Betrayed Sentiments: Joseph Anton and the Phraseology of Emotional Representation

Abstract

This article addresses the issue of the emotional construction of Salman Rushdie’s memoir Joseph Anton in terms of the conceptualization and the linguistic representation of emotions. To this end the essay explores the relationships between feelings and their linguistic expression as well as examining how emotions are represented in the memoir on the figurative level. In particular, the article looks at how idiomatic expressions, as part of the emotion lexis deployed in Joseph Anton, contribute to the emotional representation of its principal characters. The article claims that the memoir has an emotional structure imposed by a few central metaphors and sustained by idioms to figuratively frame its content. The study proves that Joseph Anton is not only heavily charged with emotions but it also utilizes a plethora of idiomatic expressions and figurative language, which is a distinctive feature of Rushdie’s novelistic works.

Keywords

emotions idioms language metaphors phraseology Salman Rushdie

Introduction

Salman Rushdie’s memoir begins, on 14 February 1989, when the spectre of death arrives at Joseph Anton’s door (Rushdie, 2012: 3)¹ in tandem with the physical death of his friend, Bruce Chatwin (4). It is on that day when Rushdie takes part in Chatwin’s funeral that Ayatollah Khomeini passes a death sentence on the author of The Satanic Verses (1988), published just five months before, along with “all those involved in its publication” (5). Soon afterwards, Rushdie is offered police protection by the Metropolitan Police and the Special Intelligence Services who accompany him in all his activities for the duration of the fatwa years. To keep himself and his guardians safe Rushdie chooses an alias for himself — Joseph Anton — selecting the first names of his favourite writers: Joseph Conrad and Anton Chekhov. Joseph Anton becomes the protagonist of the memoir, narrated in the third person, which allows Rushdie to look at his own life from a certain removed perspective and to present a story of the man involved in an international scandal, called the Rushdie affair. The character, however, is not fictionalized; it is a real person — Salman Rushdie — who seems, however, to live for a long time in a singular world shaped by the incidents occurring after the fatal diktat. The memoir relates in detail, almost day by day, the events in the protagonist’s life, his struggle through quotidian problems concerning his personal security, his family, his friends, his publishers, his supporters and opponents, as well as his writing career.

In the more than 600 pages of Joseph Anton (2012) the principal character deals with various types of emotion, manifesting themselves in various degrees of intensity, evoked by the scenario that is being written for him by external forces as well as by the turmoil in his private life, until 27 March 2002. At that point he can finally hail a cab as a regular citizen for whom “the threat level has been reduced” (632); that is, when his life is no longer in danger as assessed by the Special Branch of the Metropolitan Police, so that formal protection is no longer required. For the 13 years that constitute the pivotal part of the memoir, Joseph Anton and many other characters experience in one way or another a plethora of emotions that find their linguistic expression in the language of the book, thus forming a linguistic picture of their emotional states. It is not surprising therefore that emotional reactions, expressive responses, and evaluative descriptions abound in the memoir.

I would like to examine the way emotions are expressed in Joseph Anton and demonstrate how and to what extent language helps the writer to encapsulate the feelings that are provoked by the events described in the memoir, and also what additional senses are communicated by the use of emotive language. Furthermore, I would like to address the relation between the emotions which are expressed linguistically and the structure of the book. The approach to Joseph Anton adopted in this analysis follows one of the steps in the examination of autobiographic narratives suggested by Aneta Pavlenko (2007), that is, “linguistic choice”. Such an analysis explains how linguistic choices elucidate the presentation of events, and which events in particular are described, what implications they have for the narrative and how they contribute to the overall “presentation of the self” (Pavlenko, 2007: 177). At the same time, this analysis uses one of the four approaches to the language of emotions distinguished by Elinor Ochs and Bambi Schieffelin, that is the narrative-orientated approach, which studies “the many ways in which speakers/writers shape and colour their messages to create a particular mood or to impact an audience in a particular way” (1989: 11). I will limit my detailed analysis to the domain of phraseology, while remaining simultaneously aware that it is not the only repertoire on which to draw for expressive means and, furthermore, that phraseological language in more than one way interacts with other lexical resources in doing emotional states justice. The issue of linguistic expressions of emotion is addressed before their phraseological aspects are explored. In brief, the ensuing textual analysis aims to describe the utilization of phraseology in ascertaining the emotional intent of the author of Joseph Anton and the potential effect the memoir may have on the reader.²

Emotions, language, and phraseology

Emotions will be understood in this analysis as internal changeable noncorporeal states, states of the mind which are normally reactions to external factors (Torrent-Lenzen, 2008).³ Each emotion in the memoir, be it brief or long-lasting, is “triggered by a noticeable event” (Oatley, 1994: 54), as emotions generally are, a fact which is more than evident in Joseph Anton. I will use the terms emotion, feeling, and affect interchangeably, following Claudia Caffi and Richard W. Janney’s (1994: 326) treatment of this phenomenon in linguistic terms.⁴ It is worth mentioning that Rushdie shows a marked preferences for the word feeling (84 tokens), with the second most frequently utilized appellation being mood (28 tokens). Other choices are emotion and sentiment, represented by 11 and 3 uses, respectively. The word affect never appears in the memoir with reference to emotion.⁵

