidence presented by the Bush administration for war in Iraq […] was exaggerated, distorted, selective and fabricated evidence masquerading as absolute certainty. […] This adds up to a pattern of halftruths, deceptions and outrageous hyperbole (Chicago Tribune) [1858] I was quaking from head to foot, and I could have hung my hat on my eyes, they stuck out so far. (Mississippi) [1859] It got so tarnation dry that fish a-swimmin’ up the river left a cloud of dust behind them. (Punkin Centre) 47. Litotes purports to lower Weight by saying what something is by negating its opposite [1860-61]. Yet a subtly opposite rise in Weight may ensue from suggesting that it is most decidedly opposite [1861-63]. [1860] An egg boiled very soft is not unwholesome. (Emma) [1861] she married a poor man, an act which was not disgraceful, since he was not unworthy. (Middlemarch) [1862] It was curious to see how the great ladies forgot her, and no doubt not altogether a pleasant study to Rebecca. (Vanity) [1863] ‘You know that I love you, and you led me to believe, Miss Fairfax, that you were not absolutely indifferent to me.’ ‘I adore you’. (Earnest) 48. Euphemism lowers Weight in order to spare discomfort or embarrassment for speaker or hearer (or both). Potential signals of Pejorative Attitude get manipulated to seem blandly innocuous, e.g., circumstances of birth [1864] and death [1865]. This strategy may be encouraged by doublespeak [1866-67] (cf. VII.12-16). [1864] ‘The girl was in the club’. […] ‘If you intend me to infer that she was pregnant, then for the life of me I can see no reason why you don’t actually say so.’ (Major Maxim) [1865] ‘Don’t grieve for her’, the priest said, […] ‘she’s gone to her reward.’ (Singing Birds) [1866] The Israeli government is currently erecting the Wall of Separation – euphemistically called the ‘Security Fence’ – which is supposed to block ‘terrorist attacks’, but certainly won’t prevent missiles and helicopters from hitting their human targets. (Stop the Wall)www [1867] Humboldt County’s policy of using pepper spray directly on the eyes of non-violent protesters, euphemistically called ‘pain compliance’, shows the dark side of law and order. (Earth Films)www Not a bit surprisingly, one thematic epicentre for Euphemisms these days is the Dispositive Action of ‘making not do’ and ‘making not possess’, honestly termed ‘firing’ or ‘laying off’. According to one recent survey by William Lutz,40 workers were said to be ‘dehired’, ‘selected out’, ‘transitioned’ ‘surplussed’, ‘excessed’, ‘rightsized’, ‘uninstalled’, or ‘managed down’; or they underwent ‘workforce adjustments’, ‘headcount reductions’, ‘negative employee retention’ (Litotes too?), or ‘a volume-related production schedule adjustment’ (cf. VII.16). 49. The function of Euphemisms weakens when the actual meaning is no longer effectively camouflaged. Such is the status of ‘privatisation’ for putting public industries into private hands at jumble-sale prices and switching priorities from job security to shareholder profits, which has justly earned the opprobrium of labour unions and
wider circles [1868], and was tellingly rechristened ‘briberisation’ by Joseph Stiglitz, Nobel Laureate for Economics and former Chief Economist of the World Bank [1869] (cf. VII.106). So now fresh Euphemisms are displacing it, such as ‘rationalisation’ [1870] and ‘disinvestment’, the latter actually stipulating just how much money is to be ‘raised’ and when [1871]. [1868] Privatisation of electricity and water also puts a hole straight through the Government’s claim to be guardians of the environment. (Independent) [1869] Stiglitz called privatisation ‘briberisation’ because of the readiness with which national leaders are bought by offers of commissions paid into Swiss bank accounts. (Arvind Sivaramakrishnan in The Hindu) [1870] privatisation would provoke knee-jerk opposition from the labour a more neutral word, such as rationalisation, would be more palatable. (South African data)
movement,
and
[1871] the politically correct euphemism of ‘disinvestment’ has come to acquire a life of its own and the privatisation imperative has become secondary to target-setting and revenue-raising. (Indian Express) Surely the most sinister euphemisms of our times apply to warfare [1872], the top prize going to ‘ethnic cleansing’ to disguise the filthiest actions [1873]. [1872] Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called ‘pacification’. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called ‘transfer of population’ or ‘rectification of frontiers’. (George Orwell) [1873] Fighting in the former Yugoslavia has been accompanied by accounts of mass killings and rapes, torture, so-called ethnic cleansing or mass expulsions of rival ethnic groups, and detention centres reminiscent of Nazi concentration camps. (Scotsman) 50. The smear, in contrast, radically raises Weight to intensify Pejorative Attitudes about a person or group. Smears increasingly dominate political discourse attacking ‘anti-war and civil rights protesters’ [1874] and insubordinate foreign nations [1875]. The ‘flakspeak’ of the ‘New Right’ described in VIII.27ff not merely launches incessant smears [1876] but then claims to be ‘smeared’ by the outraged responses [1877]. [1874] 40 years ago, anti-war and civil rights protesters were bugged, followed, smeared, arrested, impersonated, and disrupted by the government. (Gilmore v. Ashcroft) [1875] France says it is the victim of a smear campaign by the Bush administration […] leaking false stories about alleged French complicity with the Iraqi regime (CNN) [1876] The abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively try ing to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, […] I point the finger in their faceand say, ‘You helped this happen.’ (Jerry Falwell on 9/11) [1877] In an appeal for funds, Jerry Falwell Ministries accuses ‘liberals and especially gay activists’ of launching ‘a vicious smear campaign to discredit’ him. (Americans United) How anyone could ‘smear’ the ‘Reverend’ Falwell more ‘viciously’ than he richly deserves I cannot begin to imagine. 51. The quip, in contrast is rather the opposite: a light-hearted, low-weight, and amusing poke at a meritorious target
[1878] Whites kill themselves by jumping from a tall building, blacks kill themselves by jumping from a low basement. (Dick Gregory) [1879] He was born with a silver foot in his mouth. (Texas Governor Ann Richards on the gaffs of Bush Sr) [1880] Rumsfeld also toured a torture chamber in Iraq, which he said gave him a lot of good Christmas-gift ideas for John Ashcroft. (Barry Crimmins) [1881] The U.N. is a place where governments opposed to free speech demand to be heard! (Alfred E. Neuman of MAD Magazine) 52. Sarcasm also deploys Weight and Pejorative Attitude, but is routinely directed at irritating or belittling another face-to-face participant [1882-84]. The Flow can be intensified as well. [1882] Using her most sarcastic voice, she said, ‘I think your hat is the is the loveliest thing I have ever seen in my whole life!’ (Stuart Stories)www [1883] He said, with that jarring, sarcastic tone to his voice: ‘I realize that things are different for you, living in 1990. We poor savages, way back in the Dark Ages, still think that our women might possibly be satisfied with one man.’ (Strawberries) [1884] Nixon, on the stage, looked down at Rather and asked with heavy sarcasm, ‘Are you running for something?’ Dan snapped right back, ‘No, sir, are you?’ (Topics)www 53. Irony tweaks the Parameter of Belief and is less obtrusive in Weight, Attitude, and Flow than sarcasm and may indeed go ‘unrecognized or ignored’ [1885]. It is more directed to a whole situation, and it may be strategic to claim irony in excusing a smear [1886], or to deploy it in satirising the personal courage of Bush Jr [1887] (who evaded the draft to stay out of the Vietnam War, and fled to Offutt Air Force Base, near Omaha, Nebraska, on the day of 9/11). [1885] ‘He’s changed a lot — got a lot older looking.’ ‘Sixty years will do that to you’, I said. ‘Present company excepted, of course.’ He didn’t recognize, or ignored, the irony in my voice. (HandHeld Crime)www [1886] [When] Schultz also criticized the Italian’s perceived conflicts of interest, […] Berlusconi said: ‘Mr. Schulz, I know that in Italy a producer is now shooting a film about the Nazi concentration camps. I propose you to play the role of capo’ [camp commander]. […] ‘What I said was said with irony’, Berlusconi responded, almost plaintively. (Seattle Times) [1887] An Iraqi vice president offered a unique solution to the U.S.-Iraq standoff: a duel between George W. Bush and Saddam Hussein […] with U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan as the referee. […] Reporters who were present detected a note of irony in his voice. (Associated Press) Wholly unintentional irony breaks through in the discourse of the ‘New Right’: [1888] How Parents Can Help Children Live Marijuana Free, […] with a preface by Orrin Hatch, listed warning signs that your kids might be inhaling, [such as] ‘excessive preoccupation with social causes, race relations, environmental issues’ (Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting)www [1889] The very document that protects our liberties more than anything else, the Constitution, was of course drafted in total secrecy. (‘Press Secretary’ Ari Fleischer, on why Dick Cheney withheld records of secret meetings of the ‘Energy Task Force’)
These discourses involuntarily stumble by unmasking the ‘War on Drugs’ partially as a right-wing war on leftwing ideologies; and by equating the fundamental document of American democracy, which was fully published along with all records and minutes as soon as the work was finished, with a shameful record of corporate and governmental cronyism (see VII.23 for details when the record was leaked). 54. Satire is more creative than sarcasm or irony and more likely to amuse a wider audience, rather like an elaborated quip. It helps to release Pejorative Emotions like anger and disgust when direct Actions are hardly feasible, e.g., in imaginary news headlines from Internet websites: [1890] Bush: ‘Our Long National Nightmare of Peace and Prosperity Is Finally Over’ (Onion) [1891] U.S. Suspects World Not Putting U.S. Interests First (SatireWire) [1892] U.S. to Arab World: ‘Stop Hating Us Or Suffer the Consequences’ (Onion) [1893] Pentagon Debating Which Age to Bomb Afghanistan Back Into (National Lampoon) [1894] Congress Forbids Economy to Recover until Congress Passes Bill to Help Economy Recover (SatireWire) [1895] Bush Vows to Remove Toxic Petroleum from National Parks (Onion) Whereas sarcasm may be insulting and irony patronising, satire may be flattering in attributing background knowledge to the audience, e.g., about Bush Jr’s devious environmental policies of approving ‘toxic’ emissions and opening ‘National Parks’ to his oil-drilling pals in [1895]. 55. Satire creates entire whimsical non-realities, e.g. with mock news items: [1896] AFGHAN MOUNTAINS SURRENDER! – Those Who Said Bombs Wasted on Mountains Proved Wrong – After weeks of relentless bombing that has taken a devastating toll, the mountains of Afghanistan unconditionally surrendered to the United States today. ‘We said from the outset that those harboring terrorists were just as culpable as the terrorists, and the mountains were’, said Rumsfeld. ‘Also, if we include the mountains, more than 90 percent of our bombs have hit their targets.’ Responding to complaints from Afghans that many bombs had hit people, Rumsfeld conceded there was ‘some collateral damage’, but insisted many mountains were parked in residential areas. For Afghanistan’s neighbors, the surrender staves off an unprecedented mountainarian crisis, as hundreds of peaks, fleeing the war, were arranged in makeshift refugee ranges along the borders with Pakistan and Tajikistan. (Onion) I would see here one effective mode of the ‘deconstructive’ counter-discourse along the lines proposed in II.172. 56. Parody is a low-Weight Intertext aimed at a one previous Text [1897], or else at a Text Type, such as the Mills-and-Boon style romance [1898] (cf. III.77). [1897] Mark Lowry entertains the notion of plastic surgery in a parody of the Michael W. Smith song ‘Place in this World’, Mark’s version in ‘Face In This World’ beginning, ‘My hairline’s moving, but I’m standing still.’ (Mouth in Motion)www [1898] ‘You don’t love me!’ he hoarsed, thick with agony. […] ‘Don’t!’ she thinned, her voice fining to a thread. ‘Answer me’, he gloomed. […] Night was falling. A molten afterglow of iridescent saffron shot with incandescent carmine lit up the waters of the Hudson till they glowed like electrified uranium. (Stephen Leacock)
Yet like satire, parody can exert impressive social and political Weight in deconstructing hypocrisy, e.g., by inventing an unimaginably forthright ‘State of the Union Address’ for Bush Jr with this opening: [1899] Fellow Republicans, distinguished campaign contributors, fellow white males: As we gather tonight, our nation is at war against an insidious foreign force funded in no small part by my father, our economy is in recession exacerbated by the economic policies imposed upon us by my campaign’s financial backers, and the civilized world decries my administration’s policies on the death penalty, petrochemical whoredom, global warming, and grotesquely shameless jingoism. Yet today, the state of my popularity rating has never been stronger. (Applause.) (www.whitehouse.org/news) At times, I can’t decide whether to laugh or cry. But parody, quips, irony, and satire have helped to make the geopolitical and economic nightmare scenario of the non-legitimate, violent, and devious 'Bush Administration' almost bearable. 57. The paradox associates two concepts that logically should be incompatible. It prefers opposed Content Words, like ‘find – lose’ in [1900], ‘enthrall – free’ and ‘chaste – ravish’ in [1901], and ‘saving – exposing’ or ‘animals – humans’ [1902]; and can enhance its Flow with parallelism in the Grammar, e.g., ‘whosoever shall save’ - whosoever shall lose’ in [1900], or ‘saving dumb animals – exposing dumb humans’ in [1902]. [1900] Given an eternal life, such antagonisms can be worked out, but in one short human life they are incapable of solution. Jesus referred to such a paradox when he said: ‘Whosoever shall save his life shall lose it, but whosoever shall lose his life for the sake of the kingdom, shall find it.’ (Urantia Book) [1901] For I, except you enthrall me, never shall be free, Nor ever chaste except you ravish me. (John Donne) [1902] World In Action questioned the Animal Liberation Front the paradox of saving dumb animals by exposing dumb humans to incendiary devices. (Independent)
about
Oxymoron carries less Weight, but still links up incompatible concepts [1903-05] and has been cultivated in some types of literature, viz. [1906-07]. [1903] Premier Nutrition offers a complete line of natural artificial flavours. www [1904] Human Sexual Behavior was not as fun as it sounds. […] ‘I took this class because I wanted to start out my summer with some good, clean porn! (Rob’s Page)www [1905] An oral contract isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. (Sam Goldwyn) [1906] An honorable murtherer, if you will, for nought did I in hate, but all in honour. (Othello) [1907] His jarring concord, and his discord dulcet, his faith, his sweet disaster; (All’s Well) Trendy websites offer established Collocations they wittily classify as ‘oxymorons’. There, I enjoyed ‘working vacation’, ‘military intelligence’, ‘sanitary landfill’, and (most of all) ‘compassionate conservative’ (cf. VII,1, 25). 58. The pun derives its Weight by exploiting coincidences among sounds to create a whimsical interplay of between alternate meanings [1908-09], though it may be unintentional [1910-11], notably in hapless news headlines like [1912-13].
[1908] falstaff: My honest lads, I will tell you what I am about. pistol: Two yards, and more. falstaff: No quips now, Pistol. Indeed, I am in the waist two yards about; but I am now about no waste; I am about thrift. (Merry Wives) [1909] Club Try-Angles. Once you get over the name (a super-clever pun), you’ll find a nice addition to the Salt Lake City gay club scene. (saltlakecity.com)www [1910] ‘I’m a sort of kennel-maid — dogsbody. I’m sorry’, she said quickly again, ‘that wasn’t meant as a pun.’ (West of Bohemia) [1911] I may be out on a limb here (pardon the unintended pun) because I am not an expert on the type of trees that grow in Africa (Stoves Archive)www [1912] Lawmaker backs train through Iowa (Des Moines Register) [1913] Sexual Battery Charged (Columbus Dispatch) Some elegant, compact puns interchanging words of similar sounds, sometimes called ‘paronomasia’, would qualify as quips too: [1914] The war on Iraq is the weapon of mass distraction. (Michael Moore) [1915] We’ve had our second war in a decade to protect the oiligarchies in the Persian Gulf. (Jim Hightower) [1916] Without a never-ending enemies list, cancervatives cannot survive. (Chicago Sun-Times) [1917] The silliness over ‘Bring ‘em on’ is getting out of hand. How do we know that they understand the colloquial meaning of Dumbya’s41 braggadocio? (Cal-Pundit)www Rather than sounds, the anagram exploits coincidences among letters to create pithy transformations. The results can be striking, the more so when aided by a computer program like Anagram Genius, 42 as in these creations: [1918] compassionate conservative => Conspire to save a vast income! [1919] Republican National Committee => Inept ballot count — America mine! [1920] President George Walker Bush => Sorest bungler (hawk pedigree). [1921] George Walker Bush, President of the USA => Pretender grabs White House — flag use OK! [1922] The Republican Party => Entire rat club happy! 59. Another set of Figures, sometimes called ‘tropes’, operates by associating or equating seemingly incompatible components, one lower and one higher in Weight, to create a novel perspective. These have been cultivated most prominently in literature, though their occurrence is widespread, as my selection of examples offered below may suggest. 60. The easiest to recognise is probably the simile, formed by saying something is ‘like’ [1923-24] or ‘as’ [1925-26] something at higher Weight which it cannot literally be. [1923] The corporate agriculture establishment squawked like a bantam rooster choking on a peach pit. (Yellow Stripes)
[1924] After half an hour’s unsteady plodding, my buffalo let me dismount. My back was like a mangled corkscrew, my legs like chicken wishbones. (Daily Telegraph) [1925] The altar was as a block of ice to him. (Might Have Been) [1926] the stroke of death is as a lover’s pinch, which hurts and is desired. (Antony and Cleopatra) Counterfactual similes with ‘as if’ are favoured in popular fiction for depicting human Emotions, both Ameliorative [1927] and Pejorative [1928]. [1927] She felt as if she were floating on a soft, fleecy cloud (Double Fire) [1928] she felt as if she had been broken in two and glued back together again all wrong. (Twist of Fate) Similes are most effective when the thing compared evokes lively visual images, as in these data. 61. Metonymy, which is far less common, substitutes associated things, such as an article of clothing for the human wearing it [1929]; or ‘grape’ for wine, ‘silkworm’ for fine clothing, and ‘protoplasm’ for humans [1930]. We also find it used as a tool for textual interpretation [1931-32] [1929] Many of the faces are vaguely familiar from faded newspaper photographs of dark suits coming and going in Downing Street. (High Places) [1930] Up Broadway he turned, and halted at a glittering cafe, where are gathered the choicest products of the grape, the silkworm and the protoplasm. (Four Million) [1931] Here, ‘oppression’ stands by metonymy for the riches that can be gained by oppressive measures; […] ‘robbery’ stands by metonymy for the riches that can be gained by theft (Psalm 62 Notes)www [1932] Here the production and consumption of ‘literature’ — where what should be a joy feeds on and consumes the lives of the characters — is a metonymy for the Victorian economic system itself. (George Gissing)www In the discourse of the news, a place is said to do what people are doing there: [1933] Whitehall last night confirmed the minimum-wage provisions have been deleted from the draft (Guardian) [1934] There is still, at the end of the day, an odd unwillingness to state the simple fact that in many cases the White House lied to the American public, repeatedly and unashamedly, to pave the way for war. (Josh Marshall)www 62. Synecdoche substitutes the part for the whole or the specific for the general: [1935] Let not your ears despise my tongue forever (Macbeth) [1936] It was clearly the night of Martin Scorsese, Synecdoche for Directorial Art. Every time directing was mentioned in any honorific way, we got to see Mr Scorese sitting there (Urban Rubbish)www [1937] Tredegar Iron Works is a synecdoche for industrialized antebellum Richmond. (Sarah Baumgardner)www [1938] Make Gikonyo synecdochic of the town, which is synecdochic of the region in which the town lies, which is synecdochic of all of Kenya (Grain of Wheat)
63. Personification has non-humans acting like humans [1939-40]; and in absence of another term (like ‘animalation’?), it could be applied to animals too [1941-42]. [1939] The battered Renault shudders along mirrored pavements, and coughs up suburban curves (Harvest of Thorns) [1940] Time hath, my lord, a wallet at his back, Wherein he puts alms for oblivion, A great-sized monster of ingratitudes. (Troilus and Cressida) [1941] The belief in the Rainbow Snake, a personification of fertility, increase (richness in propagation of plants and animals) and rain, is common throughout Australia (George Chaloupka in Aboriginal Art)www [1942] Tiamat is a Babylonian dragon. She is a personification of the sea in the creation myth Enuma Elish (Mythological Dragon List)www To my surprise, I found the term applied to texts where I’d expect, say, ‘representation’: [1943] ‘Red Wing’, an old song, is a personification of my 1942 Indian motorcycle (D. Edgar Murray)www [1944] A work of poetry from 1661 may be described as ‘a personification of a Morgan patriarch’. (Pencoed Castle)www 64. The most important and indispensable Figure of all is of course the metaphor, which directly expresses one thing as something else it could not literally be. As we might expect if ‘metaphoric usage’ is presented as the opposite of ‘literal usage’ [1850] (VI.41ff), the metaphor readily overlaps with the other figures. Even so, plausible examples are not hard to discover, and once more literature and poetry outdo other discourse types [1945-48]. [1945] the captain had seemed a creature driven by the steely wheel of ambition (Harmattan) [1946] he was tormented by the worms of rebellion which had made his body uncomfortable in that house (same) [1947] He that depends Upon your favours swims with fins of lead, And hews down oaks with rushes. (Coriolanus) [1948] Awake! for Morning in the Bowl of Night Has flung the Stone that puts the Stars to Flight And Lo! the Hunter of the East has caught The Sultan’s Turret in a Noose of Light (Rubaiyat, 1ST edition) More ordinary metaphors may be migrating toward literal, e.g., body parts not used for bodies: ‘brains’ becoming ‘intellectual centre’, mostly for groups [1949]; or ‘bowels’ for the ‘deep inside’, mostly for places [1950]. Already literal enough are the ‘head of the table’, the ‘foot of the staircase’, and so on.
[1949] The next Labour government will abandon the corrupt priorities of the Tories’ education policies and make Britain the brains of Europe. (Jack Straw) [1950] From the bowels of Portland steps forth a truly obnoxious band! (Reatards)www More than other figures, ‘metaphor’ is a popular term for any special meaning: [1951] President Bill Clinton’s turbid State of the Union address was a metaphor for modern government — sprawling, metastasizing, undisciplined, approaching self-parody (St Louis Post-Dispatch)www [1952] Godzilla lays waste to New York City, perhaps a metaphor for the Japanese threat to US economic interests (Godzilla)www 65. Symbolism assigns a deeper meaning to an Object [1953], an Event [1954], or a Human [1955]. [1953] Viewed as a crown by Sikhs, the turban is a symbolism of discipline, integrity, humility and spirituality that must be worn in public. (Farmingdale News)www [1954] The Teapot Dome incident became a symbol for supposed excesses and government graft and corruption. (American Presidency)www [1955] Bush is a symbol of a corrupt system. […] He represents a cabal of men who are willing to sacrifice the lives of thousands or millions, and the integrity of the biosphere, for the sake of money and hierarchical power. (Walter I. Zeichner)www Whereas the other Figures reviewed here often occur without being identified as such, a ‘symbol’ is usually named as one, and can overlap with other figures. In [1955], Bush Jr relates to a ‘corrupt system’ as symbolism, but to ‘cabal’ as synecdoche. 66. The allegory is the most extensive Figure: a more concrete Text standing for a more abstract Text. In older literature, the allegorical quality is signalled by figurative Actors like ‘guilt’, ‘shame’, ‘fate’, and ‘virtue’ [1956]. Some writers expounded it point by point [1957], which might seem patronising nowadays. [1956] Guilt and shame, says the allegory, were at first companions; […] [but], guilt gave shame frequent uneasiness, and shame often betrayed the secret conspiracies of guilt. [So] guilt boldly walked forward alone, to overtake fate, that went before in the shape of an executioner: but shame being naturally timorous, returned back to keep company with virtue. (Wakefield) [1957] ‘Agree with thine adversary quickly, […] lest at any time the adversary deliver thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the officer, and thou be cast into prison.’ […] In which allegory, the offender is the sinner; […] the judge is God; the way is this life; the prison is the grave; the officer, death; (Leviathan) Being a relation among texts makes the allegory useful for interpretation too: [1958] Goethe’s Fairy Tale is an allegory of inner transmutation of the soul, in which various polarities emerge and are brought together again. (Alchemy Drama)www [1959] Monkey is the Chinese classic which combines the divine and human and is an allegory of own personal journey to spiritual development. (Wu Cheng En)www 67. The Figures in my terse overview are the most frequently cited resources for style, at least in literary studies. They obviously have diverse effects on style and are not clearly distinct. Some are used as Modifiers of a whole ‘style’:
[1960] In a letter of February 1818, Keats writes in a colourfully metaphoric style: ‘let us open our leaves like a flower and be passive and receptive.’ (Negative Capability)www [1961] R.L. Stevenson created […] a metonymic style of narrative, allusive, historically rooted, [but] highly dialogic. (Kailyard Lockup)www [1962] The paralleling of the dramatic events of the two witnesses with the dramatic collapse of the two towers is in keeping with the symbolic style of the book of Revelation (Bible Codes)www [1963] Jaan Kross’s texts are an example of the allegorical style widespread in Estonian literature, requiring considerable skill at reading between the lines. His historical novels and short stories are an allusive analysis of the present times, relationships between power and the individual. (Estonian Culture)www [1964] Not one came close to matching for lucidity and perceptiveness, delivered in an icily ironic style, the essay penned at the time of the war by the former Swedish prime minister, Carl Bildt. (Jonathan Power)www [1965] In the typically hyperbolic style of the ‘mainstream’ news media these days, Bush’s confrontation with Iraq was being characterized as comparable to the Cuban missile crisis. (Justin Raimondo) www However, I also find some as Modifiers of ‘meaning’: [1966] In his film, Strike, [Sergei Eisenstein] intercut heroic striking workers being beaten by police with shots of a bull being slaughtered. The metaphoric meaning is clear: strikers are cattle. (TVCrit)www [1967] The shechinah, the feminine sacred […] lives in exile during the week, an exile that itself possesses the additional metonymic meaning of representing diaspora. (The Shechinah)www [1968] Alev Croutier’s Seven Houses is rich with psychological insights that carry layers of allegorical meaning, and with a subtle, lush beauty, engrossing and delightful on many levels at once (Susan Griffin in the Turkish Times)www [1969] The phrase ‘good government’, which has proudly been used by our Wisconsin citizenry to describe our political climate since 1848, now has the same oxymoronic meaning as it does on the Beltway in Washington. (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)www [1970] And being a romance series, naturally, there are many scenes of lovemaking with throbbing this-es and tumescent that-ses in that charming euphemistic style of the genre. (Lori Herter)www [1971] The lyrics from the ‘Star Spangled Banner’ […] take on a new, ironic meaning: On Vieques Island, the ‘bombs’ show that ‘our flag is still there’, but that the Constitution continues to be, at best, an uncertain presence (Sanford Levison in Crisist)www [1972] those names of streets and rows now seem to have such a grimly sarcastic meaning: Holly Bush Place, Green Street, Pleasant Place, […] which now consist of ruinous tenements, reeking with abominations (London Dust)www [1973] Gangsta rappers and their advocates argue that they are simply doing what other artists do in emphasizing certain elements of their world. ‘In drama you take the mundane elements of life and you infuse them at times with hyperbolic meaning’ (Ta-Nehisi Coates in the Village Voice) [1974] The words ‘population shift’ convey an innocence that gives a very euphemistic meaning to a violent and tragic human phenomenon. (Today)www
[1975] Any meaningful characterization of a modern economy must start with a fair assessment of the paradoxical meaning of the globalization of economic activities (Technonationalism)www So the particular figures are found to be the tributaries of figurative meaning as a complex and variegated set of alternatives to plain literal meaning. The figures are continually pushing at the margins of language, helping us say one thing and mean another, or say and mean different things at the same time, or mean what we could not or dare not say — and ‘show some style’ while we’re doing it. VI.E Manipulating styles 68. If a style is determined by parameters of choice, then it can be manipulated by systematically interchanging the strategic choices that act as stylistic indicators. A heuristic exercise might be to postulate a set of clines, pick an intuitively straightforward authentic sample near one end of a cline and resolutely manipulate the style toward the opposite end. Some plausible clines might be: Fancy Plain Formal Informal Impersonal Personal Deliberate Spontaneous Strenuous Casual Figurative Literal Archaic Contemporary In general, everyday speaking tends toward the right-hand side of these clines, and careful writing toward the left. But, as remarked above, the styles of speech and writing are more flexible than is often assumed (cf. VI.30). 69. A Fancy Style displays lavish embellishments even when the content is ordinary [1976], whilst a Plain Style eschews them, as in my rewriting [1976a]. [1976] Enthusiastic as we are in the noble cause to which we have devoted ourselves, we should have felt a sensation of pride which we cannot express, and a consciousness of having done something to merit immortality of which we are now deprived, could we have laid the faintest outline of these addresses before our ardent readers. (Pickwick) [1976a] Considering how eager we are, we’d feel too proud for words of accomplishment if we could tell you even a little of what those speeches said, but we can’t.
an
endless
A Formal Style sets the tone for official business of self-important people [1977], whilst an Informal Style puts matters simply for ordinary people [1977a]. [1977] In the course of its deliberations, the committee acknowledged the diversity within the land grant college system and that it would not be possible to collect all the data or conduct the analyses that would lead to a credible evaluation of the content and quality of the many diverse programs and curricula. (Land Grant Universities)
[1977a] Once it got going, the committee confessed up that the programs and curricula of land grant colleges were too many and too different to get all the info and check it out enough to really say how good any were. An Impersonal Style avoids addressing the participants in the discourse by First or Second Person [1978], which a Personal Style freely adopts [1978a]. [1978] The management have confidence in future earnings growth and the maintenance of the target payout ratio. (Financial Investments) [1978a] We feel confident that in the future, our company can provide you with bigger earnings and with a steady rate in the payout we have planned for you. Spontaneous Style pops out on the spur of the moment [1979], whilst a Deliberate Style is elaborately planned and composed [1979a]. [1979] ‘Who’s that waving?’ ‘Who where?’ ‘That car in front, I dunno.’ ‘Maybe she wasn’t waving at us. It was only for a minute.’ ‘No, no, no, she’s not.’ ‘I think she’s realized she’s made a mistake.’ ‘Oh yes, yes, yes.’ (conversation)BNC [1979a] ‘What is the identity of yonder gesticulator?’ ‘Which personage, and in which locality?’ ‘The one ensconced in the vehicular conveyance preceding our own. I profess myself unenlightened.’ ‘Conceivably, the gesticulations were not destined for our attention. Their temporality was momentary.’ ‘Egad, I strongly concur with your negative contestation.’ ‘I opine she is now cognizant of her misprision.’ ‘Upon my word, there too I am in consummate agreement.’ A Strenuous Style betrays hard work from the Producer and demands it from the Receiver too [1980], whilst a Casual Style makes matters easier [1980a]. [1980] I caught this morning’s minion, kingdom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn falcon in his riding Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing in his ecstasy! (Windhover) [1980a] This morning, I saw a favoured falcon, like a prince summoned by the many-coloured sunrise, joyfully hovering high in the air, stationary, braced on rippling wings. A Literal Style deploys no Figures [1981], whilst a Figurative Style parades them [1981a]. [1981] She was awake the whole night, and she wept the greatest part of it. She got up at dawn with a headache, was unable to talk, and unwilling to take any nourishment. (Sense) [1981a] All the while Night’s sable panoply enshrouded the Earth, somnolent Morpheus shunned her eyes, now melted to o’erwelling fountains of Niobe. Under the arching brows of roseate Aurora, she quitted her wakeful couch, her head wracked by demons of pain, her powers of speech imprisoned, and her appetite exiled. An Archaic Style chooses expressions long out of currency [1982], whilst a Contemporary Style prefers the usages of today [1982a].
[1982] Ride betimes, and ride hard; for the Wood Perilous beginneth presently as ye wend your ways; and it were well for thee to reach the Burg ere thou be benighted. There be untoward things in the wood, though some of them be of those for whom Christ’s Cross was shapen. (World’s End) [1982a] Ride early and fast, because you will soon come to the dangerous forest, and you had better reach the castle before night falls. There are strange beings in the forest, though some are Christians. 70. To produce my rewritings, I manipulated the Stylistic Parameters described in the previous section, varying the emphasis from cline to cline: Complexity for Fancy and Formal; Markedness and Flow for Strenuous and Archaic; and Figurality of course for Figurative. Admittedly, such calculated contrasts between styles may seem a bit stretched, and some of my counter-discourses may savour of parody — but then so may some originals, intentional for Charles Dickens [1976] but unintentional for Gerald Manley Hopkins [1980] or Charles Morris [1982]. 71. Styles can this be regarded as mobile and dynamic, subtly ranging between complementary extremes. Perhaps we might navigate the range by manipulating the Parameters individually, e.g. starting with Milton’s Strenuous and Formal original [1983], reducing first grammatical Complexity [1983a], then lexical Complexity [1983b], and finally imposing a markedly Casual Informality [1983c]. [1983] thee chantress oft the woods among I woo to hear thy evensong. (Il Penseroso) [1983a] I woo thee, chantress, oft among the woods to hear thy evensong. [1983b] I often lure you in the forest, nightingale, so that I can hear your evening song. [1983c] Lotsa times I decoys you in the boonies, birdie, to dig you evenin’ chirps. But at some point we again risk parody. 72. Contrasts can also be accentuated by manipulating the clines together: Formal, Impersonal, and Strenuous, as in [1984] compared to [1984a]; or Informal, Personal, and Casual, as in [1985] compared to [1985a]. [1984] The pooling effect enables capacity purchasers to take advantage of the disparate temporal requirement for flexible capacity and avoid the cost of capacity constrained operation and low asset utilization that often face firms to which capacity is dedicated. (Coordination of Global Manufacturing) [1984a] A pool of competing providers with flexible capacity keeps purchasers from losing time and money when operations would otherwise be constrained and assets inadequately utilized. [1985] What I want and what the people want is generals who will fight battles and win victories. General Grant has done this, and I propose to stand by him. (Abraham Lincoln) [1985a] The proclivity of our illustrious populace, as well as of my humble self, esteems generals who superintend forcible bellicosities and achieve supremacy therein. These encompassments having been effectuated by General Grant, my resolve is to tender him my adamant allegiance. 73. Exercises of this type might help to built stylistic fluency, and I have deployed a simpler version in my own teaching.43 After some of my own demos, my students in Botswana rewrote the formal [1986] as the informal [1986a-86b].
[1986] Influential local authorities close to the offices associated with financial affairs have given the public to understand that a series of recent developments which have not been favouring the free distribution of information have left some uncertainty regarding the whereabouts of funds reported missing. [1986a] Local authorities have made the public aware of something not quite right about the money reported missing. [1986b] The public has been informed that even now the money that was stolen has not been found. Perhaps such exercises could assist the National Curriculum English in making its chirpy objectives more concrete (cf. VI.10.13.5f). VI.F Analysing a text 74. On 26 June 1955, the Congress of the People held at Kliptown, South Africa, adopted a remarkable document entitled The Freedom Charter.44 Though the term was of course not used, it was an outpouring of progressive ecologism, e.g.: [1987] We, the People of South Africa, declare for all our country and the world to know: that South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white; […] There shall be a forty-hour working week, a national minimum wage, paid annual leave, and sick leave for all workers, and maternity leave on full pay for all working mothers; […] Education shall be free, compulsory, universal and equal for all children; Higher education and technical training shall be opened to all by means of state allowances and scholarships awarded on the basis of merit; […] Free medical care and hospitalisation shall be provided for all, with special care for mothers and young children… In 1956, the apartheid ‘government’ responded by arresting 156 advocates and charged them with ‘high treason and a countrywide conspiracy to use violence to overthrow the present government and replace it with a communist state’ (sound familiar?), punishable by death. The ‘Treason Trials’ dragged on for five years with no death sentences, given the sheer absurdity of proving a ‘conspiracy’ among 156 people, some of whom hardly knew each other. But major opposition figures were kept out of circulation and burdened with heavy legal costs: some were re-arrested and sentenced to long prison terms; and the police practices of ‘isolating, beating and torturing to elicit information’ soon ‘became commonplace’ (Nelson Mandela). 75. Among the ‘defendants’ of those asinine ‘trials’ was the distinguished South African writer and human rights activist, Alex La Guma, His novel Time of the Butcherbird 45 opens with the unexplained scene in [1988], which, we find out only later, is a black community displaced from their ancestral village in the Karoo to a repulsive desert by greedy white mining companies. [1988] (a) When the government trucks had gone, the dust they had left behind hung over the plain and smudged the blistering afternoon sun so that it appeared as a daub of white-hot metal through the moving haze. (b) The dust hung in the sky for some time before settling down on the white plain. (c) The plain was flat and featureless except for two roads bull-dozed from the ground, bisecting each other to lie like scars of a branded cross on the pocked and powdered skin of the earth. (d) In the distance a new water tank on metal stilts jutted like an iron glove clenched against the empty sky. (e) The dust settled slowly on the metal of the tank and on the surface of the brackish water it contained, laboriously pumped up from below the sand; on the rough cubist mounds of folded and piled tents dumped there by officialdom; on the sullen faces of the people who had been unloaded like the odds and ends of furniture they had been allowed to bring with them, powdering them grey and settling in the perspiring lines around mouths and in the eye sockets, settling on the unkempt and travel-
creased clothes, so that they had the look of scarecrows left behind, abandoned in this place. (f) This was no land for ploughing and sowing; it was not even good enough to be buried in. 76. The topic is set and sustained by Thematic Sequences whose headwords (‘dust’, ‘plain’) fittingly function as the Subjects of most of the Independent Clauses (a, b, c, e). One Sequence stages the desolate Place: ‘plain – plain – plain – flat – featureless – roads – ground – earth – place’. Another features the stifling aridity: ‘dust – haze – dust – powdered – dust –sand – powdering’. A grammatically linked Sequence features Dispositive and Enactive events of the ‘dust’ dominating the place and the people: ‘hung over – smudged – moving – hung– settled slowly – powdering grey – settling – settling’. Nearly all of these lexical choices are unmarked, as if to highlight a Plain Style that is iconic for the scene itself. Iconic too is the repetitive insistence on ‘dust’, ‘settle’, and ‘plain’, to enforce the dreary monotony of the scene. 77. Another key Thematic Sequence features the heat: ‘blistering sun – white-hot metal – branded – perspiring’, which links by natural metonymy to the ‘sand’ and ‘dust’ accumulating in hot places. The other main Thematic Sequences are associated with ‘dust’ as well. At the start of the novel, the ‘government’ or ‘officialdom’ responsible for this bleak situation ‘leaves dust behind’, an Action parallel to the Actions that left behind the ‘people’ and their ‘furniture’ as if they were already equated with dust: ‘dumped – unloaded – abandoned’. The Thematic Sequence for hard mechanical objects and rough actions is in turn linked by Metonymy to the government: ‘trucks’ (the immediate cause of the ‘dust’) – roads – bull-dozed – water tank –metal stilts – iron – metal – tank’. The ‘tank’ is a Symbol of government cynicism leaving just the minimum for survival; and, by the simile of ‘jutted like an iron glove’, also a Symbol of the brutal power of the government which, in the irony playing off the familiar Collocation ‘iron fist in a velvet glove’, dispensed with the velvet. 78. By skilful synecdoche, the ‘dumped’ people appear in parts: ‘sullen faces – mouths – eye sockets’, as if falling to pieces and soon to be skeletons whose ‘mouths’ and ‘eye sockets’ will be filled with ‘dust’ indeed. Their plight resonates with the pain-fraught metaphor and personification (or animation) of the injured landscape with metonymic links via ‘branded’ to cattle, and via ‘pocked’ to disease. 79. The Actions of the ‘dumped’ people are limited to the Dispositives of having ‘folded and piled’ their ‘tents and having ‘brought’ their ‘allowed furniture’; and now just the bodily Enactive of dumbly ‘perspiring’, the sweat ironically resembling the ‘brackish water’ they must drink. There will be no Productives of ‘ploughing’ or ‘sowing’ in the future, which awaits them, only the final Dispositive being ‘buried’ in this ‘land’ that is ‘not even good enough’ for that humble purpose. A double Irony inhabits the metaphor of the ‘scarecrows’: that these people are made to represent lifeless figures dressed in ‘unkempt clothes’; and that there will be no crops grown here from which to ‘scare the crows’. 80. The most marked lexical choice, ‘cubist’, carries the literal meaning of a specific anti-realist art movement in early 20th century painting, which, among other principles, represented objects and humans in the medium of geometric planes. Here its meaning is figurative, bringing the ‘folded and piled tents’ into a Thematic Sequence with geometric terms ‘bisecting’, ‘cross’, and ‘lines’, and symbolizing perhaps the dehumanisation of those expected to live and die in those ‘tents’. 73. These designedly laconic uses of stylistic figures render the overall style deceptively Plain and Impersonal, as arid and sparse as the terrain. The inhumanity of the scene and of the political and social system of apartheid that engendered it speaks for itself out of the Visuality of the images, as in an allegory for the dispossession and ‘dumping’ of the native Africans, like refuse, in their own homeland. Notes to Chapter VI 1
See Rumelhart et al., Note 13 to Ch. V.
