Study Guide for ENG1502

© 2012 University of South Africa All rights r ights reser ved Printed and published by the University of South Africa Muckleneuk, Muckleneuk, Pretoria ENG1502/1/2013–2014 98917056 InDesign

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CONTENTS Page Preface

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Learning unit 1: What is Language?

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1.1 1.1 An Introduction to Foundations in Applied English Engl ish Language Lang uage 1.2 What are texts and domains? 1.3 What is language? langu age? 1.4 Why study language? lang uage? Conclusion References

1 3 4 5 6 6

Learning Lear ning unit 2: Let’s listen to the sounds of the English Language Lang uage 2.1 The discrepancy between spelling spelli ng and sound 2.2 Basic concepts of the sound system 2.3 Sound production 2.4 Variation in pronunciation 2.5 Attitudes and accents 2.6 Sound patterning patterni ng 2.6.1 The syllable 2.6.2 2.6. 2 Stress and intonation Conclusion References

7 8 11 15 19 20 21 21 24 25 25

Learning Lear ning unit 3: How do we build them? Words Words and Sentences 3.1 Morphology Morphology 3.1.1 3.1.1 Types ype s of morphemes morpheme s 3.2 Challenges Challeng es in dividing divid ing words into morphemes 3.3 Morphs and allomorphs 3.4 Word formation format ion processes processe s 3.5 Syntax: word order and sentence structure structu re 3.5.1 The sentence 3.6 The basic structure struct ure of the sentence 3.7 The conjunction in a sentence 3.8 Sentences in texts Conclusion References

26 26 27 30 31 32 34 34 35 52 52 53 56

Learning Lear ning unit 4: I hear what you are saying, but what do you mean? 4.1 What is meaning? meani ng?

57 58

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4.1.1 4.1.1 Word order and meaning mean ing 4.1.2 4.1.2 Time, space and meaning meani ng 4.1.3 4.1.3 Non-verbal language lang uage (or paralingu paral inguistic istic tools) tools) and meaning meani ng 4.1.4 4.1.4 Signs/symbols Signs/symbols and meaning meani ng 4.2 Words Words in context 4.2.1 Ambiguity 4.2.2 4.2. 2 Homophones Homophones 4.2.3 Synonyms 4.3 Kinds of meaning 4.3.1 Denotation 4.3.2 Connotation 4.3.3 Literal meaning/Implied meanin g/Implied meaning meanin g 4.3.4 Metaphoric meaning meani ng Conclusion References

58 59 60 60 62 62 63 63 64 64 65 65 65 66 66

Learning Learn ing unit 5: One Language: Lang uage: Many Varieties ariet ies 5.1 Texts in conversational conversat ional contexts 5.2 Context of situation 5.3 Language Lang uage and Society 5.4 Language Lang uage and Social class 5.5 What is Standard English? References

67 67 69 70 72 74 76

Learning unit 6: Language in Action 6.1 The importance of context 6.2 Analysing Analy sing authentic texts in the real world 6.3 Language in literature Conclusion References

77 77 81 95 105 105

Appendices Append ices

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Preface

PREFACE This study guide forms forms the core study study material for for the module ENG1502: ENG1502: Foundations in Applied English Lang uage Studies. The study material materia l comes in a package comprising a Study Guide and an accompanying CD. In this introductory note, we outline the outcomes of the module and its content and we also give gu idance on how to to use the study material.

Purpose of this module The purpose pu rpose of the module is to introduce the study st udy of the English Language. Lang uage. This module is part of the first year English Language and Literature Major offered by the English Studies Department. It forms part of the BA general degree. It’s companion first

year module is ENG1501: Foundations in English Literary Studies.

The graduate that we would like to produce should: should: (1) gain a firm background in the theories underpinning the use of the English language. (2) be able able to use the English language with con fidence in all its functions: reading, writing, writi ng, speaking, speak ing, or listening. listen ing. (3) understand the structure and function of the English language in the various discourses – which include literature, media, technology, and others. To To achieve achieve these outcomes, outcomes, our graduates therefore need to study study a foundational module module in Applied English Studies in the following areas:

• • • •

the sounds and sound patterns of the English language (phonetics and phonology) the formation of words and the relationship among them (morphology (morphology and syntax) ways in which the language lang uage makes meani ng and is used in context (semantics, pragmatics and discourse analysis) the mutual relationship between language and society (sociolinguistics)

The module modu le offers students an opportunity for a broad exploration and understanding of what these aspects of language are and how they relate to each other. The main emphasis is on the application of these theoretical concepts to the English Language and on the laying of a foundation for further explorations in the second year. Unit 1 gives the scope of the module as outlined below: ENG1502/1

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PREFACE

Outcomes and Assessment Criteria of the Module Outcome 1:

Students can describe and explain the structure of texts above single-sentence level. Assessment Assessment criteria: Students can identify the t he purpose, structure, struct ure, audience, tone and style of authentic texts such as advertisements, news reports and political speeches. Outcome 2:

Students can understand and explain the grammatical and functional structure of the English Language. Assessment Assessment criteria: Students can: (1) (1) identify words and phrases in clauses and sentences; (2) describe and explain the functions of the constituents of a sentence; (3) describe the function of of the major major word word classes: classes: noun, noun, verb, adjective, adjective, adverb etc., and recognise the difference between content and structure words. Outcome 3:

Students produce their own writing, practising the conventions of academic English. Assessment Assessment criteria: (1) (1) (2) (3) (4) (5) (6) (7)

in written texts, students can substantiate substantiate their ideas; use the standard standard form form of the English language; langu age; write grammatical gramm atical sentences; compose properly structured structu red paragraphs; adopt a formal tone tone and style; organise ideas logically; logical ly; use correct spelling spell ing and punctuation.

Module Layout There are six units u nits in this th is module.

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With the t he exception of the last unit, un it, each unit is constructed in i n the following way: An introduction; outcomes of the unit; discussion of the critica l areas of the topic; activities; some feedback; and key terminology and references. Unit 6 is laid out slightly differently d ifferently.. This unit u nit gives you an opportun ity to observe some aspects of the language langu age which are covered in the other units as they may be used in real situations. The activities activ ities have been designed to engage e ngage students st udents to think critically critica lly about how each aspect of the English language la nguage relates to others at different levels and in everyday use. Students are expected to complete all exercises, and where feedback has been provided, check their answers. The activities act ivities bui ld progressively on one one another and are therefore interrelated from one unit to another.

Preface

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• • •

In line with the t he practice in Applied Applied Language and Linguist L inguistics, ics, the examples examples used in the Study Guide have been drawn, as far as possible, from various social contexts. Since many of our students students come from Southern Africa, and South Africa, Af rica, many examples reflect this context. However, since language is a universal social phenomenon, anyone who speaks a language will relate comfortably to the concepts illustrated. The CD provides several live examples of the t he English language lang uage as it is spoken by different members of the community of English speakers. Here you have the opportunity to listen to sounds, songs, readings and language as it is really used in various other social scenarios. Each unit provides you with a modest reading l ist which you are strongly advised to go through as it will enrich your understanding of some of the concepts discussed in the module. Whi le all assessment assessment and further fur ther activities activit ies will wil l be included in the Tutorial letter 101, and on the course website, you are urged to make very productive use of the information and exercises in the prescribed texts.

Prescribed Textbooks There are two prescribed books which will be used used in the first and second year. ye ar. You You are required to buy these books. They are available at a discounted fee at all of ficial Unisa booksellers within South Africa. The following are the titles: (1) Carter, R., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K. & Swift, N. (2008) Working with Texts , London: Routledge. (2) Mullany, L. & Stockwell, Stock well, P. (2010) (2010) Introducing English Language , London: Routledge.

Recommended References Richards, C. & Schmidt, R. (2010) Longman Dictionary of Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics, (4th Linguistics, (4th ed) London: Pearson Education Limited In addition to these prescribed books you will also receive some guidelines in your Tutorial Tutorial Letter 101 about the Electronic resources, recommended works and any other ancillary material. We would like to thank than k the listed authors for their contribution to this module.

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UNIT 1: 1: What is language?

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UNIT 1 What is Language? 1

1.1 1.1

AN INTRODUCTIO INTRO DUCTION N TO FOUNDATIONS IN APPLIED APPLI ED ENGLISH LANGUAGE This first year Language Module will provide you with an introduction to the English language. It will familiarise you with the terms and concepts that are used to describe language in a scienti scienti fic and systematic way. These terms and concepts are going to be applied in real life contexts where the English Language is used. You will learn about domains or situations of language use (e.g. home, boardroom, school, court, and so on). on). Because Applied Engl ish language langua ge refers to the arena of the use and application of linguistic concepts in different situations, it will be necessary that we introduce you to the definitions of technical language analysis terminology such as, syntax, phonetics, phonology, register, genre, text, semantics and pragmatics. Language is an integral component of any society. In order for us to investigate how language is used in society, we have to study varieties of language, dialects, standards, and attitudes to language. In line with this, the module will introduce some concepts of language in society. The rationale for this module is taken from the module form, which is an of ficial document that presents the aims and outcomes for modules at UNISA. We outline this underlying principle below: wil l equip students with the skills skil ls of of applied applied English language langu age studies (a) The module will (such as language usage, writing studies, and discourse analysis). Students will be able to apply their understanding and skills to English language as it functions in various real-life real-li fe contexts such as, the media and political politica l contexts. E nglish (b) The module aims to introduce students to a systematic description of English Language and to introduce them to t he grammatical competences competences needed to apply their knowledge to the analysis of authentic language data. module will introduce meta-lang meta-language uage terminology in the discipline of Applied (c) The module English language studies which is essential for advanced pro ficiency and literacy development. The speci fic outcomes of this unit are the following: (1) Define what is language, and describe various de finitions of language. (2) Describe the functions funct ions of language. lang uage.

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(3) Explain Explai n the relevance/importance relevance/importance of of English Language Studies. (4) Use the knowledge gained to analyse a few few texts. This Th is unit un it seeks to orientate you to a list of concepts in Applied English language lang uage studies that are going to be used in the rest of the Study Guide. These ideas form a foundational knowledge base for the study of language in subsequent years.

Source: Adapted from Eggins (1994)

Diagram 1

The diagram diag ram above il lustrates the structure and system of how lang uage relates to people who use it in various situations and cultures. cultu res. Some of these terms may be unfamiliar mil iar to you, but if you look carefully, you might recognize terms like li ke ‘letters’, ‘sounds’, ‘sounds’, ‘wordings’, or ‘words’, ‘meanings’, and ‘culture’. There are also technical words on the diagram that are used to describe these familiar terms, which are used in the study of language. These are; phonology, grammar, and semantics (e.g. phonology = the study of sound patterns). The diagram diag ram above represents t he wider w ider field of language studies. This module will depart from the smallest circle, and move gradually towards the bigger circles. Alt hough it is clear from the diagram through the various lines that the smallest units of analysis of language are sounds and letters, both these take us to the next, bigger circle of words and as you move move further furt her outwards, the words words convey meani meanings. ngs. Words Words and the meanings are governed by grammatical rules. For the sake of this first-year module, we are going to look at at two main concepts concepts that illustrate il lustrate the nature of language. These are texts and domains of language use. You may have heard that meaning depends on the context. In other words , a context or domain has ‘meaning potential’. That is, meaning is obtained in the context. 2


See the diagram below: below:

1.2

WHAT WHAT ARE TEXTS TEX TS AND DOMAINS? TEXTS AND DOMAINS OF LANGUAGE USE

Domains: business, Law, Media, Politics, Advertising, Science, Technology

Texts Texts: lexis, syntax, grammar,

Phonology

Diagram 2

Our main unit u nit of analysis in language studies is a text. What do you think a text is? Write down other words that have the stem ‘text’, (e.g. textile) and a nd think t hink about what they mean. Write down down at least one one de finition of a text. As you read this module, you may may also want to compile compile your own file or journal where you place or paste your own texts. Diagram 2 above shows the two-way, simultaneous relationship that exists between a text, and the domains of language use. This diagram illustrates that any given text occurs within a corresponding domain of language. There are many types of texts, as illustrated in Unit 6. It would not be possible to list all of them. Likewise, there are numerous domains of language use.

Carter et. al. (2008:142) say that the word ‘text’ itself originally meant ‘something woven’ woven’ (Latin (L atin texere , – ‘to weave’ textum weave’ textum – ‘what has been woven’), and you can see a relationship between text, textile (‘capable of being woven’) and texture (‘having the quality of woven cloth’). By ‘text’ we mean any piece of writing/language that hangs together from the beginning to the end. It has to have unity. Texts do not only have to be written. They can be spoken, e.g. the news that we hear on radio, or the news that we watch being broadcast on Television. Television. A text can ca n also be visual visua l or audio-visual. Indeed, texts that are produced for television are audio-visual. Similarly, some written texts combine both the written and the visual, e.g. Newspaper reports. An art painti ng, such as, Leonardo Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, or the Last Supper can also be a text. ENG1502/1

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Domain refers to social categories which locate all instances of language use in various situations or contexts. It can be the classroom domain, the sports field, a church, a political rally, etc. Notice that a classroom belongs to the larger sphere or domain of education, and a sermon in church belongs to the larger domain of religion. Some of the domains of language use that will be discussed in this module are advertising, politics, literature and media. Domains can be more abstract entities, although we can identify them through various artefacts: texts, drawings, and pictures. A collection of pictures can work together to portray a particular domain. Once we define the domain or the situation, we can then ask questions like, what is the topic? Is this text spoken s poken or written? What is the meaning of the text? How does the text create this meaning? Who are the interlocutors (or addresser and addressee)? Who are the participants? Answerparticipants? Answering such questions, will then take us back to other aspects of the study of language where we will wil l be studying concepts concepts like, genre, discourse, register, reg ister, field, tenor and mode, (as shown in Diagram 1 above). These terms will be explained in more detail in the following units. New Terminology

As a way of introducing introduci ng this th is module, we would like li ke to inform you t hat you will wil l meet many new terms and therefore, you will have to learn the de finitions of the terms and how they are applied to the study stud y of language. langua ge. We have have provided glossaries at the end of some units to help you with the t he de finition of terms. You should also consult additional sources to learn more about the concepts that are introduced in this study guide. Be aware that certain terms may sound familiar in everyday use but actually they have a special or a technical meaning in Applied Language Studies. Always have examples of each term. Applied Language Studies requires precision and accuracy in the de finition of terms and examples of the usage of the terms.

1.3

WHAT WHAT IS LANGUAGE? LA NGUAGE? The following following are some of the definitions that have been suggested by different scholars.

• • •

•

Language is sometimes referred to as a semiotic system (Halliday 1979 and Carter et. al. 1997). This means that it is thought to be a system where the individual elements – ‘signs’ – take their overall meaning from how they are combined with other elements, (for example, road traf fic lights) l ights).. Language Langu age is a system of relating relatin g forms to meanings, ( Delahunty & Gar vey 2010:31) 2010:31).. Language Lang uage is a set of rules, unconsciously present present in the mind, mind , which enables human beings to represent and communicate meanings by producing audible, visible, or tactile symbols that these rules systematically relate to those meanings, (Delahunty & Garvey Ga rvey 2010:31) 2010:31).. We use the term language lang uage to refer to the general faculty facult y which enables human huma n beings to engage in the verbal exchange of information – to ‘talk’ to each other. The exchange may take place by means of speech, spee ch, writing writ ing,, signing, sign ing, or Braille, Brai lle, ( Jackson & Stockwell 201 2 011) 1)..

In this module we view language as a system of relating forms to functions. The following is an explanation of what it means to view language as a system. We need to learn forms and functions of the English Language. For example, we learn about the constituents of sentences, such as verbs, nouns, and adverbs. We then move on to lear n about how these forms function in a sentence in order to make mea ning in i n conversation or in other texts. For example, we learn about funct ional aspects of the same forms such 4


as, subject of a simple sentence, predicate, or object. Later on we examine authentic texts, such as, poems and recipes, to see how these are used in contexts. Here is an extract from Delahunty and Garvey Ga rvey (2010:38), which describes why we refer refer to language as a system and what the elements of a system are. A language langua ge as a system

Rules are not distributed randomly in the mind m ind like li ke potatoes in a sack. Rather, they are systematically related to one another. It is easiest to envision this conception with an analogy. A computer system has a set of components (central (central processing processin g unit, monitor, keyboard, speakers, and drives of various types) whose overall function is to process information. The components interact with each other; you can, for instance, play a CD while reading your email. The components also contain smaller parts, all of which interact in precise, though li mited, ways with each other and with parts pa rts of other components. Language Langu age systems likewise likew ise have components. components. The most commonly cited ones are: phonetics/ phonetics/phon phonology, ology, morphology, vocabulary, vocabula ry, orthography/ orthography/spelling/writing spelli ng/writing,, syntax, semantics, pragmatics, and discourse, (Delahunty & Garvey 2010:38). The following table represents the language langu age system:

Lang Langua uage ge conc concep eptt

Meani eaning ng

Phonetics

The study of speech sounds.

Phonolog y

The study of the sound patterning system.

Lexis

The study of the actual words a writer or speaker chooses to use. The study of how words are formed.

Morphology Morphology Syntax Orthography Semantics Pragmatics Discourse

The study of how words combine to form sentences and the rules that govern the formations. Writing systems The study study of of meaning, how meaning is made and understood. understood. The study of the use of langu l anguage age in communication – i.e. sentences as used in contexts and situations. How language langua ge is organized beyond the sentence, i.e. in larger texts.

We have have defined domain, text and what we mean by language as a system above. The rest of the module will clarify some of the components which make up a written or spoken text. It is important to bear in mind that we are analysing language use, and the particular unit of analysis is the text. However, the text is made up of the entire language as a system. This short discussion should make it clear that the micro- (e.g. text) and macro- (e.g. domains or situations) aspects of language study are connected. More of this will be illustrated in the unit on Language in Action.

1.4

WHY STUDY LANGUAGE LA NGUAGE? ? Now that you have been given the de finitions of language, we would like to highlight the importance of studying and teaching about language. Before reading on;

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What reasons can you give for Language Stud ies or for studyi studying ng language? lang uage?

You You may think t hink of many reasons such as, writing, writi ng, reading, readin g, and a nd speaking speak ing English in a world where English is the language langua ge of doing business. In many countries countries al l over the world, English is an of ficial language. You You might be interested in knowing knowi ng about language variation va riation (‘dialects’ or ‘varieties’). ‘var ieties’). You You might be interested in standardisation of languages, lang uages, in how languages langu ages are learned, in the relationships between language and culture or society, or in how computers are programmed to understand or produce language. Maybe you are interested in writing, in journalism, or any communication field. You might want to enrich your own fluency and proficiency in the language. People in various professions frequently have to demonstrate competence and pro ficiency in the use of the English Language.

CONCLUSION In conclusion, we can say that language languag e is a tool that humans use in order to exchange meaningful messages with some of our fellow human beings by means of texts, which are structured according to the rules and conventions of the particular language that we share with those fellow human beings bein gs ( Jackson & Stockwell Stockwell 201 2 011) 1).. In the rest of the module, language will be studied in context and different features will wil l be traced in persuasive texts such as advertisements and political speeches, as well as in informative texts such as news reports. You You will wil l be sensitised to the way language changes according to context, audience and purpose. In other words, you will be introduced to the notion of register. The distinction disti nction between standard and a nd non-standard English will be discussed; the characteristics of South African English considered. Samples of English in the technological/digital age will be used to demonstrate deviations from the standard and to enhance understanding of the constant dynamism of language. The rest of the module focuses on language and context. It further traces different features in persuasive language, discourse analysis and language analysis of literary texts. Sociolinguistic issues, including such concepts as language and identity, power, and gender, will also be introduced.

References Carter, R., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K. & Swift, N. (2008) Working with Texts, London: Routledge. Delahunty, G.P. & Garvey, Gar vey, J.J. (2010) The English Language from Sound to Sense, Colorado: WAC WAC Clearinghouse. Eggins, S. (1994) An (1994) An Introduction to Systemic Systemic Functional Functional Linguistics, London: Linguistics, London: Pinter Jackson, H. & Stockwell, P. P. (2011) (2011) An An Introduction Introduction to The The Nature Nature and and Functions Functions of Language, Language, London: Continuum Mullany, L. & Stockwell, P. (2010) Introducing English Language, London: Routledge. 6

UNIT 2: Let’s listen to the sounds of the English Language

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UNIT 2 Let’s listen to the sounds of the English Language 2

LISTEN “The playwright on my right thinks that some conventional rite should symbolize the right of every man to write as he pleases” “The sons raise meat” and “The sun’s rays meet”. What you saying? C ome again?

OUTCOMES By the end of the unit you should be able to:

• • • • • •

define some of of the key terminology termi nology used to discuss the sound system of the English language; describe the sounds and sound patterns of the English language; explain how sound and spelling relate in English; distinguish disting uish between the different sound sound articulation art iculation patterns of the English language; read with understanding the dictionary entries on sound and pronunciation; identify speech variation patterns as used by different speakers.

INTRODUCTION This unit un it presents presents a discussion of the sound system of the English Language. Lang uage. The aim is to equip you with enough tools to assist you to speak intelligibly. For this reason, this un it is accompanied by a CD in which some of of the pronunciation is illustrated. Put simply, this unit is about the art of pronunciation. Given that the sound system is very wide, and we have limited space, we will be selective about what we include in this unit. In applied language studies we are always concerned with application of the theoretical and feature descriptions of language, as such, our focus in this unit will be to observe the sound system in action. We will be using a number of examples from different genres and speech events to illustrate how sound patterning assists with effective language use. ENG1502/1

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2.1 2.1

THE DISCREPANCY DISCREPANCY BETWEEN BETW EEN SPELLING AND SOUND To To get us think th inking ing more about how spell ing and sound in the t he Engl ish lang uage let’s read and listen aga in to the opening openi ng quotation. Observe the play on the sound ‘rite’. ‘rite’. The words ‘rite’ , ‘write’, ‘right’ ‘wright’ are all a ll spelt differently and a nd convey different meanings, yet they sound similar. In English grammar such words are called homophones. (See Unit 3 for a detailed description of homophones.) This kind of wordplay is used a lot in poetry for example to create rhythm, rhyme echo and humour. It makes a nice candidate for the game of tongue twisting. I know a book by Thompson titled ‘The Rite to Write about Wright’ a title that can ‘twist’ your tongue.

LISTEN Some unknown author has created this verse to illustrate the discrepancy between spelling and pronunciation: I take it you already know of know of tough and tough and bough and bough and cough and dough? dough? Some may stumble, but not you, you, on hiccough, hiccough , thorough, thorough , slough, slough, and through? through? So now you are ready, perhaps, to learn of less familiar traps? Beware ofheard of heard,, a dreadful word, word, that looks like beard, beard , but sounds like bird. bird. And dead, dead, it’s said like said like bed, bed , not bead; bead ; for goodness’ sake, don’t call it deed! Watch out for meat and great and threat . (They rhyme with suite and suite and straight and straight and debt.) debt .) A moth is moth is not a moth in mother , nor both in both in bother , broth in broth in brother . And here is here is not a match for there, there, nor dear and fear , for bear and and pear . And then there’s dose and dose and rose and rose and lose – lose – just j ust look them up–and goose and goose and choose And choose And cork and cork and work and work and card and card and ward and ward and font and front and front and word and word and sword sword And do and do and go, go, then thwart and thwart and cart, cart , come, come! I’ve hardly made a start. A dreadful language? language? Why man alive! I’ve learned to talk it when I was five. And yet to write it, the more I tried, I hadn’t hadn’t learned it at fifty-five. – Author Auth or Unknown Unk nown

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 1 Complete the following t able with homophones for the given words. Two words have been done for you as examples.

ate eight

cereal

dear

sore

mist

made

rain reig n

vain

horse

id le

What can you say about t he bolded words in the foll owing pairs of sentences? (a) (a) (b)

The silver coin bears the bears the armour of the King. The wild-life at that park is dominated by bears by bears..

(a) (b)

Get to the store as store as soon as possible, it looks like there is a fire! If we store all the grain in the barn, it will be protected from the rain

(a) (b)

I have contracted have contracted the the flu and must see a doctor soon We have contracted Omnifoto Omnifoto to cover the event on Wednesday.

(a) (b)

Your behaviour blew all our chances of winning. A blue dress would match your hat better t han a red one.

Yes, Yes, some are either spelled differently and sounded the same or vice versa. This happens a lot in the English language, because, unlike other languages such as Esperanto, 8


and some Slavic languages, English spelling does not always re flect how the word is pronounced.

It is from this behaviour of the spelling spelli ng and sound relationship in the English lang uage that we have words classi fied as follows: homophones : two words are homophones if they are pronounced the same way but differ in meaning or spelling or both (e.g. bare and bear) homonyms: two words are homonyms if they are pronounced or spelled the

same way but have different meanings. meaning s. (e.g. bank (embankment) (embankment) and bank ( place where money is kept)) kept)).. heteronyms: two words are heteronyms if they are spelled the same way but differ in pronunciation (e.g. (e.g. row (a series of objects arranged arrang ed in a line), pronounced pronounced (r), and row (a fight), pronounced (rou)). (rou)). homographs: two words are homographs if they are spelled the same way but differ in meaning (e.g. tear (water from the eyes) tear (rip -apart)).

http://www.ultralingua.com/onlinedictionary/ In the unit un it on semantics, you wil l learn more about how words words mean in different d ifferent contexts and forms.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 2 This activity aims at get ting you to think about words, their sounds and meaning. It’s no use being embarrassed hearing someone say ‘Hey, I am off to the bank across the street’ and you, desperate for money responds and say ‘please get me R200. Please, I’m so broke’ broke’ and the person says ‘N o I meant the river bank across the street.’ Look again at the descriptions of the classi fications of words and then d o the following: (1) (1) (2) (3) (4) (4)

Find 3 sets of words which are homonyms in the English English language. Find 3 sets of words which are homophones in the English language. Find 3 sets of words which are heteronyms in the English language. Find sets of words which are homographs in the English language. (see (see this web page for examples of homographs: http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wordscape/wordlist/ http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/wordscape/wordlist/ homogrph.html

It will help if you attempt to use these words in sentences as well to ensure that you understand the differences in meaning. Let’s get back to more sounds now Why learn about or teach pronunciation?

As Peter Roach (2009, (2009, p.6) has highlighted highl ighted ‘… ‘… pronunciation exercises fi cult, exercises can can be dif fi cult, … but if we eliminate everything dif fi cult cult from language teaching and learning, we may end up doing very little beyond getting students to play simple sim ple communication games .’.’ The minute you read this unit, you you will instantly be reminded of the learning experience on your first week at school, ‘learning the alphabet’. I imagine, like me, first, you were puzzled by the 21 +5 symbols, which you were later told are consonants and vowels, ENG1502/1

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respectively. You You scrambled through them, them , to memorize each vowel and consonant. As you read books, papers, papers, you kept meeti meeting ng these symbols; gradually they t hey got so familiar, famili ar, now, you don’t have to think about how they are sounded. So why are we doing this again at University? Well the reasons are simple. (1) (1) We want to understand the ‘science’ behind the production of of these sounds sounds (a) Where are they produced? Think Th ink about it, the sounds /b/ /b/ and /t/ are a re not articulated at the same places in the mouth. To produce /b/, we use the two lips, but when we produce /t/ we use the tongue and the alveolar ridge. (b) How are they produced? When we make the sounds /b/ /b/ and /p/ /p/, we use the two lips but with /b/ we make a noise and use some force, yet with /p/, we don’t make a noise and we do not use force. (2) For those of us whose first language langua ge is not English, the study of the sounds of of the English language will even be more advantageous. (3) For those of us whose first language is English, over and above just using the language, we must learn about its form and systemic function which adds to the refinement of how we can effectively speak the language. Some people pronounce words like ‘county’ as ‘cowtry’, ‘could’ as ‘cooled’, or put the stress of the word ‘agreement’ on A as in ‘Agreement’ instead of ‘aGREEment’, putting the stress on the second syllable. The first two examples il lustrate the tendency to want to sound every letter in a word, clearly not aware that some letters that come in pairs/ clusters, are represented by one sound during pronunciation or that some sounds are ‘silent’ in the English lan language. guage. This T his can only be understood if one studies the phonetics and phonology of a language. The last two examples illustrate a confusion with which part of the word (the (the syllable syl lable)) should be stressed. T hese ‘oddities’ may be regarded reg arded by many as insigni ficant because they do not confuse understanding, but, they do sound clumsy. For example you can enter into both an ‘aGREEment’ and ‘Argument’ with someone, but not an ‘Agreement’ so if the word ‘agreement’ is is pronounced the same as commun ication breakdown, and this is unnecessary, un necessary, and ‘argument’ , then there may be a communication can be avoided. Essential Terminology

Let’s quickly get the terminology in place. When studying studyi ng the symbols at this level we don’t don’t call them letters or alphabets, a lphabets, but phonemes. The whole system is referred to as the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). (See appendix 1) for a complete chart of the IPA. The IPA was formed to address the confusion arising from language orthography. Each language, langu age, and so does the English Language, Langua ge, draws its sounds from this international chart. char t. When you see the chart in appendix 1, you will wil l realize reali ze that some symbols/ symbols/ sounds do not not exist in the English Eng lish language. lang uage. For that reason, in Figure Fig ure 1, we show only those sounds applicable to the English language. In total there is a set of 24 consonant phoneme sounds and 20 vowel phoneme sounds (yes, 20 and not 5), in the English Language phonetic alphabet. Some of you will have done this work in your first grade, but you were not aware your teachers were drawi ng the phonetic variations from this alphabet. 10


FIGURE 1: The British English only IPA

Bilabial

Stop Fricative

p

Labiodental

Interdental

b f

v

θ

ð

Alveolar

t

d

s

z

Affricate Affr icate Nasal

m

L iqu id Gl ide

Palatoalveolar

Palatal

Velar

k ʃ

ʒ

ʧ

ʤ

Glottal

g

h

n

ɳ

l w

j See the charts below showing the symbols with examples of words.