Speakers, as Fainsilber and Ortony (1987: 241–42) claim, choose one of the two verbal ways of communicating emotions: the literal and the figurative avenue. Some linguists go so far as to claim that much of the “expressive language” (Irvine, 1982: 31) used to talk about emotional states is figurative in nature (Kövecses, 2002: 111). Figurative language is intricately linked to the concept of emotion as it is believed to be created as a way of conceptualizing human emotional experiences (Gibbs et al., 2002; Meier and Robinson, 2005; Sauciuc, 2009), even if such symbolizations are imperfect (Larsen et al., 2008: 181). The use of phraseologisms as a means of expressing emotions has been discussed in connection with their semantic/pragmatic functions and their contextual senses (Koller, 1977: 70ff). As studies of phraseology and emotions show (for example, Torrent-Lenzen, 2008), phraseological units (PUs) express emotions of various types and serve as their linguistic signs but more often than not they simultaneously designate their intensity, and signal attitudes as well as evaluations (positive or negative) (Corpas Pastor, 1996: 119–31; Fiedler, 2007: 25; Gläser, 1986: 31; 1998: 128).⁶

Pragmatically speaking, we use PUs when we intend to communicate more than denotative meanings, when we wish to express our subjective attitudes — attitudinal connotations (Corpas Pastor, 1996: 130–31; Fiedler, 2007: 31; Gläser, 1986: 31, 1998: 128; Koller, 1977: 72) — and to communicate the assignation of values (evaluations) (Koller, 1977: 72; Moon, 1998: 217; Pajdzińska, 1991). The choice of emotive, attitudinal, and evaluative phraseological expressions is evoked by a particular situation (Hümmer, 2007: 147–49; Mohr-Elfadl, 2006: 302).

A large group of PUs — idioms — can be classified as actualizations of metaphorical language use. The use of metaphorical language has been shown to play a vital part in the conceptualization and communication of emotions (Blakemore, 2011: 3537; Dobrovol’skij, 1995: 318; Fainsilber and Ortony 1987: 239–40; Fiehler, 2002: 80; Kövecses, 2000: 188; Schnall, 2005: 29–30). Idioms of emotions indirectly access the emotional sphere where they serve as conceptualizations that refer in their form to our physical perceptions and bodily reactions (Knowles and Moon, 2006: 38). It is very likely that, for the above reasons, as Raymond W. Gibbs, Jr. et al. (2002: 123) suggest, idioms are “well-suited to talk about emotions”. Speaking of emotions and language at a language-particular level — English in Joseph Anton — Fussel and Moss (1998: 2) conclude that “English is rife with […] figurative expressions for emotions”.

A question that poses itself is that of the choice between the figurative and the literal and the mixing of the two. Regarding Rushdie’s prose, this issue has already been addressed and discussed.⁷ Rushdie’s prose is saturated with idiomatic expressions, whose figurative nature often interacts with non-idiomatic metaphorical images, which accentuates the non-literal aspect of his language. Not only is Rushdie fond of idioms, using them extensively in his novels, but he also employs them in many creative ways, hence he could be labelled a highly phraseological author, both quantitatively and qualitatively (Szpila, 2013, 2014). It is not surprising therefore that his liking for fixed idiomaticity becomes evident also in his memoir.

Many idioms are preferred over their literal equivalents as they, being metaphorical or metonymic in nature, perform certain functions which are required in a literary text — that is, referential uniqueness, semantic-formal compactness, and vividness of imagery (Fainsilber and Ortony, 1987). Apart from these roles, idiomatic expressions are extremely useful in achieving discoursal aims and stylistic effects, such as lexical cohesion, logical cohesion, metaphorization, extended metaphor, and lexical synonymy, amongst others.

Last but not least, the use of phraseological units allows for manipulation on the level of their lexical constituents, with an eye to altering the semantics of an expression so that it might better serve the author’s semantic and textual intentions, as well as contribute to the extension of metaphorical images. An apposite example can be found within a metaphoric narrative fragment which may be understood as an allusion to the idiom a cloud hangs over sb. If this is the case then Rushdie, for the purpose of intensification, plays with the idiom in the following way: “The clouds thickened over his head” (355). The following examples are illustrations of Rushdie’s creativity, a creativity which — it must be said — is limited in the memoir to comparisons with his novelistic creativity: “‘Keep your legs crossed’, he told her, ‘I’m writing as fast as I can’” (14); “Publishers Weekly came out against the publication of a paperback edition and again he smelled a rat, or penguin” (214); and, “This clause gave off the unmistakable scent of rat” (247).