2
Quoted from the translation by S.H. Butcher.
3
All quotes from the translation by Hugh Lawson-Tancred.
4
Quoted from the translation by Benjamin Jowett.
5
Whether and how similar authorities of Greek antiquity — Gorgias, Isocrates, Thrasymachus, Lycophron,
Alcidamas, Licymnius of Chios, and so forth — addressed this dilemma would be an issue of great interest if more of their works were extant. 6 The Latin original title De Elocutione seems to me less apt, since written language receives more attention than speech. I quote from the translation of W. Rhys Roberts, who does not provide the original Greek data (see following note). 7 Inevitably, translation obscures the stylistic indicators specific to Classical Greek, such as the ‘length of vowels’ and the use of ‘particles’. The conception of style being relative to a particular language is briefly aired in VI.10.6.2. 8 The Greek term ‘kôla’ (‘member’) is used in the text mainly for a sentence, but some-times for a clause as well. 9 Charles Bally, Traité de Stylistique Française (Heidelberg: Jules Marouzeau, Précis de Stylistique Française (Paris: Masson, 1941).
C.
Winter,
1909);
compare
10 Compare Bernd Spillner, Linguistik und Literaturwissenschaft: Stilforschung, Rhetorik, Textlinguistik (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 1974); and Reinhard R.K. Hartmann, Contrastive Textology (Heidelberg: Groos, 1980); and the references in both volumes. 11
By Mona Baker (London: Routledge, 1992).
12
Saussure, cited Note 28 to Ch II, p. 99.
13 Classics include Max Deutschbein, Neuenglische Stylistik (Leipzig: Quelle & Meyer, 1932); Mathesius, Functional Analysis, in Note 96 to Ch. II; Jean Paul Vinay and Jean Darbelnet, Stylistique Comparée du Français et de l’Anglais (Paris: Didier, 1958); and Mario Wandruszka, Interlinguistik (Munich: Piper, 1976). 14 As of April 2003, ‘contrastive linguistics’ appeared on 2,393 Internet websites and ‘contrastive stylistics’ on only 16. 15 I am indebted to the students in my graduate seminar on Corpus Linguistics at the Universidade Federal da Paraíba for verifying the Portuguese data. 16 I strongly doubt if epigrams like ‘style is the man himself’ (‘le style est l’homme même’, 1763) from the French naturalist Georges-Louis Leclerc, Count Buffon, was intended to extend this far. 17
Sapir, cited in Note 28 to Ch. II, p. 266.
18
Chomsky, Aspects, cited in Note 60 to Ch. II, pp. 127, 222f.
19
J.R. Firth, Papers in Linguistics 1934-1951 (Oxford: Oxford UP, 1957), p. 184.
20
Halliday, Explorations, cited in Note 106 to Ch. II, pp. 103, 112ff.
21
By Geoffrey N. Leech and Michael H. Short (London: Longman, 1981).
22 Compare Josephine Miles, Style and Proportion (Boston: Little, Lubomir Doležel and Richard Bailey (eds.), Statistics and Style (NY: Elsevier, 1969).
Brown,
1967);
23 Compare Stanley Fish, ‘Literature in the reader: Affective stylistics’, New Literary History 1, 1970, 123162. 24 Curtis Hayes, ‘A study in prose styles: Edward Gibbon and Ernest Hemingway’, in Doležel and Bailey (Note 22), pp. 80-91. 25
E.g., Samuel Levin, ‘Internal and external deviation in poetry’, WORD 21, 1965, 225-237.
26
Where only the author’s name is given, the poem is untitled.
27 The ms. is in the Huntington Library. Compare now Hugh M. Hood et al. (eds.) Georgia’s Lost Poet, Dr. Thomas H. Chivers (Birmingham, AL: Brookside, 2001). 28 It was the work of two quite dissimilar authors writing at least 30 years apart: one an eccentric professorial language guardian (William Strunk) legislating his biases; the other, his former student and affectionate apologist (E.B. White), a distinguished writer of prose. Quotes from pp. 60f, 48, 52, 66, 77. 29 Ironically, the most visible success falls to the official ‘guides’ and ‘handbooks of style’, issued by some prestigious institution like the Modern Language Association or the American Psychological Association, for authors who presumably already have a style of their own. Anyway, ‘style’ only refers there to standardising text formats, e.g., paragraphing, citations, footnotes, and references. 30 I am chiefly following M.A.K. Halliday, e.g., ‘Notes on transitivity and theme in English’, Journal of Linguistics 1967-68, 3, 37-81, 3, 199-244, and 4, 179-215; see especially pp. 213 and 219. 31
On Halliday’s estimate of the ‘duration’ of unstressed Syllables, see Note 9 to Ch. IV.
32
Compare Kenneth L. Pike, The Intonation of American English (Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 1945),
33
See Hightower, Yellow Stripes (Note 2 to Ch. I), pp. 114f.
34 Yet to judge from John Lyons’ compendious survey Semantics (Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1976), Attitudes have not received any substantive treatment in the study of meaning. 35 E.g. Gottlob Frege, ‘Über Sinn und Bedeutung’, Zeitschrift für Philosophie und philosophische Kritik 100, 1892, 25-50. 36
E.g. James J. Gibson, The Senses Considered as Perceptual Systems (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966).
37
E.g. Willard van Ormen Quine, Word and Object (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1960).
38 The example of ‘torrent’ was brought up by John Sinclair in a talk at the University of Vienna in 1994 that first set me thinking seriously about how corpus research might redirect our studies. 39
By Brian Seaton (London: Macmillan, 1982).
40
Life under the Chief Doublespeak Officer, at www.dt.org/html.Doublespeak.html.
41 For unfathomable reasons, this transmuted nickname has caught on, with 1,367 hits on the Internet in January 2004.
42
At www.genius2000.com/ag.html.
43
Reported in my ‘Stylistics in Africa’, College Literature, special issue, to appear.
44
Posted at www.anc.org.za/ancdocs/history/charter.html and well worth reading.
45
Annie Gagiano of the University of Stellenbosch writes me that the butcherbird, which in Afrikaans is
‘laksman’ meaning ‘executioner’, is a symbol for the African who would one day strike back at the ‘brutally repressive Afrikaner elite’. She notes that the bird’s ‘habit of hanging up its prey on thorns or barbed-wire fences’ could be ‘reminiscent (to the anthropomorphic imagination) of the intimidation technique of killing opponents or criminals and exhibiting their corpses in public’.
VII. Discursive Themes of Social Division VII.A Tracking social discourse 1. In recent decades, the ideological polarisation between right versus left in English-speaking societies (and many others) has been drastically overlaid by the economic polarisation between top versus bottom. 1 If the ideological centre seems to be in remission, so does the economic ‘middle class’. Those politicians on both right and left who align themselves with the top and against the bottom create a hollow ‘new left’ cloning the old right, and a vitriolic ‘new right’ moved over to the far right. The latter are obsessed with money and power, and with an agenda to abolish every trace of the social safety net by their Orwellian term ‘welfare reform’, which would, among other things [1989] get rid of Aid to Families with Dependent Children, make cuts in Medicaid and turn it into a block grant, cut home heating allowances and food stamps, and deny assistance to welfare moms who can’t find work. 2 Apparently, the vaunted ‘compassionate conservatives’ at the top of the world’s richest country want America’s ‘unfortunate’ to be not just poor, but destitute; not just sick, but untreated; not just cold, but freezing; not just hungry, but starving. Not just the ‘survival of the fittest’, but the extinction of the ‘unfit’. 2. Thus intent is chillingly plain in the voting record of the now supposed ‘Vice-President’ Richard Cheney, who when in Congress consistently voted against the civil rights programs, federal immunization program, school lunch and child nutrition programs, support services for the elderly, family violence prevention programs, college student aid programs, adult education, bilingual education, the Equal Rights Amendment, minimum Social Security benefits, the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Water Act, the Superfund hazardous waste cleanup program…and (almost alone) even against the bans on armour-piercing cop-killer bullets and on guns that fool metal detectors. 3 3. If Cheney often lost on these spiteful votes, supposed ‘President’ George W. Bush often wins by acting through executive order with no vote. 4 Just in the first few months ‘in office’, he slashed the budgets of libraries, public housing repairs, child abuse programs, workforce training for the dislocated, renewable energy research, fuel efficient cars, the Environmental Protection Agency, the Community Access Program, the Girls and Boys Club of America, the Childcare and Development Grant — even though, all put together, the money thus ‘saved’ couldn’t make a dent in the trillion-dollar deficits projected from his binges of ‘tax relief’ for the very rich.5 And don’t bother ask the ‘President’ why, since he is evidently misled by his title of ‘commander inchief’ to regard government as a military operation:
[1990] I’m the commander, I do not need to explain why I say things. That’s the interesting thing about being President. […] I don’t feel I owe anyone an explanation. (speaking to the National Security Council) The rolls of the victims of these cuts by a chest-beating ‘compassionate conservative’ and ‘education president’ were already long by 2003, just for example: 33,000 in child care programs; 332,000 in home heating programs; 36,000 in meals for minors programs; 8,000 in homeless child education programs; and 50,000 in after-school programs (Bushwhacked).6 4. Surely the increasing disproportion between the tiny empowered minority scrambling to the top and the vast disempowered majority slipping toward the bottom is flagrantly incompatible with both the theory and the practice of democracy. Public and private discourse become steadily more conflicted as discursive strategies or themes compete to inform or 'disinform' the population, to legitimise or illegitimise some position or proposal, all of which raises a veritable gamut of social, political, and economic issues for an ecologist study of text and discourse. In this chapter, I shall raise some of these issues and identify and illustrate some strategies of discourse and counter-discourse which inhabit them, reserving for later the in-depth analysis of individual texts. VII.B Modes of speaking 1: Strategies for inclusion and exclusion 5. First, we can review some strategies you can use to include or empower yourself, usually excluding or disempowering others, at least by implication. Self-promoting tells how superior you are, as is common in the discourses of public relations such as advertising [1991] and politics [1992]. [1991] We are absolutely the best service available to help fight or beat a speeding ticket […] without you discussing your speed or driving, [by finding] rules, regulations or procedures that ‘they’ have not followed (Ticket Killer)www [1992] We are the most environmentally friendly Agriculture Ministry in Europe. (Minis-ter John Gummer, who ate a hamburger and force-fed another to his 4-year old daughter on British TV in 1990 to ‘prove’ that mad cow disease poses no danger to humans) With everything claiming to be ‘the best’, a special irony inheres in the Collocation ‘nothing but the best’ which returned 74,226 hits from AltaVista on the Internet, glorifying music, dogs, knives, furniture, health care, real estate, football camps… 6. Academic discourses too become self-promoting as they are increasingly colonised by public relations: [1993] Northface University is establishing the finest university in the world for software developers. […] The courses are fast-paced, utilize leading edge technologies, and reinforce best practice skills. […] Students are mentored by some of the most well-respected thought leaders in the software industry.www [1994] With our reputation as one of the UK’s leading centres of teaching excellence and research innovation, we’re making a lasting impact on the next generation of innovators and business leaders (Sheffield City Polytechnic)7 Staff must do their own self-promotion on ‘evaluation forms’ inquiring how we have ‘improved our teaching and research’ since the last evaluation and plan to do before the next (should any time and energy remain after filling out the piles of forms). 7. Patronising seeks power by disempowering others. You can ignorant or stupid [1995]; or you can loftily bestow praise like a special favour [1996].
address
them
as
[1995] You are patronising me […] far more that any sexist male could. I am a woman with a brain, […] I do n ot require anyone to decide which bits of books I can manage to read without straining my poor littleintellect to the breaking point. (Elizabeth Elliot)www [1996] ‘You grow quite professional as a landlady. I hear on all sides of the excellence of your establishment.’ Wilson knew she was being patronised if not mocked outright (Lady’s Maid) The term originated as a process of social or financial support from a powerful ‘patron’, but the current sense suggests tendering unwanted or irrelevant support. 8. Jargonising seeks power by deploying a strenuous style of gratuitously technical, obscure, or pretentious expressions to empower insiders and disempower outsiders. Legal discourse or ‘legalese’ has been one prime domain, viz.: [1997] Financial products supplied by a financial supply facilitator are not financial supplies. However, a supply of an interest facilitated by a financial supply facilitator is a financial supply by the financial supply provider if the supply of the interest is one to which regulation 40-13 applies. (Australian Treasurer on the Goods and Services Tax) [1998] Trial court did not abuse its discretion by ordering a post-judgement temporary injunction to enforce a permanent injunction that was part of a final judgement when the court made adequate findings that the permanent injunction was violated and tailored the post-judgement injunction to only enforce the provisions of the permanent injunction. (Minnesota Court of Appeals in the Minneapolis Star Tribune) 8 The jargonising of discourses in statistics can be wondrously theoretical, since they don’t need to directly confront reality or address the public, e.g.: [1999] Randomization defines the parameter of interest expressed as a function of multiple endogenous variables. It orthogonalizes the treatment variable simultaneously with respect to the other regressors in the model and the disturbance term for the conditional population. (Randomization)www Recently, too, the jargon of computer ‘technospeak’ has scaled new depths: [2000] CGMud is a free, softcoded system with a cached on-disk database and dynamic single inheritance, supporting graphical I/O via a custom client. (CGMud)www [2001] The ABC-PDQ 381 environments into hex and alphageomosaic applications virtualized to PIA DIP switch functionality at 120010 baud. (XERCOM in InfoWorld) Unlike the discourses of law or statistics, these are, perversely enough, intended to attract paying clients and customers, who, if they can’t understand them, can at least be too impressed to resist or to ask unwanted questions. 9. The term shoptalk can designate discursive strategies of a professional group to facilitate insider use rather than to impress each other or outsiders. An engaging example stems again from the computer industry, but from the community of ‘hackers’, defined by themselves as persons who ‘program enthusiastically (even obsessively)’, or ‘enjoy exploring the details of programmable systems and stretching their capabilities’. 9 (The term should not be confused with the journalistic misuse of ‘hacker’ for the ‘cracker’ who breaks through the computer security codes.) Their shoptalk described in [2002] fits their occupation of manipulating symbol systems as ‘languages’ of the computer.
[2002] Hackers, as a rule, love wordplay and are very conscious and inventive in their use of language. [They] regard slang formation and use as a game to be played for conscious pleasure. Their inventions thus display an almost unique combination of the neotenous enjoyment of language-play with the discrimination of educated and powerful intelligence. Shoptalk terms devised to designate people may be Ameliorative for expert hackers [2003-06] or Pejorative for people the hackers unwillingly deal with [2007-10]. [2003] demigod: A hacker with years of experience, a national reputation, and a major role in the development of at least one design, tool, or game used by or known to more than half of the hacker community. [2004] Jim Clark […] launched Silicon Graphics Inc., whose high-powered computers transformed the way everything from suspension bridges to jet aircraft get designed. […] But a successful Healtheon IPO would put him firmly in the pantheon of high-tech demigods (Business Week) [2005] language lawyer: A person who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. [2006] The C++ Programming Language is excellent reference for language lawyers as well as a good tutorial for newbie [beginner] users (DWM)www [2007] code grinder: A suit-wearing minion of the sort hired in legion strength banks and insurance companies to implement payroll packages and other unspeakable horrors.
by
[2008] Many of the college graduates with Computer Science degrees these days are code grinders with no understanding or enthusiasm for an aesthetic engineering solution. (Perry E. Metzger) www [2009] marketroid: A member of a company’s marketing department who promises users that the next version of a product will have features that are not actually scheduled for inclusion, are extremely difficult to implement, and/or are in violation of the laws of physics; or one who describes existing features in ebullient, buzzword-laden adspeak. [2010] Marketroids will take any documented file format with more than two users and declare it ‘standard’. (John Foust)www Pejorative too are the terms for the practices of jargonising: [2011] cybercrud: Obfuscatory tech-talk. The computer equivalent of bureaucratese. [2012] The headaches of junkmail fibercrud pale beside the anxieties triggered by vivid multimedia cybercrud served up on optical disks and communication links. (Paul Saffo)www [2013] math-out: A paper or presentation so encrusted with mathematical or other formal notation as to be incomprehensible. This may be a device for concealing the fact that it is actually content-free. [2014] The only problemo is both these examples of the Adaptive Vector Quantizer are a mathout, and I cannot decipher to layman’s terms the algorithm supplied. (Bryan Reinhardt)www Whereas euphemism primly masks the pejorative (like throwing people out of work) (VI.48f), shoptalk playfully mocks the pejorative, partly to poke fun at products that plague the practices of hackers. Puns abound. ‘MS-DOS’ becomes ‘mess-loss’, ‘mess-dog’, ‘mess-dross’, and ‘Domestos’ (the toilet cleaner), because of ‘its
single-tasking nature, its limits on application size, and its nasty primitive interface’. ‘FORTRAN becomes ‘Fortrash’, because of ‘its primitive design, gross and irregular syntax, limited control constructs, and slippery, exception-filled semantics’. ‘IBM’ is said to stand for ‘Inferior But Marketable, ‘Insidious Black Magic’, or ‘It’s Been Malfunctioning’, for making machines that hackers find ‘underpowered and over-priced’; ‘the designs are incredibly archaic’, and ‘you can’t fix them’ because ‘source code is locked up tight’. 10. These functions set shoptalk clearly apart from the other discourse strategies reviewed above. It promotes solidarity among insiders and deconstructs the power-seeking pretentiousness of patronising and jargonising, which is disdained by hackers as ‘bureaucratic bafflegab’ as well as 'cybercrud'. Though shoptalk does tend to exclude outsiders, its purpose is programmatically inclusive: [2015] Hacker culture [is] conscious of some important shared experiences, roots, and values; it has its own myths, heroes, villains, folk epics, in-jokes, taboos, and dreams. The special vocabulary of hackers helps hold their culture together — it helps hackers recognize each other’s places in the community. […] A sense of community may be hackerdom’s most valuable intangible asset. 9 Similarly, the hacker community is undeniably a power group, but they earn their status far more legitimately than some bombastic ‘authority’ who produces discourse like [1997-99]. Their specialised knowledge and experience are products of intense and arduous training, and empower the rest of us who must depend on the electronic industry to minimise the drudgery of producing texts and images, and communicating over vast distances. And they resist intrusive projects like the ‘computer forensic laboratories for seized or intercepted computer evidence’ created by the Patriot Act (VII.109.6.1) or the ‘New American Century’ plan to ‘seize total control of cyberspace and the Internet’ (VII.97). [2016] There’s nothing that gets people in the high-tech world more excited than Big Brother and the misuse of technology, especially by the federal government. (Wade Randlett at DigitalConsumer)www Indeed, hackers may prove to be the prime force of resistance, always devising ingenious means to protect the privacy of citizens and ferret out ‘top secrets’ of governmental and military misconduct. VII.C Modes of speaking 2: Strategies for displacement 11. Next, we can review some strategies for saying one thing to avoid saying another that might cause difficulties. Here too, you may be empowering yourself and disempowering others, but less overtly, e.g., making yourself look good just by making others look bad. Since the terms for describing are mostly not stabilised, I shall improvise, mainly by creating brisk analogies to ‘doublespeak’ as publicised by the US National Council of Teachers of English. 12. The term doublespeak itself was coined after Orwell’s ‘newspeak’ plus ‘doublethink’ in the novel 1984, and serendipitously links with ‘doubletalk’: using language to create a misleading and soothing alternative to some straightforward and pejorative reality — like providing a discursive veneer of official theory to mask operational practice. One US survey from law, business, economics, and politics concluded that ‘doublespeak has become the language of public discourse, the language we use to conduct the business of the nation’ (William Lutz).10 13. In its more extreme modes, doublespeak can be utterly mystifying. The text [2017] on the back of former US ‘draft cards’ seems designed to make sure you won’t know how to ‘appeal’ (and won't), whilst [2018] leaves you dazed about the forces that are (or maybe are not?) menacing ‘enunciatory modality’.
[2017] A personal appearance before the appeal board may be requested if you are eligible to request an appeal to the appeal board. You may appeal to the appeal board without requesting a personal appearance before the appeal board, but if you wish to appear before the appeal board, you must specifically ask for the appearance in addition to requesting an appeal. [2018] If, for a while, the ruse of desire is calculable for the uses of discipline, soon the repetition of guilt, justification, pseudo-scientific theories, superstition, spurious authorities, and classification can be seen as the desperate effort to ‘normalize’ formally the disturbance of a discourse of splitting that violates the rational, enlightened claims of its enunciatory modality. (Homi K. Bhabha The Location of Culture) But often you can make a canny guess, e.g., that [2019-20] are about people dying. [2019] Patient failed to fulfill his wellness potential. (entry in doctor’s chart after the patient died) [2020] rocket boosters […] have an explosive force upon surface impact that is sufficient to exceed the accepted overpressure threshold of physiological damage for exposed personnel. (Air Force letter) 14. Unquestionably, doublespeak is a royal strategy of US ‘administrations’ on touchy issues. Bush Sr. pledged ‘no new taxes’ during the 1988 election campaign and for his 1991 budget, which hid $21.7 billion of them behind the locutions ‘receipts proposals’ and ‘user fees’; elsewhere, he spoke of ‘revenue increases’ and ‘passenger facilitation charges’. Under Reagan, tax increases were first ‘revenue enhancement’, then ‘receipts strengthening’; under Clinton, a ‘wage-based premium’. Lunging obsessively in the opposite direction, Bush Jr replaced ‘tax cut’ connoting pain with ‘tax relief’ connoting a cure for pain. 15. Doublespeak has been craftily combined with jargonising (in the sense of VII.8) by coining outlandish technical terms to implicate power and authority whilst camouflaging what is meant. Peace was ‘permanent prehostility’, and combat was ‘violence processing’ (Pentagon). Bombs were ‘vertically deployed anti-personnel devices’ (U.S. Army). The invasion of Grenada was a ‘pre-dawn vertical insertion’ (State Department). The narrowly avoided nuclear explosion at Three Mile Island was a ‘spontaneous energetic disassembly’ (Metropolitan Edison). Mercenaries in Nicaragua were ‘unilaterally controlled Latino assets’ (Central Intelligence Agency, hereafter CIA). A bill collector was a ‘persistency specialist’ (Chase Manhattan Bank). Road signs were ‘ground-mounted confirmatory route markers’ (Massachusetts Department of Public Works). Fleas were ‘hematophagous arthropod vectors’ (American Journal of Family Practice). 16. And doublespeak terms positively abound for laying off employees, already sampled as euphemisms back in VI.48, as when corporations issue denials like: [2021] These are called schedule adjustments, not layoffs. (Stouffer Foods) [2022] This was not a cutback or a layoff. It was a career-change opportunity. (Clifford of Vermont) Exquisitely quaint doublespeak for layoffs were a ‘normal payroll adjustment’ (Wal-Mart); a ‘career transition program’ (General Motors); ‘management initiated attrition’ (IBM); ‘negative hiring’ (Peoria, Arizona Police Dept.); ‘release of resources’ (Bank of America); and ‘decruiting’ (Council of Residential Specialists). 11 17. Plain language, in contrast, unmasks corporate cynicism, as when John Brink, CEO of Consolidated Freightways, posted a hotline for 17,000 employees to call on Labor Day 2002[2023], eliciting a neat quip from the Teamsters Union [2024].
[2023] Thank you for dialing in this holiday weekend. I hope you and your family and enjoying your time together. I have some extremely urgent and sad news to share with you today. […] Your employment ends immediately. (Associated Press) [2024] That’s like telling your wife you’re getting divorced on Valentine’s Day. (Carlos Ramos) In return, plain language is surely the fitting medium for the real human consequences of layoffs, e.g., after a survey among 63,000 Safeway ‘ex-workers’: [2025] suicides, attempted suicides, divorces, broken families, whole towns devastated economically, [whereas] executives at the top shared a personal gain of $800 million. (Susan Faludi in the Wall Street Journal) 18. Perhaps bubblespeak would be an apt companion term for unmitigated hot air, a cordial ally of doublespeak. Here, absurdly vacuous or tortuous explanations (official theory) are offered because forthright ones (operational theory) threaten the interests of a speaker or authority. A crass infringement of constitutional rights empowering the ‘Department of Justice’ to monitor communication between prisoners and their attorneys (should any be allowed) was ‘promoting justice’ [2026]. ‘Capital punishment’ honours ‘the sanctity of human life’ [2027]. ‘Patriotic folks’ couldn’t serve in Vietnam because the US military was totally filled by ‘ghetto youths’ out for fast bucks [2028]. ‘Environmental criminals’ are ‘decent people’ [2029]. ‘Toxic’ pollution in the workplace promotes the workers’ ‘health’ [2030]. [2026] Its purpose is to encourage full and frank communication between and their clients and thereby promote broader public interests in the observance of law and administration of justice. (Upjohn County vs. United States) [2027] Capital punishment is our society’s recognition of the sanctity of human life. (Orrin Hatch) [2028] So many minority youths had volunteered for the well-paying military positions to escape poverty and the ghetto that there was literally no room for patriotic folks. (Tom Delay on why he and Dan Quayle avoided military service in Vietnam) [2029] Environmental crimes are not like organised crime or drugs. There you have bad people doing bad things. With environmental crimes, you have decent people doing bad things. (Deputy Assistant Attorney General Barry Hartman) [2030] When the Office of Management and Budget blocked […] the Occupational Safety and Health Administration from establishing lower exposure limits for more than 1,000 toxic substances used in industry and agriculture, […] the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs ruled that workers will be better off exposed: […] ‘because of intense competition, companies cannot raise their prices to pay for the cost of the new regulations [and] would have to cut wages and jobs, [so] workers would have reduced incomes, thus affecting their health.’ (New York Times) Never mind that companies are gleefully ‘cutting wages and jobs’ anyhow, whilst ‘regulations’ are in fact being gutted by the Bush-Men (cf. VII.66f, 72. 80). 19. Bubblespeak rose to historic significance when the ‘Supreme Court’ justified unconstitutionally stopping the vote count and in effect appointing Bush Jr to an illegitimate presidency: [2031] The counting of votes that are of questionable legality does, in my view, threaten irreparable harm to the petitioner [Bush] and to the country by casting a cloud upon what he claims to be the legitimacy of his election. (Justice Antonin Scalia)12
To appreciate the rich irony of the bubblespeak from Scalia — whose own son Gene worked for the law firm representing Bush’s ‘petition’ to the Court — we need merely sample the public discourse showing that precisely ‘votes of questionable legality’ produced Bush’s Florida ‘victory’ by an official margin of 592, viz.: [2032] Of the 2,490 overseas ballots that ended up being included, […] 344 had no evidence of being cast before election day; 183 were postmarked in the US; 96 lacked witnesses; 169 came from unregistered voters; 5 came after the November 19 deadline; and 19 were cast on two ballots. All these violated Florida law, yet were all counted for Bush. (Michael Moore)13 [2033] In Seminole County, the elections supervisor (a Republican) had illegally allowed two GOP operatives to ‘correct’ thousands of pre-printed absentee ballot applications mistakenly showing birth dates instead of the legally-required voter IDs, without [which] the law says the applications are automatically void (John Dee in lumpen magazine) [2034] In Okaloosa County, the Republican elections supervisor sent out absentee ballots unsolicited in response to change-of-address notifications, a practice that was bizarre and illegal, contributing to an 81%, 8,600 margin in absentee ballots for Bush in that County. (Washington Post) [2035] In Bay County, which has more registered Democrats than Republicans, a suitcase full of absentee ballots was illegally turned in, contributing to a 9,000-to-3,000 margin in absentee ballots for Bush. (courtroom deposition of GOP operative Michael Leach) And so on. Even these ‘questionable votes’ were modest compared to the mass of non-votes reported in Britain at the crucial time but not in the major US media. 14 [2036] Katherine Harris and Jeb Bush had ordered county elections officials to erase 57,000 voters from voter rolls, most of them Black, […] on grounds they are felons. […] The company that came up with this rotten little ‘purge’ list has, under threat of suit from the NAACP, confessed that the total purge targeted 94,000 voters — and that, at outside tops, only 3,000 may be illegal voters. (Greg Palast onBuzzFlash) Again with rich irony, Scalia was right that counting votes that proved Gore had actually won would indeed ‘cast a cloud’ on Bush’s ‘legitimacy’; but then so did the Court’s violation of the core principle of democracy — the right of the citizen to vote and have your vote counted honestly. And, as amply emerges from discourse data I cite, the ‘Bush administration’ is doing more ‘irreparable harm to the country’ than I could have imagined, and so far getting away with it. As we shall see, the ‘White House’ spews forth a relentless torrent of deceitfully worded assaults on constitutional rights, consumer health, worker safety, and the environment. 20. The combined weight of these voting violations presents a discursive dilemma of what to call Bush Jr, since you can only be ‘president’ if you won the election; you cannot just be appointed by a Supreme Court packed with right-wing allies. Designations like ‘Thief-in-Chief’, ‘a trespasser on federal land, a squatter in the Oval Office’ (Michael Moore), though apt enough, might seem confrontational. For my part, I merely put quotation marks around the titles in his ‘Administration’, whose domination by ‘Justice’ and ‘Defense’ has earned it the designation of ‘junta’ and its ascension that of a ‘coup d’état’ from various commentators. 15 If such terms sound inapplicable to America, a little-known ‘coup’ was actually planned in 1934 to kill the New Deal and restore the gold standard, as revealed to Congress by Major General Smedley Butler of the US Marine Corps: [2037] Butler testified that bond trader Gerald MacGuire had approached him in the summer of 1933, claiming to represent wealthy Wall Street broker Grayson Murphy, Singer sewing machine heir Robert Sterling Clark, and other unnamed men of wealth. […] MacGuire asked Butler to lead an army of 500,000 veterans in a march on Washington, D.C. […] Butler eventually deduced that the real goal was a coup d’état to take Roosevelt
captive, and force reinstatement of the gold standard. […]. The plotters would keep Roosevelt as a figurehead until he could be ‘encouraged’ to retire. 16 Is it un-American for the president to be a figurehead for tycoons and the military? (No-brainer of the year.) 21. If such ballot abuses don’t recur in 2004, then it may well be because there aren’t any ballots — only computerised ‘voting machines’ from GOP-friendly companies like Diebold and ES&S, whose potential for election fraud — already a Republican speciality perfected in Florida — is known to be infinitely greater: 17 [2038] The computer programs that tell electronic voting machines how to record and tally votes are allowed to be held as ‘trade secrets’. […] The companies that make these machines insist that their mechanisms are a proprietary secret. Can citizen’s groups, or even election officials, audit their accuracy? Not at all, with touch screens, and rarely, with optical scans, because most state laws mandate that optical scan paper ballots be run through the machine and then sealed into a box, never to be counted unless there is a court order. (Bev Harris in Scoop) [2039] Diebold Election Systems had been storing 40,000 of its files on […] an obscure site never revealed to public interest groups, but generally known among election industry insiders, and available to any hacker with a laptop. […] These files amounted to a virtual handbook for vote-tampering: diagrams of remote communications setups, passwords, encryption keys, source code, user manuals, testing protocols, and simulators, as well as files loaded with votes and voting machine software. (same) Reports of incidents like the following need not seem so ‘weird’ after all (so who needs the Marines?): [2040] In Alabama, Democrat Don Siegelman won the election for governor and went home. The next morning, 6,300 of his votes were gone, and Republican Bob Riley took the job instead. A recount was requested, but denied. (Vox Populi)www [2041] If you pressed the Democrat’s name in some counties in Texas, the Republican’s name was chosen. And in Cormal County, Texas, three Republican candidates won by exactly 18,181 votes apiece. ‘Isn’t that the weirdest thing?’ County Clerk Joy Streater asked at the time. ‘We noticed it right away, but it is just a big coincidence.’ […] But it gets even more amazing: in two other races elsewhere in this great nation, Republicans won by — wait for it — 18,181 votes. (same) www [2042] A recent fund-raising letter written by Diebold’s chief executive Walden O’Dell said he is ‘committed to helping Ohio deliver its electoral votes to the president next year’. (Cleveland Plain Dealer) [2043] There is a complex connection between the companies that make voting software and machines and the GOP, [which] makes sense of some of the most astonishing out-comes of 2002, where vast majorities of black voters voted for anti-black candidates, or where Republican votes skyrocketed and Democratic numbers plummeted, reversing historic trends, or machine s tallied more votes than werecast. (Counter-Punch)www (That ‘big coincidence’ in [2041] was a gem of bubblespeak too.) So now we can also wonder what to call this ‘Republican Congress’ and its ‘majority leaders’. At all events, ‘machine politics’ has acquired a nasty new meaning. 22. To judge from the Internet, Bush Jr has created his very own idiom — Dubyaspeak, a pungent personal mix of doublespeak and bubblespeak.18 He vows that the US is the foremost ‘peacekeeper’ despite his two devastating wars (so far); [2044]; or that the power crisis in California was due to insufficient equipment [2045] and not to the machinations of Bush’s pals and sponsors in the energy industry, as confirmed elsewhere [2046].
[2044] Redefining the role of the United States from enablers to keep the peace to enablers to keep the peace from peacekeepers is going to be an assignment. [2045] The California crunch really is the result of not enough power-generating plants and then not enough power to power the power of generating plants. [2046] After deregulation, […] the small coterie of plant owners held California’s power systems hostage. They could name their price and they did: $9,999 per unit of power — 30,000 percent above the old regulated price. [At] Duke Power of North Carolina, its managers simply threw away the spare parts needed to keep the plants running [and] ordered them to shut down a plant during a shortage (Best Democracy) Like the election fraud itself, dubyaspeak is rarely deconstructed by the conservative mass media, who after all worked their, erm, heads off helping to get him ‘elected’ [2047-48]. [2047] Reporters have to find a way to turn the nincompoop they bashed through the election into something resembling the leader of the free world (David Carr in the New York Times) [2048] Fox News formally declared Bush the winner [and] other networks ran like lemmings after Fox; […] John Ellis, the man in charge of Fox’s election coverage, [is] a first cousin of George W. and Jeb Bush (Stupid White Men) 23. Fibspeak is public lying for private or political motives. 19 [2049] There is no conclusive evidence that nicotine is addictive; […] and the same thing with cigarettes causing emphysema, lung cancer, heart disease (Rush Limbaugh) [More than 1,000 Americans die each day from smoking-related causes. – LifeClinic.com] [2050] The US gives far and away more tax money to foreign countries than anyone. (Bill O’Reilly) [The US gives a smaller fraction of its gross national product than any other developed country – Institute for Policy Studies] [2051] There are more American Indians alive today than there were when Columbus arrived. (Limbaugh) [Today, less than 2 million can claim ‘Indian’ ancestry; in 1492, it was between 5 and 15 million – Bureau of Indian Affairs] [2052] There are 100,000 abductions of children by strangers every year in the United States. (O’Reilly) [There were 134 in 1999, and 93 in 2000.] [2053] 800 babies a year are being left in dumpsters in Washington, DC (Newt Gingrich) [Four babies were found in dumpsters that year, all rescued and cared for Newt’s favourite enemy, the Clinton federal government] [2054] Conceptions from rape occur with the same frequency as snowfall in Miami. (Bush nominee Judge Leon Holmes on denying abortion to rape victims) [Each year in America over 30,000 women become pregnant from rape or incest; snow falls in Miami roughly once ever 100 years – American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology] [2055] There have been reports coming out of the White House of damages [committed by departing Clinton staffers] up to $200,000; […] obscenities scrawled; […] viruses in the computers (Grover Norquist) [no damage was done to the White House – General Accounting Office] [Untended irony from Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal: ‘it’s worse than anyone is saying — the Bush people being discreet’.]