We will discuss d iscuss the names of the sounds later.

2.2

BASIC CONCEPTS OF THE SOUND SYSTEM SYSTEM The study of the t he sound sou nd system is referred to as phonetics and phonology phonology. At the level of phonetics, we study the speech sounds, how they are articulated, (articulatory phonetics), phonetics), how they are transmitted tra nsmitted (acoustic phonetics) phonetics) and how they are received

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(auditory (auditory phonetics). At the level of phonology, phonology, we study the t he ways in which the t he sounds are combined, and patterned, as such we have syllable structures, and other features intonation, pitch above the segment level, the suprasegmental features of stress, intonation, pitch and length. In this unit as well as units 4 and 6, you will read more about how these features can make our everyday language work for communication. In this unit we focus on articulatory phonetics, that is, how sounds are produced. However, you can read more on acoustic and auditory phonetics on your own, or if i f you happen to study speech therapy, linguistics, lingu istics, or music, you wil l get to know more about other branches of phonetics. phonetics. The T he descriptions are included i ncluded in appendix 2 for those of you who may be interested. Articulator Ar ticulatoryy phonetics

This refers to the study of how sounds are produced using the human vocal apparatus. In articulatory art iculatory phonetics, we describe and classify classif y sounds according to where and how they are produced. This shall form the main pre-occupation of this unit. Other key terminology to support your understanding is: phoneme, phonemic and phonology nology discourse, we don’t call the phonetic. As noted earlier, i n the phonetics and pho sounds, alphabets, but we call cal l them phoneme sounds. In the next unit you will learn that the smallest segment of a word is a morpheme. In this unit u nit we are making maki ng you aware that, the smallest segment of a sound sound is a phoneme which can disting uish between two words. words. Let’s take the two words ‘pit’ and ‘pet’. They differ in i n one vowel sound ‘e’ and ‘i’; ‘i’; ‘doom’ and ‘room’, ‘room’, they differ in i n the consonants /d/ /d/ and /r/, otherwise they are the same. Note that in writing, when we represent a phoneme, we put it bet ween slashes /d/ /d/.. This Th is is how al l phonemic sounds are represented. r epresented. The dictionary is a very very good basic resource for you if you you want to see see information about words. Take a qu ick look at any word in i n your dictionary, dict ionary, after every word entry, you will wil l find the phonemic transcription inside slashes, or a phonetic transcription inside brackets, which illustrates the way the word is pronounced. Here are some examples of the words ‘bias’ and ‘feat’ ‘graduate’ and ‘strike’ as represented in the dictionary.

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:t/ n. a remarkable, skilful, or daring action; act ion; exploit; achievement: feats of strength ... (example feat / feat / fi :t/ taken from the Collins English Dictionary)

The entries in the dictionary provide you with very useful information. informat ion. As you can see in the examples above, the information touches on pronunciation, meaning, on word usage, on accent/stress accent/stress patterns, and on word morphology. morphology. The examples also iillustrate llustrate that different dict ionaries use different methods to enter words. So choosing a dictionary also requires understanding what information you are looking for in the entry. If you get stuck on a word, go to the dictionar y. Part of the aim of this unit u nit is to help you understand how to read the dictionary entries on sound and pronunciation. From now on remember to enclose /t/ in between slashes, if you are refering to ‘t’ as a sound. This will make more sense to you if you look at the way ‘th’ in the words ‘thin’ ‘thi n’ and ‘this’ are pronounced. pronounced. You You will realise rea lise that the t he manner of voicing voicing is different, di fferent, in ‘thin’ ‘th in’ it is voiceless and in ‘this’ ‘thi s’ it is voiced. Therefore, to represent these sounds sounds you cannot use the same symbol for – ‘th’, these are letters of the alphabet and as sounds they are represented as follows: /θ / = as in thin / ð/ = as in this Don’t Don’t be confused by the terminology. term inology. You You will wil l come across the two phrases ‘phonemic symbols’ and ‘phonetic symbols’ used a lot in the literature on phonetics and phonology, they are not interchangeable. A phonemic symbol shows fewer features than a phonetic symbol and unlike the phoneme sound, the phonetic symbol will ENG1502/1

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be enclosed in square brackets [a]. Phonetic representation is more precise and much more complex than phonemic representation. For our purposes we wi ll use phonemic systems to refer to sounds. To To illustrate il lustrate the differences, let’s look at at the sound /p/ /p/ in ‘peat’ and /t/ in ‘take’. The sounds have aspiration, that is, when you pronounce them, you push air out, almost like you have put an ‘h’ sound [p h ] and [th ]. Phonetical Phonetically ly you would would represent the word ‘peat’ as [phi t] and phonemically as /pit/ /pit/.. In the t he former, the aspiration is shown using the aspirant and the diacritic mark on the vowel sound. ˈ

LISTEN Lets listen to some words taken from: http://edition.englishclub.com/eslhttp://editi on.englishclub.com/esl- magazine/

pronunciation-25-words/ Let’s practise these words together:

• • •

Listen to the word. (wait for a one second pause after) Say the word with me. Say the sentence with me.

Are you y ou ready for this? t his? (1) thistle (allow thistle (allow a pause and then repeat with me). Be careful not to step on t he thistle. (2) crisps. Potato crisps. Potato chips are called crisps in England. (3) should. You should. You should not pronounce the l when you say the word should. (4) would. Would would. Would and wood sound the same when you say them out loud. (5) clothes. Put on warm clothes before you head outside today. (6) order. The order of these words is not important. (7) murder. A murder. A man was charged charged with murder murder over the holidays. (8) air. The air. The air is so cold you can see your breath. (9) literature. You literature. You can download classic literature for free online. (10) language. English language. English is a dif ficult language to learn. (11) onomatopoeia. Onomatopoeia refers to words that sound like their meaning. (12) deterioration. It deterioration. It is dif ficult to watch t he deterioration of a fr iend’s iend’s health. (13) little. If you practise, your English will improve little by little. (14) assailant. The assailant. The assailant was caught by the police. (15) catastrophic. A catastrophic. A catastrophic earthquake earthquake struck the centre of the city. city. (16) alter. Don’t alter. Don’t alter your plans just because I can’t go. (17) exclamation. One exclamation mark is enough to get your point across. (18) crocodile. Captain crocodile. Captain Hook was petri fied of the crocodile in the movie Peter Pan. (19) unfortunate. It unfortunate. It is unfortunate that the weather has delayed our trip. (20) six. Six six. Six plus six equal twelve, which is also known as a dozen. (21) development. The development of new technology has allowed us to receive information very quickly. quickly. (22) decision. It decision. It wasn’t my decision to have a picnic in the rain. (23) ambulance. When ambulance. When you hear an ambulance you must pull over to the side of the road. (24) law. The law states that residents must clear their sidewalk when it snows. (25) low. If low. If you bend down low, you will see where the children are hiding. 14


ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 3 Find a telephone director y and look-up 25 surnames you have dif ficulty pronouncing. Why do you think you have dif ficulty with these names?

2.3

SOUND PRODUCTION Knowing how sounds are produced is an important ski ll for teachers and anyone learning the English language. What do we do with our mouth when we we pronounce words? words? We shall begin by looking inside i nside the mouth where all these sounds are made. The vocal tract

The followi following ng diagram shows the vocal tract and some of the important areas at which the consonant sounds of the English language are produced. We start start with w ith the consonants. This is a sketch of the head showing showi ng all the articulators. art iculators. You wil w illl need to look at it carefully as the sounds are described, and you will often find it useful to have a mirror and a well-lit place so that you can look inside of your mouth as you practice placing your sounds.

FIGURE 3

Figure 3 above shows all the organs involved in speech production.

The description descr iption of consonants involves identify ing three aspects/features aspects/features of a sound namely; place, manner ma nner and voicing. Where in the t he vocal tact are sounds made? How are they produced? What is the state of the voice during production? ENG1502/1

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Figure 4 shows the sounds at their place of articulation. Places of articulation

FIGURE 4

When a sound is produced, two t wo articulators art iculators are involv i nvolved: ed: one is the act ive articulator art iculator (the one that moves) moves) and the other the passive articu ar ticulator lator (the one that the other moves toward). During consonant production, the airstream which moves from the lungs through the vocal tract, must be obstructed. The consonants are therefore classi fied according to the place and manner of obstruction. Name of soun und d

Place of Obstru tructio tion

Bilabial

The point of maximum maxi mum constriction constric tion is made m ade by the coming together of the two lips. /b, p, m/

Labiodental

The lower lip articulates art iculates with wit h the upper teeth. /f, /f, v/ v/

ar ticulates lates with the back or bottom of Dental/interdental The tip of the tongue articu the top teeth. ‘th’ / θ/ð/ Alveolar

The tip or the blade of the tongue articulates art iculates with the forward forward part of the alveolar ridge. /t, d, s, z, n, l/

Postalveolar/ palato-alveolar

The tip or the t he blade of the tongue articulates art iculates with the back area of the alveolar ridge. /ʃ, ʒ, t ʃ, dʒ/ as in ‘fish’, ‘garage’, ‘rich’, ‘rich’, and ‘ridge’, ‘r idge’, respectively.

Palatal

The front of the t he tongue tong ue artic a rticulates ulates with the domed part of the hard palate. /j/ as in ‘yes’

Velar Velar

The back of the tongue articulates with with the soft palate. /k, g, ɳ/

Uvular

The back of the tongue articulates art iculates with the far back of the soft palate, including the uvula. /

Glottal

The vocal folds folds are brought together; in some cases, the function of the vocal folds can be part of articulation as well as phonation, as in the case of [h]

TEphonemic_GreyBlue21.exe

16

(possible web link)


ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 4 Look at the following chart as you listen to the track on the CD. Look at the set of words and tick yes or no to indicate whether the word has a consonant of the place of articulation shown on the left or not.

Place of articulation

Word Word

Yes

No Word Word

Yes

No

Word

Yes

No

Word

Bilabial

apple

lamb

Yel l

bank

Velar Velar

knot

break

Cast

ghost

Alveolar

scare

quick

Dark

knot

Dental

thick

bake

Hitch

rough

Alveolar palatal

craze

push

Measure

action

Yes

No

Labio-dental Manners of Articulation A rticulation

This refers to the degree and kind of obstruction of of a consonant consonant sound in the vocal tract. The articulators artic ulators may close off off the oral tract for a brief brief or relatively longer period; they narrow the space or modify the shape of the tract. If we take the example of /t/ and /s/, both sounds are articulated by the tongue touching the alveolar ridge, that’s why they are called ca lled alveolar sounds, but the degree of constriction is d ifferent. With /s/ /s/ the air is not stopped, but flows through, yet with /t/ the air is blocked brie fly before it is released. For that reason /s/ /s/ is called a fricative fricat ive because the air is allowed to flow with audible friction. The /t/ is called a stop or plosive because the air flow is first stopped before it is released. In line with the behaviour of the air flow, there are several manners articulation. Stops, as noted, are sounds whose production requires that air be stopped before release; fricatives involve a slight opening between the articulators to allow the air to escape with frication; affricates involve a stop, followed by very gradual release resulting in friction. Affricates start like stops and end like fricatives. Approximants are released by means of a greater opening in the vocal tract, therefore unlike fricatives, there is no friction created. As their name suggests they approximate closure. In this group are the glides and liquids. Nasals are produced with the air flow stopped at the oral cavity and released through the nose. Other manners are trills and taps. For examples of each of these see the following f ollowing table. Voicing Voicing

A sound can either be voiced or voiceless. Voiced sounds those where during sound production, the vocal folds vibrate, and voiceless sounds are when the vocal folds are apart and not vibrating. vibrat ing. Voiced Voiced sounds are all t he sounds on the right in the cha rt above where a square shares two sounds. sounds. They are /b, v, v, ð, d, z, ʒ, d ʒ, g/. The sounds on the left are voiceless. Only stops, fricatives and a nd affricates show alternation between bet ween voiced and voiceless sounds, whereas the other manners of articulation – approximants and nasals – are always voiced. In describing a sound, we refer to: e.g. Voiceless bilabial stop /p/; voiced bilabial stop /b/; voiced alveolar nasal /n/ and voiced alveolar fricative /z/ /z/.. ENG1502/1

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ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 5 Try this: (1) (1) Give the appropriate three-term three-t erm description for each of the following followi ng sounds (e.g. (e.g. [k]: voiceless velar stop): stop): [f] [f ] [b] [θ] [ʃ] [t] [ j] (2) Give the appropriate appropriat e phonetic symbol for each of the following sounds: (a) (a) (b) (c) (d) (d) (e) (e) (3)

What phonetic propert y distinguishes distingui shes each of the following followi ng pairs of sounds (e.g. (e.g. [p] and [b]: voicing; [s] and [ ʃ]: place of articulation; [t] and [s]: manner of ar ticulation)? ticulation)? (a) (a) (d)

(4) (4) (5)

(6)

(7)

a voiced palato-alveolar fricative a voiced alveolar stop a voiced velar stop a voiced dental fricative a voiced labio-dental fricative

[k] and [g] (b) (b) [b] and [d] (c) (c) [d] and [z] [z] [z] and [ ʒ] (e) [ ʃ] and [ ʒ] (f) [d] and [g]

Which of the following followi ng English words begin with a fricative? fric ative? ship, psychology, veer, round, plot, philosophy, think, late, xylophone Which of the following following English words end with a fricative? stack, whale, swim, epitaph, half, halve, hash, haze, phase, use, path, cuts, pleads Which of the following followin g English words begin with a stop? Philanderer, Philanderer, plasterer, plasterer, parsimonious, ptarmigan, psyche, charismatic, cereal, c ereal, carping, kinky ghoulish, grueling, guardian, thick, tickle, bin, dreary Describe the position and and action of the articulators during the production production of the following sounds (e.g. (e.g. [d]: the blade of t he tongue forms a c onstriction of c omplete closure with the alveolar ridge; the vocal cords are vibrating): vibrating): [b] [k] [ ð] [v]

Adapted from ‘English Phonetics and Phonology’ by Phillip Carr

Some of you will be news readers. It is very important to articulate the sound, know where to place the articu lators as this affects the clarity clar ity of the sounds to the listeners. Vowels Vowels (short, long and diphthongal)

As noted, noted, there are, in total total 24 vowels vowels in the English language. Vowels Vowels can be grouped into three categories as shown below. Please Please study them closely as vowel articulat art iculation ion is the most challenging for speakers of English. The charts below shows the vowels with examples:

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There is no burn ing need for you to memorise al l these strange stra nge symbols. However, if you get into the habit of using them and paying attention to the entries in the dictionary, you will find them very helpful for pronunciation.

LISTEN Listen to the recording as the vowels are pronounced. If you would like to hear all the sounds made by native speakers of British and Amer ican English visit the following website and listen. http://fonetiks.org/engsou2am.html http://www.stuff.co.uk/calcul_nd.htm

2.4

VARIATION IN PRONUNCIATION PRONUNCIATION LISTEN Listen to the recording We have recorded a short passage read by speakers whose first languages are different.

They will introduce their language and read. At the end of the recording recording do and and think about about the following: (1) (1) Write down what your first impression was of the way each of the readers read the text? (2) Did you pick any variations? variati ons? If so which ones? (in case you are not sure – feel free to replay the track (3) (3) Which of the readers readers was more intelligible intelligible on a scale of 1 = less to 5 = very intelligible. Remember Remember this is not a scale to rate good or bad but what made intelligible reading to you. Be ready to defend your choice, when this is discussed either in your discussion forum of myUnisa or in the t utorial letter. ENG1502/1

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2.5

ATTITUDES AND ACCENTS It is very dif ficult to make judgements on what is good and bad pronunciation. I went onto one blog blog and picked the following comments com ments about South South African Afr ican accents. Re: South African Pronunciation!! « Reply #60 on: June 03, 2011, 07:36:30 am » I am a South African/American and I think the whole accent thing is silly. I try hard to retain my South African accent. There are plenty of countries that have thick accents – have they spoken to a Phillipines Phil lipines teacher or someone from India lately? How about Scotland Scotland or Ireland Irel and – and as someone someone posted earlier t here are differnet differ net accents inside the US, ex. a Southerner vs a Minnesotan. they will wi ll get used to it – its helpful to expand thei r horizons. Dont change your accent! Re: South African Pronunciation!! « Reply #61 on: June 03, 2011, 07:57:16 am » I am from America and to be quite honest some (but not all) South African accents are hard for me to understand. They were quite of few South Africans at the EPIK Orientation and some of there english were bad. I imagine that “there english were” better than this ... As for the the orig original inal topic, being from England I’ve been told by some some co-teachers that I can be hard to understand at times but I’ve noted that these are the ones who I struggle to understand too. The teachers who have a higher level of English never have any trouble. I think that often it is an excuse to save face. I agree with a previous poster that even in American there are lots of different accents so saying that they can only understand an “American” accent is just their excuse to make t hemselves not look bad in front of the other teachers and you. Re: South African Pronunciation!! « Reply #62 on: June 03, 2011, 08:54:09 am » I’m still young but I think its a recent thing that South Africans are starting to notice their different regional accents. I was born in Durban, well the Kloof area which is different to the regu lar “hey bru” though I can speak it having gone g one to school school in Durban. Since I lived in i n Cape Town Town for 4 years I’m now told Cape Town Town can be heard i n my pronunciation pronunciation where as I’m continual continual ly asked to say say things thi ngs like li ke “Nine” and “Fish” when in Cape Town. Anyhow Anyhow my point is its a contextual contextual thing thin g and if it requires some tweak ing on your part to be heard and understood that should not be an issue however however you need not feel that you have to abandon your identity. Anyhow being South Afr ican is more than the way you speak or what you eat etc etc.

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ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 6 What is your opinion regarding the South African pronunciation s or any other pronunciation maybe in your own country if you are not South Afric an? More about about varieties including varieties in accents is covered in Unit 5 of this module.

2.6

SOUND PATTERNING PATTERNING Phonology

In the previous sections, we considered the phonetic phonetic features of the ind ividual sounds. What the section sect ion has done done is give you the ammunition, ammun ition, the tools and the terminology for dealing with w ith speech production. However, sounds sounds don’t exist in isolation, they occur in the company of other sounds. Phonology describes sound behaviour and patterns in the context of more than one sound appearing together. For our purposes we will look at syllables, stress, and intonation. i ntonation. We We have chosen these because they have been identified as another problematic area for language users.

2.6.1

The Syllable Syllab le Let’s look at and read the poem below entitled ‘The moon was but a chin of gold’ by Emily Dickison. Dickison. The MOON was BUT a CHIN of GOLD A NIGHT or TWO aGO, And NOW she TURNS her PER fect fect FACE UPON the WORLD beLOW. The poem has been wr itten in such a way as to show where stress is put on parts of a word. For For instance in the word PER fect fect the stress is the first syllable and the one syllable words that are stressed are also written in capital fonts.

LISTEN Listen to the recording on the CD to hear the effect of the beat on the rhythm created in the poem. What this poem demonstrates is how syllables are used to c reate rhythm in poetry. Look at the poem again. You will notice that the first line has four stressed syllables, the second line has three stressed syllables, the third line has four stresse d syllables and the fourth has three stressed syllable. So the pattern is 4-3- 4-3. Each line start s with an unstressed syllable. When you study poetry you will be told that the pattern that Emily has used is an ‘iambic meter’.

So what is a Syllable?

The syllable is a phonolo phonological gical unit un it consistin consistingg of segments segments around a central vowel. The total number of syllables equals the number of vowels. Syllables are not only useful to know to understand rhythm in poetry; they are also useful in music. If you listen to a rap, its movement is measured using syllable based rhythm. ENG1502/1

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The syllable is also the environment for marking marki ng stress in words. So if you want to change the meaning of a word or indicate its category, you use stress.

LISTEN Listen to this rap song (a song by one SA rapper) Work out the rhythmic pattern of the song. Which syllables are stressed?

LISTEN Let’s take this example using the word ‘record’ (2 syllable word) (a) (a)

Can you give a REcord of of your your work. – record is a noun, the fi rst rst syllable is stressed.

(b)

Can you please reCORD your work. – record is a verb, and the second syllable is stressed .

The beats mark the number of syllables syl lables in i n this word, as such the pitch rises r ises on the t he stressed syllable. syll able. Words Words such as the ‘record’ above are called heteronyms , spelled the same but different in meaning. The difference in mean ing is signal led by the stress placement.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 7 Rewrite the following words to show the pla cement of stress to brin g out the meaning of the word. Two have been done for you.

Word Word

Pencil photography physiology polit ical pol itics Subject(v) Produce(v) Produce (n)

No of syllables

4 3

Stress place

second syl lable first syllable

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 8 We can do a quick overview of the syllable count on the f ollowing words. Please complete by filling in the blank spaces for the number of syllables for each word. Use the following basic rules. Count the number of vowels, each vowel carries one syllable, subtract any silent vowels at the end of each word, subtract one vowel from a diphthong vowel. Remember that we are using the 24 vowel sounds set shown in the vowel chart and not the 5 vowels you did in Grade one.

Word Word inform information 22

No. of syllables 2 syl lables

Word Word mortal immortal ity

No. of of syllables


informat ive possibi l ity possibi l ity drama dramat ic dramatical ly

5 syl lables

immortal intel l igent intel l igentsia intel l igent ly possible possibil it y

4 syl lables

3 syl lables

A very important thing thi ng to note is that in English there are consonant clusters that are not allowed. For example you can never have a word in English beginning with a consonant cluster of ‘ng’ yet in a number of African languages, such as Zulu, you can.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 9 How many syllables does each of t he following words have? comment, discuss, con fi scate, scate, fairy, ferry, reading, idea, deal, appreciate, interesting, develop, development.

What this tells us is that learning about syllables is useful for literary appreciation; for music creation and for understanding meaning of words that share certain spelling features. How do we know when and w hen not to stress a syllable? The word ‘COMment’ has 2 syllables and the first syllable is stressed. A lot of second language users stress the second syllable and when they do, the word sounds like ‘comMENT’ which is the stress pattern for the word ‘comMEND’ . Unless someone was listening carefully to the context in which t he word has been used, they may be confused by the meaning.

You You have to be aware of of this difference, di fference, especial ly if your first language is not English or unlike English which is a stress-timed language, yours is a syllable-timed language. In many African languages every syllable syllable carries a similar weight, weight, in English the weight varies from from one one syllable to another. another. As such, in English there are stressed and unstressed syllables. The big question is: Where should I put the t he stress st ress for words? The principles noted below uses words which will make sense to you if you read them in conjunction with Unit 3 of morphology and syntax.

Here are some guidelines on how to determine stress in English. These are not rules, but guidelines as there may be exceptions. (1) A word t here is a reason to put word is normally normal ly stressed on the first syllable, unless there the stress somewhere else. (2) The “reasons” are either suf fixes (like -ity or -ion) or prefixes (like con-, dis-, ex- or in-). (3) If the suf fix (ending) starts with the letters i or u this will affect the position of stress in a word. Sample suf fixes: -ion , -ual, - ual, -ial, -ient, -ious, -ior, -ic, -ity, etc. The stress stre ss comes co mes on o n the th e syll sy llable able before b efore the suf fi x. Examples: Atla Examples: Atlantic ntic , comic, suf fi cient, cient, explanation, residual. There are only a very few exceptions exceptions to this rule. (4) Other suf fixes do not affect the stress of a word. ENG1502/1

23

Sample suf fi xes: -al , -ous , -ly, -er, -ed, -ed , -ist -i st,, -ing, -i ng, -ment Examples: Permanent, permanently, develop, development (5) Prefixes are not normally stressed in two-syllable words, except in some nouns or adjectives. Examples: To ex’pand, ex’pand, to de’ fend; but an ‘exper ‘ expert, t, a report repo rt.. Bisyllabic nouns starti starti ng with a pre fi x need to be learned individually ► Pre fi xes

nouns and adjectives, but not are usually stressed in three-syll able nouns always stressed in verbs.

Examples: ‘Continent, ‘incident, ‘exercise; to con’sider, but to ‘indicate con’sider, to en’visage but (All th ree syllable verbs verbs ending in -ate are are stressed on the fi rst syllable).

http://linguapress.com/grammar/word-stress.htm You You wil w il l lear le arn n more about pre pr e fi xes and suf fixes in the next unit.

2.6.2

Stress and intonation Another very ver y important i mportant phonological phonological feature for someone learning learni ng to speak another a nother language is stress and intonation. We have talked about stress in the preceding section on the syllable syl lable and you now know that the syllable is the t he environment for stress in English. So the syllable, stress and intonation are interrelated. Intonation is a very important skill in social circles. One of the issues noted in Unit six is that language is used to create tone and attitude which goes a long way to communicate meaning meani ng in your statement. So to become a good listener and communicator, you need to understand how intonation works. One basic principle of stress is that t hat content words are stressed, but it is up to the speaker to choose which words to stress.

LISTEN Listen to the following script on the CD. The following person was asked to say ‘Hello’ to: (1) (1) (2) (3) (4) (4) (5) (6)

a friend they meet regularly a friend they haven’t haven’t seen for a long time. a neighbour they don’t like a 6 month old baby someone doing what they shouldn’t be doing to know if someone is listening

How far do you think the reader achieves to convey an attitude or emotion. State which attitude you think is shown.

Intonation helps us achieve some of the discourse functions mentioned in UNIT 6:

• 24

show attitude = express emotions, emot ions, confidence interest, doubt, pain, irony etc.


• • •

accentuate certain functions = where to place stress grammatical gram matical functions funct ions = indicate grammar gramm ar and syntax struct structures ures i.e. when to pause between phrases and clauses and sentences. discourse functions = signals ‘new’ and ‘given’ information; when a speaker is indicating contrast; what kind of response is expected of the listener

At the sentence level we can c an hear a lot of stress a nd intonation. Depending on which word is stressed, the meaning changes. chan ges. Look at this sentence and try to read it with the stress on the bolded words. ‘You ‘You want to talk tal k to me? I am not interested.’ (the (the speaker doesn’t doesn’t want to talk ta lk to the listener) You want to talk to me? I am not interested?’(the speaker is surprised the hearer ‘ You thinks thi nks he/she he/she is not interested to talk tal k to them).

LISTEN Listen to the following sentences. What meaning do you think is intended by the speaker? The sentence on which this is based is: John could only see his wife from the door. Voice A:John could not see his wife from the door. Voice B: John could only see t he other people in the room. Voice C: The only place John c ould see his wife f rom was the door. What you will have noticed in the readings is that intonation can fall or rise.

CONCLUSION In this th is unit un it we have introduced several basic concepts of the sound system. we hope you now have a workin workingg idea of the basic tools of of pronunciation, the place and the man ner where sounds are produced. produced. You You should should also be aware now now that there is no one one to one one correspondence between sound and spelling. Sound production must be learned with special attention given to the variations that come with place, manner, and voicing; as well as stress and intonation.

References Fromkin, R. et. al. (2005) An Introduction to Language, London. Thomso T homson n and Wadsworth. Ladefoged, P. (2001) (20 01) Vowels and Consonants: An Introduction to the Sound of Language, UK. Blackwell Publishing. Publishing. Ladefoged, P. (2000) A (2000) A course in Phonetics, Phonetics, London. Thomson and Wadsworth. Roach, P. P. (200 0) English 0) English Phonetics Phonetics and Phonolog Phonolog y, London. Cambridge University Press.