The poetic function, however, is not conspicuously at work in the memoir as Rushdie does not seem to be experimenting with language as much as he does in his novels. A feature of the phraseological use in Joseph Anton is the canonicity of structure, semantics, and function (excepting the dexterity of the euphemistic modification of “the excrement hit the ventilation system” [466]). This is a major difference between the use of idioms in Rushdie’s novels and their use in the memoir.

Joseph Anton — an emotional work

There are a few factors which allow me to approach Joseph Anton as an emotional narrative. First and foremost, Rushdie’s memoir must be related to the nexus between writing, and writing autobiographies in particular, and the expression of emotions, as many types of autobiographic writing serve “to release, to unload the weight of emotions” (Lejeune, 2009: 194). Considering the seriousness of Rushdie’s situation, his being under the threat of being killed, and the many events engendering positive and negative emotions, his memoir may be viewed not only as an account of his life in danger. It may also, if not primarily, be regarded as a record of emotive responses to these adverse circumstances. Furthermore, Gibbs et al. (2002: 132ff) observe how people express their emotions figuratively in autobiographical writing, and explain the choice of metaphorical language in terms of the “vividness hypothesis”.⁸ People resort to expressive figurative expressions to reveal their intense emotions in a concrete and clear fashion, which may be exemplified with the following simile from the memoir: “He felt like a child with the keys to the toy shop” (433). The same scholars further claim that creative writers often make use of metaphorical language to write about emotions. This last observation comports with Henry de Montherlant’s aphorism Le bonheur écrit á l’encre blanche sur des pages blanches (Happiness writes in white ink on white pages), cited by Rushdie in the memoir (545), which could in fact refer to writing in general. Even though there is no shortage of pages, or perhaps paragraphs, describing happy moments in Joseph Anton, we can arguably say that the memoir is a confirmation of the rule rather than an exception. Ultimately, there is the linguistic element, which if treated as the primary access to the emotions in Joseph Anton is more than tale-telling. The linguistic means themselves are a most convincing argument to regard the memoir as an emotional piece of autobiographical writing as they unambiguously allow insights into emotional states.

The focal point of this analysis is the figurative language of emotion expression, realized via fixed idiomatic expressions. Nevertheless, in an in-depth assessment of the emotive language of Joseph Anton, we should consider as well other linguistic means, primarily emotive words; in other words, denoting emotions. In my initial assessment of the affective lexis in Rushdie’s memoir I used the corpus of emotional words prepared by P. N. Johnson-Laird and Keith Oatley (1989), due to its relatively exhaustive character. I checked the presence and frequency of all 590 words evidenced in their first list and established the relationship between words denoting emotions organized around the five basic modes: happiness, sadness, anger, fear, and disgust (compare Oatley, 1994: 54).⁹ The results were not surprising, both with regard to the impressions the reader may have after having read the memoir and the results obtained from the phraseological analysis. The vocabulary of negative emotions constitutes 75% of all the emotional words (sadness: 23%, anger: 13%, fear: 29%, and disgust: 10%). The remaining lexis (25%) refers to happiness. It has to be emphasized that this analysis did not take into consideration the context of use, the grammatical structures, and the rhetorical devices which may significantly influence the ultimate interpretation of the emotive effect. Nevertheless, with these statistics I would like to demonstrate the condensation of emotional lexis in the memoir as well as the diversity of vocabulary used to talk about emotions. In Joseph Anton, Rushdie used nearly 1500 lexical items (as tokens) to denote the five modes, with those referring to fear heading the list (419 tokens). The sheer numbers show the significance of the sentiments experienced and described in the memoir and may indicate Rushdie’s intention to focus the reader’s attention on the emotive side of the story. A further more detailed analysis would shed more light on the use of emotional words in the memoir and their relationship to the use of other linguistic means in the expression of emotional states, not to mention their contextualization in the book. However, the overall negative impact of the memoir’s vocabulary, obtained from the statistical examination, substantiates the claim Rushdie made in one of his 1994 interviews that “the major experience [he has] had over the past few years could be summed up as pain” (Reder, 2000: 166).¹⁰

Having analysed the book from the perspective of its emotionally-charged elements as well as its figurative language, I have come to the conclusion that the novel is organized around one overarching metaphor, which dictates the structure of the novel and the distribution of the emotional load throughout the whole book. This metaphor is further sustained by a number of sub-metaphors, whose function is only auxiliary with regard to the main figurative mode of the memoir. The metaphor that seems to me the most powerful organizing tool is the metaphor of darkness and light, which corresponds to pessimism and optimism in all their manifestations. This metaphor can no doubt be called a mega-trope, functioning as an example of “text/discourse-forming strategies or rhetorical moods” (Chrzanowska-Kluczewska, 2013: 23).¹¹ We could say that Joseph Anton is indeed “trapped in a metaphor” (Rushdie, 1992: 430),¹² as the “darkness–light” metaphor is expressed on many an occasion in the memoir, with the initial example in the very first paragraph: “It was a sunny Tuesday in London but the question shut out the light” (3), and continues throughout, for instance in these demonstrative fragments: “He said to Elizabeth, it feels as if half your life is a sort of struggle towards the sunlight” (381); “In the darkness that followed the collapse of the French initiative there was one unexpected shaft of light” (462); “[t]he world, which had briefly brightened when The Moor’s Last Sigh was published, darkened again” (491). This metaphor is sustained by the second most important metaphor, namely the “clouds–clear sky” metaphor, which is deftly employed in the following example:

The only cloud on the horizon was Syed Shahabuddin, the Indian MP, demanding that action be taken in India against his “blasphemous” book, which he declared that he had not read, saying, “I do not have to wade through a filthy drain to know what filth is”, which was a good point, about drains. It was briefly possible to ignore that cloud and enjoy publication (though, to tell the absolute truth, the publication of a book always made a large part of him want to hide behind the furniture). Then on Thursday 6 October 1988, the cloud covered the sun. (116)

This metaphor is visible as well at many other points in the memoir (61, 119, 228, 355, 506, 549, 576). Its omnipresence is aptly summarized by Rushdie when he describes the life of his principal character, Joseph Anton, as follows: “His life was like a day of high winds that sent clouds rushing across the sun: first darkness, then sudden light, then gloom again” (318).

The mega-trope, as has been said, is accompanied by a number of subsidiary metaphors, one of which — “clouds–clear sky” — has been exemplified above. The others do not necessarily derive from the same source domains as the two above (with the exception perhaps of the storm/hurricane/tornado metaphor: 5, 23, 53, 102, 103, 169, 227, 275, 276, 341, 519), but refer ultimately to the dichotomy established by the main metaphor(s). As important auxiliary metaphors assisting in sustaining the main one I would include: the top–bottom metaphor (including the barrel metaphor) (51, 53, 57, 145, 284); the blackbirds metaphor (11, 169, 504); the “hook–bait” metaphor (270–77); the “bat-winged fear monsters” metaphor (301, 384, 473, 504, 571); the false dawn metaphor (453, 509); and even the singing metaphor (433, 493), whereby the willingness to sing betokens a happy mood. These are not as pervasive as the main one(s) but help to accentuate the emotional duality of Joseph Anton’s existence. I hold both the principal and subsidiary metaphors to be important devices used by Rushdie to foreground the emotional aspects of the memoir and to influence the reader’s perception of his world.

Metaphors control the narrative and its structure, most of whose elements can be classified into the two classes established by the categories represented by the darkness–light dichotomy. Similarly, the emotions which accompany those elements are categorized accordingly. Therefore, a pattern of emotional narration emerges which to me resembles a genuine rollercoaster of emotions. The relationship between emotions, their expression, and the narrative constitutes what I will call an authorial emotional style, borrowing but modifying the term emotional style from Dewight R. Middleton (1989). Consequently we can establish in the memoir emotive loci — that is, fragments which refer to the emotions characterizing the protagonists in the book. They may also be at the same time loci which evoke emotions in the reader: sources of emotional experience (Harris and Paradice, 2007: 2082), whose description lies beyond the scope of the present study.¹³ Amongst the emotive loci we can further distinguish those which contain linguistic markers of emotion, and those which do not talk about emotion in a direct way and which do not make use of affective language. The emotive locus of the first type is represented in the first fragment below. The second, on the other hand, reveals feelings of sadness, even rage, without resorting to any particular lexical expression of emotion. Nevertheless, the three loci, of course, are linguistic representations of situations whose aim is to convey inner emotional states.

This was when he, in a calculated strategy, deliberately went off the deep end and began to shout. He knew nobody in this office was to blame for what was happening, and that, in fact, they had laid their careers on the line for him; but if he couldn’t get past them, he had lost, and he had just decided not to lose. So cold-bloodedly, knowing it was his only chance, he blew his stack. (456)

Valerie Herr had a cancer scare but the biopsy proved nonmalignant. Thank goodness, Jim, he thought. Angela Carter was less fortunate. The cancer had her in its grip and though she fought it hard she would not, in the end, defeat it. All over the world great writers were dying young: Italo Calvino, Raymond Carver, and now here was Angela wrestling with the Reaper. A fatwa was not the only way to die. There were older types of death sentence that still worked very well. (291)

Linguistically speaking, for the sake of this analysis, emotive loci can be divided into figurative, phraseological, and nonfigurative (literal). The latter type comprises those emotive loci in which emotions are discussed by means of literal language. This group encompasses both lexical emotive words and the characteristic physical or cognitive symptoms or effects of emotional states (metonymically related to the very emotions). The figurative and phraseological classes overlap as the figurative category includes idiomatic expressions of a metaphorical and metonymic nature. However, as the present investigation has an idiomatic, that is phraseological, formulaic orientation, it is necessary to differentiate the nonliteral character of idioms from nonliteralness in general. Nevertheless, we should not ignore the relationship between the meaning of idiomatic emotional expressions and their source domains, the latter being more often than not physical imagery; for instance: “When Grass returned to his seat, he was trembling with anger (77) and “Gore-Booth had an excellent poker face and no emotion flickered across it” (350).