Fibspeaking about Enron and the Bush ‘energy plan’ was routine [2056] until a memo from Enron Chairman Ken Lay to ‘Vice President’ Cheney was published in the San Francisco Chronicle and from there in the Fact Sheet of the Committee on Government Reform, US House of Representatives (31/01/ 2002) [2057]. [2056] What was put in the energy plan was put in at the need to help address an energy shortage in America, not as the result of a request of any one company or any one person. It was done because it’s the right policy for the country. (Ari Fleischer) [2057] Contrary to the White House claim, the White House energy plan incorporates the vast majority of Mr. Lay’s policy recommendations, [such as] to exercise federal eminent domain authority to override state decisions on siting of transmission lines, to reject price controls on electricity as a way to mitigate the California energy crisis, and to speed permitting of new energy facilities. (Fact Sheet) And fibspeak too is another hallmark for choicest Dubyaspeak: [2058] By far the vast majority of my tax cuts go to those at the bottom (debate with John McCain) [The bottom 60% got just 14.7% – Citizens for Tax Justice] [2059] Our first goal is clear: We must have an economy that grows fast enough to employ every man and woman who seeks a job. (State of the Union address, 2003) [By February 2004, 3 million jobs had been lost under Bush’s policies — ‘the worst overall job growth rate under any president in 58 years’ – AFL-CIO] [2060] I have sent you Clear Skies legislation that mandates a 70 percent cut in air pollution from power plants over the next 15 years. (same) [Bush’s New Source Review proposal is ‘the most sweeping and radical assault on a Clear Air programme and environmental law enforcement since the inception of the EPA’. – John Walker of the National Resource Defense Council] [2061] I believe in the results of focusing our attention and energy on teaching children to read. [He slashed $39 million from federal spending on libraries, and proposed eliminating the ‘Reading is Fundamental’ programme, which has distributed 200 million free books to low-income children since 1966.] To say that the fibspeak of Bush Jr would fill a thick book is no mere exaggeration, because it already has: The Lies of George W. Bush: The Politics of Deception.20 24. The cowed press uses doublespeak to frame fibspeak: [2062] Examining Bush’s statements on Iraq and on tax cuts, [David E.] Rosenbaum ‘found little that could lead to a conclusion that the president actually lied.’ Instead, he suggested that Bush was guilty of ‘selective emphasis’; any answer on whether he ‘stepped across the line’ into unacceptable manipulation ‘can probably be answered conclusively only by historians when all the evidence and consequences are known.’ (New York Times) Similarly, it was euphemistically said of Bush’s statements that they ‘appeared to contradict the events’; or that he had ‘ embroidered key assertions’, ‘taken some liberties’, ‘omitted qualifiers’, or ‘simply outpaced the facts’; or that his ‘rhetoric’ had ‘taken some flights of fancy’ (Dana Milbank in the Washington Post). Compare the reverse flagelation of a Democratic president: [2063] Clinton’s ‘calculated, sustained lying has involved an extraordinarily corrupting assault on language, which is the uniquely human capacity that makes persuasion, and hence popular government, possible.’ (George Will in the New York Times)
In the final days of hyping his war against Iraq, Bush vowed that ‘the days of deceit and denial are long gone’. Top that for unintentional irony! 25. In fraudspeak, you hypocritically profess standards or principles (theory) contradicted by your own actions (practice): [2064] The poor feed off the largess of this government and give nothing back (Rush Limbaugh) [He formerly collected unemployment payments] [2065] Racial paternalism and its unintended consequences can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination (Clarence Thomas) [Thomas was admitted to Yale Law School in 1971 through affirmative action] And yes, national leadership leads again: [2066] Any time an officer of a publicly held corporation sells stock we ought to know within two days. (Wall Street speech) [Aware it was illegal, Bush sold his own stock in the imploding Harken Energy Corporation for $848,560 to an anonymous purchaser und did not disclose to the Securities Exchange Commission for 8 months.]21 [2067] Inherent in these principles must be the interests of the small shareholders. (same) [He left them holding the bag when he dumped his stock just before Harken tanked and the share price plunged] [2068] We ought to look at people who are trying to avoid US taxes as a problem. [Harken had set up a subsidiary in the Caymans when he was on its board – Timothy J. Burger in the New York Daily News] [2069] This tax relief is for everyone who pays income taxes. […] Ninety-two million Americans will keep this year an average of almost $1,100 more of their own money. (State of the Union, 2003) [80% of Americans get less than this ‘average’. More than half of all taxpayers get less than $100. Almost a third get nothing at all. Meanwhile, millionaires get tax breaks averaging $90,000. – Citizens for Tax Justice] [2070] We continue to work together to keep Social Security sound and reliable. (same) [The costs of his tax cuts alone exceed by three times the entire projected shortfall in Social Security – Paul Krugman, Professor of Economics, in the New York Times]. 26. Flakspeak (after the anti-aircraft cannon for shooting at people above you) or attackspeak can designate discourse moves whose intention is to reduce and debase the human value of a person or group (I.38; VIII.28). It may be delivered face to face (or by e-mail) with the usual tired buzzwords: [2071] Get out of my studio before I tear you to fucking pieces. (Bill O’Reilly to Jeremy Glick, whose father died in the 9/11 attacks but who opposed the war on Iraq) 22 [2072] Saw you on Donahue with your liberal shit. Blow it out your ass, dickhead! (anonymous e-mail to political satirist Al Franken) [2073] You fucking Communist cunt, get out of here. (Richard Scaife, 23 heir to the Mellon fortune and bankroller of far-right ‘think tanks’, to Nation Senior Editor Karen Rothmyer, who asked him to ‘explainwhy do you give so much money to the New Right?’) [2074] You fucking son of a bitch. I saw what you wrote. We’re not going to forget this. (Bush Jr to Wall Street Journal writer and editor Al Hunt, who had merely omitted Bush Sr from his list of presidential candidates in 1988 and favoured Jack Kemp)24
27. Public discourse has become stridently confrontational as ‘conservatives’ of the ‘New Right’ — better dubbed the ‘New Rant’ — make flakspeak their preferred discourse mode [2075], as some acknowledge with consummate chutzpah [2076]: [2075] Ted Olson [now Bush’s Solicitor General] actually wrote articles anonymously in the American Spectator [and] charged the Clintons with a multitude of felonies, including […] the years in jail that, in his opinion, they ought to have served. (David Brock 25 on BuzzFlash)www [2076] We are trying to change the tones in the state capitals — and turn them toward bitter nastiness and partisanship. (Grover Norquist of ‘Americans for Tax Reform’) Discursive strategies of ‘pre-emptive defence’ (to use a bellicose term of the current ‘administration’) have widely created a myth of ‘liberal bias in the media’, so that reports exposing conservative lies and misdeeds will appear to lack ‘objectivity’ and ‘balance’ — virtues the conservatives self-righteously claim to uphold. [2077] Conservative news organizations are popular because they feed the rage. We bring the pain to the liberal media. […] We’ve created this cottage industry in which it pays to be un-objective […] Criticize other people for not being objective. Be as subjective as you want. It’s a great little racket. (Matt Labash of The Weekly Standard) The twisted conservative bias in the media can thus be camouflaged behind tireless indignant laments of a ‘liberal bias’26 — undermining in advance potential reports of conservative misdeeds whilst forgetting the merciless media flak unleashed even in the generally staid New York Times against Bill Clinton (‘the worst human being ever to occupy the White House’ – George Will) and Al Gore (‘Obsessive Loon at the Edge of Madness’ – Maureen Dowd). ‘The right-wing critique of liberal journalism is bankrolled by organisations obsessed with smashing labour, deregulating business, and putting corporations firmly in command of society’.27 28. No blow seems too low for the far-right flakspeak of public figures. The Democrats in Congress were ‘sick, pathetic, incompetent, tax-spending traitors’ (Gingrich on the 1990 budget debate). The Environmental Protection Agency was ‘the Gestapo of government’, and the Nobel Prize committee were ‘Swedish environmental extremists’ (Tom Delay). Feminists were ‘feminazis’, ‘obsessed with perpetuating a modern-day holocaust’ (abortion) (Rush Limbaugh). Black civil rights leaders were ‘race-hustling poverty pimps’ (C.J. Watts, sole black Republican Representative in Congress). And private flaking on the Internet against ‘Democrats’ dishes out the most-simple-minded smears imaginable: [2078] Voters are getting a new message: Democrats are crooks. (OpinioNet)www [2079] The Democrats are truly beginning to resemble the Mafia. They are barely a political party anymore, opting instead to become a criminal enterprise based on the maintenance of power at any cost. (Daily Rant)www [2080] Democrats are communists in all but name. (Free Republic)www [2081] Democrats are racists and hate blacks. They want to keep blacks down. (same) Perceptive commentators and opinion surveys agree that the Democrats’ real failing lies in abandoning the left and its traditional interests in labour, social progress, and the environment, and avidly competing with the Republicans in abjectly pandering to ‘corporate America’ at the top (VII.1) 28 — surely anything but ‘communists’!
29. The extremes to which flakspeak stretches public credulity by no means render it harmless. Fabulously rich right-wing sponsors of ‘foundations’ and ‘think tanks’ — actually stink tanks — have hoisted flakspeakers into powerful positions, such as talk show hosts on radio and television, or authors of books that become ‘bestsellers’ because those same sponsors buy up enormous quantities, viz.: [2082] Allen Neuharth, president of the Freedom Forum foundation, has repaid $20,000 he took from the Forum for a secret buy of 2,000 copies of his autobiography, Confessions of an S.O.B., in hopes of boosting it onto the best-seller list. (Treasure State Review) Despite a rabidly anti-intellectual slant in New Rant discourse, those same sponsors fund Cash-ForBash ‘intellectuals’ as ‘fellows’ or ‘research scholars’ in ‘institutes’ and ‘centers’ with innocuous-sounding names like ‘Heritage Fund’, ‘American Enterprise Institute’, or ‘National Center for Public Policy Research’ (as opposed, say, to the ‘Millions for Minions and Billions for Bigots Fund’, the ‘Shaky Foundation’, ‘Disinformation Nation’, or ‘America’s Assassins of Character), bankrolled by high rollers like Mellon heir Richard Scaife, John M. Olin, or Lynde and Harry Bradley, all of whom fervently believe the right-wing ideology holding that their money confers the power to dictate the political agenda of the whole society if not the whole world. (cf. I.16). The ‘research’ attacking social enemies is welcomed and disseminated in journals with their own innocuous-sounding names, like the National Review, the New Republicor the Weekly Standard (as opposed, say, to the Nastiest Rebuke, Snooty Bubblespeak, or Cheeky Slander — or even Calumny Columns). 30. Being the home of the most articulate resistance, universities are also the home of New Right beachheads that invite these ‘intellectuals’ to speak on the ‘decline of higher education’, always with the same anti-left flakspeak: [2083] Beginning in the mid-1960s, the left made a concerted effort to take over our colleges and universities. […] They’ve trampled free speech, virtually banished conservative professors, and turned our schools into little more than huge megaphones for anti-American rhetoric from coast to coast. (David Horowitz) This modest speaker planned a one-man ‘information assault’ to [2084] investigate and expose the hiring practices and tenure selection criteria used at universities and colleges; […] publish and distribute 300,000 copies of my new booklet, ‘Political Bias in America’s Universities’, onto campuses in every state; [and] conduct a National Survey On The State Of America’s Universities [and] send the results to two groups that hold real power over our schools: school alumni and state legislators. Why such untiring zeal? His website asks for ‘the $325,500 needed to fully fund the National Campaign to Take Back Our Campuses’,29 so ‘please make a contribution of $25, $35, $50, $100, or more, if possible’ — though his ‘Center for the Study of Popular Culture’ has already gotten $10.2 million from ‘conservative foundations’ (Media Transparency).www Great rate for Rent-A-Rant. 31. The same torrent of Cash-For-Bash funds a network of ‘campus newspapers’, again with bland names. The first and most notorious was the Dartmouth Review, the ‘flagship of yellow journalism, academic style’, which by 1992 had ‘received $300,000 from the Olin Foundation’ (Stanley Fish), 30 and which ran a quotation from Adolf Hitler, no less, in its masthead on the day commemorating the Jewish holocaust. Also, the Review reportedly published private correspondence of gay students stolen by its staff members. 32. Amazingly, even some university presidents may be spreading comparable disinformation, e.g., by asserting that today’s campuses extend
[2085] an immunity for whatever is said or done, responsibly or carelessly, within or without the walls of academic freedom by persons unconcerned for the truth; who, reckless, incompetent, frivolous or even malevolent, promulgate ideas for which they can claim no expertise, or even commit deeds for which they can claim no sanction of law. (John Silber in the Jewish World Review) This flakspeaker ruled Boston University for thirty years, indefatigable in his ‘attacks on scholarship produced by feminists, Marxists, multiculturalists, and others who did not pass his ideological litmus test’ (Henry Giroux). Perhaps the far-right ideal would be a campus where every crowd has a Silber lying. 33. Predictably, print and airwaves reek with the closely related hatespeak, which degrades whole types of people by criteria like race or religion: [2086] Niggers are basically primitive animals. […] The Jew Marxists see the nigger as their instrument, as their bullets, by which to destroy our society. […] I shudder to contemplate the future under nonwhite occupation; rapes, murders, robberies multiplied a hundred fold. (David Duke) [2087] We should invade their countries, kill their leaders, and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. […] We killed civilians. (Ann Coulter on anti-American Muslims) 31 Even these conventional bugbears attract less frenetic venom and unprincipled lunacy from the New Rant than do the ‘Liberals’, who get branded as ‘nothing less than Communists, Socialists, and Dictators’ (Limbaugh).32 We are straightfacedly asked to believe they ‘take sheer joy in telling lies’; they ‘hate America’ and ‘society’; they ‘seek to destroy sexual differentiation in order to destroy morality’; and they ‘want to take more of our money, kill babies, and discriminate on the basis of race’ (Coulter, Slander). Or again, they ‘despise freedom because they despise morality’ (huh?); they ‘seek to disarm individuals and render them powerless before the thugs, thieves and murderers who rule the inner cities’; and so on ad nauseam (Limbaugh again). Slander indeed, but whose and of whom? 34. What strikes me most about flakspeak and hatespeak is the motivation gap: why anyone could conceivably want to ‘destroy morality’, deliver us up to ‘thugs, thieves and murderers’, and so on. The only answer from the ‘New Rant’ slander-blender is to portray its enemies as monsters of inhumanity, e.g. as ‘intellectually dishonest, unprincipled, mentally immature, spoiled children’, or as ‘members of the selfdeluded, isolated and ill-educated Professorial Class living in their government financed socialist Ivory Towers’ (Limbaugh again); or again as ‘drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals’ (Pat Robertson). Such scum ‘champions sucking the brains out of little babies’ (Coulter); and ‘encourage women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians’ (Robertson). If this hatespeak points to the final solution of simply killing off the Liberals [2088], some ordinary citizens got the message, witness a lighted rent-a-sign in the Ozarks [2089]: [2088] We need […] to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed too. Otherwise they will turn out to be outright traitors. (Coulter) 33 [2089] Anti-war demonstration to be held at old slaughterhouse. All liberals and commies come and line up against the wall. (commented by Izard Wizard)www 35. Surely, the dominant goal of flakspeak and hatespeak is to simply block rational dialogue or discussion with opponents whose intelligence and integrity have been dragged through the filthiest mud (I.38; VII.26ff; VIII.28). There only remaining discursive space has the unappetising option of responding with flakspeak, e.g.,
designating Bush Jr. an ‘AWOL, unelected, strutting popinjay’ (Nashville Files); a ‘know-nothing fundamentalist fitness freak’ (Jonathan Freedland in the Guardian); a ‘dangerous, arrogant, foolish, bible-belted fundamentalist, right-wing warmongering fanatic’ (Labour MP George Galloway in the Independent); and the ‘greatest threat to life on this planet that we’ve most probably ever seen’, running ‘the most corrupt andracist American administration in over 80 years’ (London Mayor Ken Livingston e in the Independent). But then these responses happen to ring true, at least for me. 36. While the strategies reviewed so far are deliberate and malevolent, flubspeak is accidental and embarrassing when you say some obtrusively wrong thing. Words get interchanged with similar sounds but disparate meanings [2090], with Bush Jr still flaunting his famed flair for leadership [2091-95]. [2090] We shall reach greater and greater platitudes of achievement [plateaus] (Chicago Mayor Richard Daly Sr) [2091] I was trying to convince those college students to accept my tenants. [tenets] [2092] A tax cut is really one of the anecdotes to coming out of an economic illness. [antidotes] [2093] The law I sign today directs new funds and new focus to the task of collecting vital intelligence on terrorist threats and on weapons of mass production [destruction] [2094] However they delineate, quotas, I think, vulcanize society [polarize] [2095] We cannot let terriers and rogue nations hold this nation hostile [terrorists, hostage] Flubspeak in print interchanges Homonyms [2096-99] and even Antonyms [2100-03]. [2096] Gorillas vow to kill Khomeini (Valley Independent) [guerrillas] [2097] School superintendent stood on principal in Michigan (Times Chronicle) [principle] [2098] Jobless Rate Sores (New York Post) [soars] [2099] The second was a musical number entitled ‘London Derriere’ (Charleston Gazette) [Londonderry Air] [2100] Cure Sought for Rural Health (Kansas City Star) [illness] [2101] FDA demands leaky condoms (American Medical News) [leakproof] [2102] Ancestors of Civil War vets meet annually (Daily Star) [descendants] [2103] School board member suspected of honesty (Southern Carolina News) [dishonesty] Privileged irony intrudes when flubspeak leads to accidentally telling the truth (Bush Jr yet once more): [2104] I was running against peace, prosperity [and then brought wars and record deficits] [2105] Ann [Veneman] and I will carry out this equivocal message to the world: Markets must be open. [He imposed protectionist tariffs on steel and then dumped them.] [2106] I think if you say you’re going to do something and don’t do it, that’s trustworthiness. [He said he was going to reduce CO2 and then reneged, declaring it isn’t pollution.] [2107] I am mindful not only of preserving executive powers for myself, but for predecessors. [He blocked the congressionally mandated release of papers from Reagan-Bush administration, including his own father’s.]
[2108] For every fatal shooting, there were roughly three non-fatal shootings. And, folks, this is unacceptable in America. And we’re going to do something about it. [As governor of Texas, Bush signed one bill repealing the ban on concealed weapons, and another expressly okaying them in hospitals, amusement parks, and, yes, churches.] 37. Triviaspeak falls between deliberate and accidental when saying what is achingly obvious and uninformative, such as relations between natural cause and effect [2109-11]; or is circular by definition, with Bushspeak right on cue [2112-14]. [2109] Tester links pygmy defect to shortness (Evening Press) [2110] Cold Wave Linked to Temperatures (Daily Sun) [2111] Carcinogens Cause Cancer, Says Book (Contra Costa Independent) [2112] A surplus means there’ll be money left over. Otherwise, it wouldn’t be called a surplus. [2113] It’s very important for folks to understand that when there’s more trade, there’s more commerce. [2114] I hope the ambitious realize that they are more likely to succeed with success as opposed to failure. 38. All these discursive strategies for displacement in the service of power and exclusion have become so influential in public and political discourse that an agenda for shelving them in favour of ecologist strategies would doubtless be dismissed as ‘naive’, as if the path of ‘wisdom’ must lead to pomposity, deceit, greed, slander, and hypocrisy. I would retort it is far more naive to imagine that a social minority who exploit discourse for ruthlessly widening the gap between insiders and outsiders and proliferating intolerable extremes of poverty and misery can continue to dominate a democracy and escape massive social backlash (I.24). And for all their money and media pull, these perpetrators and their backers are a small minority indeed. Even the ‘victory’ that handed the US Congress to the far right in 1994 occurred only because 60% of eligible citizens did not vote at all: [2115] Of the four out of ten people who did vote, two and a fraction marked the Republican box. But half of those told exit pollsters they were not voting for the Republicans (much less Newt’s ‘Contract With America’), they were voting against the Democrats. So the GOP’s claim to the mantle of power came down to only one out of ten eligible voters — the same minority of true believers, party activists, corporatists, and ‘geeks in golf pants’ (Garrison Keillor) that always vote Republican. (Yellow Stripes)34 The vast majority of sincerely committed citizens are simply waiting to vote for a genuine left (though few would use the term) — for a sincere populism that honestly delivers on civil rights, worker benefits, consumer health, and environmental protection, all now under fierce discursive attack, as we shall see in the following sections.
VII.D Discourse and Counter-Discourse 1: The ‘New Racism’ 39. The following sections undertake to survey sets of ‘discourses and counter-discourses’ relating to precarious social issues. For showing what’s at stake, I relied mainly on voices selected for their value in clearly accentuating contested discursive positions that pit the well-being of the great majority against the greed for money and power of a tiny minority -- people power versus money power.
40. The Modifier in ‘New Racism’ sounds curious for an ideology which, for thousands of years, sustained and justified the ‘great empires’ and their slave trades and enabled Europe to build the monuments of its officially ‘superior civilisations’. Racist discourses published long ago in respected journals seem hardly dated: [2116] These savages court slavery. […] They have no independence about them, generally speaking, but follow a master as a spaniel would. (Francis Galton, founder of ‘eugenics’, 1853) 35 [2117] Morality was a joke among Negro society. […] They are just as devoid of ethical sentiment or consciousness as the fly and the maggot. (T.S. Murrell, 1909)36 Still, the emancipation from slavery and colonialism and the civil rights movements in the 20 th century sharply diminished the public acceptability of racist discourse, mainly where economies and labour markets were strongly expanding in the 1960s and early 1970s. Yet when recessions became endemic, wages stagnated or fell everywhere but at the very top, and jobs were massively wiped out by such practices as ‘downsizing’ and ‘privatising’, racism came oozing forth again. 41. The New Racism thus seems ‘new’ mainly in its aggressive re-emergence in public discourse for cynical moves of flakspeak and hatespeak, notably in the mass media [2118-19], and most nastily in anonymous postings in Internet chatsites [2120], where African Americans are now joined by Arabs as prime targets [2121]. [2118] We have in our nation, not hundreds or thousands but millions of sub-humanoids — savages […] who for whatever reason have not become civilized. (Bob Grant on WABC) [2119] I’d rather have a trained monkey working for me than a nigger. […] Hitler was good in the beginning (Cincinnati Reds owner Marge Schot on Primetime Live) [2120] Why can’t we just have the United States military fire bomb the ghettos and kill all the niggers? Would our cou ntry really miss these porch monkeys? (‘ die niggers die’)www [2121] Why not just nuke the towelheads, ragheads, sandniggers, camelfuckers, bobble-heads, scraprats or whatever you want to call them? (‘Gator Hunter’)www 42. Racism might resonate with ‘New Right’ spokespersons and their wealthy sponsorship for several reasons. They blame easily recognised scapegoats for the worsening social problems like poverty and crime actually aggravated by their own agenda to destroy the social safety net (cf. VII.1). Their hypocritical fraudspeak slinks to high moral ground to castigate ‘black vice’ in matters like abortion, illegitimate offspring, and drug use (VII.49). They tacitly woo voter blocks of closet racists, and have few black votes to lose anyway (8% in 2000) — even less after illegally denying so many their right to vote in Florida (cf. VII.19). And they vehemently oppose the immigration of ‘non-whites’ who might well vote against them too. 43. Using the beloved ‘pre-emptive defence strategy’ (VII.27), the far right inanely vow that ‘the real racists’ are their opponents: the ‘Black community’ [2122], ‘Democrats’ [2123], ‘black ‘Democrats’ (double jeopardy) [2124], ‘liberals’ [2125], or ‘multiculturalists’ [2126]. [2122] The Black community [has] taken away the rights of the White people and shown who the real ‘Racists’ are in America. (Racism in America)www [2123] The democrats are the real racists. They use African Americans and Hispanics for their own agenda, but have no respect for them, obviously. The media indeed goes along with them creating more hate, more division, and less understanding. (‘lady-in-red’ — ‘A Conservative News Forum’)www
[2124] The real racists are the black Democrats who continue to stoke the fires of racial unrest to stay in the limelight and pander votes (Daniel H Duffy)www [2125] Liberals are the real racists; […] If a person chooses to be his own man rather than what the liberals think he should be then he is accused of being a traitor to his group. That is what the Nazis did. (Confederacy Project)www [2126] Multiculturalists are the real racists. […] I’m not a racist, only a culturist. I believe Western culture — rule of law, universal suffrage, etc. — is preferable to Arab culture. (Mark Steyn in the National Post)www The same ‘preventive’ strategy accuses the opponents with precisely the favoured moves of the far right, such as ‘creating more hate, more division’ [2123]. 44. Rent-A-Rant Horowitz denied the whole problem and blamed the victims: [2127] The effects of racism in the black community are minimal, and have been blown way out of proportion by a cadre of power-hungry black leaders, who are meanwhile ignoring the moral and social failings that are the real reason blacks lag behind whites (quoted in Salon.com)www He also ran a paid rant in the Berkeley Daily Californian (which apologized), titled ‘Ten Reasons Why Reparations for Slavery is a Bad Idea — And Racist Too’, and inanely proclaiming that slavery was selfinflicted by blacks. 45. Racist ‘media pundits’ are oddly ensconced in otherwise respectable outlets: [2128] I would propose that no African-American use the terms ‘racism’ or ‘racist’. The words are a feckless indulgence, corrosive to blacks and whites alike. (Lance Morrow in Time). [2129] On the sidewalk [at Times Square], we saw two ‘Mideastern-looking men’, […] looking like the guys who’d just a few days before blown up a landmark, […] silently videotaping the outside of St. Pat’s.[…] I surveyed the street for a policeman or patrol car [and] thought: ‘Those guys are terrorists.’ (Peggy Noonan in the Wall Street Journal) [2130] There are thousands of Arabs in the United States at this moment on student and travel visas. They should all be asked, politely and without prejudice [sic], to go home. […] Every Middle-eastern-looking truck driver should be pulled over and questioned. (Mona Charen in Townhall) Maybe these vitriolic ‘pundits’ owe their jobs to the intervention of right-wing corporate sponsors, and capture a shallow readership with no interest in the serious, researched reporting those outlets are better known to publish. 46. Certainly racist discourse could hardly have mushroomed without a steady influx of ‘grants’ and ‘funding’ from right-wing ‘think tanks’ like those cited in VII.29, also with bland-sounding names like the ‘Pioneer Fund’ or the ‘Manhattan Institute’ (and not, say, the Pious Sneer Fund’ or, the ‘Man-Hating Institute’). These sources also promote the academic accreditation of the New Racism in the universities. 37‘These academics’ ‘provide justification to people for their racist beliefs; if you have a Ph.D. after your name, you have a lot more clout’ (Heidi Beirich, at the Southern Poverty Law Center). They earn their ‘grants’ and ‘fellowships’ by singling out race as the cause of social ills like ‘murder’ and ‘promiscuity’ [2131], with a duplicitous appeal to Freudian sexual envy [2132-33].
[2131] The best predictor of murder rate across the 50 states of the U.S. is simply the proportion of the population that is Black. (Glayde Whitney, late Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Florida State University)www [2132] Blacks, according to [J. Philippe] Rushton [Professor of Psychology at the University of Western Ontario], have larger genitals, making them more promiscuous, and smaller brains, making them less intelligent than whites. (Barry Mehler)38 [2133] Rushton (who’s gotten more than $770,000 from the Pioneer Fund) has transformed the Victorian science of cranial measurement into a sexual fetish — measuring not only head and brain size, but also the size of breasts, buttocks and genitals. ‘It’s a trade-off: More brain or more penis. You can’t have everything’. Rushton was reprimanded by his school for accosting people in a local shopping mall and asking them how big their penises were and how far they could ejaculate. (reported in Rolling Stone ; posted by Jim Naureckas at Extra!)www If I stooped to flakspeak, I’d insinuate that hint Rushton himself needs a magnifying glass to urinate, and ejaculates, if at all, as far as his own shoelaces. But of course I won’t. 47. Even more amazingly, such lunatic fringe academics have not been at all ostracised. Rushton himself has, on the contrary, [2134] been embraced by the scientific mainstream, having been elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the American, British, and Canadian Psychological Associations (David Lethbridge)www In January 2003, he fittingly became the well-heeled director of his long-time patron, the Pioneer Fund, founded in 1937 to ‘conduct research and study into the problems of race betterment’ (Certificate of Incorporation) — what is commonly called eugenics.39 Its ‘first president, Harry Laughlin, was an influential advocate of sterilization for those he considered genetically unfit’, and ‘testified before Congress that 83 percent of Jewish immigrants were innately feeble-minded’ (reported in Rolling Stone), drawing on tests at Ellis Island by H.H. Goddard in 1910, who found Jews testing as ‘morons’ (a term he invented) just because they didn’t understand English. Guess who famously took up this same advocacy: [2135] The demand that defective people be prevented from propagating equally defective offspring is a demand of the clearest reason and if systematically executed represents the most humane act of mankind. It will spare millions of unfortunates undeserved sufferings, and consequently will lead to a rising improvement of health as whole. (Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf) 48. Meanwhile, the academic market has been strangely receptive to books that cite race to discourage or discredit government programs for the disadvantaged. An influential one was Losing Ground by Charles Murray [2136-37]. who once burned a cross in his home town of Newton, Iowa. Actually, the success of the book was ensured by the ‘conservative’ Cash-For-Bash and Rent-A-Rant schemes [2138]. [2136] This year’s budget-cutters’ bible seems to be Losing Ground among movers and shakers in the federal executive branch. […] In agency after agency, officials cite the Murray book as a philosophical base for proposals to slash social expenditure. (New York Times) [2137] Murray argues that welfare programs, instead of providing a helping hand for those in temporary need, actually created the problem. […] By making it more economically feasible for single mothers to remain
unmarried, he argues, welfare increased the incidence of out-of-wedlock births, thus hastening the decline of black communities and creating a parasitic underclass (quoted on Salon.com) www [2138] The Heritage Institute raised $125,000 to promote Murray’s book; […] it sent 700 free copies to academics, journalists, and public officials worldwide, sponsored seminars on the book, and funded a nationwide speaking tour for Murray.40 However, welfare should create a ‘parasitic underclass’ not just blacks but also of whites, whom Murray in fact patronised in Losing Ground as ‘white trash’ ‘sitting at home in their undershirts drinking’, and ‘not really caring anyway’ — which blurs the issue of race. 49. Cash-For-Bash ‘intellectuals’ soon refocused on race with books so hefty you could literally use them to bash poor people senseless. The portentous tome (724 pages) titled The End of Racism was authored by the founder and first editor of the Dartmouth Review (VII.31) while it ran a vicious parody of African Americans: [2139] Dese boys be sayin’ that we be comin’ here to Dartmut an’ not takin’ the classics. You know, Homa, Shakesphere; but I hea’ dey all be co’d in da ground, six feet unda, and whatchu be askin’ us to learn from dem? [etc.] (Keeney Jones, later speechwriter for Secretary of ‘Education’ William Bennett) He is one Dinesh D’Souza, a grateful immigrant from Bombay, India, and one more Rent-A-Rant protégé of the Heritage Institute. The book title signifies the complacent prediction that ‘racism will end’ when society goes colour-blind (and blacks cease to feel discriminated, or else!) because all public support and protection of African Americans has been abolished, though private citizens will be free to discriminate as they see fit. Here, we find an academic variety of flakspeak in a more strenuous style but no less pejorative, with apocalyptic visions of ‘barbarism’ [2140] (a term I find laughably quaint), ‘catastrophic cultural change’ [2141], and a ‘breakdown of civilization’ [2142], all blamed on ‘blacks’ (but not Hispanics and certainly not Asians). [2140] For many whites the criminal and irresponsible black underclass represents a revival of barbarism in the midst of Western civilization. (527) [2141] The conspicuous pathologies of blacks of catastrophic cultural change that poses a threat both to the AfricanAmerican community and to society as a whole. (478)
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the
product
[2142] A breakdown of civilization within the African-American community [has brought] high rates of criminal activity, by the normalization of illegitimacy, by the predominance of single-parent families, by high levels of addiction to alcohol and drugs, by a parasitic reliance on government provision, by a hostility to academic achievement, and by a scarcity of independent enterprises. (477) The true cause, namely the social and economic discrimination that fosters ‘crime’ and ‘addiction’ and places ‘academic achievement’ out of reach, is arrantly ignored so as to place the blame on the ideology of ‘Afrocentrism’ (which in reality encourages African Americans to reflect on their heritage): [2143] it offers young blacks nothing in the way of knowledge and skills that are required by modern life [but] a fortified chauvinism, a hardened conspiratorial mindset, and a robotic dedication to ideologies of blackness, […] evident in the hardened gleam in many Afrocentric eyes, [and] a virtually cultic pattern of lockstep behavior. (381) Thus, the ‘blacks’ are at fault for ‘severing the bonds of empathy and under-standing that are the basis for coexistence and cooperation in a multiracial society’ (381). I see little ‘empathy and understanding’ in today’s racist discourses, but D’Souza sees them in ‘segregation’ (of all places), which he vowed (in the New York
Times) was created by Southern whites ‘to protect blacks’. If I stooped to flak-speak. I’d hint he’s yearning to be certified an Honorary Honkey, but again I won’t. 50. The most bloated tome of academic racism so far is the even more portentous tome titled The Bell Curve of Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein — 552 pages of text, 110 pages of ‘appendices’, 168 pages of ‘notes’ and a 57 page ‘bibliography’ — which drew a blitz of media attention [2144], as always courtesy of the ‘conservative’ Cash-For-Bash machine (while ‘working on the book, Murray got more than $500,000 from the Bradley Foundation' – Los Angeles Times): [2144] The book and its dubious claims set the agenda for discussions on such public affairs programs as Nightline, the MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour, PrimeTime Live, and All Things Considered. It occupied a full issue of the New Republic, made the covers of Newsweek and the New York Times Magazine, took up nearly a full oped page in the Wall Street Journal and garnered a near-rave review from theNew York Times Book Review. (Extra!)www After linking with Herrnstein, who had written that ‘the tendency to be unemployed may run in the genes of a family about as certainly as bad teeth’ (Atlantic Monthly), Murray shifted the blame for social ills from ‘welfare dependency’ (in Losing Ground) over to the biological and genetic differences between races. Significantly, ‘researchers’ cited to support claims about race and IQ were paid by (surprise!) the Pioneer Fund. Besides lauding the ‘convincing empirical reports’ of the pioneering penisographer-cum-ejaculometer Rushton (11 mentions in the bibliography, plus a two-page mention in an appendix), the authors avow having ‘benefited especially from the advice’ of Richard Lynn, a professor of psychology at the University of Ulster and ‘a leading scholar of racial and ethnic differences’, who has written [2145] What is called for here is not genocide, the killing off of the population of incompetent cultures. But we do need to think realistically in terms of the ‘phasing out’ of such peoples. […] Evolutionary progress means the extinction of the less competent. To think otherwise is mere sentimentality. (Newsday) 51. The central question of the book is posed in the plainest style: ‘if you have to choose, is it better to be born smart or rich?’ (127), the preferred answer being ‘smart’. This seemingly innocent question tricks you into presupposing that IQ (‘smartness’) is indeed determined by genetics (‘at birth’) (in Curvespeak: ‘it is beyond significant technical dispute that cognitive ability is substantially heritable’, 105). If you start out smart and want to get rich too, just wait for your justly earned ‘membership’ in the ‘cognitive elite’, ‘gained by high IQ’ (510): [2146] Among other things, they will come to run much of the country’s business. In the private sector, the cognitive elite dominates the ranks of CEO’s and the top echelon of corporate executives (510). So when you queue up to be born, tick the ‘smart’ box on your entry permit. And tell your parents and grandparents to do the same retroactively and ASAP. 52. By neatly circular logic, success in getting wealth and power is taken as proof of membership in the cognitive elite, which would certify (brace yourself) Bush Jr (or Dick Cheney, or Karl Rove) as the smartest men in the USA just now. But [2147] many of the world’s most intelligent people have chosen challenging and intrinsically rewarding professions that offer no hope of wealth, prestige or power, [which can after all be] attained by those who are devious and seek material gain without regard to principles of ethics or conscience, instead of by those who are intelligent or socially gifted. [Is] a crooked lawyer who makes $200,000 a year held in higher esteem by society
than a social worker who works for little or no money to help rebuild the slums of the inner-city? (John C. Culbertson)41 Murray would have to say ‘higher esteem’, no, but higher IQ, yes, which entitles gabillionaire CEOs like, erm, Ken Lay. Conversely, my own IQ is falling right now by giving away this book instead of making money out of it. 53. However implausible, genetic accounts for ‘racial inferiority’ do better than social accounts like ‘welfare dependency’ and ‘culture of poverty’ in totally freeing society from blame for discrimination and from all responsibility to work for social change and progress toward equality. Within the book’s discursive theme, IQ is genetically determined and is thus inherited; success or failure throughout your life is in turn determined by IQ more than (or rather than?) ‘socio-economic status’. Moral: if you’re dumb (‘cognitively challenged’ in Curvespeak), you’ll probably be poor; and if you’re poor, you’re probably dumb (and your parents too, so curse them, and not society, for not having married smarter spouses). 54. For shock effect, the vilified ‘welfare edifice’ is foreseen mutating into a cushy concentration camp for genetic ninnies, namely [2148] a high-tech and more lavish version of the Indian reservation for some substantial minority of the nation’s population, while the rest of America tries to go about its business. (526). To avert this nightmare, Murray pompously counseled the US, on ABC’s This Week, to ‘get rid of the whole welfare system, period, lock, stock and barrel’. 55. To look ‘scientific’ and intimidate critics, the book bristles with statistics, tables, graphs and ‘multiple regression equations’, but all these are biased from the outset — and some manipulated and misinterpreted too (VII.61) — by at least three fundamental category errors: that IQ and socio-economic status are ‘independent variables’; that correlations between them prove causalities; and that education can be simply omitted as a determining factor. Far more plausibly, differences in achievement and manifestations of intelligence (however measured) are the consequences, not the causes, of social inequality. Schooling views the cognitive and the social factors as independent to evade the blame for reinforcing inequalities in ‘socio-economic status’ (cf. I.49). And society is happy to concur by hailing the same view in the Bell Curve, without ploughing through its blizzard of ‘equations’. 56. Even if the ‘intelligence tests’ marketed in psychometrics yield meaningful measures, they need not be measuring any ‘independent’ genetic endowment. They are imbued with cultural knowledge, and your access depends on your socio-economic status, family history, ecology, environment, and so on.42 Whatever the design, the texts cannot done in a cultural vacuum that effectively isolates purely genetic skills. Moreover, genetic skills might well be far more equal than cultural skills and thus hold insignificant predictive value i f we could measure them. 57. The vagaries of IQ testing probably motivated replacing ‘intelligence’ (because of ‘undue affect and political baggage’) with ‘the more neutral term “cognitive ability”’ (22), invoked as the ‘the decisive dividing force’ (25) within society. It is ‘more important than parental SES [socio-economic status] in determining poverty’; it ‘still has a major effect on poverty even within groups with identical education’ (137); and it ‘affects social behavior without regard to race and ethnicity’ (135). Unexpectedly, some welfare (though not money!) is foreseen: [2149] it will become broadly accepted by the cognitive elite [that] the underclass are in that condition through no fault of their own but because of inherent shortcomings about which little can be done. [Since they] cannot
be trusted to use cash wisely, will consist of greater benefits primarily in the form of services rather than cash (523).
[…]
policy
58. More deviously, ‘low cognitive ability’ is also blamed for the ‘difficulty in figuring out why marriage is a good thing’ (544), and thus for ‘bearing children out of wedlock, being on welfare and having poor parenting skills’ (John C. Culbertson), expressed elsewhere in more brutal terms: [2150] Murray [has been] obsessed with attacking single mothers on welfare, calling out of wedlock births ‘the single most important social problem of our time’ [what happened to crime? violence?]; the US government should end all welfare support; […] fathers should refuse to make child support payments to unwed mothers — as a form of punishment. […] Unlike earlier eugenicists, Murray and Herrnstein say they oppose forced sterilisation. Instead they would make poor families go hungry and homeless, by cutting off all welfare, food stamps and subsidised housing to the poor. (Sharon Smith)43 [2151] Charles Murray [on CBS] suggested that welfare for single mothers be […] flat-out eliminated. [It] would be painful, but would provide a powerful incentive to reduce pregnancies, and help turn around the trend toward single-parent families. […] Young, unwed mothers would have to work, get support from family and friends, or starve! [Besides], welfare […] promotes breeding of intellectually inferior humans. (Conservative Manifesto)www So you might favour abolishing welfare as a substitute for ‘eugenic’ sterilisation, if you were obtuse enough to imagine (as Murray asks you to do) that unwed pregnancies arise from deliberate and cynical economic calculations. 59. The category of race (or ‘ethnicity’ in Curvespeak) is legitimised as a category of common sense, not of science: [2152] Races are by definition groups of people who differ in characteristic ways. […] The rule we follow i s to classify people according to the way they classify themselves. (271f). This sleight-of-hand ‘rule’ is not ‘followed’ when deciding who’s smart or dumb; nor are IQ scores declared valid just because tested people think so. Instead, the authors flatly ‘claim that black IQs are 15 points lower than whites, citing R. Travis Osborne, who ‘took almost $400,000 from Pioneer for “research” into black genetic inferiority’ to support ‘restoring school segregation’ (Newsday). Amusingly, they also aver that ‘Jews, specifically, Ashkenazi Jews of European origins, test higher than any other ethnic group’ (275) — an unwitting affront to the first president of Pioneer, who testified that ‘Jewish immigrants are innately feeble-minded’ (VII.47). 60. Now, since race is incontestably determined by genetics, asserting that IQ is too creates the link the whole book was planned to forge: African Americans are ‘cognitively challenged’ (and hence poor) because nature has decreed them so. If Losing Ground told ‘well meaning whites fearing that they are closet racists’ that ‘they are not’ and ‘made them feel better’, then Bell Curve’s genetic proof that ‘blacks’ are inferior exonerates white people (and non-white Bombay Indians) who thought so all long and converts them from racists to realists or even armchair scientists. 61. Yet tainted ‘research’ money eventually lost its miracle powers when the counter-discourse of ‘experts in the fields of psychometrics, dysgenics, and genetics began to weigh in’: 44 [2153] Scholarly examination repeatedly demonstrated that the statements that form the very core of The Bell Curve’s arguments were either highly questionable or demonstrably false. […] Experts in the field
found they could not reproduce its results. […] ‘Several of the numbers are simply wrong. There are no fewer than five copying or multiplication errors in age- and test-specific entries in the body of a single table.’ 45 […] Rerunning the data with a more accurate standard deviation [yielded] a significantly higher black-white IQ convergence. (Eric Alterman)44 [2154] Scientists found countless other incidents of the authors either ignoring data that conflicted with that which they cited or unaccountably failing to include or address important studies that would throw a monkey wrench into their reasoning. As a result of the above, more than a few members of the expert community denounced the book as a kind of scholarly swindle (same) [2155] This book is a fraud, and its authors must have known it was a fraud when they were writing it. By ‘fraud’ I mean a deliberate, self-conscious misrepresentation of the evidence. (Michael Nunley, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma)46 I’d say it’s clear by now for whose ‘intelligence’ the Bell Curve tolls.