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UNIT 3 3

3

How do we build them? Words and Sentences

OUTCOMES By the end of this th is unit un it you should be able to:

• • • • •

define morphology and syntax identify both simple and complex morphemes distinguish types of morphemes and their functions describe irregular forms, and identify spurious relationships of words describe the structure and formation of sentences

INTRODUCTION The aim of the first part of the unit u nit is to introduce the t he process of word formation. formation. The study of word formation is known as morphology. The information that you will read in this unit will help you understand how words are formed in the English language and also why certain word forms are not appropriate in certain sentence forms. This section of the unit is also of value if you are interested in developing the vocabular y of the English language. Equally important in this unit is the focus on the relationship between word forms and sentence sentence structure; struct ure; that is the relationship between morphology and syntax. The aim of the t he second part of this t his unit is to introduce you to the key patterns and structures of the grammar of the English language. We have selected a few of these as we cannot do all in one unit. un it. For For you you to know how meaning meani ng is created in texts, you have to understand how the language used to create the texts is structured and patterned. The patterning patterni ng that this un it will wil l focus on is at the sentence level.

In the introductory introductor y chapter it was noted that one level at at which language lang uage operates is that of the sentence and that the sentence is composed of many units. This unit discusses the different units and explains how they are put together into meaningful wholes.

3.1

MORPHOLOGY Morphology is simply the study of how words are shaped. Morphology refers to how words are created. It is potential potentially ly a key component component to learn learning ing and understanding understandi ng new words and vocabulary vocabulary (Mcbride-Chang (Mcbride-Cha ng et. al. 2007). In light of this statement, this unit

26

UNIT 3: How do we build them? Words and sentences

introduces you to the activity activ ity of formulating words and understanding new vocabular y in English. Engl ish. You You will wil l also learn that some words look look like they t hey stem from the same base yet they do not. This technique is used a lot in poetry. In order to understand morphol mor phology ogy it is important to understand how it relates to morphemes. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units that combine to form words. The smallest smal lest part of a word that has a g rammatical rammatica l function fu nction or meaning mean ing could cou ld be an af fix: a pre fix or suf fix. Prefixes are attached to the front of the root of the word as in the example below, below, the {un-} {un-} in the word unable is the prefix, and suf fixes are attached at the end of the word as is the case in the t he word laughed {-ed} {-ed} is the suf fix. These smallest units contain meaning, as such, they make a difference in the meaning of a word.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 1 Modify the followi ng English words into different word forms by adding either a pre fix or suf fix. Expect, interfere, school, take, and qualify.

3.1. 3.1.1 1

Types of Morphemes Morp hemes Free and bound morphemes

Read the paragraph below and take note of the underlined words: ‘A girl confessed at the counsellor’s of fice. “I’m the happiest girl in town,” she flattered. “I come home to enjoy the company of my family. We spend the evenings laughing and giggling around the dinner table. ‘We have always been a happy family. Mom and Dad have always been churchgoers.’ In this passage the base word girl can can be classi fied as a simple si mple morpheme because it is free and it can stand on its own and other morphemes such as -ish (girlish) (girlish) can be attached to it to create a new word. The word fl attered is a complex morpheme because it has the potential of being segmented further into smaller units. Flattered can can be broken down as follows fl at+ter+ed . Before we go much further let us learn more about free and bound morphemes. Free Morphemes: Lexical and grammatical morphemes

Column 1 of Table 1 contains words with single morphemes called free morphemes. When you read re ad the words in column colum n 1, they are all a ll complete words which cannot can not be broken down any further into smaller units, this makes them free morphemes ( fish, coal, skin, depart, nominal). A free morpheme is a word that cannot be broken down into smaller units. It is a word that carries meaning on its own. Further examples of free morphemes are words such as car, boy, shop, girl, school . Free morphemes fall into two categories: lexical morpheme and grammatical morphemes. Lexical morphemes carry the ‘content’ of the messages we convey (examples of lexical morphemes are those given above). Grammatical morphemes consist of function words such as conjunctions, prepositions, articles and pronouns, for example (and, because, a, and, for, of, I). Free morphemes are also known as base words. Simple words, also known as monomorphemic monomorphemic words can also a lso be called cal led free morphemes; complex words, words, also known as polymorphemic words are words that contain more than a single morpheme (for ENG1502/1

27

example words in column 2 and column 3 of Table 1. These are words such as fishes, coals, skinniest, nominalisation etc.). Column 1

Column 2

Column 3

One morpheme Fish

Two Two morphemes Fish/es

Three morphemes + Fish/er/ies

Coal

Coal/s

–

Sk in

Sk i n/ny

Sk in/ni/est

Establ ish

Establ ish/ed

Nom inal

Establish/ment Nom inal/ise

Depart

Depart/ure

Nominal/isa/t ion

Depart/ing Depart/ed Table 1

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 2 Identify the free morphemes in the short paragraph provided below. “In my younger and more vulnerable years my father gave me some advice that I ’ve been turning over in my mind ever since. ‘Whenever you feel like critic ising anyone’ he told me, just remember that all people in this world haven’t had the advantage that you’ve had’.” (Extracted from the Introduction: The Great Gatsby P7)

Bound Morphemes: Inflectional and derivational

Column 2 of Table Table 1 contai contains ns examples of bound morphemes. Though critical critica l in giving givi ng meaning to a word, a bound morpheme is a morpheme that does not carry meaning when left lef t to stand alone, a lone, it needs a base word (free morpheme) to be attached att ached to in order to carry meaning, for example -ny - ny in the word skinny is is the bound morpheme. In the previous section we identi fied different kinds k inds of free morphemes. We We now identify different kinds of bound morphemes. They are also divided into two categories: the k inds of morphemes in flectional morphemes and derivational morphemes. These kinds are also known k nown as transforms because they transform the original orig inal word from one word category to another. Inflectional morphemes are those that do not affect the grammatical status of a word, the addition addit ion of the in flectional morpheme on a noun will still leave the affected word as a noun. noun. In fact the t he English lang uage contains contai ns about ten forms of inflectional morphemes, these are:

28


Inflections Noun plurals Possessive Possessive case Third Thi rd person singular singul ar verbs Past tense -ed The -ing form form of the verb The past participle form of a verb -ed The -er comparison comparison form of the adjective The -est comparison comparison form of the adjective

Examples

Table 2 (Adapted from Horne and Heineman 2006)

Another important i mportant factor w ith Engl ish in flections is that they are all suf fixes, that is they are all word-endings or af fixes attached to the end of the words. Derivational morphemes on the other hand, are the segments which affect the grammatical status of the original word. In English Engl ish these can be pre fixes or suf fixes. The addition of these morphemes onto root words affects the grammatical status of the original word. A derivational morpheme frequently changes the original word from one grammatical class to another. For example, the word skin is is a noun, but the addition of the bound morphemes -ny -ny to make it skinny and derives an adjective from the noun. Go back to column 2 of Table 1 to identify more derivational der ivational morphemes.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 3 In Table 2 you you are given types of in flections in the English language. Fill in the example column with examples of these in flectional morphemes. Summary of morphemes lexical

grammatical

free

bound

free

bound

function word

inflectional af fix

content word

derivational af fix

can, to, and, she

-ed, -s, -er

house, garden, door

hopeful, unhappy

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 4 Read the paragraph extracted from the editor’s introduction of the novel ‘The Great Gatsby’ by Fitzgerald. In the paragraph, the italicized words can be broken down into morphemes. Break them down and then identify the free and bound morphemes found in each word. Use the following table to cluster the words: ENG1502/1

29

Free Free morph morphem emes es/b /bas asee morph morphem emes es Base Trick

Boun Bound d morph morphem emes es Base/ment Trick/ed Trick/ed

“If Fitzgerald thought of Gatsby as some sort of American Trimalchio thrown up by the riotous licence of the Twenties, he certainly subjected him to some remarkable metamorphoses. (He is called Trimalchio just once in the novel.) But there are some distinct disti nct genealogical traces t races of Gatsby’s Gatsby’s ancient ancestor. ancestor. In the Satyricon Trimalchio is fi rst

mentioned in the conversation of two friends discussing where that night’s feast

is to be held: ‘Do you not know at whose it is today? today? Trimalchio, a very rich man, who has a clock and a uninformed trumpeter in his dining-room, to keep telling hi m how much of his life is lost and gone.’ Gatsby’s concern with time – its arrestability, recuper- ...” ability, repeatability – repeatability – is equally obsessive ...” The Great Gatsby by F Scott Fitzgerald (p vii) vi i)

3.2

CHALLENGES IN DIVIDING WORDS INTO MORPHEMES Spurious relationships of words

It is often a challenge to identify identif y irregul irre gular ar forms of words that cannot be broken broken down into morphemes. For example: words such as department and and depart may may seem connected. However, the two words are not related in any way, taking the verb depart which depart which means ‘to leave’ has no connection with the word department which is a noun referring to a section of a large organ isation. Therefore, the word department cannot be divided into two morphemes depart +ment because because the two words carry completely unrelated unrel ated meanings. More examples of spurious relationships of English words are wall and and wallet , wig and wiggle , corn and and corner , ham and hammer. Irregular forms

English has many irreg ular ula r forms which may use different in flections than regular ones. ones. The regular regu lar form ‘Mary kicks the door open’ when changed to the past tense it reads thus ‘Mary kicked the door open’ There are three thre e common irregular irreg ular forms in English. E nglish. The irregu irre gular lar form that uses different in flections than regular ones: ‘Waiters bring the food to customers’ ‘Waiters brought the food to customers’ 30


The irreg ular form that th at involves involves internal vowel changes (also known as ablaut ablaut words) words):: ‘The girls throw the the towels away’ ‘The girls threw the the towels away’ that involve historically unrelated forms: ‘They go ‘They go to to the shop on foot’ ‘They went to to the shop on foot’ NOTE, it is advisable to always use a dictionary if you are not sure of the appropriate form of a word.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 5 How would you consider the relationship between the given pairs of words below? That is, are they spurious, irregular or ablaut? Describe the relationship. Culture and cult Supplement and supple Mandatory and mandate Moderator and mode

New Vocabular Vocabularyy

You You may agree that English is one of of the fastest growing growin g languages languag es in the world. First, it grows fast in terms of the number of speakers of the lang uage and secondly, in terms of rapid expansion of its vocabulary, probably due to it serving as a lingua franca in many countries. Now that you have been introduced to the system of word formation in English, you may wish to introduce new English vocabulary into your collection.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 6 In the last line of the paragraph from the Great Gatsby, the italicised words words are not in the English Dictionar y. This means that these are possible new words that the author of the novel created. Can you come up with at le ast five new words that you think can be added in the English language. Give reasons for your suggestion.

3.3

MORPHS AND ALLOMORPHS Morph

Read the short paragraph below and take note of the underlined words: ‘I visited the workhouse last week. The workers worked in the building until late. However, the youngest worker works for only three hours a day. The adult workers often work work for more than ten hours hours a day.’ day.’ ENG1502/1

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A morph is a unit which is a segment of a word-form. word-form. If we consider the elements in in the underlined words like ( the the youngest) works, worker, worked, workhouse , workhouse , we find in a first step recurrent forms followed by variant forms: work (recurrent) , , -s (variant) , , -ed (variant) , , -er (variant) , , house (variant). These are called morphs, i.e. phonological representations of an element, a segment, which is not yet classi fied, (http://www.anglistik.phil.unierlangen.de/dozenten/barnickel/Newwords.pdf). Would it be possible to replace the morphs found in the underlined words with others? Try to do that and see how the paragraph will sound. Allomorphs Al lomorphs Allomorphs: an allomorph is a single morpheme with more than one phonological

realization, for example: say/sez, a/an. Often the result of history of the language. A group of different morphs is called allomorphs, these are different versions of one morpheme. For example, allomorphs are realisations or variants of morphemes. They occur in all a ll types ty pes of morphemes: morphemes: in lexical morphemes such as of fi cial cial from of fi ce ce , in roots as in reception from receive , in derivational morphemes as in impossible vs. impossible vs. incorrect and in grammatical endings, such as voiced /d/ in loved vs. /t/ in walked . loved vs. unvoiced /t/

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 7 (a) (a) What is the difference diff erence between a morph and a morpheme? Your Your de finition should also include examples. (b) Identify the function of each italicised morph morph in the underlined underlined words given given in the passage below: ‘At the signing sign ing ceremony ceremony which was attend ed by by the national press, Prof Salitou Toure, President of IUGB said “this is an important day in the history of IUGB and we are privileged privileg ed to partner with a world renown ed institution such as Unisa. We are sure to learn from your experience with the object ive of ive of making mak ing our our university the hub of excellence in the region ...’ (Unisa ( Unisa Intcom dated 24 February 2012). 2012 ).

3.4

WORD FORMATION FORMATION PROCESSES Compounding is the process of forming a word from two base forms. These base forms can be free or bound morphemes. For example pickpocket, blueberry, blueber ry, cut-throat, bitter-sweet, back street, baby sit. There sit. There are different ways of spelling compound words, you can spell them as single words as is the case in the first two examples, or you may put a hyphen in between the two words as is the case in the middle two examples or spell the words separately as is the case in the last two examples. Different dictionaries spell compounds differently. d ifferently. However, it is important to note that whichever form you adopt, be as consistent as possible in your writing. writ ing.

Another interesting point to note note when studying studyin g compounds is that they are categorized into different types. These are called endocentric compounds, exocentric compounds and coordinative compounds. Endocentric compounds are those compounds that represent a subtype of the head, for example garden example garden chair, chair, facecloth. facecloth. Exocentric compounds are those compounds that name a subtype, but the sub type is not represented by by either the head or the modi fier in the t he compound, for example redhead . 32


Coordinative compounds are those compounds in which both elements are heads and each contribute equally to the meaning of the whole. For example bitter-sweet . di fferent word form. For example, Conversion is a process whereby a word is used in a different a noun is used as a verb as in ‘the girls gir ls butter their bread each time t ime they eat white wh ite bread’. bread’. butter their Reduplication is a type of a compound in wh ich both elements are the same or slightly different. For example, humpty-dumpty, wishy-washy. However, English makes very little use of this type, except in the names for children’s games. Acronyms are words formed from the initial sounds of words. For example, SARS (South African Revenue Services), UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scienti fic and Cultural Organisation).

t wo words merge into each other. For example, brunch (breakfast (breakfast and Blends are when two lunch). Think of mostly new words in the English vocabulary such as email (electronic + mail), webinar mail), webinar (worldwideweb + seminar) , , Prevacid (prevent acid). Clippings are an informal shortening of a word to a single syllable. For example ad (advert, (advert, advertisement)

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 8 Think of more examples of compound words of English and categorise them in the table below.

Compound word

Ty pe of compound

Morphology Glossary Af fix is a morpheme attached either at the beginning, middle or end of a word. Allomorphs Al lomorphs are variant forms of a single morpheme. Base is an expression to which an af fix can be attached. Bound morpheme is a morpheme that cannot occur unattached but plays a critical role in giving meaning to a complete word.

morpheme that changes the t he grammatical grammat ical status of a word word Derivational morpheme is morpheme is a morpheme from one word class to another. ca nnot be Free morpheme is a morpheme that can stand on its own, that is word that cannot broken down into smaller units. Inflectional morpheme is a suf fix morpheme that serves to only modify the grammatical properties of the base word in which they occur.

mini mal grammat ical form of of a word. word. This sounds simila r to a morpheme morpheme Morphs are a minimal but it is different because this indicates the variant forms of a single morpheme. It is illustrated illustrated by { } in l inguistics. ENG1502/1

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Morpheme is the smallest meaningful unit of a word. Irregular words are often words that use unusual in flections than the regular ones. Prefixes are morphemes attached at the beginning of a word. Suf fixes are morphemes attached at the end of a word. Regular words are words that use usual in flections in verbs, nouns, adjectives and

adverbs. Root is that part of a word that remains irrespective of the addition of different morphemes.

t he same root yet they are not. For Spurious words are words that seem to stem from the instance words such as wall and and wallet . The two words are not related in meaning.

3.5

SYNTA SYNTA X: WORD ORDER AND SENTENCE STRUCTURE

3.5.1

The Sentence The largest l argest unit u nit of word combination is the sentence. We have all al l written wr itten many sentences, some correct and others incorrect. This Unit attempts to show you what tools you need in order to see what words do when they are in the company c ompany of others, how they relate to each other to create meaning. Units in a sentence

The units un its that make up a sentence start star t with the t he word. In your high school years you will wil l recall the major parts of speech you learned. learned. As a way way to remind ourselves of what these are, and in particular how they function in real language, we will highlight the parts of speech, sometimes referred to as word categories. etc), the nouns (words referri referring ng to person, The verbs (words of action-wash, eat, give, etc), thing, place or idea), the adjectives (words denoting quality, or describe nouns), the adverbs (words that modify a verb, adjectives, other adverbs and sentences), and the minor parts of speech: the prepositions (denote several notions such as time, location e – to, along, with, w ith, into tc), pronouns (words can be used instead of or to refer to nouns), articles (the definite ‘the’, and inde finite articles ‘a’ and ‘an’) , conjunctions (coordinating and subordinating – see list on page 52) , auxiliary verbs (verbs used to support the main verb – be, have, do, will can, could, shall, should, must, might etc). At the lexical lex ical level, this is what we have, the elements someti mes referred to as parts par ts of speech or word categories.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 9 Identify the parts of speech of each of the words in this short except. Historical Perspective Later came the fi rst rst of the Nguni people who arrived with herds of cat tle, and mined red ochre in the hills south of Malelane. Early smelters, which pre-date the main 34


Nguni in fl ux, ux, have been excavated, indicating that the use of iron and copper was well advanced during these years. Similarly, early pottery fragments and sculptural artifacts unearthed in the hills on the Long Tom Pass, notably the “Lydenburg heads” have been described as a major art fi nd . nd .

Did you find?

Later (adverb) came (v) (v) the (art icle) Nguni (n) people (n) who (pronoun) arrived (v) with (preposition) herds (n) of (preposition) cattle (n), and (conjunction) mined (veb) red (adjective) (adjective) ochre (n) in ( preposition) preposition) the (article) (art icle) hills hil ls south of Malelane. Malel ane. Early Ear ly (adverb) (adverb) smelters (n), (n), which (prono ( pronoun) un) pre-date (v) the (article) main Nguni Ngun i (n) in flux (n), have been excavated, indicating t hat the use of iron and copper was well advanced (v) during these years. Similarly, early pottery fragments and sculptural artifacts (n) unearthed in the hills on the Long Tom Pass, notably the “Lydenburg heads” have been described as a major art find. This basic identi identi fication process is easier to do. It names these elements as isolated un its and does not take into account their relationship with the other words in whose company company they appear. What syntax does is to examine these in context as both single elements and elements within a group.

3.6

THE BASIC STRUCTURE OF THE SENTENCE The known structure str ucture of the t he Engl ish language l anguage sentence is in two parts; the subject and the predicate. The predicate constitutes of the verb and sometimes the verb and the compliment. Below are some examples of simple sentences showing the different patterns in which the sentence could look like. As described described in ‘The in ‘The Longman Handbook for Writers and Readers’ a predicate is the completer of a sentence. The subject names the “do-er” or “be-er” of the sentence; the predicate does the rest of the work. A simple predicate consists of only a verb, verb string, or compound verb:

• • •

The water evaporated. The water has been evaporatin evaporating. g. The water evaporated, disappeared into the air, and never seen again.

A compound predicate consists of two t wo (or more) more) such predicates connected:

•

The water began to flow into the river and eventually filled the pond below the stream.

A complete predicate consists of the verb and all accompanying modi fiers and other words that receive the action of of a transitive verb or complete its its meaning. meani ng. My car (subject) has been stolen. (predicate) ( predicate) John (subject) (subject) drove drove my car (predicate). The president (subject (subject)) gave all the Cabinet ministers mi nisters a car. (predicate) (pred icate).. Tatiana Tatiana is attentive. (predicate) ( predicate).. The dog died. (predicate) (pred icate).. The subject is always in a noun phrase or nominal form and the t he predicate pred icate in i n a verb phrase or verbal form. Given that the noun can be substituted with a pronoun, the ENG1502/1

35

noun phrase could be as in ‘He ‘ He is coming’. Of course, a noun phrase can ca n appear inside the predicate as well, as tthe he object, as in ‘The priest is a corrupt fellow’, where ‘corrupt fellow’ is the noun phrase. Here are some examples taken from Silva (1995) which show the structural composition of the simple si mple sentence. Subject Noun phrase She She (pro (pronoun noun))

Predicate Verb phrase was was humming umming

(auxiliary + verb) My car John

has been stolen was driving drivi ng

Noun phrase an old church song (determiner+ adjective phrase (adjective + noun) + noun my car

The table above shows the ful l constituent struct ure of the sentence from f rom the part of speech to phrase level. It also shows you the functional aspects, for example the pronoun/nouns ‘she’, ‘ and ‘John’ function function as the subjects of the sentences and ‘was ‘she’, ‘my my car’ and ‘John’ and ‘was driving’ as as the verb phases and ‘an old church song’ and and humming’, ‘has been stolen’ and as noun phrases in the predicate position. The following is another example ‘my car’ as showing more details on each of the phrases. Subject Noun Phrase

Predicate Verb phrase

Tears Tears (noun)

were gleaming gleami ng (auxil (auxiliary iary + verb)

Prepositional phrase (preposition + Noun phrase ( determiner + adjective+ noun) on my mother’s face

Let’s start with: Nouns phrases or nominals

In a sentence or text, text , nouns are sometimes somet imes referred to as content words as opposed opposed to function words such as prepositions and articles. The noun is the quintessential part of a sentence. Even in a sentence such as ‘stop’, the noun may not be in the surface structure, but is implied as in ‘You stop’. There are different kinds of nouns, common nouns (man, friend, apple, stick), proper proper nouns (names (names of particu lar things th ings and people (August, The Catcher and the Rye’ Rye’,, the Union Building, Building , Johannesburg), Johannesburg), collective nouns which refer to a collection or group g roup of people, people, animals an imals,, etc, (herd, ( herd, government, committee), abstract nouns such as (belief socialism, intelligence, etc). Let’s look again at the passage and see if we can identify the noun types. Nguni Ngun i (n) (n)

:

proper

people (n)

:

common

herds (n) (n)

:

common

cattle (n) (n)

:

common

ochre (n), hills (n), Malelane (n), smelters (n), Nguni (n), in flux (n), copper (n), pottery (n), fragments (n), artifacts (n), hills (n), Long Tom Pass (n), 36


Other single nouns include plural form nouns (children , men, mangoes) and pronouns pronouns (she, he, they etc). Noun phrases refer to the combination of words in which the noun appears as the ma in word around which the other word categories congregate. A noun phrase is either a noun or any group of words that can be replaced by a pronoun. In the sentences illustrating the basic structure of the sentence, you saw that the noun phrase can be in the subject position, as a subjet and in the predicate position, as an object. The Noun Phrase and its structure

It is a unit comprised of a noun (which becomes the t he head of the un it) plus plus other additional elements which modify the noun. The elements which generally modif y the noun are determiners and adjectives. A noun phrase can be in finite in length. The bolded sections in the following sentences are noun phrases in different forms (Single words) words) (Proper names) Mr. Jones Jones spoke to Dr. James James. (Nouns and articles) The boy ate an apple. (Nouns and a nd possessives) possessives) My friend works with her father. (Nouns and adjectives) The young girl wore a long, white dress dress. (Nouns and quanti fiers) Some of the the kids ate all of the cake. a nd prep. phrases) The man with the gun frightened the people in the bank. (Nouns and (Nouns and relative clauses) The woman who lives there is my aunt. (Nouns and a nd phrases) The dogs sleeping on the deck should be left alone. (Noun clauses) Whoever wrote this is in trouble. Water is important for survival.

http://www.eslgold.com/grammar/noun_verb_phrases. This table shows you al most all al l the t he groups of noun phrases. One very ver y useful usefu l way of determining a noun phase is to take the string of words and substitute them with a pronoun. So the sentences in the table above would look like this: It is important for it. He spoke to him. He ate it. She works with him. She wore it. They ate it. He frightened them. She is my aunt. It should be left alone. He/she He/she is in trouble.

(Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words) (Single words) words)

We don’t don’t speak like this, but looking at these sentences you may begin to appreciate the statement we made earlier that nouns and noun phrases provide the content and information to make a sentence mean something. The structure struct ure of the noun phrase potential potentially ly contains three sect ions: ENG1502/1

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Pre-modi fication; head noun and post-modi fication. Any given noun phrase will use one or two or all these parts. Let’s look at some examples: Pre-modi fier The young The The very tall ta ll psychology The HI V positive The The doctor’s high

Head noun girl dogs professor professor man chi ldren place salaries

Post-mod ifier

sleeping on the deck with a north American Amer ican partner who is wearing the hat to stay for for the holidays

This should should give you an idea idea of the possible possible patterns that a noun phrase can possi possible ble have.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 10 This activit y will give you good practice on t he noun phrase. Study the following passage. Underline the noun phrases. Replace the noun phrase with a pronoun. In the same passage identify t he pronouns. Try Try to find an appropriate noun or noun phrase to replace the pronoun. The world’s greatest snow-capped peaks, which run in a chain from the Himalayas to Tian Shan on the border of China and Kyrgyzstan, have lost no ice over the last decade, new research shows. The discovery has stunned scientists, who had believed that around 50bn tonnes of meltwater were being shed each year and not being replaced by new snowfall. The study is the first to survey all the world’s icecaps and glaciers and was made possible by the use of satellite data. Overall, the contribution of melting ice outside the two largest caps – Greenland and Antarctica – is much less than previously estimated, with the lack of ice loss in the Himalayas and the other high peaks of Asia responsible for most of the discrepancy. Bristol University glaciologist Prof Jonathan Bamber, who was not part of the research team, said: “The very unexpected result was the negligible mass loss from high mountain Asia, which is not signi ficantly different from zero.” (The guardian, Febraury, 2012) At the t he sec ond level of this t his c ourse we will wil l introduc int roduce e advanc ed proc esses of how the noun and noun phrase structures (nominal structures) work. We will also observe how nominal structures are used differently in different disciplines, different registers and genres. In an ar ticle by Fang, Schleppegrell and Cox (2012) (2012) they demonstrate how nouns in the academic register c an be a challenge to many students. Let’s look at the two short extracts they use to illustrate this, one from a well-known fable (literature genre) and the other from a sc ience book (scienti fic language). The underlined sections are nouns and noun groups. 38


Percy, 2002: “The Cat and the Mice’

There was once a large larg e family fa mily of mice, who l ived together toget her i n a little litt le house house in the country. Life for them should have been peaceful and happy, but it wasn’t. And you know why?

Cooney, DiSpezio, Foots Matamoros, Nyquist & Ostlund, 2000: Science Text-book Text-book As rocks change, the minerals m inerals that make up the rocks may change too. A mineral is a natura natural,l, nonliving nonlivi ng solid with a definite chemical structure. str ucture. The heat and pressure inside the earth may change the arrangements of the atoms in minerals.

A large prowling prowli ng ginger gin ger cat made every day a perfect misery for the mice. Each This change chan ge in arrangement arran gement of atoms atoms ocmorning, the cat crouched outside the curs when the mineral quartzite found in back door, watchi watching ng the family famil y eat breakbreak- sandstone (a sedimentary rock) changes fast. The little ones trembled in fear as into quartzite quart zite (a metaphoric rock). The atthe cat’s shadow fell across the breakfast oms in sandstone are arranged in a pattern table. that form a small crysta l. Pressure and heat inside the earth rearrange the atoms into After breakfast, Mother-mouse would larger crystal. This pattern makes quartzite run indoors, her weeding left un finished. stronger than sandstones. After tea, the two mouse twins t wins would start their thei r music practice, but the sound of their playing playi ng would soon be drowned out by a dreadful meowing from f rom outside. outside.

The structures structu res of the noun phases are different in the literary and science texts shown above. The science text, for example exa mple seems to pack in more information in it’s phrase than does the story text. It also uses more phrase embedding. ‘the minerals minera ls that make up the rocks’ = In this th is one noun phrase, you have have a noun phrase (the minerals), a relative clause (that make up the rocks) embedded embedded in the relative rel ative clause is another noun phrase, “the rocks”). As opposed to the noun phrases from the story: a large family of mice, = adjectival modi fiers and a noun in the country. = prepositional phrase in which noun phrase is embedded A large prowling prowlin g ginger ging er cat. = a determiner, modi mod ifiers and noun. We can now now move move on on to other phrase phrase types which are as important as the noun phrase. The verb and verb phrase

When we talk of a sentence or a clause, c lause, its core element e lement is the verb. Verb phrases are groups of words which take the function of a verb. Verbs and therefore verb phrases form the head of the predicate of the sentence. They could be single words or accompanied by other words. There are different forms of the verb in English: Forms of the verb to be : is, am, are, was, were, be been Forms of do: do: do does, did Forms of have : have had ENG1502/1

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Other forms: can could, should, shall, will etc A sentence is no sentences without a verb verb phrase.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 11 Find all verbs and remove them from the passage. See how the passage will read like.