The memoir naturally contains passages in which emotive language is conspicuously absent: narrations of events, emotion-free, without any reference to feelings or intentions of arousing emotions in the reader (see, for example, the personal vignettes on pages 42 and 197). Yet emotions are also themselves an object of reflection in Joseph Anton. The author is aware of their presence, manifestations, origins, consequences, linguistic expression, as well as their impact and place in fiction and autobiographical narrative. In many instances we are given to understand that the emotional states that Joseph Anton experienced never get out of hand with regard to their description, albeit that the emotions themselves may have got the better of the principal character as well as others. In other words, dramatis personae are observed carefully appraising their emotions, and all the while these are being scrupulously related in words. Moreover, the condition of author sine qua non is naturally the ability to notice emotions in other people, and in himself, as well as assessing their authenticity. There are examples of this in Joseph Anton as exemplified by: “Their faces were angry, or, to be precise, their faces were performing anger for the cameras” (128), “They saw him in many moods, depressed, belligerent, judicious, self-pitying, controlled, weak, solipsistic, strong, petty, and determined, and stood by him through them all” (198), and “The shock, the pain, the weeping, the anger came in waves, and then subsided” (505).

Rushdie also reveals his awareness of the relationship between feeling emotions and committing them to paper, which is evident on the following two occasions, first in “If he wrote timid, frightened things, or angry, vengeful things, his art would be mangled beyond hope of repair” (212), and then:

He himself had used writing in this way, committing his fears, weaknesses, lusts and fantasies to paper and then throwing them in the bin. But the material in the journal was too categorical, too wide ranging, to be just idle anger or resentment. These were no passing feelings. This was what she really thought. (240)

Doris Lessing’s words: “you just had to tell the truth, to tell as much truth as possible”, quoted in the memoir (375), may have accompanied Rushdie while writing his autobiography, making his confessions as “emotionally honest” as possible. Taking into consideration the fragments adduced above, and evoking Jean-Jacques Rousseau (Mentir, c’est cacher une vérité que l’on doit manifester, that is “To tell lies is to hide the truth that should be exposed”), the reader may be more likely to trust in Rushdie’s assessment of other people’s emotions as well as his own, and his ability to portray them as faithfully as possible (the use of the third person narration may serve this purpose too). It must be noted in this connection that as all the states under consideration are put on paper in recollection after many years, they must have been rationalized and re-evaluated so that, in retrospect, and, in consequence, the emotions have been filtered through a temporal as well as a spatial distance. Therefore, it can be argued that the phraseological colouring conveys the actual affects only approximately. The verbalizations of emotions have also been filtered through language itself and thus limited by all the constraints imposed on the linguistic manifestation of emotions, which might indicate a discrepancy between the emotional reality and the expressive capacity of language. The memoir makes explicit reference to Rushdie’s diary, which he kept while being Joseph Anton and to which he makes not infrequent reference, and perhaps these records could shed a clearer light on the real nature of the emotions of the protagonist and of the affects displayed by others. In this way, an interpretation of the memoir’s emotive meanings and the actual affects in Joseph Anton is limited despite the wealth of the linguistic evidence.

Joseph Anton and phraseology of emotions

For this analysis of the language in Joseph Anton I have selected 295 idioms as types and their 391 contextual tokens. Rushdie’s memoir contains, statistically speaking, more idioms than, for instance, Haroun and the Sea of Stories (1990), The Enchantress of Florence (2008), and Luka and the Fire of Life (2010), which are less phraseological than Rushdie’s other novels. It is not surprising that Rushdie’s liking for idiomaticity manifests itself in, and extends into, this new genre amongst his literary works. It arguably demonstrates that the memoir does not differ so much in the selection of idiomatic expressions, at least from Rushdie’s novels.

If we look at the emotions expressed idiomatically in Joseph Anton and divorce them from the context of their use we could categorize them into certain groups according to the type of affect; some groups are very numerous, with their members expressing both positive and negative feelings, and characterized by more and less intensity. As an illustration of their multifariousness, the following groups can be exemplified: sadness: sb’s face falls (33), with a heavy heart (133), sb’s heart sinks (539), break sb’s heart (132, 174, 430, 430, 579); excitement: on the edge of your seat (81), have a ball (542), quicken the pulse (613); anger: look daggers (101), the rough edge of sb’s tongue (231), foam at the mouth (344); up in arms (395); blow your stack (456); fury: a red rag (183), go off the deep end (456); anxiety: get cold feet (220), on edge (598), tie in knots (270); fear: lose your nerve (545); calmness: a straight face (263, 313), a poker face (350), the stiff upper lip (372, 442), keep your nerve (556, 560); confusion: run around like a headless chicken (300), be out of your depth (460), be at a loss (9, 581); annoyance: stick in your throat (439), pain in the neck/arse (154, 204, 415), rub salt in the wound (408); pull a rabbit out of the hat (468); frustration: at the end of the rope (455) embarrassment: have egg on one’s face (260). Although such groupings may seem very basic and systemically orientated, the versatility of the semantic classes exhibit the variety of the emotions expressed in the memoir. This simple categorization already sheds light on the prevalence of certain types of, mostly negative, affects permeating Joseph Anton. This way of looking at the idioms of emotions employed in the memoir, helpful as it may be in a general assessment, must necessarily be complemented by a contextual analysis, an analysis of the idioms of emotions not divorced from their embedding in the text.