VII.E Discourse and counter-discourse 2: Worker safety 62. The polarization of society noted at the outset (VII.1) bears heavily on the discursive contests between public health and private profit, where the role of mass media is deeply ambivalent. As I write this, the deaths and injuries of American servicemen in Iraq are getting full, sympathetic coverage, though the numbers are modest. But the deaths and injuries of ordinary working civilians back in the U-S-of-A are only occasionally and briefly covered, though the numbers are staggering [2156-57], and the circumstances are often horrifying [2158]. Moreover, most of them could have easily been foreseen and prevented [2158-59]. [2156] In 2000, 5,915 workers died from traumatic injuries, and more than 50,000 died from occupational diseases. More than 5.7 million workers were injured on the job. […] That’s one workplace death or injury every five seconds. (Worker Safety and Health, AFL-CIO report)www [2157] According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), […] on average, sixteen workers were fatally injured and more than 14,900 workers were injured or made ill each day during the year 2001. […] These statistics do not include deaths from occupational diseases, which claim the lives of an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 workers each year. […] An additional 639,500 injuries and illnesses occurred among state and local employees in the 29 states and territories where this data is collected. (Death on the Job, AFL-CIO report)www [2158] Every one of their deaths was a potential crime. Workers decapitated on assembly lines, shredded in machinery, burned beyond recognition, electrocuted, buried alive — all of them killed, investigators concluded, because their employers willfully violated work-place safety laws. […] They happened because a boss removed a safety device to speed up production, or because a company ignored explicit safety warnings, or because a worker was denied proper protective gear. (David Barstow in the New York Times) [2159] A whole cascade of failed safety measures went into the Bhopal tragedy. […] A refrigeration unit designed to prevent just such a catastrophe was shut down and had been inoperative for five months. The plant lacked a computerized monitoring system for detecting toxic releases. Instead, workers were in the habit of recognizing leaks when their noses would burn and their eyes would water. No alarm system existed for warning the surrounding community, and no effort had been made to develop evacuation procedures. 47 63. Owners and managers don’t care or react; or else, instead of acting to improve working conditions they spew out discourses of public relations, deploying fibspeak (vowing the incident was a mere fluke in a normally
safe working environment, or was caused by the carelessness of the victims) or flakspeak (accusing labour unions and citizen groups of malicious scaremongering). [2160] They shrug at the pleas of workers whose health they destroy in order to save money. They hire experts — physicians and researchers — who purposely misdiagnose industrial diseases as the ordinary diseases of life, write biased reports, and divert research from vital questions. They fight against regulation as unnecessary and cry that it will bring ruination. They ravage the people as they have the land, causing millions to suffer needlessly, and hundreds of thousands to die. (Muscle and Blood)48 When unrecorded numbers of miners digging the Hawk’s Nest Tunnel for Union Carbide of Bhopal ‘(in)fame’ in the 1930s rapidly died from silicosis, an incurable lung disease that suffocates its victims, 49 the deaths were hushed up [2161], and when Congressional hearings were finally held, the company’s lawyers called the ‘working conditions’ the ‘best ever’ [2162]. One contractor’s testimony frankly dismissed the victims with hatespeak [2163]. [2161] Hundreds of men contracted a mysterious disease while excavating a tunnel near Gauley Bridge, West Virginia and began ‘dying like flies’ within a year. […] Some were dumped in the river bed and covered with the tunnel rock. Others were transported to Nicholas County and buried unceremoniously on a private farm. Pneumonia was given as the cause of death. [2162] Counsel for the defense maintained that the Hawks Nest tunnel had the best ventilation of any ever constructed by Rinehart and Dennis, and that the working conditions and machinery on the Hawk’s Nest job were the best ever known. (West Virginia Historical Society)50 [2163] I knew I was going to kill those niggers but I didn’t know it was going to be this soon.51 Today, the website of the Elkem Metals Company at the same location merely lauds ‘the famous Hawk’s Nest Tunnel’ as ‘an absolute engineering feat’. 64. Just days after the Hawk’s Nest hearings in 1935, industrialists met at the Mellon Institute and formed the ‘Air Hygiene Foundation’, whose public relations campaign purported to counter ‘misleading publicity about silicosis’. By the 1970s, its Orwellian name had grandly mutated to ‘Industrial Health Foundation’, and it had over 400 corporate sponsors. When the government’s National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) proposed new standards for silica protection, the industries instantly formed the ‘Silica Safety Association’, which in theory ‘investigated and reported on possible health hazards’ but in practice successfully lobbied against the proposal. When the Center for Disease Control reported 14,824 cases of death by silicosis between 1968 and 1994, the industries raised an outcry about ‘flawed science’ and a ‘silica scare’ to ‘whip up emotions’. There’s that motivation gap again (VI.34) — why ‘scare’ people if there's no cause? 65. Alternately, existing legislation is insistently violated or ignored by cheating on mandated tests for high dust levels, and with terrible results [2163-64]. reports are rebuffedas ‘hearsay’ [2165]. (All data are from the Courier-Journal, which interviewed 255 people in the coal industry, of whom 234 reported widespread cheating).
Alarming
[2163] Hundreds of coal miners nationwide die each year of black-lung disease because many mine operators […] cheat on air-quality tests to conceal lethal dust levels. [2164] Dozens of miners described dust so thick they couldn’t see their feet or the head lamps of other miners. Those who are still working spit up coal dust every morning. [2165] the National Mining Association said claims that mines are routinely dusty are ‘hearsay’.
To explain deaths of U.S. miners — 54,248 between 1972 and 1994 — due chiefly to black lung, the industry cynically says the cause is smoking cigarettes. 66. Whilst industries block new legislation or violate existing legislation, the current policy of the nonlegitimate ‘US government’ is to repeal or gut legislation: [2166] Since taking office, the Bush Administration has stopped work on dozens of important safety and health standards, withdrawn worker training grants and stopped important record-keeping rules that would require employers to identify which injuries are musculo-skeletal disorders. (AFL-CIO) [2167] The Bush administration is proposing changes to safety measures for coal miners that will result in the additional deaths of hundreds if not thousands of miners from black lung each year. […] Under the new rules […] mines will be allowed to quadruple the level of coal dust that miners breathe from the current level of 2 milligrams per cubic meter to 8 milligrams. 52 The Bush ‘Labor’ Department fouled the air even more with bubblespeak by saying that ‘exposure to ergonomics-related injuries is not well-understood or easily measured, making regulations for all industries difficult’.53 Moral: let’s have no regulations at all, and let the industries monitor themselves. 67. The story gets worse. After incessant ‘cuts’, ‘the federal government now has 1,200 inspectors to cover 7 million American workplaces’ (Molly Ivins in the Abilene Reporter-News).Besides, Bush Jr, in his wondrously spiteful in-your-face style, sent an unmistakable signal to all US workers by appointing as Solicitor of the Department of Labor the son of the ‘Justice’ who helped inflict a ‘President Bush’ on the world: Eugene Scalia, who is America’s most tireless and vociferous bulldog foe of workplace safety and worker compensation: [2168] Scalia refers to repetitive-stress injuries, which afflict 600,000 American workers annually, as ‘junk science’, [and] a ‘psychosocial issue’ — in effect, calling those who suffer from it fakers […] ‘who do not like their jobs.’ (Joshua Green in American Prospects)WWW In a brief prepared for the United Parcel Service, Scalia nearly burst with doublespeak to discredit a pending OSHA requirement that employers pay for protective equipment such as respirators and gloves. [2169] The administration provides no proof or credible argument that the proposed rule will improve health and safety, and in fact, the rule will cause significant economic harm, will not promote health and safety, and may reduce personal protective equipment by reducing collectively bargained cooperation between union and management in the implementation of personal protective equipment requirements. (quoted in same) By this duplicitous logic, the obvious fact that gloves provide safety still needs to be ‘argued’ and ‘proven’; company expenses constitute ‘economic harm’; and mandating ‘protective equipment’ equals ‘reducing’ it by stirring up antagonism between ‘union and management’, which would of course actually result from not getting it. 68. How would Scalia downplay these working conditions in the food industry? [2170] A Pennsylvania plant was fined for dangerous levels of ‘chicken feathers and feces’ that put workers at risk of ‘deposits in the eyes, ears and respiratory tract.’ In Mississippi, OSHA fined a company for an exposed drive shaft that caused the amputation of a worker’s legs, as well as for failing to provide safety goggles and gloves, and leaving toxic chemicals unlabeled. (Tony Horwitz in the Wall Street Journal)www [2171] Cynthia Chavez Wall […] cut up and prepared chicken parts that were sold to fast-food restaurants. She often went home with her hands bleeding from the cuts she inevitably got trying to keep pace with constant
demands to speed up the process. She worked up against fryers with oil heated to 400 degrees; no air conditioning, no fans, and only a few small windows. She found it hard, sweaty, dangerous, hellish work. Then on the morning of September 3,1991, […] flames flared and smoke billowed throughout the building, which had no sprinkler system, no evacuation plan, and only one fire extinguisher. […] All but the very front doors had been padlocked from the outside. Company executives later said they did this to prevent chicken parts from being stolen. Trapped, twenty-five of the ninety employees died in the flames. Cynthia Chavez Wall’s body was found at one of the doors.54 Perhaps Scalia would plead that we have ‘no proof or credible argument’ that feathers and feces harm eyes and ears; that the workers culpably wandered into the drive shaft or set the fire; and that padlocks prevent ‘significant economic harm’. 69. For hazardous conditions, even the mining industry can’t compete with the nuclear industry (IX.4). Between 1979 (Three Mile Island) and 1986 (Chernobyl), some 23,000 accidents occurred at U.S. reactors — and went unreported by major news media like NBC, whose owners are energy conglomerates in the nuclear business like General Electic.55 One worker was impelled to turn whistleblower by ‘gathering documentation’ of ‘abuses’ [2172], some of them grisly and fatal [2173]. In retaliation, she was first harassed and then contaminated [2174], and finally ‘murdered’ on her way to hand the evidence to the press [2175]. 56 The corporation cynically wound up the matter by spreading a freakishly nasty smear [2176]. [2172] Karen Silkwood was a laboratory analyst at the Kerr-McGee plutonium processing plant. […] Radioactive contamination was everywhere, safety records were routinely falsified, and deadly plutonium was disappearing. […] Silkwood, outraged, took it upon herself to gather documentation proving as many of the abuses as she could, intending to give the evidence to a reporter from the New York Times. (Raw Deal)www [2173] One day a worker bent down to adjust a compressor unit; it exploded, ripping though his hand and tearing off the top of his face, spitting tissue over the ceiling. He died instantly. (Howard Kohn inRolling Stone)57 [2174] While she was collecting evidence, Silkwood’s phone was bugged, her movements monitored and, worst of all, she was deliberately contaminated with plutonium. (Green Left Weekly) [2175] Silkwood was found dead inside her car, which had crashed on the way to her meeting with the Times reporter. Local authorities claimed she had been drunk or stoned — an odd way to meet a reporter — but later investigations indicated that she had been purposefully run off the road. In effect, Silkwood had been murdered. […] The documents she had been carrying were never found. (Raw Deal)www [2176] Kerr-McGee officials have advanced a different conspiracy theory passed along in off-the-record conversations with local reporters: Silkwood contaminated herself to embarrass the company. […] One state representative shakes his head. ‘I can’t understand that dame, shoving plutonium up her ass’. (Kohn) She got it up the ass all right, but for a totally different motive: a courageous concern for worker safety in a murderously cynical industry. VII.F Discourse and counter-discourse 3: Consumer health 70. If the dominance of private profit over public health leads to ignoring or denying dangers to worker safety, just the same happens with dangers to consumer health. Each year, some 5000 Americans die — an average of 14 every day — and 325,000 are hospitalised by contaminated food, carrying pathinogens like E. coli, salmonella, listeria, and campylobacter(Center for Disease Control and Prevention). Again, instead of actions to
clean up their operation, companies spew out storms of doublespeak (‘it’s too technical for the public to grasp’), fibspeak (‘it was a mere fluke’), or flakspeak (‘we are blameless victims of malicious scaremongering’). 71. A consumer action group called S.T.O.P. (‘Safe Tables Our Priority’), run by families of loved ones killed by food, mostly small children, presents eyewitness testimony, 58 such as Nancy Donley’s gruesome tale of her five-year-old son Alex poisoned by E. coli from a hamburger: [2177] I watched in horror as his life haemorrhaged away in a hospital bathroom. I stood by helpless while bowl after bowl of blood and mucous gushed from his little body. I listened to the screams and then the eerie silence that followed as toxins that had started in his intestines moved to his brain. I sat with my only child as I watched as doctors frantically shoved a hose into his side to re-inflate a collapsed lung, as brain shunts were drilled into his head to relieve the tremendous pressure. Then I watched his brain waves flatten. 59 Both miners and diners are no strangers to dangers, but at least the miners know it. 72. Governmental inaction is hardly due to not knowing how these diseases are transmitted [2178], but to ruthless industries lobbying the government until it actually loosened its regulations [2179], once again like worker safety (VII.66f). [2178] Most people become infected primarily by ingesting food (including produce, fruit, and juice) or water contaminated by animal feces. (epidemiologist John Crump)www
meat,
[2179] Americans face a greater risk of contaminated meat because the US Agriculture Department is allowing companies to perform more of their own food safety inspections. […] 206 meat inspectors said there were weekly or monthly instances when they did not take direct action against animal feces, vomit, metal shards or other contamination because of the new USDA rules. (Organic Consumers Organisation) www Again as in worker safety, poor working conditions make the hazards easily predictable, as at the Wampler plant in Pennsylvania — a company owned by Pilgrim’s Pride, whose CEO, one ‘Lonnie Bo Pilgrim’, once handed senators $10,000 checks on the floor of the Texas Senate to vote against a law compensating workers for lost fingers or crippled hands — which had to recall 27 million pounds of lunchmeat contaminated with listeria: [2180] Leaked internal documents […] referring to dozen of earlier violations of USDA guidelines, […] described meat residue from the previous day stuck on equipment; old meat on the tines of forks used to mix meat products; liquid filled with ‘unknown black foreign particles (possibly from the overhead cooling units)’ dripping through a hole in plastic covering six hundred pounds of meat; water splashing from the floor onto food products; workers washing their boots and allowing water to splash onto food and food-preparation surfaces; condensation on ducts and pipes above the food-processing area. […] Testing for listeria was not in Wampler’s plan. […] But when the USDA finally got around to taking samples, listeria was found in the drains.60 Much of the meat had already been eaten by children in the National School Lunch Program, a fact the government carefully keep quiet. Meanwhile, the ‘Bush Administration’ just as quietly killed Clinton’s regulations to test for listeria — along with them, killing many hapless meat-eaters. 73. Powerful food industries don’t wait around for government pandering like ‘new USDA rules’ and ‘inspection cuts’ but aggressively monitor and counter public discourse about foods with flakspeak and fibspeak. If a known health hazard like cancer from agricultural chemicals [2181] draws honest public comment, the industry files lawsuits and howls about ‘bogus environmental scares’ [2182]. 61
[2181] Alar, or daminozide, is a plant growth regulator that was used to keep ripening apples on the tree, which helped growers save labor (picking) costs and improved the cosmetic appearance and keeping quality of red apples. Evidence had been accumulating since the 1970s [and published in 1973 in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute] that a breakdown product of daminozide called UDMH induced cancer in animal tests. (Pest Management at the Crossroads)www [2182] Facing CBS News cameras, [Meryl] Streep [co-founder of the Children’s Health Environmental Coalition] said that Alar, a cancer-causing chemical, was measurable in apple juice bottled for children. This alarming news was true. And the Environmental Protection Agency has since reaffirmed its conclusion that Alar is carcinogenic.62 […] The food industry retaliated by suing CBS News. [They] lost these lawsuits, but their publicity machine still managed to leave the impression in most peoples’ minds that the Alar ‘scare’ was not justified by the facts. (Rachel’s Environment & Health Weekly)www The reason for this stubborn fibspeak ‘publicity’ was patently obvious. ‘ Triggered by the Alar controversy’, food disparagement laws’ being pushed through 13 state legislatures byindustry lobbyists ‘made it illegal to disseminate unproven claims that perishable farm products are unsafe’ (Elliott Negin in the Columbia Journalism Review).62 The burden of proof rests on the defendant to bring forth ‘reliable scientific inquiry, facts, or data’ (Texas statute), and to sustain the legal costs that will probably bankrupt you whether you win or lose.63 (Some statutes cynically provided for paying the ‘plaintiff’s’ fees but not the ‘defendant’s’.) 74. The industry then only hungered a showcase to flex the shiny new laws. The issue proved to be the awesome danger to consumers posed by ‘mad cow disease’ (or BSE for Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy), which passes via contaminated beef into a virulent human variant known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease. Unlike previously known contaminants, it has no cure so far, and cannot be stopped by cooking or irradiation; all its victims — as of August 2003, 140 confirmed in Britain alone — slowly die in unspeakable agony as their brains are literally eaten up into ‘sponges’ by the virus. Since it can lie dormant for years, can be spread by nourishing animals on ‘rendered’ feed of animal parts, and is easily mistaken for Alzheimer’s, the real number of eventual victims is impossible to calculate. 75. So the meat industry wanted no talk of it breaking out in the US 64 — which it finally did at the end of 2003 — and dramatically moved to stifle public discourse: [2183] Texas cattle ranchers have sued the ‘Oprah’ show [because of] her guest, cattle rancher-turnedvegetarian activist Howard Lyman, director of the Humane Society’s Eating with Conscience Campaign. ‘You say this disease could make AIDS look like the common cold?’ she asked. ‘Absolutely’. […]. Ms. Winfrey turned to her audience and prompted their applause with this remark: ‘It has just stopped me cold from eating another burger!’ The following day, cattle prices plummeted. Amarillo rancher Paul F. Engler of Cactus Feeders Inc. decided to use his state’s 1995 food disparagement law to try to recover more than $1 million in damages suffered.64 With rich but unintentional irony, the discourse of the actual lawsuit was dressed in a strenuous style of fraudspeak about virtue being denigrated by vice: [2184] [Due to] defendants’ false slanderous, and defamatory statements, plaintiffs have endured shame, embarrassment, humiliation, mental pain and anguish [and] are, and will in the future, be seriously injured in their good name and reputation. (Engler v.Winfrey) Out of court, though, the plaintiff’s instructions to his lawyer were purest flakspeak: [2185] We’re taking the Israeli action. Just get in there and blow the hell out of somebody. 65
Topping this flakspeak, Texas Agriculture Commissioner Rick Perry dubbed beef critics ‘food terrorists’, a term also picked up by a phoney group called ‘American Council on Science and Health' 66 (and not say, 'Industry Whores for Foison Poison'), even though the term would properly apply to terrorists attacking ordinary citizens through food [2186], if not indeed to contaminating food industries like Wampler (VII.72). [2186] In 1984 an Oregon-based religious cult sprayed salmonella bacteria on salad bars in an attempt to poison voters and influence a local election Seven hundred and fifty people were affected (Food Terrorists)www The mad cowboys of Texas did not ‘blow the hell out of’ Oprah — I doubt anybody could — but the unconstitutional infringement on freedom of speech was not challenged, and a grim warning was issued to potential ‘food disparagers’ who are less able than Oprah to waste long times in court and foot massive legal fees. 76. Besides, the food industries have their own ‘pre-emptive defence’: maintaining files to discredit potential ‘enemies’ who might speak out, e.g., about the bottle feeding ‘aggressively promoted’ by the Nestlé corporation: [2187] The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate that more than a million babies die every year as a result of diarrhoea picked up from unhygienic bottle feeding. That’s one baby every 30 seconds. […] Nestlé controls about 40 per cent of the world baby milk market, aggressively promoting its babymilk products in developing countries and discouraging breastfeeding. (Networking Newsletter)www [2188] They rely on exploitative and deceptive tactics, including giving free samples to mothers so their own milk will dry up; […] promising ‘modernisation and heightened status’; [and] telling mothers that their own milk is ‘inappropriate’. The majority of Third World Mothers wind up watering down the formulas, using contaminated water because they cannot afford to administer formulas in the prescribed way. 67 Following a boycott, the ‘public relations’ (PR) industry joined in the discourse: [2189] Nestlé responded with a broadside accusing its critics of ‘an indirect attack on the free world’s economic system’. The Vice-President of the Nestlé Coordination Centre for Nutrition […] began collecting files on the activities of various churches, student groups. trade unions, women’s organisations, and health workers who had joined the boycott. (Mad Cow USA)64 [2190] [The Centre’s President] spelled out a comprehensive corporate PR strategy: […] working with national and international civil servants, ‘not to defeat all regulation, but to create regulation that legitimizes and channels our rights, opportunities and contributions’; [and] separating the ‘fanatic’ activist leaders from those who are ‘decent concerned’ people, and ‘stripping the activists from the moral authority they receive from their alliance with religious organizations’. (The Cornerhouse)www 77. The goal of corporate PR is to draw the initiative of public discourse onto their own side, preferably leaving their other side compelled to a silence whose effect can be lethal indeed, as with mechanical heart valves implanted in the 1980s: [2191] Bjork-Shiley valves had fractured during testing, [and] the company that made the valve, never told the government. […] Pfizer management ordered the defects to be ground down, which weakened the valves further, but made them look smooth and perfect. Pfizer then sold them worldwide. When the valve’s struts break, the heart contracts — and explodes. Two-thirds of the victims die, usually in minutes. In 1980, Dr Viking Bjork, whose respected name helped sell the products, wrote to Pfizer demanding corrective action. He threatened to publish cases of valve-strut failures. A panicked Pfizer executive telexed: ‘Attn Prof Bjork. We
would prefer that you did not publish the data relative to strut fracture.’ […] The fracture count has now reached 800, with 500 dead, so far. Bjork called it murder, but kept public silence. (Greg Palast) www By more of the ‘big coincidences’ that bless Republicans (compare [2041]), Pfizer donated $3.9 million to the GOP in 1999-2003; asked Congress to ban all lawsuits against makers of body implant parts in Bush Jr’s ‘Tort Reform’; and recently ‘launched Connection to Care, an expanded program providing free medicines to lowincome, uninsured patients’ (Pfizer Online). www Now they’re all heart. VII.G Discourse and counter-discourse 4: Environmentalism 78. Environmentalism is an ideology advocating the health and safety of all citizens, including workers and consumers (and presidents). Its theory is simple: clean air, land, and water, free from damage, waste, and pollution. Its practice, however, is complicated by raising a gamut of social, political and economic issues. Like the safety of workers and the health of consumers, it faces a precarious contest between public health and private profit, which is reflected in discourses and counter-discourses on whether and how to support the environment. 79. The confrontational tone was clearly set from above when a ‘Republican’ Congress bankrolled by polluting industries turned its flakspeak against ‘science’: [2192] During the 104th Congress, the Committee on Science launched a major initiative directed at the basic integrity of the science community, [vowing] that many environmental regulations were not based on ‘sound science’, but instead on scare-mongering and gross exaggerations of environmental problems. […] The hearings reflected a fundamental disregard for the scientific process itself and undermined the very credibility of science as a basis for making policy decisions. […] This attack spread to encompass almost all forms of regulation, including those designed to insure public health, protect the environment, and guarantee workplace safety […] The Chairman proclaimed his belief that the global [climate] change issue was ‘liberal claptrap’. […] On July 21 1995, the Committee directed the EPA to terminate its global climate change research program and reduced the budget for global change research from $22.5 million to $2.4 million. (Environmental Science Under Siege)68 For ecologism, a pungent move was to sever the dialectic between theory and data: [2193] The hearings reflected a systematic aversion to the use of theory, models, and other sources of scientific knowledge to provide a full understanding of observed data. […] The emerging effort to truncate the scientific method at the initial observations stage endangers the ability of the scientific community to unify its understanding not only of environmental problems, but of any phenomenon. 68 No less alarming, and deeply ironic as well, was ‘the overall message of the hearings that Congress should act as the arbiter of scientific disputes’, just when the ‘hearings featured a confusing array of scientific distortions, red herrings, false accusations, and vague charges of a breakdown in integrity’. 80. Such mistrust emerges even from the discourses of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Under Bush Sr, EPA files were leaked in which ‘ninety independent scientists who advise the agency part-time’ were annotated with flakspeak like ‘bleeding heart liberals’ or ‘invidious environmental extremists’ (New Scientist). Under Bush Jr [2194] enforcement of the nation’s environmental laws has fallen precipitously. […] Penalties and remedies for EPA administrative actions in the first 14 months of the Bush administration fell 80 percent [from] the last 13½ months of the Clinton administration, from $845.1 million to $165.1 million. The average settlement cost
of those EPA administrative actions fell by 63 percent, from $234,000 to $87,000 . (Glen Johnson in the Boston Globe)www This trend hugely benefited Koch (aptly pronounced ‘coke’), the US’s largest privately owned oil company with annual revenues of more than $30 billion: [2195] Koch Industries had a 97-count indictment against it for knowingly releasing 91 metric tons of benzene, a cancer-causing agent, into the air and water, and for covering it up from federal regulators. Koch also faced $352 million in fines. Koch executives contributed $800,000 to George W. Bush’s campaign, and after he took office, the 90 most serious counts and the $352 million in fines against Koch were dropped. (Kennie Anderson, Land Of Hypocrisy)www Bush’s own valorous sorties are handily posted on a Chronology of Environmental Destruction,www including: [2196] Even before his inauguration, President Bush began filling critical administration posts with people who had significant ties to polluting industries, people who regard the environment as a resource to be exploited. [2197] Within hours of becoming president, Bush froze action on former President Clinton’s ‘roadless’ policy, which would have protected 58.5 million acres of national forests from encroachment by cars, trucks and offroad vehicles. [2198] Bush abandoned his campaign promise to regulate power plant emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas that scientists consider a major cause of global warming. [2199] The administration called for ‘more study’ of safe amounts of arsenic allowed in drinking water, and later ignored the study results. [2200] The administration took away the Interior Department’s power to veto mining permits, even if the mining would cause ‘substantial and irreparable harm’. [2201] The Senate passed a version of the Bush energy plan that scuttles an increase in fuel efficiency standards. [2202] The administration cleared legal hurdles so mining and construction companies can dump waste into streams and rivers, including waste generated after coal mining companies literally rip the tops off mountains. [2203] Bush proposed a deceptively labeled ‘Clear Skies’ plan that ditches regulations governing emissions of three major pollutants — mercury, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxide. (compare [2060] in VII.23). [2204] The Bush administration announced a plan that would gut a key part of the Clean Air Act that requires America’s oldest, dirtiest power plants and refineries to install pollution control equipment when they expand. [2205] Bush announced a new rule that would gut the National Forest Management Act. Moreover, the Bush ‘White House’ set up its own ‘Council on Environmental Quality’ (CEQ) to rewrite the discourse of the EPA, as when the post-9/11 hazards in Manhattan were trivialised, mainly in ‘the desire to reopen Wall Street’ (EPA): [2206] The CEQ […] suppressed EPA warnings about potentially dangerous environmental contamination, ordering EPA to replace warnings with misleading statements that there was no cause for concern. The changes resulted in the EPA publishing information that was the reverse of language in the draft. (NYCOSH) www
[2207] ‘E.P.A. Testing Terrorized Sites For Environmental Hazards’ was changed to read, ‘EPA Reassures Public About Environmental Hazards’. […] ‘Even at low levels, E.P.A considers asbestos hazardous in this situation’ was deleted and replaced with a section that read, in part, ‘Short-term, low-level exposure of the type that might have been produced by the collapse of the World Trade Center buildings is unlikely to cause significant health effects’. (CBS News) The chairman of the CEQ resorted to doublespeak: ‘The right word here is ‘collaborate; we had to do some very dramatic and significant coordination.’ Yet the meeting of American Chemical Society featured a piquant counter-discourse, e.g.: [2208] The debris pile acted like a chemical factory. It cooked together the components of the buildings and their contents, including enormous numbers of computers, and gave off gases of toxic metals, acids, and organics for six weeks (Thomas Cahill of UCDavis)www 81. The 9/11 disaster as such was not predictable — though poerful evidence is mounting that the Bush administration had been warned that some such attack was being planned 69 — but the Valdez disaster, like Bhopal in [2159], was virtually inevitable: [2209] The true cause of the Exxon Valdez catastrophe was the oil giants’ breaking their promises to the Natives and Congress, cynically and disastrously, in the fifteen years leading up to the spill. […] Several smaller oil spills before the Exxon Valdez could have warned of a system breakdown. But a former Senior Lab Technician […] told our investigators that management routinely ordered her to toss out test samples of water evidencing spilled oil. She was ordered to refill the test tubes with a bucket of clean sea water called, ‘The Miracle Barrel.’ 70 [2210] As part of the come-on to get hold of the Chugach’s Valdez property, Alyeska hired the Natives for emergency work. They practiced leaping out of helicopters into icy water, learning to surround leaking boats with rubber barriers. But they soon found that part of their assignment was not to clean up spills but to cover them up. Their foreman David Decker said he was expected to report an oil spill as two gallons when two thousand gallons had spilled. Alyeska kept the natives at the terminal for two years — long enough to help break the dockworkers’ union — and then quietly fired them all. […] To deflect inquisitive state inspectors, the oil consortium created sham teams, listing names of oil terminal workers who had not the foggiest idea how to use spill equipment which, in any event, was missing, broken or existed only on paper. 71 The incident itself was directly triggered not by a drunken captain but by broken radar: [2210] The third mate would never have collided with Bligh Reef had he looked at his Raycas radar, [but] the tanker’s radar was left broken and disabled for more than a year before the disaster, and Exxon management knew it. It was just too expensive to fix and operate. (same) So the reviled ‘Captain Big-Swig’ was just a fall guy. For a high (oily) water mark in fraudspeak, try the recent Exxon brochure: ‘The water is clean, and plant, animal and sea life are healthy and abundant.'. And as of this writing, Exxon-Mobil, Nr. 2 contributor (after Enron) to Bush Jr’s campaigns, has still not paid the a penny of the $5 billion fine and may never do so: in August, 2003, the Bush-appointed appellate courts in Texas (!) ordered the Alaskan judge once again to review the award. 72 82. Yet even Koch’s blasts of ‘benzene’, 9/11’s ‘piles of debris’, and the Valdez lube job are dwarfed by the dangers of sludge, defined as a ‘semisolid mixture of bacteria and virus-laden organic matter, toxic metals, synthetic organic chemicals, and settled solids removed from domestic and industrial waste water at a sewage treatment plant’ (HarperCollins Dictionary of Environmental Science). Toxins include arsenic, asbestos,
petroleum derivatives, industrial solvents, pesticides (like DDT), chlorinated compounds (like dioxins), and heavy metals (like lead and mercury), plus an army of bacteria, viruses, protozoa, parasitic worms, and funguses, and radioactive waste from hospitals, businesses, and decontamination centers — a tasty stew headed for your neighbourhood and maybe your dinner table. 83. Nobody knows how much sludge is really entering the US environment, but even partial estimates are frightening: [2211] Chemical plants, pulp mills, steel factories and all manner of other manufacturing concerns dumped more than a billion pounds of toxic chemicals into America’s rivers, lakes, streams, bays and coastal waters between 1990 and 1994. Another huge load of toxic substances […] ended up in U.S. waters after having been flushed by factories through sewage treatment plants. […] The toxic emissions we report in this study, massive though they are, are but a fraction of the total pollutant load entering the nation’s waterways –– maybe 5 percent. (Dishonorable Discharge)73 [2212] Most pollution of America’s waters is unregulated and unmonitored — allowing polluters to pollute with little fear of regulation or disclosure. A 1994 study by the General Accounting Office (GAO) found that the majority of toxic pollutants discharged from 200 of 236 pesticide, pharmaceutical, and paper plants it examined, were so-called ‘uncontrolled’ pollutants that are exempt from regulation under the pollution-permitting process of the Clean Water Act. (same). 84. The costs for really safe methods of disposal are unacceptable to government or industry, whilst the Clean Water Act feebly calls for ‘voluntary compliance’ by industries to detoxify their own waste (called ‘Bushball’ after Jr’s Texas rules).74 Indeed, a scheme was hatched to turn, erm, excrement into money: [2213] Since the early 1990s, the EPA has been working with the waste management industry and municipalities to establish sewage sludge, the semi-solid waste by-product from municipal sewage treatment plants, as a safe fertilizer for application on land.74 Yet another phoney interest group was drummed up for sludge producers with the Orwellian name ‘Water Environment Federation’ (rather than, say, ‘Shit Up the Creek with No Paddle Gang’), which ‘wrapped itself in the language of environmentalism and locked arms with the EPA’. 74 Their newsletter collected double-speak renames for ‘sludge’ like ‘purenutri’, ‘biolife’, ‘bioresidue’, ‘Powergro’, ‘recyclite’, ‘nutri-cake’ and (the most audacious) ‘ROSE’ (acronym for ‘Recycling Of Solids Environmentally’ (but not, say, ‘putri-nutri’, ‘crappuccino’, ‘shitzbath’, or ‘tox-fraught’). The winner was ‘biosolids’, defined now in doublespeak as the ‘nutrient-rich, organic by-product of the nation’s wastewater treatment process’. 85. In 1992, the jolly old EPA, which had once classified ‘sludge’ as hazardous waste, approved ‘biosolids’ as a ‘Class A fertilizer’, and issued a report with the strenuous doublespeak title ‘Institutional Constraints and Public Acceptance Barriers to Utilization of Municipal Wastewater and Sludge for Land Reclamation and Biomass Production’, from which (exploiting the bold type I put in) I can make the pungent acronym ‘I-COPA-BUM-SLURP’. To counter citizens who ‘mount a significant campaign’, it advocates ‘aggressive public relations’ using ‘glossy brochures describing the project, open public meetings, presentations’ of ‘films’ and ‘material stressing community benefits’. A 1994 article titled ‘Campaign Tactics: How to Strategize for Successful Project Development’ even uses the term ‘pre-emptive strike’ for ‘getting positive messages out’ ‘before the counter-messages start’ (Kelly Sarber). 86. How safe are these ‘biosolids’? You judge the sludge:
[2214] 25-year-old Harry Dobin ran a coffee truck at a Long Island Railroad station 1000 feet away from a sludge composting site. […] When he could no longer breathe, doctors performed a lung biopsy and discovered Aspergillus fumigatus, a common by-product of sludge composting. By the time the disease was diagnosed, it was unstoppable, spreading to his spine, his legs, and finally his heart, leading to his death. 74 [2215] On Nov. 24, 1999, Joanne Marshall awoke in the middle of the night to find her 26-year-old son Shayne Conner gasping for breath. Soon, Shayne would be dead and his mother would embark on a search for answers that has led to her lawsuit charging that sewage sludge spread on a nearby field killed her son. […] Wheelabrator Water Technologies, the owner of the company that spread the sludge, argues that the science behind Marshall’s claim is unreliable and that there is in fact no scientific evidence to prove that sludge had anything to do with her son’s death. (Portsmouth Herald) [2216] Tony Behun, an otherwise healthy 11-year-old boy, rides his motorbike across a mining area ankle deep in sewage sludge. Within hours he develops lesions on an arm and a leg, runs a high fever within two days, and is dead in eight days from Staph aureus septicemia. (EPA microbiologist Dr. David Lewis at Sludge Victims)www The Pennsylvania Department of Environmental Protection chose fibspeak for [2216]: Tony was killed by a ‘bee sting’, or a ‘chipmunk bite’. 75 In another death, Wheelabrator invoked ‘volumes of science that back up the use of biosolids as safe for land application’. So dying from sludge is just being plain ‘unscientific’. 87. Worse yet, some food corporations have announced they are considering growing food on sludge after all, and you can bet the lobbying against labelling will be fierce. 76 A representative of the National Food Processors Association said that consumers don’t need to know whether their food has been grown in sludge’. 77 Oh yeah? I say, a ‘biosolids’ company that supplies growers has a gross message to the American consumer — figurative from other polluting industries but literal here — which cannot be put in any nicer words than: ‘eat my shit’. 88. As with worker safety and consumer health, the industries are busy with a public relations (PR) campaign of unrestricted fibspeak, fraudspeak, and flakspeak: [2218] ’Environmental PR’ seeks to fix ‘misperceptions’ by convincing the public that ecological crises don’t exist, that corporations are really protecting and improving the natural environment, and that environmental activists who criticize and attack industry are ‘eco-terrorists’, fear mongers, and the latest incarnation of the communist menace.77 [2219] The anti-environmental campaign is most obvious in the fringe activities of radical right-wing organizations calling themselves the ‘Wise Use’ movement. Supported by corporate sponsors, Wise Use is loudly agitating against laws and regulations that constrain the rampant exploitation of natural resources. 78 [2220] We intend to wipe out every environmental group by replacing it with a Wise Use group. (Ron Arnold, director of the ‘Center for the Defense of Free Enterprise’)77 [2221] Environmentalism [is] an attack on the ideals of Western civilization. Opposed to science, technology, and economic development, […] environmentalism has become the gravest threat to human survival. (Ayn Rand Institute)www But since environmentalism is after all built upon science, the latter term has to be split: [2222]
‘Junk science’
is
the
term that
corporate
defenders
apply
to
any
research,
matter how rigorous, that justifies regulations to protect the environment and public health; […] ‘sound
no
science’ is used in reference to any research, no matter how flawed, that can be used to challenge, defeat, or reverse environmental and public health protections. 77 [2223] ‘Junkman’ Steven Milloy has made a career of lobbying for polluting industries, heading corporate front groups to deny environmental concerns, and ridiculing individual environmentalists. […] Milloy defines ‘junk science’ as ‘bad science used by lawsuit-happy trial lawyers, the ‘food police’, environmental Chicken Littles, power-drunk regulators, and unethical-to-dishonest scientists to fuel specious lawsuits, wacky social and political agendas, and the quest for personal fame and fortune’. 77 Never mind that it’s Rent-A-Rants like Milloy who get paid a ‘fortune’. 89. Like the New Rant against ‘Liberals’ (VII.33), flakspeak as venomous as [2223] may seem hysterically silly. But its fundraisers must believe it will be taken seriously as confrontational discourse that effectively blocks rational dialogue and encourages fierce resentment, even fomenting violence by anti-environmental activists. These were incited by a literal call to arms from James Watt, once Reagan’s Interior Secretary (and convicted of corruption in 1996), addressing a gathering of cattlemen in 1990 [2224]. News reports confirm the trend [2225-26]. [2224] If the troubles from environmentalists cannot be solved in the jury box or at the ballot box, perhaps the cartridge box should be used.79 [2225] Attacks on US environmentalists are on the rise: physical assaults, phone harass-ment and death threats; eco-activists have been shot at, raped, knifed and fire-bombed. 81 [2226] Helvarg’s book79 records instances of drive-by shootings, firebombings and pet poisonings. Greens have been attacked by speeding autos, chainsaws, pistols and, in the case of redwood defender Judi Bari, a car bomb that nearly killed her. 90. The most progressive and inspiring counter-discourse on the environment came from the Union of Concerned Scientists, ‘a non-profit partnership of scientists and citizens combining rigorous scientific analysis, innovative policy development, and effective citizen advocacy to achieve practical environmental solutions’, e.g., by means of ‘renewable energy’: [2227] We’ve played a significant role in winning support for renewable energy in key federal electricityrestructuring bills. […] This exciting new development will provide enough clean power to meet the entire electricity needs of 7.5 million homes and reduce as much carbon dioxide — the main greenhouse gas implicated in global warming — as taking 5.3 million cars off the road or planting 1.6 billion trees. 80 The ‘warning’ issued by the Union in November 1992 pointed out that ‘a great change in our stewardship of the earth and the life on it is required, if vast human misery is to be avoided and our global home on this planet is not to be irretrievably mutilated’. The discourse encompasses ‘five inextricably linked areas’: (1) ‘bringing environmentally damaging activities under control to restore and protect the integrity of the earth’s systems we depend on’; (2) ‘managing resources crucial to human welfare more effectively’; (3) ‘stabilizing population’; (4) ‘reducing and eventually eliminating poverty’; and (5) ‘ensuring sexual equality and guaranteeing women control over their own reproductive decisions’. 80 91. The lists of the ‘concerned scientists’ read like a veritable Who’s Who in contemporary science. It bore the signature of 1,500 ‘senior members of the world’s scientific community’, including 101 Nobel laureates. So which discourse will you believe — the consensus of world’s most eminent scientists, or the paid flakspeak and smarmy spin-control of Rent-A-Rant whores for polluting industries whose raw greed and stinginess send
workers like Cynthia Wall and Harry Dobin or children like Alex Donley and Tony Behun to nightmarishly gruesome deaths? VII.H Discourse and counter-discourse 5: Civil asset forfeiture 92. During the ‘Tory government’, my eye was caught by some startling news: [2228] The Commons Home Affairs Committee wants to seize assets from people suspected for drug trafficking even if they have not been convicted. […] The MPs said they, their wives and children should be stripped of money, cars and any other assets — even if they are acquitted by a criminal court. (Daily Mirror, my italics) Here was an unvarnished call to abolish due process of law, coming from the British Parliament, which might be nostalgically imagined to have invented it. Merely being ‘suspected’ of ‘drug trafficking’ is to overrule a formal ‘acquittal’, and bring total ruin on your whole family. I felt reminded of the famed Biblical ire of ‘visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children’ (Exodus 20:5 and 34:7; Numbers 14:18; Deuteronomy 5:9). Strictly applied, this plan would make the ‘criminal court’ irrelevant and dispensable. Once the police decide to ‘suspect’ you, let them just go ahead and ‘strip’ you, splurge your ‘money’, cruise in your ‘car’…they will anyway. 93. I dismissed the idea as absurd, but déjà vu recently whacked me when I found a similar plan actually operating in US ‘justice’. It bears the title of ‘civil asset forfeiture’ and sheds a revealing light on the zeal of government agencies to pursue a ‘war on drugs’ that shows no signs of being won or even winnable. 81 In the official theory, empowering the seizure of their illegal profits will convince drug traffickers to turn honest and, say, deal in, erm, energy conglomerates, electronic voting machines, or biosolids. In the operational practice, ‘law enforcement agents’ can instantly seize cash and property without proof of crime, due process, or constitutional safeguards [2229]. ‘Probable cause’ suffices — or merely ‘claims of anonymous informants’, ‘tips’, and ‘hearsay’ [2230], for which ‘cash rewards’ are paid out [2231] by the grateful police, who get their share. Even schoolchildren are recruited as informers [2232] (an old Nazi shtick), though they are only enticed with ‘gifts and candy’. [2229] Under civil asset forfeiture, everything you own can be legally taken away even if you are never indicted, tried or convicted of a crime. […] To get seized property returned, you have to fight the full resources of your state or the federal government; [and] prove your property’s ‘innocence’ by documenting how you earned every cent used to pay for it. (Civil Asset Forfeiture)82 [2230] Totally innocent Americans are losing their cars, homes and businesses, based on the claims of anonymous informants that illegal transactions took place on their property. […] Anyone with a grudge can phone a false tip that can change your life. Suspicion, hearsay, a police vendetta can cost you your car, your cash, your house, your toys, and the clothes in your closet. (Looting of America)83 [2231] The Justice Department’s asset forfeiture fund paid $24 million to informants in 1990. […] Some airline counter clerks receive cash awards for alerting drug agents to ‘suspicious’ travellers. (Presumed Guilty)84 [2232] One-fourth of our nation’s elementary and junior high schools now have Drug Abuse Resistance Education [where] uniformed police officers teach children the official government line on drugs. Correct answers to policemen’s questions are rewarded with small gifts and candy. Instructors encourage children to call police and turn in their parents and friends ‘for their own good’. What police don’t tell children is […] their parents will be immediately arrested, the children may be placed in foster care, and their homes can be confiscated under civil forfeiture laws (Rising American Police State)85
You might conclude than anybody (including you) could be a hapless suspect, e.g., when a gung-ho ‘drug agent’ sees any old ‘walk’ as a future perp walk [2233]. But in fact, the ‘agents’ are far more selective [2234], and for potent reasons [2235-37]. [2233] It is difficult to know how to avoid looking like a drug courier. [One] drug agent told a judge that he was suspicious of a man because he ‘walked quickly through the airport.’ Six weeks later, the same agent said he was suspicious of another man 86 because he ‘walked with intentional slowness after getting off the bus’. (Drug War Hits Home) [2234] The owners’ only crimes in many of these cases: They ‘looked’ like drug dealers. […] An examination of 121 travellers’ cases in which police found no dope, made no arrest, but seized money anyway showed that 77 percent of the people stopped were black, Hispanic, or Asian. 84 [2235] In Volusia County, Florida, the drug squad of the Sheriff’s Department seized $8 million in cash, […] assuming that anyone carrying more than $100 was a drug trafficker. […] Ninety percent of the motorists from whom cash was seized were blacks or Hispanics […] Several officers revealed that they were told to forget about the white criminals because many could afford expensive and effective lawyers, while most minorities could not. (Highway Robbery)87 [2236] As officers are pushed for volume drug arrests, they focus on minority consumers rather than dealers and manufacturers, who are mostly white. […] This also sheds light on why the increasing number of drug arrests and convictions does not stop or slow the level of drug-related crime. ‘Prosecutors and judges are getting stiff necks from looking the other way’. (Joseph McNamara, past police chief for San Jose, California) [2237] [Whilst] police officers use arrests of minorities as career stepping stones, prosecu-tors who got where they are with primarily white political support ignore white criminals in favor of minorities [to] keep their jobs and get re-elected. (Freedom Magazine)87 94. The most effective resistance is practiced by counter-discourses, which ‘law enforcement agents’ cannot (yet) control or cut off, posted on the Internet at websites like The Future of Freedom Foundation, Concerned Citizens Opposed to Police States, Forfeiture Endangers American Rights (FEAR), and the International Society for Individual Liberty. Two modes of counter-discourse predominate in my data samples. Expository discourse from legal or community sources presents the scope, expansions, or innovations in the laws, such as the involvement of more and more agencies [2238] or the amounts involved [2239]; the seizure of property that happens to be the scene of an alleged ‘crime’, even with no knowledge or involvement of its owner [2240]; the ‘chilling seizure’ of fees for defense lawyers [2241]; and ruthless, violent tactics gone ‘out of control’ [2242]. [2238] Agencies seizing property now include the FBI, the DEA, the U.S. Marshals Service, the Coast Guard, the IRS, local police, highway patrol, the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the FDA, and the Bureau of Land Management. Asset forfeiture is a growth industry. Hundreds of expanded asset forfeiture bills are pending before Congress and state legislatures. (Looting of America)83 [2239] Between 1986 and 1990, the U.S. Justice Department generated $1.5 billion from forfeiture. (Drug War Hits Home) 86 [2240] Recently the Justice Department has taken the position that once an illegal act occurs on some property, that property belongs to the government from the moment of the illegal act, even if the owners knew nothing about it and had no involvement with the ‘crime’ (U.S. vs. 92 Buena Vista Avenue) (Rising American Police State)85
[2241] In a particularly chilling decision, the Supreme Court has even approved seizing the earned fees of attorneys who represent a criminal defendant that the federal government chooses to target for forfeiture. (Justice through the Looking Glass)88 [2242] A body of ‘law’ [for] law enforcement personnel to stop motorists and seize their cash on the spot, to seize and sometimes destroy boats, cars, homes, airplanes, and businesses in often fruitless drug searches, and even to kill and maim […] is out of control. (Roger Pilon, Director of the Center for Constitutional Studies) 89 Narrative discourse tells the stories of specific victims of the ‘laws’ [2243-46], including imaginative creep to supposed crimes unrelated to drugs [2247]. [2243] Willie Jones, a second-generation nursery man, […] bundles up money from last year’s profits and heads off to buy flowers and shrubs in Houston, […] using cash, which the small growers prefer. […] In Nashville’s Metro Airport, he’s flanked by two police officers who search him and seize the $9,600 he’s carrying. A ticket agent had alerted the officers that a large black man had paid for his ticket in bills. (Government Seizures Victimize the Innocent)90 [2244] In 1989, police stopped [Jamaican Black] Ethel Hylton at Houston Airport and told her she was under arrest because a drug dog had scratched at her luggage. Agents searched her bags and trip-searched her, but they found no drugs. They did find $39,110 in cash, money she had received from an insurance settlement and her life savings, accumulated through over 20 years of work as a hotel housekeeper and hospital janitor. Ethel Hylton completely documented where she got the money and was never charged with a crime. But the police kept her money anyway. (Looting of America)83 [2245] Jacksonville University professor Craig Klein’s new $24,000 sailboat was subjected to a fruitless drug search by U.S. Customs Service Agents. In their 7-hour search, the boat was damagedbeyond repair. The engine was chopped up with a fire axe, the fuel tank was ruptured and 30 holes were drilled in the hull. (St Petersburg Times) [2246] Donald Scott, a ranch owner, was gunned down in his home by a multi-agency raiding party that the Ventura County District Attorney found was ‘motivated, at least in part, by a desire to seize and forfeit the ranch for the government’. (Legal Robbery)www [2247] [When] Kathy and Mark Schrama were arrested in 1990, […] Kathy was charged with taking $500 worth of UPS packages from neighbors’ porches, and Mark with receiving stolen goods. […] The day after their arrest, their house, cars and furniture were seized. Based upon mere accusation, $150,000 in property was confiscated, without trial or indictment. Police even took their clothing, eyeglasses, and Christmas presents for their 10-year-old son. (Looting of America)83 95. The ‘intertextuality’ exerted by these counter-discourses, supported by the easy access and open participation on the Internet, did much to animate the active lobbying of Congress by private citizens and by legal groups like the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, which led a broad reform coalition with the American Bar Association, the American Civil Liberties Union, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the National Association of Realtors, and the American Bankers Association — a formidable array. After more than a decade of waffling and against a welter of sneaky ‘amendments’, Congress passed the ‘Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000’ 91 ‘creating new procedures’, such as: [2248] Requiring warrants; shifting the burden of proof squarely to the government by requiring the government to show complicity; […] allowing for release of seized property in certain hardship cases; allowing
the appointment of counsel for indigent claimants in appropriate cases; requiring payment of reasonable attorneys fees in virtually all cases where the claimants prevail. (Reform Coalition Succeeds)92 96. However, the Reform is at best a ‘necessary first step’. 93 It preserves the twisted logic that property becomes guilty if guilty acts occur there; but it greatly improves the owner’s chances of claiming ‘innocence’, and requires the government to show a ‘substantial connection between the property and the offense’. The immediate eviction of people from their homes is prohibited, but the government still can lodge a ‘complaint’ and a ‘forfeiture action’ that will do so eventually. Forfeiture must be justified by a ‘preponderance of the evidence’, but ‘probable cause’ can still start the ‘action’. And most damaging, local ‘law enforcement agencies’ can still keep forfeited assets instead of referring them to the Federal Treasury. So maybe [2249] there is little reason to think that this slightly higher burden of proof will cause law enforcement officials to shift their emphasis from seizing property and cash to fighting dangerous criminals. (Executive Privateers)94 [2250] Through a perverse irony, the government soon finds that it has a financial interest in the profitability of the drug market, and, therefore, a fiscal stake in keeping drugs illegal. […] Law enforcement develops a stronger stake in not winning the drug war than in winning. (same) Can not winning (in the official sense) equal winning (in the operational sense)? Here, you might well feel perplexed about the CIA’s role in the ‘war on drugs’ too: [2251] A Federal grand jury in Miami has indicted a Venezuelan general who led a Central Intelligence Agency counter-narcotics program that put a ton of cocaine on the streets of the United States in 1990, Government officials said today. From 1987 to 1991, [...] the unit handled shipments totaling 22 tons of cocaine being shipped through Venezuela. Since its inception in 1947, the CIA has been accused of forming alliances of convenience with drug traffickers around the world in the name of anti-Communism. (Tim Weiner in the New York Times) Perhaps it’s not just their own noses the CIA agents follow.
