READING LIST NOTES, 100 books and articles for Qualification Test, 2013.3.20

READING LIST NOTES
BOOKS
1. (book) Austin, J. L. (2002). How to Do Things with Words. Beijing: Foreign Language
Teaching and Research Press. (Original work published 1962) (MALE)
The speech act theory begins with Austin. His assertion is that statements do more
than just say something—they do something in saying. Austin, forms, two categories
for utterances: constatives, refers to any utterances that have a truth-value; and
performatives, as pseudo-statements that do not just say something but do or perform
something.
According to Austin, utterances act according to certain conventions and a speaker must
follow in order to be considered ‘good’, ‘functional’, or ‘felicitous.’ When the speech act
fails in one or more of these conditions, Austin calls this situation either a misfire or an
abuse. They are outlined by Austin as follows:
(A.1) There exist conventional procedure, certain persons and certain
circumstances, and further,
(A.2) A given case must be appropriate for the invocation
(B.1) The executions by all participants are both correct and
(B.2) complete.
(Γ.1) Sincerity
(Γ.2) conduct themselves subsequently.
When conditions A and B are broken, there are cases of misfires. And when Γ conditions
Γ are broken, there are cases of abuses.
Failure of any one of these conditions could disrupt a successful uptake. Uptake, is
essential for a speech act to work, as it is the successful comprehension of the utterance.
Austin segments speech acts into three parts: locutionary acts, uttering words with sense
(sounds) and reference (semantic meaning); illocutionary acts, the act performed in
saying and the intention of the act, that works according to the rules of a “performative
formula” (context and text); and perlocutionary acts, the consequence of the utterance on
an interlocutor. It is the illocutionary act that carries the force of the action that the
utterance performs.
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For Austin meaning references illocutionary force, and he distinguishes them stating
traditionally, “meaning is equivalent to sense and reference” however he admits that
meaning is blurred between the locutionary and illocutionary acts of an utterance.
2. (book) Bloor, T. & Bloor, M. (2001). The Functional Analysis of English: A
Hallidayan Approach. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press.
(Original work published 1995)
This book provides an introduction to the analysis of English. The aim is to provide
the reader with the grammatical tools based on Halliday’s theories in Introduction
to Functional grammar. For Halliday, language is a “system of meanings.” When people
use language, they express their meanings. From this point of view, the grammar
becomes a study of how meanings are built up through the use of words and other
linguistic forms such as tone and emphasis.
Metafunctions, According to Halliday, the ways humans use language are classified into
three broad categories named Metafunctions (using Schwartz, How to fly a kite, catch a
fish, grow a flower).
1. Ideational metafunction: Language is used to express our perceptions of the world and
of our own consciousness. Ideational function (a boy rather than a girl learning to fish,
the writer has certain attitude ‘hidden” within the ideational framework) can be classified
into two subfunctions: the experiential (hooks are sharp, noise frightens the fish away)
and the logical (since establishes the logical relationship as a reason between the two
main ideas in the sentence).
a. the experiential metafunction is mainly concerned with content or ideas.
b. the logical function is concerned with the relationship between ideas.
2. Interpersonal metafunction: Language is used to communicate with people and to
express feelings, attitude, opinions and judgments (ought to, perhaps).
3. Textual metafunction: Language is use to relate what is said to the real world and to
other linguistic events. This involves the use of language to organize text itself (is
realized through the word order of the sentences, through the numerals, first, second,
third and fourth- It is the meshing of these functions in the lexicogrammar of the clause).
In almost any instance of language use, all three Metafunctions operate simultaneously to
express meaning.
Ch. 6 Focus on ideational function, language is used to express our perceptions of the
world and of our own consciousness using the concept of Process and Participant as the
entities. There is also circumstance as the third element in the “clause as representation.”
The Process centers on the part of the clause that is realized by the Verbal group and the
Participants are the entities involved in the Process. Halliday’s concept of process is an
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ongoing loop that is divided into three main processes, including material, mental and
relational. There are three major processes (and three minor):
1. Material Processes aassociate with outer experience of actions and events of the
material world,” like Jerry took the money.
2. Mental processes are construed by a person’s consciousness (by reacting on it or
reflecting on it and must be construed with at least one human participant) and are
realized through the use of verbs like think, feel, want, see, like, hate and so on.
3. Relational processes: Both inner and outer experiences can be construed using
“relational” and are realized by verbs like be or have (or some verbs that have same class
like seem, become, and appear and so on).
4. Verbal processes are (considered the category of borderline of mental and relational
process and) enacted in the form of language, like John said, “hold on.”
5. Behavioral Processes (have both mental and material aspects and are not pure mental
processes as) somehow relate to human physiological processes. A wider range of verbs
is considered to be behavioral related processes including a subconscious behavior like
“sleeping” to “verbs such as ‘dance.
6. Existential processes: are similar to relational processes as they typically have verb be.
They manifest something exists or happens as in the word “there”
3. (book) Booth, W.C. (1974). A Rhetoric of Irony. USA: The University of Chicago
Press. (MALE)
Booth identifies and examines the constructs of what he calls "stable irony," or
irony with a clear rhetorical intent, presented in a covert way with finite
application. The author’s real meaning is clearly implied. Booth created the term implied
author. He also contrasts with those that he considers unstable, or rather those ironies that
have not been clearly interpreted or understood that we have difficulty determining
whether the author is being ironic or not. (Sometimes it’s hard to find the meaning of
irony because irony can be misdirected or misinterpreted.)
Four marks of stable irony:
1. ironic statements are intended,
2. covert – intended to be reconstructed
3. the reader is not invited to reconstruct further ironies
4. irony is finite in application – the field of discourse is narrowly
described, and not about “life in general”
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What makes irony different from all communication? Human statements are surrounded
by nuances that are assumed to be understood by speaker and listener but elaborate
inferences are required in literature. Context is everything!
Four steps to reconstruction:
1. Reader must reject the literal meaning
2. Reader must try out alternative interpretations
3. Reader makes a decision about the author’s knowledge or beliefs
4. Reader chooses a determined meaning based on his beliefs about the
author
Context is the key, and for Booth there are two kinds. First, there is the literary context –
what we reconstruct as we read. Second, there is the historical context – in which the
piece was written and printed and read.
“The literary context is what we finally arrive at, in our total act of successful reading: it
does not exist for us until the passage clicks into place as a kind of completed whole. The
second exists before, during, and after this reading, available to be referred to as an aid in
our reconstruction – and also available as a possible distraction from a sound reading.”
Historical knowledge, including knowledge of genres, is thus often implied when
reconstructing stable ironies: a reconstructing of implied authors and implied readers
relies on inferences about intentions, and these often depend on our knowing facts from
outside the text.
**4. (book). Brown, G. & Yule, G. (2011) Discourse Analysis. (9th
Edition).Beijing:
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press (by arrangement with the Syndicate of
the Press of the University of Cambridge).
The book takes a linguistic approach to the analysis of discourse and examines how
humans use language to communicate and how addressers construct linguistic
messages for addressees and addressees work on linguistic messages to interpret
them.
• The analysis of discourse is the analysis of language in use which provides the
functions of language.
• Functions of language;
o Transactional; language expresses the ‘content’
o Interactional; language expresses social relations and personal attitudes. It
attempts to find a common point of view between humans.
The role of context in interpretation:
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• In order to analyze discourse from a pragmatic point of view the analyst must take
into account the context within which the discourse occurs.
• Discourse analysts are also often interested in the relationship between the parties
to the discourse
• Reference (words refer to things) is treated as an action on the part of the
speaker/writer. Use. “Rome is a city in Europe..”
• But it is thought that actually ‘referring’ is not something an expression does, it is
something that someone can use an expression to do. “When in Rome..” Acts in a
similar way to mention.
Reference in text and in discourse :
Text; ‘the verbal record of a communicative event’
• Texts have texture; that is created by their being related to one another through
cohesive relation. Cohesion is realized by grammatical (realized by sound) and/or
lexical devices.
(If the interpretation lies outside of the text (requires contextual knowledge) it is said to
be an exophoric relationship which plays no part in textual cohesion.
If the explanation is within the text it is endophoric and does form cohesive ties within
the text.
o But there is the issue that sometimes the hearer may not have the relevant
contextual knowledge and so the communication will fail (exophoric). Or
if it is a long text it is possible that if something/someone is introduced
near the beginning the hearer/reader will not remember it (endophoric).
• Contains some critique of the idea of cohesion; a text can appear to have some
appearance of cohesion (due to apparent links between sentences) when in fact it
doesn’t really make up a text. However, Halliday and Hasen just say that there are
degrees of cohesion.
Coherence in discourse: coherence is realized by the interlocutor’s shared knowledge
(between the speaker and the hearer).
• Coherence; a logical, orderly, and aesthetically consistent relationship of parts. In
order for a text to be coherent it must be understandable, must follow a logical
order.
• Coherence (an understandable structure) in discourse is not the only thing that
helps it make sense.
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• We also learn how to read things, to guess what the most likely meaning of a
communication will be.
• Speech Act Theory explains how some unconnected utterances go together in
conversational discourse to form a coherent sequence.
o From the speaker’s point of view several sentences strung together may
constitute a single act. Thus a fairly extended utterance has cohesion.
5 (book). Butler, J. (1990). Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity.
New York: Routledge, Chapman & Hall, Inc. (FEMALE).
Performativity is a very important concept for understanding Butler’s book, Gender
Trouble. It is referred to the” capacity of speech,” and other non-verbal forms of
action, in order to perform a constructed identity. The term "performativity," derives
from speech act theory by Austin, who did not use the word "performativity," but did
give the name performative utterances to mean saying something was doing something.
Austin's account of performativity has been subject to extensive discussion in philosophy,
literature and beyond. Butler is one of the scholars who has elaborated upon and
contested aspects of Austin's account of performativity from the vantage point of
feminism. In her work performativity has played an important role in discussions of
social change.
The notion of performativity has its roots in linguistics and philosophy of language,
describes performativity as “…that reiterative power of discourse.” She used this concept
for gender development which is brought to life through discourse.
Butler focuses much on “gender performativity” and sees gender as an act that has
been rehearsed, much like a script. We as the actors make the script a reality
through repetition, and come to perform in the mode of belief. Butler sees gender
not as an expression of what one is, rather as something that one does.
Butler’s interpretation that “gender is performative”, thus can be concluded that
characterization is also a performative act (1990:xv).
Butler's concept of gender is social performance rather than a pre existing concept of
gender.
Gender is a social construct, constructed by society’s rules and culture. Gender is not
naturally occurring. Speech itself can be an action, and so certain modes of speech can
help create a construct of gender.
• Questions the notion of masculine and feminine
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o Accepts that masculine and feminine exist but claims that they don’t need
to, they aren’t ‘natural’ but instead socially constructed.
o Discourse utterances are to some extent what make gender, it’s not just
actions, it’s the ways in which we speak
 Discourse presents your identity and your idea.
o For example; the idea of masculine and feminine language.
o When we label certain modes of speech as masculine and feminine we
perpetuate the static notions of gender being pre assigned.
• She claims that new constructs of gender can arise, and should arise. In which
case they tend to arise from marginalized groups. Men and Women can choose to
rebel against the social construct of gender (through speech or other acts) in order
to signify rebellion against the accepted norm.
6. (book). Cameron, D. (2006). Performing Gender Identity: Young Men’s Talk and the
Construction of Heterosexual Masculinity. Jaworski, A. & Coupland, N. (Eds.) The
Discourse Reader. London: Routledge. (FEMALE)
Cameron reviews Butler’s book and agrees with her view. Gender is socially
constructed rather than naturally occurring.
Butler’s interpretation that “gender is performative”, thus can be concluded that
characterization is also a performative act (1990:xv).
o Butler's concept of gender is social performance rather than a pre
existing concept of gender. Speech itself can be an action, and so certain
modes of speech can help create a construct of gender. Discourse
utterances are to some extent what make gender, it’s not just actions, it’s
the ways in which we speak
 Discourse presents your identity and your idea.
o For example; the idea of masculine and feminine language.
o When we label certain modes of speech as masculine and feminine we
perpetuate the static notions of gender being pre assigned.
Compares Butler to Austin – views Butler’s view of ‘gender as performative’ as an
offshoot of Austin’s performative speech acts.
o Austin named performative utterances to mean saying something was
doing something.
o Austin stated that utterances brought something into being (they made it
happen)
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o Butler said that this can be extended to include discourse, actions, body
language. In which case all these things can bring gender into being
(through discourse, actions and body language an identity is constructed).
** 7. (books) Carter, R. & Nash, W. (1999). Seeing Through Language; A Guide to
Styles of English Writing. Massachusetts: Blackwell Publishers Inc. (Original work
published 1990). (MALE)
The book is to help students - to "see through" language. It has an emphasis about
aesthetics, carried out through the functions of language. It is concerned with
creativeness, as developed through the processes of textual analysis and textual
composition. It enhances student's understanding of various types of text, and the ability
to turn perception into productivity through the process of writing.
• Style as deviation;
o Style is a specific way of doing something
o Often deviation IS style – when people move away from what is normal
they may be said to have a particular style.
o But by sticking to what is normal they may appeal to more people
o So for example Jane Austen stuck to the norm in order to appeal to more
people (her feminism was not strongly represented in order to avoid
alienating people).
• Style and Ideology;
o The writer can use linguistic structures to communicate their own beliefs
on the reader (e.g. Austen imparting feminism through P&P)
o But readers will all be positioned differently (#22book, Mills) according to
their own historical, sociological, and cultural contexts and thus will draw
different things from reading. (For example as mentioned in the paper,
readers who are used to living in a patriarchal society may rationalize
certain aspects of Elizabeth’s character as masculine in order to explain
them)
(Speech Act)
o Quasi Speech Acts;
• Speech acts that do not exist in the real world (when they exist in
literature) lack the force of the illocutionary intention.
• Can be thought of as pretend speech acts – no actual effect will
occur from their being spoken).
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8. (book) Carter, R. & Stockwell, P. (Eds.). (2008). The Language and Literature Reader.
London: Routledge. (MALES)
The book is an invaluable resource for students of English literature, language, and
linguistics. It provides an overview of the discipline and brings together the most
significant work in the field with integrated editorial material.
Stylistics; David Lodge
• Lodge aims to take a broad view of how stylistics has developed
• Originally the point of stylistics was to;
o Clarify the concept of style
o To establish for ‘style’ a place in the study of literature
o To develop more precise, objective, and inclusive methods for studying
style
o Lodge mentions a researcher called Spitzer considered to be the Father of
‘new stylistics’ Spitzer has two major achievements:
o Discovered that a particular literary effect may be related to a particular
ordering of language.
o He developed a method for dealing with the style of long and complex
structures, such as novels.
 Known as the ‘philological circle’
 When reading long passages if one finds certain expressions which
seem unusual and underline them, and then you compare the
underlined parts and a certain consistency will usually be found.
 Lodge notes that this method is vulnerable to criticism as it could
be construed as very subjective.
Style and Interpretation in Hemingway’s ‘Cat in the Rain’; Ronald Carter
• Carter analyses the short story “Cat in the Rain” with a consistent attention to the
connection between form and meaning but with the degree of attention to
linguistic features like cohesion, repetition and ambiguity.
• Carter notes that although the style of the story is simple and straightforward it
produces complex effects. It Suggests that these feelings and impressions that are
created by the story are due to linguistic patterning
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• Carter believes the story is about some kind of rift between the two American’s in
the story but Hemingway never mentions this specifically.
• Carter feels that ‘cat’ in the title is actually symbolic of something else.
• Continual usage of certain terms provides a sense of cohesion,
• There is ambiguity over the ‘cat’ – both the actual physical animal and what it is
meant to represent.
• Shifts in wording change the feeling of the story and leave the reader feeling off
balance; e.g. shift from ‘cat’ to ‘kitty’
• Carter feels all these linguistic devices are done purposely by the author to create
these feelings within the reader.
Final Chapter; Stylistics; Retrospective and Perspective
Provides an overview of stylistics and the authors think what stylistics can cover in the
future, including:
o Be theoretically aware; be aware of the growing body of theory, challenge
it and incorporate it where possible.
o Be sociolinguistic; should take into account the social, cultural and
ideological dimensions of reading.
o Be difficult; don’t avoid reading and trying to interpret challenging works
of literature
o Be precise;
o Be progressive; aim for better things. If a theory or approach does not
work it should be thrown out or fixed.
9. (book) Chatman, S. (1978). Story and Discourse: Narrative Structure in Fiction and
Film. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. (Male)
Chatman attempts to give an overview of narratology and stress narratives can be
analyzed structurally.
In this invaluable text to the fields of narrative theory and film/narrative studies, as a
structuralist Chatman offers an analysis of narrative by detailing the clear distinctions
between story (what is told) and discourse (how it is told).
Chatman notes that earlier work by Propp was useful because it tried to make a theory of
plot and separated the structure of narrative which is a distinction made generally by the
French structuralists and Russian formalists. The shortcoming with Propp's analysis was
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that it looked on simple folk tales which are not representative of modern narratives, and
it might lead to analysis without seeing the narratives as a whole.
Chatman believes that the object of study of narrative theory is literary discourse. The
task is not to criticize or prescribe, but to explore questions such as: How do we
recognize a presence of a narrator? What is plot? What is point of view?
Chatman stresses the distinction between the narrator and the author. The narrator might
or might not be present in the narrative while the author never is - he or she is instead the
real person behind the work and is always there.
Chatman goes on to show that narratives are structures. The distinction between story and
discourse is that Story is the content, while discourse is expression.
Chatman divides narrative discourse into narrative form (narrative transmission; the way
in which the story is told, e.g. P&P is told from Elizabeth’s point of view, other writers
might choose to use flashbacks to provide a back story for their characters) and its
manifestation (materializing medium: ballet, theatre).
Finally, Chatman differentiates between "reading" and "reading out", where the former
means surface reading and the latter means relating surface statements to deep
statements, moving between narrative levels, and therefore 'constructing' the story.
10. (book) Coulthard, M. (1977) An Introduction to Discourse Analysis. London:
Longman. (MALE).
The central concern of the book is the analysis of “verbal interaction” in terms of
discourse. The book provides major theoretical advances in the description of
discourse. The findings of discourse analysis can be used to investigate second-language
teaching and first-language acquisition and to analyse literary texts.
• Discourse analysis is attempting to discover what language is and how it works.
• Discourse is made up of semantic meaning, grammar and phonetics; it looks into
how pragmatic meaning relates to the semantic meaning of individual words
which in turn is used to explain how sentences or utterances are meaningful in
their contexts.
e.g. Identical utterances can have different meanings in different contexts.
Coulthard exemplified speech act theory by Austin and provided his view that basically
an illocutionary act is a linguistic act performed in uttering certain words in a given
context, while a perlocutionary act is a non-linguistic act performed as a consequence of
the locutionary and illocutionary acts. The perlocutionary act is the causing of a change
in the mind of the listener. Austin observes that it is the distinction between illocutionary
and perlocutionary which seems likeliest to give trouble.
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Coulthard contends that unfortunately Austin does not purse the investigation of
perlocutionary objects and sequels which may lead to a study and reveal persuasive and
oratorical techniques.
Besides that, the concept of Adjacency Pairs is introduced to stress its importance to
understand conversational analysis: (In Paper)
• The Features including:
o They are two utterances long
o The utterances are produced successively by different speakers
o The utterances are ordered (first pair part and second pair part)
o The first pair part always selects next action (first pair part predicts the
occurrence of the second pair part)
o The utterances are related
e.g. hello
11. (book) Giora, R. (1998). Irony. In Blommaert, J. & Bulcaen, C. (Eds.), Handbook of
Pragmatics 1998. (pp. 1-21). Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins Publ. Co.
(FEMALE)
Giora claims that irony is one of the most common tropes and refers to irony from a
general review of the traditional account of irony by Grice to the viewpoint of echoic
account and then pretense theory from Clark & Gerrig. She mentions “The classical
view of irony…recently this view has been challenged by pragmatists and cognitive
psychologists.”
• Specifically functions of irony
o Politeness mechanism (criticism as praise/praise as criticism)
o Social function (social cohesion/arguments within safe boundaries)
o Emphatic function (also referred to as informative function)
o Marginalized groups (particularly feminists) using irony to transmit
subversive ideas.
12. (book). Grice, H. (1975). Logic and Conversation. In P. Cole & J. Morgan (Eds.),
Syntax and Semantics: Speech Acts, Volume 3. (pp. 41-58). New York: Academic Press
(MALE).
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Grice discusses the concept of implicature; a ‘kind of indirect, context-determined
meaning,’ in which the circumstances surrounding an utterance will require speakers to
establish the reference of the utterance’s meaning (in paper). The aspect of meaning is
that a speaker implies, or suggests without directly expressing. (Although the utterance
"Can you pass the salt?" is literally a request for information about one's ability to pass
salt, the understood implicature is a request for salt.)
Grice believes that utterances create expectations which guide the hearer towards the
speaker’s meaning. Grice describes these expectations are in terms of a Co-operative
Principle. Grice notes the four maxims of CP as in quantity, quality, relation, and
manner.
(i) The maxim of quantity
Give the required amount of information—not too much or too little.
(ii) The maxim of quality
Do not say that for which you lack evidence or which you believe to be false.
(iii) The maxim of relation
Make your contributions relevant to the purpose in hand.
(iv) The maxim of manner
Avoid obscurity, ambiguity and unnecessary prolixity, and be orderly.
Also notes that a participant in a talk may fail to fulfill a maxim in various ways (In
paper)
1. to violate a maxim, in order to mislead someone.
2. to opt out and refuse to cooperate or offer information.
3. to handle a clash of maxims where fulfilling one would break another.
4. to flout a maxim and blatantly fail to fulfil it.
Grice states that Irony flouts the Maxim of Quality (truthfulness). To Grice, it is perfectly
obvious to the ironist and his audience that what he has said is something he does not
believe. The ironist is trying to get across some other proposition than the one he
suggested. And this other one must be contradictory to what he suggested on the surface.
Conversational implicature must possess certain features:
1. A conversational implicature can be cancelled as the speaker refuses to cooperate (opt
out) or offer information. (A. Cancellability (defeasibility) — Implicatures can be denied
without self-contradiction.)
2. A conversational implicature requires contextual and background information and a
knowledge of what has been said. (B. Nondetachability — any way you had expressed
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the proposition you uttered would have given rise to the same implicatures) (with the
exception of implicatures arising from the rules of Manner).
3. C. Calculability — you can trace a line of reasoning leading from the utterance to the
implicature, and including at some point the assumption that the speaker was obeying the
rules of conversation to the best of their ability.
Non-Conventionality: “...conversational implicatures are not part of the meaning of the
expressions to the employment of which they attach.”
13. (book) Halliday, M. (2008). An Introduction to Functional Grammar. Beijing:
Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. (Original work published 2004) (Male)
For Halliday, language is a “system of meanings.” When people use language, they
express their meanings. From this point of view, the grammar becomes a study of
how meanings are built up through the use of words and other linguistic forms such
as tone and emphasis.
1. Ideational Metafunctions: Language is used to express our perceptions of the world
and of our own consciousness. Ideational function (a boy rather than a girl learning to
fish, the writer has certain attitude ‘hidden” within the ideational framework) can be
classified into two subfunctions: the experiential (hooks are sharp, noise frightens the fish
away) and the logical (since establishes the logical relationship as a reason between the
two main ideas in the sentence).
b. the logical meatfunction is concerned with the relationship between ideas.
2. Interpersonal Metafunctions: Language is used to communicate with people and to
3. Textual Metafunctions: Language is use to relate what is said to the real world and to
express meanings.
Ch. 5 (Clause as Representation) Processes:
According to Halliday, “the configuration of process + participants constitutes the
experiential centre of the clause.” The most central element in it is the process. The
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participants as a nominal group are also directly involved in the process; however, the
circumstantial elements are not directly involved in the process. The grammatical system
by which this is achieved is called transitivity. The transitivity system belongs to
experiential Metafunctions (a subfunction of ideational matafunction). The transitivity
system construes the world of experience into a manageable set of process types.
There are three major process types, including material, mental and relational processes.
(Focus on ideational function, language is used to express our perceptions of the world
and of our own consciousness using the concept of Process and Participant as the
entities. The Process centers on the part of the clause that is realized by the Verbal
group and the Participant are the entities involved in the Process.) Halliday’s concept of
process is an ongoing loop that is divided into three main processes, including material,
mental and relational. There are three major processes (and three minor):
2. Mental processes are construed by a person’s consciousness (by reacting to it or
6. Existential processes are similar to relational processes as they typically have verb be.
**14. (book) Halliday, M. & Hasan, R. (2001). Cohesion in English. Beijing: Foreign
Language Teaching and Research Press.
Cohesion is realized by grammatical and/or lexical devices, concerned with a
linguistic system: they are resources for text construction. This book studies the
cohesion that arises from semantic relations between sentences. Cohesion is a relational
concept. There are several techniques used for cohesion, including Reference (reference
is a semantic relation. If the interpretation lies outside of the text (requires contextual
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knowledge) it is said to be an exophoric relationship which plays no part in textual
cohesion. If the explanation is within the text it is endophoric and does form cohesive ties
within the text) from one to the other, substitution (6 apples- substation is a grammatical
relation), Ellipsis, repetition of word meanings, the conjunctive force of but, so, then,
lexical cohesion and the like are considered. Cohesion is defined as a set of possibilities
that exist in the language for making text hang together.
Looks at how language comes together to form a ‘text’ (a related whole) rather than just a
collection of random sentences:
Cohesion and the text (no limit on text):
Texture involves more than cohesion. There are two other components, one being the
textual structure and the other, the macrostructure of the text.
The textual structure is internal to the sentence: the organization of the sentence and its
parts in a way related to its environment (environment being the text/story itself).
The macrostructure of the text creates the text as a particular kind- conversation,
narrative, lyric, and so on.
• When something refers back to something that has already been mentioned it is
“anaphoric” (pg 2).
o E.g. Wash and core six cooking apples. Put them in a box
 The “them” in the second sentence refers back to the “six cooking
apples” in the first sentence. This is an anaphoric function that
forms cohesion between the two sentences.
• Within a text of one sentence there is likely to be cohesion due to the grammatical
structure of the sentence. When there is cohesion across sentence boundaries, it’s
necessary to find the cohesion to make sense of the text.
• While the grammatical structure will occasionally not happen as there will be a
clear break. Lack of grammatical structure will make the cohesion less obvious
but cohesion still exists.
Cohesion and Discourse
• Each discourse has its own structure. Discourse structure of a conversation is
reinforced by cohesion
• Cohesion explicitly ties together the related parts, bonding them more
closely together than to other parts that are not so related.
16