In an attempt to differentiate the relationship between idioms used neutrally in the memoir and those which are pregnant with emotive, evaluative, and expressive connotations, I took into account the context of their embedding, as the connotative sense of certain idioms, as mentioned earlier, is strongly influenced by the context and the local and/or overall senses in the memoir. In my estimation, amongst the 295 idiomatic expressions only 10% of them are used neutrally. It must be said though that most idioms are conventionally expressive — they are systemically suited to express emotions with varying degrees of intensity.

Good illustrations of the idioms used fairly neutrally are: a family tree (20), cheek by jowl (90), put a finger on sth (106, 398), the red carpet (128), put two and two together (163, 216), the grass roots (179), fair game (183), take root (188), top brass (190), at the helm (197), down the road (213, 619), blue blood (216), say your piece (227), touch base (257), common ground (271, 272, 627), the whole ball game (314), take stock of (440), on the same page (492), put heads together (546), take a leak (572), flesh and blood (578), call it a day (608), take on board (625). At the opposite end of the scale are idioms which are deployed because of their inherent connotations, for instance: sb’s face falls (33, 551), look daggers (101), scream blue murder (141), a pain in the arse (154, 204, 415), put a knife in sb’s back (170), put your foot down (258), foam at your mouth (344), roll your eyes (347), up in arms (395), lock horns (403), a piece of work (441, 550), and dozens of others. The context of course influences the interpretation of idioms with neutral connotations, which can be used either to express negative feelings, evaluations, and attitudes, or to convey the opposite sentiments. For instance, the idiomatic expression in sb’s hands is used three times in the book (196, 557, 560). The expression connotes a negative attitude on page 196, with reference to the Special Branch’s misgivings about the efficiency of Rushdie’s protection team, and then it is used on pages 557 and 560 with reference to Rushdie being in control of his own life, thus conveying more positive associations.

Another way of looking at the relationship that obtains between idioms and emotions is to examine the former as referring to the causes of emotional states. Some are then linked to emotions through the cause–effect relation. A case in point is the idiom a red rag (183) in the description of Joseph Anton’s decision whether or not to have his name included on the electoral roll for the European Parliamentary elections, which in turn could, according to Scotland Yard’s assessment, lead to a fit of rage on the part of some Muslims. In the same vein we could interpret idioms such as a blind alley (290) and a dead end (199) as causes of frustration, as well as Rushdie’s preferred idiom a false dawn (453, 509, 523), to refer to disappointment and chagrin. On the other hand, idioms may be indicative of the results of emotional states, feelings which lead to undertaking a particular cause of action that is described in idiomatic terms. There are several such uses in Joseph Anton, one of which is give sb a bloody nose (371), which reflects Joseph Anton’s anger at Enoch Powell’s “rivers of blood speech” (which failed, however, to transform into a physical assault on the politician).

Finally, I observe the use of idioms as designations of obvious changes in the emotional states of the characters. As an illustration, the idiom bury the hatchet (362, 437) is deployed to demonstrate the trajectory from the negative to the positive, or at least the neutral, feelings between Joseph Anton and, respectively, Sonny Mehta and Marianne; and break sb’s heart (132, 174, 430, 430, 579), which eloquently juxtaposes opposing emotional states. This is only possible if we look into all the idioms discoursally, to wit, when we investigate their functions in a wider context: co-text as well as personal emotional experience.

The events of the very first pages (3–16), which relate the announcement by the national and international media of the fatwa and describe the immediate reactions to Khomeini’s edict, unequivocally establish the raison d’être of the memoir, and, at the same time, become the main point of reference. I could argue therefore that on a most general level the affects in Joseph Anton are engendered, kept alive, and conserved by the death sentence itself. Consequently, I would classify all the emotions as metonymic responses to the fatwa. However, that sweeping generalization would bar further examination and necessarily preclude neater categorization. After having analysed the referential and contextual use of idioms I can distinguish a few situational subsets in which idioms are used for their referential and connotative impact. The primary division would separate the emotional states in response to the fatwa from the affects which are aroused with reference to Joseph Anton’s private life. By no means is it possible or justified to categorically dissociate the two large and general groups; they intermingle as certain characters act on two planes simultaneously, and numerous situations involve personal and nonpersonal factors.

