Unit 1: Basic Concepts
1.4 Literary deviance
Literary language is often grammatically or LEXICALLY DEVIANT (LEXICALLY = in its use of vocabulary). In poetry, this can be the result of the constraints of rhyme and metre, or of the poet's wish to emphasise certain words and meanings. In the latter case, the deviance is often described as FOREGROUNDING. Compare the poem (a) below with the PARAPHRASE of it in "normal" English prose in (b). Where do the differences lie and what effects are lost in the (b) version?
(a) The Pomander Bracelet
1 To me my Julia lately sent
2 A Bracelet richly Redolent:
3 The Beads I kissed, but most loved her
4 That did perfume the Pomander.
Robert Herrick (1591-1674)
(b) My Julia lately sent (to) me a richly redolent bracelet. I kissed the beads but loved her most who perfumed the pomander.
Such "rule-breaking" is also exploited by other writers or speakers aiming at particular stylistic effects, such as advertising copywriters or headline writers. In these cases, there are often constraints of space.
Unexpected uses of language are also part of the stock in trade of humorous writers. In passage (c) below, the writer's style is very COLLOQUIAL, often resembling spoken language. In passage (d), the style is extremely FORMAL; at first sight we may think we are reading a travel book or a geography textbook, but certain features of the text soon alert us to the fact that the writer is not entirely serious.
(c) Jeeves,' I said, 'May I speak frankly?'
'Certainly, sir.'
'What I have to say may wound you.'
'Not at all, sir.'
'Well, then - '
No, wait. Hold the line a minute. I've gone off the rails. I don't know if you have had the same experience, but the snag I always come up against when I'm telling a story is this dashed difficult problem of where to begin it. It's a thing you don't want to go wrong over, because one false step and you're sunk. I mean, if you fool about too long at the start, trying to establish atmosphere as they call it, and all that sort of rot, you fail to grip and the customers walk out on you. Get off the mark, on the other hand, like a scalded cat, and your public is at a loss. It simply raises its eyebrows, and can't make out what you're talking about.
P.G. Wodehouse, Right Ho, Jeeves, p 1.
(d) Incorporated under the laws of Minnesota but omitted from the map due to the incompetence of surveyors, first named "New Albion" by New Englanders who thought it would become the Boston of the west, taking its ultimate name from an Indian phrase that means either "Here we are!" or "we sat all day in the rain waiting for [you]," Lake Wobegon is the seat of tiny Mist County, (Dibbley, My Minnesota), founded by Unitarian missionaries and Yankee promoters, then found by Norwegian Lutherans who straggled in from the west, having headed first to Lake Agassiz in what is now North Dakota, a lake that turned out to be prehistoric, and by German catholics, who, bound for Clay County, had stopped a little short, having misread their map, but refused to admit it.
Garrison Keillor, Lake Wobegon Days, pp 8-9.