‘The region abounded with all types of game, plants, birds and insects. The rivers ran full, providing for the needs of these early inhabitants. Later came the

rst fi rst

of

the Nguni people who arrived with herds of cattle, and mined red ochre in the hills south of Malelane. Early smelters, which pre-date the main Nguni in fl ux, ux, have been excavated, excavated, indicating that the use of iron and copper was well advanced during these years. Similarly, early pottery fragments and sculptural ar tifacts unearthed in the hills

on the Long Tom Tom Pass, notably the “Lydenburg heads” have been described described as a major art fi nd. nd. Here is an example with the fi rrst st sentence without the verbs: The region with all types of game, plants, birds and insects. The rivers full , providing for the needs of these early inhabitants. Later the fi rrst st of the Nguni people who wi th herds of cattle, and red ochre in the hills south of Malelane.

At the end of reading readi ng this th is you could say “okay, “okay, so what did all al l the mentioned people, places, things do?” You are asking for the VERB. Verbs Verbs can be used to convey convey meaning meanin g or perform a grammatical grammatica l function. funct ion. In the sentences: They drink dri nk every weekend. I believe everything you say. I will wil l taste all the dishes. The underlined underli ned verbs in sentences a-c state an a n event, a state of being and an action respectively. They are conveying meaning. Yet Yet in the sentences: I have been crying He had won the election. The verbs express grammatical g rammatical functions, ‘have been, and a nd had’ are called auxil iary verbs. Auxil Aux iliary iary verbs do not carr y any lexical lex ical meaning, meanin g, but assist the t he main m ain verb, to show mainly tense and aspect. Verbs, Verbs, as we saw with nouns, also come in singles and groups. The group is called the verb phrase. 40


The Verb Verb phrase can be used in fi ve different ways: as a predicate

I am studying Lingu istics. The glass was broken by by the dog as a noun phrase modifier

The woman reading the book just book just yelled at me. My dog is the puppy chewing on the rawhide . The most recent news news reported by the anchor made me sad. as an adjective phrase complement

You You should should be excited to study syntax . My mother is upset to see me leave. Your Your professor professor is curious to know why you dropped her class . The teachers are happy to learn about teaching methods . as a subject.

is good exercise. Swimming is is educational. Reading books is impresses me. Your eating health food impresses is human. To err is disappoints librarians. To never visit v isit the library disappoints as a subject complement

My favourite pastime is reading . His hobbies are writing and editing articles . My job is to repair damaged books . Subject-Ve Subject-Verb rb agreement and a nd other sentence structura str ucturall issues

We mentioned mentioned earlier that the verb has to agree in number and tense with the subject. It is common to find the verb inappropriately inappropriately used, especial ly when there are too many words or phrases coming between the subject and the verb. Always make sure you you know if the subject is singular singula r therefore to take a singular verb or plural to take a plural verb. Here is an exercise to illustrate the possible confusion:

The following following paragraph contains contains six errors in subject-v subject-verb erb agreement. agreement. Find and correct each of the six verb errors. Remember to stay in the present tense. ENG1502/1

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Santa

According to legend, Santa Claus is a fat fat old man who visits every house on our planet in about eight hours on one of the coldest nights of the year. Santa, as everybody knows, stop for a glass of mil k and a cookie cook ie at each house along the route. He prefer to work unnoticed, so he wears luminous red suit and travels with a pack of bell-jangling reindeer. For reasons that most people does not understand, this jolly old man enters each e ach house not by the front door but through the chimney (whether you has a chimney or not). He customarily gives generously to children in wealthy families, and he usually remind poorer children chi ldren that it’s the thought that counts. Santa Claus is one of of the earl iest beliefs that parents try to instil in their children. After this absurdity, it’s a wonder that any child ever believe in anything agai n. Did you do the following?

(1) (1) Change “stop for a glass” to “stops for a glass”; glass”; (2) change chan ge “prefer to work” to “prefers to work”; (3) change chang e “people does not understand” to “people do not understand”; (4) change “you has a chimney” to “you have a chimney”; (5) change “remind poorer children” to “reminds poorer children”; (6) change “child ever believe” to “child ever believes.” http://grammar.about.com/od/correctingerrors/a/SVAexercises_2.htm The most common confusion with subject-verb subject-verb agreement arises when we use quantifiers and group g roup nouns nouns such as: some of, neither, nor, either or, a lot of, some, team staff, audience etc. One way o off avoiding this particu par ticular lar era is making mak ing sure you have identi identi fied the subject of the sentences. For example in the following sentences Example:

The list of items is/are on the desk. The subject is the list not the items. It is the list that is on the desk; what list? of items which will then take the singular subject ‘is’ So: My My aunt or my uncle is arriving ar riving by train today. Who is arriving arr iving by train? Its my aunt or uncle, one of of them, not not both. So the two singular verbs connected by or’ ‘or’ require a singular verb.

Similarly, if you have two singular subjects connected by either/or or neither/nor they they require a singular verb. verb. Examples:

Neither Nora Nora nor Chazile Chazile is available. available. Either Khulana or Siviwe is helping helping today with stage decorations. decorations. But when I when I is is one of the two subjects connected by either/or or or neither/nor , put it second and follow it with the singular verb am . Example: Neither she she nor I am going to the the wedding. wedding. 42


When a singu lar subject is connected by or or to a plural subject, put the plural or or nor to subject last and use a plural verb. Example: The serving bowl or the plates go on that shelf.

Likewise, Likew ise, when a singular and plural subject are connected by either/or or or neither/nor , put the plural subject last and use a plural verb. Example: Neither Felix Felix nor the others others are available. available.

The other obvious pattern is that you you use a plural plural verb with two or more subjects subjects when when they are connected by and . Example: A car and a bike are my means of transportation.

Sometimes the t he subject is separated from the verb by words such as along with, as well as, besides , or not . Ignore these expressions when determining whether to use a singular or plural verb. Examples: The politician, along with the newsmen, is expected shortly.

Excitement, as well as nervousness, is the cause of her shaking. The pronouns each, everyone, every one, everybody, anyone, anybody, someone, and somebody are are singular and require singular verbs. Do not be misled by what follows after of . Examples:

Each of the the girls sings well. well. Every one of the cakes cakes is gone.

TAKE NOTE Everyone is Everyone is one word when it means everybody . Every one is one is two words when the meaning is each one. one. With words that indicate portions – percent, percen t, fractio fr action, n, par t, majorit maj orit y, some, al l, none, phrase (object of the pre position) remainder , and so forth – look at the noun in your of phrase to determine whether to use a singular or plu ral verb. If the object of the preposition is singular, singular, use a singular verb. If the object of t he preposition is plural, use a plural verb. Examples:

Fifty percent of the pie has disappeared. is the t he object of the preposition of . Pie is Fifty percent of the pies have disappeared. is the t he object of the preposition. Pies is One-third of the city is unemployed. One-third of the people people are unemployed. unemployed. The expression the number is followed by a singular verb while the expression a number is followed by a plural verb. Examples:

The number of people we need to hire is thirteen. A number of people have written in about about this subject. subject. ENG1502/1

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When either and and neither are are subjects, they always take singular verbs. Examples:

Neither of them them is available available to speak right now. now. Either of us is capable of doing doing the job. The words words here and and there have have generally been labeled as adverbs even though they indicate place. In sentences beginning with here or or there , the subject follows the verb. Examples:

There are four hurdles to jump. There is a high hurdle to jump. Use a singular verb with sums of money or periods of time. Examples:

Ten rands is a high price to pay. Five years years is the the maximum sentence sentence for that that offense. Sometimes the pronoun who, that , or which is is the subject of a verb in the middle of the sentence. The pronouns who, that , and which become become singular or plural according to the noun directly in front of them. So, if that noun is singular, use a singular verb. If it is plural, use a plural verb. Examples:

Salma is the scientist who writes/write the reports. The word in front of of who is who is scientist , which is singular. Therefore, use the singular verb writes . He is one of the men who does/do the work. The word in front of of who is who is men , which is plural. Therefore, use the plural verb do. Collective nouns such as team and and staff may may be either singular or plural depending on their use in the sentence. Examples:

The staff is in a meeting. is acting as a unit here. Staff is The staff are in disagreement about the fi ndings. ndings. are acting as separate individuals in this example. The staff are The sentence would read even better as: The staff members are in disagreement about about the fi ndings. ndings. http://www.grammarbook.com/grammar/subjectVerbAgree.asp I think these basic tips are useful for us especially when we get stuck with the subject verb agreement syntactic structure. str ucture. 44


Another syntactic structure structu re which calls for attention is when we deal with the verb phrase are the auxiliary verbs. These are the verbs which accompany the main verb to modify it for tense, aspect, mood. They normally precede the main verb, For Example:

I shall go go now. He had won won the election. They did write did write that novel together. I am going going now. He was winning winn ing the election. They have been writing writing that novel for a long time. You You may be asking ask ing yourself, yoursel f, what is the difference d ifference between bet ween a verb as we know it, i.e. the lexical verb (word) and an auxiliary? ma rked for tense and Lexical verbs or the words called verbs are the ones that can be marked person. In English, these include the past and the present tenses. Lexical verbs – have meaning – and normally use do-support for for questions, negatives and a nd emphasis. Auxiliar Auxi liaryy verbs are characteristically used as markers of tense, person, aspect, mood, and voice.

With lexical lexical verbs, verbs, these are expressed by verb in flections; however, however, with auxiliar auxi liaryy verbs, these are expressed with separate words. Let’s look at these examples to see the difference: I had a dog (possessed) vs I had wanted wanted a dog. (‘had’ lexical in the fi rst rst and auxiliary in the second example-telling the tense when the dog was wanted) is full of problems for the foreign learner. (is is lexical) English, English, like all languages, languages, is full Some points are easily explained, such as the difference between for and since, while others are more tricky. (are is auxiliary) Try this out and see if you can make the difference: Underline Underline the auxiliary auxiliar y and double underline the lexical verb as shown in the first example (1) (1) Language Lang uage is constantly changing and being adapted to speaker’s needs descriptions written in the earl ier part of the nineteen hundreds are stil l (2) Grammar descriptions being taught by some instructors. (3) Grammar descriptions descriptions written in the earl ier part of the nineteen hundreds are stil l being taught by some instructors. ling uistic descriptions have rejected many errors of of the older tradition and (4) Modern linguistic have supported departures from traditional grammar with reasoned argument. Modal Auxiliaries

This is another type of helping verb. We will wil l not not get into details about them, but we will wil l give you some basic information on them. They are sensitive as they don’t like being done certain things to them, for example, modal auxiliaries don’t:

• ENG1502/1

like being used with other auxiliary verbs such as do, does, did etc. 45

• • • •

like being followed by to, to, with the exception of ought to. to. change form, like add an “-s” or “-ed”, for example. have infinitives (to may, to shall etc.) or participles (maying, shalling, shalled etc.). You You cannot say say to shall , to must or or to may. allow you to sound the ‘l’ in pronunciation

The verbs can, could, will, would, should, may, might, must, ought and shall are are verbs which ‘help’ other verbs to express a meaning and are called modal verbs. These modal verbs have no meaning by themselves. A modal verb such as would has has several varying functions; it can be used, for example, to help verbs express ideas about the past, the present and the future. It is therefore wrong to simply believe that “would is the past of will”: it is many other things.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 12 Attempt Att empt the t he following fol lowing task on modal s: (1) (1)

You seem to be having trouble there. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ I help you? will

(2) (2)

ought

must have

will have

would you be

must you be

That bus is usually usually on time. It __ __ __ __ _ to be here here any time now. now. has

ought

I read read about your plane’s plane’s near disaster disaster.. You You _ __ __ __ __ __ _ terri fied! must have been

46

couldn’t

I’m really really quite quite lost. __ __ __ _ __ __ __ __ showing showing me how to get out of here? here?

might (9) (9)

could

shouldn’t

would you mind (8) (8)

would mind not to

John is over over two hours hours late late already already.. He __ __ __ __ __ _ missed missed the bus bus again again.. should have

(7)

might not

He __ __ __ __ __ _ __ _ have have committed this crime. He wasn’t wasn’t even in the city that night. might

(6) (6)

shall

It’s way way past past my my bedtime bedtime and and I’m really tired. I _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ go to bed. should

(5)

could

That ice is dangerously thin now. You _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ go ice-skati ng today. today. mustn’t

(4) (4)

shall

I don’t don’t have have enoug enough h money money to to buy buy lunch. lunch. ___ __ __ __ _ you you lend lend me a couple couple of dollars? may

(3)

would

might have been

shall have been


(10) 10) It’s the law. law. They ___ __ __ __ __ _ have have a blood blood test before before they they get married. married. might

could

have to

Adapted from http://grammar.ccc.commnet.edu/grammar/auxiliary.htm

The Adjective and the Adjective Adject ive Phrase

They modify and intensify nouns direct ly or or indirectly. We We have have already seen this in the examples under the noun descriptions the kinds of adjectives that can modify the noun. This again ag ain underscores the importance importa nce of the nouns as the main glue in the sentence. Look at the following t wo paragraphs (1 and 2) what is the frequency of adjective phrases and why do you think one paragraph has more adjectives than the other? (1) Xai Xai (pronounced’ Shai Shai’) is a large town in the south of Mozambique, situated on the Limpopo River, 220 kilometres north of the capital, Maputo. Xai Xai is the capital of the Gaza Province. Provi nce. English is spoken in Mozambique, but but the of ficial language in Mozambique is Portuguese. Portuguese and Shangaan are the languages spoken in the Gaza Province. Xai Xai X ai is a bustling bustlin g town with markets, shops, petrol stations, banks and internet cafes. (2) The beach town known as Praia de de Xai Xai has been a popular tourist attract attraction ion since Mozambican tourism was first developed. It is not dif ficult to see why Praia de Xai Xai – with all its natural beauty and exquisite beaches – is the preferred destination for many holidaymakers. Praia de Xai Xai is situated 12 kilometres from the main town of Xai Xai. The road is tarred, but care must be taken to avoid pedestrians and vehicles that stop without warning to drop off or pick up passengers. The Adverb and Adverb Phrase

We saw that an adjectives modi modi fies a noun, an adverb modi fies a verb. Adverbs modify all other parts of speech except for the noun. So an adverb can:

• • •

Modify an adjective: ‘awfully expensive’ Modify an adverb: ‘she eats quite frequently’ Modify prepositions: ‘right outside outside the door’

Adverbs say more about about time (now, then, today, today, never, till); ti ll); place ( there, t here, here, below, above, outside; manner (slowly, eagerly, badly, well); degree ( very, reasonably, quite, too); too); number (once, twice, t wice, finally again); certainty ( certainly, certai nly, surely, surely, perhaps, not) interrogative (how, why, what, when). (1) (1)

Adverb modify ing a verb ‘She walks beautiful beautifully’ ly’

(2) Adverb modify ing an adjective: ‘That is a very good book’ (3) Adverb modifying modif ying another adverb ‘She walks very slowly’ ENG1502/1

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Try and find other examples of adverbs in sentences.

Adverb phrases phrases are group of words which function in exactly the same way as adverbs.

• • • •

We expect our grandparents to arrive in about an hour. hour. My cousin watches television almost al most as much as you do. The weatherman says it will wil l rain al l day. day. Your Your brother plays soccer better than my brother brother does.

Look at the following sentences. Decide whether the bolded sections are adverbs or adverb phrases. Note that some of the group of words are neither phrases nor clauses.

• • • • • •

We served drinks to our friends when they arrived. In the morning, we played cards. We will al l leave immediately. We moved to Cornwall Cor nwall because we wanted wanted to live in the countryside. In winter, we decided to move to the south west. I fi nished nished work early. could catch the 4.30 train. I left work early so that I could get hungry. Take a packed lunch with you, in case you get

The Prepositional Phrase As the name suggests, the head of t he prepositional phrase is the preposition. The structure structu re of a prepositional phrase is comprised of a preposition + noun phrase. Its main function in a sentence is to signal a relationship between the object of the preposition and some other elements in the sentence – in terms of ti me, space, location and association. For example

The mat on the floor is swollen from the floor moisture (which mat?) Before leaving, Sam gave us his address (when did he give his address?) Prepositional phrases can be tricky. If placed at the wrong point in the sentence they can create confusion. The principle is that you place them as close as possible to the element they refer so as to avoid confusions as: ‘The boy ( past) saw a man with a telescope’ telescope’ . The ambigu ity created by the modif ying phrase can be problematic. Was the boy carrying the telescope or did the boy use the telescope to see the man? This ambiguity is created by the prepositional phrase, as it’s not clear as to which noun (boy or man) is being modifying. Sentences according to structure

We look look first at the three structures. independent/main clause (IC) ( IC) Simple sentences: consist of one independent/main people’s lives.] l ives.] e.g. [Mobile phones have taken over people’s [Mobile phones are becoming an essential gadget for making a teenager’s life mobile, flexible and easy. e asy.]] 48


independent/main clauses (IC) ( IC) joined Compound sentences: consist of two or more independent/main together using a coordination conjunction or a conjunctive adverb. e.g. [Although Senzo was supposed to collect the documents and complete the re port on Friday (DC)] but [the documents were unavailable until Thursday (IC)]. [The use of mobile phones is important for networking;] networking ;] however, however, [it can distract dist ract a lot of drivers on the road.] Complex sentences: consist of one independent clause (IC) clause (IC) and at least one depend). The subordinate/dependent subordinate/dependent clause is introduced or linked lin ked to the main mai n ent clause (DC clause (DC). clause by means of a subordinat subordinating ing conjunction. Each ty type pe of clause is identi fied in the following complex sentences: e.g. [Although Senzo was supposed to collect the documents and complete the re port on Friday (DC)], [the documents were unavailable until Thursday (IC)]. Compound-complex sentences: consist of a combination of the complex and the compound sentences. e.g. [Even though the documents were unavailable until Thursday, (DC)] [Senzo collected what he had, (IC)] and [he submitted the report on Friday. (IC)] N.B. The brackets brackets [ ] are used to indicate the clauses Clauses (independent (i ndependent (main) and dependant d ependant (subordinate)) (subordinate))

[Web developers should develop their proficiency with visual language (IC)] [because Web pages involve as much visual communication as verbal (DC)]. If you look again at t he sentences, sentences, you will realize that t hat all the clauses have been bracketed. bracketed. Inside the Clause

Clauses make up the biggest unit within a sentence. They, in turn, are made up of phrases. So the clause ‘Web developers (NP) should develop (VP) their pro ficiency (NP) with visual language’ (PP) – made up of four phrases. with in a clause. cl ause. You You Phrases: refer to a combination of words which function as a u nit within can have several several phrases within withi n a clause. The English language langua ge uses several several phrase types namely: Noun Phrase (NP), Verb Phrase (VP), Adjective phrase (AP), Prepositional phrase (PP), and adverb phrase (AdvP). e.g. [(Mobile phones) phones) NP (are (are becoming) becomi ng) VP V P (an essential gadgets) NP (for making) maki ng) PP (a teenager’s life) NP, ( flexible) AP and (extremely exciting) AdvP]. It is these units or structures, the clauses and phrases that we move around when we write. If we confuse t he way the units should be structured str uctured and positioned in relation relat ion to each other in a text, then we run the risk of making errors, miscommunicating, distorting messages or making no sense at all. Look at the following sentence: (A) The boy, boy, he is at home. home. (the boy boy and ‘he’ refers to one thing – so one of of them must go). This is a typical direct translation error caused by first language interference. In Zulu, for example the sentence would read: ENG1502/1

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U (the) mfana (boy) u (he)se (at) khaya (home). To To appreciate the t ype of error, it takes ta kes one to understand understa nd that a noun phrase and its corresponding pronoun cannot be used together to refer to the subject of the sentence. The same clauses and phrases are used by by text creators, creators, poets, news news writers, and politicians etc. to create t he desired effect. As was noted in Unit one, some of these structu res can be inverted for different effect. Some can be expanded, modi fied again to create an effect. There are two ways ways in which we will be looking at the sentence: The structural structur al and the functional points of view. What do we mean by this and why is it so important? Look at the following sentences:

• • •

The waitress served the t he meal. The waitress, who was employed yesterday, yesterday, served the meal. The waitress was employed yesterday yesterday and served the meal on the same day.

What is the difference dif ference between these two sentences?

• • • • •

2 and 3 are a re longer than tha n 1 (obvious). (obvious). 2 has more punctuation marks than 1 and 3 (commas). 2 tells us more about the waiter than t han 1 does (which waiter/employed waiter/employed previous day). day). 3 tells more about what the waitress did and when she did it. 2 and 3 has two verb forms and 1 has one verb (see underlined).

Looking at the differences we have listed, structurally, these sentences are indeed different. In terms of the structural labelling and naming of sentences, sentence 1 is a simple sentence, 2 is a complex sentence and 3 is a compound sentence. Let’s explore in detai l what the structures structu res are. Every piece of text will use one or all these types. Depending on the domain in question, texts may use many sentence types, but these three are basic. These labels may not be new to many of you. We wi ll brie fly explain them more to remind you than to teach you what they are.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 13 Below is a text on how t o tender a garden, taken from the ‘ Home’ magazine (July, (July, 2008).

Design Decisions

by Michelle Terblanche

(1) (1) “Divide your garden into sections and remember that everything doesn’t have to be done in a day. day. (2) For example, an area can be c overed in gravel or bark now to be planted later. (3) (3) Fine gravel is fairly cheap and will keep the place neat and tidy until your finances are balanced. (4) You can use pine needles, peach pips, or nutshells. (5) The water feature or braai can wait a while too. (6) In the meantime, you can work wonders with the bench and three pretty pots. (7) Your Your small garden can cost you the price of a new car, but it can also cost you as little as a week’s groceries and both can be equally beautiful. (8) The difference lies 50


in the type of garden you’re planning, your expertise and energy, and your design decisions.” Do the following analysis of this extract for sentences. Don’t look at the feedback before completing the task. There are ____ number of sentences. Sentence 1 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 2 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 3 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 4 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 5 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 6 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 7 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type) Sentence 8 is a simple, c ompound, complex sentence (underline the type)

Feedback

Now you can check your answers 1 = compound; 2 = compound; c ompound; 3 = compound; 4 = simple; 5 = compound; 6 = compound; 7 = compound; 8 = compound. Even though we haven’t haven’t printed the t he rest of Miss Terblanche’s erblanche’s art icle, we did d id establish that the dominant domina nt sentence sentence structure struct ure she uses is the compound sentence, some simple sentences and very few complex sentences. It’s dif ficult to say whether she avoided the complex sentence, or she doesn’t know how to construct one, or m aybe she didn’t even think about variety in sentence use. Whatever the reason, we wouldn’t wouldn’t like li ke to believe that she left them out of ignorance. It is for this reason that you must learn about the various sentence type, so that you can choose which one one to use and more more importantly ‘spice’ your text with a variety of sentences. Look again at this sentence: (a) Benjamin avoids hard work and and this bothers me. (b) Benjamin’s avoidance of hard work bothers bothers me (c) It bothers me. In these sentences we clearly are playing around with the words and phrases, moving them around. A main ma in clause has been changed chan ged into a noun phrase. We can do this th is process (called nominal ization) whereby a statement statement is changed change d into a noun phrase, only if we understand how noun phrases are formed and what their functions fu nctions are. Nominal ization occurs more frequently in academic texts and other technical texts. Sentences, clauses, phrases and text creation

Now that we have given you background information on the terminology used in the discussion of sentences and introduced you to the sentence names and classi fication, we will wil l move move on to look in more more detai detaill at at the sentence kinds and how how they can be effectively effectively used. Remember, the success of any piece of writing, be it academic or non-academic, ENG1502/1

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depends on how well your sentences have been crafted. Moreover, at University level you are suppose to develop the skill ski ll to choose the appropriate appropriate sentences to use for the kind of writing you are doing. We have have stated that there are four main mai n kinds of sentences that matter, these vary var y depending on the t he number and types ty pes of clauses they have. The compound and the complex sentences are formed by coordinating several phrase and clauses and this is done by using conjunctions.

3.7

THE CONJUNCTION IN A SENTENCE A conjunction is a fu nction word that serves as a connector or a li nking nki ng word to join words, phrases, or or clauses. Coordinating Coordinat ing conjunctions conjunctions are used for for compound sentences and subordinating conjunctions are used to form complex sentences. One way to make sure you master the use of conjunctions is to see how accomplish writers use them in real texts. Cohesion and coherence in texts, that is, if someone says ‘this writing flows well’, it’s it’s because the conjunctions have have been used appropriately appropriately and effectively. There is a long list of conjunctions conjunctions that can be used to create complexity complexity in sentences. Below is a list of the conjunctions, grouped according to the function they perform in a sentence. Most of these will be familiar to you, but the important thing is that you familiarize familiar ize yourself with their function. Time: after, after, wh ich, and, as along as, as soon as, at which, before, once, since, the moment, then, till, until, when, whenever, whereupon, while Result: and, and so, else, or else, otherwise, so, so that Contrast, Concession, Alternatives: although, apart from, but, despite, even if, even though, except that, in spite of, or, much as, nor, nor that, though, whereas, while, whilst, whilst , yet. Reason: as, as a result of, because, because of, considering, due to, for, given that, in case, in view of the fact that, that, just in case, on account of, seeing that/that, since. Purpose: in case, in order that, in order to, so, so as to, so that, to

(that), providi providing ng (that), (that), Conditional: as long as, even if, if, on condition that, provided (that), so long as, unless, un less, whether… or Manner: as, as if, as though, in a way, just as, like, much as, the way. Addition: and, as well as, besides, besides which, in addition to. Giving examples: for instance, for example, in particular.

3.8

SENTENCES IN TEXTS TEX TS The usage of these conjunctions conjunctions will not be illustrated to you you through created sentences, sentences, but we will invite you to study each of the texts and extract the conjunction, stating the function of each.

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ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 14 Passage 2 Historical Perspective In the mountains above Barberton scientists have found traces of “Stromatolites”, the remnants of blue-green algae formed 3 5 00 million years ago when oxygen was added to the earth’s atmosphere in signi fi cant cant quantities to create the fi rst rst evolutionary step towards life forms. Throughout the Mpumalanga hills and mountains exist hundreds of examples of San (bushman) art. This art serves as a window looking into the lives lives of the San hunters and gatherers who inhabited the area centuries before the arrival of the Nguni people from t he nor th. The region abounded with all types of game, plants, birds and insects. The rivers ran full, providing for the needs of these early inhabitants. Later came the fi rst rst of the Nguni people who arrived with herds of cattle, and mined red ochre in the hills south of Malelane. Early smelters, which pre-date the main Nguni in fl ux, ux, have been excavated, excavated, indicating that the use of iron and copper was well advanced during these years. Similarly, early pottery fragments and sculptural ar tifacts unearthed in the hills on the Long Tom Tom Pass, notably the “Lydenburg heads” have been described described as a major art fi nd. nd. Passage 3 My hometown and my college town have several things in common. First, both are small rural communities. For example, my hometown, Gridlock, has a population of only about 10,000 people. Similarly, my Similarly, my college town, Subnormal, consists of about 11,000 local resid ents. This population swells to 15,000 peopl e when the college students are attending classes. A second way in which these two towns are similar is that they are both located both located in rural areas. Gridlock is surrounded by many acres of farmland which is devoted mainly to growing corn and soybeans. In the same way, way, Subnormal lies in the centre of farmland which is used to raise hogs and cattle. Thirdly, these these towns are similar in that they contain college campuses. Gridlock , for example, is home to Neutron College, which is famous for its Agricultural Economics program as well as for its annual Corn-Watching Festival. Likewise, the Likewise, the town of Subnormal boasts the beautiful campus of Quark College, which is well known for its Agricultural Engineering department and also for its yearly Hog-Calling Contest.

http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/fwalters/compcont.html

REFLECTION What can you say about the flow of each of these passages based on the way the conjunctions have been used?