15. (books) Hennessy, R. & Ingraham, C. (Eds.). (1997). Materialist Feminism; A
Reader in Class, Difference, and Women’s Lives. New York and London: Routledge.
(FEMALE)
The section is the introduction to the book. The term Material feminism was first
used in 1975 by Delphy. The concept has its roots in socialist and Marxist feminism; the
authors describe material feminism as the "conjuncture” (a combination, as of events or
circumstances) of several discourses—historical materialism, Marxist and radical
feminism, as well as postmodernist and psychoanalytic theories of meaning and
subjectivity.” Materialist Feminism can be described as examining the means of
production, how money is made and earned, who is privileged and who lacks
opportunity. Using the broad lens of feminism to examine these issues Materialist
Feminists believe they can make society more equal for all rather than dividing between
cultural groupings.
They look at the lives and oppressions of women in a historical context
o Capitalism oppresses women by paying them a lower wage, exploiting
many by which some may benefit
o The concept that a capitalist society is also a patriarchal one, if capitalism
is torn down then women will be freer.
o Notes that a minority of women (who are wealthy) benefit at the expense
of many other women (who are poor), a class system perpetuated by
capitalism is partially responsible for the sufferings of many.
16. (book) Leech, G. (2008). Language in Literature: Style and Foregrounding. Harlow:
Pearson.(MALE)
This book focuses on two important concepts, Style and Foregrounding. Style is how
language is used according to different circumstances. In order to be stylistically
distinctive a feature of language must deviate from some norm of comparison. Stylistics
is the application of linguistic techniques to literary texts. It aims to apply both formal
and functional aspects of textual study.
Figures of speech as deviant language; Figures of speech provide a contradiction to the
expected (or normal) paradigm and thus can be considered deviant.
• Foregrounding; the idea of ‘unique deviation’ – e.g. deliberate deviation from the
norm through personification, extended metaphor etc.
o The idea of foregrounding is that normal literary art provides a
background to the deviation which is in the foreground.
o The thing in the foreground is known as the figure. Figures appear in two
types; (see pg 19).
17

 Syntagmatic; a different pattern of language imposed on the
normal linguistic code
 Paradigmatic; a gap (missing) in the established linguistic code, a
violation of the predictable pattern.
Cohesion helps pick out patterns of meaning that run through the whole text.
(Cohesion of foregrounding; foregrounded features identified in isolation are related to
one another, and to the text in its entirety. (like P & P’s ironies))
(Coherence of foregrounding; (the consistency and systematic character of
foregrounding)
-Cohesion between (different) deviations occurring in different parts of the
text (to link the text)
-Congruence (similarity) between deviations occurring concurrently (happen
at the same time), but at different linguistic levels).
• PAPER; Leech (2008) notes that the field of pragmatics, which studies the
meaning of utterances in context, places special importance upon Austin’s and
Searle’s speech acts and Grice’s cooperative principle (Leech, 2008:88)
• Yet the concept of irony as an unconventional meaning does not satisfactorily fit
into either paradigm—speech acts cannot account for unconventional acts that
break with sincerity, and the cooperative principle comes into conflict with
standards which heavily govern the conditions of carrying out politeness in
English speech. Leech (2008) gives criticism against these two theories, saying
that speech acts are too ‘regimented’, and the cooperative principle does not
“explain why people are so often indirect in the way they talk” (93). Leech offers
that analysts could faithfully use his politeness principle in turns with Grice’s
cooperative principle to achieve unconnected goals in communicating irony (96).
• Irony allows us a way to not break the maxims so blatantly (pg 96). So it helps us
achieve our goals in a polite way.
o Rather than being offensively frank (and thus breaking the maxim of
politeness) or being politely dishonest (and thus breaking the maxim of
truthfulness) we can be ironic instead. This allows us to convey an
offensive meaning (the intended meaning) while portraying a happy face
(the literal meaning).
• Communication is goal related; humans use it to help us achieve our goal of the
moment in a socially acceptable way.
18

• Thus human communication often apparently says one thing while meaning
another (perhaps in order to be polite and follow societal dictates) (while is still
observance of Grice’s maxims of communication).
• This goal orientated approach is normally applied to pragmatics but it could be
argued it should also be applied to discourse analysis and stylistics as well. (used
in paper).
• Pragmatics (analyze utterance), discourse analysis (analyze text), and stylistics are
all related; they all investigate the nature and formal structure of language in use.
There are some distinctions (analysis of single utterances vs analysis of text) but it
is suggested that this is more for convenience than anything else.
• Linguistics can be used to ‘close the gap’ between author and reader and help the
reader understand the text better. It is not necessary for the reader to be a
linguistics expert or to fully understand the author’s intentions behind the text.
But some understanding of author background, linguistics of the time etc can help
understand the text better.
17. (book) Leech, G., & Short, M. (2007). Style in Fiction: A Linguistic Introduction to
English Fictional Prose (2nd ed.). Harlow: Pearson.
This book describes linguistic analysis and literary criticism can be combined,
through the study of literary style. It draws on the prose fiction to demonstrate the
approach.
The main focus is concerned with the style of texts. Conversational analysis is
performed upon communication through discourse and text.
A distinction is made between communication as discourse and as text. Discourse is
linguistic communication seen as a transaction between speaker and hearer, as an
interpersonal activity whose structure is determined by its social purpose. Text is
linguistic communication (either spoken or written) seen as a message coded in its
auditory or visual medium.
Grice’s principles can be referred to as the rhetoric of text and discourse; they allow a
discourse to achieve its communicative goals effectively. But this is often done by
breaking the maxims. Breaching maxims is the perfect opportunity to exploit an utterance
that has different illocutionary acts within it.
The formulaic approach of speech acts is insufficient to explain the differences between
explicit utterances and those with ‘extra meaning,’ as author and reader often share a
secret communication through the usage of irony.
Define irony
19

o “as a double significance which arises from the contrast in values
associated with two different points of view.”
• The most usual kind of irony is that it involves a contrast between a point of view
displayed in the novel (or story) and the assumed point of view of the author and
hence of the reader.
o E.g. Austen displays her critical views of society and economic necessity:
whether stated through the novel as a whole or through conversation of her
characters, they tend to bein contrast to some assumed point of view held
by society in general at the time in which she lived.
18. (book) Liang, X.H. (2011). The Narrator’s Metafictional Manipulation: A Cognitive
Poetic Study of The French Lieutenant’s Woman. (Doctoral dissertation). Tsinghua
University, Beijing, China. (国内文献) (FEMALE).
This dissertation used within the paper to look at style of writing and organization.
Liang’s dissertation examines FLW as a metafictional novel.
o A metafictional novel is one in which it is apparent within the work that it
is a fictional novel and this is used to raise questions between fiction and
reality.
• Liang attempts to understand in what ways and through what linguistic devices
the author provides the appearance of a metafictional novel.
• Looks from a ‘cognitive poetic perspective’
• That is focuses on the cognitive abilities of the reader due to claims that
understanding of the novel is a two way process between the author and the
reader.
• So, she comes to three conclusions; the writer of FLW has manipulated the
metafictional devices in three aspects.
o The narrator’s presence is prominent.
o The narrator controls the readers’ perception.
o The narrator’s metaphorical thinking filters through both into his world
and his character’s world.
**19. (book) Liu, S.S. (1997). Outlines of Western Stylistics. Jinan: Shandong Education
Press. (国内文献) (MALE)
20

Liu uses James Joyce’s Dubliners because it is written in plain prose, he uses this to
show that stylistic analysis can be conducted successfully not only in poetic and
highly deviant usages of language but also in plain prose.
Style and Stylistics;
• ‘Style has three aspects of meaning:
o The manner or expression in writing or speaking, which changes at all
times according to the actual situations.
o The register, refers to the special variety of language used by a particular
social group that may have a common profession, or the same interests
o The linguistic features that seem to be characteristic of a text, e.g. Jane
Austen’s P & P.
• Stylistics can be divided into two areas:
o General Stylistics; covers studies of the varieties of language (news,
science, law, sports, etc.)
o Literary Stylistics:
 Formal stylistics; focus the refinement of a linguistic model which
has potential for further linguistic or stylistic analysis.
 Functional stylistics (broader sense); focuses on the aesthetic or
thematic function of language in literary texts.
Influence of Systemic-Functional Theory on Two Recent Stylistic Trends
• Discourse Stylistics
o Theoretical basis is the theory of discourse analysis (the socio-linguistic
analysis of natural language).
o Concerned with describing examples of actual language use in the context.
 So data for analysis is ‘actual language’ i.e. “naturally occurring
language in a social context of actual language use”
o Has 3 characteristics;
 the importance of the context of situation and of actual language
 stress on the interpersonal communication of language and its
studies on the actual texts
 stresses on the analysis of the cohesive relations
21

• Sociohistorical and socio-cultural stylistics.
o The way people treat things relies on their viewpoint (which embodies
features of socio-history and socio-culture)
• Systemic Functional theory; semantic components, these three components
overlap and relate.
o Textual
 How the text is structured as a message
 Focus is on cohesion.
o Ideational
 Construes human experience. It is the means by which we make
sense of "reality" (how we view the world).
 Transitivity analysis; works in Eveline (a story within Dubliners)
but fails in the the 2nd
part.
• Liu claims; “transitivity analysis is more applicable for
analyzing actual doings and happenings but may be less
applicable for analyzing certain descriptions of
psychological activities.
o Interpersonal
 Relates to a text's aspects interactivity (how people relate with
each other).
 Comprises three component areas: the speaker/writer persona,
social distance (between social groups) and social status.
Conclusion:
Instead of focusing on Systemic functional linguistics to study the relationship between
the linguistic system and the outside world (between language and society) Liu believes
that in literature analysis greater emphasis should be placed on studying the relationship
between the linguistic system and individual psychology or between language and
literary psychology (this is because the imaginary work of literature works through both
social structure and individual psychology, the latter being most important)(emphasis
should be placed on both reader and author).
20. (book) Martin, J., Matthiessen, C., & Painter, C. (2010). Deploying Functional
Grammar. Beijing: The Commercial Press. (Male)
22

The book in general reviews Halliday’s Introduction to Functional Grammar. The
authors think functional grammar is a theory of grammar. It intends for
deployment. He emphasizes that many principles of Halliday’s functional grammar
initially worked out for Chinese, which was the first language Halliday investigated in
detail. Subsequently he developed these principles in English. Halliday’s work has
inspired work on a wide range of languages.
1. Ideational metafunction: Language is used to express our perceptions of the world and
of our own consciousness. Ideational function (a boy rather than a girl learning to fish,
the writer has certain attitude ‘hidden” within the ideational framework) can be classified
into two subfunctions: the experiential (hooks are sharp, noise frightens the fish away)
and the logical (since establishes the logical relationship as a reason between the two
main ideas in the sentence).
b. the logical metafunction is concerned with the relationship between ideas.
2. Interpersonal metafunction: Language is used to communicate with people and to
3. Textual metafunction: Language is used to relate what is said to the real world and to
express meaning.
Ch 4, Transitivity-clause as representation (Transitivity is a resource for construing our
experience of the world in terms of configurations of a process, participants and
circumstances.)
Characterization of transitivity:
According to Halliday, “the configuration of process + participants constitutes the
experiential centre of the clause.” The most central element in it is the process. The
participants (as a nominal group) are also directly involved in the process, however, the
circumstantial elements are not directly involved in the process. The grammatical system
by which this is achieved is called transitivity. The transitivity system belongs to
experiential Metafunctions (a subfunction of ideational matafunction). The transitivity
system construes the world of experience into a manageable set of process types.
There are three major process types, including material, mental and relational processes.
(Focus on ideational function, language is used to express our perceptions of the world
23

and of our own consciousness using the concept of Process and Participant as the
entities. The Process centers on the part of the clause that is realized by the Verbal
group and the Participant are the entities involved in the Process.) Halliday’s concept of
process is an ongoing loop that is divided into three main processes, including material,
mental and relational. There are three major processes (and three minor):
2. Mental processes are construed by a person’s consciousness (by reacting to it or
6. Existential processes are similar to relational processes as they typically have verb be.
21.(book) McCarthy, M. (2002). Discourse Analysis for Language Teachers. Shanghai:
Shanghai Foreign Language Teaching Press. (MALE)
This book gives a practical introduction to discourse analysis. It examines how
discourse analysts approach spoken and written language. It also provides language
teachers for designing teaching materials and classroom activities.
What is discourse analysis?
• Discourse is “concerned with the study of the relationship between language and
the contexts in which it is used” (used in paper)
• Discourse analysis should not be separated from the study of grammar and
phonology (in order to understand the meaning of utterances we must be aware of
the grammatical and phonological stresses).
24

