8.1740, Review: Simpson (1997) Language Through Literature

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-8-1740. Thu Dec 4 1997. ISSN: 1068-4875.

Subject: 8.1740, Review: Simpson (1997) Language Through Literature

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1)
Date:  Mon, 1 Dec 1997 11:48:27 GMT
From:  Dr Judy L Delin <jld1 at stir.ac.uk>
Subject:  Simpson Book Review

-------------------------------- Message 1 -------------------------------

Date:  Mon, 1 Dec 1997 11:48:27 GMT
From:  Dr Judy L Delin <jld1 at stir.ac.uk>
Subject:  Simpson Book Review

Paul Simpson (1997) Language Through Literature. Routledge, New York.
	223 pages. Hardback, $59.95, paperback, $18.95.

Reviewed by Judy Delin <jld1 at stir.ac.uk>

    In five main chapters, this book provides a students' introduction to a
range of elements of linguistic theory that have a useful application in the
study of English literature. Chapter 1, `Studying language and literature'
(20 pages) outlines the theoretical basis of the book, suggesting that
literary texts are on a continuum with non-literary ones, and that there is
no useful place for the concept of a specifically `literary language'. The
chapter also contains a useful outline of the notion of `register' as applied
to literary and non-literary texts. Chapter 2, 'From shapes to words:
exploring graphology and morphology in poetry', (36 pages) gives an
introduction to a range of linguistic concepts in phonetics and
morpohology, including the relationship between phoneme and letter,
types of morpheme, affixation, and word production rules. It also
introduces the notion of grapheme, and looks at visually-immediate
aspects of presenting language on the page such as line breaking and the
use of white space. Chapter 3, `Words and meanings: an introduction to
lexical semantics', (37 pages), covers a range of aspects of word meaning
that would inform vocabulary choice: definitions of `meaning' based on
connotation and denotation, lexical relations such as synonymy and
homonymy, and aspects of word meanings arising out of the placement of
words in use, such as unusual collocations of words. The chapter
introduces a `cloze' technique for analysis of the expectedness or otherwise
of vocabulary in literary texts. Chapter 4, `Exploring narrative style:
patterns of cohesion in a short story', (25 pages) describes a workshop
exercise of separating sentences in a passage from a Hemingway short
story and presenting them to students for re-assembling as a text. In
explaining the possibilities for re-ordering the sentences, it covers a range
aspects of text cohesion based on Halliday and Hasan's (1976) model of
text cohesion, including reference relations such as anaphora and
cataphora and types of clause conjunction. It also introduces Labov's
(1972) framework for studying naturally-occurring narrative as a
framework for comparing `real life' (e.g. newspaper report) and literary
narratives. Chapter 5, `Dialogue and drama: an introduction to discourse
analysis' (47 pages) presents a simple model for the analysis of discourse
based on that of Burton (1980), an overview of models for explaining
conversational relevancy and coherence including Grice's (1975)
conversational maxims and Sperber and Wilson's (1986) Relevance
Theory, and an outline of Brown and Levinson's theory of politeness (1978,
1987).  Each chapter contains practical exercises for students, and worked
examples using extracts from modern English literature, often presented
on the basis of previous students' responses to workshops on the same
texts. Some exercises are based on linguistically-informed creative
writingfor students to try themselves. There is an extensive teachers'
appendix giving further sources, applications, and suggestions for other
literary texts  for  some of the main linguistic ideas. The book contains a
glossary for use by students which gives brief definitions for linguistic
terms used throughout, an extensive bibliography, and a useful index.

The book provides a thorough coverage of some of the most central ideas
from linguistics that have been usefully been applied to the analysis of
literary texts, and which students of literature are likely to appreciate as
part of a linguistic `toolkit' for informed stylistic study. It is a book that
has long been needed, collecting together relatively recent linguistic ideas
with the most useful of the older work and presenting them accessibly,
without the assumption that the reader either has a sophisticated
command of grammatical terms or that tutors will necessarily want to
subscribe to either a formal or a functional approach to language study.
Chapter 1's presenting of the theoratical basis of the book as a whole is a
useful one, and is required reading for students of  literature attempting
to apply linguistic frameworks for the first time. The author distances
himself from Leavisite literary criticism, presenting the linguistic
approach as a democratizing mode of analysis, empowering students and
novices with usable tools to enable them to say something interesting
about literary texts without years of experience. Chapter 1 identifies a
range of linguistic characteristics that might be thought to be exclusively
`literary' and locates them additionally in a range of non-literary texts, a
common strategy in stylistics courses but nevertheless one that opens
students' eyes to an interest in the texts that surround them every day.
For teachers who feel that their audiences -- students or colleagues --
might be sceptical of a linguistic approach to literarature, chapter 1 is
powerful source of defensive arguments.