CONCLUSION This unit has given g iven you enough working workin g tools to handle hand le words, and group g roup of words as they appear in texts. The next unit will show further how meaning is made using these tools and how meaning can shift depending on the context of a situation. So whilst we acknowledge that words are formed in particula r ways and so are sentences, ENG1502/1

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the productivity of the English language makes it possible to generate many meanings from the standard meanings meanin gs that we know. know. The ability to recogn ise sentence types, use a variety of them, can improve our written product. In the second year of th is course we wil l do more advanced work on composition composition where your knowledge of the structures we have covered here will be useful. Additional practice on complex complex sentences. sentences. Try this exercise on complex sentences (1) (1)

She had blonde blonde hair when she was was a child, but ___ ___ __ _ she she got older and older, older, her hair went darker and darker. (a) (b) (c) (d)

when after while as

(2) Will you go to the history history museum museum tomo tomorrow rrow?? Sure I will, ___ ____ __ ____ ____ ___ _ itit doesn’t doesn’t rain rai n heavily.

(a) (a) (b) (c) (c) (d)

even if in case as soon as as long as

(3) When the Internet was was created in 1969, 1969, only a few people knew about about it. That’s __ ____ __ __ it came into existence as a secret US government project. (a) (b) (c) (d) (4) (4)

why that because when

__ ____ ____ __ is known known to to us all is that that the old scientist, scientist, for for __ ____ ____ __ life was hard in the past, still works very hard in his eighties. (a) (a) (b) (c) (c) (d)

As; whose What; whom It; whose As; whom

(5) Miss Green took took up the story story at the point _____ ___ __ _ the thief had just just made off with the jewels. (a) (b) (c) (c) (d)

when which in which where

(6) It was not until dark __ ____ ____ __ he found found __ ____ ____ __ he though thoughtt was was the correct way to solve the problem. problem. (a) (a) that; what 54


(b) when; what (c) then; that (d) what; that (7) Native Americans from the south-eas south-eastern tern part of __ __ __is __ is now now the United United States States believed that the universe in which they lived was made up of three worlds. (a) (b) (c) (d)

where what that which

(8) __ __ __ life pace continues to to speed speed up, up, we are quickly losing the art of enjoyment. (a) (b) (c) (d)

With As When While

(9) I had not believed in falling fall ing in love with somebody somebody at at first sight ______ I met David on Valentine’s Day three years ago. (a) (b) (c) (d)

where after when before

(10) (10) I really don’t don’t know ___ ___ __ _ I had my money money stolen. (a) (b) (c) (d)

where it was that it was where that it was when when was it that

Syntax Glossary Looking at the way the terminology has been used. Refer to your linguistic dictionary resources, find the meaning of each of the words in the list below. Lexical Subject Predicate Complement Modi fier Determiner Nominal Verbal Verbal ENG1502/1

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Embedded Auxiliar Auxi liaryy verb In flection Tense Tense Person Mood Voice Voice Domain Text Text

References Bauer, L. (1988) Introducing Edi nbugh University University Press. Great Britain Introducing Linguistic Morphology Morpholog y , Edinbugh Ronald, C., Goddard, A., Reah, Rea h, D., Sanger, K. & Swift, Swif t, N. (1997) (1997) Working with Texts: A Core Introduction to Language L anguage Analysis, London Analysis, London & New York: Routledge. Delahnty, G.P. & Garvey, J.J. (1994) Language, Grammar and Communication. A course for teachers of English. International editions, Mr Graw-Hill, Inc. Frank, M. (1993) Modern (1993) Modern English. English. A Practical Practical Reference Guide , Prentice Hall Perspective,, Cape Town: Oxford University, Horne, F. F. & Heinemann, G. (20 06) English in Perspective Press. Huddleston, R. (1984) Introduction to the Grammar of English , Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Payne, T.E. T.E. (2006) (20 06) Exploring Exploring Language Structure: Structure: A Student’s Student’s Guide, Cambridge Guide, Cambridge University Press. United Kingdom. Swan, M. (2009) Practical English Usage , (4th ed.) Oxford Oxford University Press. Print. Pri nt. (353-4) Quirk, R., Greenbaum, S., Leech, G. & Svartvik, J. (1972) A (1972) A Grammar of Contemporary English , London: Longman. Thomson, A.J. & Martinet, Mart inet, A.V A.V. (1986) (1986) A A Practical English Grammar, Grammar, Oxford: Oxford University Press. Yule, Yule, G. (2004) (2 004) The Study of language, (2nd language, (2nd ed.) Cambridge University Press. United Kingdom.

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UNIT 4: I hear what you are saying, but what do you mean?

4

UNIT 4 I hear what you are saying, but what do you mean? 4

OUTCOMES By the end of this th is unit you should be able to:

• • • • • • • • •

define semantics and pragmatics understand the relationship between words and meaning differentiate differentiate between lingu istic meaning and speakers meaning distinguish between denotation and connotation recognise different different types ty pes of meaning understand how words, sentences, phrases combine to form meaning define how and what meanings are expressed understand the importance of context, as well as how it shapes and affects meaning analyse and understand the relevance of words in speech, reading, writing, texts, and the world.

INTRODUCTION In this unit we introduce the concepts of semantics and pragmatics, as well as their importance in everyday communication. We are going to look at the meaning of indi vidual words in a language; lang uage; that is, how how words words convey meaning, meani ng, what kinds ki nds of meaning meani ng are expressed by certain certa in words, what the role of words in sentence construct construction ion is. And how words words combine to create create meaningfu meanin gfull communication. In add ition, we explore what knowledge we need in i n order to interpret words in context? Words are important building blocks of any language because through their use we gradually acquire knowledge of language and learn what particular words actually mean. That said, communicating is a dynamic process, with an intended purpose. When we communicate we often use things other than verbal language to convey meaning. Thus, this unit will also explore the relationship between non-verbal signs, symbols, physical objects and meaning and how all these factors contribute to, shape and affect meaning.

In this unit, un it, we shall start by de fining the t he terms semantics and pragmatics, pragmatics, then turn tur n to the relationship between words, time, space, symbols, sings and meaning; and finally look at the different kinds of meaning including denotation, connotation, literal and metaphoric meaning. ENG1502/1

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4.1 4.1

WHAT WHAT IS MEANING? MEANI NG? Semantics and pragmatics are closely related concepts. Semantics is the study of how meaning is expressed expressed by elements of any language, whereas pragmatics refers to the study of language or meaning in speci fic communicative contexts. These elements include meaning of words, phrases, sentences, or texts. The study of semantics is important because it enables us to understand how language users construct meaning, how they acquire a sense of meaning meani ng as speakers, listeners, readers and wr iters. In addition, how the meaning meani ng of certain words or phrases change over time? In other words, an analysis of meaning involves involves investigating the relationship relationship between language and everything everythi ng we use language to talk about in everyday interactions. An understanding of how we use language lang uage to talk tal k about the world, how how we use language in d ifferent social situations, how language changes, how varieties of English in fluence and affect meaning are fundamental to appreciating how communication works. The study of semantics; therefore, broadly refers to how meaning is constructed, interpreted, illustrated, symbolised, imagined, concealed or disguised. However, semantics is not limited to meaning in written or oral/verbal language only but includes things like facial expressions, body language, gestures as well as cultural signs, symbols and objects – all of which contribute to our understanding of the meaning of particular situations, events and social behaviour.

4.1. 4.1.1 1

Word order and meaning Now let us look at the following examples that illustrate how words combine into meaningful sentences, and what meaning is being communicated.

• •

Dog bites man Man bites dog dog

Here we notice that the same words – man, dog, bites – have been used in these sentences, but the meaning conveyed is not the same. This shows us that the manner in which a sentence is structured or how words are put together together lead to a different meaning of a whole sentence. In both sentences, the t he word order indicates how man and dog are related to the verb bites. The subject in i n first sentence is the dog and the object is the man, whereas in the second sentence sentence the order is changed with the man becoming the subject and the dog as object. This clearly i llustrates that how words are sequenced in a sentence affect and in fluence meaning. Hence form (word order in this case) and meaning in language are interrelated. interrelated. For a detailed discussion about how words words are made up and how words are combined form larger units such as sentences and phrases refer to the previous Unit 3 on Words and Sentences.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 1 Study the sentences below, and answer these questions: W hat do these sentences mean? What is the difference bet ween sentences? How does the word order change the meaning within each sentence?

• • 58

This is my daughter’s picture. My daughter’s picture this is. My father painted. Painted my father.


• • •

4.1.2 4.1.2

The boy kicked the ball. The ball kicked the boy. boy. The fi lm lm was based on the novel. The novel was based on the fi lm. lm. The school bell r ings at midday. At midday the school bell rings.

Time, space and meaning As you will wi ll learn in Unit 5 on Language Lang uage Varieties, Varieties, language lan guage changes chang es depending on the circumstances in which it is being used; when it is used, as well as the purpose for its use. The meaning mean ing of some words, sentences and phrases may have changed and evolved over time to such an extent that t hat it has become acceptable acceptable to use these to express certain certa in ideas, views, meaning. Note that the t he concept of of time, ti me, as it is used in this t his context, refers to historical changes that have taken place in language, and their deg ree of in fluence. Think Thi nk of the difference between old/traditional English and modern English, for example. Look at the following words: What do these mean?

• •

Upon what meat doth this our Caeser feed? (anything nourishing that we eat or drink to sustain life, life, provide energy and promote growth growth)) It is unhealthy to eat red meat every day. (animal flesh)

The two sentences sentences show how the meaning of the word ‘meat’ has changed over time. In Shakespeare’s time the word meat referred to food in general; and in recent times the same word is used speci fically to mean animal flesh. What is important here is that the word ‘meat’ ‘meat’ which was wide-rangin wide-ra ngingg to include food substances substances such as bread, drinks and fish in the past, is now used to mean animal flesh. This demonstrates to us that time is a crucial factor affecting the meaning required in communication. Like time, geographical space also contributes to how the meaning of certain words becomes understood. The relationship between the actual space in which words are used, the purposes for which they are used, and the mean ing associated with these words is an important one. Put differently, space in fluences meaning and in turn, meaning meani ng is shaped by space. Consider the use of the word ‘cool’ in in this th is exchange below for example.

• •

Speaker A: How are you? Speaker B: I am cool. Speaker C: I’m gonna go down to the beach. You wanna come.

In order to realise that speaker B uses the word ‘cool’ to to mean that they are ‘ fine’ fine’ or ‘well’ ; and that speaker C means that ‘I am going to go down to the beach. Do you you will need to know something about the space. Such background want to come?’ you knowledge will enable you to arrive at an understanding of what the speakers mean, how they relate to one another, and whether the conversation interaction is formal or informal. Other Ot her examples include the word ‘robot’ which is used in the South African Afr ican context to refer to a set of traf fic lights; or ‘braai’ which in the American and British context are called ‘barbeque’. As you you will wil l read in Unit Unit 5, language varieties, var ieties, geographical space and meaning are interrelated. The manner in wh ich we express ourselves, the choices of words words we use often make us recognisable recog nisable to other speakers of English from f rom other parts of the world. ENG1502/1

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ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 2 (1) (1) Consider the way in which meaning is conveyed in these sentences: What is the difference between these sentences? How do you think time, and space, has affected the meaning in each sentence?

• • • • • (2)

4.1.3 4.1.3

See you shortly. See you in a bit. Pass me that salt. Give me that salt. They are watching news on the television. They are watching news on the telly. How are you? Howzit? She said s he was okay. She said she was OK.

Write down 5 English words, from any other parts of the world, and describe their meaning in their particular geographical contexts.

Non-Verbal Language (or Paralinguistic Paralin guistic Tools) and Meaning Like individual ind ividual words, non-verbal non-verbal language langu age (also referred referred to as paralingu parali nguistic istic signs), play an important role in communication. When we speak we often use non-verbal signs such as body language, languag e, facial expressions ex pressions and gestures in order to express our intended message. The use of non-verbal non-verbal signs sig ns enables us to build a picture in i n our mind of what is being communicated and to understand the meaning of a particular thing, situation, or concept. For example, after spending a Sunday afternoon with your colleagues, you may wish to wave goodbye to them as a sign to show that it is time to leave.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 3 Read the extract below and comment on the use of non-verbal communication. Mother: Sipho did you write your homework? Sipho: Not yet mother. mother. Mother: Switch off that television! Now! (Sipho leaves the room and bangs the door hard). Why did Sipho bang the door? How and what is the meaning implied in the last sentence by the mother?

4.1.4 4.1.4

Signs/Symbo Signs/ Symbols ls and Meaning The relationship rel ationship between signs/symbols signs/symbols and meaning mea ning is an important one. We come across different kinds of signs or symbols everyday and they all refer to different thi ngs. A sign or symbol sy mbol is something which is used to represent another th ing – it might m ight be a picture, a letter, or an object. For example, when we see traf fic signs – no entry and stop signs; a toilet and no smoki smoking ng signs, we immediately know what is required of us, understand how we should behave in certain circumstances; and in some cases these

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signs help us to locate speci fic places or things. Signs/symbols in themselves could be rendered meaningless, meaning less, but it is when these are used in context and for a particula r purpose that we are able to decode what it is that they represent, denote, or communicate. Signs and Symbols

Traf fic Sign

No entry

Toilet Toilet

No Smoking

South African Flag

Coat of Arms of South Africa

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 4 Look at the following signs/symbols and write down what each of these mean.

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4.2

WORDS IN CONTEXT As mentioned earl ier, the studies in i n semantics and a nd pragmatics are so interwoven i nterwoven that drawing clear and distinct separation between the two is dif ficult because of the blurring of the boundaries. Put differently, in order to understand the speaker’s meaning, you will need to know something about the context or to have input of contextual information, and vice versa. The study of ‘meaning in use’, ‘meaning in interaction’ (Mullany (Mul lany and Stockwell, Stockwell , 2010) or ‘meaning in i n the world’ – known as pragmatics – suggests that treating words, sentences and phrases in isolation from their context of use may render meaning complex, ambiguous and vague. In summary, meaning and its surrounding context are firmly linked; l inked; thus through pragmatics pragmat ics we are able able to arrive at an understanding of what a speaker means by uttering certain words and expressions. For example, suppose you wish to understand the followi ng sentence “ The boy I men you will need to know something already to figure out what tioned before before is dangerous” you the speaker is tr ying to convey to you. you. First, you need prior knowledge of who the boy boy is (pragmatics). Second, understand the linguistic meaning of this sentence. Finally, with al l this background information, informat ion, you will wil l be in a position to realise real ise that perhaps the speaker is advising you to be careful of this boy (semantics). In addition, let us consider the word ‘goal’ in in the sentences below and re flect on the extent which the context helps us work out the meaning.

• •

My goal this year is to complete my degree programme. Scoring a goal in soccer is not as simple as it looks.

In the first sentence, the word ‘goal’ occurs occurs in a context relating to personal ambition, desire and aspiration (it is used figuratively or metaphorically) whereas in the second sentence it has to do with performance in sports, in particular soccer (it is used more literally). In the sentences above, it is clear that the meaning of the word ‘goal’ takes takes on a different meani ng depending on context. This Th is demonstrates that words can never be explained in isolation because the context forms an essential part of understanding how we read, interpret, and make sense of language in our daily interactions.

4.2.1

Ambiguity This section builds on the previous one where we looked at meaning meani ng and context. This section discusses the complex relationship between bet ween words and meaning. As we have illustrated earlier earl ier the same word can change its meaning mean ing depending dependi ng on how and for for what purposes it is used (i.e. context). context). All Al l of this can in fluence meaning and lead to ambiguity. ambigu ity. What is ambiguity? ambigu ity?

Ambigu ity refers to a situation where a word, word, phrase, phrase, sentence is open open to more than tha n one one possible possible interpretation. interpretat ion. In this way, the meaning meanin g becomes unclear and vague. However, context may play an important role where ambiguity exists in that it helps us to form speci fic and intended interpretation. In other words, the same expression, statement or use of language may be ambiguous in one context and unambiguous in another. It is important to realise that there are many kinds of ambiguity which includes interpretations of individual words (i.e. lexical ambiguity); sentences, phrases, newspaper headlines, headli nes, or idiomatic expressions (i.e. semantic ambigu ity). Lexical ambiguity ambigu ity is when the use of small language unit li ke a speci fic word can be interpreted differently, and semantic ambiguity is when it is not possible to decide on the intended meaning of a sentence, phrase etc. 62


For example, the following sentences are ambiguous:

•

•

•

The department of education has advertised adver tised positions for teachers of English, isiZulu isiZulu and Afrikaans . Ambiguity: Has the department advertised positions for teachers who can each teach one of these languages or all three languages? Peter gave her cat food . g ive cat food to her? Ambiguity: Did Peter give her cat some food or did Peter give The man hit the old lady with an umbrella. u mbrella to hit the old lady or did the t he man hit the Ambiguity: Did the man use an umbrella old lady who is carrying an umbrella?

In all the instances above, the context does not clearly indicate the intended meaning hence these sentences sentences remain ambiguous. In addition, addit ion, ambiguity ambiguit y can be used intentionally to create meaning and produce a certain effect. This is often the case in texts such as newspaper articles where a writer can deliberately use ambiguous language, phrases or headlines in i n order to produce produce a certain certai n effect from the readers, which wh ich in most cases is used to lure them into buying and reading the paper. Let us look at this phrase as a possible newspaper headline ‘Tourism is getting out of control’ . Notice how this headline can have different interpretations. It could be suggesting that the increase in the number of tourists has had a negative impact on the environment and as such it is not good; or that there is a necessity for a set of rules and regulations about the behaviour expected of tourists; or that restrictions could put be in place to manage the t he number of tourists tourists allowed al lowed to visit. Because this headline headli ne lends itself to more than one interpretation; its meaning is ambiguous and imprecise. The above above examples looked at semantic semantic ambiguity. ambigu ity. The following section is concerned concerned with lexical ambiguity. The word ‘produce’ on on its own potentially has different di fferent meanin meanings, gs, unless it is used in a context which will help us to identify which meaning is intended. It could mean crops and food, or to manufacture something. ‘Assemble’ can can mean to fit together pieces of a puzzle, to build and create a structure, or to come together at a meeting. ‘Erection’ could could be referring to a building or sexual arousal. It is clear that all these words on their own have at least two or three potential meanings hence they are ambiguous. Such words are called ca lled homographs. (see 2.1 of Unit 3)

4.2.2

Homophones Homophones Homophones are words that have the same sound (pronunciation ( pronunciation)) but different meaning and usually spelling. For example, the nouns ‘hour’ and and ‘our’ are are pronounced the same but the meaning and spelling are different. If we look at the noun ‘rose’ ( ( flower) and verb ‘rose’ (past (past tense of ‘rise’ ) we notice that although they have h ave the same sound and spelling, spelli ng, the meaning meanin g is different. Another example is the noun ‘bear’ (the (the animal), anim al), (to tolerate), ‘bare’ (naked) (naked) all of which are pronounced the same but differ in ‘bear’ (to meaning, and in spelling as in the case of the word ‘bare’ .

4.2.3

Synonyms If different words have have similar simi lar meaning, meani ng, they are cal led synonyms. synonyms. Different words can be used alternatively to mean the same thing or refer to the same idea. For example, instead of using the word ‘certain’ we we can use the t he word ‘definite’, ‘determined’, ‘obvi you can use the synonyms ous’ , ‘clear’ . In addition, instead of the word ‘questionable’ you

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‘ dubious’, dubious’, ‘arguable’, ‘arguable’, ‘ debatable’, debatable’, ‘ambivalent’ ‘ambivalent’ all all of which can be used to mean exactly the same thing.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 5 (1) (1) Analyze Analyz e the exchange between the two speakers in terms of what you have read in this section of the unit. Do you understand what the conversation is all about? What kind of knowledge do you need in order to understand this conversation? Speaker A: I think we could visit her tomorrow. Do you agree? Speaker B: Um … I’m not sure. Speaker A: Isn’t s he brave? brave? Speaker B: What a good business woman! She has a l ot of wisdom and is brave indeed. (2)

Read the sentences below and describe the difference in meaning of of the highlighted words in bold. In addition, explain how t he context changes the meaning in each of the following pairs of sentences.

• • •

The machine is not in action now. action now. It is urgent that you take action in action in that matter. John was awarded his degree in degree in communication at the University of South Afri ca. Quality is perceived as a degree of degree of excellence. John made a conscious decision conscious decision to smoke. He remained conscious until conscious until the ambulance arrived.

4.3

KINDS OF MEANING

4.3.1

Denotation Denotative meaning is the core or central meaning of word or lexeme. It is therefore understood as the dictionary de finition of a word; sometimes known as the cognitive or referential meaning. Hence denotative meaning of words is considered objective, neutral or without any emotional associations. For example, the word ‘chair’ in in English is used to refer to a particular piece of furniture in the real world; and the word ‘com would be understood to describe a speci fic type of electronic device. However, puter’ would denotation is related to connotation, which leads to semantic change. This means that some words have more than just their denotative or dictionary meaning. Depending on how and for what purposes these words are used, t hese words could be described as connotative. Consider the dictionary dictionar y meaning meanin g of the word ‘pig’ which is ‘an omnivorous hoofed bristly mammal’. Although this de finition here is fairly neutra l and simply refers to nothing other than tha n a type of an animal an imal,, the connotation of the same word word becomes different. The connotative meaning of ‘pig’ has negative implications implicat ions and is associated associated with greed, g reed, dirt, di rt, or an annoying an noying person, for example. For a further furt her discussion on this topic of denotative meaning refer to Unit 6 on Language in Action.

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4.3.2

Connotation Unlike denotation discussed previously prev iously,, connotation is connected to the state of mind mi nd and culture, thus is can be described as overtones, personal or emotional associations aroused by words. In other words, connotative meaning refers to the associations or feel which a word has rather than what it explicitly denotes (i.e. denotative meaning). Hence two words with the same de finition may actually have different connotations. For example, the word ‘blue’ could could be interpreted to mean a colour or an emotion, as in blue or sad music – My and ‘He plays blues music’. With ‘My mother bought a blue car’ and music’. With time, some of these associations become widespread w idespread and common usage. Consider the t he word certa inty, absolute, absolute, de finite; for example, ‘virtual’, (which ‘virtual’, (which in the past denotatively meant certainty, now commonly commonly used to ‘I am virtually v irtually part of the family’ ) has changed over the years and is now imply ‘arti fi cial, particularly in i n the realm of cyberspace, as in cial, changeable, changeable, fl uctuating, fl exible’ particularly ‘Virtual classrooms at the university universit y of South Africa are designed to help students with their learning’.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 6 Describe the denotative and connotative meaning of the words in this table. What are the similarities and differences of the words?

Denotative

Connotative

Home Dog Dark Rough Witch Fresh Cold

4.3.3

Literal meaning This is when the speaker says a sentence, uses words, or phrases to mean exactly ex actly and a nd literally what he says. Like all types of meaning, literal meaning is related to, and often shaped by the context in which an utterance, a word, sentence, or phrase is used. In other words, the context enables the audience to gain a better understanding of the intended meaning of an idea, activity, event etc. Example: In an air-conditioned seminar room the visiting professor commented: “ It is cold cold in here”. Considering the circumstances under which the statement was uttered, the speaker’s intention is to comment about the temperature in the room and to convey that t he room is cold due to the air-conditioning.

4.3.4

Metaphoric meaning Study this short statement. After the visiting professor’s exciting lecture on Shakespeare’s play on Romeo and Juliet , and a series of unanswered questions he had posed to the students, she remarked: “ It is cold in here”. here”.

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Unlike the previous example, the meaning of ‘cold’ here here does not refer to temperature. The professor’s professor’s uses this t his word to allude to the students’ lack of par ticipation, lack l ack of interest or passivity with regard to the subject matter.

CONCLUSION In this unit we have looked at the relationship between words and meaning, and the extent to which context helps us to form an opinion about something, to interpret a situation and to understand the intended meaning. We have also discussed the difference between lexical and semantic meaning, meani ng, as well as different kinds of meaning such an ambiguity, synonyms, homophones to illustrate that the manner in which words, phrases and sentences are used affects and in fluences the meaning. In the next unit, we shall look at English language varieties as well as factors that have contributed to the development as an international language.

Glossary Here is a list of some important terms used in t his unit. un it. Using your own words, de fine and describe these terms. Semantics Pragmatics Lexeme Denotation Connotation Referential Language Varieties Homophone Synonym Lexical Ambiguity Semantic Ambiguity

References Mullany, L. & Stockwell, P. (2010) Introducing English Language, A Resource Book for Students. London and New York: Routledge.

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UNIT 5: One language: many varieties

5

UNIT 5 One Language: Many Varieties One 5

OUTCOMES By the end of this th is Unit, you should be able to:

• • • • • • • •

define and give examples of language variation. describe describe English Language L anguage varieties. describe the relationship between language and context. describe what is meant by context from a situational and cultural view. discuss the relationship between language and identity. define Standard (South African) English. describe the historical and contemporary factors that have led to English as an International International language. describe attitudes towards English from own/local geographic context.

INTRODUCTION As it has been shown in the previous units and in subsequent subsequent ones, language is contexcontextualized. None of us speaks and writes English in exactly the same ways. Why do you think none of us speaks or writes exactly the same way? For any text that we produce, a number of factors contribute to our individuality as language langu age users. First, t here are geographical fac factors: tors: where we come come from or have lived during durin g childhood and adolescence. Secondly, there are social factors: the social environment where we were brought up and the social groups to which we belong. Thirdly, there are factors that have to do with the purpose of a text. In this unit, we are going to investigate English varieties according to the factors that have been mentioned and other factors that are closely related. In the CD accompanying th is Study Guide, listen aga again in to the recording where different people people with d ifferent ifferent language backgrounds read one text written in En glish. These are examples of variation, in pronunciation.

5.1 5.1

TEXTS TEX TS IN CONVERSATIONAL CONVERSATIONAL CONTEXTS CONTEX TS Although we may all speak English, the way way that we speak varies according to what we we are doing, who we are speaking to and who we are. For example, let us take a scene in

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which a medical pract itioner speaks to a patient about about the prescription to be used as a cure for an illness: Doctor: Tell me how you feel. Patient: I feel pain around my neck. Doctor: Can you describe the pain. Patient: It is severe, I feel as if I should not move or do any work. Doctor: I am going to give you some some penicillin, penicilli n, take two tablets every day in the morning. To To answer the three questions we would have the following scenario. Who is speaki ng? Doctor What is the topic? Medical consultation Who is the addressee? A Patient James Paul Gee (2012) says says the following about social variation variat ion in language: languag e:

• •

Each language has many different styles or varieties. They are called cal led registers. This Thi s stems from the fact that anyti anytime me we talk we need to make clear two things: (1) who we are. (2) what we are doing.

Gee observes that ‘first, we are all not a single who, in who, but a great many different whos in different contexts. Second, one and the same speaking or acti ng can count as different things thi ngs in different d ifferent contexts. We We accomplish different whos and and whats through using different social registers. We shift our style when talking to different people.’

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 1 How is your language different, for example, when you are talking to your boss (if you are already working)? How is your language different when talking to your lecturer during of fice hours than when you are talking to your friends?

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 2 Consider how you talk when you are interacting wi th family members. Is your usage of language exactly the same as it is when you speak in a presentat ion in class? How does your answer to the preceding question show your understanding of different linguistic contexts?

Possible answer

You You are more more likely to use ‘school-like’, ‘school-like’, or formal formal language la nguage to your lecturer or teacher. When communicatin commu nicatingg with a lecturer, lectu rer, a student tends to use language langu age that t hat stands on its own, requiring little inferencing on their part. You are inclined to demonstrate cognitive involvement, and judgment for your intelligence. On the other hand, your 68


language to your friend might emphasize social and affective involvement, solidarity, and co-participation co-participation in meaning-making. None of us speaks a single uniform register, nor is any one of us a single, uniform identity. The different social registers we use allow us to render multiple whos (who are we) and whats (what (what are we doing). doing ).

Exactly how do we observe social variation var iation in language? lang uage? It is found in any of the levels or part of the system of of language. langua ge. It may be lexical, syntactic or stylistic, styl istic, in other words, phonetic, phonological, semantic, and so on. Language variation is also in fluenced by whether it is spoken spoken or in the written mode. It is usually said that t hat some people people are good speakers of English but they are not necessarily good writers or vice a versa. This is based on an important distinction between speaking and writing, which will be further studied in other modules dealing with Applied English Languag La nguagee Studies.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 3 (1) (1)

Find examples of language language variation. variation. Describe the language language variation variation from those examples.

(2)

What are the three main components or questions that we have to answer when describing language variation?