VII.I Discourse and counter-discourse 6: ‘American interests’ 97. In 1997, a right-wing think-tank called ‘Project for a New American Century’ was founded ‘to make the case and rally support for American global leadership’. Its Internet website 95promulgated a ‘Mission Statement’ including these missions:
‘establish a global security order that is uniquely friendly to American interests’;
‘provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world’;
‘discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role’;
‘create a new military service, U.S. Space Forces, with the mission of space control’;
‘take total control of cyberspace to prevent enemies using the internet against the US’;
‘fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theater wars’.
In this spirit, they wrote urging President Clinton in 1998 to ‘enunciate a new strategy that would secure the interests of the U.S. and our friends and allies around the world’, and complained that ‘American policy cannot
continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council’. They also issued a 90-page report on ‘Rebuilding America’s Defenses’, which has been called ‘a blue-print for US world domination’ drawn up by ‘chicken-hawks — men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war’ (Tam Dalyell, longest-serving member of the British Parliament). 96 98. Such jingoistic discourse might conjure up the plot for some futuristic Hollywood rule-the-world fantasy, But now in 2004, the list of signers reads like a Who’s Who of the two Bush ‘Administrations’ and their associates: Elliott Abrams, William J. Bennett, Jeb Bush, Dick Cheney, Eliot A. Cohen, Francis Fukuyama, I. Lewis Libby, Norman Podhoretz, Dan Quayle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz…as if the think-tank had been physically siphoned into the White House. And they are busily teaching the world how to be ‘uniquely friendly to American interests’, which Bush Jr described to Congress as ‘far-reaching’. Indeed. 99.
As
a
long-standing
discursive
theme,
‘American interests’
have
been
extolled for ‘benefiting the international order’ and even guaranteeing ‘survival’, e.g. [2252]. But lately those interests have favoured war and annihilation instead [2253-55]. [2252] Although it may not have the national will again to assume the role of world policeman, the U.S. does have the political and economic power to be one of the world’s peace legitimizers. The cause of international survival may depend on renewed American interest and diplomacy in troubled areas. […] Thus, international American interests benefit both the international order and U.S. security. (After the Bicentennial) www [2253] The incredible military superiority of the United States vis-à-vis the nations of the rest of the world, in any imaginable combination [will] always defend a democratic nation under attack from nondemocratic forces; […] if you have the kind of power we now have, either you will find opportunities to use it, or the world will discover them for you. (Irving Kristol in the Weekly Standard). [2254] I’m a war president. I make decisions here in the Oval Office in foreign-policy matters with war on my mind. […] In my judgment, when the United States says there will be serious consequences, and if there isn’t [sic] serious consequences, it creates adverse consequences [sic again]. People look at us and say, they don’t mean what they say, they are not willing to follow through. (Bush Jr on Meet the Press) 97 [2255] International law is like Santa Claus [that only] exists in law school classrooms. In the corporeal world, international law is whatever the United States and Great Britain say it is. (Ann Coulter) 98 So when the US (or any of its ruling chickenhawks) threatens another nation with ‘serious consequences’ like an unprovoked ‘shock and awe’ 99 mega-bombing, then it must deliver them or else — Katy, bar the door! — be judged insincere, indecisive, or, worst of all, cowardly (like France, we were told). 100. In theory, the ‘world policeman’ could ‘intervene’ to rescue ‘civilised society’ [2256] on the basis of ‘moral’ and ‘racial superiority’ [2257], but in practice its ‘interests’ seem to have been more tangible [2258]. [2256] Chronic wrongdoing [or] a general loosening of the ties of civilised society may […] ultimately require intervention by some civilised nation [in] the exercise of an international police power. (President Theodore Roosevelt, 1904) [2257] The day is not far distant when […] the whole hemisphere will be ours in fact as, by virtue of our superiority of race, it already is ours morally. (President William Howard Taft, 1912) [2258] I was a racketeer for capitalism. […] I helped make Honduras ‘right’ for American fruit companies in 1903. I helped make Mexico and especially Tampico safe for American oil interests in 1914. I helped make
Haiti and Cuba a decent place for the National City Bank to collect revenues in. I helped purify Nicaragua for the international banking house of Brown Brothers in 1909-1912. I brought light to the Dominican Republic for American sugar interests in 1916. (Major General Smedley D. Butler of the US Marines) 100 101. More recently, such noble ‘causes’ have been defended by the U.S. Army’s ‘School of the Americas’ (SOA), at Fort Benning, Georgia (from 1946 to 1977 in Panama) — now renamed the ‘Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation’ — which its supporters call ‘an important tool in helping spread democratic values to Washington’s allies in Central America and South America’. According to its website (www.soaw.org), instruction is [2259] focused on nation-building skills, […] consolidation of the effective democratic governance, respect for the rule of law, and economic development along free market principles. Some noted graduates seem to have acquired rather special notions of ‘democratic governance’: [2260] dictators Manuel Noriega and Omar Torrijos of Panama, Leopoldo Galtieri and Roberto Viola of Argentina, Juan Velasco Alvarado of Peru, Guillermo Rodriguez of Ecuador, and Hugo Banzer Suarez of Bolivia. (School of the Americas Watch)www Instruction relied on some rather special textbooks too: [2261] a 1992 report declassified by the Pentagon in 1996 revealed the details of a manual used at SOA in the 1980s that advocated tactics such as beatings, false imprisonment, execution, and bounty payments for enemy dead. (Bruce Kennedy, CNN Interactive)www At least one ‘manual’ is posted on the Internet 101 and its discourse conveys a special brand of ‘respect for the rule of law’, e.g.: [2262] The agent must offer presents and compensation for information leading to the arrest, capture or death of guerrillas. [2263] The employee’s [i.e. captive's] value could be increased by means of arrests, executions, or pacification, taking care not to expose the employee as the information source. [2264] Familiar clothing reinforces identity and thus the capacity for resistance. […] If the interrogatee is especially proud or neat, […] give him an outfit that is too large and fail to provide a belt, so that he must hold his pants up. The manual has a ‘Descriptive Bibliography’ of notes and references of CIA-funded studies in psychology and psychoanalysis with titles like ‘Psychic Self-Abandon and Extortion of Confessions’, alongside a ‘Guide’ on ‘Brainwashing’, and a ‘Police Interview pamphlet’ with a ‘sprightly style’. 102. Few Latin American countries have been closer to ‘American interests’ than Cuba, whose direct annexation as a state was predicted by John Adams back in 1783 but was ironically forestalled by US racism [2265]. Intervention in the War of Independence against Spain was seen as just the occasion to ‘clean up the country’ with genocide American style: [2265] This population is made up of whites, blacks, Asians and people who are mixture of these races, [who] are generally indolent and apathetic [and] possess a vague notion of what is right and wrong. […] The immediate annexation of these disturbing elements into our own federation in such large numbers would be madness, so before we do that we must clean up the country. We must destroy everything within our cannons’ range of fire. We must impose a harsh blockade so that hunger and its constant companion, disease, undermine
the peaceful population and decimate the army, […] in order to annex the Pearl of the Antilles. (US UnderSecretary of War J.C. Breckenridge in 1897) The ‘cannons’ range of fire’ must have fallen short. Cuba became an ‘independent republic’, though its ‘Constitution’ incorporated the ‘Platte Amendment’ authorising invasions by the US (with its proper ‘notion of what is right and wrong’) to ‘restore order’, as duly occurred in 1902, 1906, 1912, 1917, and 1933. Annexation would hardly have seemed necessary anyway: [2266] By the 1950s U.S. corporations owned 80% of Cuba’s land, most of the sugar industry, and all of the public utilities, oil refining, nickel industry, and railroads. (Gary Erb, Rebels and Dollars)www 103. After the surprise victory of the Cuban revolution, US policy reverted to ‘imposing a harsh blockade’ [2265], which is still in force today. In March, 1962, the Joint Chiefs of Staff forwarded to the US Secretary of Defense (‘Secretary of War’ until 1947) a ‘top secret’ document titled ‘Pretexts to Justify US Military Intervention in Cuba’ and only recently declassified. 102 It affords an instructive counter-discourse to the discourse of the ‘world’s peace legitimizer’ [2252], by cynically proposing ‘incidents in and around Guantanamo to give genuine appearance of being done by hostile Cuban forces’, e.g.: [2267] (1) Start rumours (many). Use clandestine radio. (2) Start riots near the base main gate (friendly Cubans). (3) Develop a Communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, […] exploding a few plastic bombs in carefully chosen spots, arresting Cuban agents, and releasing prepared documents substantiating Cuban involvement. (4) A ‘Remeinber the Maine’ incident could be arranged: Blow up a US ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba. […] Follow up with an air/sea rescue operation to ‘evacuate’ remaining members of the nonexistent crew. Casualty lists in US newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation. […] Conduct funerals for mock-victims. The Kennedy Administration rejected the plan, but would Bush/Cheney have done? 104. Today, ‘American interests’ are hard to distinguish from ‘global interests’, as represented above all by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), whose policies bear uncanny likenesses to the cynical indifference if not hostility of moneyed interests toward health, safety, and the environment as seen in sections VII.E-G, viz.: [2268] Oxfam International estimates that, in the Philippines alone, IMF-imposed cuts in preventative medicine will result in 29,000 deaths from malaria and an increase of 90,000 in the number of untreated tuberculosis cases. (Panic Rules)103 [2269] In Africa an estimated 500,000 more children died from the imposed restructuring of their countries’ economies to ensure increased flows of money to external banks, while spending on health care declined by 50 per cent and on education by 25 per cent. (Unequal Freedoms)104 105. Energetic deconstruction and counter-discourse should be duly applied to the discourses of such institutions, who present themselves on their websites in glowing terms. As one of the ‘10 Things You Never Knew’ (a phrase that almost gives the show away — there was nothing to know), the World Bank praises its inroads into the health care market [2270]. A counter-discourse of close ‘reading’ deconstructs the Bank’s World Development Report titled ‘Investing in Health’ [2271]. [2270] Providing poor people with basic health and nutrition lies at the heart of reducing poverty and promoting economic growth, […] health, nutrition, and population projects in the developing world. 105
[2271] On first reading, the Bank’s strategy looks comprehensive, even modestly progresssive. […] But, on reading further, we discover that the key recommendations spring from the same paradigm that has worsened poverty and health levels. Governments must […] ‘foster an enabling environment for households to improve health’ — which really means requiring disadvantaged families to cover the costs of their own healthcare; ‘improve government spending in health’ — means trimming government spending from comprehensive coverage to a narrow selection of cost-effective measures; ‘promote diversity and competition in health services’ — which means turning over to private, profit-making doctors and businesses most of those government services that used to provide free or subsidized care for the poor. […] Loan programmes, development priorities, and adjustment policies have deepened inequalities and added to the poverty, ill health and deteriorating living conditions of at least one billion human beings. (Who Killed Primary Healthcare?)106 106. Still more effective is the counter-discourse on the World Bank’s ‘Country Assistance Strategy’ in a ‘fourstep programme’ as described by the Bank’s own former Chief Economist Joseph Stiglitz : [2272] Step One is ‘Privatization’ — which could more accurately be called ‘Briberiza-tion.’ […] National leaders — using the World Bank’s demands to silence local critics — happily flogged their electricity and water companies. ‘You could see their eyes widen at the prospect of 10% commissions paid to Swiss bank accounts for simply shaving a few billion off the sale price of national assets’. […] Step Two [is] ‘Capital Market Liberalization.’ In theory, capital market deregulation allows investment capital to flow in and out. Unfortunately, as in Indonesia and Brazil, the money simply flowed out and out. […] A nation’s reserves can drain in days, hours. […] Step Three [is] ‘Market-Based Pricing’, a fancy term for raising prices on food, water, and cooking gas. This leads, predictably, to ‘the IMF riots’ (and by riots I mean peaceful demonstrations dispersed by bullets, tanks and teargas), as when the IMF eliminated food and fuel subsidies for the poor in Indonesia, the Bolivian riots over water prices, the riots in Ecuador over the rise in cooking gas prices imposed by the World Bank. […] This economic arson has its bright side — for foreign corporations, who can then pick off remaining assets, such as the odd mining concession or port, at fire sale prices. […] Step Four [is] Free trade, which Stiglitz likens to the Opium Wars, when the West used military blockades to force open markets for their unbalanced trade. Today, the World Bank can order a financial blockade just as effective — and sometimes just as deadly. […] (Greg Palast in the Observer, ‘The Globalizer Who Came In From the Cold’)107 The same renowned economist, whose knowledge of the facts is unassailable, pointed out that ‘IMF/World Bank plans’ are devised in ‘secrecy and driven by an absolutist ideology’ that ‘undermines democracy’; and worse, ‘they don’t work’, as when ‘IMF structural “assistance” led to Africa’s income dropping by 23%’. [2273] We have long known that World Bank projects bring environmental catastrophe and suffering on a grand scale. Now we know the projects are economic failures as well. This removes the last shred of justification for the World Bank’s very existence. (Environmental Digest)www But the ‘plans’ are not ‘failures’ if their real ‘justification’ is to convert whole nations and governments into handcuffed debt-repayment mechanisms, flood their markets with first-world imports, and sell off state industries and public services to multinational corporations at ‘briberised’ or ‘fire-sale’ prices. Slashing health care, dumping toxic waste, and jacking up the prices of food, water, and fuel are all part of the same logic of dressing up economic invasion and servitude in the guise of ‘financial support’, ‘economic growth’ and ‘reduction of poverty’ [2770] — collateral damage, so to speak, like economic cluster bombs waiting to ignite. VII.J Discourse and counter-discourse 7: The ‘Patriot Acts’108
105. If it seems callous to call the 9/11 attacks a ‘golden opportunity’ for an illegitimate presidency [2274], the administration’s moves to ‘exploit’ it have been callous enough, though thepress was initially ‘shy’ about ‘pointing this out’ [2275]. [2274] The events of Sept. 11 shocked and horrified the nation; they also presented the Bush administration with a golden opportunity to bury its previous misdeeds.109 [2275] The press has become a lot less shy about pointing out the administration’s exploitation of 9/11, [now] that exploitation has become so crushingly obvious. As The Washington Post pointed out, in the past six weeks President Bush has invoked 9/11 not just to defend Iraq policy and argue for oil drilling in the Arctic, but in response to questions about tax cuts, unemployment, budget deficits, and even campaign finance. 110 At all events, the ‘administration’ gladly seized the ‘opportunity’ to foist an orgy of radically right-wing legislation upon Congress, maximising secrecy for the government and its agents whilst minimising it for the citizens. In effect, the ‘government’ arrogated to itself sweeping powers of secret surveillance and control, and stipulated that citizens or residents who were ‘unpatriotic’ enough to resist, refuse, or speak out can be fined, imprisoned, or deported (or have their ‘faces slammed into a wall’, 109.2.2). 106. The outcome was the ‘USA PATRIOT’ Act (342 pages), whose title is a monstrously devious and contrived acronym for ‘Uniting and Strengthening America by Providing Appropriate Tools Required to Intercept and Obstruct Terrorism’ (HR 3162 RDS, 107th Congress). 111 The discourse actually says nothing at all about ‘patriots’ and refers to ‘patriotism’ exactly once, namely when [2276] the Nation is called upon to recognize the patriotism of fellow citizens from all ethnic, racial, and religious backgrounds. (Section 102)112 presumptively including those Black and Hispanic Americans who were illegally stripped of their voting rights in Florida (VII.19). A more honest title would be (to ape a post-9/11 threat from Ari Fleischer) the ‘Watch What You Say And Do, Because We Will Without You Knowing It’ Act. It was ‘triumphantly signed into law’ by ‘President’ Bush on October 26, 2001, suspiciously soon (45 days) after the attack, rammed through Congress under unprecedented conditions: [2277] The act was hurriedly signed into law with overwhelming approval within six weeks of the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, without hearings or without being marked up by acon gressional committee. (Noell Straub in the Progressive Review)www [2278] Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas [!]) told the Washington Times that no member of Congress was allowed to read the first Patriot Act […] before its passage, and no debate was tolerated by theHouse and Senate leadership. […] Dick Cheney […] publicly threatened members of Congress that if they didn’t vote in favor of it they would be blamed for the next terrorist attack. [Even the farright columnist] William Safire described the first Patriot Act’s powers by saying that President Bush was ‘seizing dictatorial control’. (Alex Jones in Infowars) Surely Cheney’s support in Congress for armour-piercing cop-killer bullets and guns that fool metal detectors (VII.2) should make him the very darling of terrorists. Meanwhile, the veil of maximal secrecy enshrouding the passage coincided with ‘Attorney General’ John Ashcroft’s ‘Memorandum for Heads of All Federal Departments and Agencies’ goading them to stonewall ‘requests for information’: [2279] When you carefully consider FOIA [Freedom of Information Act] requests and decide to withhold records, in whole or in part, you can be assured that the Department of Justice will defend your decisions.
However, some authentic patriots posted the secretive discourse of the ‘Patriot Act’ on the Internet, where it has been analysed by citizens’ advocacy groups like the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU, at www.aclu.org). 107. Not content with the radical Patriot Act (hereafter Patriot I), the ‘Department of Justice’ (hereafter DoJ, its own acronym) concocted the even more radical ‘Patriot Act II’ (120 pages), whose official title is the ‘Domestic Security Enhancement Act’, dated January 9, 2003 and secretly forwarded ‘for comment’ on January 10 to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert and ‘Vice-President’ Cheney,113 but publicly (and unexpectedly) posted by the Center for Public Integrity (CPI) on the Internet on February 7. 114 Though stamped for secrecy with ‘confidential – not for distribution’ at the top of every page, it opens with a revealing ‘Section-By-Section Analysis’ evidently intended as a public or at least congressional advocacy of why previous legislation, including Patriot I, needs to be ‘amended’. 108. I downloaded both discourses and installed them as a mini-corpus in WordPilot to search for significant frequencies and collocations. Admittedly, analysing two strenuous legal discourses of 56,869 words (Patriot I) and 36,664 words (Patriot II) is a daunting challenge under any circumstances, but these two discourses were designed to treat secrecy in secretive language, just in case anyone inside or outside of Congress should essay to read them (cf. 109.3.1). Still, I shall essay to isolate and illustrate some major discursive strategies. 109.1.1. One strategy is to use the term ‘terrorism’ continually or in expansive senses and contexts. If, as we, saw, Patriot I says virtually nothing about ‘patriots’ and ‘patriotism’ (VII.106), it makes 336 mentions of ‘terrorism’ and ‘terrorist’, plus their various derivatives like ‘bioterrorism’ (but mercifully not ‘food terrorism’).115 In Patriot II, where ‘patriot’ or any derivative occurs exactly zero times (except in the name of the predecessor act), ‘terrorist/terrorism’ occurs 353 times, almost twice the density (at .096%) as that in the much longer Patriot I (at .059 %). Typically, the term clusters within Patriot II in contexts of ‘threatening’ or ‘endangering’ ‘security’, unsubtly reinforcing the message that the threat is real and omnipresent. 109.1.2. The term is strategically expanded for ‘domestic’ activities not ordinarily relating to terrorism, essentially creating a new and broad definition: [2280] The term ‘domestic terrorism’ means activities that (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion. (802)I In a literal reading, clause (A) would reclassify as ‘terrorism’ every ‘violation of law’ that ‘endangers human life’, which should include the various death-dealing attacks on worker safety and consumer health that the federal government is so reluctant to prosecute (VII.E-F). By the second and third clauses (B-C), you can qualify as a ‘terrorist’ without doing anything at all, or even ‘intending’ to; you need merely ‘appear to intend’ to do it. Thus, overt ‘acts’ become ‘terrorism’ through the interpretation of the law enforcement agencies or their informants who judge ‘appearances’. For some ‘authorities’, just being a ‘Middle East citizen’ might be probable cause (cf. VII.45): [2281] Hundreds of Iranian and other Middle East citizens were in southern California jails on Wednesday after coming forward to comply with a new rule to register with immigration authorities only to wind up handcuffed and behind bars […] under a new nationwide anti-terrorism program. (Reuters, 19/12/2002) 109.1.3. Expansive too is having ‘terrorism’ cover ‘intimidating civilians’ (unless the government does), which could include warning them about ‘dangerous chemical companies’, which Patriot II restricts you doing, as we’ll see in [2310]. ‘Influencing the policy of a government’ could include filing a lawsuit for release of White House documents relating to its collaboration with Enron (cf. VII.23).
109.1.4. Elsewhere, the term ‘terrorist’ craftily alternates with ‘consumer’: [2282] To avoid alerting terrorists that they are under investigation, this provision would prohibit (absent court approval) disclosing to a consumer the fact that law enforcement has sought his credit report. (126) II Yet even these loose discourses hardly cover acts to which the DoJ is zealously applying the label of ‘terrorism, where no ‘life is ‘endangered’, and no ‘population’ or ‘government’ is being ‘intimidated’ or ‘coerced’, viz.: [2283] In the first two months of this year, the Justice Department filed ‘terrorism’ charges against 56 people. But an investigation has found that at least 41 of them had nothing to do with terrorism — a point that prosecutors acknowledge. […] The largest group of ‘terrorism’ cases this year was [surprise!] from Texas, where prosecutors have won guilty pleas from Latinos charged with illegally working at the Austin airport. (Mark Fazlollah in Knight Ridder Newspapers) [2284] The Justice Department has used many of the anti-terrorism powers granted in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks to pursue defendants for crimes unrelated to terrorism, including drug violations, credit card fraud, and bank theft, according to a government accounting released yesterday. (Dan Eggen in the Washington Post)
I was wryly amused by the DoJ's recently opened ‘website launched to educate Americans about how we are preserving life and liberty by using the USA PATRIOT Act’, where ‘drug crimes, mail fraud, and passport fraud’ are at least correctly termed ‘ordinary, non-terrorism crimes’ (www.lifeandliberty.gov). 109.2.1. A second strategy is to apply the extraordinary category of ‘enemy combatants’ to strip ‘suspects’ of all legal and constitutional rights: [2285] The Bush administration is developing a parallel legal system in which terrorism suspects — U.S. citizens and noncitizens alike — may be investigated, jailed, interrogated, tried and punished without legal protections guaranteed by the ordinary system, lawyers inside and outside the government say. (Washingon Post) As usual, the DoJ emitted its justification in smarmy fraudspeak: [2286] Attorney General John Ashcroft Tuesday adamantly defended the administration’s policy to detain enemy combatants without giving them the right to speak to an attorney. ‘Some people fail to understand that security is designed to secure something, and what we are securing are the rights of individuals’, Ashcroft told CNN’s Larry King Live. ‘So, rather than security being something that challenges rights and that diminishes rights, security makes those rights safe and strong.’ (CNN) This tortuous logic hinges on Ashcroft’s odd notion (reported in Time)116 of ‘civil liberties’ centring on ‘the right to be uninjured’ and to ‘to live in freedom’, which are inexplicably threatened by giving jailed defendants an attorney — never mind the verdict of the trial, which the government is not obligated to hold anyway. 109.2.2. Conversely, precisely those same ‘liberties’ are denied to supposed ‘enemy combatants’, such as the Muslim ‘detainees’ in Guantanamo (a locale chosen because it lies outside US jurisdiction and rule of law), viz.: [2287] Upon leaving their cells, they have been subjected to strip searches and body cavity searches, and they have been placed in ‘three-piece suits’ consisting of leg restraints and a belly chain linked to handcuffs. (Amnesty International)
[2288] His face was slammed into a wall and he was kicked by prison guards. His lower teeth were loosened in the process, and although he was in extreme pain, he was not allowed to see a dentist. (Turkmen vs. Ashcroft) [2289] He was grabbed by the hair while he was shackled and forced to face an American flag by a prison guard who told him ‘This is America’. (Amnesty International) Not surprisingly, the dire threat of being ‘declared enemy combatants’ suffices to extort guilty pleas without even ‘offering evidence’: [2290] The federal government implicitly threatened to toss the defendants into a secret military prison without trial, where they could languish indefinitely without access to courts or lawyers. That prospect terrified the men. They accepted prison terms of 6 ½ to 9 years. ‘We had to worry about the defendants being whisked out of the courtroom and declared enemy combatants if the case started going well for us’, said attorney Patrick J. Brown, [even though] prosecutors never offered evidence that the defendants intended to commit an act of terrorism. […] ‘One by one’, Bush said after the arrests, ‘we’re hunting the killers down’. 117 In January 2002, a court decision granted ‘President’ Bush ‘the authority to designate U.S. citizens as enemy combatants and detain them in military custody if they are deemed a threat to national security’ (CNN Law).www And, remember, he ‘doesn’t owe anybody an explanation’ (VII.3): [2291] Solicitor General Ted Olson argued, in a recent legal brief, there is no requirement that the executive branch spell out its criteria for determining who qualifies as an enemy combatant and no set evidentiary standard the administration needs to meet in order to slap someone in prison, incommunicado, without right of appeal. (Beria Lives)www This same Olson once seemed eager to lock up the Clintons [2075] (VII.27), which theoretically could now be done but for the massive political fallout. 109.3.1. A third strategy is to make dense, often fragmented references to other statutes. This occurs extensively in both Patriot Acts, making minor ‘amendments’. in the wording (or punctuation) of 15 previous Statutes which are not quoted, though most can be downloaded from the Internet. Moreover, Patriot II proposes 22 changes to Patriot I, such as inserting the ominous section heading ‘Required disclosure of customer communications or records’ (Sec. 2703). 109.3.2. This strategy might be favoured for several compelling reasons. First, the DoJ purports to be making ‘only modest, incremental changes in the law’ (website), as if the Act were not radical but interwoven with established US legislation: [2292] Congress [sic] simply took existing legal principles and retrofitted them to preserve the lives and liberty of the American people from the challenges posed by a global terrorist network. (DoJ website) Second, the numerous calls among irate citizens to repeal Patriot I can be turned down for demanding a hunt for all the changes which have already been made, at least in the U.S. Code as it is now posted by the House of Representatives. Third, an Act written this way simply could not be digested by members Congress at the breakneck speed at which it got rammed through, as attested by [2277-78], even if they had a chance to read it and had taken the trouble (like I did) to gather the ‘amended’ Statutes. Still, I didn’t find any changes that seemed really more explosive and tyrannical than what is fully spelled out in the Patriot Acts. 109.3.3. The clear favorite was the United States Code, which was ‘amended’ 203 times in Patriot I and 82 times in Patriot II, of which 190 are directed only to Title 18, ‘Crimes and Criminal Procedure’. Title 18 is a truly gargantuan document, comprising (as of March 2004) 999,499 words in 122,292 paragraphs, and growing
each time it gets ‘amended’. Some amendments in the Patriot Acts form stretches of discourse that are uninformative and, for most Americans, utterly meaningless, e.g.: [2293] Rule 6(e)(3)(D) of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure is amended by striking ‘(e)(3)(C)(i)’ and inserting ‘(e)(3)(C)(i)(I)’. (203)I [2294] Section 2510 of title 18, United States Code, is amended in paragraph (17), by striking ‘and’ after the semicolon (800)I Others at least betray the DoJ’s intentions, e.g., increasing the penalty for ‘wilfully and maliciously setting fire to or burning any building’ that is a ‘dwelling or if the life of any person be placed in jeopardy’ (U.S. Code) from ‘not more than twenty years’ ‘to ‘any term of years or for life’ (810)I. 109.3.4. Similarly, ‘mail fraud’ was augmented by the new ‘felony’ called ‘computer fraud and abuse’ (202). The ‘telephone toll billing records’ the DoJ can request for suspected citizens became ‘local and long distance telephone connection records, or records of session times and durations’ (210). And the term ‘chemical’ was deleted in front of ‘weapons of mass destruction’ (104) to make the latter term more encompassing for deadly items like tubes and trailers. 109.4.1. A fourth strategy is to insist that prevailing legislation, including Patriot I, is perilously weak. Perhaps the slam-bang passage of Patriot I made the DoJ confident that even more ‘patriotism’ could be inflicted on the cowed nation (say, like the second big tax cut). So Patriot II bristles with unintentionally ironic (not to say comic) gripes against Patriot I for containing ‘typographical and other errors’ that ‘prevent full utilization’ (428)II; manifesting ‘lack of clarity’ about ‘disclosure of e-mails’ (121)II; ‘losing valuable and necessary intelligence exemptions’ for ‘pen registers’ (monitor outgoing telephone calls) and ‘trap and trace devices’ (monitor incoming calls) (110)II; ‘complicating or preventing prosecution of persons convicted of nonviolent terrorist offenses’ (410)II (not ‘prosecuted’ yet ‘convicted’ seems to be the status of ‘enemy combatants’); and generally ‘failing to take account of the myriad ways in which, in the modern world, war can be waged against the United States’ (501)II. 109.4.2. Yet a ‘lack of clarity’ can offer strategic advantages, such as allowing vague extensions for the term ‘terrorist’. Besides, how the ‘tools’ of Patriot I could be ‘utilized’ more ‘fully’ than current practices like [2295] is hard to imagine, let alone how typos could be ‘preventing’ them. (Perhaps the zeal of the agents was heightened by invading a town named Moscow?) [2295] The FBI flew in 120 agents, fully-armed in riot gear, on two military aircraft, to Moscow, Idaho, to arrest one Saudi graduate student for visa fraud. The raid went down in University of Idaho student housing at 4:30 a.m. in the morning, terrorizing [!] the suspect’s family [and] the families of neighboring students. […] At least 20 other students who had the misfortune to either know the suspect or to have some minor immigration irregularities were also subjected to substantial, surprise interrogations (4+ hours)… (Elizabeth Barker Brandt, Professor of Law at the University of Idaho) Terrorism for ‘visa’ terrorists, with stars and stripes on it. 109.5.1. A fifth strategy is to appropriate mountains of public money for ‘national security’. Patriot I contains a barrelful of such provisions, mostly (surprise!) to the various arms of the DoJ, who wrote it. The sums are suspiciously round and enormous (e.g., four payouts of $50,000,000 each). By carefully tallying up the provisions, 108 I computed the minimum cost of the Act for the taxpayer coming to $2,927,250,000. Yet the real cost will be far higher, because the Act also authorises ‘such sums as may be necessary’ for at least five other
costly projects.108 Undoubtedly, these self-serving ‘allocations’ would have been cut back in Congress during a genuine debate — another compelling reason for not having any [2277-78]. 109.5.2. In vain I scoured the discourse of Patriot I for some practical explanation of how millions of dollars actually translate into ‘antiterrorism training’ or ‘defending the Nation’. Presumably, an arsenal of high technology is to be purchased and unleashed, taking for granted that terrorism — like those insolent ‘weapons of mass destruction’ that unreasonably refuse to come out of hiding — will be found if you just look hard enough. The prospective gadgetry is literally endless: [2296] Iris, retina, and fingerprint scanners; hand-geometry assayers; remote video-network surveillance; facerecognition software; smart cards with custom identification chips; decompressive baggage checkers that vacuum-extract minute chemical samples from inside suitcases; tiny radio implants beneath the skin that continually broadcast people’s identification codes; pulsed fast-neutron analysis of shipping containers…118 109.5.3. In return, I noticed some curious omissions in the financing. Agents are to be ‘trained’ in ‘utilizing foreign intelligence information’ but no mention is made of them learning foreign languages, perhaps because that wouldn’t sound expensive enough. Cash is piled up ‘protecting the northern border’ (perhaps with a chainlink fence made of US coins with a nice doublespeak name like ‘Penny Blockade’ or ‘Necklace of Nickels’ or ‘Borders of Quarters’?), but none for the southern border, notorious for smuggling. Or again, ‘antidrug’ funds go to Turkey and South and Central Asia (1005)I, but not Latin America — singling out Muslim nations?. The link between drugs and ‘terrorism’ is of course a pet theme of the ‘President’: [2297] ‘If you’re doing drugs, you’re helping terrorists.’ […] While stopping just short of calling drug users terrorist co-conspirators, Bush argued that, because many terrorist organizations worldwide are financed in part by drug trafficking, quitting drugs may in some ways help cut off the flow of money to groups like al-Qaeda. (Associated Press) You’re supposed to forget that al-Qaeda, like Bush and much of his family, is financed by oil money, so the real way to ‘cut of the flow of money’ is (God bless the mark!) to conserve energy. 109.6.1. A sixth strategy is to push for unlimited rights to watch and listen to citizens without asking or t elling anybody. Patriot I authorises total ‘interception’: not just via ‘wiretaps’, ‘pen registers’ and ‘trap and trace devices’ (see 109.4.1) (Sections 214, 216), and ‘seizure of voice-mail messages’ (209), but also via information from internet service providers about a citizen’s web surfing, e-mails, chat sites, special interest groups, membership in organisations, and so on — all channelled to ‘computer forensic laboratories for seized or intercepted computer evidence relating to criminal activity (including cyberterrorism)’ (816). You need not even be under investigation; the ‘interceptor’ just needs ‘reasonable grounds to believe that the contents will be relevant to the investigation’ (217). For good measure, ‘immunity’ from ‘court action’ is granted to ‘any provider of a wire or electronic communication service’ that ‘furnishes information’ (225). We should keep in mind here that the major news media being tamed, cowed, or bought up by 'converatives', the Internet is prime medium of information and resistance to the Bush team, who would gain much by criminalizing it as the arena for ‘cyberterrorism’ (a hazy Sci-Fi term the Act nowhere explains (perhaps ‘unpatriotic’ websites like bushwatch.com, bushandcheneysuck.com, or toostupidtobepresident.com, so far still posted). And we saw the ‘mission’ of the ‘New American Century’ to ‘take total control of cyberspace’ (VII.97). 109.6.2. Immunity is also granted to citizens who ‘furnish a consumer report of a consumer and all [!] other information in a consumer’s file to a government agency’; in return, they are forbidden to ‘disclose to any person, or specify in any consumer report, that a government agency has sought or obtained access to
information’ (626)I. Again, ‘consumers’ are placed in a context together with ‘terrorists’, even if they only misuse their credit cards (compare sample [2284]) 109.6.3. Moreover, not ‘complying with a request’ can be hazardous: [2298] [After] a refusal to comply with a request for records, a report, or other information, […] the court may issue an order requiring the person to comply. […] Any failure to obey the order of the court may be punished by the court as contempt. (128) II [2299] if a person refuses to comply with an order of the court to cooperate in the installation of a pen register or trap and trace device, […] the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has the same authority […] to impose contempt sanctions. (109)II The penalties for publicly disclosing that you have ‘provided access by authorized investigative agencies to financial records and information, consumer reports, and travel records’ (129) II can be even worse: [2300] This Subsection makes it an offense for an officer of a financial institution to notify other persons about a grand jury subpoena or an administrative subpoena issued by the Department of Justice for records of the financial institution. The offense is punishable by up to a year of imprisonment, or up to five years of imprisonment if the disclosure was made with the intent to obstruct a judicial proceeding. (129)II The irony of calling this ‘offense’ an ‘unlawful disclosure’ (129)II is exquisite: prior to the outbreak of this epidemic of ‘Patriotism’, precisely these secret ‘provisions of access’ for government agents were themselves unlawful. 109.6.4. Patriot II goes further still by ‘authorising surveillance’ of your entire computer (stiffly called a ‘multifunctional device’): [2301] Authorization of electronic surveillance with respect to a device, unless otherwise specified, may be relied on to intercept and access communications through any of the device’s functions. The section also effectively allows a search warrant for other information retrievable from the device (whether or not related to the intercepted communications) to be combined with the electronic surveillance order. (124)II So the ‘warrant’ needn’t specify which ‘information’ to ‘search’ for: agents browse your mails for anything they can use to charge (or blackmail) you.