The first group is the most numerous and diverse category and can be subdivided into neater themes, such as Joseph Anton’s relations with the police, his publishers, his friends, politicians, celebrities, and public figures. As far as the immediate reactions to the fatwa are concerned, the narrative, fuelled by the idiom a cloud on the horizon, which is used three times (61, 116, 409), contains references to Joseph Anton’s fate, such as fair game (183), under fire (289), left to his own devices (361), a gilded cage (376), between a rock and a hard place (547), and a cloud hangs over sb’s head (585, 591). Joseph Anton speaks of his story in terms of lights at the end of the tunnel or green lights (314, 399), and talks of being swept under the carpet (317), as well as of “the controversy of The Satanic Verses” being considered old hat (602), and describes his fluctuating emotional states and feelings using, for instance: a lump in his throat (57, 150), heavy heart (133), sb’s spirits lift (154), tie in knots (270), out of your depth (460), blow your top (601), quicken the pulse (613), go off the deep end (456), blow your stack (456), keep your nerve (556, 557, 560). The sphere of his private life would include his relations with his wives, sons, and immediate family. Events in Joseph Anton’s personal life are also narrated with emotive idioms, such as break sb’s heart, a broken heart (132, 430, 430, 579), and play second fiddle (617), which define his relations with women, and a shot in the arm (515) describes the positive impact on the writer of the summer of 1997, which Rushdie spent in the Grobow house in America with his friends and family.

Apart from the events of the memoir that stirred up many types of emotion, there are various characters that Joseph Anton describes by means of idioms, and the reactions to whom are displayed with the help of emotive idiomaticity. He describes the English as “cold, unfriendly fish” (35), characterizes Harold Pinter’s tongue as having a rough edge (231), Helen Hammington’s fist as made of iron (325), calls Ayatollah Sanei “a loose cannon” (555), and Taslima Nasreen “a piece of work” (441). The narrator mentions David Gore-Booth’s poker face (350), Gillon Aitken’s stiff upper lip (442), and Mahmud Va’ezi’s forked tongue (446). No less important are the evaluations and assessments of the actions of various other parties in the story. By means of referential idioms, Joseph Anton eloquently expresses his attitudes to the described actions, behaviour, efforts, and suchlike. By way of illustration: Joseph Anton accuses the British government of “[climbing back] into bed with his would-be assassins” (264), as well as blaming the world community for “[having sat] on its hands for eight years” (499), the Germans in the European Parliament for “sweeping him under the carpet” (436), and the Labour parliamentarians for “jumping on the Muslim bandwagon” (131). He criticizes Random House for getting cold feet (220), as well as “a gaggle of self-appointed ‘leaders’ and ‘spokesmen’” for “sticking knives in his back” (170), and also finds fault with Padma for blowing cold and hot (606). On a positive note, Joseph Anton appreciates the editorial director of Mondadori and its staff for publishing The Satanic Verses by announcing that they “won the day” (151), and commends the American writers who “stood to be counted” during public readings from the novel in the USA after the announcement of the fatwa (150).

There are themes that are recurrent in the memoir as well as in Rushdie’s novels, such as religion, freedom of speech, and art, which are discussed generally in the book as well as more specifically in the context of the situation of Joseph Anton. Many times Rushdie steps outside the description of the immediacy of Joseph Anton’s fate and talks about events and situations not bound to the time and place. This happens when he talks about the India–Pakistan conflict as “a bone of contention” (35), and imagines families when “all hell was breaking loose” (104), as well as calling free speech “the whole ball game” (314).

The memoir does not only register Joseph Anton’s emotions. The narrator is by no means orientated towards exclusively presenting his own emotional states. Other people’s feelings are in evidence in the book and are presented also by means of idioms of emotion. Rushdie avails himself of a large number of idiomatic expressions to convey the character and intensity of their emotional states: on the edge of your seat (81), look daggers (101), scream blue murder (141), lift sb’s spirits (220), leave a bitter taste (247), set your face against (355), with open arms (469). At the same time, expressions of emotion are not exclusively conveyed by Joseph Anton directly. There are a few quotations in the memoir conveying other people’s sentiments. These are usually provided as direct reported speech, which may indicate Joseph Anton’s willingness to be true to their authentic character, untinged by the narrator’s interpretations, and to remind the reader of the reporting aspect of the memoir (quotation marks are also used for Rushdie’s own words). Joseph Anton quotes Peter Huddle’s unfavourable opinion of Detective Sergeant Stonehouse (“a royal pain in the arse” [154]), Blake Morrison describing writing as “fiddling while Rome burns” (177), Ayatollah Jannati saying that the fatwa “sticks in the throat of the enemies of Islam” (439), his own mother asking him if he has lost his senses (276), Collin Hill-Thompson encouraging him to stick to his guns (299), MI6 saying that “the new ‘tough line’ would ‘bring the mullahs to their knees in about two years’” (504), Clarissa referring to his living in “cloud cuckoo land” (572), and Vijay Shankardass, quoting Kulbir, fearing blood on their hands when riots break out in Delhi due to Rushdie and Zafar’s visit to India (600).