Context refers to different things in the study of language. It can be place, it can be time, it can be participants. For example, language can occur at a shopping mall, during the day, amongst two friends (Grade eleven students), on a movie date. These are examples of contexts of language use. The focus for this unit is how language would vary according to this th is context. context. For For example, there is likely to be informal talk, tal k, a friendly chat, maybe language associated with young people, like slang, perhaps a mixture of languages, code switching and so on. Examples of informal talk/language variety

Halliday (1985, 1994) distinguishes between context of culture and context of situation. For now we are mainly interested in texts and the context of situation. Under the context of of situation, the ma in focus is on the topic, what is also known as field, and the relationship between the participants, what can also be described as tenor.

5.2

CONTEXT CONTEX T OF SITUATION SITUATION Context of situation refers to the speci fic scenes or instances within the broader sociocultural environment. Three aspects of this situation were identi fied in the diagram in Unit 1 and the introduction as having an i n fluence on the shape and meaning of texts. These aspects can be summarized summa rized as:

• • • ENG1502/1

What is going on – nature of the social activity act ivity and subject matter ( field) The roles and relationships taken up by speaker/listener speaker/listener and reader/writer reader/writer (tenor) (tenor) The channel c hannel or medium of communication communicat ion – whether whet her it is spoken or written and whether it is used for for action or re flection (mode). 69

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 4 Let us re flect on the following text. Try to predict some aspects of the context of s ituation of the text by using the following questions.

• • •

What is the topic of the text? ( field) Who is involved in creating the text (speaker/listener or writer/reader)? What is the nature of their relationship (tenor)? Is the text spoken or written (mode)?

Text Text 1.1

RB: Mum, can we make a cake? SH: Ok but it’ll have to be a packet mix. I think there’s one there. RB: What do we do first? SH: Ok, well, turn t urn the oven on the first … here I’ll do that. t hat. You You put all the ingredients in gredients in a bowl and mix them all up, no just on low. RB: Can I put it in the cake tin now? SH: No, mix it on medium speed for a few minutes first … that’s right, now you can pour it into the tin and put it in the oven. RB: How long does it have to cook for? SH: We’ll give it half an hour and see how it goes eh? Possible answers

From the dialogue dialog ue above, it may be deduced that it took took place in the t he kitchen. There are two participants in the exchange, one is the mother and the other one is perhaps her daughter. The mother is giving givi ng instructions instruc tions on how to bake a cake. On the other hand, the daughter keeps asking questions and making maki ng requests. There is no reference to any any written text, we can therefore therefore assume assume that this is spoken. spoken. This is a short response which demonstrates aspects of analyzing the t he context of situation situation from dialogue, d ialogue, in i n other words moves beyond the home to how how language langua ge varies register analysis. The following now moves within with in society or with in the geographic geog raphic location. Reflection question: What would you consider are some of the features which characterises a conversa c onversation tion and spoken text?

5.3

LANGUAGE AND SOCIETY We have already seen how how language can vary according to context; e.g. e.g. ‘dialog ‘dialogue ue with a friend at a Mall, or between a teenage gi rl and her mother in the kitchen’ kitchen’ Society refers to something bigger big ger than the t he family, fami ly, home, home, or the shopping shopping complex. It involves involves larger categories of grouping a collective number of people, such as, a town, or a country. It may consist of a larger population of people. On the other hand, a home or a mall forms part of society. The study of the relationship between language and society is called sociolinguistics. Peop le who are sociolingu ists study language use and langu age sociolinguistics. People variation. The branch of socioling sociol inguistics uistics that describes descr ibes the t he variation var iation of language langu age according to place is usually referred refer red to as ‘the study of dialects’. dia lects’. People People who come from

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a particular place are often classi fied according to the English variety that they speak. Notice how people who come from America speak English as compared to people who come from South South Africa.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 5 What are some of the differences between American English and British English? Give examples? You may have observed this on the media or in movies. There are differences in spellings of the words. If your computer (e.g. (e.g. Microsof t word) is set to use Americ an spelling, it will keep underlining some words if they are spelt dif ferently. On the other hand, if you have written them in British spelling, the same may occur. This is why it is advisable to do a spell check on the computer before finalizing or sending your documents. American words; words; behaviour, recognize British words: words: behaviour, recognise (You may also find some differences in syntax or grammar between these two varieties of English in your sec ond year of study)

Some varieties are regional reg ional or geographical. As long as the speakers of of these languages langua ges are mutually mutual ly intelligible intell igible to one another – in other words, as long long as they can understand one another – these different forms are said to be varieties of one language. In South Africa, linguists have observed that there are common varieties of English that are spoken. In addition to this, some go further to distinguish between the English that is spoken by White South Africans, the English En glish that is spoken by Black South South Africans, coloureds from the Cape, and Indian English. This does not not end there, some some study the language variety that is spoken by Indian South Africans and those that are spoken by Coloureds from Cape Town. South African English (SAfrE) is said to be a regional variety, with many words borrowed from the languages of the region. Recently, the Oxford dictionary added the word ‘Vuvuzela’. ‘Vuvuzela’. We We also have words words like ‘Indaba’ , and ‘Imbizo’ . Can you think thin k of other words or lexical lexical items that belong to South African Engl ish? The regional reg ional variety variet y is seen at the level of vocabulary, but it can also be at any of the other components of language, e.g. phonological or semantic. We normally label people according to their countries of orig origin. in. Based on the way one one speaks, the accent, and the pronunciation, we can either correctly or falsely categorize the speaker as coming from Nigeria, Nige ria, Zimbabwe Zi mbabwe or or South Africa. Based on these countries, we have different varieties of English, such as, Nigerian Engl ish, Kenyan English, Malaysian English and so on. However, this can be misleading or inaccurate. For example, many years ago, I went to a presentation to a private school school in Pietermaritzburg Pietermar itzburg with some Law students from the University of Kwazulu-Natal. Kwazulu-Natal. I met one of the LLB students, a lady who spoke in an American accent. I immediately concluded that she was American. Amer ican. I was shocked to learn that she was South African, Af rican, and had probably probably never been to America. The only reason for this could be her family upbringing, how she was socialized as she was growing up, and attending one of the prestigious private ENG1502/1

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schools in the country. This shows the relationship between lang uage and identity. This will wil l be further fur ther developed in other modules in your second and third year. Language Lang uage can also lead to conflicts and tensions among people people who live in a particular part icular country. Not so long ago, South Africa experienced many language related con flicts. Language prejudice

In 2008, 20 08, there t here was a wave of xenophobic xenophobic attacks in South Africa that t hat started in Johannesburg in Alexandra township. Language Langu age was used by the attackers as one of of the criteria to distingu disti nguish ish who is a South African Afr ican and who is not. English would not have have been used because it is the language langua ge of communicat communication ion among people who speak different lang languages uages in South Africa. The attackers used some of the indigenous languages to determine if people were locals or not. Failure to speak the language resulted in persecution. In some cases this was not necessarily the failure to speak the entire language but it was failure to understand a particular lexical item or word. This was prejudice manifesting itself in linguistic terms because no first language speaker of English or any language can claim to know all the words or even all the meanings of words in that language. For example there are many synonyms of the word ‘bedroom’ in English but you may not know all of them e.g. bedchamber, bunk room, chamber, cubicle, guest room. During Duri ng these attacks some people were often caught out out of guard by being quizzed quizz ed on the vocabulary vocabul ary of some archaic Zulu words like li ke ‘Indololwane’ (elbow), when most most people use the more contemporary, or Gauteng terminology termi nology of ‘Umkhono’ (arm). Unfortu Unfortunately, nately, failure to pass this vocabulary test could result in the loss of a life. This incident demonstrates that language languag e is is very very important, and that lingu istic prejudice prejudice is a major concern for the government and that language experts can raise awareness about the role of language in nation building, multiculturalism and social cohesion. Going back to the focus of this unit, on regional and social varieties of English. The study of dialect is about the geographic mapping of language or language varieties to certain areas. The following discussion will focus on social varieties of English.

5.4

LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL CLASS Language can also vary according to the social class. Social class is a dif ficult concept to define. We sometimes use income as a marker of social class. For example, social class cl ass has to do with the economic income that th at a particula part icularr person or group posses possesses. ses. People People earning a low income usually belong to a lower class. Take for instance, construction workers or miners who may be less-educated.

Social class lang uage varieties variet ies are also very important. The Engl ish spoken spoken by educated educated people is different from the Engl ish spoken by less-educated less-educated people, furthermore, furt hermore, where you were educated, which school you attended also counts. Th is coincides with wit h access to middle class schools and institutions. Who goes to what school is often a question of how much income parents can afford. Jackson and Stockwell (2010:1 (2010:10), 0), describing language langu age and social variation, say; ‘the ways in which language varies socially is the concern of sociolinguistics. … Sociolinguistics often investigates the correlation between a linguistic feature, e.g. of pronunciation or grammar, and a social distinction, e.g. gender or social class.’ The social groups may 72


be based on class, age, interests and other factors. These varieties are often markers of identity. For example, in South Africa, the language spoken by young people, often referred to as slang has been associated with township varieties ( Bembe & Beukes 2009). Students who come from ex-Model C schools and those who come from the former DET schools are often characterized character ized by different varieties of English. T his is associated with the t he pronunciation. The growing growin g middle m iddle class, cl ass, the so called cal led black diamonds d iamonds and y-culture y-cultu re are associated with w ith ex-Model C schools as opposed to the township schools. Read the following article; ‘Darkies’ and ‘coconuts’ trends in Parliament MANDY ROSSOUW AND VERASHNI PILLAY

JOHANNESBURG, SOUTH AFRICA – Feb 16 2011 10:41

The parliamentar y debate debate about about the President’s President’s State of of the Nation Nation speech is an annual tradition tradit ion where opposition opposition parties can ca n say to the head of state what they like to h is face, and African National Congress (ANC) Members of Parliament (MPs) try to impress him while President Jacob Zuma is forced to sit through it all. So, Tuesday was due to be another boring day in Parliament. But suddenly a lone voice saying “Madame Deputy Speaker, on a point of order,” changed the tone of what was set to be a dry, predictable afternoon. The voice was Democratic Democrat ic All A lliance iance ( DA) spokesperson spokesperson and MP Lindiwe Lind iwe Mazibuko, Maz ibuko, who complained to Deputy Speaker Nomaindia Noma india Mfeketo about a comment made by Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande about “a government of darkies”. No one from the ANC side said a word until Mazibuko stepped up from her backbencher seat and asked the speaker if the word “darkie” should be allowed in such an august institution like Parliament. Then the party part y started. Nzimande Nzim ande started muttering in i n isiZulu about Mazibuko being a ‘coconut’, ridiculing her Model-C schooling.

Mfeketo dismissed Mazibuko’s complaint complaint because the latter lat ter could not produce a rule in the parliamentary parlia mentary rulebook ru lebook to explain why “darkies” “darkies” is outlawed in Parliament. And all the way Nzimande kept on muttering muttering in i n isiZulu, to the great pleasure of the ANC MPs who, for once, once, did not seem to mind a derogatory term for black people. people. Eventually Eventual ly former ANC chairperson chai rperson and now Congress of the People (Cope) sometimespresident Mosiuoa Lekota got up and put the matter to rest. He told the speaker if an opposition part y (read: white) MP were to talk about “darkies”, the matter would not be put to rest that easily. In the face of growing discontent from the opposition benches, benches, Mfeketo relented. “I’ll think about this and make a ruling at a later stage.” Throughout itit all, Zuma Zuma was quietly quiet ly chuckling chucklin g along, giving knowing glances to Deputy Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe. A lthough the topic may have been unsavoury, Nzimande reached his goal — to t o make the president sit up and notice him. As t he incident aired on eNews the word “Blade” became beca me a local trendi ng topic on Twitter Twitter as people expressed their outrage. (Taken from Mail and Guardian online, Guardian online, 16 February 2011)

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Recently DA parliamentarian leader, Lindiwe Mazibuko was challenged and even labelled ‘coconut’ by Julius Malema and the Minister of education, Dr Blade Nzimande as seen in the article above. Lindiwe Mazibuko has been criticized for her accent, and her education. The inference that can be drawn from this article is that Lindiwe Mazibuko speaks English with a particular part icular accent that has been associated with the emerging black middle class cl ass in the democratic South Africa. Afr ica. These are the young people who are the beneficiaries of Black Economic Empowerment, and Af firmative Action. The exact nature of their speech is partly based on phonolo phonological gical variation; var iation; (Arista Da Silva, 2008, 200 8, conducted a study at Wits about Black South Afr ican Varieties of Engl ish). ish). Another derogative designation, ‘coconut’ is described by McKinney (2007). (2007 ). It is used to describe some of the language varieties of urban youth. ‘Coconut’ is also a name given to a Novel written by the then third year medical student at the University of Cape Town, Kopano Matlwa. The novel is about growing up black in a white suburb where the cost of fitting in means changing your identity. The main characters aspire to be assimilated into white society and reap the bene fits.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 6 Write down any labels that are used to name people who speak a particular variety of English? (You can use examples from your country.) What is a coconut? (Note that this is largely a South African label)

When studying study ing varieties var ieties of English, Engl ish, it is necessary to d isting uish between prestigious varieties and non-prestigious non-prestig ious varieties. var ieties. Usually, the t he prestigious presti gious varieties va rieties are closer to what is often referred referred to as Standard English. Engl ish. Speakers of certai n varieties may be esteemed as prestigious, prestig ious, e.g. Model C, or Standard English. There are usually negative perceptions and attitudes towards speakers of regional varieties or non-prestigious varieties of English.

5.5

WHAT WHAT IS STANDARD STANDARD ENGLISH? A standard standard variety of English is de fined as the lang uage that th at is used for of of ficial purposes like business, politics, education, science and technology. It is taught in schools. It is found in of ficial government communications and national news broadcasts on radio and television. Britain and America have long been associated with Standard English. As a result, we speak of Standard American English and Standard British English. The American variety has gained impetus through the in flux of Hollywood movies. Note that even when using Microsoft on the computer we have to choose whether to use British Standard English or American Standard English. The global spread of of the English language langu age means that speakers from different countries are able to understand one another, even though, they can speak different standards, such as, South African Standa rd English, British Standard English, and Indian Standa rd English. Scholars of world Englishes refer to the three main concentric circles where English is used. These are English as a first language in t he inner circle, English as a second language in the outer circle, and English as a foreign language i n the expanding circle (Kachru 1992).

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There has also been some resistance to the spread and use of English in some some countr countries. ies. English empowers and also disempowers. It empowers because it enables both social and economic mobility on the part of those who command pro ficiency in the language but to those who lack pro ficiency, it becomes a barrier barr ier to both social and economic econom ic mobility. bilit y. In addition to this English has also been criticized for destroying the indig enous languages in some of the countries where it is spoken because it is part and parcel of political and economic capital.

ACTIVITY ACTIVIT Y 7 (1) (1) Do you come from a monolingual or a multilingual multiling ual background? (2) How do you think your background affects affec ts your ability abilit y to communicate communic ate in English? [note articl e by Rajend Mesthrie (2008) on the death of the mother tongue] ‘Death of the mother tongue’ – is English a glottophagic language in South Africa? RAJEND MESTHRIE The South African Language Policy South Afric a has eleven of ficial languages excluding sign language. The constitution states that these languages ought to enjoy equality, and parity. In practice this is not the case. Since the 1994 democratic elections English has remained the main language of government and business. Questions for discussion (1) (1)

Would you be able to tell which province province a person comes from within South Afri ca by merely listening listen ing to t o him or her speaking speak ing English? Eng lish? Please Pl ease explain your answer. (2) (2) Would you be able to tell if he or she is educated or not? Whether he or she went to a Township school or a Private school? (3) (3) What is the of ficial language policy of your country?

Glossary Dialect : The regional and social variations of language, especially in respect of grammar and vocabulary. Variety Variety : This is a relatively neutral term used to refer to languages and dialects. Standard English: This is a controversial term that refers to a type of English that is associated with educated people, a variety of English that is spoken in England, especially in the Media (BBC) and a language of business and political administration in many parts of the world. Register: A variety of a language described according to who is using it and the uses to which it is being put. ENG1502/1

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References Da Silva, A. (2007) ‘South African English: a Sociolinguistic Analysis of an Emerging Variety,’ Variety,’ PhD thesis, University of the Witwatersrand Gee, J.P. (2012) Social Linguistics and Literacies: Literacies: ideolog y in discourses, London: discourses, London: Routledge. Jackson, H. & Stockwell, P. P. (2011) (2011) An An Introduction Introduction to The The Nature Nature and and Functions Functions of Language, Language, London: Continuum Droga, L. & Humphrey, S. (2002) Getting started with Functional Grammar, Berry Grammar, Berry NSW: Target Texts. Texts. Mesthrie, R. (2008) ‘Death of the mother tongue’ – is English a glottophagic language in South Africa?’ English Africa?’ English Today 94, 94, Vol. 24, No. 2 pp 13–19

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UNIT 6: 6: Language in action

6

UNIT 6 Language in Action 6

OUTCOMES: At the end of this Unit, you should should be able to: to:

• • • •

understand the meaning of the terms ‘discourse’ and ‘text’; understand the way in which the features of language are adapted to the context, the intended audience and the purpose of the discourse; understand how texts re flect and relate to the pow power er structures structu res that exist in society; apply this knowledge in analysing particular texts.

INTRODUCTION This Unit draws on and refers to areas of of language langua ge study discussed in other Units. Units. But it goes a step further; inviting you to see how language features operate in practice. This is why this Unit is headed ‘Language ‘Lan guage in i n Action’. Action’.

6.1 6.1

THE IMPORTANCE IMPORTANCE OF CONTEXT CONTEX T As we have stated, stated, no piece of of language, langu age, or text, exists in isolation. It always occurs in a particular context. Many factors within this context – historical, social, situational and cultural, amongst others – will affect the kind of language used. The purpose of the text, and its audience, will also in fluence the writer or speaker’s choice of of language. langu age. Considering all these factors, and trying to establish how and why they shape the language of texts, is known as discourse analysis. What do we mean by the term ‘discourse’?

The term ‘discourse ’ has different meanings according to which field or school uses the term. In the field of Linguistics, discourse refers to a stretch of language, spoken or written. For our purposes, this de finition may be expanded to include an inde finite number of texts, as well as social practices. Texts contribute to the construction of broader social patterns and beliefs. Discourse includes non-verbal elements, such as visual material materi al in the t he larger social socia l context. Discourse is broader than text. It li nks the linguistic lingu istic to the social. social. Examples of texts which contribute to discourse are textbooks, novels, plays, poems, lectures, polit ical speeches, news reports (in print or on radio and television), television), advertiseENG1502/1

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ments, cartoons, posters, lea flets or pamphlets, billboards,

films,

television ‘soapies’,

pop songs, e-mails and cellphone text messages. (Think for a moment which of these

examples use language only, and whether this langu age is spoken or written; and which use language in combination with visual or aural elements.) There are tremendous variations in the kind of of language used in different texts, depending on the type of discourse it is. Some texts, for example, have a practical function. These would include such things thi ngs as timetables, television program me schedules, and instructions that come with electrical appliances or which appear on medicine bottles. The purpose of such texts tex ts is to instruct i nstruct and inform. i nform. Accordingly, Accordi ngly, the language lang uage used would be factual, pla in, clear, l iteral in style, and objective in tone.

What do we mean by the adjective ‘literal’?

The word word ‘literal’ ‘litera l’ when when used used to refer to a word indicates its neutral, denotative meaning: how it would be de fined in the dictionary. dict ionary. For example, the literal mean meaning ing of the word ‘mother’ ‘mother’ is ‘a female parent of a child or children’. No connotations connotations (attitudes (attitudes or emotional associations) are attached to th is definition. ‘Literal’ language is distinct from ‘emotive’ language. An emotive description of the concept ‘mother’ would be imbued with personal feelings, negative and positive, towards a part icular individual. ind ividual. (You may like to consider these points in relation to Serote’s poem ‘Alexandra’ in the Literature module. modu le. The speaker in t he poem compares the township to a mother figure with all the con fl icting feelings this metaphor implies.) ‘Literal’ meaning is also understood as the t he opposite of of ‘ figurative’ or ‘metaphorical’ meaning, which are rich in emotional associations. (see also unit 4) What do we mean by ‘objective’? ‘objective’? ‘Objective’ language lang uage refers to lang uage that th at is based on facts, does not not have any obvious bias or is not in fluenced by personal feelings. Its opposite is ‘subjective’, which indicates language that is predominantly personal, and is based on an individual’s ideas and feelings, not facts. ‘Subjective’ language is often characterised by the frequent use of the personal pronoun pronoun ‘I’. ‘ I’. What do we mean by ‘tone’? ‘tone’? ‘Tone’ ‘Tone’ is dif di f ficult to define. When applied to a text it refers to the feeling or atmosphere of language: for example, is a speech or a piece of writing cold and distant, or warm and emotional? Is it formal formal,, or chatty and informal? A text which deals with a crime scene could cou ld be described as having an ‘eerie’ or ‘chi lling’ ll ing’ tone. Tone Tone is created by the writer or speaker’s choice of words and how these words are arranged. With experience and exposure to different texts, you will become more sensitive to tone, and better able to pinpoint and describe it. Literary texts, such as poems, plays or novels, have an altogether different purpose. Literary writers wr iters aim to express personal perspectives in original ways, enriching enrichi ng us, their readers, with the imagi native worlds they create, engaging our emotions and extending our understanding of human nature and the world. The best writers are highly skilled in the craft of language use, and use different creative devices to enhance meaning

and effect. These are the kind of texts you will be studying in the Literature module. 78


What do we mean by the adjective ‘literar y’? The word word ‘literary’ ‘literar y’ relates to literature; texts written by novelists, poets and/or and/or dramatists. Literary texts may be distinguished from texts such as telephone directories or recipes which have a functional purpose. Other texts, such as advertisements and political speeches, a im to persuade the audience to behave in a certain way – to buy a certain product, or support a particular point of view. Such texts are likely to use emotive language lang uage to sway the reader. Emotive language lang uage is also found in letters to the editor, ed itor, for for example, where citizens citize ns write to the newspaper to express their opinions and feelings about matters which concern them. What do we mean by ‘emotive’ ‘emotive’ lang uage? Emotive language lang uage expresses the emotions of the writer wr iter or speaker, and seeks to evoke an emotional response in the reader or audience. Careful Caref ul consideration of the words chosen will help us to identify the emotions expressed or evoked. Newspaper reports purport to be factual and objective, and to give the reading public accurate information about current events, but close examination exami nation of the language used often reveals bias. Journalists choose which facts to report, and how to report them. Bias may often be demonstrated when we compare reports from different newspapers about the same event. The effect of such reports may vary greatly. Certain facts may be played down or suppressed suppressed in some reports, while other facts fac ts may be foregrounded, or given extra emphasis. The T he choice of words words to describe people and events will wil l colour the reports in particular ways. Can you think of events that would would be reported in d ifferent ways? A report on a strike or protest march, for example, will be described in a way that reveals the reporter’s point of view and attitude. If the point of view is conservative, the event will most probably be described in a negative way, and the tone will be disapproving. If any acts of violence or or vandalism occurred, occu rred, these will w ill be foregrounded. A reporter from f rom a more progressive newspaper will have a different point of view and probably emphasise the positive aspects of the protest action. These points illustrate i llustrate that media texts form part par t of the power systems that operate in society. By representing situations and events in certain ways, they in fluence public opinion and help to construct social knowledge and beliefs. Power structures may be reinforced or undermined by the attitudes and values implicit in texts and discourse.

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What do we mean by ‘power systems’ systems’ and ‘power struct structures’ ures’ in society? Inequality Inequalit y is an unfortunate reality in all a ll societies of the world. Societies are organised hierarchically into social groups, or classes, according to factors such as financial status, family background, eth nicity, political allegia nce, gender, educational level and occupation, amongst others. Status is not fixed or stable. stable. Because society is dynamic, dy namic, the status of individuals and groups may change over time. The status of an individual will wil l vary, depending on the social groups s/he s/he belongs to. Some Some groups and people people enjoy power, while others are d isempowered. People’s People’s relationships with one another are based on this uneven distribution of power which makes them occupy different levels in society. But here we are talking sociology. What, you may ask, does it have to do with language? By contributin contributingg to discourse, texts re flect and shape the power structures in societ y. Language is part of a process of construction. Embedded in texts are values and assumptions which contribute to the creation of our beliefs. We grow up with these and may come to regard them as normal and right. By examining the language of texts, we can gain insight into the fact that social hierarchies are arti ficially created and not natural and inevitable. The order of things may be changed, and language can play a huge part in bringing this about. You You may like to think thi nk about about some historical examples of discursive change, A hundred years ago, women were not allowed to vote, nor could they hold political of fice. Twenty years ago in South Africa, Af rica, blacks did not have the vote. vote. Many people regarded these situations as natural and right. They resulted from ideologies that prevailed at the time. ( Ideologies are systems of belief used to explain, justify, interpret and evaluate people and their activities.) Yet the fact that these things have changed − women and blacks have gained power − show that they were not natural. People have now become used the idea of seeing women and blacks in positions of power. Alternative ideologies have replaced the old ones. The examination examin ation of what type of text a piece of language is, is part of a branch of academic study known as Genre Studies. Our study of language is located within Genre Studies, and the approach we take and teach is discourse analysis − the close and detailed reading re ading of selected pieces of writing, writi ng, and a consideration of how how these are linked to broader social patterns.

Discourse analysis entails the study of language on the micro-level. ‘The morpheme ‘micro’ refers to examining things on a small scale, and requires that you recognise and understand the t he basic ‘nut and bolts’ bolts’ of language. langua ge. For example, you need to be able to recognise what word class a word belongs to: is it a verb, a noun or an adjective? Does a word function as the subject or object in a sentence? Is a verb in the active or passive form, and is it in the indicative, interrogative or imperative mood? What is the effect of a comma, or an exclamation mark? But discourse analysis also entails the study of language on the macro-level . ‘Macro’ involves considering texts on a larger scale: how they are connected to their context, and what broader effects they have in society. Such considerations take extra-linguistic factors into account: aspects that lie outside the text itself. Extra-linguistic factors refer to what is going on around a text: its socio-historical, discursive context. When we read Martin Luther King’s famous ‘I have a Dream’ speech, for example, we do so with an awareness that he was talking from the perspective of Civil Rights, a powerful movement in the 1960s which aimed to break down racial segregation segre gation in the United States. This background is not explicitly declared in the t he ‘I have a Dream’ speech itself, itself, and so is ‘extra-ling uistic’, but background 80


knowledge of the context would add greatly to an understanding and appreciation of the speech’s historical and political signi ficance.

6.2

ANALYSING ANALYSING AUTHENTIC TEXTS TEX TS IN THE REAL WORLD The best way of understanding u nderstanding discourse analysis is probably probably by means of practical pract ical demonstration. Below we have reproduced a selection of texts, and after each text, we ask you a few questions to get you thinking and to alert you to its particular language features, before we provide commentary. We do not want this Unit to become a passive reading exercise, but want you to be actively engaged in the critical examination of language and its effects in different kinds of texts. TEXT 1

Before first use:

• • • • •

Open the lid of the kettle by pushing the lid latch backwards and then pulling the lid upwards. Pour the water in through the open lid of the kettle. Fill the kettle to the ‘max’ level. Boil. Discard the water. Repeat this twice. Make sure that the lid is closed properly before boiling by gently clicking the lid back in place. Always ensure that your kettle kett le is placed on a flat surface. Where would you expect to find this text? Why do you think it is written in i n point form? form? Look at the length lengt h of the sentences. What do you you notice? Are they al l full ful l sentences?

Look at the verbs. What is their form? Consider the lexis (vocabulary) used. Are A re the nouns concrete or abstract? Is any figurative language used? Look at the word ‘max’ in point three. What is different about this word? In point one, the words ‘open the lid’ appear. In point two, we ‘the open lid’ l id’..

find

the words

The same three words, ‘open’, ‘open’, ‘the’ and ‘lid’ are used in both cases, but but are placed in a different order. How does this change in order affect meaning? Does the word ‘open’, ‘open’, as it is used in both sentences, sentences, belong to the same word word class (noun, (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.)? etc.)? Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You You may want to jot jot down your ideas. Discussion of questions

Where would you expect to find this text?

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The source of this text is a lea flet that came with a new kettle. Its purpose pur pose is to instruct buyers in the use of the new appliance they have bought. Why do you think it is written in i n point form? It is written in point form, setting out the steps, one at a time, to make it as easy as possible to understand. The steps are sequential, making it clear what order to follow. Look at the length of the sentences . What do you notice? Are they all full sentences? What do we mean by a ‘full sentence’?