hard disks and e-
109.7.1. A seventh strategy is to advocate enlisting a multitude of civilian informants. In case all that high-tech might not sniff the dastardly varlets out, ‘recruit’ a civilian army: [2303] In one of the most misguided responses to the terrorist attacks, President Bush is proposing a program to recruit one million volunteers to act as spies and informants against their neighbors, [such as] letter carriers, utility workers, cable installers, and workers in the transportation, trucking, shipping, maritime, and mass transit industries, whose jobs allow access to private residences to report‘suspicious’ activity. (ACLU)119 Even if these patriotic ‘volunteers’ don’t get a salary, they would certainly cost the government plenty if a tip can send ‘120 agents, fully-armed in riot gear, on two military aircraft’ to ‘arrest one Saudi graduate student for visa fraud’ [2295]. But this horde of bush league spooks was providentially blocked by Congress. 109.8.1. An eighth strategy is to complain that keeping the public informed ‘diverts valuable resources’ needed to ‘detect and incapacitate terrorists’ [2305-06].
[2305] The government is forced to divert valuable resources to litigating this question [whether to ‘approve the government’s request’ for the secret ‘submission of sensitive evidence’]. And even worse, a request for confidentiality itself can be a security breach: the government risks disclosing sensitive national-security information simply by explaining in open court why the information should be redacted. (204) II [2306] Although existing exemptions permit the government to protect information relating to detainees, defending this interpretation through litigation requires extensive Department of Justice resources, which would be better spent detecting and incapacitating terrorists. (201) II However, my financial tally summarised in 109.5.1 suggests that the ‘valuable resources’ are unlikely to run out. The real issue is still that the government, like Bush Jr, feels it ‘doesn’t owe the public any explanation’ (cf. VII.3, 109.2.2). 109.9.1. And so a ninth strategy is to claim that any information released to the public, e.g., about who has been ‘detained’ (which sounds more innocuous than ‘jailed’) or ‘denied release’, would instantly ‘tip off terrorists’, who would be heinous enough to ‘flee’, ‘accelerate their plans’, or ‘kill witnesses’: [2307] Publicizing the fact that a particular alien has been detained could alert his co-conspirators about the extent of the federal investigation and the imminence of their own detention, thus provoking them to flee to avoid detention and prosecution or to accelerate their terrorist plans before they can be disrupted. (201) II [2308] This section would […] deny release to persons charged with […] offenses that are likely to be committed by terrorists, […] because terrorism is typically engaged in by groups — many with international connections — that are often in a position to help their members flee or go into hiding. (405)II [2309] The Patriot Act […] allows law enforcement to conduct investigations without tipping off terrorists [who] might flee, destroy evidence, intimidate or kill witnesses, cut off contact with associates, or take other action to evade arrest. (DoJ website) But terrorists (revealingly called ‘aliens’ in [2307]) who sustain a network of ‘international connections’ will know who has been ‘detained’ and ‘denied release’ without reading the court records or police reports the DoJ wants to keep secret. 109.9.2. If you recall the ‘radical assault on a Clear Air programme’ in Bush’s ‘Clear Skies’ legislation in [2060], you’ll recognise a jewel of bubblespeak in Patriot II: [2310] The Clean Air Act […] requires private companies that use potentially dangerous chemicals to submit to the Environmental Protection Agency a ‘worst case scenario’ report detailing what would be the impact on the surrounding community of release of the specified chemicals. Such reports are a roadmap for terrorists [at the EPA?], who could use the information to plan attacks on the facilities. […] The revised section will require that public access be limited to ‘read-only’ methods [i.e. you can ‘read’ the ‘information’ but not ‘remove, copy, or take notes’], and only to those persons who live or work in the geographical area likely to be affected by a worst-case release. (202)II So to qualify for a ‘roadmap’, terrorists can go live next door to the ‘dangerous chemical facilities’ and see which side gets blown to bits first. 109.10.1. A tenth strategy is to place the blame on ‘aliens’, who are prominently cited in the Section authorising ‘mandatory detention of suspected terrorists’, where it sounds like Ashcroft the sheriff busting them in person:
[2311] The Attorney General shall take into custody any alien […] until the alien is removed from the United States […] if [the DoJ] has reasonable grounds to believe that the alien […] is engaged in any activity that endangers the national security of the United States. (412) I Ashcroft also nastily menaced aliens while addressing the U.S. Conference of Mayors: [2312] If you overstay your visa — even by one day — we will arrest you. If you violate a local law, you will be kept in custody as long as possible. […] We will use all our weapons within the law… (United Press International) As we saw, those ‘weapons’ include having your ‘face slammed into a wall’ [2288]. 109.10.2. Patriot II legalises sudden deportation, officially called ‘expedited removal’ (in one section, within 14 days), for ‘all aliens, not just nonpermanent residents’; and ‘expands the expedited-removal- triggering crimes to include’ ‘possession of controlled substances, firearms offenses, espionage, sabotage, treason, threats against the President, violations of the Trading with the Enemy Act, draft evasion, and certain alien smuggling crimes’ — these wildly excoriated as ‘far more serious than aggravated felonies’ (504)II. One Richard Humphreys was sentenced to 37 months in prison for ‘threatening to kill or harm the President’ after joking in a bar that ‘God might speak from a Burning Bush’, the absurd charge being that he must have been planning to douse the Godsent thief-in-chief with petrol and set him alight. 120 (Insert your own joke here, but quietly.) 109.10.3. So aliens are not safe even as ‘permanent residents’: [2313] Nor is there any reason to distinguish between aliens who are permanent residents and aliens who are not: for both types of aliens, the fact of a criminal conviction suffices to establish that a person is removable. (504) II Whether ‘illegal activities’ were committed is made irrelevant [2314]; and ‘acts’ need merely ‘appear to be intended’ [2315], as for ‘domestic terrorism’ in [2280]. [2314] Requiring the additional showing that the intelligence gathering […] on behalf of a foreign power […] violates the laws of the United States is both unnecessary and counterproductive, as such activities threaten the national security regardless of whether they are illegal. (101) II [2315] The definition of ‘international terrorism’ […] covers acts which by their nature appear to be intended for the stated purposes. Hence, there would be no requirement to show that the defendants actually had such an intent. (402) II And where an ‘alien’ may get ‘removed to’ may be irrelevant too: [2316] The Attorney General may direct that an alien be removed to any country or region regardless of whether the country or region has a government, recognized by the United States or otherwise. (503) II By not requiring that aliens just be ‘removed’ to their native countries, the DoJ has a pretext not for sending repugnant specimens home to friendly allies like Britain, but rather, say, to the North Pole, where something a lot more personal than their assets will get frozen. And the Act seems to say as much: [2317] The Attorney General may direct that the alien be removed to another II or region if […] removal to any country [is] impracticable, inadvisable, or impossible. (503)
country
Astoundingly, US citizens too can get the boot, declared ‘aliens’ from some ‘inferred intent’, which need not be even be ‘‘manifested in words’ [2318].
[2318] An American can relinquish his citizenship [and] be expatriated if, with the intent to relinquish nationality, he becomes a member of, or provides material support to, a group that the United States has been designated as a ‘terrorist organization’, if that group is engaged in hostilities against the United States. […] The intent to relinquish nationality need not be manifested in words, but can be inferred from conduct. (501) II Without your citizenship, you couldn’t have a passport, so you would just be deported again and again until you found a friendly terrorist cell. Better drop that falafel with hummus and grab a BSE Hamburger Special with Freedom Fries. 109.11.1. The final and most insidious strategy is to equate protest or resistance to these Acts with ‘aid to terrorists’. After Bush Jr proclaimed to the world ‘you are either for us or against us’ in September 2001, the official response to protest or resistance might have been a foregone conclusion, viz.: [2319] Those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty […] only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve; […] they give ammunition to America’s enemies and pause to America’s friends. (Ashcroft defending Patriot I before the Senate Committee on the Judiciary, 09/12/2001) Yet few issues have split ‘national unity’ as sharply as the Patriot Acts, which also imply that Mr Ashcroft’s ‘America’ has countless ‘enemies’ and few ‘friends’. 109.11.2. The same malevolent response targets protests against unprovoked war: [2320] ‘You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that’s being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that protest’, saidVan Winkle, of the [California] State Justice Department. ‘You can almost argue that a protest against that is a terrorist act.’ (Oakland Tribune) For publicly criticising the acts and policies of ‘President’ Bush, newspaper editors have been fired, and university professors disciplined: one of the latter , Sami Al-Arian, was actually arrested and declared a ‘terrorist leader’, although he had once been photographed with the then-candidate Bush Jr (for whom he campaigned), and his son Abdullah had been invited into the White House to help lure Muslims into the supersmarmy ‘faith-based initiative’.121 109.11.3. Universities are monitored by meddlesome ‘patriotic’ thought-police: [2321] The American Council of Trustees and Alumni issued a report […] in November, 2001, listing 117 allegedly anti-American statements made on college campuses, [and] calling professors ‘the weak link in America’s response’. In March, 2002, the Americans for Victory Over Terrorism released its list of ‘objectionable’ statements from professors, legislators, and writers who, it claims, ‘misunderstand [our] ideals and their practice’ — among others, former President Jimmy Carter [!!]. […] Both organizations have close ties to the Administration. (USA PATRIOT Act Six Months Later)www High schools came to enjoy a similar assiduous attention: [2322] Secret Service agents visited Oakland High and interrogated two 16 year-old male students in connection with comments they had allegedly made during a classroom discussion concerning President Bush and the U.S. Government’s role in Iraq. When one of the students asked if […] could he talk to them later with a lawyer present, the agents told him, ‘We own you, if you don’t talk to us now, and we find out you haven’t told us everything, we’ll put you motherfuckers in federal prison.’ (IndyMedia)www
Anchorman Dan Rather expressed his ‘worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend in a constitutional republic based on the principles of democracy’. 122 If, as Bush repeats like a crowing rooster, enemies really do attack the US because ‘they hate our freedoms’ 123 (and not because of how the US imposes its ‘interests’, heavens, no!), the Bush-boys’ fix seems to consist of taking those freedoms away. 110. One piquant bit of counter-discourse from the intelligence committees of the US House and Senate directed to the CIA might be apt here: [2323] The committees recommended that the ‘aggressive recruitment’ of ‘terrorist informants who have human rights violations in their background’ be ‘one of the highest priorities.’ Within months of instituting the guidelines, in-coming CIA director George Tenet assured Congress that not a single unsavory applicant had been rejected. […] A secret CIS study found that more than 1,000 informants known as ‘unsavory characters’ were employed around the world. (John Kelley)124 The
committees
dryly
adduced
the
‘unfortunate
fact
that
individuals
with
a
reputable
background rarely yield the key intelligence leads that are critical to the counter- terrorist efforts of the United States’.124 But the Intelligence Oversight Board disagreed, citing unsavoury CIA informants who, like Manuel Noriega, [2324] enjoyed profitable contractual arrangements with the CIA not because they were particularly important sources of information, but because they served as paid agents of influence who promoted actions or policies favoured by the CIA in that country. (Wash-ington Post) 111. As of January 2004, 237 communities in 37 states have passed resolutions opposing Patriot I, though these are largely symbolic, since test cases of defiance would be vilified by the DoJ for ‘aiding terrorism’ and eventually garrotted by the vengeful ‘Supreme’ Court. So far, Patriot Act II has not been formally introduced into Congress, thanks to having been swiftly made public on the Internet. Perhaps it was a trial balloon (pun intended). Or perhaps the DoJ is keeping it dormant like an unexploded cluster bomb until another major terrorist strike sets a felicitous mood. 112. On January 9, 2003, the same day Patriot II was secretly forwarded to Speaker of the House Dennis Hastert, an intriguing counter-discourse was formally introduced in the full Senate as Senate Bill S. 22, called the ‘Justice Enhancement and Domestic Security Act’ (with 482 pages), by a list of Democrats reading like a Who’s Who of ‘left-wing liberalism’ (by my own definition), including Tom Daschle (presenter), Edward Kennedy, Hilary Clinton, Joseph Biden, Patrick Leahy, Charles Schumer, Mark Dayton, Richard Durbin, Jon Corzine, and Jack Reed. I downloaded the bill from the website of the Congressional Record and finally beheld the other face of America, long blotted out by the far-right blizzard of rants and grants. 113. Despite the similarity of titles with Patriot II (presumably a coincidence given the timing), this bill sought to redirect the legislating trend of Patriot I. It does ‘provide $12 billion over three years to support public safety officers in their efforts to protect homeland security and prevent and respond to acts of terrorism’, but the agenda is utterly unlike Patriot II. Support is projected for protection of children against abuse, abduction, and pornography, and of the elderly (‘seniors’) against crime and mistreatment in nursing homes; assistance to victims of crime; compensation of persons wrongfully convicted; benefits for officers (‘hometown heroes’) injured or incapacitated while on duty; protection of the cultural and archaeological history of native Americans; protection of whistle-blowers in government agencies; increased use of DNA in sexual assault investigations; rescue of innocent persons from the death penalty; and drug education and prevention programs, including drug treatment alternatives to prison. Tougher laws are projected not for locking up people who refuse
to provide information to the government or have disclosed that they did so, but for ‘identity theft’ of social security or bank account numbers; immigration of war criminals and human rights abusers; perpetration of toxic hoaxes; and sale of firearms to juveniles and believed delinquents. 114. To judge from the Internet, this bill has received far less publicity that its counterpart Patriot II, most of carping about the provisions on drugs and gun control. I find no confirmation that it has been brought to a vote, and Bush would instantly veto it for more reasons than I have room to mention here. Like so many other hesitant signs of hope, it hangs in a wistful balance until America finds its way again in a mass exercise of free speech and free action too populist and too determined to be slandered, muffled or silenced by the chin gangs of corporate America. 115. Now more than ever, critical discourse analysis is called upon for its ‘critical’ perspective and discursive engagements with discursive themes of social division. Our status as discourse analysts must be intimately balanced with our status as deeply concerned citizens in a vertiginously polarizing world, and as practitioners of a counter-discourse of economic and ecological sanity. Notes to Ch. VII 1
See Hightower, Yellow Stripes (Note 2 to Ch. I).
2 Quoted from Al Franken, Rush Limbaugh is a Big Fat Idiot (New York: Dell, 1996) p. 157, describing the programme of the blusterous former senator and hopeless presidential hopeful Phil Gramm. 3 Quoted from Paul Begala, Is Our Children Learning? The Case against George W. Bush (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2000), pp. 130-35. 4 Compare now Ron Suskind, The Price of Loyalty: George W. Bush, the White House, and the Education of Paul O’Neill (NY: Simon and Schuster, 2004). 5
For details, see Paul Krugman, The Great Unravelling (NY: Norton, 2003).
6
Molly Ivins, and Paul Dubose, Bushwhacked (NY: Random House, 2003), pp. 47f.
7 Quoted from Fairclough, Critical Discourse Analysis (Note 148 to Ch. II) p. 142, who forthrightly analyses his own academic self-ratings. 8
I thank William Lutz for identifying the source of this priceless example.
9 The definitions in the section are from the immensely amusing Hackers’ Dictionary of Computer Jargon, posted at www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/tech/ computers/ TheHackersDictionaryofComputerJargon/toc.html. 10 The New Doublespeak : Why No One Knows What Anyone’s Saying Anymore (New York: Harper Collins, 1997), p. x. I am indebted to this book for some prime examples. 11
I thank Jim Hightower in Yellow Stripes (Note 2 to Ch. I.), p. 78, for these examples.
12
Supreme Court No. 00-949 (00A504).
13 Compare David Barstow and Don van Natta ‘How Bush took Florida: Mining the over-seas absentee vote’, New York Times, 14/07/2001.
14 The original and still best report is Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. (New York: Plume, 2003). 15 See Gore Vidal, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002); and Michael Moore, Stupid White Men And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! (NY: Harper Collins). 16
See Clayton E. Cramer, ‘An American Coup d’État?’ History Today, 11/1995.
17 See now Bev Harris, Black Box Voting: Ballot Tampering In The 21st Century (High Point, NC: Plan Nine, 2003), to be posted for free as a PDF file via Plan Nine’s website at http://www.plan9.org/. 18
Compare Note 11 to Ch. IV.
19 See above all Joe Conason, Big Lies: The Right Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth (New York: Thomas Dunne. 2003). 20
By David Corn (New York: Crown, 2003).
21 On the Harken scandal, see Ivins and Dubose (Note 6), pp. 3-14. Bush says he was cleared by the SEC, but the SEC just said it didn’t have enough to prosecute him. 22 For a shocking transcript of the ‘interview’, see Tom Gorman, ‘Bill O’Reilly’s Fascism, Part 2’ at www.counterpunch.org/gorman02122003.html. 23 On how Scaife ‘has worked hard and spent millions to dictate America’s political agenda’, see Rothmyer’s report at http://www.salon.com/news/1998/04/07news.html. 24 The flak has been reported on numerous websites like Bush’s Record of Shame at /www.blogd.com/bushrecord.html, citing eyewitnesses who affirm that Bush was visibly drunk, though the incident came long after he officially ‘stopped drinking’. 25 Compare David Brock Blinded by the Right; (NY: Crown, 2002); Joe Conason and Gene Lyons, The Hunting of the President (NY: Thomas Dunne, 2000). 26
Nicely deconstructed in Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? (NY: Basic Books, 2003).
27 Robert McChesney, ‘The rise and fall of professional journalism’, in Kristina Borjes-son (ed.), Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002), p. 371. 28 See Ralph Nader, Crashing the Party (NY: St. Martins, 2002); Michael Moore, ‘Democrats DOA’, in Stupid White Men (Note 15), 209-28; and Jim Hightower, If the Gods Had Meant Us to Vote, They’dHave Given Us Candidates (NY: Perennial, 2001.) 29 With only four websites mentioning it on the Internet, (three of them ridiculing it), and only three mentions of his vaunted ‘booklet’ for polluting the academic environment, this ‘National Campaign’ doesn’t seem to be making a big impression, though I don’t doubt the cash is rolling in from ‘foundations’ and ‘think tanks’. 30
There is No Such Thing as Free Speech (Oxford: OUP, 1994), p. 55.
31 For the record, National Review Online took this post-9/11 column ‘This Is War’ off its website, and editor Joshua Goldberg fired Coulter, though only after she also ridiculed John Ashcroft’s airport safety
programme (Goldberg’s recent wife is Ashcroft’s chief speechwriter and senior policy advisor). She was promptly snapped up by fellow Rent-A-Rant Horowitz, quoted in VII.30 and 44. 32 ‘60 Hard Truths [i.e. hateful lies] about Liberals’, on the Internet. Compare from Franken (Note 2), pp. 8, 49f. 33 She was demanding the execution of John Walker Lindh, an American who joined the Taliban back when they were still friends with the US, and who must be ‘liberal’ just because he grew up in Marin County, California. 34
Hightower (Note 2 to Ch. I), p. 253.
35 The Narrative of an Explorer in Tropical South Africa (London: J. Murray, 1853). He coined the term ‘eugenics’ in Hereditary Genius (London: Macmillan, 1869). 36
‘Syphilis and the American Negro’, Transcriptions of the Medical Society of Virginia 1909, p. 169.
37 The most informative site I have found on this trend is from the Institute for the Study of Academic Racism at www.ferris.edu/isar/homepage.htm. 38 ‘In Genes We Trust: When Science Bows to Racism’, The Public Eye: A Publication of Political Research Associates, March 1995. 39 See William Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and the Pioneer Fund (Urbana: Illinois UP, 2002). 40 Norman Solomon, ‘The Manhattan Institute: Launch Pad For Conservative Authors’, Institute for Public Accuracy.www 41 ‘Race, intelligence and ideology: A review essay of The Bell Curve’, Education Policy Analysis Archive 3/2, February 1995. 42 Compare Jared Diamond, Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies (NY: W.W. Norton, 1997). 43
‘Alarm bells’, Socialist Review 182, January 1995.
44
Alterman (Note 26), p. 98ff.
45
Robert Hauser, quoted in Nicholas Leman, ‘The Bell Curve Flattened’, Slate.com 18/01/1997.
46
‘The Bell Curve: Too smooth to be true’, American Behavioural Sciences, 09/10/1995.
47
Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Trust Us, We’re Experts (NY: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001), pp. 112f.
48
By Rachel Scott (NY: E.P. Dutton 1974), p. 293.
49 See David Rosner and Gerald Markowitz, Deadly Dust: Silicosis and the Politics of Occupational Disease in 20th Century America (Princeton: Princeton UP, 1991). 50
Jennifer Jordan, ‘Hawks’ Nest’, West Virginia Historical Society Quarterly, 12/2, April 1998, 1-3.
51
Quoted from Rampton and Stauber (Note 47), p. 77.
52
Paul Sherman, ‘New coal dust standards mean increased black lung for miners’, WSWS, 25/06/2003.
53
Quoted in Leigh Strope, ‘Government to offer workplace guidelines’, TruthOut 5/04/2002.
54
See Hightower (Note 2 to Ch. I), p. 119.
55 Gar Smith and Han Hollitscher, ‘Secret documents reveal nuclear accidents worldwide’, Earth Island Journal, summer 1987. 56 See Richard Rashke The Killing of Karen Silkwood (NY: Viking, 1982); and Howard Kohn, Who Killed Karen Silkwood? (NY: Simon & Schuster, 1981). 57
Howard Kohn, ‘Malignant Giant’, Rolling Stone, March 1975.
58
For their full report, see Sandra Eskin and Nancy Donley, ‘Why are people still dying from contaminated
food?’ at www.safetables.org/pdf/STOP_Report.pdf; and the thorough exposé in Eric Schlosser, Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of the All-American Meal (NY: Perennial, 2002). An informative newsletter at www.foodhaccp. com/memberonly/newsletter48.html collects reports on outbreaks, recalls, and food safety from all round the world. See also the Organic Consumers Association’s ‘toxic archive’ at www.organicconsumers.org/ toxicarchive.htm. 59
www.stop-usa.org/Victim_Support/victim_stories.html.
60 Ivins and Dubose (Note 5), pp. 134, 128, 130. See Oliver Prichard and Aparna Surendran, ‘Food plant cited before outbreak: Corrective actions were not taken at a Franconia poultry processor linked to seven deaths’, Philadelphia Inquirer 03/09/2002. 61 Compare discussions in Paul and Anne Ehrlich, Betrayal of Science and Reason (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1996); and John Wargo, Our Children’s Toxic Legacy: How Science and Law Fail to Protect Us from Pesticides (New Haven: Yale UP, 1998). 62
‘The Alar “Scare” Was for Real’. Columbia Journalism Review, Sept/Oct 1996.
63
Marianne Lavelle, ‘Food Abuse: Basis for Suits’, National Law Journal, 05/051997.
64 Sheldon Rampton and John Stauber, Mad Cow U.S.A: Could the Nightmare Happen Here? (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1997). Answer, 2003: It can and has. 65
Reported in Thomas Goetz, ‘After the Oprah crash’, Village Voice, 29/04/1997, p. 39.
66 Its ‘Director of Nutrition’, one Ruth Kava, sent a flakspeak letter to the editor or the Wall Street Journal (23/08/1999) titled ‘Food Terrorists Targeting U.S. Parents’ directing the accusation of ‘terrorism’ at Greenpeace, of all people. 67
See Barbara Garson, ‘The baby bottle scandal’, Mother Jones, 12/1977.
68 George E. Brown, ‘Environmental Science Under Siege: Fringe Science and the 104th Congress’, posted at the Website of the Democratic Caucus www.house.gov/ science_democrats/archive/envrpt96.htm. 69 ‘Disclosure Bush Received General Warning Before 09/11 Prompting Criticism of Missed Signals’, CNN.com Transcripts, 17/05/2002; Mike Hersh, ‘Call it 9-11Gate’, American Politics Journal.www 70
Greg Palast, ‘Don’t Buy Exxon’s Fable of the Drunken Captain’, London Observer 23/03/1999.
71
‘Ten Years After But Who Was To Blame?’ London Observer 21/03/1999.
72
Greg Palast, ‘Exxon Lubricated by Bush Judges’, London Observer 02/09/2003.
73 Environmental Working Group, Dishonorable Discharge: Toxic Pollution of America’s Waters, at www.ewg.org/pub/home/reports/dishonorable/dd_pdf/disdisch.pdf. 74 John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1995), Ch. VIII; p. 119f., 122. 75 Len Martin, in ‘The Death of Tony Behun, DEP, UMWA and Rush Township’ at www.penweb.org/issues/sludge/behun-synopsis.html documents the obscene wash of fibspeak and bubblespeak from the various authorities, whilst the death-dealing sludge company is actually suing the township for defamation! 76 According to a company representative, ‘Del Monte is an active supporter of a study which we hope will facilitate sludge use in the future’. Quoted in Rampton and Stauber, Note 76, p, 122. 77
Rampton and Stauber (Note 45), p. 126f, 222f, 264f.
78 Quoted in Tim Boston, ‘Life, liberty and the pursuit of resourcism: An ideological analysis of the Wise Use Movement’, The Trumpeter, 1998. 79 See David Helvarg, The War against the Greens: The Wise-Use Movement, the New Right Environmental Violence (San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1994). 80
and
Anti-
At www.ucsusa.org/ucs-home.html.
81 For a devastating exposé of why the war is a fraud, see Michael Levine, Deep Cover: The Inside Story of How DEA Infighting, Incompetence, and Subterfuge Lost us the Biggest Battle of the Drug War (NY: Delacorte, 1990); and Michael Levine and Laura Kavanau, The Big White Lie: The CIA and the Cocaine/Crack Epidemic (NY: Thunder’s Mouth. 1993). 82
At www.progress.org/archive/fold13.htm.
83 Jarret Wollstein, ‘The Looting Of America: Civil Asset Forfeiture’, International Society for Individual Liberty Educational Pamphlet Series, at www.isil.org/resources /lit/ looting-of-america.html. 84 Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty, ‘Presumed Guilty: The Law’s Victims in the War on Drugs’, Pittsburgh Press, 11/08/1991. 85 Jarret Wollstein, ‘Red Alert: The Rising American Police State’ in Practical Freedom: The Asset Forfeiture Manual, at www.buildfreedom.com/tl/aforfeit,shtml. 86
David Boaz, The Drug War Hits Home’, Freedom Daily, January 1992.
87
Contemporary Urban Television at cutv.com/robbery.htm http://
88
www.therighter.com/articles/Asset_Forfeiture.html.
89
Free-Market.Net Spotlight, at http://www.free-market.net/spotlight/forfeiture/
90 Andrew Schneider and Mary Pat Flaherty, ‘Government Seizures Victimize the Innocent’, Pittsburgh Press, 08/11/1991.
91 The Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act 1997, Congressional Testimony to the Commit-tee on the Judiciary, United States House of Representatives, posted at www.cato.org/ testimony/ct-rp061197.html. 92
At www.nacdl.org/public.nsf/newsreleases/2000mn007.
93 For a careful assessment, see Ernest H. Short, ‘Civil forfeiture of real property and the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000’, Oklahoma Bar Journal 73/18, 15/06, 2002. 94 Brant Hadaway, ‘Executive privateers: A discussion on why the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act will not significantly reform the practice of forfeiture’, University of Miami Law Review 55/1, 2002, 81-121. 95
At www.newamericancentury.org.
96 Quoted in Kurt Nimmo, ‘The Committee for the Liberation of Iraq: PR Spinning the Bush Doctrine’, Counterpunch, November 19, 2002. None of the Bush regime but Colin Powell have seen combat. Compare Jim Lobe, The Chicken Hawk Factor, at www.alternet.org, September 9, 2002; and the ‘Chicken Hawk Database’ of the New Hampshire Gazette at www.nhgazette.com/chickenhawks.html. 97
On ‘Meet the Press with Tim Russert; NBC, 08/02/2004.
98
‘The Hun is at the gate’, Town Hall, 29/11/2001.
99 This pet phrase of the Iraqicidal chickenhawks is the title of a book by ‘military strat-egists’ Harlan K Ullman and James P. Wade (Washington, DC: Command Control Research Program, 1996), which cites as successes the Nazi blitzkrieg and the bombing of Hiroshima. Proud precedents indeed! 100 Smedley D. Butler. War is a Racket (NY: Round Table, 1935). 101 KUBARK Counterintelligence Interrogation at www.parascope.com/articles/0397/ kubark06.htm According to Team Delta, ‘a ‘high speed unit of former special forces and other elite military personnel’,www KUBARK is the CIA’s codename for itself. 102 Posted at www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/11_20_01_northwoods.pdf; its authenticity has been confirmed by SPIEGEL ONLINE. 103 By Robin Hahnel, (Cambridge MA: South End Press, 1999). 104 John McMurtry, Unequal Freedoms; The Global Market as an Ethical System, (West Hartford, CT: Kumarian Press, 1998), p. 305. 105 At wlbn0018.worldbank.org/HDNet/HD.nsf/Sector Pages. 106 By David Werner, posted at www.panos.co.uk. 107 Reprinted in Palast, Note 13, pp. 154-56. Compare Stiglitz’s own more detailed account in Globalization and its Discontents (NY: Norton. 2002). 108 An earlier version of this report was presented as a keynote address at the Conference on Discourse Analysis at the University of Hodeidah in Yemen, in October, 2003. My paper ‘Critical discourse analysis from the perspective of ecologism: The discourse of the ‘New Patriotism’ for the ‘New Secrecy’ may appear in Critical Discourse Analysis in 2004, and offers full quotes and specifies the previous acts ‘amended’ with download sites, and the dollar amounts (or ‘such sums as necessary’) authorised to various agencies and projects.
109 Paul Krugman, ‘Bush’s Aggressive Accounting’, New York Times, 05/02/ 2002. 110 Paul Krugman, ‘Exploiting the Atrocity’ New York Times 12/09/2002. 111 Posted by the Elect Our Public Defender website at www.electpd.org/hr3162.pdf. 112 Sections are identified in Arabic numbers and the two Acts with I and II in superscript. 113 Barbara Comstock, Director of Public Affairs for the Justice Department, denied it was forwarded. But the ‘Department of Justice control sheet’ proving this transaction was obtained by PBS and is now posted at www.publicintegrity.org/dtaweb/downloads/ Story_01_020703_Doc_2.pdf 114 Follow the ‘Patriot II’ link at www.publicintegrity.org, where a helpful summary is also provided. A PDF version composed of bitmaps made by a scanner is at www.infowars. com /print_patriotact2_analysis.htm. 115 Other interesting frequencies: ‘Attorney General’ 121, ‘Secretary of the Treasury’ 49, ‘Secretary of State’ 45, but ‘Secretary of Defense’ just 2. 116 Quoted in Richard Lacayo, ‘The War Comes Back Home’, Time, 12/05/2003. 117 M. Powell, ‘No Choice but Guilty: Lackawanna Case Highlights Legal Tilt’, Washing-ton Post, 20/07/2003. 118 C.C. Mann, ‘Homeland Insecurity’, The Atlantic Monthly, September 2002. 119 At www.aclu.org/action/tips107.html. 120 ‘Man jailed for Bush remark’, CNEWS Law & Order, 06/12/2002.www 121 In the exultant screed ‘The Scorching Indictment Of Sami Al-Arian’ (21/02/2003), the Tampa Tribune boasts of having targeted Al-Arian since 1995, until flakspeaker Bill O’Reilly finally helped them out by smearing him as a terrorist on the Fox Channel. 122 At www.mediaresearch.org/cyberalerts/2002/c...20517_extra.asp 123 First at his Address to a Joint Session of Congress and then at every opportunity. 124 ‘Crimes and Silence’, in Kristina Borjesson (ed.), Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002), pp. 314f and 317.