• In order to understand what is happening within discourse it is necessary to make
a distinction between form and function but they should be used hand in hand in
order to correctly conduct discourse analysis.
• Linguistic forms are grammatical, lexical and phonological ones.
• Function of discourse will be dependent on the participants, roles, and settings,
the same thing said by different people or in different circumstances can be mean
different things.
• Certain patterns may be apparent; e.g. Sinclair-Coulthard ‘Birmingham’ Model
(the model of spoken interaction)
• Transaction Exchange Move Act
• Discourse Analysis and Grammar: (discourse and grammar are inseparable)
o Structuring the individual utterance, clause and sentence, and structuring
the larger units of discourse are ultimately inseparable.
• Lexical Cohesion
o Related vocabulary items occur across clause and sentence boundaries in
written texts and across act and move boundaries in speech are a major
characteristic of coherent discourse.
• Phonology
o Intonation is important in discourse analysis to fully identify the meaning
of the discourse.
• Spoken Language
o Adjacency Pairs; pairs of utterances in talk that are mutually dependent
 E.g. a question predicts an answer, or an answer presumes a
question
o We can only be sure of the function of the initiating utterance (the first
pair-part) when it is contextualized with the response it gets (the second
pair-part) (e.g. if someone says ‘hello’ it could be expecting a response, or
in response)
o Turn taking; people take turns in discourse, either they are selected or
nominated by the current speaker, or if no one is selected, they may self-
select. There are also used as linguistic devices to avoid a turn. (Used in
paper).
25

• Written Language: Written Discourse; also helps to find patterns written discourse
to make it more easily understood.
o The more we learn how different texts are organized from small units to
large, the more likely we are able to create authentic materials and
activities for the classroom.
o Written discourse is less context dependent compared to spoken discourse.
o However, written discourse is written by someone for someone (a
particular target audience) and those outside that target audience may not
understand it.
22. (book). Mills, S. (1996). Knowing your place: A Marxist feminist stylistic analysis. In
Weber, J.J. (Eds.), The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present. (pp 241-
259). Great Britain: Arnold. (FEMALE)
Mills looks at contextualized stylistics (concerned with factors outside the text that may
have an impact on the text). She criticizes that there is too much concern over the author;
in actual fact the author doesn’t have complete control over what appears in the text.
They have constraints on them (e.g. societal constraints) and can only make decisions
within limited parameters.
Mills is concerned not only with the author but also the reader. So in order to understand
how the text is interpreted you have to look at the positioning of the reader (#7, book,
Carter & Nash). Positioning of the reader refers to the way in which the reader is
addressed by the text. For example (used in paper) certain ideologies may be transmitted
by the State (government) through text form. This is in order to help citizens recognize
their positions within a society and accept those roles within society.
Each text contains an ideological message that we accept (or reject), through this method
the reader is positioned. Gender is often ignored when it comes to analysis of reader
positioning. When analysis is done it often appears that the reader is positioned from a
male dominated view of the world (used in paper). However, it is difficult to position
women in a cohesive way, not easy to find links in between), as women are not a
coherent group (easily understandable, they have other loyalties to class, race, etc. in the
same way that a racial group is) they are all different and thus harder to position.
Female-addressed texts are often misinterpreted as male hating: when the target
readership is women then it is sometimes thought that the writers of the book hate men.
**In Weber, J.J. (Eds.), The Stylistics Reader: From Roman Jakobson to the Present. (pp
241-259). Great Britain: Arnold.
This book introduces several key essays which mark the development of stylistics as
a discipline.
26

Roman Jakobson's Theory of Communication refers to six factors required in verbal
communication. The addresser sends a message to the addressee. The message requires
a context (referential), verbalized with a code understood by both the addresser and the
addressee and finally a contact is reached (a physical channel and psychological
connection), enabling to stay in communication.
Formalist Stylistics
Formaliststylistics concentratesonthe linguisticformsinthetexts,payinglittleattentiontothefunction
oftheseformsin relation to the overall content.(onlinedefinition)-Whatarethey?
FunctionalStylistics
Functionalstylisticsemphasizesthe contextualfunction ofthelinguisticelements areusedto perform-
How do they do it?
Affective Stylistics
Affective stylistics is derived from analyzing further the notion that a literary text is an
event that occurs in time—that comes into being as it is read—rather than an object that
exists in space.
Pedagogical Stylistics
Thisreferstostylisticanalysisforteachingandlearningpurposes.Literarytextsmaysometimesbe
difficultforlearnerstoappreciate.Hence,ateachermayanalyzethe linguisticpatterns inthetext,
breakingdown complexlinguisticunitstosmalleronesto helpthelearnertograspthemessage/cohesion
within.
Contextualized Stylistics;
27

Concerned with factors outside the text that may determine or interact with the elements
within the text.
IdeologyandSpeechActTheory-Pratt,M.(FEMALE)
• Linguistic theories encode social values (Halliday), they are ideologically
determined.
• Speech act theory allows us to see language as social practice.
• Although speech acts are based on the existence of assumptions (in order to allow
inferencing) it is hard to classify exactly what that background knowledge is.
• Speech act theory also classified the speaker as one distinct, unified personality,
with an ideology that can be interpreted by the hearer.
• In actual fact people may act for all sorts of reasons (e.g. work, because a loved
one has asked them to etc.) thus removing the notion of one unified speaker.
**23 (book) Mody, M. & Silliman, E. (Eds.). (2008). Brain, Behavior, and Learning in
Language and Reading Disorders. New York: The Guilford Press. (FEMALES)
The purpose of the book is to gain a better understanding of how language and
literacy disorders develop. Specifically it’s focused on cognitive development. It claims
that attempts to understanding language and reading disorders have become
oversimplified – either they are explained through brain-behavior relationships; or they
are explained in theories of environmental constraints.
Brain; refers to how the brain develops and cognition (the thinking process) New
research has shown that knowledge does not originate in the genes or is fostered in the
environment. Instead knowledge, and language, is due to a process of ‘self-organization.’
This means that while a child can be exposed to knowledge it is down to the brain to
organize their learning. A child’s behavior is a reflection of past history so can never be
studied out of context.
24 (book). Muecke, D. (1980). The Compass of Irony. London: Methuen & Co. Ltd.
(Original work published 1969)
Muecke defines irony according to three essential elements:
o Irony is double layered
o There is some opposition between the two layers
o There is an element of ‘innocence,’ either a victim is unaware of irony
or the ironist pretends not to be aware of it.
28

• Verbal irony vs Situational:
The most basic classifications of irony: Verbal (also termed as Intentional) Irony and
Situational Irony.
“Verbal Irony implies an ironist, intentionally employing a technique. Situational Irony
does not imply an ironist but merely ‘a condition’ felt to be ironic, something that just
happens to be noticed as ironic.
There is a difference between the concepts of ironic and ironical which is essential to
understand verbal irony and situational irony. Ironic is referred to as the “the Irony of
Fate” or “practical irony” and is used to describe an event that occurs as a coincidence.
Ironical, describes one who intends to show something ironic is happening, and an ironist
induces the irony that takes place.
• Irony is classified into 3 grades and four modes. The three grades; overt, covert,
and private.
Muecke classifies irony into four modes: The first two modes, Impersonal Irony and Self-
disparaging Irony relate much to verbal irony in the sense that they are used intentionally
by a speaker; In Pride and Prejudice Elizabeth represents a prime example of both
Impersonal and Self-disparaging modes of irony. She uses many tactics of impersonal
irony to ridicule and also uses ploys to pretend her ignorance in order to force her victim
(object/target?), in many cases Darcy, into self-contradiction. In the other two modes of
irony, the role of the ironist is solely given to the author and the characters become either
discoverers or victims of a situational irony.
1. Impersonal: It has an emphasis on the ironic utterance itself. Impersonal Irony is
recognized by how it conveys mockery on the part of some victim. (It relates to echoic
irony, not related to personal experience instead based on something heard.)
2. Self-disparaging has a focus on the ironist’s persona as a major factor. Self-disparaging
ironists are much like Socrates; they confess their ignorance while their superiority is
made apparent by their ability to force their supposed superiors into contradicting
themselves.
3. Ingénu Irony, the character charms the readers with their naivety and incomprehension
of the world’s ways, often leading them to see what others cannot or discover the irony in
situations. (Jane Bennet as example)
4. Dramatized Irony is ‘the presentation in drama or fiction of such ironic situations or
events as we may find in life,’ (when the author of literature writes an ironic situation
into their play or book.)
29

He also reviews general irony as a type of irony towards the whole world/situation/ time
and romantic irony is the ironist’s way of manifesting in art his sense of life’s
contradictions.
25. (book) Propp, V. (1975). Morphology of the Folktale (2nd ed.). (L. Scott, Trans.).
Austin, TX: University of Texas Press. (Original work published 1968) (Male)
The book is regarded as one of the major breakthroughs in the field of folklore in
the twentieth century.
Propp theorized that folk tales follow a certain formula, with as many as thirty-one
narrative functions used in each story. In testing his hypothesis he compares the themes
of about 100 tales and proves the application of his theory is effective and shows that the
formula is correct.
He comes to the conclusion that there is really only one fairy tale in its structure. There is
a significant amount of repeating functions (fundamental elements) in these classic
stories. Propp defines the function "as an act of a character, from the point of view of the
course of the action."
Functions are stable elements in the story, they never change. "The number of functions
known to the fairy tale are limited," while the stories vary greatly.
Propp’s structure is reviewed as the basic story structure and Propp is considered to be a
fascinating pioneer exploration of the narrative “competence” that the readers seem to
share.
**26 (book). Richards, K. (2003). Qualitative Inquiry in TESOL. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan. (MALE)
TESOL – Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages
• Subject of the book is research skills.
The idea that Qualitative Inquiry (QI) is a soft research method leading to soft research as
opposed to quantitative research is subjective, but if you do it well, step by step then you
get very good results.
• The book aims to some improved methods of doing QI research to the reader.
• Within each section there are more in depth methods to be explored, from
undergraduate (level 1), masters (level 2), phd and doctorate (level 3).
• The whole book does follow a process – taking you effectively on a step by step
as to how to do research in an effective way.
30

• The conversational analysis used mentioned in the textbook refers to real life
conversation and suggests you should never use invented data. (Therefore, this
doesn’t relate to research done on conversations in Pride and Prejudice. As they
come from a novel they are definitely not naturally occurring.)
Part 1: focuses on data collection (chs 2-4): 3 different ways of research
• Interviewing
• Observation
• Collecting and analyzing spoken interaction (this is how the utterances from the
Pride & Prejudice have been collected).
Part 2: deals with the (how practical) practicality of the research project (chs. 5-6)
• Planning a project
• Analysis and representation (your findings)
27. (book). Saeed, J. (2000). Semantics. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and
Research Press.
This book aims to give the reader some of the central ideas in the field of semantics.
Grouped into three main sections;
1. Preliminaries: is concerned of semantics within linguistics and its relations with the
disciplines of philosophy and psychology. Saaed suggests that semantics can’t be
separated from other aspects of the grammar model because semantics means to make
sense of the whole communication.
2. Semantic Description (Context and Inference): Examine how speakers rely on context
in constructing and interpreting the meaning of utterances. This part covers a huge scope
of reviewing Austin and Searle’s speech act theory section and summarizes that
understanding speech act or illocutionary force in Austin’s terms, of an utterance
involves the hearer in combining linguistic knowledge and Background knowledge is
needed to understand certain utterances – (background knowledge sometimes referred to
as non-linguistic knowledge as in perlocutionary suggested by Coulthard )
Semantics is the study of conventional, linguistic meaning. Pragmatics is the study of
how we use this linguistic knowledge in context. There is a relationship between the two.
3. Theoretical Approaches (Meaning Components): reviews three important semantic
theories regarding meaning components. Some semanticists have hypothesized that
words are not the smallest semantic units but are built up of smaller components of
31

meaning which are combined differently (or lexicalized) to form different words.
Recognizing these semantic components can help us to understand how words are fitted
together, to work together as a sentence.
28. Schiffrin, D. (2003). Approaches to Discourse. Malden: Blackwell. (Original work
published 1994) (Female)
This book is a guide to several important scholars’ frameworks, concepts, and
methods available for discourse analysis within linguistics, including speech act
theory, pragmatics, and Gricean Cooperative Principle.
The speech act theory begins with Austin and is also in part the brainchild of Searle.
Speech act theory asserts that statements do more than just say something— they do
something in saying. Speech acts are, according to Searle, the most fundamental elements
of communication, every utterance performs an act.
There is a close relationship between semantics and pragmatics, meaning, according to
Searle builds upon the relationship of reference (in locution) and intention (in illocution);
thus meaning in an U tethers reference together with intention, (meaning is a concept that
within an utterance intended within that particular context). Therefore, meaning, in part,
relates to the intention which is the force behind the words, so the illocutionary force,
explains the meaning via context.
Searle also review Austin’s segment of speech act of three parts: locutionary acts,
uttering words with sense (sounds) and reference (semantic meaning); illocutionary acts,
the act performed in saying and the intention of the act, that which works according to the
rules of a “performative formula” (context and text); and perlocutionary acts, the
consequence of the utterance on an interlocutor. The illocutionary act is especially
important to illustrate the force of the utterance. Searle breaks Austin’s locutionary act
into two acts, utterance act (phonetic and semantic coding) and propositional act (the
utterance’s content, one of the four definitive conditions which Searle uses to categorize a
speech act within the taxonomy.)
Schiffrin also reviews Grice’s Cooperative Principle. According to the cooperative
principle, meaning is logically derived from the concept of implicature, (where a word
signifies a semantic meaning but also relates that word to a context dependent upon the
speaker’s use according to conversational conventions).
The cooperative principle is the proposal that human communication is based on. Grice’s
maxims are:
(v) The maxim of quantity
Give the required amount of information—not too much or too little.
(vi) The maxim of quality
32

Do not say that for which you lack evidence or which you believe to be false.
(vii) The maxim of relation
Make your contributions relevant to the purpose in hand.
(viii) The maxim of manner
Avoid obscurity, ambiguity and unnecessary prolixity, and be orderly.
29. (book) Searle, J. (1975). Indirect Speech Acts. In Cole, P. & Morgan, J.(Eds.), Syntax
and Semantics: Speech Acts, Volume 3. (pp. 59-82). New York: Academic Press.
Searle states that the simplest cases of meaning are when a speaker means exactly
and literally what he says (In paper).
However there are exceptions to this rule, e.g. in hints, insinuation, metaphor, irony, etc.
In these cases a sentence that contains illocutionary force indicators for one form of
illocutionary act can also be uttered to perform ANOTHER illocutionary act with a
different propositional content. These are known as indirect speech acts. (Can you pass
me the salt?-question /Pass me the salt.-request)
The difficulty of explaining indirect speech acts is that the utterance contains a dual
meaning. The S communicates to the H more than he actually says by relying on their
mutually shared background information, both linguistic and non linguistic, together with
powers of rationality and inference on the part of the H.
- In order to explain indirect speech acts….. It is necessary to use speech
acts theory, certain general cooperative conversation principles for
conversation based on Grice, and mutually shared factual background
information of the speaker and the hearer, together with an ability on the
part of the hearer to make inferences.”
Some facts about indirect speech acts:
1) The sentence in question containing an indirect speech act doesn’t have imperative
force as part of its meaning.
2) The sentences in question are not ambiguous as between an imperative illocutionary
force and a non imperative illocutionary force.
3) These sentences are normally used to issue directives
4) The sentences are not (in the normal sense) idioms
5) These sentences are still normally idiomatic.
6) The sentences have literal utterances (in which they are not “also” indirect requests).
33

7) In cases where these sentences are uttered as requests they still have literal meaning
and are uttered with and as having that literal meaning.
8) If a sentence is uttered with the primary illocutionary point of a directive (the intended
meaning), the literal illocutionary act is also performed.
Problems with speech acts (distinctions recognized by Searle for indirect speech acts);
1. Some syntactical forms work better than others;
- Certain forms will tend to become conventionally established as the
standard idiomatic (colloquial) forms for indirect speech acts.
 (Can you pass me the salt?)
- In order to be plausible as an indirect speech act the sentence has to be
idiomatic to start with.
2. Certain sentences can have the same meaning but if phrased in a slightly different way
(by adding “please” for example) due to certain grammatical principles and illocutionary
forces.
- For example I want you to do it can have the same meaning as Do I want
you to do it? However the first one can have please added to it, the second
can’t.
30. (book) Searle, J. (2001a). Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. (Original work published 1969). (Male)
The speech act theory begins with Austin and is also in part the brainchild of Searle.
Speech act theory asserts that statements do more than just say something— they do
something in saying. Speech acts are, according to Searle, the most fundamental elements
of communication, every utterance performs an act.
There is a close relationship between semantics and pragmatics, meaning, according to
Searle builds upon the relationship of reference (in locution) and intention (in illocution);
thus meaning in an U tethers reference together with intention, (meaning is a concept that
within an utterance intended within that particular context).
Searle also review Austin’s segment of speech act of three parts: locutionary acts,
uttering words with sense (sounds) and reference (semantic meaning); illocutionary acts,
the act performed in saying and the intention of the act, that which works according to the
rules of a “performative formula” (context and text); and perlocutionary acts, the
consequence of the utterance on an interlocutor. The illocutionary act is especially
important to illustrate the force of the utterance. Searle breaks Austin’s locutionary act
34

into two acts, utterance act (phonetic and semantic coding) and propositional act (the
utterance’s content, one of the four definitive conditions which Searle uses to categorize a
speech act within the taxonomy.)
In this book, Searle points out the illocutionary act as the primary act and based on this,
Searle’s developed four condition rules which the illocutionary act is primarily
scrutinized through:
(1) Propositional content relates to the action of the statement regarding some
past, present or future activity or state.
(2) Preparatory rule referring to some pre-existing assumptions held by both the
speaker and the hearer.
(3) Sincerity rule involves the speaker’s subconscious attitude according to its
intention of the utterance.
(4) Essential rule which focuses on what the act counts as, in other words, the
illocutionary point or purpose of the utterance.
When the rules fulfilled, it is dubbed felicitous and works according to its proper
design.
31. (book) Searle, J. (2001b). Expression and Meaning: Studies in the Theory of Speech
Acts. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research Press. (Original work published
1979 (Male)
In this book, Searle explains that there is a close relationship between semantics and
pragmatics, meaning, according to Searle (2001a) builds upon the relationship of
reference (in locution) and intention (in illocution); thus meaning in an U tethers
reference together with intention. Therefore, meaning, in part, relates to the intention
which is the force behind the words, so the illocutionary force, explains the meaning
through context.
According to Searle, every utterance has an illocutionary point—a purpose for being
communicated, and it is upon those points that Searle makes his five classifications of
illocutionary acts: Searle states that illocutionary points are “the best basis for a
taxonomy”
(ASR) Assertives have the “point or purpose of committing a speaker… to
the truth of the proposition”.
(DIR) Directives are “attempts… by the speaker to get the hearer to do
something”.
35