In this text, sentences are mostly short and simple, again for the purposes of clarity. The most commonly used sentence structure str ucture for ful f ulll sentences in Engl ish is: Subject, Verb Verb and Object (SVO), (SVO), for for example: S

V

O

The woman made the tea. However, this pattern is subject to variation. Consider the structure of: ‘Discard the water’. Label the sentence parts. Is it a full sentence? Can you find the elements of Subject, Verb and Object? V

O

Discard the water. Analysis reveals that the Subject is missing. This is linked to the fact that the verb ‘discard’ is in the imperative form, i.e. the form used to give orders or instructions. The verbs ‘open’, ‘pour’, ‘fill’, ‘boil’, etc., in this text are all in the imperative voice. This construction erases t he subject ‘you’, ‘you’, which is nevertheless understood: ‘(Y ‘( You) [d]iscard [d]iscard the water’. The latter is a full sentence, despite the omission of the subject. The element that is essential to a sentence is the verb. A full sentence requires a finite (complete) (complete) verb. verb. Subject and object may be omitted, but there has to be a verb. So can we regard reg ard the single word ‘Boil’ ‘ Boil’ as a sentence? sentence? Yes, we can. ca n. It is possible to have a sentence consisting of one word only, provided that word is a finite verb, which ‘boil’ is. ‘(You) ‘(You) boil (the water)’ is what is understood, u nderstood, even though the subject and object are not stated. (See unit un it 3.) Consider the lexis (vocabulary) used. Are A re the nouns concrete or abstract? Is any figurative language used? The lexis (vocabulary) used in t his text consists of concrete words, all common nouns (‘kettle’, lid’, ‘water’). The adjectives adject ives ‘open’ and ‘flat’ are literal in meaning, and the ad verbs ‘backwards’ and ‘upwards’ are directional, directiona l, or time-related ti me-related (‘always’). (‘always’). No No figurative language is used. Look at the word ‘max’ in point three. What is different about this word? 82


The word word ‘max’ is an abbreviation of ‘maximum’, ‘maxi mum’, an example of a process process termed ‘clipping’, because the end of the word is ‘clipped’ off. This is one of the word-formation processes mentioned in Unit 3, Morphology. Other examples of cl ipping are ‘exam’ for ‘examination’ ‘examinat ion’;; ‘supp’ for ‘supplementary’ and a nd ‘op’ for ‘operation’ ‘operation’.. Can you thin t hinkk of any examples of your own? In point one, the words ‘open the lid’ appear. In point two, we ‘the open lid’ l id’..

find

the words

The same three words, ‘open’, ‘open’, ‘the’ and ‘lid’ are used in both cases, but but are placed in a different order. How does this change in order affect meaning? Does the word ‘open’, ‘open’, as it is used in both sentences, sentences, belong to the same word word class (noun, (noun, verb, adjective, adverb, etc.)? etc.)? The different arrangement arrang ement of the three words words ‘open’, ‘open’, ‘the’ ‘the’ and ‘lid’, also relate to syntax. syntax. In ‘open the lid’ l id’,, ‘open’ is used as a verb, and ‘lid’ ‘l id’ is its object. ‘Open’ in ‘the ‘t he open lid’, on the other hand, serves as an adjective, describing descr ibing ‘lid’ ‘l id’.. This illustrates i llustrates how the word class of a word is determined determi ned by its function funct ion in a sentence. The same word can belong to more than one word class, depending on how it is used. It is impossible to know to which word class cl ass a word belongs if we do not see the t he word in context and so underu nderstand its function funct ion in a sentence. Consider the word ‘butter’ in the followi ng sentences: The butter melted in the heat. Butter the pan well before baking. In the first sentence, ‘butter’ is a noun, while in the second, it is a verb. To To sum up, the language langu age in this t his text ai ms to be as simple and clear as possible. Sentences are kept short. Point form is used. The style is plain and literal, the tone factual and unemotional. To avoid ambiguity and confusion, no figurative language is used. All Al l these language langua ge features are in keeping with w ith its purpose of instruct ing. The form is determined by the function and purpose. TEXT 2

More than 90% of people with eating eati ng disorders are teenagers and young women. One of the most serious eatin eatingg disorders is anorexia, which wh ich causes major health problems. problems. Anorexia is an a n eating eat ing disorder where there is extreme e xtreme weight loss. People become anorexic by refusing to eat enough, and by overexercising. It usually begins in girls between the ages ag es of 16 16 and 18. People People with anorexia bel ieve they are fat when in fact they are dangerously dang erously thin. thi n. Anorexia causes damage to the body’s body ’s system as a result result of extreme malnutrition. Slow heart rate and low blood blood pressure which can result in death from heart failure, are common problems. Sufferers need psychological treatment. What do you think the t he source of this text is? Who do you think its audience is? What would you say is its its purpose? Is the personal pronoun (‘I’) used? ENG1502/1

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What sort of person do do you think wrote it? Would Would you describe it as factual or emotive? Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You You may want to jot jot down your ideas. Discussion of questions

What do you think thi nk the source of this text is? Who W ho do you think its audience is? We cannot be certain certai n of the source of this text, but it could could come from a medical textbook, or from a lecture given to students in the medical field. The medical discourse used is not too advanced, however, so the audience could also be laypersons (people without specialist knowledge k nowledge of medical matters); matters); for example, a group of of parents and high school learners in a school where anorexia was a problem. The principal may have arranged arrang ed a meeting meeti ng to be addressed by a health professional to educate them about the dangers of becoming obsessed with being thin. Alternatively, the text could appear in the health section of a newspaper or magazine. (Notice the t he tentative nature of the observations made so far: ‘could’ and ‘may’ indicate uncertainty. uncerta inty. What we are doing here is mak ing ‘educated guesses’, guesses’, based on our experience of the world and our ou r awareness of probabilities.) What would you say is its purpose? The purpose of the text is to inform. The speaker or writer is obviously someone someone who who is educated and well-informed about eating disorders in particular and is transmitting his/her knowledge to others. The person has a command of standard English. Standard English is English that is usually in the written form, grammatically correct and free of slang and colloquialisms. colloquial isms. It is the speech variety which wh ich is legitimised legitim ised by the dominant forces in a society and carries prestige. This has strong political implications. People who have a command of standard English a re empowered; those who don’t, don’t, are disempowered and marginalised margi nalised in certain cer tain contexts. Can you see see the link between language and the power power structures in society?

If this is a live lecture situation, the speech has been planned well, unlike most spoken language which is spontaneous, usually less formal, and which may include colloquialisms and other non-standard features. Is the personal pronoun (‘I’) used? What sort of person do you think wrote it? Nowhere is the personal pronoun ‘I’ used. The writer has chosen to take a completely impersonal perspective. We can infer that his or her educational level is relatively high from this text, but learn nothing personal about him or her. The person is behaving professionally, and not giving anything away about his or her own feelings or attitude. Would Would you describe this text as factual or emotive? The style of writi w riting ng is factual, factual , the tone impersonal i mpersonal and unemotive. The speaker or writer does not go into the feel ings of the person per son with anorexia, or express ex press his or her own feelings about the condition. 84


TEXT 3

WINTER WINT ER ALWAYS ALWAYS MEANS MEA NS A GREAT DEAL IN THE EASTERN CAPE

So banish your winter blues and turn up the heat with red hot fun and adventure in the Eastern Cape this winter, where piping hot packages, price scorching discounts and great getaways are up for grabs. Being in the hottest destination this winter has never been so cool, so be there when temperatures rise at the many fiery sporting clashes, action-packed festivals and fun-fi lled events taking place in the Eastern Cape this winter. Go on – make a GREAT DEAL of the Eastern Cape’s sizzling discounts on a variety of prime packages, amazing adventures, sumptuous dinners and escapes and budget-beating specials AVAILABLE NOW! Life is an adventure. Live yours in the Eastern Cape – the home of adventure. What sort of text is this? Where would you expect to find it? Pick out all the words that relate to temperature. W hat do you notice notice about these? Are they all used in the same way? How do their meaning and usage differ? Consider the phrase ‘a great deal’, used in the heading and main text. What do you notice about this phrase?

What would you say say the purpose of this text is? What age group do you think it is aimed ai med at? What makes you think so? Before reading on, thin k about these questions questions and tr y to answer them. You may want to jot down your your ideas. Discussion of questions

What sort of text is this? Where would you expect to find it? This text is an a n advertisement and could appear in a travel magazine, newspaper, on the internet, or possibly be broadcast on radio or television. It could also appear on a poster or in a pamphlet. Pick out all the t he words that relate to temperature. W hat do you notice about these? Are they all a ll used in the same way? How do their meaning and usage d iffer? There is a lot of word play on on meanings of cold/ho cold/hot, t, in both their literal and colloquial senses. Words and phrases relating to temperature include ‘winter’, ‘turn up the heat’, ‘red hot fun’, ‘price scorching’, ‘sizzl ing discounts’ d iscounts’,, ‘hottest’, ‘cool’ and ‘ fiery’. Of these, only ‘winter’, ‘wi nter’, meaning a cold season season of the year, is used in its literal, or dict ionary sense. All Al l the other words comprise current slang, where the words ‘hot’ and ‘cool’ both both denote somethi something ng attractive attract ive and desirable. Using ‘cool’ ‘cool’ and ‘hot’ in their colloquial colloqu ial sense is an example of non-standard English usage. Such informal, non-standard usage is ENG1502/1

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acceptable in this context, but would not be appropriate in academic discourse. If you were to use these words, with their colloquial meaning mea nings, s, in an assignment, assign ment, you would be penalised. Standard English is required in the academic world. Consider the phrase ‘a great deal’, used in the heading and main text. What do you notice about this phrase? There is also wordplay wordplay in the phrase ‘a great deal’: deal’: it has two possible possible meanings; meani ngs; ‘a lot’, lot’, and ‘a bargain’. Both meanings are intended. What would you say the purpose of this text is? The purpose of this text is to persuade. Language is used to manipulate the audience. It aims to motivate people to spend a holiday holiday in the Eastern E astern Cape, boosting the tourist trade in that part of the country. What age group g roup do you think it is aimed ai med at? What makes you think so? The text is aimed a imed at a young audience, judging by the use of slang and a nd colloquial isms like ‘hottest’ and ‘cool’, ‘cool’, not generally used by the older generation. References to ‘fun’, ‘action-packed’, ‘fun- filled’ and ‘adventure’ also suggest that an energetic audience wanting excitement is being targeted. targ eted. Older consumers would probably look for for opposite qualities qual ities in a holiday destination: quietness and tranquillity. The words ‘discounts’, ‘packages’, and ‘budget-beating’ are intended to appeal to those with a limited holiday budget. The tone and style of the text is colloquial, colloquial , racy and emotive, in keeping with its aim of persuading its audience to buy the product – a holiday in the Eastern Cape. TEXT 4

Dear Mr Mayor Congratulations on your appointment. And a big congratulations on your smart new car. You have have barely been in your position and have purchased a car that th at most citizens can only dream of owning. I am sincerely hoping that this purchase will help you achieve the many goals that lie ahead of you. I really hope this car helps you to: • sort out the billing system; • get all street lights working working again; agai n; • stop paying bonuses and unusually high salaries to of ficials who don’t don’t perform; • become more transparent with respect to the council’s financial affairs; • end corruption in the council. It looks like this new car really has its work cut out. Good luck. Citizen, Pretoria.

Where would you expect to find this text? How does the writer wr iter feel about the Mayor’s appointment and the purchase of a luxury car? 86


What is his/her tone? tone? Are the congratu lations sincere? What is the writer’s wr iter’s purpose purpose in writing wr iting this t his letter? What does this letter i mply about about the power relations in society? What sort of person do do you think the t he writer is? Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You You may want to jot jot down your ideas. Discussion of questions

Where would you expect to find this text? The source of this text is a letter to the t he editor of a newspaper, newspaper, or a letter to the mayor himself. If it appears in the newspaper, the audience is not only the editor, but the general public; anyone a nyone who reads the newspaper. How does the writer wr iter feel about the Mayor’s appointment and the purchase of a luxury car? The writer wr iter clearly rejects the mayor’s mayor’s action of buyi ng a luxury lux ury car as soon as he gets into of fice. S/he pretends to admire the mayor, but really disapproves of his actions. What is his/her tone? Are the congratulations sincere? The tone is ironic. What do we mean by this? Irony entails expressing the opposite of the truth. This is a very general de finition: each example of irony needs to be understood within its speci fic context. Irony is used in everyday situations when we may, for example, say ‘Good evening’ to a colleague who arrives arr ives late for a morning meeting, meet ing, but it is also a frequently-used literary device. You will encounter irony in many different forms in the texts prescribed in the Literature module.

The writer congratulates congratu lates the mayor on on something he strongly disagrees disag rees with – buying an expensive car. He pretends to believe that the car will enable the mayor to ful fil his duties when this is clearly impossible. What is the writer’s wr iter’s purpose in writing this t his letter? The purpose of the text is to criticise unnecessary expenditure of public money; to object to inef ficiency and corruption; to highlight poor service delivery; to inform the public of something they t hey might not be aware of; to expose and mock behaviour which is not in the public interest. The style used is standard Engl ish; the text is written clearly, with points listed methodically. methodical ly. However, the mean ing is not as simple as it appears. There is hidden meaning meani ng and the writer’s true attitude att itude is disguised. disgu ised. A text such as this reminds us that the declared purpose of a text is not necessarily necessarily its true purpose. The writer claims to be giving congratulations when he is actually expressing his disapproval. There is an ironic disjunction between the apparent and tr ue intentions. ENG1502/1

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What does this letter i mply about about the power relations in society? The writer’s objections to the Mayor’s Mayor’s expenditure hint h int at the inequalities that th at exist in society, and the uneven distribution of wealth. This in turn relates to the power structures which privilege some people and disadvantage others. Here we are considering the broader contextual concerns that this letter is addressing. Even as we study its use of language on the micro-level, we are also functioning on the macro-level: we are conscious of the extra-linguistic factors that add to its meaning. What sort of person do do you think the t he writer is? The writer w riter is a person with w ith a strong interest i n civic civ ic affairs affa irs and a critical critica l mind. m ind. S/he observes public events closely, feels strongly about about them, and takes ta kes the trouble to write to the newspaper to register his/her reactions and opposition, something that most people would not bother to do. By challenging the existing social order (represented here by the mayor and his extravagant ext ravagant habits), the writer is attempting to t o alter the power structures struct ures in society. societ y. In a small way s/he is contributi contributing ng to the discourse d iscourse of public of fice; undermining the belief that a high position should be linked with a luxurious lifestyle. S/he S/he is using usi ng language to do this. TEXT 5

I knew that I had AIDS when I could no longer climb cli mb the stairs from the judges’ common room in the High Court to my chambers two floors above. For nearly three years, every morn ing after tea, I made a point of walking. Two Two flights, four landings, forty stairs. But on that day in late October 1997 I couldn’t. Each step seemed an insuperable effort. My energy seemed to have have drained drai ned from my legs. I was perspiring grey exhaustion. ex haustion. My lungs felt waterlogged. My mouth rough and dry. No pain. Just overwhelming overwhelming weariness. And fear. After twenty t wenty steps I paused on on the midway landing landi ng to lean my forehead against the wall. The stairwell was quiet. I could hear myself panting. I grimaced. The thought − that thought − could no longer be postponed. I would have to see my doctor. This afternoon. But already I knew what he would say. It was what somehow I had been waitin g for − fearing, dreading, denying, as it encircled me, closing in, for twelve years. My mouth and lungs told me what I didn’t want to know, didn’t need to be told. I had AIDS.. AID S.. Where would would you expect to find a piece of writing such as th is? Look at the verbs. What tense are they in? What W hat does this tell us about the type of text this is? To To what extent is the pronoun pronoun ‘I’ used? What is the effect of this? Look at the lengths of the sentences. Are they roughly the same, or is there a variation? Look at the final sentence of the passage. It is very short. What is the effect of this? Does the writer always write in full sentences? Why do you think this is? What contribution, do you you think, think , does this text make to the discourse of of AIDS? 88


Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You You may want to jot jot down your ideas. Discussion of questions

Where would you expect to find a piece of writing such as this? t his? Look at the verbs. What tense are they in? W hat does this tell us about the type of text this is? This text could come from a diary, diar y, a letter; letter; a novel; or an autobiograph autobiography. y. (In actual fact, it comes from an autobiographical text: Witness to AIDS by by Edwin Cameron.) All the verbs are in the past past tense. This enables us to recognise that th at the text is in the narrative form: the narrator is telling a story or giving an account of an event that has already happened. To To what extent is the pronoun pronoun ‘I’ used? What is the effect of this? The pronoun ‘I’ occurs several severa l times ti mes in the text. This gives the t he writing wr iting a profoundly personal tone. The writer is describing his innermost feelings and sharing his deepest fears. His honesty creates a very intimate relationship with the reader. Look at the lengths of the sentences. Are they roughly the same, or is there a variation? There is a great variation in sentence sentence length. Some utterances run on using several sentence parts and many words, whi le others (‘No pai n’) consist of two words only. only. These do not contain verbs, so, strictly speaking, they are not proper sentences. As already mentioned, by de finition, a sentence requires a finite verb. If we accept this de finition, which of the following utterances are proper sentences, and which are not? This afternoon. af ternoon. Two Two flights, four landings, forty stairs. Just overwhelm overwhelm ing weari ness. And fear. I grimaced. I had AIDS. Only the last l ast two quotations consist of of proper sentences. Although short, they t hey contain finite (complete) verbs (‘grimaced’ and ‘had’). This shows us that even very short utterances consisting of two or three words (or even one) can be full sentences, while longer ones like ‘Two flights, four landings, forty stairs’ are not, because there is no verb. Sentence length is not the critical criterion cr iterion for a sentence. Why does the t he writer use ‘ungrammatica ‘ung rammatical’l’ sentences, leaving leav ing out verbs? He is clearly an educated person, so poor literacy is not the reason. The writer varies his sentence sentence structures struct ures for for dramatic effect. As is discussed with regard to the Shakespearean quotat ions considered in the Unit on Syntax (‘Full ma ny a glorious morning have I seen’), writers manipulate language for particular effects, sometimes breaking breakin g the rules of grammar to do so. We We call this th is ‘poetic licence’. This is commonly ENG1502/1

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found in creative writing, and absent or rare in factual or academic discourse. Unless you are writi ng creatively, we do not recommend that you use verbless verbless utterances in your assignments. The marker would probably underline these and write a stern comment about not writing in full sentences! Edwin Edwi n Cameron is expressing himself emotively, intent intent on conveying to the reader the intensity of his reaction to the realisation that he finally had ‘full-blown’ AIDS. His incomplete utterances, such as ‘No pai n’ and ‘And ‘And fear’, help to convey his shock. Their Thei r short, staccato quality could also suggest his breathlessness as he tries to climb up the stairs, gasping for air. Look at the final sentence of the passage. It is very short. What is the effect of th is? The final sentence: ‘I had AIDS’ is startling in its simplicity and directness. Had this same point been made i n a roundabout, wordy way, way, it would not have the same i mpact. Analysis shows that the writer alters regu re gular lar syntax − including omitting the crucial element of the verb at times − to create the desired emotional effect. There is a direct correlation between the deviant syntax and the t he emotive content content of the text. The lang language uage has been matched to the t he writer’s purpose and created c reated the appropriate tone.

When you study the prescribed texts in the Literature Module (ENG1501) (ENG1501),, be on the lookout lookout for such such variations in grammatical gra mmatical str ucture, and think t hink about why the writer created these. It is never enough enough to simply point out unusual features: featu res: in language lang uage and literature study you need to be able to comment on their effects. Form and funct ion, and form and purpose, are linked. How, do you think, does this text contribute to the discourse of AIDS? People who are HIV-positive or living with AIDS have been marginalised, because AIDS AI DS has been a stigmatised stigm atised condition. People i nfected w ith and a nd affected by AIDS A IDS have tended to conceal their situations, thereby contributing to t he culture cultu re of shame and silence around the disease. They have been marginalised; margi nalised; rendered invisible and voiceless. voiceless. This, unti l fairly recently, was the prevailing prevaili ng discourse. Edwin Cameron, however, has chosen to challenge this t his discourse by speak ing out. In his book, of which we gave g ave you the opening passage, he declares his status openly, and has done this in several other public domains. As a Constitutional Constitutiona l Court judge, he holds a high position in society, and so his opinions would carry weight and be in fluential. He has thus altered the discourse of AIDS which assumes that its victims are low in status and stereotypes the AIDS-ill as social pariahs. By speaking out, he is encouraging others in similar positions to do the same and disclose their status. The accumulation of such acts has had a major effect on how HIV-positive persons are perceived and treated. The implications of this are enormous, including such issues as their entitlement to free medical treatment and employabilit employability. y. It is signi ficant that this has come about because of of language: langu age: such texts have helped to bring about change in the discourse of AIDS. TEXT 6

The next text is an edited extract from the famous ‘I am an African’ Afr ican’ speech by by former President of South Africa, Thabo Mbeki, delivered in Parliament in Cape Town on 8 May 1996, on the occasion of the adoption of the South African Constitution Bill. 90


I am an African. I owe my being to the hills and the val leys, the mountains and the glades, the rivers, rivers , the deserts, the trees, the flowers, the seas and the ever-changing ever-chang ing seasons that de fine the face of our native land. My body has frozen in our frosts and in our latter day snows. It has thawed in the warmth of our sunshine su nshine and melted in the t he heat of the midday m idday sun. The crack c rack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startli ng lightning, lightn ing, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope. The dramatic shapes of the Drakensberg, Drakensberg, the soil-coloured waters of the Lekoa. iGgili noThukela, and the sands of the Kgalagadi, have all been panels of the set on the natural stage sta ge on which we act out the foolish deeds of the theatre of our day. A human presence among a mong all a ll these, a feature on the t he face f ace of our native land thus defined, I know that none may challenge me when I say – I am an African! I owe my being to the Khoi and the San whose desolate souls haunt the great expanses of the beautiful Cape – they who fell victim to the most merciless genocide our native land has h as ever seen, they who were the first to lose their lives in the struggle to defend our freedom and independence i ndependence and who, as a people, perished as a result.

I am formed of the mig rants who left Europe to find a new home on our native land. l and. Whatever their own act ions, they remain sti ll part of me. In my veins courses the blood of the Malay slaves who came from the East. Their proud dignity informs my bearing, their culture a part of my essence. The stripes they bore on their bodies from the t he lash of the slave master are a reminder embossed on my consciousness of what should not be done.

I am the grandchild g randchild of the warr ior men and women women that Hintsa and Sekhukhune Sekhuk hune led, the patriots that t hat Cetshwayo Cetshwayo took to battle, t he soldiers Moshoesh Moshoeshoe oe and Ngungunyane Ngu ngunyane taught never to dishonour the cause of freedom. free dom. I am the grandchild who lays fresh flowers on the Boer graves at St. Helena and the Bahamas, who sees in the mind’s eye and suffers the suffering of a simple peasant folk; death, concentration camps, destroyed homesteads, a dream in ruins. I come of those who were transported from India and China, whose being resided in the fact, fac t, solely, that they were able to provide physical labour, who taught me t hat we could both be at home and be foreign, who taught t aught me human existence itself demanded that freedom was a necessary condition for that human existence. Being part of all these people, and in the knowledge that none dare contest that assertion, I shall claim that – I am an African.

LISTEN How does the language, tone and style of this s peech suit the speaker and setting? Who is this speech aimed at? Who is the audience? What is the mood of the speaker? What tense is this speech in? Look at the verbs to establish this. Does this text have any interesting phonological (sound) features? Refer to the Unit on Phonology, which discusses how cert ain phonological features can enhance the meaning and effect of l anguage. ENG1502/1

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Look at the words used in the first paragraph of the speech. Common nouns such as ‘hills’, ‘rivers’, ‘rivers’, ‘trees’ and ‘seas’ are used in their lite ral sense, but is their effec t purely literal? (Compare these nouns with the nouns used in the first text we discussed, ‘kettle’, ‘water’ and ‘surface’. Do they have the same effect ? Why not?) Look at the different groups, named by the then Deputy President, that form part of South Afric a’s history. Why do you think he refers to these groups? Consider the use of the personal pronoun, the ‘I’ in this text. What is unusual about this? Compare his use of the pronoun ‘I’ with that of Edwin Cameron in the previous text. Is it the same? This is not easy to decide. Mbeki constructs his identity in a complex way. way. Read through the whole text and try to understand how he does this. On what does he base his identity ? Consider whether the meaning of the ‘I’ changes as the speech develops. What power relations underlie this text? What is the purpose of this speech? Consider the significance of the date of this text. Can you relate its purpose to its historical context? South Africa has eleven of fi cial languages, nine of which are African. Why does Mbeki choose a non-African language in which to express his African identity and pro-African ideas? Before reading on, think about these questions and try to answer them. You may want to jot down your ideas.

Discussion of questions How does the language, tone and style of this speech suit the speaker and setting?

The speaker here, the Deputy President President of of South Africa at the time, uses language lang uage be fitting tin g his position, the setting, setti ng, and the importance of the occasion. The context dictates that the speech be elevated, elevated, formal and digni dign i fied. Although spoken, the speech is wellplanned and carefully prepared (pre-written). The sentences are well-constructed, and the lexis deliberately chosen. What is the mood of the speaker? The mood of the speaker spea ker is one of pride, and a nd this th is is re flected in the positive tone he adopts. It is uplifting, patriotic and celebratory. Rhetorical devices such as repetition, seen in the phrase ‘I am an African’, stand out with powerful effect. skillll of using language langu age in a special way that in fluences people. Rhetoric involves the ski A rhetorical device is a method used in speech or writing to heighten the impact of what is being expressed. Who is this speech aimed a imed at? Who is the audience? The audience is not only the assembly assembly in Parl Parliament, iament, but the South African people as a whole, and the rest rest of the world. world. The adoption of South South Africa’s new Constitution Constitution is a 92


major political and historical milestone, and would attract worldwide media attention. For this reason, the Deputy President aims to create the most positive impression of South Africa he possibly can. What tense is this speech in? Look at the verbs to establish this. The tense of this th is speech is the t he present: almost al l verbs are in i n the present tense: ‘am’, ‘owe’, ‘owe’, ‘know’, ‘k now’, ‘come’ ‘come’ etc. Yet Yet the speaker is also drawing drawin g on the past, which seems something of a contradiction. He is subsuming everything in Africa’s history to construct his present identity: the past is forged into the present. Does this text have any interesting phonological phonological (sound) features? Phonological aspects are not easy to pick up when we read a text. This text was delivered as a speech, designed to be heard, not read. If received aurally, it would be easier to appreciate the sound effects of the rhetorical devices, such as the rhythms and repetitions which are strongly present. If you read the speech aloud, you would become more aware of these. Look at the lexis ( vocabulary ) used in i n the first paragraph of the speech, especially cial ly common nouns such as ‘hil ls’, ls’, ‘rivers’, ‘rivers’, ‘trees’ and ‘seas’. ‘seas’. What is their thei r effect? The nouns nouns he uses (‘hills’, (‘hi lls’, ‘rivers’, ‘rivers’, ‘trees’ ‘trees’ and ‘seas’) are drawn from nature, and although they are common nouns, they evoke far more than their narrow, literal mean ings. Subsequent references to the Drakensberg, deserts and other geographical features conjure up visions of vast landscapes, magni ficent in their scale and beauty. Expressions such as ‘the crack and the rumble of the summer thunders, lashed by startling lightning, have been a cause both of trembling and of hope’ have a poetic quality and powerful emotive effect.

The landscapes he refers refers to serve as a ‘stage’ ‘stage’ and backdrop for the deeds we enact every day. day. You You may recognize recogn ize Shakespearean Shakespeare an echoes here,1 which further elevate the tone of the speech. Some abstract nouns in keeping with the idea listic nature natu re of the speech are also used: these include ‘freedom’ and ‘dignity’. Look at the different groups, named by the then Deputy President, that form part of South Africa’s history. Why do you think he refers to these groups? The Deputy President President names a wide range of of groups, sharply different in ethnicity and culture. cultu re. He attempts to be inclusive and not leave leave any group out. When he states that all these groups form part of who he is, he foregrounds the diversity of the South Afr ican population, while at the same time indicating that they can be melded into one. South Africa’s history is marked by bitter divisions between racial groups, and he is attemptin attemptingg to overlay this history with a vision of unity. Consider the use of the personal pronoun, the ‘I’ in this text. What is unusual about this? The use of the pronoun pronoun ‘I’ is interesti ng in this th is speech. When Mbek i begins to speak, speak , the ‘I’ appears to refer to himself h imself personally. However, as he he goes on, we begin to realise rea lise that, with every new sentence, he is assimilating assimilat ing into this ‘I’ qualities qual ities that he is drawing from numerous sources, human and non-human. non-human. Geographical Geographica l features and countless 1 ENG1502/1

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different communities t hat have existed over centur centuries ies are incorporated into his identity. identit y. By the time he reaches the end of his speech, his ‘I’ in ‘I am an African’ has become a powerful symbolic construct which encompasses the best possible qualities that any African Africa n could have. This complex, comprehensive comprehensive identity is presented as the ideal. ideal. Compare Mbeki’s use of the pronoun ‘I’ with that of Edwin Cameron in the previous text. Is it the same?