VIII. The Standards of Textuality Revisited VIII.A The ‘Standards’ in theory and practice 1. The previous Introduction to Text Linguistics presented, as far as I know for the first time, the ‘seven standards of textuality’; contrary to the academic decorum of the times, the book opened right off with authentic texts and a hands-on demon-stration.1 Since then, people occasionally approach me at conferences to be reassured that I ‘still believe in’ that system. Perhaps linguistics has a reputation for faddish theoretical or topdown innovations that are soon shelved; ‘case grammar’ and ‘generative semantics’ come to mind. But text linguistics, and even more, discourse analysis, have been mainly practical, bottom-up enterprises, promoting a grainy realism which has been largely absent in ‘modern linguistics’ and which supports access to diverse issues and interests. I recall how, at the National University of Singapore in 1989, I received for evaluation in the same
week two theses that could hardly have been more different: a discourse analysis of Spenser’s Faerie Queene from a university in India, and a study of tractor operating manuals in Russian from a polytechnic in the German Democratic Republic. 2. The ‘seven standards’ too are at least realistic enough that they appear in discursive practice, as do most of their Negatives, viz.: [2325] As Descartes made clear, the mind […] can learn to comprehend a series of events by bringing them together into a cohesive, learned pattern to form a language. (Logic and Design)2 [2326] he sounded horrible, incohesive and babbly, so I sent his neighbor down to check on him (Caeli Dictum)www [2327] I resolved […] that I would be most moderate, most correct; and, having reflected a few minutes in order to arrange coherently what I had to say, I told her all the story of my sad childhood. (Eyre) [2328] ‘Gentlemen! Consider, for Heaven’s sake — help — Sam — here — pray, gentlemen — interfere, somebody.’ Uttering these incoherent exclamations, Mr. Pickwick rushed between the infuriated combatants (Pickwick) [2329] What could all this mean but an intentional affront? By some means or other she must have had the misfortune to offend him. (Northanger) [2330] Mason will not defy me; nor, knowing it, will he hurt me — but, unintentionally, he might in a moment, by one careless word, deprive me, if not of life, yet forever of happiness. (Eyre) [2331] I am happy on every occasion to offer those little delicate compliments which are always acceptable to ladies. (Pride) [2332] ‘Long live the race of the immortal Alfred!’ However unacceptable these sounds might be to Prince John, he saw himself obliged to confirm the victor (Ivanhoe) [2333] They were addressed by a congressman [with] spirited words on the necessity of keeping ignorant foreigners out of America. ‘Say, that was a mighty informative talk. Real he-stuff’, said Sidney Finkelstein. But the disaffected Babbitt grumbled, ‘Four-flusher! Bunch of hot air!’ (Babbitt) [2334] Amongst the media sources on offer, […] there was real choice available in terms of depth and detail, ranging from entertaining but uninformative tabloids to highbrow news sources (Media and Voters)3 [2335] Humour can be an excellent behaviour for easing tensions, [namely] situational humour, i.e., funny within the context of the situation people are in at the time. (Improve Your Personal Skills)4 [2336] ‘Situational’ […] refers then to a particular teaching technique involving physical demonstration of actions and objects; [or] to the language which is likely to occur within a specific context of situation[…] Most situational teaching in the first sense implies highly unsituational language in the second sense (Vivian Cook)www [2337] One only has to note the impressive erudition manipulated by the likes of [Jorge Luis] Borges, [Julio] Cortázar, [Alejo] Carpentier, or [Carlos] Fuentes or the intertextual references that abound in the new narrative to realize that the Spanish-American writer […] is now very much a citizen of the world. (Postmodernism and Contemporary Fiction) 5
[2338] Personal (expressive) writing, the kind espoused by [Peter] Elbow, imagines a non-intertextual space, a space in which students can ‘express their own thoughts and ideas’ (Beyond Dichotomy)www These practical senses mostly imply Ameliorative Attitudes for the terms and Pejorative ones for their Negatives: a text ought to be ‘cohesive’ [2339], ‘coherent’ [2340], ‘acceptable’ [2341], or ‘informative’ [2342]; and being explicitly ‘intertextual’ is a lively trend in literature and philosophy [2343]. Less distinct about Attitudes are ‘intentional’ as a matter of emphasis [2344], and ‘unintentional’ as a lack of control [2345]. [2339] The staff interviewed spoke cohesively about the function of the unit and its philosophical underpinnings. (Haven)www [2340] What do you mean, Sir? […] Be plain and coherent, if you please. (Dombey) [2341] we are seeking an agreement at Maastricht that is acceptable to the House. (Hansard) [2342] We want this bulletin to be informative yet agile, helpful in understanding key phenomena of Mexican reality (Mexico Insight) [2343] Patsy Stoneman provides a brilliant intertextual account of Wuthering Heights. (Language and Literature) [2344] ‘We want the representatives and senators to know that any restriction on patient safety is going to be a grave mistake, and I use that word “grave” intentionally’, said Jack Goodrich (Post-Gazette)www [2345] In praising Strom Thurmond's racist presidential bid, Trent Lott unintentionally told the truth about his views on civil rights; (Philadelphia City Paper)www 3. From the standpoint of theory, however, the seven standards are aspects of all texts. They do not suddenly disintegrate at some well-marked borderline, but rather fall along a cline of explicitness. The benevolent Mr Pickwick’s protests in [2328] are only implicitly ‘coherent’, and we still know just what he meant; the malevolent Prince John in [2332] did have to ‘accept’ the ‘popular shout’, albeit with ‘vexation’; and the insolent ‘tabloids’ in [2334] are ‘informative’ in their prying voyeuristic manner decidedly not aimed at ‘highbrows’. 4. Problems regarding the standards are generally taken in stride, e.g., for Mary Wollstonecraft’s novel left unfinished at her premature death in childbirth: [2346] Those persons will […] gladly accept even of the broken paragraphs and half-finished sentences; […] The fastidious and cold-hearted critic may perhaps feel himself repelled by the incoherent form in which they are presented. But an inquisitive temper willingly accepts the most imperfect and mutilated information, where better is not to be had. (William Godwin, preface to Wrongs of Women) Textuality really breaks down only under extraordinary conditions, e.g., when a woefully unintelligent computer translator programme like Babelfish on the Internet works piece by piece, giving us [2347-49], which are phantasmagorical until you consult the originals [2347a-49a].6 [2347] With Foz de Iguassu compete oversize factories of humans and nature together. […] Visitors can neardare themselves over foot pledge, bars and bridges to close to the cases. Like a giant discharge the Devil Throat on Argentine page transforms the Rio Iguassu into turned up snow-white gout. [2347a] Bei Foz de Iguassu konkurrieren überdimensionale Werke von Mensch und Natur miteinander […] Besucher können sich über Fußpfande [typo for: Fußpfade], Stege und Brücken bis nahe an die Fälle
heranwagen. Wie ein Riesenabfluß verwandelt der Teufelsschlund auf argentinischer Seite den Rio Iguassu in aufgewühlte schneeweiße Gicht [typo for: Gischt]. [2348] All rooms are connected by high-put, considered timber bridges and wood bars around a wet will with rains to reduce as well as the slip hazard with gunk education. [2348a] Sämtliche Zimmer sind durch hochgelegte, überdachte Holzbrücken und Holzstege miteinander verbunden um ein Nasswerden bei Regen, sowie die Rutschgefahr bei Matschbildung zu verringern. [2349] João Person surprised. An impressive urban green area that valley as the second place, in the world, trees for inhabitant. […]. Spread for the edge, Bath of I Smell organizes the mess. [2349a] João Pessoa surpreendeu. Uma impressionante área verde urbana que vale o segundo lugar, no mundo, em árvores por habitante. […] Espalhados pela orla, Banho de Cheiro organiza a bagunça [i.e., the festival]. (Majestosa Cidade das Acácias)www Whatever textuality can be assigned to these ‘translations’ has to be transferred from the originals. VIII.2 Discursive diversity: Seven standards in seven samples 5. Here are seven highly diverse samples from authentic texts: 7 [2350] WARNING! Driver carries only $20.00 in ammunition (bumpersticker, US) [2351] atheist: a son or daughter who dates someone of a different religious persuasion bum: any male over the age of 18 who is not studying to be a doctor respect: something parents got from their kids in the old days talking back: making a statement that doesn’t coincide with your parents’ own opinion (MAD Magazine’s Dictionary of Cliché Parental Terms) [2352] Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow Creeps in this petty pace from day to day To the last syllable of recorded time; And all our yesterdays have lighted fools The way to death. Out, out, brief candle! Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player That struts and frets his hour upon the stage And then is heard no more. It is a tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing. (Macbeth V, v, 17-28) [2353] Given the historical relationship between Africa and the West it is ironic that the latter is today preaching the virtues of freedom to Africans. Former colonisers and ex-slave-owners have made a virtue of
championing political and economic liberalisation. Yesterday’s oppressors appear to be today’s liberators, fighting for democracy, human rights, and free market economics throughout the world. [Yet] once stripped of its humanist rhetoric, […] this reasoning is […] the same notion used to justify slavery and colonialism: that the strong should be free to exercise their strength without moral or legal limitations that protect the weak. (Tunde Obadina in Africa Today, Nigeria) [2354] Multiculturalism is a word drilled into students’ minds at diversity-focused universities. The Penn State Objectivist Club would like to change the rampant support. […]. In a speech titled ‘Your Professors’ War Against the Mind: The Black Hole of Post-Modernism and Multiculturalism’, […] Gary Hull likened the views of the multiculturalist and the post-modern professor to that of a sadistic doctor who treats healthy patients by infecting them with viruses and breaking their legs and later asking them to come back for more. […] ‘The multiculturalist agenda at the University seeks to destroy our American identity [by] teaching students that the Empire State Building is as good of an architectural structure as a tepee; a concerto by Mozart is no greater than the beating of a tom-tom’. (Penn State Collegian) [2355] Failing return of the product within 7 days, the Supplier’s liability shall be limited on return to Supplier of the product or parts thereof, to the replacement or repair (in sole discretion of Supplier or of its duly authorised service dealer) of the product to elim-inate any defect in material and workmanship found to be due exclusively to any acts or omission on the part of Supplier of which defects Supplier shall have been notified in writing by the Customer within the aforesaid warranty period. (warranty packed with an electric heater, Botswana) [2356] J1Z is a handle electric tool drived by series generation. Its features are small in volume, light in weight, convenient to catch etc. It can be used in places which is moist and narrow. It can be used in the workshop with good conduct electricity such as work high above the ground. Read the explanation following before the tool got through power. 1. Be sure to carry out strictly the relevant rules. Otherwise you must obey our explanation first. 2. The workpiece to be drilled must be regularized and pay more attention. 3. Use the plug correctly without changing the plug as one please and pluging the outlet with bare conducting wire directly not using the plug. 4. Not to use power without limited. Check before being used. Let the tool have nonloading and see whether there is abnormal noise and the scraws become flexible and fall off and the inverting sparkle is normal or not. If the rotation speed is reduced abnormally, you should reduce to exert yourself. The drill should be repaired day to day. Do keep same part. If they are damaged you must change the new one and the same one. (instruction sheet packed with a power drill, Botswana) These samples appeared in a variety of discourse domains: bumpersticker [2350], humour magazine [2351], historical stage tragedy [2352], political commentary magazine [2353], campus newspaper [2354], product warranty [2355], and oper-ating instructions [2356]. Only [2356] was not produced by fluent users of English; and only [2352] is not from a contemporary source. 6. All these samples actualise the standards of textuality with resources appropriate to their text types (cf. II.131). Their Cohesion draws on the resources of Lexicogrammar, Prosody, and Visuality for forming, arranging, and combining the expressions. A bumpersticker like [2350] should be short and pithy to fit on a
bumper and to be quickly read in passing by other motorists It starts with a Participial Noun as a one-word Tone Group visually highlighted in the upper-case exclamation ‘WARNING!’, like the text type for announcing a danger. The Grammar is terse and assertive, e.g., the Noun ‘driver’ with no Article, and the Simple Present ‘carries’ instead of the more logical Progressive ‘is carrying’. The most prominent Lexical Choice goes at the end where it can exploit End Weight for Strong Stress: ‘¡am·mu·!ni·tion’. 7. The Grammar and Visuality of dictionary entries as imitated in [2351] are typically formatted with a head word, a colon, and a definition which uses the same Word-Class, e.g., a Noun (‘atheist – son’) plus a Relative Clause, or a Participle (‘talking back – making’) in a Non-Clause. The Flow of the Prosody is accordingly rough, with the head word occupying a short Tone Group and the definition one or more longer ones, e.g.: [2351a] ‘!bum: || ¡an·y !male ¡o·ver the ¡age of ¡eight·!teen | who is ¡not !stud·y·ing to be a !doc·tor’. A Thematic Sequence relates to the family (‘son – daughter – parents – kids’). 8. The Lexicogrammar of [2432] is dominated by Stylistic Figures of metaphor and personification centring on the themes of ‘time’ and ‘life’. Some Collocations are more predictable like ‘dusty death’ and ‘tale told’ whilst others are less so like ‘tomorrow creeps’ and ‘syllable of time’; and some have come to seem predictable just because they occurred here, like ‘struts and frets’ and ‘sound and fury’. 9. As is typical for a Shakespearean historical tragedy, the Prosody is in blank verse with no rhyme and with a rhythm that is regular but not monotonous except iconically so in the first line, e.g.: [2352a] To·!mor·row, and to·!mor·row, and to·!mor·row !Creeps in this ¡pet·ty ¡pace from !day to ¡day To the ¡last !syl·la·ble of re·¡cord·ed !time; || And ¡all our !yes·ter·¡days have ¡light·ed !fools The ¡way to !dust·y !death. || !Out, ¡out, ¡brief !can·dle! [etc.] The Grammar and Prosody often have the end of a Tone Group and a Clause both falling at the end of a line. Where this does not occur, the final Word may still get some extra Weight at a slower pace, e.g. ‘fools’. The short Non-Clause Tone Group with piled-up Stresses, !Out, ¡out, ¡brief !can·dle!’, iconically invokes briefness. 10. The Lexicogrammar and Prosody of [2353] are appropriate for essayistic writing. Even with my omissions, the Sentences are long (24, 14, 19, and 40 Words), each comprising several Tone Groups. In almost every Tone Group, End Weight assigns strategic focus: ‘!West – !Af·ricans – ¡lib·er·al·is·!a·tion – !lib·er·¡at·ors – !world – !free·dom – !strong – !weak’. Its Thematic Sequences are fitted to a report on political economy, e.g. ‘freedom – slave-owners – oppressors – liberators – democracy – human rights – humanist’); and the contest among political ideologies is iconically reflected in balanced lexical parallels (e.g. ‘freedom – slavery’; ‘yesterday’s oppressors – today’s liberators’; ‘the strong – the weak’). All these connections make the Cohesion of the text explicitly efficient and effective, even though the Style is fairly Formal and Impersonal in the sense of section VI.E. 11. Campus newspapers like [2354] are as a rule dismally insensitive to matters of Prosody, e.g., not exploiting End Weight for strategic effect. Compare the original opening with this rewritten version:
[2354a] A word circulated daily and drilled into students’ minds on the campuses of universities, which, like Penn State, focus on di·!ver·si·ty, is ¡mul·ti·!cul·tur·al·ism. ·!Chang·ing this rampant support is the goal of the Penn State Ob·!ject·iv·ist ¡Club. Such newspapers also crudely mix lexical Styles, such as Formal (e.g. ‘diversity-focused universities’) with Informal (e.g. ‘come back for more’, ‘as good of a structure’). The Style is mainly set by a cargo of venomous smears and flakspeak of yellow journalism on the ‘New Right’ (e.g. ‘drilled – rampant – War – Black Hole – sadistic – infecting with viruses – breaking legs – destroy’). 12. Sample [2355] is a lexicogrammatical, prosodic, and visual monstrosity of Strenuous, Formal and Impersonal Style. It is formatted as a single Sentence of 85 Words with just one true Tone Group termination (at ‘7 days’) and two false ones in the midst of a grammatical pattern (at ‘thereof’ and ‘dealer’); otherwise it is a tedious, breathless drone. Beside the sole Independent Clause (‘liability shall be limited’) in the grammar, the Sentence carries one Dependent Clause (‘Supplier shall have been notified’), 7 Nouns instead of Verbs (e.g. ‘return’, ‘replacement’), and no less than 20 Prepositional Phrases (if we count ‘parts thereof’). This Grammar deliberately obscures the Cohesion of who ‘shall’ do what and when. The Lexical Choices intensify the tedium by intrusive repetitions (‘return’ and ‘defects’ twice, ‘product’ 3 times, ‘Supplier’ 5 times). 13. The Cohesion of [2356] is curious in quite different ways. By itself, the prosody would flow well enough, aside from the sentences about ‘pluging’ and ‘nonloading’. But the Grammar identifies the writer to be signally disfluent in Standard English (e.g. ‘drived – places which is – through power – without limited – have nonloading – reduce to exert yourself’), as do some Lexical Choices (e.g. ‘convenient to catch – good conduct electricity – regularized – become flexible – inverting sparkle’). All this was surely not designed to puzzle readers as the cohesion of [2356] was. 14. Regarding Coherence, the topics of our samples are mostly straightforward: this ‘driver’ is well-armed [2350]; American ‘parents’ piously preach conformist behaviour to their ‘kids’ [2351]; ‘life’ woefully fails to ‘signify’ anything; [2352], the ‘economic liberalisation’ of today re-enacts the ‘colonialism’ of ‘former’ times [2353]; ‘multiculturalism’ and ‘post-modernism’ in the university constitute ‘ram-pant warfare’ [2354]; this ‘Supplier’s liability’ is impregnably ‘limited’ [2355]; this ‘electric tool’ requires a thorough ‘explanation’ before use [2356]. Yet their coherence could be deconstructed by uncovering some underlying strains or contradictions (II.176). The ‘driver’ is not a professional ‘carrier’ of ‘ammunition’ [2350]; an ‘atheist’ would not accept any ‘religious persuasion’ [2351]; ‘life’ is accused of being both tediously long in its ‘creeping pace’ and yet ‘idiotic’ in its ‘briefness’ [2352]; ‘human rights’ are grossly violated by ‘slavery’ [2353]; no ‘doctor’ ever behaves in such a criminally ‘sadistic’ manner [2354]; no ‘warranty period’ has been ‘aforesaid’ unless it be the silly ‘7 days’ [2355]; the drill is ‘handle’ (i.e. handy) and ‘convenient’, yet you must ‘carry out strictly the relevant rules’ [2356], or else. 15. These strains are also related to the Intentionality. [2350] is to discourage theft or assault. [2351] is to caricature the self-righteous naggings of ‘parents’ at their ‘kids’. [2352] portrays Macbeth’s meaningless life of crime having convinced him that ‘life’ in general ‘signifies nothing’; just after Lady Macbeth ‘by self and violent hands took off her life’, he may be preparing himself for ‘leaving’ it ‘becomingly’, as if ‘throwing away’ ‘a careless trifle’, just like the Thane of Cawdor, another Scottish traitor whose title set Macbeth on his evil path (Macbeth V, vii, 70-71; I, iv, 4-11). [2353] seeks to show how the ‘preaching’ of the ‘West’ about ‘economic liberalisation’ masks a ‘concept’ of ‘freedom’ for ‘the strong’ to ‘oppress’ the ‘weak’. [2354], in direct contrast, seeks to reassert the cultural supremacy of the West by defaming the ‘multiculturalism’ that promotes cultural equality and ‘diversity’. [2355] wants to make sure that ‘the Customer’ won’t have the foggiest idea of the
‘Supplier’s liability’ and won’t press claims. [2356] wants to praise the product yet to anticipate and avoid imminent risks and problems. 16. The Acceptability of these texts depends on distinctive cultural knowledge. [2350] presupposes a culture where ordinary drivers carry guns in their cars — established practice in the United States or South Africa, but unknown in the United Arab Emirates or Brunei. [2351] presupposes a culture of alienation between generations within the American family. [2352] presupposes a familiarity with the innovative rhetorical strategies of Elizabethan drama, which may not be easy to follow for modern audiences. [2353] would be warmly accepted by an informed audience whose lives have suffered under colonialism and globalisation. In contrast, [2354] would be warmly accepted by an uninformed audience dogmat-ically convinced of the universal superiority of mainstream (white male) ‘American culture’. [2355] and [2356] are barely acceptable, and [2355] is, I have argued, quite intentionally so. 17. The Informativity of the samples is relatively high insofar as they strain coherence and adapt their text types. [2350] adapts the sign posted on buses in American cities to ‘warn’ aspiring thieves that the ‘driver carries only $20.00 in cash’. [2351] creates surprise effects by making explicit the implicit bigotry in the sanctimonious discourse of some parents. [2352] is an engaging fabric of metaphors and personifications that paradoxically endow ‘nothing’ with concrete Visuality. [2353] surprises by its ‘ironic’ linkage between ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’, once starkly proclaimed by the ruling party in Orwell’s 1984 but now smoothly masked behind ‘humanist rhetoric’. [2354] surprises by the scorched-earth flak-speak of accusing ‘professors’ of conduct that would send any real ‘doctor’ to prison. [2355] is intentionally uninformative. [2356] is unintentionally informative through its sublime ineptness, which has evoked lively hilarity among my university colleagues who teach English as a foreign language. 18. The Situationality of the samples broadly reflects the societies where they were to be received. [2350] reflects the galloping rise in poverty, joblessness, and crime in the US, whilst nervous citizens stock up on firearms. [2351] reflects the significant decline in US family ties such as mutual respect and shared cultural values. 19. Sample [2352] reflects an ambivalent society fascinated by the pageantry of royalty, power, and wealth, yet repelled by the injustice, immorality, and inhumanity of those who wielded them. The Elizabethan ‘stage’ was home to guilt-ridden kings and nobles who ‘strutted’ their ‘hours’ and then were deservedly cast into ‘dusty death’. Shakespeare excelled in interweaving with plays with his own personal ambivalence between his pride in the power of language, most celebrated in his Sonnets for ‘outliving marble and the gilded monuments of princes’ (LV, 1), versus his anxiety over the ‘imaginary puissance’ of his ‘rough and all-unable pen’ that ‘mangles the full course of glory’ (Henry V, Prologue 25, Epilogue 1, 4). 20. Samples [2353] and [2354] reflect converse reactions to the same post-modern contradiction arising when multicultural and multinational societies and economies sharply intensify both the competition for resources and the concentration of wealth and privilege (I.22). In [2353], Tunde Obadina, the Economics Editor of the monthly magazine Africa Today (‘the voice of the continent’), is leading into a close analysis of the ‘African Growth and Opportunity Act’ (AGOA), then before the American Congress and later signed into law in The Trade and Development Act of 2000. Its website 8 contains the usual self-promoting discourse and glitzy visuals showing the benefits of the ‘free market’ [2357], also praised by the large majority of sponsored websites. [2357] The Act offers tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets.
Yet only 6 of the 38 eligible African countries have notably raised their exports to the US; 16 have exported nothing at all (Washington Office on Africa). 21. In [2354], a ‘Collegian Staff, in obsequious sympathy with the ‘Club’, framed the discourse of the late Gary Hull. The latter was probably a cut-price clone of upscale campus Rant-A-Rant Horowitz (VII.30), vowing to defend ‘our American identity’ against a fiendish conspiracy among ‘post-modern professors’. The substantive issues are not even stated, let alone addressed; instead, ‘professors’ are smeared with a simile so outrageous as to demolish any claim to ‘Objectivity’. The relevant political and economic issues are merely hinted through Metonymy by opposing monumental icons of powerful Americans (‘Empire State Building’) and Europeans (‘concerto by Mozart’) against modest indexes of Native Americans (‘teepee’) and African Americans (‘tomtom’) — crass functional non-sequiturs mismatching pre-modern against modern, since the tepee properly matches the ‘Western’ camping tent (mobile home for nomadic life) and the tom-tom the ‘Western’ telegraph (instrument to use sounds for transmitting messages over distances); and no ‘multiculturalist’ advocates them for contemporary use anyway. The discourse exploits the situation of white males who fear that their university degrees will not shield them from social and economic insecurity and who are thirsting to hear pretexts for not sharing with other ‘cultures’. 22. The situationality of both [2355] and [2356] involves a consumer having bought an electrical apparatus that can readily cause major property damage or personal injury. These probabilities are not mere speculation, viz.: [2358] The National Fire Protection Association reports there are around 3,000 fires caused by electric heaters each year (Pullman Fire Department)www This space heater was evidently thought too primitive to need instructions; it didn’t even have an ‘off/on’ switch. Instead, the text [2355] was devoted to deploying wondrously Strenuous Style for the intention of shielding the ‘Supplier’ against ‘liability’ if the heater burns or shocks people, or causes short-circuits or fires in their homes. 23. The power drill in [2356], on the other hand, was accompanied by verbose instructions that were plainly well-meaning though not plainly meaningful. You are even instructed when and how to read the instructions. Instead of forestalling responsibility for ‘defects in material and workmanship’ as in [2355], the goal is to help the user live with the defects. I confess to having used the tool myself before I deciphered the ‘relevant rules’, and, sure enough, after I had drilled exactly four holes in a hard wall, I heard ‘abnormal noise’ and beheld the ‘rotation speed’ ‘reduced abnormally’ — to zero in fact. The heat from the drill bit had visibly melted the motor and welded it fast. I fear I failed to ‘regularize’ the wall and make it ‘pay more attention’; nor did I ‘reduce to exert myself’ soon enough upon witnessing ‘abnormality’. So I learned too late the true urgency of ‘day to day repair’. The dealer at the Gaborone Mall ‘changed the new one’ by replacing the whole tool; but I never got the chance to drill by the ‘rules’ because it was soon ‘conveniently catched’ out of my Land Rover by car thieves in a Pretoria garage. 24. Finally, the Intertextuality of our samples guides and supports the other six standards of textuality. Bumperstickers like [2350] provide a medium of commercially manufactured discourse for displaying the drivers’ presumptive views or personalities without social contact. These views can be defiantly anti-social, especially when the topic is the male love of guns. The ‘intertext’ for [2351], however, invoking ‘parents’ preachy admonitions about ostensibly anti-social behaviour of their children, wryly suggests that the ‘parents’ speak an outlandish language in need of translating with the aid of a dictionary or glossary. 25. The intertextuality for [2352] is more diffuse. Its connections reach back into the ‘Elizabethan revenge tragedy’ whose language Shakespeare elevated to unrivalled brilliance; but also into historiography, notably
Raphael Holinshed’s Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and Irelande (1577) that provided material for other history plays as well; 9 and into the mythologies of witches and goddesses of destiny in various text types, including stage plays. The ‘dramatic monologue’ or ‘soliloquy’ was a celebrated sub-text designed as an elegant set-piece for the characters to meditate out loud. In modern cinematic staging, such as Roman Polanksi’s Macbeth, these may be shown with the character not speaking but staring into space, as a visual icon representing thought without speech. 26. The intertext for [2353] is the discourse of ‘economic liberalisation’, which culls its thematic terms from the discourses of the post-modern globalising ‘re-colonisation’ by trade policies favouring the rich such as the ‘African Growth and Opportunity Act’ (VIII.20). Counter-discourse ‘stripped of humanist rhetoric’ makes Obadina’s point quite forcefully [2359]. [2359] I called it the ‘Africa Recolonization Act’. […] The Congress of South African Trade Unions declared this bill worse than no bill at all. Indeed, South African President Nelson Mandela declared the bill ‘not acceptable to us’. [It] requires sub-Saharan Africa to adopt a range of policies straight out of the International Monetary Fund’s discredited play book: cuts in spending on health care and education, orienting food production away from meeting domestic needs and toward exports, and dives-ting natural resources and precious public assets to foreign investors. […] Look at the coalition promoting it — a corporate who’s who of oil giants, banking and insurance interests, as well as apparel firms seeking one more place to locate their lowpaying sweatshops. (Jesse L. Jackson, Jr.)10 Due to onerous rules for qualifying, and to hundreds of exclusions, even the lurvely IMF calculated that the benefits to Africa were only one-fifth what they would have been under a genuine free-trade regime. Presumably that works out to five times as much benefits to, erm, ‘American interests’. 27. Curiously, the ‘intertext’ of right-wing monoculturalist discourse like [2354] seems to be blankly unaware of how efficiently this ‘globalised free market’ is already imposing an agenda of power and inequality heavily biased toward white males in the US and its ‘allies’. Why bother to rant and smear cultural minorities whose human rights are already being quietly and efficiently suspended by the ‘free market forces’, the ‘war on drugs’, ‘American interests’, ‘homeland security’, and the ‘war on terrorism’? Plausibly, the agenda calls for heaping insult on injury and discredit in advance any counter-movements of social consciousness and responsibility by stridently repeating that the victims of inequality are actually perpetrators of a heinous plot to ‘destroy American identity’, and deserve the least benefits and indeed perhaps violence (I.18). In particular, the vindictive far-right stink tanks with intellectual pretensions, like the ‘Ayn Rand Institute’ and the ‘Center for the Study of Popular Culture’ of Rent-A-Rant Horowitz, are madly eager to mudsling distinguished academic experts in multiculturalism, who command the most articulate authority to deconstruct the far-right agenda and reveal what it is — a very real and wealthy plot to destroy American democracy. Besides, multicultural universities offer successful careers whereby graduating foreign students can become permanent US residents — another perennial anathema to the far right. 28. More generally, as I have noted, far-right flakspeak is intended to engender a confrontational environment of ‘cultural war’ 11 which leaves no room for rational discussion and debate among the supporters of differing ideologies (VII.26-39, 35). The laughable overkill of some smears — e.g., university professors ‘likened’ to ‘sadists’ who diabolically spread ‘infectious viruses’ and ‘break legs’ — are like the overkill of ‘pre-emptive strikes’ in a real hot war American style. Such reduced and debased exercises of language, aimed at reducing and debasing human beings, expressly turn language against itself (I.38). 29. The ‘intertext’ for [2355] is the discourse of product warranties colonised by the legal discourse of statutes and regulations, whose Strenuous Style shows indicators like ‘thereof’ and ‘aforesaid’. This mode of discourse
merges three goals: fulfilling legal obligations, brandishing authoritative knowledge of the niceties of law, and intimidating the buyer. Injured consumers would have to hire their own lawyers just to determine what the warranty says, only to find that their cause is already lost. 30. The intertext for [2356] is more curious. The producer(s) know both the product and the conventions for giving instructions, but, like many people I have encountered around the world, they sadly overrate their own knowledge of English, a tendency of course encouraged by the commercial value of English and rarely observed for other ‘foreign languages’. The country of origin was nowhere indicated in the text or on the tool and the package, but the native language of the writer(s) must be radically unlike English. Apparently, the grammar was cobbled on the model of the native language, as my students in Arabia did (II.200), and the vocabulary was culled from an unreliable bilingual dictionary. Such discourse underscores the need for better access to ‘English for Professional Purposes’ than has remotely been achieved so far (II.208). 31. Having briefly revisited the seven standards of textuality, I now revisit the three design criteria for evaluating texts (cf. II.130). My own status as a text receiver is of course hardly typical. I might qualify as an intended text receiver for [2352] as a keen admirer of Shakespeare, for [2353] as an ‘ecologist’ then living in Africa, and for [2356] as a user of power drills. I do not qualify as a prospective car-burglar for [2350], nor as a gullible student or closet racist for [2354]. I can read discourse like [2351] with some empathy as a counterdiscourse against the discourses of arrogant parental authority, though I am not personally involved or addressed. But I would point out that the alienation within the ‘Western’ family in ‘modern societies’ is no joke, least of all when exported into societies where the strength of family ties is essential for cultural identity or even for physical survival under adverse conditions (cf. VIII.59). 32. The most efficient texts in getting readily processed would be [2350], [2351], and [2354], all expressed in ordinary language despite occasional twists. More effort is needed for the poetic language of [2352] and for the political and economic language in [2353]. For [2355] and [2356], so much effort is needed that readers might give up, though only [2355] was designed to encourage them to do so by being radically inefficient. 33. How far these texts would be effective in promoting the goals of the producers or presenters is an unsettling question. Receivers of [2350] might be scared off but, if armed themselves, might instead feel challenged to an adrenaline-pumping gun battle like they daily watch on TV. Receivers of [2351] will feel amused only if they are ‘kids’ getting nagged or adults remembering how they once got nagged by their parents; others might feel indignant. The receivers of [2352] may realise that Macbeth is just universalising his own hopelessness (VIII.15), but may instead get carried away by the eloquent pessimism and concur that ‘life’ is hollow and meaningless at bottom. 34. The goal of [2353] is to alert African readers to the deeper irony of ‘preaching the virtues’ of a ‘freedom’ which, just like ‘slavery’, allows ‘strength’ to be ‘exercised without moral or legal limitations’. Audiences with access to relevant information about issues like the ‘African Growth and Opportunity will welcome a critical look behind the ‘humanist rhetoric’; but most Africans whose lives will be affected by ‘free market economics’ have no such access and will be either deceived by such ‘Acts’ or just ignored. Besides, the apostles of ‘free market’ and ‘free trade’ can freely dictate their terms to the nations of Africa (cf. VII.104ff), and have efficient ‘procedures’ to get any money that goes in back out, and fast: [2360] The IMF expects borrowers to give priority to repaying its loans on schedule [and] has in place procedures to deter the build-up of any arrears, or overdue repay-ments and interest charges [and] ensure that the IMF is among the first to be repaid. 12 The recent fate of Argentina should be an object lesson to any debtor nation.
35. In contrast, sample [2354] would be effective for poorly-informed American readers, who might credit these fearsome accusations and turn angrily against their ‘professors’. Other readers (like me) would refuse to believe that ‘professors’ (of all people) would want to wage a ‘war against the mind’ and ‘destroy American identity’. We would retort that people who use such blatantly partisan language are not ‘Objectivists’ but alarmists and slanderers (VIII.21). 36. Sample [2355] is effective precisely by not being efficient, since communication was never intended. The goal of the ‘Suppliers’ — identified only as ‘Nu-World Industries’ with no location or address where you could possibly ‘return of the product’ or ‘notify in writing’ — is to fulfil the legal requirements for ‘war-ranties’ in a way that evades responsibility. The Suppliers can act like officials who, when accused of misconduct, are their own judges; and the accusation is thrown out if a formal writ is not submitted in an ‘aforesaid period’, period. They could have known that in this part of Africa, many buyers of low-cost heaters would not be fluent enough in formal English to compose such a writ even in the grossly unlikely event that they had understood why, where, and how to do so. 37. Sample [2356] is just the opposite: not effective because it is not efficient. It would be effective only for readers with a sound working knowledge of electric power tools, but then it would be rather superfluous. Unlike [2355], effective communication does seem to have been sincerely intended in [2356], witness the assiduous urging to ‘read the explanation’. 38. How far these samples would be appropriate to the situation is another unsettling question. I have seen many bumperstickers like [2350] signalling a frank disregard for appropriateness in general and for political correctness in particular (VIII.24). They have a captive audience in the immediate visual field of the motorist behind. And the risks of hostile reactions are far lower than if the same texts were uttered face to face — though some of my friends were stopped by Florida police for the wryly philosophising bumpersticker ‘Shit Happens’ (which it did, right then). 39. MAD Magazine, the source of sample [2351], is a special discourse of a different nature. It is a mainly sophisticated ‘comic’ intended for satire and caricature of the inane, pretentious, or hypocritical manifestations of US culture, such as gory films and imbecilic TV sitcoms. It plays off the discourse of smarmy advertisers, moral crusaders, religious fanatics, high rollers, seedy politicians, and the despotic military and police. A favoured strategy in MAD is to display people saying what just would not be appropriate or politically correct in their real situations and thus betraying their hidden intentions. Subverting conventional appropriateness is thereby made appropriate to the magazine’s own situation. 40. Shakespeare’s history plays are special too. We know from historical records that these persons could hardly have spoken so nicely, but we have somehow accepted his representation of the modes of discourse are that appropriate for kings and nobles, compelling admiration despite frequently ignoble motives. Such is sustained even in a soliloquy, despite the stage fiction that nobody’s listening. 41. Samples [2353] and [2354] could not both be judged appropriate by the same audience, because they imply opposing viewpoints on cultural diversity, and operate with two widely differing strategies: the one ecological and intellectual, the other confrontational and emotional. They indicate most clearly of all the seven samples how texts seek to position the audience and encourage them to take sides (II.176). We are asked to choose between the valid opposites of ‘freedom’ and ‘slavery’, or between ‘liberators’ and ‘oppressors’ in [2353]; and between the sham opposites of ‘American identity’ and ‘multiculturalism’, or between ‘Empire State Building’ and ‘teepee’ in [2354].
42. Finally, both [2355] and [2356] are highly inappropriate from the standpoint of the audience, though for totally disparate reasons, as we have seen. The likely effect would be severe disorientation, and if you don’t understand the problems and dangers of such appliances, you may be in for a real shock. 43. So far, I have examining the texts as I found them, much as was done with the seven texts placed at the start of the 1981 Introduction. But now I shall round off with a demonstration of deconstructing by a ‘critical rewriting’ that reverses and thus highlights the ideological agenda to position the audience and make one particular view of the world seem natural and general (II.132, 177). (The term ‘rewriting’, does not mean limited to ‘written texts’, though for me at least the work is most efficient and effective using a word processor.) 44. The ‘deconstructive rewriting’ in [2350b] explicitly escalates the stance of defiance and menace merely implicit in the original [2350]. [2351b] takes on the position of the self-righteous parents. [2350b] WARNING! Mess with me and you’ll get yer head blowed off! [2351b] atheist: a person who has wilfully forsworn allegiance to the One True God and will burn in Hell for all eternity bum: any male who, entirely through his own laziness, has ended up in the gutter, and has no claim to any help from family or society respect: the dutiful deference parents deserve at all times from their grateful children talking back: responding to wise parental advice with insolent comebacks that should earn you a sound whipping [2352b] uses abjectly Plain Style to abrogate all intent of casting a pall of grandeur over the emptiness of life, and so loses all effectiveness to compel either empathy or sympathy. [2352b] The way the next days just keep on coming and coming toward the end of time is trivial and all the days lead us twits to grungy graves. So let it go! Life is like some oozy blot, or some lousy actor who moans and mooches about on the stage for while and then shuts up. Life is like a story from some eejit, all noise and no meaning. Nothing is left of the textual fabric of a beauty that paradoxically consoles and transcends its own sadness (cf. VI.71). 45. [2353b] switches sides by ‘preaching’ from just the position which [2353] was intended to deconstruct. [2354b] switches in the opposite direction by occupying the position violently attacked in [2354] and asserting that multiculturalism affirms the identity of America rather than ‘destroying’ it. [2353b] The long history of bringing our Western Enlightenment to Africa, the Dark Continent, imposes upon us the moral imperative to enlighten the Africans today on the virtues of freedom through political and economic liberalisation. Now more than ever, our radiant commitment to democracy, human rights, and free market economics must be spread to Africa to help the Natives outgrow their primitive bartering with animal skins and join Modern Civilisation and the New World Order -- Ours. [2354b] Multiculturalism is a vital topic for today’s university campuses that are committed to serving our multicultural society in a spirit of democracy and equality. Yet multiculturalism has been the continual target of unprincipled attacks by right-wing radicals who masquerade as ‘Objectivists’ and as champions of ‘academic freedom’ and ‘excellence’ to mystify their brutal and unconstitutional campaigns for white male supremacy. They bewail the ‘destruction of American identity’, but the real identity of America is multicultural, and always
has been — a open nation of natives and immigrants building its strengths upon diversity and upon the freedom to be diverse. 46. This much ‘deconstructive rewriting’ was not too difficult insofar as I could be considered conversant with the cultural situations reflected by the original texts. Rewriting [2355] and [2356] had to overcome turgid resistance of two distinct modes. By far the harder task was to rewrite the heater warranty into a really userfriendly version such as [2355b]. [2355b] If the Customer does not return the product within 7 days, the Supplier or its authorised service dealer has the right of deciding whether to replace or repair it. We will do so only if we find some defect in material and workmanship that is entirely our own fault. In addition, the Customer must send the Supplier a written notice of the defect before the warranty period ends. Instead of switching sides on cultural issues, as I had done in [2350a-2341b] and [2353a-2344b], I switched disempowerment by arrogant ‘Suppliers’ over to empowerment of ordinary ‘Customers’. I expunged the stylistic indicators of legalese and greatly streamlined the grammar. My version [2355b] retains the agenda of limiting the ‘Supplier’s’ responsibility, but rejects the agenda of confusing and intimidating the Customers. Now you would at least have fair warning that you shouldn’t depend too much on the ‘Supplier’ or ‘service dealer’ when there’s trouble. Yet by making the text more efficient to read, I made it less effective for the ‘Supplier’s’ intention (cf. VIII.36), which might have been more aptly deconstructed like this: [2355c] The Supplier has the liability rigged so that you’ve got a snowball’s chance in hell of getting this piece of cheap junk fixed or replaced. Even if it goes phut or burns your house down within 7 days, you can hardly find us; or if you manage anyway, we’ll say it wasn’t our fault; or if it obviously was our fault, we’ll point out we didn’t get a written notice during those 7 days (you know, the African mail service…). So sayonara, sucker! 47. Rewriting [2356] required both some knowledge of electric machinery and some facility in inferring from the flubspeak the intended expressions which may resemble them in sound or spelling (e.g. ‘handle’ = ‘handy’, ‘series generation’ = ‘serial generator’) or else in meaning (e.g. ‘moist’ = ‘damp’, ‘narrow’ = ‘cramped’, ‘have nonloading’ = ‘spin freely’). The ‘inverting sparkle’ might be the ‘sparks in the generator’ that runs on alternating (‘inverting’?) current. [2356b] J1Z is a handy electric tool driven by a serial generator. It has the advantages of being compact, light, and convenient to hold. It can be used not merely in workshops with well-secured electrical outlets but also in damp or cramped conditions or on high metal frames. Please observe these instructions carefully. 1. Use only a power source with the proper voltage. 2. Use the correct plug; do not exchange it randomly and do not just insert the bare wires into the outlet. 3. Before using the tool, let it spin freely and check for excess noise, loosened screws, or abnormal sparks in the generator. 4. Take care to ensure that the item to be drilled has a suitable shape and surface. 5. If drilling slows down the rotation, reduce your pressure on the drill. 6. When repairs are necessary, they should be performed at once. Exchange any damaged part with the authorised factory replacement. Furthermore, I reorganised the overall pattern to enhance Coherence. The item marked ‘1.’ in the original text [2356] does not qualify as a technical instruction; it seems to mean that unless you are already familiar with
how to operate the tool, you should read the ‘explanation’. In exchange, the unnumbered materials in the paragraph placed below item ‘4.’ do qualify, and I have reformatted them as such. I also rearranged the individual instructions into a more logical order: first connecting to power, then checking the tool, then checking the ‘piece to be drilled’, then responding to some event during the drilling, and finally responding to defects in the tool. The ‘plug’ matters a lot because the drill is sold without one — buildings in southern Africa have a variety of outlets — and some people have indeed been sticking the ‘bare wires’ into the outlet and getting more thrill than drill by confusing the live wire with the ground wire. 48. ‘Critical’ or ‘deconstructive rewriting’ reminds us that our own responses as ‘text linguists’ and ‘discourse analysts’ are not a neutral or objective processes, but, in accord with the approach of discursivism, can be made explicit objects of reflection and manipulation (II.112). Ecologism regards the standards of textuality as theoretical resources for the practices of critically probing texts from multiple perspectives and working out multiple social or ideological agendas built on discursive themes like ‘freedom’ or ‘multiculturalism’. 49. In return, the standards as such do not constitute the practical resources of units, items and patterns — the ‘concrete wherewithal of speech’ (Sapir)13 — that underwrite or sponsor Cohesion, Coherence, Intentionality, and so on. The resources are provided by the triad of Lexicogrammar, Prosody and Visuality, which comes fully into view by finally transcending the mind-set of ‘linguistics’ where language is a composite of ‘levels’ with ‘emes’, or ‘components’ with ‘rules’, extracted from analysis and arranged in formal systems. In its place, we recognise the organisational resources actively supporting synthesis and determining Style, such as Collocations in Lexicogrammar, pitch contours in Prosody, and mental imagery in Visuality. Textuality is all of a piece; and discourse analysis as our particular professional practice should sustain its own conscious dialectic with discourse synthesis as the general social practice. VIII.B. Close-Up: Shopping as an ‘Art Form’ 50. The text shown below comes from an advert published in Time (Asian edition, 24/06/1994), with numbering added for handy reference: [2361.1] Shopping, once a chore for necessities and now an art form and major leisure activity, is a great barometer of social change. [2361.2] If you shopped in Indonesia before the 1980s, your options were limited to traditional markets and neighbourhood ‘mom and pop’ stores. [2361.3] Wealthy Indonesians were forced to go overseas if they wanted to buy upmarket international brands [2361.4] becausethese goods were simply not for sale at home. [2361.5] Then came the retail revolution. [2361.6] Now there are hundreds of supermarkets, department stores, plazas, malls, and supermalls to rival the best in the west dotted all over the archipelago; [2361.7] a mega mall and a hyper mall are on the drawing board. [2361.8] Growing per capita income — now at US$ 750 per annum — [2361.9] and Indonesia’s massive population has [sic] spurred a retail frenzy [2361.10] which began in the capital Jakarta, the country’s headquarters for commerce, industry and its burgeoning middle class — [2361.11] Indonesia’s prime shoppers. […] [2361.12] Our steadily expanding economy is coupled with rapidly rising family incomes; [2361.13] the middle and upper-income groups who constitute our consumer base are the groups exhibiting the most dramatic upward mobility. [2361.14] The nation’s growing middle class population, those with annual incomes over US$ 4,500, is already estimated to total nearly 20 million. [2361.15] We saw shopping malls as another type of family recreation where you all go to relax and have fun.