(COM) Commissives have a point to commit the speaker… to some future
action.”
(EXP) Expressives are “to express the psychological state specified in the
sincerity condition.
(DEC) Declarations are with the purpose to “bring about some alteration
in the status or condition of the world.
(Searle (2001b) states that literal utterance contains meaning with an assertive
illocutionary force that makes the speaker to believe the statement with full sincerity.
Searle gives three features of literal meaning:
First, in literal utterance the speaker means what he says; second, in general the literal
meaning only determines a set of truth conditions relative to background assumptions
which are not part of the semantic content; and third, the notion of similarity plays an
essential role in any account of literal predication.
32. ( book) Short, M. (1996). Discourse analysis and the analysis of drama. In Weber, J.
(Ed.), The Stylistics Reader. (pp. 158-180). London: Hodder Headline Group. (Male)
The importance of this article is that Short shows us how pragmatic understanding
is achieved by turning to Grice’s account for meaning. He notes the difference
between “what a sentence means and what someone means by uttering that sentence.”
Grice first forwards the concept of implicature, a “kind of indirect, context-determined
meaning” in which the circumstances surrounding an utterance will require speakers to
establish the reference of the utterance’s meaning. This textual-contextual relationship is
in accordance with Austin and Searle’s accounts of meaning.
Short also points out that Searle classified conversational implicature as a subset of
“indirect speech act.” (For Searle, e.g. in hints, insinuation, metaphor, irony, etc are
indirect speech. In these cases a sentence that contains illocutionary force indicators for
one form of illocutionary act can also be uttered to perform ANOTHER type of
illocutionary act. These are known as indirect speech acts.) (Can you pass me the salt?-
question /Pass me the salt.-request)
Short concluded that both Grice and Searle insist that the implicatures are derivable from
an informal set of step by step inferences and there appears to be much conversational
meaning which cannot yet be sufficiently accounted for in this way. (169)
Grice and Searle say that in order for the hearer to understand what the speaker is
implying (the implicatures within their speech) it is necessary for the hearer to follow a
36

step by step process. Short says that if this step by step process is followed certain nuance
of conversational meaning won’t be understood or discovered.
33. (book). Simpson, P. (1993). Language, Ideology and Point of View. Great Britain:
Routledge (MALE).
• Point of View:
is not on what the text is saying (the ‘truth’) rather it is the ‘angle of
telling.”
• Language:
o As representation, as a projection of perspectives, as a way of
communicating attitudes and assumptions.
o Can view language from 2 points of view
 Stylistics: refers to using linguistics for the study of literature BUT
he emphasizes may be that there is no such thing as an exclusively
literary language, by definition any language used in a literary
work could be viewed as ‘literary language’
 Critical linguistics; seeks to interpret texts on the basis of linguistic
analysis. It expands the horizons of stylistics by focusing on texts
other than just literary ones. Critical linguists believe that language
reproduces ideology; language operates within a socio-political
context. Because language operates within this social dimension it
reflects, and some people say constructs, ideology (pg6).
• Ideology
o ‘describes what we say and think interacts with society’
o Ideology derives from the taken for granted assumptions, beliefs and value
systems which are shared collectively by social groups.
o When it is the ideology of a dominant social group it is said to be
dominant. Dominant ideologies come from powerful political and social
groups.
 Our view of ideology will be influenced by the linguistic practices
of the people who hold these views.
• Language (linguistic practices) presents a ‘point of view’ – something that is not
necessarily true but shows the ideology that the speaker holds.
37

• In the thesis we specifically looked at the chapter ‘Gender, Ideology and Point of
View’
o The idea that certain linguistic practices tend to perpetuate stereotypes that
are not perhaps any longer embodied in law.
o For example ‘androcentricism’ – the idea that male practices are looked on
with favor while feminine practices are viewed negatively
 This is no longer enshrined in law but is an ideology still held by
many – the way they say things may show their point of view.
34. (book) Simpson, P. (2003). On the Discourse of Satire: Towards a stylistic model of
satirical humour. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.
This book covers three types of figurative language including satire, irony and humor.
(Simpson specifically places an emphasis on explaining Verbal irony as central to the
SMUT model of Satire, in respect of uptake).
Figurative language is understood to be opposing to literal claims. It provides a
distortion, which allows for a speaker’s implicit meaning to be inferred from a literal
statement. Irony, as a subset of satire, is often communicated through humor. These three
types share similarities and differences.
Humor is to see something that is laughable or amusing and has a variety of uses. For
example, humor is a social “lubricant” designed to ease tension; humor also has five
functions: aggressive, sexual, social, defensive, and intellectual, of which three in
combination provide satire.
Satire is a discourse which is used to expose the follies of others and is often
communicated through humor and irony. Simpson notes that satire manages three of
Ziv’s functions of humor, the aggressive, the social and the intellectual, and carries them
out simultaneously. The aggressive function occurs through a satirist’s feelings of
superiority. At the same time satire can carry out the social function of humor,
allowing people to ease tension. It provides an intellectual function; by being
nonsensical, satire provides relaxation through laughter.
For satire to work, certain pre-conditions must be met. These four model components of
satire are laid out by Simpson:
Setting Refers to the potential knowledge and culture base of the “satiree.”
Method The utterance can be delivered through exaggeration, ridiculing or
a reversal of values or irony.
38

Uptake The effect of the satirical utterance will have on the ‘satiree’,
dependent on the ability of the satiree to inference the meaning of
the satirist’s address.
Target An event, person, experience, or text which a satiree identifies in
uptake as the victim of the attack.
Humor, irony and satire are bound together; the use of one form of figurative language
may display another. Satire is non-existent without both humor and irony.
While these three forms entwined and contain similarities, they are also different. First,
verbal irony and satire are intentional, while verbal humor may be unintentional, for
example through a slip-of-the tongue that amuses listeners. Furthermore, humor is
intentionally overt, it is meant to be detected by the listener, while irony, and some cases
of satire, can employ a mask to disguise. Among these three, humor could be the most
simple one.
Irony is viewed as part of satire; it is possible that satire could not exist without irony, yet
they are not the same; irony is too complex to be defined as it is dualistically layered
while satire can be suggested as simply a reversal of thinking about the world.
(Speech acts cannot completely account for unconventional illocutionary acts, they do
offer a location for irony in the perlocutionary act (62). The notion for finding irony
there, rather than in the illocutionary force of the utterance relies on uptake. The concept
of perlocution in satirical discourse relies heavily on inferencing by the satiree; That is to
say that pragmatically speaking, irony requires a special effect on the part of the hearer’s
ability to infer any incongruity in an utterance according to their understanding of the
illocutionary force and the content given by the speaker.)
35. (book) Simpson, P. (2004). Stylistics; A Resource Book for Students. New York:
Routledge. (MALE)
• Defines stylistics;
o ‘to do stylistics is to explore language and to explore creativity in
language use.’
o Exploring language is a way to increase our understanding of (literary)
texts as a whole.
Simpson stresses an importance on narrative stylistics:
Narrative discourse refers to re-expressing felt experience by matching up patterns to a
connected series of events. He created a diagram of a model of narrative structure, where
plot is the (abstract) storyline, and discourse is the narrative design (the actual text). The
39

diagram consists six narrative descriptions in stylistics, including textual medium, textual
structure, intertextuality, sociolinguistic code, and characterization in actions and events
and focalization.
As for a sociolinguistic model of narrative, he also explores further the structure of
narrative, focused on one particular model of narrative, the framework of natural
narrative developed by the sociolinguist Labov. He believes Labov’s model has proved
practical and productive in stylistics. He introduces the model and has some practical
activities developed around them.
Labov’s model of natural narrative includes six parts:
1. Abstract (what was this about?)
2. Orientation (Who or what are involved in the story, and when and where did it take
place?)
3. Complication Action (Then what happened?)
4. Resolution (What finally happened?)
5. Evaluation (So what?)
6. Coda (How does it end?)
• In this book as with his others Simpson discusses satire – (in paper) notes that
satire and irony are intertwined.
Within the paper, when discussing the idea of gender as being performative (constructed
through behavior or speech) we used the following from Simpson; Burton (1982) who
stated that realities, from which we can extend the framework to gender, are in fact
linguistically constructed (in Simpson, 2004:187)
36. (book) Simpson, P. (2008). Satirical Humour and cultural context: with a note on the
curious case of Father Todd Unctuous. In Carter, R. & Stockwell, P. (Eds.), The
Language and Literature Reader. (pp. 187-197). Great Britain: Routledge. (MALE)
Simpson attempts to sketch a general model for the study of satirical humor from a
stylistics viewpoint. Humor is designed to be noticed—though it can occur
unintentionally—however it also appears through figurative language, as for example
sarcasm can be an aspect of humor and is figurative.
40

o SMUT model
 Setting, method, uptake, target
• Definition of setting used within the paper.
• Setting; Refers to the potential knowledge base of the
satirist’s audience, referred to as the “satiree”, which is
generally derived from a principle reference point
involving culture, beliefs, knowledge or attitude.
• Simpson analyses dialogue from a TV show of Father Todd in order to understand
humor within a cultural context and he comes up to recognize a pattern.
o The dialogue analyzed contains ‘eliciting exchanges’
o The discourse is made up of a series of two part acts containing two
structural elements; Initiation & Response.
o The first speaker performs an eliciting move; the initiation
o The second speaker performs an informing move; the response.
o Each move element is realized by a single discourse act; all together they
make up the complete discourse.
• Simpson analyzes this TV show and comes up with this pattern for satirical
hummer (?) and he also draws on other works by Irish writers and this specific
pattern also found within the Irish writers which suggests that the type of satirical
writing, occurring in this discourse structure, may be culturally normal. Thus
writing, or discourse, can be considered to have a cultural basis.
37. (book) Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1981). Irony and the Use-Mention Distinction. In
Cole, P. (Ed.) Radical Pragmatics. (pp.295-318). London: Academic Press.
This article within the book first points out it is necessary to make a distinction
between using a word and mentioning it.
Use: “what” the expression refers to.
Mention: refer to the “expression itself.”
The distinction between use and mention can be illustrated for the word Rome:
Use: Rome is in Europe.
41

Mention: When in “Rome,” do as the Romans do.
This article also stresses that Ironical utterances do have one essential semantic property:
ironic utterances are cases of mention and are semantically discernible (from cases
where the same proposition is used in order to make an assertion, ask a question etc.)
This semantic distinction is crucial to the explanation of how ironical utterances are
interpreted and why they exist. Without this distinction the echoic character of irony
would be overlooked. Therefore it will be impossible to make the correct prediction that
where no echoing is discernable. No utterance could ever be classified as ironic. In this
respect, a pure logical-pragmatic approach to irony is too radical.
This suggests that Grice’s logical pragmatic approach to irony is too rigid. For Grice,
irony is rather an implicature according to a pragmatic domain of relating the utterance
according to a contextual interpretation.
Sperber and Wilson state there are “many different degrees and types” of echoic
mention:
“immediate echoes, and others delayed; some have their source in actual utterances,
others in thoughts or opinions; some have a real source, others an imagined one; some
are traceable back to a particular individual, whereas others have a vaguer origin. When
the echoic character of the utterance is not immediately obvious, it is nevertheless
suggested.”
38 (book). Sperber, D., & Wilson, D. (1995). Relevance: Communication and Cognition
(2nd
ed.). Malden: Blackwell Publishing
The book contends in order to be most efficient communication should be ‘relevant.’
Relevance in communication is the key.
• Relevance is understood in terms of cognitive effects and processing efforts
o Cognitive effects; a relevant utterance is one that extends the mutual
cognitive environment to the greatest effect.
o Processing effort; the most efficient communication is one that requires
the least processing effort. Ostensive behavior provides obvious clues to
what is being said. This extends to ostensive-inferential communication,
from such behavior or utterances clues can be drawn by H as to what S is
thinking. So tropes (e.g. echoic irony) can be said to be part of ostensive
inferential communication.
The most relevant utterance is not necessarily the most literal one (therefore not the best
one). Figurative language is understood to be opposing to literal claims. It provides a
distortion, and an intentional vagueness, that allows for a speaker’s implicit meaning to
be poetically inferred.
42

Therefore, in fact implicitly inferred communication is far richer, fuller and optimally
relevant. Contextual or background information is needed for the hearer to infer correctly.
39. (book) Thornborrow, J. & Warineg, S. (2000). Patterns in Language: Sylistics for
Students of Language and Literature. Beijing: Foreign Language Teaching and Research
Press. (Original work published 1998
This book uses linguistic analysis to investigate the aesthetic use of language in
literary (and non-literary) texts.
The authors focus on the recurring linguistic patterns which are used by writers.
To the authors, the goal of stylistics is not simply to describe the formal features of texts
but to show their functional significance for the interpretation of the text. Style is
understood as a study of the selection of certain linguistic forms over other possible one.
They point out what makes the writing of Jane Austen distinctive and great is not just the
ideas expressed but the choices of language available to her.
The book specifically points out in a chapter to discuss the literal language and figurative
language. For them, the first meaning for a word that a dictionary defines is the literal
meaning. When language used as a figurative way, it is trope for a rhetorical purpose.
For figurative language, they compare two common but different figurative speeches as
in simile and metaphor. A simile is a very explicit way to say something is like
something else; such as ‘Your hands are as cold as ice.” Metaphor is another linguistic
process to compare one or two shared features between two very different things like
“Your hands are blocks of ice.” These are two different patterns of figurative language
although they don’t have any significant difference in meaning.
40. (book). Toolan, M.J. (1988). Narrative: A Critical Linguistic Introduction. Great
Britain: Routledge. (MALE)
This classic text explores a range of written, spoken, literary and non-literary
narratives. It shows what logical attention to language can reveal about the narratives
themselves, their tellers, and the readers.
The book provides an introduction to narrative; narrative appears in all forms of writing.
• Scope of analysis; narrative within literature, folktales, stories by and for children,
spoken narrative arising out of interviews and conversations, and stories in the
media.
• Propp’s morphology of the Russian fairytale is reviewed by Toolan as the basic
story structure and Propp is considered to be a fascinating pioneer exploration of
the narrative “competence” that the readers seem to share.
The book also has a special emphasis on the articulation of narrative text which
includes two parts:
43

First part focused on time, focalization and narration.
Second part focused on character, setting and free indirect discourse known as FID,
according to Toolan, readers are not consciously aware of this linguistic tool FID being at
work, and we may think of it as a sort of foregrounded narrative, neither pure narrative
nor pure character-expression.
1. Time: the most influential theorist of text time is Genette, who isolates three major
aspects of temporal manipulation or articulation in the movement from the story to text
(narrative text)
• Order: this refers to the relations between the assumed sequence of events in the
story and their actual order of presentation in text.
• Duration: for Genette this chiefly concerns the relations between the extent of
time that are supposed to have actually taken up, and the amount of text devoted
to presenting those same events.
• Frequency: how often something happens in story compared with how often it is
narrated in text.
2 Focalization: a viewpoint from which things are seen, felt, understood, and assessed (as
opposed to orientation which is a wider, less visual term which relates to “cognitive,
emotive and ideological” perspectives).
3. Narration
Toolan has a focus on stories of class and gender;
These are examined because Toolan found them to be some of the most troublesome
subjects. He notes that even today women and workers are marginalized in most written
narratives.
For the 19th
century writing, “women are conceded sensibility, depths of feeling and
understanding but they are rarely conceded power or independence” as controlling
agents.
(In paper) Toolan notes that few examples of “agentive” females in literature until the
approach of the 20th
century. “Agentive” females refer to these females who are able to be
in charge of their own destiny.
41. (book) Verdonk, P. & Weber, J. (1995). Twentieth-Century Fiction: From Text to
Context. London: Routledge.
44

The essays in the book focus on The linguistic strategies in the areas of the
narrative, textual level, and context by applying recent trends in literary and
language theory to a range of 20th Century fiction. They are presented to assist critical
reading and evaluation.
Specifically Simpson and Montgomery’ Language, Literature and Film stresses an
importance on narrative stylistics: They apply their stylistic model of narrative structure
to a successful novel, Cal.
They created a diagram of a stylistic model of narrative structure, where plot is the
storyline, and discourse is the narrative design. Thus the discourse may show all kinds of
narrative devices such as flashbacks and flashfowards. The diagram consists six narrative
descriptions in stylistics, including textual medium, textual structure, intertextuality,
sociolinguistic code (the backdrop of Northern Island’s divided society), and
characterization in actions and events and focalization (to the authors, focalization refers
to “point of view” or “angle of telling.” When the narrator is the character whose point of
view is represented is called the “reflector of fiction, Cal is consistently the reflector of
fiction: events are described from his viewing position and mediated through his
consciousness.)
(As for a sociolinguistic model of narrative, he also explores further the structure of
narrative, focused on one particular model of narrative, the framework of natural
narrative developed by the sociolinguist Labov. He believes Labov’s model has proved
practical and productive in stylistics. He introduces the model and has some practical
activities developed around them.)
**42(book). Wang, Z. L., Li, F. N., Zhou, Y. L., & Liu, C. P. (2006). An Anthology of
English Literature Annotated in Chinese. Beijing: The Commercial Press. (国内文献)
Anthology; A published collection of poems, short stories, novel excerpts or other
writings. In the book, I compared several notes, criticism and standpoints written by the
authors, including William Shakespeare’s Hamlet; Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice;
Charles Dickens’ David Copperfield; Virginia Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway and D.H.
Lawrence’s Sons and Lovers and so forth.
43. (book) Yang, M., Wang, K., & Wang, H. (2006), Chinese Culture: An Introduction.
Beijing: Higher Education Press. (国内文献)
The book focuses on Chinese culture as one of the world's oldest cultures. Important
components of Chinese culture include history, society, philosophy, literature, arts, etc.
45

It presents Chinese culture and history, documenting basic elements of Confucius
philosophy, Taoism, art of war, and other aspects of Chinese culture.
What is “being Chinese”? Not just learning how to read and write and speak the Chinese
language. “Being Chinese” also includes understanding and appreciating China’s endless
spirit – its vast collections of the arts, its astounding achievements in science… and its
beautiful culture and history.
This book condenses centuries of history into its most salient points. The authors manage
to pick the biggest factors of change in each time period, tying in the high points of
Chinese culture, including art and philosophy.
ARTICLES
1. (article) Ajtony, Z. (2010). Humour and Verbal Irony in G.B. Shaw’s John
Bull’s Other Island. Acta Universitatis Sapientiae, Philologica, 2(2), 246-258.
(FEMALE)
The aim of the paper is to examine verbal irony between different ethnic
groups. Shaw reverses traditional racial stereotypes (that of the English man and
the Irish man, a double reversal of roles) in an attempt to create humor and
interest within the play.
The paper provides definitions of irony, as a linguistic phenomenon using the
incongruity between reality and expectation (and consequently, unveiling an
attitude towards such an incongruity.) and makes the distinction between verbal
irony and situational irony. Using Gibbs’ definition, in verbal irony an individual
presents or evokes such a confrontation by his utterances whereas situational
irony is something that just happens to be noticed as ironic.
The author adopts both echoic and pretense theory, blended with the off-record
politeness theory (FTA) (Brown & Levinson (1978); therefore irony as an indirect
strategy allows the ironist to be aggressive but reduces how aggressive they
actually are. Also, the humor embodied within the off- record theory may allow
criticism, communicated through the ironical utterance, to be displayed in a
milder form (253) (in paper)
• The title of the play itself also provides a clue to the irony existent within it.
1. The title refers to ‘John Bull’ a joking name for a stereotypical British
man, a man who is proud to be English, likes Beer and Roast Beef, thinks
England is the best.
46

