Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics

This article offers a pragmatic stylistic analysis of Ford Madox Ford’s 1915 novel The Good Soldier, assessing the technical notion of ‘cooperation’ developed in Gricean theory as a means of explaining its distinctive narrative style. Critics have generally agreed this text offers a salient example of unreliable narration, but have differed significantly in how they judge the character of the narrator himself, and even in how they interpret the events of the novel. Grice characterises communicative exchanges as typically rational pieces of behaviour, in which a mutually accepted set of purposes guarantees that individual contributions are suitable and constructive, but he does also detail ways in which speakers may fail to fulfil these expectations. This article will analyse examples from the novel in which the relationship between narrator and reader might be characterised as uncooperative in specifically Gricean terms; the narrator faces a clash of conversational maxims, opts out of the maxims or violates them, rather than either adhering to them or flouting them for communicative effect. This suggests a way in which pragmatic literary stylistics might be able to offer a principled explanation of the idiosyncratic style of this canonical work of modernist fiction, and by extension of the effects of this style of narration on the reader.

In recent years, Text World Theory has been extended and elaborated to explain readers’ understanding of discoursal phenomena where toggling between separate text-worlds is sustained at length, such as extended metaphor and allegory. Similarly, experiencing adaptation, that is, reading a rewrite of a source text, may also involve readers deriving cognitive effects from shifting attention between two ontologically separate sets of worlds throughout a discourse. However, Text World Theory has not been previously applied to the study of this area. This paper deploys Text World Theory to examine the stylistic manipulation of text-worlds in A Thousand Acres by Jane Smiley and Dunbar by Edward St. Aubyn, novels that are both modern rewrites of Shakespeare’s King Lear. It aims to contribute on the one hand to Text World Theory by enriching and elaborating a Text World basis for explaining adaptation, and on the other to adaptation studies by demonstrating the utility of a cognitive stylistic approach for analyzing literary adaptation. Specifically, it investigates how the construction of intertextually-relevant text-world patterns serves to draw the reader’s attention to assign significance to certain narrative moments, and to allow the reader to access an additional layer of meaning. This study sheds some light on the possible contribution of special types of contextual information to the negotiation of text-worlds.

Zeugma (‘yoking’) is a figure of speech which, unlike metaphor, typically involves a verb followed by two discrepant objects or items in a coordinating conjunction (‘You held your breath and the door for me’). A reversal of the given order of the two items will often have a considerable effect on the tone and emotional quality of the zeugma. Still, accounts of zeugma all but ignore the question of order. This essay asks about the connection between the order of the zeugma’s items and its effect. It differentiates between the positions or slots for the items within the zeugma, and the actual items which occupy these slots. It posits an asymmetry between the first and second slots such that the second is the site of more attention and is presumed to carry more important or surprising information. Structurally, then, the zeugma entails a weak-to-strong trajectory. Separately, it also posits an asymmetry between the two items themselves, which tend to divide into a weaker (neutral) one and one that is emotionally richer or ‘strong.’ The effect of the zeugma is then linked to the relationship between the strength of the slot and the strength of the item. In the typical case, a strong item is placed in the strong slot, which produces an effect of emotional elevation. In other cases, a weak item is placed in the strong slot, which tends to produce irony. We analyze several zeugmas according to these principles, with an emphasis on examples drawn from English-language poetry.

This paper combines reader-response analysis and stylistic insights to investigate what may be triggering perceptions of racism in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It presents the results of a survey that asked participants to read extracts from the novel in which Africans are described and to highlight words and phrases they found problematic. Participants were then asked to answer some questions about their perception. Linking quantitative examination of the patterns emerging from participants’ highlighting with a qualitative analysis of participants’ answers, this paper provides a comprehensive picture of the linguistic features and structures that contribute to the perception of racism in Heart of Darkness. By doing so, this paper not only offers a novel perspective on the discussion about race and racism in Conrad’s canonical text, but it also provides further empirical evidence of the relationship between language and reader response.

How do individual readers determine where to allocate and how to modulate attention while reading a short story? To what extent are their attentional modulations influenced by textual characteristics and personal characteristics? This study uses response data from group discussions of the short story “Where are you going, where have you been?” by Joyce Carol Oates (1966). Participants read the story in advance, color-coding words or lines to indicate different modes of attention employed and annotated the text with text-related and unrelated mind-wandering thoughts. The results show how attentional allocation is driven by textual elements as well as readers’ choices, resulting in a complex interaction of elicited and volitional attention to certain elements of the text– not just focused or distracted attention, but a “modulated” and “integrated” experience that is dynamic and personal. These modulations are also impacted by contextual factors and the reader’s personal history that impact which aspects of a text are salient and how attention is directed. The results might provide an empirical basis for, but also challenge and supplement current theories of attentional modulation in reading literature.