51. The global Intentionality of the text richly shapes the arrays of selections and combinations: to whet the public (or just private) appetite for shopping; to boast about the spread of malls; to project a bullish air of economic progress in ‘rising family incomes’; to extol the management of the Indonesian economy; and to make the country attractive for investors, ‘upmarket’ tourists, and ‘wealthy Indonesians’ who, perish the thought, might otherwise shop, invest, or vacation ‘overseas’. These three groups are reassured that Indonesia will treat their money well, whether by returning high profits from investment or by furnishing ‘upmarket international brands’ to flaunt in the faces of one and all. 52. The intention of extolling the Indonesian economy adduces ‘social change’ as the force behind ‘rapidly rising family incomes’ [2361.1, 12]. The ‘middle and upper-income groups’ are asserted to ‘constitute our consumer base’ [2361.13]; but elsewhere, only the ‘middle class’ are designated ‘Indonesia’s prime shoppers’ [2361.11]. To be sure, blurring the border between middle and upper incomes is an alluring notion for the vainglorious social climbing behind the euphemism ‘upward mobility’. But the ‘burgeoning middle class’ is the key group leading the ‘retail frenzy’ in their drive to display their recent comparative wealth, whereas the upper class serenely takes its long-standing superlative wealth in stride. 53. In an intriguing move of self-deconstruction, the text also plants clues that this ‘social change’ has bypassed nearly all of the population, provided we do some basic arithmetic. If the whole population was roughly 190 million, and the population with ‘incomes over US$ 4,500’ came to ‘20 million’ [2361.14], then 89% (170 million) must have been in the lower class living on less than $4,500. If we multiply the whole population by a ‘per capita income’ of $750 [2361.8] for each citizen, the total income of Indonesia was around $142.5 billion. Multiplying $4500 by the 20 million citizens whose ‘incomes’ were at least that much [2361.14] gives a total of $90 billion. If we adjust our first total by subtracting the second total, $52.5 billion was left over for the 170 million in the lower class, so their income for a year would be just $308.82 apiece — 85¢ a day — even if the rest did not earn any more than US$4,500 — 15 times as much — but of course Suharto’s ravenous flock of cronies and relatives did, as was amply disclosed after the ignominious downfall of his mind-bendingly crooked regime in 1999, five years after this ad appeared. 54. So a latent contradiction might be detected at the epicentre of the intention-ality of our text. On the one hand, the statistics could serve the intention of touting the progress of the ‘economy’ as a whole by camouflaging the regressive poverty of 89% of the population behind an ‘income’ cooked to look at least twice as high ($750 versus $308) — a pungently ironic conception of ‘growth’ [2361.8]! On the other hand, the same statistics could serve the intention of allowing interested readers to compute the poverty, as I did. The contradiction thus fades into an intentional dualism engrained in the current ‘global free market’: if you do business in Indonesia, the rich will buy your products at top prices, whilst the poor will work your operations at bottom wages. A win-win situation. 55. The poverty of the workers is irrelevant anyway insofar as they wouldn’t be ‘shopping’ in your ‘malls’ even if (suitably disguised) they got past the ‘security’ rent-a-cops at the entrance. Indonesia did its best to adopt the ‘post-modern’ economy, described in I.22, that shifts its emphasis in marketing away from large volumes of low-priced commodities — the ‘necessities’ in ‘mom and pop stores’ — over to small volumes of high-priced commodities — the ‘upmarket brands’ in ‘supermalls’ — purchased just because they are not ‘necessities’ and thus best flaunt the buyers’ discretionary wealth and refined tastes. These brands make each act of acquisition into an iconic public bid for invidious prestige by certifying over and over the buyer’s surplus affluence. So the notion that ‘wealthy Indonesians’ simply must be able to buy those ‘brands’ [2361.3] is treated here as totally obvious.
56. To make Cohesion and Coherence explicit, thematic content is strategically placed near the Front of Clauses or Sentences, or of some other unit situated by itself. Thus, the Subject of the first Sentence sets the theme to be ‘shopping’ [2361.1], and other Subjects fall into a prominent Thematic Sequence: ‘wealthy Indonesians’ [2361.3]; ‘these goods’ [2361.4]; ‘growing income’ [2361.8]; ‘expanding economy’ [2361.12]; ‘middle and upper-income groups’ [2361.13]; and ‘middle class population’ [2361.14]. 57. Other Thematic Sequences contribute as well, as when ‘shopping’ links up with ‘shopped – for sale – retail – commerce – retail – shoppers’. An intimately related Thematic Sequence is grouped around money: ‘wealthy – upmarket – income – economy – incomes – middle and upper-income – incomes’. More elaborately connected is a Sequence for growth: ‘hundreds – growing – massive – burgeoning – expanding – rising – upward – growing’; expressions can form iconic Morphemic Sequences to mimic the ‘growing’ process in the size of places to shop, e.g. ‘markets => upmarket => supermarkets’; ‘stores => department stores’; ‘malls => supermalls => mega mall => hyper mall’. These Sequence could attract ‘dotted’ in [2361.6], which usually means ‘scattered’ but here could mean ‘found every-where’; and could be iconic for the ‘frenzy’ in [2361.10]. I would even wonder whether ‘per capita’ and ‘capital’ [2361.8, 10], though seemingly remote in meaning, might not trigger associations with the imported capitalism that has distributed the wealth in this badly skewed head count. 58. The stylistic factor of Attitudes does its bit too. Some of the Items carry Attitudes prefigured in ordinary usage, e.g., Pejorative for a ‘chore’ [2361.1] being tedious, and ‘forced’ implying compulsion [2361.4]. Other Items take on Attitudes in context, as when ‘tradition’, usually Ameliorative in Southeast Asian cultures, appears Pejorative here by association with backwardness and ‘limitations’ [2361.1, 2, 4]. In return, ‘frenzy’ (typically associated with people or sharks gone out of control) appears unexpectedly Ameliorative as a manifestation of ‘growing income’ [2361.8-9], though for me more of the sharkish meaning persists than was intended. 59. The sole Sequences of Pejorative expressions decry the bleak situation ‘before the 1980s’: ‘chore – necessities – forced’; ‘limited – not for sale’; ‘traditional markets – neighbourhood mom and pop stores’. As I noted, the common Ameliorative value of ‘tradition’ is reset to Pejorative here to animate people into buying the very latest modern commodities, which they must rush out to find in shopping malls. The use of ‘mom and pop’ as a patronising Western term is pungently ironic in a culture where the traditional home life accords profound respect to parents and grand-parents. Still, the breakdown of family ties furthers the interests of a market where selfish people spend all the more on surplus commodities to pamper themselves. The modern ‘family’ now forms a collective of hedonists who flock to ‘shopping malls’ for ‘recreation’, ‘relaxation’, and ‘fun’ [2361.15, 1] — to revel ostentatiously in the ‘leisure’ based upon wealth not earned by labour. 60. The Lexicogrammar is easily dominated by the Thematic Sequences enumerated above, featuring expressions and collocations relating to marketing, wealth, and growth. Set off against this background are a few choices that take on Marked-ness and Weight. The Collocation ‘shopping as an art form’ is formatted like an Appositive or a Simile resembling a sealed package, as opposed to the direct Statement formatted as a Clause, ‘shopping is an art form’, though the latter is in fact 10 times more frequent on the Internet, notably for locales like Singapore and Hong Kong, which seem to exist mainly for shopping (but I didn’t find Indonesia). Perhaps a sly inference is intended, associating with the pricey ‘art objects’ and ‘collector’s items’ malls love to hawk. Shoppers might feel more foolish to be smarmed as artists if they were less hungry for status and for the certification of ‘refined taste’ to be proven by ‘upmarket’ purchases (VIII.55). 61. The collocation ‘rival the best in the west’ [2361.6], in contrast, seems pointedly plain, like an improvised cliché (I found 11,153 hits on the Internet with AltaVista). But it may be a subtly marked choice in contexts
where shopping malls and ‘international brands’ are the essential symbols, indexes and icons of the Westernisation so cordially wedded to consumerism. The colourless collocation unobtrusively puts local shopping facilities on a par not just with the ‘west’ but with the latter’s ‘best’. 62. The mixed lexicogrammatical Styles of the text could address multiple audiences: expressly Informal Style (e.g., ‘chore – mom and pop – at home – relax and have fun’) alongside the more Formal Styles of the discourses of business (e.g., ‘goods – sale – retail – drawing board – commerce – consumer base’), economics (e.g., ‘economy – per capita – upper-income groups – estimated’), and sociology (e.g., ‘barometer of social change – revolution – middle class – family incomes – upward mobility’). If the Informal Style suggests easygoing friendliness, the Formal Styles flatter readers by attributing to them academic and intellectual prowess, plus high fluency in English — itself no small status symbol in Southeast Asia. The same attribution may be implied by the Greek-based Morphemes ‘mega’ and ‘hyper’, which convey a pleasing if vague promise of superlative bigness rounding off the enumeration of seven types of shopping places (VIII.57). 63. The stylistic Weight of some Lexical Choices might be tested by contrasting them with alternatives at lower Weight: ‘chore’, not ‘task’; ‘barometer’, not ‘measure’; ‘revolution’, not ‘change’; ‘archipelago’, not ‘islands’; ‘massive’, not ‘large’; ‘spurred’, not ‘caused’; ‘frenzy’, not ‘excitement’; ‘headquarters’, not ‘centre’; ‘burgeoning’, not ‘growing’; ‘prime’, not ‘main’; ‘coupled with’, not ‘along with; ‘constitute’, not ‘make up’; ‘exhibiting’, not ‘showing’; ‘dramatic’, not ‘great’; and of course ‘upmarket’, not ‘overpriced’, and ‘upward mobility’, not ‘piling up money’. Perhaps such choices are iconic upmarket words for a vocabulary seeking its own upward mobility? 64. The lexical and stylistic shift in the last sentence [2361.15] turns so Plain as to acquire paradoxical Weight, where we might have expected something more like [2361.15a]. [2361.15] We saw shopping malls as another type of family recreation where you all go to relax and have fun. [2361.15a] Our economic indicators projected shopping malls to constitute attractive familial recreation and relaxation sites. Instead, the Formal Styles of business, economics, and so on, abruptly yield to an Informal Style of carefree life, as if the builders of malls just now remembered all they really want is to supply ‘fun’ and ‘relaxation’ for your whole ‘family,’ purely out of community spirit — never mind the submerged irony of converting the traditional family as a community of love and respect into a collective of idle, fun-seeking mall-freaks (VIII.59). The choice ‘you all go’ is exquisitely cheeky for a guarded exclusive showcase where 89% of all Indonesians would probably be turned away by ‘security officers’. 65. In the Lexicogrammar, strategic choices can be noted for the Parameter of Transitivity in the sense of III.87. The Active Verbs strategically collocate with their Direct Objects: ‘buy –brands’; ‘rival – best’; ‘spurred – frenzy’; ‘saw – malls’. Three Passives deal with restrictions on shopping: ‘were limited – were not for sale – were forced’, the last of these connoting an unjust compulsion upon the ‘wealthy’ (VIII.58); two more are for the abstractions typical of academic discourse: ‘is coupled – is estimated’. The dominant Transitivity is rather the Medial, though only a few Finite Verbs occur: ‘is a barometer – go overseas – are on the drawing board – go to relax’. The one Existential Medial in ‘there are…supermalls’ [2361.6] avoids saying who built or owned them, as if they spontaneously sprang from the foment of ‘the retail revolution’; the latter’s Definite Article implies that this ‘revolution’ is a recognised reality. Most of the Medial activities are expressed instead either as Nouns, e.g., ‘frenzy – mobility’; or as Present Participles, e.g., ‘growing – burgeoning – expanding – rising – exhibiting –happening’, invoking an effect of intense development and change like natural processes. I find not a single genuine Agent plus Action Verb as Subject plus Predicate, such as ‘rich foreigners built more shopping
malls’. In fact, the Subjects of the Clauses are never an individual Agent, but only collectives like ‘population’ or abstractions like ‘economy’. 66. This distribution suggests examining the Agent Pronouns. The Second Person ‘you’ appears at the start as the unlucky pre-1980s shopper whose ‘options were limited’; and at the happy end as the lucky 1994 shopper homing in on ‘relaxation’ and ‘fun’. The First Person Plural appears in ‘our expanding economy’ and ‘our consumer base’ [2361.12, 13]. Since these entities elsewhere appear with the Possessive Nouns ‘nation’s’ and ‘Indonesia’s’ [2361.14, 11], the text can subtly purport to speak for the whole country. But the ‘we’ who ‘saw family fun’ in [2361.15] would presumably be the creators of ‘shopping malls’, who would love to identify their own interests with those of the nation, and maybe they did. 67. The Prosody of the text could deploy Strong Stress to intensify Items like ‘!forced – !hun·dreds – !mas·sive – !head·¡quar·ters – dra·!mat·ic – !best in the !west’; or contrasts like ‘!once– !now ’; ‘!chore – !art ¡form ’; or ‘!meg·a ¡mall – !hy·per ¡mall’. Strong Stress for strategic End Weight would probably fall upon ‘¡so·cial !change’, ‘¡in·ter·¡na·tion·al !brands’, ‘!re·tail !fren·zy’, ‘!prime ¡shop·pers’, and ‘¡up·ward mo·!bil·it·y’. Opportunities for End Weight can be increased by having short Tone Groups that are not Clauses, e.g., the Appositives ‘!ma·jor !leis·ure ac·!tiv·i·ty’ in [2361.1] and ‘!prime shop·pers’ in [2361.11]. Also, ‘!re·tail ¡rev·o·¡lu·tion’ is a Subject which gets End Weight by being displaced after its Verb; compare the weaker effect of ‘Then the !re·tail ¡rev·o·¡lu·tion ¡came’. 68. The Visuality of the sample is dominated by retouched photos of the inside and outside of a monstrous Indonesian ‘supermall’.
The interior shows the standard Visuality of a shopping mall, which makes it the perfected symbol, index and icon, all at once, of the in-your-face ‘look what I got!’ life-style that drives the manic pursuit of colossal wealth by fair means or (more often) foul, and wins support for political leaders, however repugnant, who coddle the rich and shaft the poor — Suharto and Marcos, Thatcher and Reagan, Poppy Bush and Son-of-a-Bush. The soaring atrium with its honeycomb of escalators, the orgies of plate glass, marble, and fake gold-and-silver, the tropical hothouse greenery, the fashion-model sales clerks, and the trendily overdressed clientele, compose the
ideal visual frame for the ‘international brands’ as the correspondingly overpriced commodities imported from prestigious far-away places and pressed upon you by glossy adverts telling you what you must have and just didn’t know it. 69. At the centre of the interior photo stands a lone woman in an evening dress looking out, presumably waiting for an affluent male shopper — maybe you, sir. The exterior shows a soaring facade with a phallic red tower at the centre, and a parking lot filled with shiny, stratospherically priced autos such as BMWs.
Mounted behind the text is a page size image of a young woman with mildly rather than ethnically oriental facial features in a simple sheath dress whose plainness highlights a zipper in the middle extending all down the front and having a large hand pull-ring at the top. Service literally at your fingertips, tuan. 14 70. Although more detailed than many studies of a brief text, my treatment certainly does not purport to be complete; such is not an aspiration of discourse analysis at large (II.113). Still, I hope to have shown that the design is not nearly so simple as it would seem in an ordinary reading. And I hope to have pursued the analysis at least to the point of uncovering some non-trivial and socially relevant strategies and motivations which can plausibly be attributed to selected choices and patterns, and which are not readily apparent on the surface. 71. Nor again does my own analysis purport to be ‘correct’ or ‘objective’. I am obviously not the intended reader who jets off to Indonesia in quest of ‘income’ or ‘fun’; and shopping malls freak me outlike a horror trip on angel dust. On the contrary, I have worked out a programmatic counter-discourse to deconstruct the motives of the actual writer(s) and the intended reader(s), taking sides with ecologism in order to frame consumerism. If 11% of the population has (at the very least) 15 times more money than the other 89% in abject poverty, and if that money is being showily squandered in ‘supermalls’, then I for one decline to praise the country for ‘social change’; and I regard any such ‘consumer frenzy’ as a social disease and long-range bioplanetary menace, not at all as just ‘another type of family recreation’. Notes to Chapter VIII 1 I had planned to begin the same way this time, but realized that such a prologue could be misleading and so would make a better epilogue. 2
By Krome Barratt (London: Herbert, 1989).
3
By William L. Miller (Oxford: Clarendon, 1991).
4
By Peter Honey (London: Institute of Personnel Management, 1992).
5
By Edward Smith (London: Batsford, 1991).
6
The German are data quoted from my paper ‘Theory and Practice of Translation in the Age of
Hypertechnology’, at the Second International Congress of Translators, Belo Horizonte, Brazil, 23-27 July, 2001. They are no longer posted on the Internet. 7
This section was modelled on the opening of the 1981 Introduction (see Note 1).
8
At www.agoa.gov.
9 Compare Allardyce Nicoll and Josephine Nicoll (eds.), Holinshed's Chronicle as Used in Shakespeare's Plays (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1927). 10
‘HOPE For Africa: A Human Face on the Global Economy’, at www.jessejacksonjr.org.
11
A phrase from Pat Buchanan’s keynote (!) speech at the 1992 Republican National Convention.
12
At www.imf.org.
13
Sapir, Note 28 to Ch. II, p. 93.
14 Once the rough Malay equivalent of respectful sir’, ‘tuan’ is now deemed ‘closely related to feudalism or colonialism; a person addressed […] would be regarded as feudalistic, out-dated, and old-fashioned.’ (Being Culturally Appropriate in IFL)www
IX. A Final Word 1. For purposes of rounding off the book, I shall treat the US as a representative arena, since it figures most extensively in my social, political, and economic data; and since it has reached its most radical polarisation between top and bottom, with impending repercussions throughout the world-wide ‘globalised’ society. This polarisation is all too clearly recapitulated in the spread of discursive themes. If you survey discourses of social responsibility and human concern, you read and hear about how the human rights of ordinary citizens near the bottom, the workers, farmers, children, elderly, immigrants, and minorities — are being eroded, down to the basic rights to be alive and well, to be fed and clothed, to work and live decent and dignified lives. But if you consume the standard media discourse, along with the spin, the punditry, the official press releases, and public relations, you read and hear about how great things are at the top, e.g., in pronouncements like ‘The economy has never been better’ (Ohio Governor George Voinovich), ‘Blue skies ahead for the economy’ (GVA Grimley), ‘Everyone is getting rich’ (Money magazine) or ‘How Long Can Americans Keep Splurging? (Business Week). Citizens who speak out or mobilise against this rosy disinformation campaign will be relentlessly smeared by the ‘New Rant’ attack machine as wimpy whiners, wild-eyed alarmists, slanderous sleazemongers, or — just maybe — domestic terrorists and enemy combatants. 2. Perhaps the phoney good news is swallowed just because the public recoils from acknowledging the authentic bad news. As of this writing, the come-smashin'-it ‘conservatives’ control the ‘White House’ and its ‘Cabinet’ of Somnambulist Horrors that would scare the, erm, wits even out of Dr Calagari, plus both Houses of Congress, the Supreme Court and much of the Judiciary, all centred around
[2362] an administration that will let its special interests — particularly its high-rolling campaign contributors and its noisiest theocrats of the right — have veto power over public safety, public health, and economic prudence in war no less than in peacetime (Frank Rich in the New York Times) [2363] This band of mean-spirited, greedy, determined power-seekers ran roughshod over the Constitution, the institutions of democracy, over real and imagined ‘enemies’ abroad. […]. It was full speed ahead in enacting long-range tax cuts for the wealthy, ignoring Congress, making secret anything that might prove embarrassing or potentially criminal, freezing out Democrats, retrenching on environmental progress, behaving like a rampaging cowboy in foreign affairs… (Bernard Weiner at CommonDreams)www Finding all this unbearable confront as daily reality, ordinary citizens may be lured or at least deflected by the soothing unreality the ‘conservative’ media disgorge. 1 3. Though the evidence I have collected has thoroughly convinced me of this ugly reality, I still find it incomprehensible in the most basic human terms. How can un-president Bush expect anyone to believe that he is helping ordinary citizens ‘put food on their families’ (who gratefully lick it off again) by destroying millions of jobs and by ramming through binge after binge of ‘tax relief’ for the very rich; or that he is protecting consumers, workers, and environment by slashing every regulation he can reach? How can the Rant-a-Rants like David Horowitz, Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter, Bill O’Reilly, or Dinesh D’Souza shut out the awareness of how false, unfair, crude, and cruel their screechy diatribes are? How do ‘advocates’ like Eugene Scalia or Steven Molloy block out mental images of the violent deaths, crippling injuries, and loathsome diseases masked by their sulfurous smokescreens as mere 'scares'? In short, how much mungy money and flatulent flattery does it take to anaesthetise human intellect, courtesy, and decency to such an extent? (Somebody help me here, I’m lost.) 4. Some of the worst news is in fact not news at all for the major media. Perhaps you might try a little discursive test yourself. Here are ten stories from recent years which deserved to be major news but which were reported only marginally if at all in the media. 2 How many can you say you really knew about? [2264] The executive director of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration reports that at least 100,000 workers die each year, and three or four times that number are disabled, as a result of occupational diseases (The Progressive). [2365] According to the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), up to 500,000 different non-prescription remedies generate $3.5 billion in sales every year, [but] at least half the drugs are worthless or of dubious value, […] advertised with bold lies (New Times). [2366] Some 500,000 people, the majority in Third World countries, are poisoned yearly by banned pesticides and drugs (Rolling Stone). Pesticides and chemical exports are suspected of causing birthdefects, reduced fertility, genetic mutations, cancer, and bone marrow, blood, and respiratory changes […] The FDA allows US drug manufacturers to export banned drugs, stale out-dated drugs, and unapproved new drugs (Mother Jones). [2367] In 1977, the Zenith Radio Corporation’s Chicago plant eliminated 5,000 US jobs which paid an average of $5.25 and hour. […] Workers in Taiwan now produce the same circuit boards for Zenith for an average wage of 36¢ an hour (The Nation) [2368] When you pull into a gas station, you could be filling your tank with a deadly mixture of toxic waste solvents, and gasoline. The GAO, the EPA, and the FBI are investigating sophisticated ‘waste laundering’ schemes [with] connections to organised crime (Common Cause). In 1990, a Tacoma recycling firm was caught […] selling fuel oil mixed with pesticide and other toxic chemicals (Seattle Times).
[2369] In July 1979, the largest radioactive spill on US history took place at United Nuclear Mill at Church Rock, New Mexico. 100,000,000 gallons of radioactive water contaminated the drinking water of more than 1700 Navajo. The company refused to supply emergency food and water. (Irish Times) Samples of the river water indicated radioactivity 6,600 times the maximum standard. [The rivers eventually empty] into Lake Mead, which supplies the drinking water for Los Angeles and Southern California. (Greenpeace Chronicles) [2370] Theoretically, one pound of plutonium, uniformly distributed, has the potential to give everyone on the planet a fatal case of lung cancer (Helen Caldicott, Founder of the Physicians for Social Responsibility) (The Nation). NASA is scheduled to launch the Cassini space probe to Saturn in October 1997 with 72.3 pounds of plutonium. […] The probe will be launched on top of a Lockheed-Martin-built Titan IV rocket — a number of which have exploded in the atmosphere. (Progressive Media Network) [2371] From the 1940s until the 1970s, federal agencies conducted heinous radiation exposure experiments on hundreds of human being around the country. […] In Oregon, 14 subjects were immersed in radioactive water, or given the material to drink. (New York Times) […] In August 1986, the Veteran’s Administration was caught red-handed shredding thousands of case records of contested radiation injury claims (VVA Veteran) [2372] Potentially 44,000 to 98,000 people die each year as a result of medical errors in hospitals (Harvard Institute of Medicine).3 Physicians and hospitals are suddenly viewed in this report as more deadly than combined deaths from highway accidents, breast cancer and AIDS. 4 [2373] [In] the Clandestine Service of the CIA, […] hundreds of employees on a daily basis are directed to break extremely serious laws in countries around the world […] — easily 100,000 times a year. (House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence) […] Government documents, including CIA reports, show that the CIA’s crimes include terrorism, assassination, torture, and systematic violations of human rights. […] The Committee expressed no legal or ethical concerns about these crimes, […] because they were laws of other countries. [Instead], a bill passed Congress […] immunizing CIA offenders who violate treaties and international agreements while following orders. 5 How did you score? Until I ferreted them out for this book, mostly with the aid of Project Censored, I didn’t know any. 5. At this point in history, the vital obligation for anyone committed to authentic democracy is to re-awaken its original and most vital function: to mount people power against money power, the latter being ‘more despotic than monarchy, more insolent than aristocracy, more selfish than bureaucracy’; ‘it denounces, as public enemies, all who question its methods or throw light on its abuses’ (Abraham Lincoln). The beginning step would logically be to assess the current political and economic situation from discursive sources both inside and (far more) outside the control of corporate interests and party lines. The ‘ecologist’ study of text and discourse outlined in this Introduction could, I profoundly hope, contribute to this large-scale knowledge-gathering process by applying our explicit discursivist and deconstructive strategies of discourse and counter-discourse with all the sensitive awareness we can muster from our own pursuit of a genuine dialectic between theory and practice (II.172). 6. Much counter-discourse that you could hardly find in the major media can be surfed at progressive or investigative websites like Center for Responsive Politics (www.opensecrets.org), Center for Public Integrity (www.publicintegrity.org), Center for Science in the Public Interest (www.cspinet.org), Citizens’ Network on Essential Services (ServicesForAll.org), Progressive Populist (www.populist.com), Media Transparency (www.mediatransparency.org), People for the American Way (www.pfaw.org), Public Power Now (www.publicpowernow.org), Common Cause (www.commoncause.org), BuzzFlash
(www.buzzflash.com), CounterPunch (www. counterpunch.org), Mother Jones (www.motherjones.com), and Alternative Press Review (www.altpr.org). Many of these have links to numerous other websites. And aside from a few tony outfits like Lexis-Nexis, the content is all free. 7. Also, rich counter-discourse is in progressive books, thoroughly researched and abundantly documented. Here are the most recent ones I found highly informative, and generally quite entertaining too, while writing my own book: Eric Alterman, What Liberal Media? (New York: Basic Books, 2003) Paul Begala, It’s Still the Economy, Stupid! (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003) Kristina Borjesson (ed.), Into the Buzzsaw: Leading Journalists Expose the Myth of a Free Press (Amherst, NY: Prometheus, 2002). Nancy Chan, Silencing Political Dissent (New York: Seven Stories, 2002) Joe Conason, Big Lies: The Right Wing Propaganda Machine and How It Distorts the Truth (New York: Thomas Dunne, 2003) David Corn, The Lies of George W. Bush: The Politics of Deception. (New York: Crown, 2003) Al Franken, The Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the New Right (New York: Dutton, 2003) Jim Hightower, There’s Nothing in the Middle of the Road But Yellow Stripes and Dead Armadillos (New York: Harper Collins, 1997); If the Gods Had Wanted Us to Vote They’d Have Given Us Candidates (New York: Harper Collins, 2001); and Thieves in High Places (New York: Penguin, 2003) Molly Ivins and Lou Dubose, Bushwhacked (New York: Random House, 2003) Carl Jensen, 20 Years of Censored News (New York: Seven Stories, 1997) Paul Krugman, The Great Unravelling (New York: Norton, 2003) Mark Crispin Miller, The Bush Dyslexicon: Observations on a National Disorder (New York: Norton, 2002) Russel Mokhiber and Robert Weissman, Corporate Predators (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1999) Michael Moore, Michael Stupid White Men And Other Sorry Excuses for the State of the Nation! (New York: Harper Collins, 2001); and Dude, Where’s My Country? (New York: Time Warner, 2003) Greg Palast, The Best Democracy Money Can Buy. (New York: Plume, 2003) John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Toxic Sludge Is Good for You: Lies, Damn Lies, and the Public Relations Industry (Monroe, ME: Common Courage, 1995); and Trust Us, We’re Experts: How Industry Manipulates Science and Gambles with Your Future (New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 2001) Joseph Stiglitz, Globalization and its Discontents. (New York: Norton, 2002) Gore Vidal, Dreaming War: Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2002)
Any one of these is refreshingly honest and enlightening in the current flood of fibspeak and fraudspeak; and many of the authors have their own websites, where you can blag some choice quotes. If you must read just one, then you’d do well with Best Democracy, since Palast himself leads the investigative pack in rooting out uncomfortable truths on the right and the left. When read in combination, these books can deliver the substantive ‘critical mass’ for the discursive and intellectual resistance to the agents of disempowerment. 8. The next step is: get involved! Start your own chatsite or blog6 and get your voice out where at least it can be heard and read. Contribute what you can where it’s needed. I myself have given free lectures and workshops on progressive education and language learning in various countries at institutions that couldn’t pay travel or honoraria.7 I myself have spent every day for seven months (our University went on strike) making my own books available anywhere for free – surely the finest thing I’ve done in my peripatetic life. Just in the first few days after upload, I have had e-mails of gratitude, some quite moving, from Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Britain, Colombia. Finland, France, India, Indonesia, Iran, Mexico, Portugal, Russia, Senegal, Slovenia, Spain, Thailand, Tunisia, Turkey, and Venezuela. Makes my whole life’s work really worth having done it. 9. If the major national parties in your country are sold out to special interests, then go organise at local levels and in alternative parties around the issues that affect the lives of ordinary citizens Maybe you think big money can’t be beaten? Wrong. Here are ten more stories [2374-83], this time on the bright side, that have hardly gotten more attention from the major media than the stories of malfeasance on the dark side [2364-73], though for entirely different reasons. [2374] Massachusetts, Vermont, Maine and Arizona passed initiatives providing for public financing of their legislative and statewide elections. […] Regular people can run for office again, [such as] Marilyn Canavan, 68, a longtime advocate of campaign reform [who] defeated Republican and party rivals financed by special interests. ‘It is a good feeling I don’t owe anything to anybody except my constituents’, she beamed. 9 59% percent of Maine’s and 36% of Arizona’s current legislators successfully ran as publicly financed candidates in the 2002 election. In Arizona, [such] candidates won seven of the nine available sets in races for statewide offices, including governor.10 [2375] When Kathleen Lewis […] learned in 2001 that her community of Glendale, Arizona was about to be Wal-Marted [with] a Supercenter of 222,000 square feet, [she] and other mad-as-hellers organised the Glendale Rebellion […] until the city council withdrew its zoning approval. [Wal-Mart] called for a city-wide referendum on the project, hired a lobbyist to direct its campaign, and proceeded to dump hundreds of thousands of dollars into slick ads. […] Against this show of corporate firepower the Glendale group had only $8,600 to spend, but it mustered a wealth of people power and democratic determination, engaging thousand of families in front-porch conversations. […] Glendale voted 60-40 against being Wal-Marted. More stunning was that this was the tenth time in three years that local coalitions had come together in Arizona cities and stopped new Wal-Mart stores.11 [2376] The launch of the Lower East Side People’s Federal Credit Union, a novel use of the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA), quietly marked an extraordinary shift in political power from boardrooms to the public power. […] Activists armed with the CRA are holding mega-mergers hostage until banks cough up millions, and sometimes billions, of dollars for loan funds pledged to low-income borrowers. […] CRA has helped boost the total of home mortgages for Black Americans by 72% in its first four years on the books. 12 [2377] The Living Wage Campaign [is] a grass roots movement of America’s low-wage workers […] taking matters into their own hands, getting organised and defeating the formidable power structure of city after city [by] pushing through various initiatives and ordinances requiring that corporate contractors and recipients of corporate subsidies pay a wage a family can live on. […] As the movement has gathered experience and
strength, more of the ordinances also require health care benefits and some paid vacation time. 9 […] By a stunning 66% margin, the electorate in Washington State said YES! to a Living Wage initiative. 13 [2378] Through the 1990s in Little Rock, the New Party steadily transformed support in low- and moderateincome city neighborhoods into local government power. […] Core issues for the Little Rock party include development, urban sprawl and annexation policies, housing, schools, campaign finance reform, police accountability, and a higher minimum wage. […] Along the way, the New Party directors have mussed the pompadours of city leaders accustomed to following the business community’s lead on policy. […] The New Party proudly points to footholds in Chicago, suburban Washington, DC, Minneapolis, Portland, Madison, and Missoula. But nowhere has the party been as successful as in Little Rock. (Arkansas Times)14 [2379] ACORN, the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, is the nation's largest community organization of low and moderate-income families, with over 150,000 member families [in] more than 60 cities across the country. […] ACORN members in Bay Point, CA, won improvements in safety conditions [by] successfully pressuring the Bay Point school district to commit to funding for a crossing guard program for the one junior high and three elementary schools — all of which are located on busy streets and attended by over 600 children each. (www.acorn.org) [2380] Tenants of the Baybrook Apartments in Baltimore have won major improvements [by] organizing and direct actions throughout this summer and fall. Residents were living without heat and facing massive rodent infestation. Maryland ACORN’s Environmental Justice Program also conducted lead testing in several apartments and found chipping, flaking and peeling lead-based paint – putting children at high risk for lead poisoning. ACORN members have utilized a number of strategies to pressure the landlord to improve conditions at the complex, including forcing him to comply with environmental regulations to address lead hazards in the building, taking him to rent court, and direct action. […] Tenants have won new heating units in all apartments, replacement of all windows and window frames, and new front doors. (same) [2381] Billionaire JimBob Moffett [wanted] a few ‘little ol’ technical approvals’ to build 2,500 of those highend designer houses and 1,900 upscale apartments [plus] 3,000,000 feet of office and shopping space […] right up against Barton Creek, [whose] cold crystalline waters re-emerge as Barton Springs, […] the spiritual heart of Austin. […] His lobbyists reportedly had lined up 4 sure votes on the 7-member council. […] Then the people took over. Neighborhood and environmental groups began to walk and talk, [and] non-activists were suddenly, spontaneously on the phones, absolutely aghast that the nation’s number one polluter was going to be allowed anywhere near hallowed waters. [At the hearing] 900 people signed in to speak their 3-minute pieces. […] ‘One by one, using logic, research, emotion, humour, and ridicule, the people of Austin tore the development apart. [They] spoke of childhood memories, sacred places, departed loved ones. Eloquence was on parade.’ (Austin Chronicle) […] Finally at 6.a.m, the vote was called. 7 to 0 for Barton Springs.15 [2382] In Seattle, in a hard-hit neighborhood that has long been notorious for drug dealing and street crime, at about 1. a.m. […], Marcus Brown […] heard what sounded like heavy construction, so he went to the window. There was a group of a dozen men and women […] wielding blowtorches, bolts, heavy sheet metals, and tools. […] They moved efficiently and professionally, building a metal structure on the sidewalk. What quickly emerged was a sturdy but stylishly modern table. A flower vase was bolted to the top and 4 heavy metal and wood seats were built around the table and linked to it with heavy chains. One of the seats was a metal replica of a suitcase, which opened to reveal an electronic board game and a set of vintage playing cards. The table was built outside a coffee shop, Café Stellina. […] The people of the neighborhood, who have not seen a lot of beauty or philanthropy in these rough city blocks, have been gathering around the table at all hours, even when the café is closed — and keeping the vase filled with flowers […] This is the true spirit of America,
the public spirit that the rest of the world rarely glimpses — and that we’re rarely shown by our own media and political powers. The spiritwe must highlight, tap into… and build our democratic future on.11 And that is my final word too. Notes to Ch. IX 1 Mark C. Miller, in The Bush Dyslexicon (cited in IX.7), cogently argues that the US public is like a dyslexic who cannot decode what is blatantly shown in the media by the Bush regime, and especially its jawdroppingly incompetent ‘leader’. 2 These were principally contacted via Jensen’s invaluable Censored News (cited in IX.7) at the following page numbers [2364] 83; [2365] 43f; [2366] 37, 78; [2367] 82; [2368] 243f; [2369] 84f; [2370] 215, 198; [2371] 195f. 3 Linda T. Kohn, Janet M. Corrigan, and Molla S. Donaldson (eds.), To Err is Human: Building a Safer Health System. (Washington, DC: National Academy Press, 2000). And compare Lawrence L. Leape, ‘Institute of Medicine medical error figures are not exaggerated’, Journal of the American Medical Association 284/1, 95-97. 4 William C. Deskin and Robert E. Hoye, ‘Another Look At Medical Error’, posted at the website of the American Medical Association aameda.org/MemberServices/Exec/ Articles/sum02/ Medical%20 ErrorDeskin.pdf. 5 Quoted in John Kelley, ‘Crimes and silence: The CIA’s criminal acts and the media’s silence’, in Borjesson (ed.) (Note 124 to Ch. VII), p. 311-14. 6 ‘Short for Web log, a blog is a Web page that serves as a publicly accessible personal journal for an individual; typically updated daily, blogs reflect the personality of the author’ (Webopedia). The ‘Blogger’ website at www.blogger.com sets them up free. 7 Argentina, Brazil, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Colombia, Croatia, Cuba, China, Egypt, Hungary, Israel, Jamaica, Jordan, Latvia, Malaysia, M orocco, Nigeria, Philippines, Poland, Portugal, Russia,Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Ukraine, Venezuela. 8
Right Livelihood Honour Roll at www.rightlivelihood.se/recip/van-rensburg.htm.
9
Hightower, Gods (cited in IX.9), pp. 191f; pp. 245f and 140f.
10 Early Experiences of Two States That Offer Full Public Funding for Political Candidates (Washington, DC: General Accounting Office, 1991). 11
Hightower, Thieves (cited in IX.9), pp. 178f; pp.163ff.
12
Palast, Democracy (cited in IX.9), pp. 336ff.
13 See David Reynolds, Living Wage Campaigns: An Activist’s Guide to Building the Movement for Economic Justice, posted at www.laborstudies.wayne.edu/Resources/ Living_Wage_Guide.html. 14 Michael Haddigan, ‘Run right at the bastards’ [quote from Hightower]: Little Rock is progressive New Party’s success story’, Arkansas Times, 16/06/ 2000. 15
Hightower, Yellow Stripes (cited in IX.9), pp. 277-80.