2. Title also refers to ‘Island’ (the spelling meaning a land mass surrounded
by water) when the play is about Ireland – the country.
3. In his title Shaw is trying to give the audience a clue that the play is
ironical.
2. (article) Amante, D. (1981). The Theory of Ironic Speech Acts. Poetics Today, 2(2),
77-96. (MALE).
According to Amante, Ironic speech acts must entail at least two propositions, they
create multiple layers of meaning by creating opposition between the two propositions.
Amante argues that illocutionary and perlocutionary effects are more closely linked than
Austin and Searle thought. Austin’s view of perlocutionary is oversimplified as the
perlocutions are necessary to many speech acts, therefore illocutions and perlocutions are
not quite as distinct and separate from one another as Austin suggested. This necessity of
the perlocutionary effect is supported by Amante who recognizes that perlocutionary acts
are strongly connected to the illocution of an utterance. According to Amante, this
dependency relationship between illocutions and perlocutions holds for both ironic and
non-ironic acts.
Ironic speech acts cause a blending of illocutionary and perlocutionary forces, called by
Amante the affective force. All ironic speech acts are affective speech acts. Speech acts
with irony have power to make an audience do something.
Normal perlocutionary acts are directed toward future events which must take place after
the utterance of the illocution but there are also some perlocutionary-like forces (which is
added) that produce certain effects on the hearers by directing their attention back to the
illocutionary act itself instead of referring to the future event - this is called an affective
act (quasi-perlocutionary force) that occurs when the ironic speech act is used. Affective
acts are neither pure perlocutions nor pure illocutions; instead they are a blend of both.
3. (article) Babb, H. (1958). Dialogue with Feeling: A Note on Pride and Prejudice. The
Kenyon Review, 20(2), 203-216. (MALE)
This article analyses the dialogues between Darcy and Elizabeth. Their dialogues can
be construed as a performance. The dialogue is spirited between Darcy and Elizabeth and
contains a lot of feeling.
Babb thinks Austen is an ironist, and although he doesn’t mention Jane Austen as a
feminist, he noted that there are two different forms of speech expressed by Elizabeth as
masculine and feminine. And that Elizabeth displays both thus showing her
unconventionality. For example, Elizabeth claims that she is unconventional by using
phrases like “uncommonly well” which has a hint of her masculine side, compared to her
other speech that expresses her feminine quality by “teasing” Darcy.
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4. (article).Bate, J. (1999). Culture and Environment: From Austen to Hardy. New
Literary History, 30(3), 541-560. (MALE)
This article is to compares Jane Austen to Thomas Hardy as two well known and
beloved English authors and compare their writing styles.
Both write about the countryside, about England, but they write about two different types
of England.
o Austen writes about genteel country living, high society in the
countryside. She writes about the landowners, who love the land and their
place in it and have a responsibility to their tenants.
o For Austen, her sense of “culture” is located in the landscape and a mode
of agriculture, not just in manners and aesthetics. Her ideal England is of
social relations (mind) and aesthetic sense (land), the sweetness to the eye
and the mind.
o Hardy writes about the lower classes, about those who actually work the
land, have their hands in the soil.
• Bates suggests that Austen’s love for the countryside informs her writing, makes a
difference to how well she writes, if she wasn’t intimately acquainted with, and
fond of, how things worked in the country she wouldn’t be able to write as well
she does.
5. (articles) Brown, L.W. (1969). The Comic Conclusion in Jane Austen’s Novels.
PMLA, 84(6), 1582-1587. (MALE)
• This article mentioned the endings of Austen’s novels are somewhat
inevitable, following societal rules.
o E.g. it is inevitable that Elizabeth will marry Darcy
• She uses her amusing endings as an ironical judgment on the individual and her
society.
• Brown’s article contains a lot of analysis of Austen’s novels, incl. P&P
• Her comic conclusion is therefore basically parodic in structure and theme.
6. (article) Brown, L.W. (1973). Jane Austen and the Feminist Tradition. Nineteenth-
Century Fiction, 28(3), 321-338 (MALE)
Austen is in agreement with early feminists (18th
century feminists) over two main
points; Austen is an ironist.
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1) In some ways, she does agree with the female writers very much that
women are not allowed to receive enough education. For example,
Austen’s view on education, there was not enough education for women
noticed by Austen and that women’s education as an issue was criticized
in P & P. and the relationship between education and marriage. (She
meant to criticize male domination of education.) For example, the
conflicts are explicit in the differences between the Bennet sisters in the
parents’ incompatible attitudes towards their own role as parents. Another
example is in the spirited debate on “female accomplishment” at
Netherfield.
2) Women’s personalities were narrowly defined by men. Men effectively
created a social construction of gender that expected women to have
certain personality traits (e.g. hysteria, weakness, gentleness).
7. (article) Calhoun, C. (1994). Separating Lesbian Theory from Feminist Theory. Ethics,
104(3), 558-551. (Female)
This paper summarizes differences between lesbianism and feminism and discusses
their problems. Calhoun points out the effect that Marxism and feminism had joined
together, leading to a consideration of lesbian feminism. Many Marxist theorists have
seen lesbianism as a feminist resistance to male dominance, while few lesbian theorists
now see the issue in that light. Instead, they see the issue more and more in terms of
women's relation to women and to oppositions among lesbians as among others in
society, addressing issues of ageism, racism, and so on."
Lesbians are regarded as the essential form of feminist revolt against patriarchy because
she refuses to be heterosexual. It is argued that this placement of resistance to patriarchy
at the heart of what it means to be a lesbian is wrong. Although lesbians don’t want a
patriarchal society this shouldn’t be the main point of being a lesbian, instead they should
care about how women are seen,
This article introduces the concept that we don’t live in a patriarchal society but in a
heterosexual society. She claims that attempting to provide new constructs of gender
based on the needs of marginalized groups (as mentioned in Butler) may create more
problems.
Unless the marginalized groups are themselves involved in the process their construct
may not be what they want.
• Even if they are involved in the process of creating their image their image may
become one that they are not happy with.
o E.g. lesbian feminists were forced to adopt a certain image to differentiate
themselves from heterosexual feminists. This image may not be one that
they are now happy with and/or that is now acceptable in modern day
society.
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8. (article) Chatman, S. (1975). Towards a Theory of Narrative. New Literary History,
6(2), 295-318. (Male)
Chatman attempts to give an overview of narratology and stresses narratives can be
analyzed structurally.
In this invaluable text to the fields of narrative theory and film/narrative studies, as a
structuralist Chatman offers an analysis of narrative by detailing the clear distinctions
between story (what is told) and discourse (how it is told).
Chatman notes that earlier work by Propp was useful because it tried to make a theory of
plot and separated the structure of narrative which is a distinction made generally by the
French structuralists and Russian formalists. The shortcomings with Propp's analysis was
that it looked on simple folk tales which are not representative of modern narratives, and
it might lead to analysis without seeing the narratives as a whole.
With the formalists and structuralists, Chatman agrees that the object of study of narrative
theory is literary discourse. The task is not to criticize or prescribe, but to explore
questions such as: How do we recognize a presence of a narrator? What is plot? What is
point of view?
Chatman stresses the distinction between the narrator and the author. The narrator might
or might not be present in the narrative while the author never is - he or she is instead the
real person behind the work and is always there.
Chatman goes on to show that narratives are structures. The distinction between story and
discourse is that Story is the content, while discourse is expression.
Chatman divides narrative discourse into narrative form (narrative transmission) and its
manifestation (materializing medium).
(Finally, Chatman differentiates between "reading" and "reading out", where the former
means surface reading and the latter means relating surface statements to deep
statements, moving between narrative levels, and therefore 'constructing' the story.)
9. (article) Chatman, S. (1986). Characters and Narrators: Filter, Center, Slant, and
Interest-Focus. Poetics Today, 7(2), 189-204.
This article introduces some terms; filter, center, slant and interest focus. In order to
understand and use these terms properly, according to Chatman, it is important to
understand how he defines point of view and focalization which leads to our
understanding of these terms.
To Chatman, point of view can be distinguished in three senses
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1. Literal (perception)
2. Figurative (ideology/conception)- A world view (From John’s point of view, Nixon
was somewhat less than noble.)
3. Transferred (characterizing general interest, well-being, etc.)- Passive state (As far as
John is concerned, the divorce was a disaster.)
For focalization, he adopted Genett’s idea that focalization is not as extensive as “point of
view” as it’s more abstract, not clear about mental cognition. His definition for
focalization is that the narrator’s use of a character as a primary medium (to filter
through) in order to render the views of events, other characters and setting of the story
through the words or “voice” of the narrator. So, filter is the concept that the narrator tells
the story through one character’s consciousness.
Center is a certain character who is of paramount importance for the presentation of the
story.
Slant is the idea that a narrator and character share the same point of view and the
narrator joins the character to make comments (to have attitudes about things in the real
world).
Interest-focus is the concept that a minor character temporarily focalized (in a narrative).
10. (article). Chomsky, N. (1959). Verbal Behavior. Language, 35(1), 26-58. (MALE)
This is a review of Skinner’s book Verbal Behavior by Chomsky.
The aim of Skinner’s work: “to predict and control verbal behavior by observing and
manipulating the physical environment of the speaker.”
o He has done the research with lower organisms than humans, found that
providing or withholding certain stimuli, based on a pattern of previous
behavior will lead to certain types of behavior. This should work to predict
what verbal speech will occur when stimuli are provided or withdrawn.
Skinner says this can be used to predict human behavior.
• Skinner limits himself to external stimuli; Chomsky suggests that surely one
needs to take into account the internal structure/content of the
organism/organization.
• Skinner’s idea is based on ‘response’ to ‘stimuli.’ By Skinner’s definition many
things are stimuli, Chomsky argues that in this case ‘stimuli’ loses all meaning.
And how can verbal utterances, which are not in response to any apparent stimuli,
be accounted for.
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• Skinner’s definition of ‘response’ (such as strong response or weak response) may
not actually be appropriate in all circumstances. Therefore this theory does not
account for all utterances.
• Skinner claims that we have to be taught (through processes such as conditioning
based on drives) to understand new things in order to get certain responses.
• Chomsky says that in fact based on pre existing knowledge we can guess the
meaning of certain things, we have already internalized this knowledge it does not
necessarily need an external stimulus.
• Chomsky notes that in order to get the best response a speaker must choose the
best way to say something based on grammatical rules. A hearer (or reader) can
then attempt to recognize the rules chosen in order to understand best what the
speaker is trying to say (an early attempt at relevance theory????)
• Chomsky notes that Skinner’s research is down on animals and thus can’t be fully
transferred to humans.
• Chomsky biographical info;
o Known as the “Father of Modern Linguistics”
o Has worked on politics, linguistics, philosophy, cognitive theory, and
logical theorems
o Is credited as the co-creator of three theorems.
o Has been suggested to be the eighth most cited source in the world.
11. (article) Clark, H. H., & Gerrig, R. J. (1984). On the Pretense Theory of
Irony. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 113(1), 121-12.6
The authors propose a pretense theory of irony based on suggestions by Grice and
Fowler’s theories. The figurative meaning of the irony is spoken with insincerity, where
the speaker is only pretending to be someone else. The theory focuses on Grice’s writing
upon this topic where he forms a model of irony based upon the etymology of the word:
“To be ironical is, to pretend.”
Like the echoic account, pretense also forwards an allusion which the speaker only
pretends to believe. However it departs from echoic theory. It has an emphasis upon a
double audience based on Fowler’s definition of irony.
That is to say, the initiated H realizes the irony because the meaning it conveys is already
part of some notion held within H’s own assumptions regarding what S pretends to
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propose. In light of this, Clark and Gerrig forward the idea that all echoic accounts of
irony can also be explained as pretense.
The pretense account of irony has three features:
1. Asymmetry of affect
2. Victims of irony
3. Ironic tone of voice
The main theory builds on the ironist as a pretender, someone who feigns a positive
posturing when masking a negative one, creating an ‘asymmetry of affect.’ Furthermore,
pretense takes a victim, either the uninitiated audience, or the unseeing person the ironist
is pretending to be, and this person could be a member of the conversation including the
speaker’s self or the hearer. (The authors claim that the echoic (mention) theory cannot
distinguish these two types of victims). Ironists employ pretentions to signify they are
conveying a disguised meaning. Irony is then, identified according to the traditional
account along Grice’s idea of irony as pretending.
12. (article). Cook, J. (2005). A Pragmatic Analysis of Irony. Language & Information
Society, 6, 18-35.
In accordance with the views of Sperber and Wilson in Relevance – agrees overall
that the most literal utterance is not necessarily the most relevant one. Verbal irony is a
commonly used form of non-literal language.
Relevance theory developed Grice’s maxim of Relation as the central key to
understanding communication.
Relevance is defined in terms of cognitive effects and processing effort.
Cognitive effects: An utterance is considered relevant only when it achieves a cognitive
effect. A relevant utterance is one that extends the mutual cognitive environment to the
greatest effect. When an utterance is given as new information to the hearer, the
information and the hearer’s assumptions produce three positive cognitive contextual
effects:
• A new assumption combining with an existing assumption to yield contextual
implication.
• A new assumption combines with the existing assumption to strengthen the
existing assumption.
• A new assumption overrides an existent assumption which is then abandoned.
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The hearer will pay attention to the most relevant stimulus and process it so as to
maximize its relevance in a context. Contextual or background information is needed in
order to infer correctly. The inference process is relevance-driven.
13. (article). Donovan, J. (1991). Women and the Rise of the Novel: A Feminist-Marxist
Theory. Signs, 16(1), 441-462. (Female)
The article recognizes that women writers were uniquely situated to contribute to
the rise of the novel in the 17th
to 18th
centuries. Their writing style has a focus on:
o Education;
 Women had enough education to write but not enough to write on
heavy subjects. So their work tended to be on subjects such as
love, marriage, home-making etc., that made their books more
accessible to ordinary people.
 Their different experience of writing (usually letters or in journals)
meant that women’s style of writing was polyvocal and thus more
accessible and interesting to many people than the male writers’
style of narration.
o Economic status;
 Women were rich enough through their husbands not to have to
work and so had the time to write.
 Women created goods for economic trade that were both
functional and beautiful – a novel fulfilled both these functions it
could be sold and so was functional but was beautiful as it was a
work of literature.
 Women became aware that their sole purpose was to be “traded” in
marriage and so became more satirical of the society in which
they lived.
Marxist Feminism; The idea that capitalism runs hand in hand with a patriarchal society
that oppresses women. Therefore if capitalism is dismantled then women would be freed.
14. (articles). Downie, J. A. (2006). Who Says She’s A Bourgeois Writer? Reconsidering
the Social and Political Contexts of Jane Austen’s Novels. Eighteenth-Century Studies.
40(1), 69-84. (MALE)
Donnie thinks that Austen has been mis-interpreted as a bourgeois writer. Other
writers have felt that as she struggled with her financial status at various points in her life
she must be of the middle classes.
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In fact she was a member of the gentry and her major characters in her novels (including
the Bennets) are the same. Her understanding of their lives and concerns can be seen
from the detail of her novels.
o Downie suggests that such understanding could only come from having
lived a similar life to those that her characters live.
She is not a bourgeois writer, bourgeois writers tend to be overly concerned with
society’s rules and regulations and in fact Austen didn’t follow these rules. Instead she
had her own points of view (e.g. Elizabeth’s feminism).
Although often quick to point out the economic status of most of her characters (which
many claim is the style of a bourgeois writer) Downie argues this is simply to inform her
novels and allow development of her characters and plot.
15. (articles). Duckworth, A.M. (1991) Jane Austen and the Construction of a Progressive
Author. College English, 53(1), 77-90. (MALE)
This author reviews others’ work about Austen. Many other authors have described
Austen as completely progressive and raise questions concerning her as a liberal,
“bourgeois,” or feminist author.
In actual fact, Duckworth contends that her liberalness is within limits.
o She is a feminist believing women should have a voice. Her argument is
concerned with a social moral code. She stresses the importance of the
domestic world, mutuality and respect between men and women, and the
rights of women to self-determination (her defence and articulation of
values are non-materialistic), but still believes that they need to be
married.
o She believes in feminism within reason. Austen’s heroines do not achieve
the autonomy that modern feminism demands.
o She is not keen on the move into towns, prefers the countryside and (tie
down to the land) the old ideas of land ownership (that she prefers
feudalism to capitalism. She does not prefer industrialization.)
• It also suggests that it is impossible to analyze her work by today’s liberal
standards that the historical context must be taken into account.
• Austen could be interpreted as liberal for the times in which she lived.
**16. (article) Fan, W. & Kuno, S. (2012) Semantic and Discourse Constraints on
Chinese Bei-Passives [Class handout]. Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures,
Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. (国内文献)
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Bei passives in Chinese have been classified as having an adversity passive
implication, a neutral passive implication, and a benefactive passive implication but
it is unclear under what circumstances sentences containing a bei passive acquire which
implication.
This paper is to solve the problem and shows that one of the functions of the bei passive
construction. Bei passive is to indicate that the referent, the speaker or the hearer receive
a major impact which is above a certain threshold from the action or event represented in
the sentence.
The impact can be direct as in the case of high-impact verbs like 打 or 开除, or indirect
as in the case of low or no impact verbs like 看见 or both.
The TOTAL of the direct and indirect impacts that the referent, the speaker or the hearer
receives must reach a threshold for a ‘major impact’.
Direct impact + indirect impact = Total Impact
Bei ALWAYS has a direct impact. It can be added to direct verbs or non-direct verbs. It
will always give a negative connotation.
This explains why a bei-passive sentence involving a low or non impact verbs 看见)
often receives an adversity implication; a low or non impact verb doesn’t suggest a major
impact, so the ‘major impact’ requirement needs to be satisfied by an indirect impact.
- A high impact verb is one that suggests that something is a bad thing (for example
when something has been broken, given away, fired etc).
- A low or non impact verb is something that just suggests an action (for example
to discover something).
However, both types of sentence should contain the suggestion of a major impact. This
major impact is already suggested by a disposal verb (for example because something has
been broken). When a non disposal verb is used the use of the bei-passive provides a
negative connotation to the sentence.
For example;
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High impact verb ; 我把那一封信烧了（the idea of burning something (shao being the
high impact verb) already creates the idea of a major impact）
low or non impact verb; na jian shi bei ta faxian le (faxian is the verb but is low or non
impact, therefore the bei passive gives a negative connotation to the sentence
in order to create the assumption of major impact).
17. (article). Feng, Z. (2008). Fictional narrative as history: Reflection and deflection.
Semiotica, 170(1), 187-199.
This article looks at the concept of history expressed through narratology. It notes
that under Marxist theories there is such a thing as ‘real’ history – any form of
narratology that moves away from the ‘real’ history is considered untrue.
However, Feng disagrees and he points out that narratology provides a great deal of
information as to how people lived and died at the time that is being written about. A plot
underpinning the history may also make it easier to understand.
• This article looks at two novellas, set in China at different times.
• Notes that narratology both reflects and deflects history – if we consider narration
to be a mirror then you can never get a true and perfect image from it only a
reflection.
• Narratology often uses;
• First level (first order narrative code); narrating
• Second level (second order narrative code); commenting
Narratology (both narrating and commenting) occurs through certain techniques, which
