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Why study language; Or, the linguistic turn

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We're Creative Writing majors and not Linguistics or TESL students, after all.

But as Mick Underwood points out, in his Communication, Cultural and Media Studies (now defunct) site, the "linguistic turn" influenced studies in several disciplines -- literature included. The influence of linguistics is seen in the focus on language in the literary theories of the New Critics, Russian Formalists, structuralists, and poststructuralists, among others.

Even creative writers point to language as integral in how or why they write. For instance, Gémino Abad says about why he writes: “I was curious how one could look with words and see things clearly again” (State of Play 14). Implied in his statement is the driving force -- call it curiosity or necessity, or call it passion -- that propels writers into a world of words.

For as soon as writers, according to Annie Dillard, “lay out a line of words … [the] line of words [becomes] a miner’s pick, a woodcarver’s gouge, a surgeon’s probe. [They] wield it, and it digs a path [they] follow” (qtd. in Burke and Tinsley 16).

Following those lines of words becomes an arduous journey for writers, though. The opening they carve in the jungle of language leads them into an unknown and, more often than not, labyrinthine path that may seem to lead them to forks or crossroads before it brings them somewhere “meaningful.”
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To understand how they clear a way through the dense foliage of language, the linguist Roger Fowler contended that “linguistic methods and tools [are] necessary for the proper and detailed analysis of literary texts” (Green and LeBihan 3).
What this kind of analysis achieves is an understanding of how linguistic units construct a text (a line of words, according to Dillard; a stretch of language comprising one or more units of meaning, according to Green and LeBihan) from the level of speech sounds to the syntactic level.

This kind of description grounds any possible interpretation of a text; that is, whatever impressions a reader may get from a text can always be cross-checked against its grammatical construction.

What this formal analysis lacks, however, is a description of the context to which a syntactical unit belongs. This “knowable context” accounts for how a text “is transformed into discourse when it forms a coherent whole.” For example, we understand the following text not only as a sequence of imperative sentences but also as belonging to the discourse of recipe books: “Wash and core the apples. Put them in a bowl” (Green and LeBihan 8).
We are able to understand the sentence quoted above because we recognize the style usually adopted by writers of recipe books. Stylistics, however scholars may agree to define it later on (the verdict is still out), provides us a better grasp of a particular discourse through its identification of linguistic features that may be typical and/or unique in a particular genre.
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Which leads us to the next question: Is there such a thing as a language unique to literature? How is this language different from the “ordinary” language we use to communicate in our everyday conversations?

We'll try to answer this question as we tackle next the ideas of the New Critics, Russian Formalists, Structuralists, Poststructuralists, Deconstructionists, and the Postmodernists.

Ready?

Reading assignment:

  • Julia Rivkin and Michael Ryan's "Introduction: Formalisms" in Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004)
  • Cleanth Brook's "The Formalist Critics" in Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004)
  • Cleanth Brook's "The Language of Paradox" in Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004)
  • W. K. Wimsatt's "The Structure of the Concrete Universal" in Literary Theory: An Anthology, 2nd ed. (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 2004)

Supplementary readings:
  • Terry Eagleton's "Chapter 1: The Rise of English," particularly pp. 38-46, in Literary Theory: An Introduction, Anniv. ed. (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2008)
  • Raman Selden, Peter Widdowson, and Peter Brooker's "Chapter 1: New Criticism, Moral Formalism and F. R. Leavis" in A Reader's Guide to Contemporary Literary Theory, 5th ed. (Harlow, UK: Pearson Education Ltd., 2005)
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Topics

1. Orientation
2. Criticism, theory, and literature3. Literature and the linguistic turn
  • New Criticism
  • Formalisms
  • Structuralism
  • Poststructuralism
  • Deconstruction and postmodernism
4. Literature and history
  • Marxisms
  • Cultural Studies
  • New Historicism
  • Postcolonial literary theory
5. Literature, subjectivities, and identities
  • Archetypal criticism
  • Psychoanalytic criticism
  • Feminisms
  • Gender and queer theory
6. Literature and its readers
  • Rhetoric
  • Hermeneutics
  • Reception and reader-response theories
7. Synthesis
References:
  • Abad, Gémino H. State of Play: Letter-Essays and Parables. Manila: Kalikasan Press, 1990.
  • Burke, Carol and Molly Best Tinsley. The Creative Process. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1993.
  • Green, Keith and Jill LeBihan. Critical Theory and Practice: A Coursebook. London: Routledge, 1996.
  • Underwood, Mick. "Introductory Models and Basic Concepts: Semiotics." Communication, Cultural and Media Studies. 2003. Availabe online: Worldwide Web. (Retrieved Nov. 12, 2008)
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