Finally, I would like to mention yet another method of examining Joseph Anton; namely, relating content elements to linguistic constitutives, which may be applied in order to ascertain the relationship between the idioms and their referents. We could distinguish certain relations between the two in terms of the micro-, macro-, and hyperfunctions of the idiomatic expressions in the memoir.¹⁴ This distinction can be helpful in assessing the referential scope of idioms regarding their referents in a text, their importance in the description of isolated denotata, recurring characters, as well as crucial motifs. Micro-idioms are those whose function is bound to the most immediate context of their embedding, and the impact of whose connotations is limited to one particular idiomatic locus, regardless of its frequency of repetition. Such loci usually, but not always, designate temporary or passing emotions, describing short-lived emotional states. This function is best illustrated with idioms which express emotions that are reactions to particular events and are limited in time and space. By way of illustration, let us consider the following examples: “He saw Weed Herbert’s face fall, noted his crushed expression and went for the kill” (33), “Instead, it roared with laughter, wept in despair and remained on the edge of its seats until he was done” (81), “He spent another weekend with Zafar at the old rectory, and his son’s love lifted his spirits as nothing else could” (220), “And, catastrophically, Random House got cold feet about signing up his future books” (220), “The Scandinavian press was up in arms about the Nygaard shooting” (395), “So cold-bloodedly, knowing it was his only chance, he blew his stack” (456).

Macro-idioms, on the other hand, are used to refer to the less fleeting, more permanent feelings, the more constant emotions and sentiments, as well as overall descriptions and attitudes presented in the memoir. For instance: “Someone needed to answer these people who were driving a communalist, sectarian wedge through the community” (142), “Those who had had the unenviable experience of ‘being Pintered’ knew that the rough edge of Harold’s tongue was to be avoided if at all possible” (231), “He made his speeches and argued his cause and asked the world’s dignitaries to set their faces against this new ‘remote control terrorism’, this pointing of a lethal finger across the world” (355). The macro-idiomatic climate may also be achieved by the repetition of one idiom over a stretch of narrative. This becomes evident with the idiom keep one’s nerve that is used four times (555, 556, 557, 560), and which organizes the emotional atmosphere of the end of the “Mr Morning and Mr Afternoon” chapter. It is interesting to note in this connection that many micro-idiomatic loci contribute to the construction of a macro-idiomatic structure. A case in point is the loci with the idioms a cloud hangs over sb’s head (587, 591) and a cloud on the horizon (61, 116, 409), which, when used macro-idiomatically, together form references to the “clouds–clear sky” metaphor, one of the principal metaphors working at the more general level of text structure.

There is yet a further function performed by idiomatic expressions with reference to the memoir’s content, which is their hyperfunction. In the case of Joseph Anton we speak of the hyperfunction of idioms when they are in control, on their own, or in conjunction with other linguistic means, of the dominating themes, topics, and subjects in the book. As discussed earlier, the main episode in the memoir is the fatwa and its repercussions on many levels: political, social, artistic, personal, to name just a few. Idioms which participate in the creation of the emotive atmosphere of these events can be called hyperfunctional. For instance: be a millstone around sb’s neck (5, 283), be in the eye of the storm (5), be in a jam (324), a gilded cage (376). Moreover, there are idioms which go beyond the scope of the fatwa and are not related to it but which are, however, described by means of idiomatic expressions with emotional, evaluative, and attitudinal connotations, such as a bone of contention (35), which refers to the conflict between India and Pakistan, and which can be called meta-referential.¹⁵

Conclusion

I am far from claiming that Rushdie’s memoir is special in topicalizing emotions, as all personal writing is emotionally charged. I hope, however, to have shown that Joseph Anton is a well-structured book, which lends itself to scrutiny from many analytical angles, including the phraseological perspective. Idiomatic expressions allow Rushdie to elucidate the many affective states in Joseph Anton by calibrating their intensity and senses. Narrative-wise, Rushdie uses idioms to express his emotions on various levels, namely the micro-level and macro-level, which blend easily with the hyper- and meta-level of the metaphorical frame.

I have also concluded that Rushdie uses idioms in Joseph Anton similarly to the deployment of idioms in the description of his fictional characters. The idiomatic language so beloved by Rushdie is once more in play in the memoir and is put to personal use in the creation of the emotions, sentiments, attitudes, and evaluations which accompanied Joseph Anton through the darkness of the fatwa years. It is without doubt a means of “getting him out of this” (252), out of a diversity of accumulated tensions, which from the perspective of over a decade later take various forms of expression. Although the idioms do not provide the only access to the types and intensity of the feelings in Joseph Anton, nor is their expressive function the only role that they play, they appear useful tools in organizing the multifarious experiences and, it is to be hoped, the process of laying the past to rest.

Footnotes

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Funding

The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Notes

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