include; metalinguistic and meta discursive.
o Meta-linguistic; branch of linguistics which studies language and its
relationship to culture and society
o Meta discursive; a discussion about discussion – a strategy used in
discourse to point out something that occurred or that has been mentioned
in prior discourse.
Adding personal comments into the story makes the history more ‘real’, more alive,
richer for the reader. These practices provide a second level of narration; (second order
narrative code) commenting which provide another level of reflection and deflection of
history.
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**18 (article). Ferrari, G. (2008). Socratic Irony as Pretence. Retrieved Dec. 10, 2012
from http://fds.oup.com/www.oup.co.uk/pdf/0-19-954487-5.pdf (Male)
Ferrari doesn’t feel that Socrates has been fully understood. He attempts to analyze
Socratic Irony as pretense irony. The use of the analysis of Socratic irony also helps
him to understand Plato’s writing and irony.
According to pretense theory, irony involves pretending to be in a context where one's
action or speech would be appropriate on the surface but (actually it is inappropriate).
Socratic irony is not meant to be communicative, since he wants his irony to go unnoticed
as he disturbs his interlocutor's unfounded self-satisfaction. Those who see through
Socratic irony see what Socrates still tries to hide. Whereas Socrates never drops his
irony and aims to test or improve his interlocutors, Platonic irony needs an appreciative
audience because it aims to be understood. Platonic writing is self-assertive display.
Socratic irony; a pose of ignorance assumed in order to entice others into making
statements that can then be challenged.
• The function of this type of pretense irony is for there to be response from the
audience.
o Response occurs due to recognition of two aspects;
 The ironist intended the audience to recognize the pretension as
pretense.
 That if the pretense were actual it would be inappropriate.
• It also allows the ironist to manipulate the conversation to where they want it to
go.
19. (article) Geisdorfer Feal, R. (2001). Introduction: Gender Issues, Representational
Practices. Latin American Literary Review, 29(57), 5-9. (FEMALE)
This article refers to the new definitions of ‘gender’ that appears to develop quickly.
The author notes that gender is no longer just a thought as referring to a biological state
but is now recognized as implicating a very complex mix of sexuality, nationality, social
class, ethnicity, and identity (identity is understood as both psychological and
performative).
The concept of performative identity can be most easily found in Judith Butler’s
Gender Trouble. Butler calls gestures, desires, and enactments performative as they
express fabrications that are manufactured and sustained through corporeal signs and
other discursive means.
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- Your wants and needs and how you want to be perceived are turned into
your personality, your identity, through body language and other signs
including discourse.
Butler claims that there is no gender identity other than what we make.
The author says that gender is closely related to genre, genre’s are either impacted due to
constructions of gender. e.g. for a genre of detective story 30 years ago compared to
today for a male detective to a female one (different manifestation of gender/different
construction of gender) which can have impact on the genre.
She comes to the conclusion that different issues are represented in different ways when
gender comes into play – either the gender of characters within literature or film, or the
gender of the writer. Also notes that gender always operates within a context and that this
context can’t be ignored.
(In Paper) Gender issues shape the way we represent things so the characters in a novel
are portrayed in different ways when gender comes into play.
20. (articles). Gilroy, A. (2002). New Millenial Austens. Novel: A Forum on Fiction.
36(1), 119-125. (FEMALE)
This is a review article of several other articles/books/readings of Austen and it
looks at Austen in terms of her relationship with England, and her status as an
English writer (i.e. her subject matter is all about England).
It also looks at global influence of Austen (claims spread is due to British Colonialism
and American hegemony). It refers to “Global Austen,” that Austen’s texts are in the
world geographically institutionalized in many parts of the world as a consequence of
British colonialism and United States global hegemony.
It is aware that Austen is a well informed and educated woman and although she chooses
to write about ‘small’ subjects (e.g. love and marriage) in detail she is aware of the wider
world (aware of the England/France war, aware of slavery and its difficulties (slavery
appears as a large topic in Mansfield Park)).
It also claims Austen has been misinterpreted as a bourgeois writer.
21. (article). Gorman, D. (1999). The Use and Abuse of Speech-Act Theory in Criticism.
Poetics Today, 20(1), 93-119.(MALE)
Many scholars have contributed to the rich range of literary analysis that utilizes
speech act theory in study of discourse (In paper) and many scholars recognize that
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Speech act theory’s major contribution is that contextual factors are highly significant
components of discourse.
On the other hand, Gorman claims that Austin has been misunderstood by almost all the
scholars who have examined him, scholars appear to have either over criticized him
(disagreeing with everything he says) or taken his word as the literal truth (and not found
fault with anything).
Gorman suggests that there are problems with using Austin to analyze literature
- Austin’s claims that literary utterances are hollow (because they don’t
have the actual meaning behind them, lacking performative force) have
led to some unhappiness from literature analysts as they have felt that
Austin has criticized what they do. However from a 2001 article that
Gorman wrote to correct some of the view of this paper, he thinks some
scholars’ aim was always to extend the speech-act approach to literary
language.
- Analysts who have examined Austin’s speech act theory have over
emphasized Austin’s refutation of the performative/constative distinction
and the same analysts have not paid enough attention to his distinction
between locutionary and illocutionary acts.
Gorman suggests some maxims to keep in mind when using or analyzing Austin.
- Don’t underrate speech-act theory (some people who just say Austin
didn’t think of anything new)
 Some analysts have either tried to deny Austin’s theory entirely or
to just use the bits of the theory that suit them in their own
theories. Instead, be sure that you understand the theory before
trying to use it and begin by asking what the point is of using the
theory.
- Don’t overrate speech-act theory
 Speech act theory is not without limitations. First, it only concerns
itself with one small aspect of human language (performative
language) and doesn’t properly explain other ways in which people
speak. Second; the classification of illocutionary is based on
several thousand verbs, this classification is too large.
Gorman then looks at a book by an author called Petrey who wrote a book called Speech
Acts and Literary Theory. Gorman found several problems with this book;
- Gorman feels Petrey doesn’t properly understand Austin
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 For example Petrey claims that Austin thought that language is a
social activity – this is an overgeneralization.
- Petrey doesn’t criticize Austin enough as Gorman claims that Petrey’s
book is vague in its use of examples and its interpretation of these
examples.
 Gorman suggests that the evolution of speech acts into pragmatics
was quite different to what Austin had in mind and shows that
speech act theory was not without major difficulties if it evolved in
such a different way.
22. (article). Grewendorf, G. (2002). How Performatives Don't Work. Studies in
Linguistics and Philosophy, 79(2), 25-39 (MALE)
This article briefly reviews Austin’s theory of speech acts.
Grewendorf states that Austin notes that there are constative and performative utterances.
Constative being typically used to make statements, refer to facts, and become true or
false. Performatives (both implicit and explicit) refer to an action that will be performed
as a result of an utterance.
Austin claimed that constatives and performatives don’t really have any distinction
between the two as the criteria by which the two are defined can be applied to either. So
Austin claimed that all utterances could be thought of as performative.
Grewendorf claimed that in this case you could class all utterances as constatives instead.
Performatives are considered to be instances of indirect speech acts – this is because the
speaker performs an act with his utterance which is derived from the literal meaning by a
Gricean inferential process usually associated with indirect speech act. If you have to
infer it then it’s indirect. Thus, in uttering a performative, the speaker directly performs
that he states something and indirectly performs that he states he is performing. To derive
the indirect speech act from the literal meaning of “I order you to leave”, the hearer might
reason (and be expected to reason) as in:
a. He is saying “I order you to leave.”
b. He is stating that he is ordering me to leave.
c. If his statement is true, then he must be ordering me
to leave.
d. Presumably, he is speaking the truth…..
Grewendorf notes that Searle disagrees; Searle says that something such as the statement
“I order you to go”
doesn’t need to have the meaning inferred. Instead it is literally an order. So according to
Searle the intention to perform a linguistic action is clear and enough for the action to be
performed – so it is not an indirect speech act.
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Searle (1989) - How Performatives Work
Extra linguistic and linguistic declarations, both are speech acts. Linguistic declarations
include such things as promises, orders, declarations etc. While these are performative
utterances they don’t change the world in any way unless there is authority behind them.
The individual may be able to make a declaration that changes their immediate
environment but in order to make an impact on the wider world it is necessary to have an
extra linguistic institution. For example, the declaration “I hereby pronounce you man
and wife” only has performative force when said by a justice of the peace, minister, or
some other person with legal power to make this happen. The statement “We declare
war” only has performative force when uttered by the recognized representative of a
country. So these declarations are extra linguistic.
23. (article) Gubar, S. (1975). Sane Jane and the Critics: “Professions
(expression/statements) and Falsehoods (lies/judgements/criticism)”. A Forum on
Fiction, 8(3), 246-259 (FEMALE)
This is a review of some other scholars’ work on Austen. Gubar summaries and
comes to several conclusions:
• Austen is sympathetic to the failures of her characters, and their personality
flaws, particularly those of younger characters (like Elizabeth and Jane) and
views these failures as growing pains, something that characters must go through
in order to be become adults.
• Austen chooses to satirize some other characters (e.g. Mrs. Bennet) showing she
has no patience with their selfishness.
• Gubar notes that Austen repeatedly uses linguistic devices such as wit and irony
to assert the independence and wilfulness of her characters, particularly female
characters. And from that we can draw that therefore she is a feminist and
ironical writer.
24.(article). Hancher, M. (1977). Beyond a Speech-Act Theory of Literary Discourse:
Toward a Speech Act Theory of Literary Discourse by Mary Louise Pratt. MLN, 92(5),
1081-1098. (MALE)
This article by Hancher reviews a book written by Pratt. Pratt was looking at the
work of Austin and Searle, Pratt tries to find a way to use speech act theory to analyze
literature.
Hancher notes that Pratt confronts and rejects the traditional formalist claim that there is
some difference between the language of literature and the language of the real world.
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Pratt feels unable to analyze literature using Austin-Searle framework because
illocutionary acts tend to be only one sentence long. Even when there are exceptions they
are limited. Thus Pratt attempts to change the framework to make it more suited to the
analysis of literature.
Hancher notes that the Austin-Searle felicity conditions on illocutionary acts are
constitutive (they are “necessary and sufficient”) rules, not regulative rules (in paper).
Hancher also looks at Grice and the Gricean maxims and he notes that Gricean maxims
are regulative, not constitutive; they are as likely to be honored when broken as when
they are observed (1090) (in paper).
But Pratt treats these Austin-Searle felicity conditions as if they were regulative (just
guidelines, not essential). This allows her to associate felicity conditions with literature.
Pratt renames ‘appropriateness condition’ to replace “felicity condition;” meaning that
speech acts are only appropriate under certain conditions. This gives greater scope to the
use of illocutionary acts, the guidelines can be used in a far more situations. However,
Hancher doesn’t feel this is appropriate.
Pratt and Searle have two different models for fictional discourse.
Searle believes that the narration of literature can either be by a fictional character or by
the author themselves. In this case the narration is a patchwork (A theory or argument
made up of miscellaneous or incongruous ideas; patchwork means putting something
together out of many uneven pieces) and can still be analyzed as individual utterances.
Pratt believes the narrator is always a fictional character and so the literature should be
analyzed as one comprehensive piece.
Hancher feels that Searle’s model for fictional discourse is more comprehensive and less
likely to distort the comparison of any two texts.
25. (article) Holdcroft, D. (1983). Irony as a Trope, and Irony as Discourse. Poetics
Today, 4(3), 493-511. (MALE)
The point of the paper is to examine irony from two important concepts; both
from the point of view of irony as a trope (that is rhetorical irony), or irony as
discourse (when the irony is responded to).
• Irony used as a trope which is rhetorical irony:
o Specifically the idea of removing self satisfaction through criticism
disguised as praise – it doesn’t allow the hearer to answer back to the
criticism due to its disguise and thus is in some ways more aggressive.
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• The force of the illocutionary act is somewhat subverted (destroyed) by the use of
irony
o If there is a qualifying aspect to the ironical utterance (if it is limited to
one area) then it removes some of the force from the utterance.
• For example ; “the weather is quite nice today for Beijing”
• The fact that the weather is nice has been limited to a certain area,
thus suggesting that maybe the weather isn’t actually that great, it
is just good in comparison to the usual weather of Beijing.
o In this case it may appear that there is no irony within the utterance –
however there will always be some duality, either between S & H,
between what S is saying and their beliefs, etc. Although the irony appears
to have been somewhat destroyed it still exists.
26. (article) Hutchens, E.N. (1960). The Identification of Irony. ELH, 27(4), 352-363.
(FEMALE)
The purpose of the article is to help define irony (more from an ironist
perspective. Irony occurs when there is some level of “deception” between what
is said and what is meant. It is important to understand the difference between ironic
and ironical.
o Ironic is defined as the “Irony of Fate” when something just happens to
someone,
o Ironical is when an ironical act is purposely perpetrated on someone (the
target, so to speak) by someone else (the ironist).
• The ironist enjoys using irony for its own sake (appreciating the cleverness of it)
which might be quite apart from his purpose of employing it such as conveying its
intended meaning.
• Besides, there’s also discussions of some of the different types of irony
o In the paper we look at rhetorical irony. The rhetorical ironist uses
statements which by seeming to assert the opposite actually reinforce the
ironist’s meaning.
27. (article) Hutcheon, L. (1992). The Complex Functions of Irony. Revista Canadiense
de Estudios Hispanicos, 16(2), 219-234. (Female)
This article looks at the functions of irony. Irony has both negative and positive
connotations. The positive or negative connotations of a particular ironical utterance
may be in part subjective, depending on whether the person applying the opinion is the
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ironist or the object/target which the ironical utterance is directed towards. In this
function irony appears in two forms, criticism disguised as praise, and praise disguised as
criticism, both containing negative and positive
Functions of irony:
Emphatic (also referred to as rhetorical)
• For rhetorical irony it is worth noting that the speaker (the ironist)
does not always expect or need a response.
Distancing function: The subdued criticism within social bounds displays the irony as a
distancing mechanism. This detachment on the part of the ironist often carries negative
point, as it can suggest a desire for control or a lack of commitment. However,
distancing could also be viewed as seeking a new perspective where only distance can
provide a new angle.
Evasive function: (As an extensive concept from Distancing), it creates an evasive
function which provides the ironist the means to remove themselves from the utterance,
and either claims the utterance as being misunderstood if it should prove to be
controversial. (Irony in its evasive function has been used by those marginalized by
society to present controversial or subversive ideas.)
Evasive function: can be understood from two different concepts: attaching and defensive
1. Attacking function (offensive/oppositional) Oppositional irony can be said
to have positive connotations. The irony is normally meant to be corrective.
The use of irony is to draw attention to and mock shortcomings, in the hope of
its correction. However, offensive irony, by contrast may often appear in a
“bitter and scornful” form, when it is used it is not expected to yield a result
and thus transmits as unpleasant.
2. Defensive function (self deprecating irony as a form of protection)
Powerless groups have sometimes resorted to using self deprecating irony as a form of
defence. This irony will often in accordance with the views of the rest of the world, in
order to avoid criticism. (This paper offers as example as Elizabeth Bennet’s comments
on education when she informs Darcy she is rather surprised at his knowing any
accomplished women. By using self deprecating irony she positions women, and herself,
as not being expected to attain to the same high educational standards as men. Thus, as
Hutcheon states, self deprecation and self protection could be said to be “two sides of the
same coin.”
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28. (article) Husbands, W. (1954). Jane Austen: Irony as Defense and Discovery by
Marvin Mudrick. The Review of English Studies, 5(19), 305-308. (FEMALE).
This article is a review of a book by Mudrick. Mudrick views Austen as someone to
be taken at face value, someone who’s jokes shouldn’t be seen as jokes and whose
ironies shouldn’t be read as ironies. So he views her as somewhat unfeeling. He
represents that Austen as continually “avoiding commitment,” “defending herself against
entanglement,” with no moral principles and uses irony as her weapon.
Husbands notes that Austen was a woman of great feeling; she was clearly loved by her
sister and nieces in her life. She enjoyed jokes and irony for its own sake. (In Paper) As
Husbands points out Austen is “diverted by ‘follies and nonsense, whims and
inconsistencies’, and that she laughs at them whenever she can, using irony freely to that
end.”
Thus, Austen enjoys the irony for its own sake and for her own amusement. Husbands
goes on to point out that Austen also uses comedy and irony as “means to a fuller and
deeper understanding of life.” Through the usage of irony she is able to examine, the
deeper complexities existent within relationships through the verbal ironies existent
between Elizabeth and Darcy. She also used them as a way to sketch people’s characters
and to show up the defects in mankind.
Husbands does not agree with Mudrick’s view that Austen was becoming more moralistic
as she wrote more, Mudrick thinks that in Mansfield Park Austen is overly harsh on some
of the characters. Husbands says that actually you have to look contextually in order to
understand Austen’s moralizing.
29. (article). Jakobson, A.L. (1977). A Critique of Wayne C. Booth’s A Rhetoric of
Irony. Orbis Litterarum.32, 173-195. (MALE).
This article provides a review of Booth’s book of “A Rhetoric of Irony.” In this
paper, the author points out that it is a sort of fallacy that based on the concept of
implied author that Booth classified stable irony and unstable irony.
• Within his book Booth attempts to distinguish stable irony from other forms of
irony based implied author:
 stable irony (where the author’s real meaning is clearly implied)
 unstable irony (in which we have difficulty determining the
author’s real views or even determining whether he is being ironic
or not).
o Suggest that in order for irony to exist it has to be recognized by the reader
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o In order to be fully understood and recognized by the reader the writer’s
intentions have to be understood – the concept of the implied author.
• According to Jakoboson Booth fails on several levels;
o He does not agree that the concept of the implied author really exists;
 Claims that it is difficult to distinguish between the intention of the
work and the intention of the author. It is possible to understand
the irony without understanding the author.
 Jakobson claims that irony is still in existence if unrecognized.
Therefore Booth fails to provide a clear definition of irony.
o Booth is also criticized for failing to distinguish between ‘being ironic,’ and
‘describing something ironic’, and imitating the two in fiction or using these
terms interchangeably.
30. (article). Johnson, C.L. (1989). A “Sweet Face as White as Death”: Jane Austen and
the Politics of Female Sensibility. A Forum on Fiction, 22(2), 159-174.
(FEMALE)ABSTRACT
This article looks at whether Austen was unfeeling and unfeminine or whether she
just had different views on several subjects to other people. In fact what Austen
exposes when she discusses certain topics without a high level of emotion is not really
her emotional deficiency but that of society at the time.
The article also discusses topics that are perhaps unsuitable for a lady. For example she
writes about some female characters being ‘ruined.’ She presents these topics in a
different way to most male authors of the time would have any girls who had been
‘ruined’ repenting of it and then quite possibly dying of the shame. Instead Austen
shows that sometimes women can get away with it (e.g. Lydia Bennet).
While it does not referred to sexual liberation in Austen’s novels, it can be considered
shocking for the time, Austen’s heroines know their own minds, they aren’t afraid to
take part in such things as exercise and reject traditional regency feminine virtues. Men
in the novels respond in a sexual way to certain of these behaviors (for example
Elizabeth’s exercise is noted by Darcy which he considers attractive).
31. (article) Juez, L. A. (1995). Verbal Irony and the Maxims of Grice's Cooperative
Principle. Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 8(1995), 25-30. (FEMALE)