In chapters 2-5, which form the main `meat' of the book in terms of the
introduction of linguistic concepts and their application to literary texts,
the balance is of theory and practical application is somewhat uneven.
While some interesting literary examples have been used, there is in
general a single large example of a literary application that is fully worked
through in the book, and few suggestions or examples are given of other
for students to work through for themselves. Neither is there a great
diversity of literary texts: what is chosen is exclusively late 20th century,
and each chapter restricts itself to a single genre. Discourse analysis is
used for drama dialogue, and not applied to poetry or prose (in which
direct or reported conversation, or conversational style, renders a
discourse analytic approach productive). Cohesion analysis  is applied to
prose alone, while morphological analysis is reserved for poetry. While
each of the worked applications  is useful and illuminating, some of the
power of each approach is lost through the lack of inclusion of other
sample texts either in the same or other genres.

For a book that `offers an introduction to English language through the
medium of literature in English' (p2), the student is required to read a
great deal of linguistic theory without benefit of literary examples, which
means that the `pay-off' in terms of literary application may only be after
30 or so pages often quite demanding new linguistic material. Students
will require dedication to absorb, for example, perspectives on discourse
analysis, the Gricean maxims, Relevance Theory, and politeness theory
before they are given an understanding of what it is all for. Short
interspersed exercises based on literary extracts giving a hint of the
literary value of each approach would have leavened the diet considerably.

The practice of narrating the results of analysis of the same texts in other
workshops is one that may be of more use to tutors than to students. The
author explains that this has been done with a view to giving students a
`voice' in tbe book (p xi), reassuring them about their own intuitions.
However, one impression that results is that the book is more intended for
tutors than for students. This is a particularly strong impression in
chapter 4, which narrates the process of reconstructing a Hemingway
short story. Although this chapter has the advantage of presenting the
literary `carrot' first, its chief value might be that of explaining to tutors
what students are likely to do when faced with this practical task. It may
be difficult, as a result, for course design teams to decide what parts of the
book are suitable for tutorial use in an interactive setting, what should be
read at home as preparation, and what is of most use to the tutor alone,
despite the presence of the teachers' appendix that contains some further
suggested activities. The presence of further texts for live tutorial study,
perhaps with solutions in the teachers' appendix, would again have been
useful in this regard.

There is no doubt that this book will be a major contribution to the pool of
textbooks upon which stylistics teaching can draw, and is, in my view, the
most attractive currently available. It may fit particularly well into
programmes in which there is an early and unproblematic language
element. For students who are more confirmed in their pursuit of
exclusively literary study before they reach the book, the lack of early and
simple literary applications in each chapter may be offputting, and tutors
may have to work harder to produce their own applications in lectures and
tutorials that will provide the necessary stimulus. What applications there
are, however, are very useful indeed: the inclusion of  the visual medium
in the study of poetry, the comparison of Labov's narrative categories and
newspaper reports to the construction of literary narrative, the
simplification and re-presentation of Burton's (1980) now-inaccesible
model for discourse analysis, and the simple and uncluttered discussion of
`core' and `non-core' vocabulary and lexical sets stand out as particular
high points. There is no doubt that this is an important and much-needed
book.

Biography:

Judy Delin is a permanent lecturer in Language and Linguistics in the
Department of English Studies, University of Stirling, Scotland. She has a
BA in English Studies from the University of Nottingham and a PhD is
Cognitive Science (Linguistics specialism) from the University of
Edinburgh. She has published on a range of topics in pragmatics,
discourse analysis, and computational linguistics, and has convened and
taught an Honours course in Language and Literature for 150 students of
English Studies for the past four years.

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