The article analyzes Brown and Levinson’s Politeness Theory and their treatment of
irony as an off record strategy (the clue to the correct interpretation of off record FTAs
lies in the making of some inferences which will allow the addressee to understand what
was in fact intended by the speaker- being indirect). According to Brown and Levinson,
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‘Be ironic” is to violate the Quality Maxim by saying something the opposite of what is
meant. The main aim of this paper is to discuss how, by being ironic, a speaker or writer
can flout not only the Maxim of Quality but the other three Gricean Maxims as well.
The Maxim of Quantity can be violated through ironical understatement or
overstatement.
Brown and Levinson suggest that the Maxim of Relevance can be violated by using
euphemisms. It is suggested that irony is normally ambiguous in some way and thus
consequently violate the Maxim of Manner.
Juez concludes that following Brown and Levinson’s theory, the Maxim of Relevance
can be flouted (in paper). in most cases, ironical remarks appear to violate two, three or
even all the maxims at the same time suggesting that irony is more complex phenomenon
than thought by Brown and Levinson.
On the other hand, other authors, such as Wilson and Sperber, believe the Relevance
Maxim is never violated because relevance can be achieved by using irrelevant
assumptions so long as the expressive behavior is relevant in itself.
32. (article) Kotthoff, H. (2003). Responding to irony in different contexts: on cognition
in conversation. Journal of Pragmatics, 35, 1387-1411. (Female)
The point of the paper is to look at the way in which people respond to ironical
utterances, whether they focus on the intended meaning, or the literal meaning. The
hearers are able to react to both perspectives.
• The hearer’s response to the ironical utterances partially depends on the group
that people are in and also depends on the hearers’ understanding of it.
o Irony as a function can express positive evaluations under the guise of
negative ones or vice versa. Irony is a method of communicating an
“evaluation gap,” which can be understood as the gap between overt sense
(literal meaning) and pragmatic force (intended meaning), where S can
express praise under criticism in disguise and vice versa.
o In friendly irony, “people react more to what is said in the ironic act”
whereas in critical irony “they react more to what is meant by the ‘critical’
ironic act.”
o So in continuous conversation, friendly participants may produce a range
of responses to verbal irony from playfully literal reactions, to ironical
retorts, and even simple laughter. In the successful execution of this style
of friendly verbal irony, an target of irony recognizing a joke could
respond with further self-directed irony; so that “ironic activities are
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always interpreted in connection with the ongoing conversation, not as
isolated acts”.
33. (article) Kumon-Nakamura, S., Glucksberg, S., & Brown, M. (1995). How About
Another Piece of Pie: The Allusional Pretense Theory of Discourse Irony. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, 124(1), 3-21.
The allusional pretense theory claims that ironic remarks have important features
including alluding to a failed expectation and insincerity as there’s violation of the
maxim of sincerity. Such violations simultaneously draw a listener's attention to the
failed expectation and express the speaker's attitude (toward the failed expectation).
Using four out of five speech act taxonomy types, they carried out their experiments and
tested the theory.
And they come to the conclusions that, that both insincerity and allusion were far more
frequently used in ironical utterances compared to literal ones. The second experiment
demonstrated that the negative attitudes frequently expressed with ironic utterances are a
function of the relative frequency of positive versus negative expectations and not an
intrinsic characteristic of discourse irony per se. The third experiment found that over-
polite requests are more likely to be used ironically than under-polite ones.
Furthermore, the allusional pretense theory has integrated echoic account with the
pretense account of irony in general, (although they believe the mechanisms of allusion
can better replace the narrower mechanisms of echoic theory; also the concept of
pragmatic insincerity extends the theory of discourse irony to other speech acts types
other than assertives).
34. (article) Litz, A.W. (1975). Recollecting Jane Austen. Critical Inquiry. 1(3), 669-
682. (MALE)
It is a literature review article. It looks at praise and criticism of Austen over the
last 200 years. It notes that reviewers don’t seem to be able to find middle ground,
either they don’t like Austen in any way or can’t find any fault with her.
The most important thing this article contends is that it stresses and agrees with
Austen’s own view of herself that she chose to sketch a small section of human life in
depth rather than deal with wider issues. That being said, it doesn’t mean she lacked
the capacity to deal with wider issues or that it was a waste of her writing talents,
instead it was a choice that she made.
**35. (article). Livnat, Z. (2003). On verbal irony and types of echoing. UCL Working
Papers in Linguistics, 15, 71-81. (Female).
This paper examines some actual examples of written verbal irony that contain
apposition, a syntactic structure (evoking semantic relations of equivalence or
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identity) which helps in the interpretation process of the utterance and especially in
recognizing the victim of the irony. This discussion demonstrates the interdependence
between appositions, its echoic quality, and the victim of the irony. The author
exemplifies different types of verbal irony using Sperber & Wilson’s echoic account that
they are different types and degrees of echoic mentions. (Some are immediate echoes,
and others delayed; some have their source in actual utterances, others in thoughts or
opinions; some have a real source, others are imagined one; some are traceable back to a
particular individual, whereas others have a vaguer origin.)
Conclusions:
A. Syntactic structure (an appositional structure) can serve as a major clue to the
speaker’s indirect meaning as it helps the reader to pick out an originator of the echoes
(utterance) as a possible victim of the irony.
B. The violation of quality as in untruthfulness plays in ironical utterances may be much
more complex than that suggested by Grice. It may serve mainly as a clue to the presence
of irony, instead of an essential part of the analysis.
C. Violations of the maxim of quantity (or their equivalent in the relevance-theoretic
framework) may also serve as a clue to ironical interpretation. In relevance theory, this
effect may be seen as a result of the increased processing effort added by the verbiage,
together with the lack of contribution to cognitive effects.
36. (article) Lu, Z. (2008). Systemic Functional Grammar applied in the Stylistic
Analysis of D.H Lawrence’s The Prussian Officer. In Wu, C., C. Matthiessen, & M.
Herke (Eds.), Proceedings of ISFC 35: Voices Around the World. Sydney: The 35th ISFC
Organizing Committee. (Female)
This paper first reviews Halliday’s three metafunctions and then tries to apply them
in the stylistic analysis of the story, D.H Lawrence’s The Prussian Officer (as a
powerful short story). Specifically she has a focus on epithet and transitivity within the
ideational function. Two parts are discussed in detail as in the military settings (Epithet)
and the orderly’s murdering of the captain (transitivity) in the story. The caption’s
frustration and jealousy of the young orderly and their conflicted/tormented relationship,
especially the orderly’s state of mind for murdering the captain were all analyzed through
these linguist tools.
By using these linguistic tools such as epithets and transitivity (Halliday classifies
clauses into three main types, material, mental and relational processes) , the author then
reveals that The Prussian Officer is a psychological battle between the two men and the
role that the orderly plays as a murderer is rather a passive one.
37. (article) McCann, C.J. (1964). Setting and Character in Pride and Prejudice.
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 19(1), 65-75. (MALE)
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McCann looks at setting and character and notes that the setting within the novel
helps connect with characters which reminds the reader of certain aspects of their
personalities.
He also notices that Austen combines setting with dialogue in order to fully provide
deep layers of irony.
o E.g. Darcy owns Pemberley – the two clearly fit together well.
o E.g. Elizabeth’s allusion to Pemberley when discussing that she realized
she has fallen in love with Darcy. Elizabeth’s remark seems
straightforward on the surface; though she intends it to be a playful but
sarcastic comment about her apparent materialism.
Austen uses irony to construct the setting and character development. She is not afraid
to let her characters use wit against themselves and to mock or criticize their own
failings. However, she appears to have deep compassion for her characters, is
sympathetic to their failures.
38. (article). Morini, M. (2010). The poetics of disengagement: Jane Austen and echoic
irony. Language and Literature, 2010(19), 339-356. (Male)
Morini agrees there is irony in Austen’s novels which is a general agreement shared
by many critics. Most critics hold that there is a gap between what the novels say and
what they mean, but different schools of criticism interpret that gap in contrasting ways.
Most critics suggest that the difficulties arise from the fact there are so many voices used
by Austen to express echoic irony (so it is difficult to define which voice is endorsed by
Austen).
Morini suggests that Sperber and Wilson’s definition of echoic irony is not good enough
to explain all ironies in Austen’s. Sperber and Wilson’s define echoic irony as “the ironic
speaker…or narrator….voices thoughts which are not his/her own, while at the same time
dissociating [him/herself] from [them] with anything from mild ridicule to savage scorn.
Morini has two concerns with Sperber and Wilson’s definition of echoic irony. First,
Morini says that sometimes the speakers don’t specifically ‘echo’ what another person
has said; they don’t say the exact same thing. Second, at times they aren’t referring to
what the other person has said in a scornful or ridiculing way. Instead they may use the
irony for another purpose.
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Morini then proposes to rewrite Sperber and Wilson’s echoic irony as ‘perspectival
disengagement,” which widens the scope of Sperber and Wilson’s echoic irony
definition.
• “Perspectival” refers to allowing a greater perspective on the utterance – it is not
necessary to find a specific prior ‘echoed’ thought or utterance. “Disengagement”
is designed to cover all cases in which there is something less than the ridicule or
scorn which Sperber and Wilson suggest. So his theory allows a better
interpretation of more subtle irony.
39. (article) Neiman, A. (1991). Ironic Schooling: Socrates, Pragmatism and the Higher
Learning. Educational Theory, 41(4), 371-384. (MALE).
This article reviews Socratic Irony which implies notions of liberal education. It
argues for an ironic view of schooling and discusses elements of liberal education in the
tradition of the pragmatic, noting irony in education is essential.
- Socratic irony is a pose of ignorance assumed in order to entice others into
making statements that can then be challenged. Socrates makes the world
a place without certainty and so that made him and others ask questions,
suggesting that Socrates was a complete ironist. Every way in which he
lived his life was ironic.
According to Neiman the ironist is someone who is constantly questioning everything.
Neiman compares the ironist to the common sensist and metaphysicist.
Common sensist refers to common sense which is sound judgment and good sense in
practical matters.
Metaphysics is the branch of philosophy concerned with understanding philosophy and
the deeper meaning of the self and the world.
- Neiman says that an ironist is a combination of the two.
Neiman suggests that only by becoming ironists can we fully start to inquire into the
world (because to the Socratic Ironist the world has no absolutes). So we should attempt
to use our education system to turn students into ‘ironists’ – in that way they can fully
enquire about the world. Hopefully by turning students into ironists they will see what is
wrong with the world and then raise the next generation in a different way.
The ironist thinks of language “not as a medium of representation but as a kind of tool by
which we solve our problems.” The ironist is also a pragmatist.
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For the pragmatist dialogue is intended as a conversation to express different opinions so
a consensus is reached on what is practicable.
(Used in paper) The pragmatic irony involves a community of shared speech among
themselves to meet their various purposes…” The pragmatic dialogue requires inquiry,
for a community to solve their problems by enacting a change in its “vocabularies and
beliefs.” Irony exhibits this change in vocabulary, for example when an ironist says
‘sunny day’ they mean ‘rainy day’, and an audience understands this irony via the
pragmatic understanding when an utterance challenges common sense. Communities
make revisions according to their doubts and their sense of wonder which allows them to
transcend the ‘truth’ for a higher understanding of sense to reach a solution.
40. (article). Newman, K. (1983). Can This Marriage Be Saved: Jane Austen Makes
Sense of an Ending. ELH, 50(4), 693-710. (FEMALE)
This article claims that many scholars feel that the endings of Austen’s novels are
unsatisfactory, because feminist heroines have to marry. In Austen’s novels, irony
and parody are subversive strategies that undermine the male hegemony her novels
portray and reveal the romantic and materialist contradictions which her plots and
characters are made of.
• So, in fact Austen’s endings of her novels (incl. P&P) are a reflection of what
women can achieve working within traditional patriarchal power structures (from
which women are excluded).
o But Elizabeth is able to influence Darcy after their marriage and during
their courtship.
 E.g. Darcy admits to Elizabeth that he has been too proud before
meeting her and that since meeting her he has learnt to put pride in
its proper place.
• Newton notes that Austen uses irony to put forward her feminist views. He claims
that according to French feminist psychoanalyst Irigaray, under cultural
constructions of patriarchal power, women’s writing tends to be mimesis,
imitation of male forms, but imitation with a difference. So we can say that
Austen’s parody, especially her parodic endings is her means to interrogate and
criticize patriarchal plots and power.
41. (article) Newton, J. (1978). “Pride and Prejudice”: Power, Fantasy, and Subversion in
Jane Austen. Feminist Studies, 4(1), 27-42 (FEMALE)
This article is concerned with the differences between men and women in terms of
power. It notes men have economic power and autonomy.
o However, men may have economic independence but the men within the
novel P & P are often not presented in the most flattering light (e.g. Mr.
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Collins is presented as a fool, Mr. Bingley is dependent on others to help
him make choices)- showing men need women (men needing help from
women) which shows women have power.
o E.g. Elizabeth is able to change Darcy’s views on various things despite
the fact that he is the one with the obvious power (In their role women use
subversion in the power struggle between men and women. They can take
away some power from men. Women undermined men’s power. Women
have the power below the surface to balance between men and women. So
it limits the power differences between men and women in the novel. And
it notes that Jane Austen’s ironical writing style is a feminist way of
disguising opposition to men. It is evasive so it makes it safe.
o E.g. although it is a feminist but Elizabeth is made safe in the eyes of
society (i.e. those reading the book at the time) by being presented
‘charmingly.’
• This article also suggests that P&P may portray some of Austen’s own desires and
thoughts that hadn’t come to pass. Also provided Austen with an outlet for her
frustrated desires and wants.
• Newton views the whole novel as ‘fantasy’
o Possibly a fantasy that a woman of the time could have such a large effect
on a man.
o Also suggests that if Elizabeth Bennet is a fantasy then we need more
fantasies like her.
42. (article). Robinson, J. (1985). Style and Personality in the Literary Work. The
Philosophical Review. 94(2), 227-247. (FEMALE)
According to Robinson, Style is a way to express personality; an expression of that
person’s traits of mind, character or personality. For example, Jane Austen’s ironic
way of describing social pretension expresses her ironic attitude to social pretension.
Austen, does so by using language in certain ways.
Verbal elements of style are the elements that contribute to the expression of personality.
Style is defined as something slightly out of the ordinary that is done repeatedly and
consistently by someone in order for it to be recognized as theirs.
An author’s writing style is partially defined by their usage of linguistics.
• It is partially possible to infer the personality of the author from their writing
style; this refers to an implied author/writer/personality from Booth.
o Writing style may show you the focus of the author – are they concerned
with what is happening in the psychology of their characters? Do they
show compassion for their characters?
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o Personalities of characters within novels may also provide clues to the
personality of the author. For example in P&P we can guess that Austen
was a feminist because Elizabeth is a feminist. This idea is from the
concept of the implied author.
• Although, it is impossible to know everything about the personality of an author
from their work.
o Authors may hide behind certain linguistic devices.
o Also, as readers we may project our own views onto their work – for
example we may wish Austen was like Elizabeth because we like the
character of Elizabeth.
43. (article) Searle, J. (1976). A Classification of Illocutionary Acts. Language in Society,
5(1), 1-23.
In this article, Searle claims that the most important way to classify his five speech
acts taxonomy are illocutionary point (essential condition), direction of fit (the
relationship of the words to the world); and expressed psychological state (sincerity
condition). These three form the basis of a taxonomy of the fundamental classes of
illocutionary acts. The five basic kinds of illocutionary acts are: representatives (or
assertives), directives, commissives, expressives, and declarations. He refuted Austin’s
classification of speech acts base on the theory that all synonymous verbs would fall
under the same illocutionary act.
The three main principles of which are: (1) the essential condition of the act, what the act
means to do or counts as (e.g. directives with different forces such as request, order,
challenge, or dare); (2) the relationship of the words to the world; (3) the psychological
state, known as the sincerity condition.
Direction of fit is understood in the following ways: The first is words-to-world, which is
to use words to describe some pre-existing conditions within the world (ASR). Second,
the direction of world-to-words is to use words to propose the world to change according
to the word’s design (DIR and COM). A third approach is the lack of directional of fit,
where the words do not propose any changes or claim any circumstances of existence
within the world (EXP). The final direction is a simultaneous emersion of the worldly
circumstance when the word is uttered, bringing about a change within the world at the
moment of speech that commits the world to some new situation (DEC).
44. (article) Shaw, V. (1975). Jane Austen’s Subdued Heroines. Nineteenth-Century
Fiction, 30(3), 281-303. (FEMALE)
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This article provides a comparison of Austen’s heroines, in particular comparing
her earlier and later heroines in her novels.
It is thought that in Austen’s final two novels (Mansfield Park and Persuasion) the
heroines are more mature in terms of moral character. But they are less feminist in many
ways, less forthright and less direct.
Shaw states that this is not because Austen was getting older and trying to moralize
(moralize means tell people what morals they should live their lives by) but because she
was trying to show a deeper, richer spectrum of human emotion. Verbal wit may be
toned down, but possibly because Austen wants to heighten social comment without
coloring it too highly with satiric comedy.
(Used in paper); In general, Austen’s irony exists in all of her works. Austen’s ironical
narration is often aimed at the social follies and hypocrisies. She also uses it to suggest
the tragic aspects of the self that is isolated from its own society.
45. (article). Shen, D. (2002). Defense and Challenge: Reflections on the Relation
between Story and Discourse. Narrative, 10(3), 222-243. (FEMALE)
This article looks at the structuralist distinction between story and discourse:
o Story; what is told (the thing being told)
 Story is made up of three functions;
• Thematic; the theme or plot
• Mimetic; the imitation of the real world
• Synthetic; the fact that the story is untrue, comes from the
author’s imagination
o Discourse; how is it told, the way in which the story is told (the language
used, writing style etc.)
Some scholars claim that in actual fact there is no distinction between discourse and
story. Shen disagrees, claims that there is a distinction between story and discourse,
however, in certain areas this distinction becomes blurred and can lead to unreliable
narration.
Shen notes 5 areas of discourse (Genette isolates three major aspects of temporal
(chronological) manipulation or articulation in the movement from the story to text
(narrative text) the five main concepts used by Genette in Narrative Discourse: An Essay
in Method. They are primarily used to look at the syntax of narratives, rather than to
perform an interpretation of them.
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1. Order: this refers to the relations between the assumed sequence of events in the
story and their actual order of presentation in text.
2. Duration: for Genette this chiefly concerns the relations between the extent of time
that are supposed to have actually taken up, and the amount of text devoted to
presenting those same events.
3. Frequency: how often something happens in story compared with how often it is
narrated in text.
4. Mood: ‘distance' and 'perspective' of the narrator (focalization)
5. Voice: with who narrates, and from where (narrating)
In the first three Shen notes that the distinction appears to be quite clear (as Genette
isolates three major aspects of temporal manipulation or articulation in the movement
from the story to text (narrative text)
It is in the last two (mood and the voice) that there is some blurring of the distinction
between discourse and story.
• Blurring of distinction particularly obvious when certain techniques are used;
o Narrated speech
o Character’s perception when used as the angle of vision by the narrator
o Homodiegetic narration
 (The narrator is a character in the story).
• The point of the article is to raise these questions to open the field for further
study.
46. (article). Sinex, M. (2002). Echoic Irony in Walter Map’s Satire against the
Cistercians. Comparative Literature, 54(4), 275-290. (FEMALE)
This article reviews a book written by Map to find examples of Echoic Irony. The
book by Map was written in the 12th Century (known as medieval times) and makes fun
of a particular type of monk. Sinex notes that Map uses echoic irony to create satire.
The article provides definitions of irony that were around at the time that Map was
writing
- Quintilian (provides a definition) of irony as the interpreter understands
something the opposite of what is said.
- BUT this definition doesn’t explain understatement
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- Another definition by (Cicero- very famous Roman writer) “irony is
present when the speaker says something other than what he thinks.” By
this definition understatement could be explained.
But Sinex says that these definitions of irony don’t fully explain the way in which Map
writes and so she uses Sperber and Wilson’s definition of echoic irony to explain:
- An echoic utterance doesn’t just report what someone else has said or
thinks. Instead it also conveys the speaker’s (ironist’s) attitude or reaction
to what was said or thought. The speaker’s attitude is crucial – (Grice
believes ironies normally communicate negativity, not everyone agrees
with this).
- The echoed thought or opinion doesn’t necessarily have to have been
conveyed by an identifiable individual. The thought may be a cultural
norm instead. The ironic echo doesn’t have to replicate the original
utterance word for word, but it must contain ‘interpretative resemblance.’
- Sperber and Wilson also suggest there can be distance (of either time or
space) between the original utterance and the ironic echoic allusion. The
beliefs of echoic allusion are not necessary held by the speaker (ironist).
In order to recognize echoic irony the reader/H must first recognize that an ironic
utterance is an echoic interpretation of something already uttered or thought. Then the
reader/H must work out the attitude of the speaker to what he has echoed. Sperber and
Wilson say that when deciding whether a remark is ironic or not the hearer relies on
contextual information. There are three elements that contribute to deciding on the
speaker’s (ironist) attitude towards the proposition they have echoed these are; diction,
tone, and immediate context.
In particular in Map’s book he uses “paired utterances” – in which something is said
in the first pair part and then echoed ironically in the second pair part to evoke satire and
humor.
(In paper) Sinex believes that Sperber and Wilson’s model provides several advantages.
- It isn’t necessary to provide a distinction between figurative and literal
utterances (ironical under/over statements, etc.)
- The model doesn’t suggest that the reader needs special methods or
abilities to understand irony. Instead they suggest we use ordinary
processes to grasp these ironies.
- This model doesn’t presuppose special knowledge (of the reader) about
the author and their goals in writing. Many definitions of irony suggest
that this is necessary (for example Booth suggests this is necessary, the
implied/historical author).
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 Booth says that in order to understand irony you must understand
the historical/implied author – you must understand the author’s
thoughts and views on certain subjects. Then when reading what is
said by the narrator/speaker you can spot the incongruity (the
differences) between what the narrator/speaker says and the actual
views of the author thus allowing you to see the irony. Booth
believes that if you understand the true views of the author you can
repudiate the literal saying of the narrator and find the intended
meaning. Sinex believes this is unnecessary to see and understand
irony.
47 (article) Strawson, P. (1964). Intention and Convention in Speech Acts. Philosophical
Review, 73, 439-60. (Male)
Strawson claims that Austin said that all speech acts are conventional but he says
that not all speech acts are conventional – only those with institutional authority can
be considered to be conventional. Others are unconventional.
Strawson claims that there are cases the illocutionary act itself is not quite a conventional
act, only to the degree that “the means used to perform it” is conventional.
Strawson comes to the conclusion there are two types of illocutionary acts:
- If the illocutionary act is not quite conventional: if uptake is secured, if the
utterance is understood as containing the overt intention issued by the S.
But even if communication is performed the intention may be frustrated
without any breach of rules or conventions. The audience response (like
belief, action, or attitude) is simply not forthcoming. (Not prescribed
response)
- If the utterance is of a conventional procedure. If uptake is secured then
any frustration of the intention must be a breach of rule or convention.
Strawson uses Grice’s classifications of intention (meaning the speaker’s intention is
recognized by his audience) to explain how Speech acts function properly according to
the intention behind them and the conventions surrounding them (in paper).
Illocutionary force will be used up or exhausted once the utterance has taken place
because it can be seen as having fulfilled its purpose. Strawson says this is only the case
when conventions are so strong that it doesn’t allow there to have been no intention
behind the utterance.
However, according to Strawson (1964) this is partially dependent on whether the
illocutionary act is conventional or not. Unlike Austin Strawson believes that not all
illocutionary acts are “essentially conventional” (457). Instead even if a speaker has an
overt intention behind their utterance, and even if uptake of that utterance is secured, if
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it is still possible for the intention to be frustrated without breaking any rules or
conventions then the illocutionary act cannot be considered fully conventional.
48. (article) Sullivan, Z. (1991). Theory for the Untheoretical: Rereading and Reteaching
Austen, Bronte, and Conrad. College English, 53(5), 571-579. (FEMALE)
The author claims common readers are untheoretical readers so in order to fully
understand a novel one must understand the historical context surrounding the novel.
The Historical context includes; social, economic and political factors. This concept is
known as Marxist Historicism.
• So for example Sullivan says that at first reading we may see P&P as unsatisfying
due to its change in a novel that begins with ‘ironic realism’ and ends as a
conventional romance.
• In actual fact if one examines the historical context of the novel it could be said
that it was impossible for Austen to have any other ending.
49. (article). Walczak, G. (2008). Gender Trouble. Feminism and Subversion of Identity
by Judith Butler. (FEMALE)
This article is a commentary on Butler’s book ‘Gender Trouble.’
• Notes that Butler views gender as social construct – it is not natural.
• Feminists also create a construct for themselves which boxes them away into a
certain grouping. Linguistics can also make this happen, certain linguistic styles
will make this more likely,
• In order to achieve true equality we should seek to deconstruct the binary
concept of gender and allow the way for other marginalized groups (in paper).
• Walczak’s criticism of Butler is that although her methodology is good it is not
prescriptive – she does not set out any way in which to do this.
50. (article). Warning, R. & Morton, M. (1982). Irony and the “Order of Discourse” in
Flaubert. New Literary History, 13(2), 253-286.
This article claims that complicity (which is involvement and participation) is
needed for irony to work. Both complicity between S & H and complicity between
author and reader are needed. This shows the intelligence of all parties considered, the
speaker/author for being able to utter the ironical remark, the hearer/reader for being able
to recognize it. It also forms a bond of solidarity between S/author and H/reader against
the uninitiated audience (the H/reader who does not understand the irony).
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• Perlocutionary force should be understood as the speaker’s intention of the speech
act upon the hearer, contrasted with the illocutionary force, which is the intention
of the speech act from the speaker’s perspective. The pragmatic situation is
altered by the speaker, placing the hearer in the position of being the one who lets
the act of irony succeed at all by their reaction to the utterance. To call upon the
hearer to accomplish this task, empowers him with the confidence to so. Thus the
effect attempted by the speaker, the hearer joining the speaker against the target,
rests on this flattery.
• Basically this ironic complicity between speaker and hearer takes place on the
pragmatic rather than the semantic or syntactic level. The affective force in
instances of irony is explained by Warning & Morton as a pragmatic level
inference in which H can realize that the descriptor the S proposes is being
evaluated by the S ironically instead of the opposing (literal) identity the
descriptor features (259).
51. (article) Wilson, D. (2006). The Pragmatics of Verbal Irony: Echo or Pretence?
Lingua, 116, 1722-1743. (Female)
This paper considers two post-Gricean accounts of verbal irony. The first treats irony
as an echoic use of language in which the speaker tacitly dissociates herself from an
attributed utterance or thought. The second treats irony as a type of pretence in which the
speaker "makes as if" (only to pretend) to perform a certain speech act, expecting her
audience to see through the pretence and recognise the mocking or critical attitude behind
it. The two approaches have been seen as hard to differentiate. The author argues that the
echoic and pretence accounts can be distinguished (on both theoretical and empirical
grounds), and that while echoic use is essential to standard cases of verbal irony, pretence
is not. However, irony has been applied to a very wide range of phenomena, not all of
which can be explained in the same way, and she admits some less central cases where
varieties of pretence or simulation do indeed achieve ironical effects.
What is missing from the pretence account is what is emphasized by the echoic account
that the attitude expressed (suspicion, mockery, rejection, etc.) is primarily to a thought
or utterance attributable to some identifiable person or people in general. The author
criticizes that the pretense account works only for cases where mimicry or simulation
(imitation) are involved. (The author contends that in irony, the speaker gives up mimicry
or simulation in order to express her own attitude, in her own tone of voice.)
52. (article) Wilson, D. & Sperber, D. (1992). On Verbal Irony. Lingua, 87, 53-76.
This article attacks the Gricean pragmatic description of irony as an ironist
intentionally flouting insincerity in order to infer something literally opposite.
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Traditional irony in the scope of Grice’s cooperative principle cannot comprehensively
define all types of irony and regard his definition as either too rigid or too vague.
They call irony a kind of ‘echoic allusion’ which is an ironical utterance credited to some
previously existing idea,
o E.g. “when in Rome” as an echoic allusion.
o This utterance is part of a statement, “When in Rome do as the Romans
do,” but it can be understood in various contexts outside of Rome.
o The speaker re-expresses the idea using a similar verbal substance
accredited to someone else entirely, but the idea is implicitly dissociated
from the speaker at that present time.
So, they suggest echoic theory works better than the traditional interpretation of irony to
describe and explain the rationale for irony as a figurative form.
o Identify three problematic situations,
 ironical under/overstatement,
 ironical quotation
 ironical interjection
(In Paper) As part of the echoic account, mention, conveys a viewpoint credited
to someone other than the speaker which can help us understand the usage of ironical
quotations and ironical interjections, which contain no proposition or element with that
opposition can be measured. Where traditional accounts of irony fail, echoic theory
provides compelling rationale.
Echoic mention is a narrow aspect under the broader concept of echoic
interpretation, which works to illustrate how verbal ironic utterances like ironical
understatements and overstatements are used.
53. (article) Wilson, D. & Sperber, D. (2002). Relevance Theory. UCL Working Papers
in Linguistics, 14, 249-290.
Relevance theory is psychological model for understanding the cognitive
interpretation of language, and also “an inferential approach to pragmatics.” The
theory contends in order to be most efficient communication should be ‘relevant.’
Relevance in communication is the key.
Relevance is understood in terms of cognitive effects and processing efforts
o Cognitive effects; a relevant utterance is one that extends the mutual
cognitive environment to the greatest effect.
o Processing effort; the most efficient communication is one that requires
the least processing effort. Ostensive behavior is obvious behavior that
provides obvious clues to what is being said. This graduates to ostensive-
inferential communication, from such behavior or utterances clues can be
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drawn by H as to what S is thinking. So tropes (e.g. echoic irony) can be
said to be part of ostensive-inferential communication.
“Every ostensive stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance”
• In this paper the other main point includes their critiques of Grice;
o Grice set the foundations for an inferential model of communication.
Another central claim that relevance theory is based on is that Grice
believes that utterances create expectations which guide the hearer
towards the speaker’s meaning. Grice describes these expectations are in
terms of a Co-operative Priniciple. Grice describes irony as an overt
violation of the maxim of truthfulness as it says one thing and means
another.
o The authors say this definition is descriptively inadequate for such things
as ironical overstatement/understatement, and ironical allusions.
o Therefore Grice does not sufficiently explain verbal irony.
o Implicature; according to Grice anything that is not explicitly said creates
implicatures. According to relevance theorists just because something is
not explicitly said doesn’t mean it doesn’t have an explicit meaning.
54. (article). Worthen, W. (1998). Drama, Performativity, and Performance. PMLA,
113(5), 1093-1107. (MALE)
Performativity is referred to the” capacity of speech,” and other non-verbal forms of
action, in order to perform a constructed identity. The term "performativity,"
derives from speech act theory by Austin, who did not use the word "performativity,"
but did give the name performative utterances to mean saying something was doing
something.
Austin's account of performativity has been subject to extensive discussion in philosophy,
literature and beyond. Butler is one of the scholars who has elaborated upon and
contested aspects of Austin's account from the vantage point of feminism. In her work
performativity has played an important role in discussions of social change.
Butler, offered the notion of performativity, which has its roots in linguistics and
philosophy of language, describes performativity as “…that reiterative power of
discourse.” She used this concept for gender development which is brought to life
through discourse.
Butler focuses much on “gender performativity” and sees gender as an act that has been
rehearsed, much like a script. We as the actors make the script a reality through
repetition, and come to perform in the mode of belief. Butler sees gender not as an
expression of what one is, rather as something that one does. The general background
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provides this article to look at performance (mainly within the theatre) of dramatic texts
and how they can be changed from the original.
• According to Austin utterances within the theatre lacked illocutionary force as
they were infelicitous – there was no real intention to carry out whatever was said
by the actors. (In Paper) it is suggested that although the performatives may
appear hollow they are still formed through dramatic narrative and audience
participation. Utterances form the personality of the characters and the social
contexts. So, it is still does something.
• Worthen also suggested that after hearing Austin’s claims that there is a lack of
believable performativity within theatres, some theatres have tried to act on these
claims – to separate what is performed from the text (of the play/book/etc.) in
order to provide a better performativity.
• There are questions as to whether it is in fact the language written in the original
manuscript that motivates the strength of dramatic performance.
55. (article). Wright, A. (1969). The Compass of Irony by D. C. Muecke. College
English, 31(3), 322-326. Retrieved July 11, 2012, from the JSTOR database. (Male)
This article provides a general introduction of Muecke’s The Compass of Irony.
• It gives the definition of irony taken from Muecke, with three essential elements:
o Irony is double layered
o There is some opposition between the two layers
o There is an element of ‘innocence,’ either a victim is unaware of irony or
the ironist pretends not to be ware of it.
• Verbal irony vs Situational:
The most familiar distinction of irony is that which separates it into two general
classifications: Verbal (also termed as Intentional) Irony and Situational Irony. This
distinction serves as one of the most basic classifications of irony:
“Verbal Irony implies an ironist, intentionally employing a technique. Situational Irony
does not imply an ironist but merely ‘a condition of affairs’ or ‘outcome of events’ felt to
be ironic, something that just happens to be noticed as ironic.
There is a difference between the concepts of ironic and ironical which is essential to
understand the verbal irony and situational irony. Ironic is also referred to as the “the
Irony of Fate” or “practical irony” and is used to describe an event that occurs as a
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coincidence. Ironical, describes one who intends to show something ironic is occurring,
and an ironist induces the irony that takes place.
• Irony is classified into 3 grades and four modes. The three grades; overt, covert,
and private.
Muecke (1980) continues by further classifying irony into four modes: The first two
modes, Impersonal Irony and Self-disparaging Irony relate much to what is detailed as
verbal irony in the sense that they are used intentionally by a speaker; In Pride and
Prejudice Elizabeth represents a prime example of both Impersonal and Self-disparaging
modes of irony. She uses many tactics of impersonal irony to ridicule and also uses ploys
to pretend her ignorance in order to force her object, in many cases Darcy, into self-
contradiction. In the remaining two modes of irony, the role of the ironist is solely given
to the author and the characters become either discoverers or objects of a situational
irony.
1. Impersonal: is characterized by the ironic utterance itself. Impersonal Irony is
recognized by how it conveys mockery on the part of some object. (It relates to echoic
irony, not related to personal experience instead based on something heard.)
2. Self-disparaging Irony centers upon the ironist’s persona as a principle factor. Self-
disparaging ironists are much like Socrates; they confess their ignorance while their
superiority is made apparent by their ability to force their supposed superiors into
contradicting themselves.
3. Ingénu Irony, the character charms the readers with their naivety and incomprehension
of the world’s ways, often leading them to see what others cannot or discover the irony in
situations. (Jane Bennet as example)
4. Dramatized Irony is found to be played around the characters unbeknownst to them.
This mode of irony is no more than ‘the presentation in drama or fiction of such ironic
situations or events as we may find in life’ (when the author of literature writes an ironic
situation into their play or book).
He also review general irony as a type of irony towards the world/situation/ time and
romantic irony is the ironist’s way of manifesting in art his sense of life’s contradictions.
56. (article) Wright, A. (1975). Jane Austen Adapted. Nineteenth-Century Fiction. 30(3),
421-453. (Male)
Basically this article has a focus to claim that Wright refers to Austen as an
excellent writer and says this is why people all around the world have attempted to copy
her writing.
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Jane Austen is so important a writer that Pride and Prejudice has been adapted to the
stage (plays), screen (films & TV), and other authors have attempted to continue the story
(e.g. Shades of Pemberley). It has also been updated and modernized (e.g. Bridget
Jones’s Diary).
57. (article) Zimmerman, E. (1968). Pride and Prejudice in Pride and Prejudice.
Nineteenth-Century Fiction, 23(1), 64-73. (MALE)
This paper is trying to examine how much the title actually gives us a clue to the
moral ground and plot of the novel. It claims that “pride and prejudice” acquire a
meaning related to the limitations of human vision, which was what Austen was trying
to show.
Austen satirizes almost all her characters in P & P, giving them all to a greater or lesser
degree some pride or prejudice.
Notes that dialogue from characters and narration from Austen are both ironical. The
ironies from the narration and the way that the characters distort things due to their own
prejudices allow the reader to see the plot.
Austen shows that even those with high morals have flaws, in some way. Austen’s
ironical narration is often aimed at society as a whole, despite the fact that it is the flaws
of individuals that cause society to act in bad ways.
VICTIM
The definition of ‘victim’ provided by pretense theory (and agreed with by such writers
as Booth) is very narrow. It only really defines those as victims who are uninitiated
audience members – those who have not understood the irony. According to Booth this
thus creates a ‘community’ of those who understood the irony (agreed with by Frye), this
community is able to realize feelings of superiority, both moral and intellectual. Hutchens
disagrees with this notion, instead saying that communities already exist and that irony
can come into being within them. Frye also points out that as the community is so large it
could be argued that it is not a community at all as it barely excludes anyone. He claims
that if there is a community of initiates then maybe this suggests a need for a community
of victims.
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It even originally seems as if Muecke agrees with this definition as he says that the victim
of irony is those who are ignorant of it. But a more careful reading of Muecke shows that
in this case he is talking about situational rather than verbal irony. However, there may
not be an ironist for situational irony.
However, this paper extends this definition of the uninitiated or ignorant audience
members as victim, finding it too narrow and restrictive. Instead we want to change the
notion of victim to include that referred to by Muecke as “object” that is the
thing/person/situation that the ironist is being ironical about. This is known as “target” by
Simpson who defined it as ‘An event, person, experience, or text which a satiree
identifies in uptake as the victim of the attack’. In the paper we have chosen to change the
definition of victim to include these aspects. Thus the victim is not normally referred to in
the pretense sense – as the uninitiated audience member, although we acknowledge the
sense of community created for those who are initiated. Instead the victim/target is the
person whom the irony is directed towards or who is spoken about.
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