Mbeki’ Mbek i’ss use of the ‘I’ is very different from that t hat of Edwin Cameron’s. As we established in the discussion of that text, Cameron adopts a very personal tone as he narrates his experience. Mbek i’s ‘I’, ‘I’, on the other hand, refers to a symbolic ideal: a composite identity comprising many different elements. What power relations underlie this text? The power relations underlying u nderlying this text are also interesting. i nteresting. As the spokesperson of the government, Mbeki Mbek i obviously obviously has power. The setting sett ing in which he makes his speech – the Houses of Parliament – is the seat of government, and so imbued i mbued with political politica l power and signi ficance. Yet, Yet, in the speech itself, Mbeki M beki seems intent on breaking down the ‘us/them’ ‘us/them’ divide, and identifying identify ing himself hi mself with ‘ordinar y’ people. This is an essential aspect of the discourse of democracy he has chosen to use. What is the purpose of this speech? Consider the significance of the date of this text.

The purpose purpose of this speech speech is clear. It takes place in the immediate aftermath of of apartheid South Africa. An entirely different ethos must be established in the ‘new’ democratic South Africa. The previous marginalisation of certain racial groups has to be reversed, hence the prominence and pride in the repet itive phrase ‘I am an African’ Africa n’.. The negative connotations the word ‘African’ ‘African’ used to carry car ry are replaced by connotations that are richly positive. Mbeki is using language in an effort to change the discourse of Africanness. The social order is in a continual process of change, and this occurs, to a large extent, because of texts such as the one under exam ination. A single text is probably not enough on its own to bring about discursive change, but a number of texts and social practices combined can do so over time (as we have seen in the change in the discourse of AIDS, AI DS, and in the empowerment of of women and blacks). blacks). Mbeki Mbek i is using his position of power to construct a new ideology which could change the course of history. Can you relate the purpose of this speech to its historical context?

After South Africa’s history of divisions and con flict, Deputy President Mbeki wants to encourage reconciliation, reconcili ation, positive attitudes and national nationa l pride. The eyes of of the world are on South Africa, and it is crucial crucia l that he inspires con fidence and hope in its future. The content, purpose, tone and style of this speech can be directly related to its historical context. It is a classic example of a government intent on forging a new identity, and provides an excellent example of the way that discourse constructs our knowledge and beliefs. Language does not simply re flect the world: it forms perceptions and actively creates what we understand by ‘reality’. South Africa has eleven of ficial languages, ni ne of which are African. Why does Mbeki choose a non-African language in which to express his African identity and pro-African ideas? 94


It could be regarded as deeply ironic that the ‘I am an African’ speech is given in English. After all, English is a colonial colonial language, associated with power structures struct ures which should be obsolete in our new democratic order. Also, English En glish is thought t hought by by many to be a seriser ious threat to the indigenous African languages because it dominates public discourse (refer to Unit 5, where we reproduce the article ‘Death of the Mother Tongue’ by the eminent linguist Rajend Mesthrie, and discuss the issues it raises). English occupies a hegemonic hegemonic (dominant, controlling) position in South Afr ica and the world, but this could change. Society and discourse are dynamic, and power structures change over time. English nominally nomina lly has equal status with wit h the ten other of of ficial lang uages. However, it is clear that it is more widely used and enjoys greater status status than th an the other languages. la nguages. Mbek i can reach more people if he speaks English than if he were to use an Afr ican language. langu age. There are reasons re asons for this: English Engl ish is an international internat ional communicative communicat ive medium, and it also serves as a ‘linking language’ or lingua franca within South Africa’s borders. If he were to choose an African Africa n language, lang uage, which wh ich one would he choose? isiZulu is the most widely used of the indigenous indige nous lang uages, but there are many other language langu age groups who would not be reached if he chose this medium, not to mention the international internat ional audience the speaker has in mind. There are logical, practical reasons why Mbeki chooses to speak in English, but the South African languag la nguagee situation and its attendant power power issues remain problematic. It is a regrettable fact that South Africans lacking in English pro ficiency find themselves disempowered in the employment and higher education sectors. Being pro ficient in English in South Africa, on the other hand, carries prestige and has undoubted social and political advantages. Mbeki, as an English-educated citizen, is aligned with the privileged, Eurocentric minority. This goes against the thrust of his speech: democratisation and the establishment of an African identity. In the discussion of this text, can you see how important extra-linguistic knowledge is to its full understanding? If we analysed the text in isolation, without taking the surrounding historical and political factors into account, much of its signi ficance would be lost on us.

6.3

LANGUAGE LAN GUAGE IN LITERATURE Extract from The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, Sali nger, ‘Dulce et Decorum Est’ by Wilfrid Wilfr id Owen and ‘In the Shadow of Signal Hill’ Hi ll’ by Essop Patel

A thorough knowledge of language lang uage is an invaluable tool when you you are called to read and understand various texts, from movie posters to recipes. However, However, this is also tr ue when you come to analysing analysi ng literary literar y texts like poems, novels and plays. The study of literature requires you, as students, to read various literary texts and then to recognise recogn ise and explain the techniques an author uses to create meaning . When you read a text, whether it is a novel, a poem or a play, you respond respond to the text because of how the author has wr itten it – how he or she has constructed his or her text. You You are made to empathise with the characters, feel the emotions or respond to the concerns the author raises because of the techniques he or she uses. As a student st udent of literature you need to think thin k about WHY WH Y you are responding to a text in a certain manner and then you need to explain HOW the author constructs his or her text in order to make you respond in this manner. Th is focus on how the author creates meaning is central to the study of literature. In a critical evaluation of a literary text you are expected to be able to identify various poetic techniques that writers use, such as figures of speech (similes, metaphors, ENG1502/1

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personi fication and so on) and sound devices (alliteration, assonance, onomatopoeia) and so on; these are all terms that you will find explained and explored in ENG1501 and later in your glossary. glossar y. You You also need to explore the effects created by these dev ices and how they combine to achieve the full impact the author desires. However, what is often ignored and yet is just as important in a critical evaluation of any text is the lan- Gram mar is often glossed over because it doesn’t doesn’t seem important importa nt in comparison guage . Grammar with grand g rand similes simi les and symbols but itit is essential to any piece of writing writin g – and a good author uses grammar as effectively as he or she uses imagery. You therefore need to bring your knowledge of lexis, syntax and phonology to every piece of literature you try to analyse, whether it is a poem, a play or a novel. With this in mind, consider the following section from the novel The Catcher in the Rye : TEXT A

Old Phoebe said something then, but I couldn’t hear her. She had the side of her mouth right smack on the pillow, and I couldn’t hear her. ‘What? ‘W hat? I said. ‘ Take your mouth away. away. I can’t hear you with your mouth that way.’ way.’ ‘You don’t like anything that’s that’s happening.’ happeni ng.’ It made me even more depressed when she said t hat. ‘Yes, I do. Yes, Yes, I do. Sure I do. Don’t Don’t say that. Why W hy the hell do you say that?’ ‘Because you don’t. You don’t like any schools. You don’t like a million things. You don’t .’.’ ‘I do! That’s where you’re wrong – that’s exactly where you’re wrong! Why the hell do you have to say that?’ I said. sa id. Boy, was she depressing me. ‘Because you don’t’, don’t’, she said. ‘ Name one thing.’ thi ng.’ ‘One thing? One thing I like?’ I said. ‘Okay.’ The trouble was, I couldn’t couldn’t concentrate too hot. hot. Sometimes it’s hard to concentrate. concentrate. ‘One thing I like a lot, you mean?’ I asked her. She didn’t answer me, though. She was in a cockeyed position way the hell over on the other side of the bed. She was about a thousand miles away. away. ‘C’mon, answer me,’ I said. ‘One thing I like a lot, or one thing I just like?’ ‘You like a lot.’ ‘All Al l right,’ I said. But the t rouble was, I couldn’t concentrate. concentrate. About all I could cou ld think thi nk of were those two nuns that went around collecting dough in those beat-up old straw baskets. Especially the t he one with the glasses with those iron rims. And th is boy I knew at Elkton Hills, named James Castle, that wouldn’t take back something he said about this very conceited boy, Phil Stabile. James Castle called him a very conceited guy, and one of Stabile’s lousy friends went and squealed on hi m to Stabile. So Stabile, with about six other dirty bastards, went down to James Castle’s room and went in and locked locked the goddam door and tried to make him take back what he said, but he wouldn’t wouldn’t do it. So they started in i n on him. I won’t won’t even tell you what they t hey did to him – it’s too repulsive – but he still wouldn’t wouldn’t take it back, old James Castle. And you should’ve seen him. He was a skinny little weak-looking guy, with wrists about as big as pencils. Once you you have read the entire extract, do a line by li ne analysis focussing focussing on the language. lang uage. Consider the punctuation, the t he tenses of the verbs, adjectives and adverbs, vocabulary vocabulary and the form of the writi ng (how it appears on the page); in each case think about how the 96


specific element of of language lang uage contributes to the creation of meaning in the speci fic extract and how this re flects the themes and concerns of the text as a whole. As you do your line by line l ine analysis, pay attention to what what ‘jumps out’ at you you and then ask yourself why the author used that word or that tense or that punctu ation mark; answering answer ing that ‘why?’ will wil l put you you on the path to understanding the way gram mar creates literary literar y meaning. meani ng. For example:

In the first line of the extract, the narrator, Holden Caul field uses the adjective ‘old’ to describe his younger sister, Phoebe. This is a stra nge word to use when describing a young girl, so the question you need to ask yourself is ‘Why does Salinger use the word ‘old’ ‘old’ to describe Phoebe?’ Phoebe?’ Possible answer:

This one one word word suggests various things. On the one hand it re flects the conversational tone in which the novel is written because ‘old Phoebe’ is colloquial, suggesting familiarity and informal ity. It also tends to be a term used by ‘men’s club’ club’ and ‘boys’ school’ men when they refer to their friends, as Holden himself uses it in l ine 40 when he refers to his school friend, ‘old James Castle’. The use of this adjective thus enables the author to maintain the voice of the young, male narrator, Holden Caul field (who attends a prestigious all boys school), in this extract. The word ‘old’ used to describe Phoebe also suggests something about the relationship between Holden and his sister. On the one hand it suggests that he considers her a friend fr iend and an equal, ‘one-of-the-boys’, ‘one-of-the-boys’, and on the other it may reveal that he considers her mature for her age. This last possibilit y is borne out by the fact that he often suggests she understands more than one would expect a ‘little kid’ to do. As you can see, one can write a fair amount merely focussing on on just just one one word. word. Also, note how quotations from the text are embedded in these sentences; in your essays, you must do the same. Quotations should form part of your ar gument, not be stuck in separate sections. One of the first things thi ngs you should notice notice about the beginn ing of this passage is t hat there is a lot of direct speech. You You need to ask yourself why Salinger Saling er would use direct speech here – what does it accomplish? Look at the verbs. What tenses are they in? What effect does this create? cre ate? Possible answers:

The direct d irect speech reveals revea ls something someth ing about the relationship rel ationship between bet ween Holden and his sister. He speaks openly to her, treating her like a close friend. This is particularly important because we know the lengths he goes to to avoid speaking to his parents. There is a sense sense here of the young people grouping together because because they feel alienated from their parents, from the older generation who cannot understand them. This is one of the central themes that Salinger is trying to explore in the novel as a whole and Holden’s Holden’s honest honest conversation conversation with wit h Phoebe while he hides from his h is parents re flects this. In considering the verbs, it is important to know that direct speech is often used to create a sense of immediacy; immediacy ; because verbs are in the present tense, there is the feelin g that what is being said is said ‘now’. This infuses d irect speech with wit h a sense of urgency and, often, heightened emotion. In this extract all the verbs are in the past tense (‘it ENG1502/1

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made me’; ‘the trouble was’; ‘she didn’t answer’) except the ones in the direct speech which are in the present tense (‘I can’t can’t hear you’; you’; ‘I like’). like’ ). This highlights the emotional content of the conversation conversation between Phoebe and Holden; she angr ily accuses him hi m of not caring cari ng about anything anyth ing and his h is response is very very defensive. The conversation is emotional emotional and the tenses of the verbs in the direct speech help communicate this. Having dealt with the direct speech in general, you now need to focus on each line. Notice the language features that stand out in each of the lines and ask yourself why the author uses them. When you answer that question, you will be commenting on their use and explaining how the author creates meaning. In line six, Phoebe says that Holden does not like ‘anything ‘ anything that’s that’s happening’. The form is something you need to comment on here; why does the author put put ‘anythi ng’ in italics? Possible answer:

It emphasises Phoebe’s tone, suggesting she is frustrated with him. It also reveals the how all-encompassing Holden’s apathy and disillusionment is; his little sister knows that there is nothing he cares about and Salinger emphasises this because the ‘anyth ing’ stands out through the italics. Note the ful l stop at the end of that sentence; if Phoebe Phoebe is so upset, what punctuat ion mark might we expect the author to use? – an exclamation mark. What is the effect of having a full stop at the end of that sentence? Possible answer:

The full fu ll stop may suggest that t hat Phoebe is used to Holden Holden behaving in i n this way and so this sentence is merely mere ly a statement of fact, not an emotional outburst. An exclamat ion mark would show surprise or anger an ger but she is not surprised by how he feels or how he acts because she knows him so well. It’s almost as though she has given up on changing him. When discussing the effect of this punctuation mark in terms of the themes and concerns of the novel, you could again comment on Phoebe’s maturity and the apathy Holden feels about the world. The full stop suggests a weariness that reveals much about both characters. Holden’s response in lines 8–9 to Phoebe’s statement is interesting. The first thing you may notice is the t he short sentences he uses: “Yes, I do. Yes, I do. Sure I do. Don’t say that. Why the hell do you say that?” What do these short sentences do to the pace of the line? And what effect is created by the pace? What does Salinger reveal about Holden’s state of mind through this use of language? Possible answers:

The many short sentences quicken the pace (imagi (im agine ne someone speaking speak ing in short sentences and you can hear the speed). A fast pace may be used to reveal emotional distress: anger, an ger, passion, fear. Holden is obviously upset by what Phoebe says and he is trying tryi ng to defend himself. 98


When you you are trying try ing to understand Holden’ Holden’ss state of mind at this moment, moment, as revealed through the language, consider the opening words of each sentence. His response moves from strong af firmatives, ‘Yes’, ‘Yes’, to ‘Sure I do’ and then to an attack, ‘Don’t say that’. that’. What does this t his progression reveal? Possible answer:

The af firmation becomes less and less sure of itself until the character is completely on the defensive. This revea reveals ls that he knows there is some truth to what Phoebe is saying even though he feels he should deny it. Perhaps he is also trying to protect Phoebe’s innocence by denying his apathy; it is important to him to protect her faith in him because he feels so disconnected from everyone else in the world. In the line li ne ‘Boy, was she she depressing me’ (line (l ine 14), 14), Salinger Sali nger reverses the normal order of the words. Usually it would read, ‘she was depressing me’. What effect does this change have on the meaning of the sentence? Possible answer:

It is a more colloquial way of speaking, again allowing Salinger to create the voice of the young male narrator. This con figuration also creates tone very effectively. The reader can hear Holden’s Holden’s exasperation with his sister whereas w hereas ‘she was depressing me’ is far more neutral. Are there any other lang uage features of the passage that create a colloquial tone? Possible answer:

Salinger often has Holden and Phoebe begin sentences with conjunctions (‘Because you don’t’ don’t’,, But the trouble was ...’, ‘And ‘And this t his boy ...’). The grammatica gr ammaticall rule ru le is that th at one should never begin a sentence with a conjunction so this misuse of language makes Holden’s Holden’s speech patterns recognisably informal informa l and colloquia l. He speaks like a teenage boy would. Another way in which Salinger creates a colloquial tone is by using slang. Here you need to comment on the use of slang. Which words are exa mples of slang? What does the use of slang accomplish? Possible answer:

Throughout Throu ghout the passage Salinger uses words words that are considered to be slang: ‘cockeyed’, ‘cockeyed’, ‘beat-up’, ‘lousy friends’, friends’, ‘squealed’, ‘dir ‘dirty ty bastards’ basta rds’ and ‘goddam’. Slang is language lang uage used by a particular particul ar group of people people and at a particular particula r time in i n history. The words words used here are still innocent enough (by our standards today!) to suggest that the slang comes from a time before today. This is signi ficant because the slang positions this novel in a particular historical period during which certain concerns were dominant; it is these concerns that Salinger explores in Catcher in the Rye . Slang is also most often used by the youth and so Salinger uses it to create the believable voice of a teenage boy. The slang terms that Holden uses express his frustration with the people and the system around him and this is partly what Salinger is trying to explore through the novel. Young ENG1502/1

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people like Holden have become disillusioned with the world their parents and adults expect them to inherit and they challenge the authority of these figureheads and the hierarchies they represent. Slang is a way of challenging the ‘system’ and expressing individual rebellion against arbitrary rules, like those of polite speech. Now look at the rest of the passage yourself and see if you can ca n note any features of the language that you would like to comment on; consider the punctuation marks, adjectives, verbs, length of the sentences and anything else that ‘jumps out’ at you. This brief look at an ext ract from The Catcher in the Rye is is only a short introduction to what you can do if you use your knowledge k nowledge of vocabulary, syntax and phonology to analyse the extract. Just looking at the language, you can find a lot to say. This same kind k ind of analysis ana lysis is not only possible, but crucial when you are looki ng at a poem. Take, for example this extract from f rom ‘Dulce ‘Du lce et Decorum Est’ by First World War War poet, Wilfrid Owen. TEXT B

(from) Dulce et Decorum Est Wilfrid Wilf rid Owen Bent double, double, like old beggars begga rs under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, Till Til l on the haunting flares we turned our backs, And towards our distant rest began to trudge. Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots, But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines dropping softly behind. Gas! GAS! Quick boys! An ecstasy of fumbling, Fitting Fittin g the clumsy helmets just in time; But someone still was yelling out and stumbling And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime... Dim through the misty panes and thick green light, As under a green sea, I saw him drowning. d rowning.

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‘Dulce ‘Du lce et decorum est pro patria mori’, mori’, the latin phrase Owen uses in this th is poem, means ‘It is sweet [good] and meet [right] to die for one’s country’; Owen suggests that when young soldiers are told that t hat it is noble and grand to give one’s life for one’s one’s country, they t hey are being told a lie. Throughout this poem he explores ex plores the truth of war, as opposed to ‘the old lie’ that young soldiers are told and believe. Once again, read the text a number of times and then do a line by line analysis, paying particular attention to the language. As you read the poem take note of prominent punctuation marks, t he repetition of letters and words and any speci fic words that you feel are important. 100


When you analyse poetry a good place place to start is to make note of where the full ful l stops stops are because they indicate sentences – units bound by a single thought or image by the poet. Often the lengt h of the part icular icula r sentence supports supports the poetic effect created in the unit; un it; remember that short sentences tend to quicken the pace and create tension, whereas long sentences suggest sug gest weariness weari ness or sadness (or nostalgia and longing, longi ng, for example). example). In the t he first stanza there are four full stops; why does Wilfrid Owen Place them where he does? Possible answer:

The first full stop appears at the end of the fourth line of the poem, allowing Owen to create a lengthy run-on line, or enjambment. The soldiers are already tired and the length of the sentence suggests the t he length of the march ahead of them; he also al so emphasises the bone-aching weariness of the soldiers marching home through the length of the sentence. This weariness can also be read to suggest hopelessness and despair; the soldiers have become numb to feeling and walk like animals, tiredly going wherever they are told. Note that the length of the sentence can tell you a lot about the effect the poet is trying to create, but remember always that the grammar is supporting the ideas the the poet is writing about – look first at the idea and then at how the grammar supports it or what the grammar emphasises. In lines 6–8 Owen uses a number of punctuation marks such as commas, semi-colons and full ful l stops. These break the last section of the stanza i nto short short units. un its. Given that he now describes the marching soldiers as ‘limping’, these small disjointed phrases seem to reflect the shuf fling, painful movement of the men. While the march is long, their steps are short and halting because they have been crippled by the war. The full stops after ‘men marched asleep’ and ‘blood-shod’ ‘blood-shod’ make the reader pause for a longer time than a comma or a semi-colon would require; this is effective because the poet particularly focuses our attention on the ideas in those sentences. ‘Men marched asleep’ emphasises the desperate fatigue of these men; alt hough they are supposed to be ‘marching’, ‘marchin g’, a word that suggests perfect, per fect, militar mi litaryy action, we are told they do so ‘asleep’. ‘asleep’. This undermi u ndermines nes the sense of act ion and makes us feel sorry for them. This f ull stop may also suggest their nodding off to sleep while walking, causing a literal pause in their movement that we are forced to make with them. The raw horror of their being ‘blood-shod’ ‘blood-shod’ is made to stand sta nd out because the ful l stop forces us to halt and th ink about that image ima ge (the repetition of the ‘d’ also forces us to read slowly and focus on the image); their feet have been worn away until their shoes are made of blood. As you can see, a ful l stop is an effective way of forcing the reader to stop and take note of things the poet feels he or she wants to stand out. Once you have discussed the full stops, go back and consider what other language features you could comment on in the first 4 lines. There are a number of commas in these lines; what has the poet used them for and to what effect? ENG1502/1

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Possible answer: One of the things commas are used for is listing. Here the poet-speaker (himself a young soldier) uses them to list phrases that describe the soldiers. The effect is a layerin g of awful images that leave the reader with an unequivocal description of how broken and haggard these young men have become; the number of images suggests the allencompassing, crippling effect of war. The commas also create a number of pauses in the first four lines and these help slow the pace, supporting the notion that the march is both lengthy and uncomfortable.

After you have discussed disc ussed the commas discuss d iscuss the t he effective effect ive use of vocabulary. Use your knowledge of semantics to analyse the images and word-choice of the poet in these first four lines. What words stand out and why? – remember that these were strong, healthy, young men who had been sent to war. Possible answer:

The phrase ‘bent ‘ bent double, double, like l ike old beggars’ beg gars’ is ver y evocative. This T his image i mage suggests sug gests that the backs of the young men have been broken; they are l iterally ‘bent ‘ bent double’, double’, crooked from their coughing coughi ng and the weight they carry. carr y. The words words ‘beggars’ and ‘hags’ are very interesting to use when describing young men – they suggest the t he soldiers are prematurely aged, haggard, emaciated and filthy. The soldiers cough ‘like hags’; their coughing is like that of an old woman. This is effective because it makes the reader think of that bubbly, bubbly, whole-body whole-body cough that destroys the elderly. All Al l in al l, these words suggest men that are unhealthy, diseased after their experience of war. One can comprehend quite clearly Owen’s negative opinion of war from these images alone. One word that you should always pay attention to in poetry (or any literary analysis) is ‘like’. The use of ‘like’ often indicates a simile which is used to compare two things. thi ngs. When you comment on a simile you must be sure to discuss the effectiveness of the comparison – what the poet is trying to draw our attention to by comparing these particular to things to each other. There are many other li nguistic ngu istic features you could comment on in this first stanza. For example, what effect does the repetition of the ‘m’ sound in line 5 accomplish? Similarly, the repetition of the ‘b’ in lines 5 and 6? Consider too the repetition of ‘all’ in line 6 and the use of so many semi-colons. What do each of these enable to poet to do? Possible answer:

The ‘m’ sound is particular part icularly ly onomatopoeic onomatopoeic and it is also a long, slow sound. Because of these characteristics, Owen can use the repetition of the ‘m’ to mimic the groaning or moaning of the men and he can use it to reinforce the slowness of the pace as the men march. The ‘all ‘all went went lame; all blind’ blind’ is very effective because it foregrounds the fact every single man is crippled by war. When you comment on semi-colons sem i-colons remember that they are very often used to join phrases and sentences that have a common purpose or idea. In t his case, what are the ideas that Owen is linking? Much like the list produced in the first four lines, these linked ideas are layered one upon another, describing the brokenness of the soldiers 102


who are ‘lame’, ‘blind’, ‘drunk with fatigue’ fati gue’ and ‘deaf’. This again aga in emphasises the pain of the soldiers and the dehumanising effects of war. The word ‘even’ ‘even’ is a tiny word but very very effective effect ive too; why? why? Possible answer:

The word word ‘even’ ‘even’ suggests suggests the degree of of the soldiers’ ‘deafness’ ‘deafness’ and foregrounds foregrounds the fact that they no longer react even when it’s a case of survival. These men no longer care; they react dul ly, like automatons, because because they are too ti red to be afraid. With one word, Owen is able to suggest the degree to which these men have lost their humanity; they are so exhausted that they do not react to the dropping of bombs behind them. In fact, the war is so debilitating that even the bombs themselves are ‘tired’. The next stanza opens with direct speech and short phrases – what is the effect achieved by this? Possible answer:

The direct speech and the short commands create tension tension and enable enable us to understand the sudden panic of the soldiers. Look at how the first time ‘gas’ is said, O wen writes it normally but the second time ti me it is all in i n capitals. Here you should should most de finitely comment on the form: this feels like the commander is still waking up with his first yell but by the second one he has realised what’s happening and he becomes even more worried about about his men. One can almost hear his voice voice rise with ‘GAS!’ and his warning ‘Quick, boys!’ is full of pathos. He warns his men and tries to get them to act quickly, even though they are tired and numb but the world that one should focus on is ‘boys’. Again, Agai n, these are young young men – boys boys – for whom whom he is responsible. responsible. Owen is very careful carefu l to keep reminding the reader that these men are so young and ill-equipped to be dealing with the horrors of war. The short phrases and the dash that links l inks the direct d irect speech to the next sentence is a wonderful reflection of the clumsy panic of the soldiers; the grammar parallels the ‘ecstasy of fumbling’ as the men put their gas masks on. There is so much one can comment on in a poem as rich r ich as this th is one; almost ever y word and punctuat punctuation ion mark has a speci speci fic purpose and you should be able to analyse the effect and see how it enriches the overall ‘message’ ‘message’ of the poem or piece of writing. writin g. Although you should think thi nk about about the rest of of stanza two and see what other elements elements of the writing you could comment on, there is one last thing I would like to draw your attention to here: the ellipsis ell ipsis in line 12. An ellipsis el lipsis is an interesting punctuation punctu ation mark because it often follows an action that has momentous implications, implications that the author wants to hint at and leave for our imaginations to fill in. Why would Owen use it here? Possible answer:

The soldier soldier who did not put his mask on in time is ‘ flound’ring like a man in fire or lime’ li me’;; this is followed by the ell ellipsis ipsis and that silence implied impl ied by the ellipsis is very provocative. There is a sense of of fatalism here, of of accepting that this is what is happening. In putti putting ng ENG1502/1

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the ellipsis here, Owen opens a quiet space that suggests, more effectively than if he had filled it up with words, the defeated, painful recognition of the other young men that their comrade is gone and that this is is the reality of war, not ‘Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori’. One can see that the language langua ge Owen uses paints a picture pictu re of war that is unequivocally harsh and cruel; when you come to analysing poems be aware of the effect every word and punctuation mark can have. This short consideration of an excerpt from ‘Dulce ‘Du lce et Decorum Decoru m Est’ is meant only to point you in the right direction and show you what is possible when you bring everything you know to your analysis of literature. However, before I conclude this section of Unit 6, I would like l ike you to have a look at the following excerpt excer pt from another poem. This is very ver y different from the Wilfrid Wi lfrid Owen poem: TEXT

(from) In the Shadow of Signal Hill Essop Patel in the howling wind by the murky waters of the sea sons of langa gather at the ruins of district six and sharpen the spears of the night and the heroes from the island urge go towards the fiery dawn ... The reason I have included an excerpt from f rom this t his particular partic ular poem is because there is one marked difference between it and the Owen poem above. Can you identify this difference? – whi le Owen’s poem is full ful l of punctuation and sop sophisticated histicated grammatical gram matical features, the Patel poem is very simple and seemingly unsophisticated. Do not let this simplicity fool you! Protest poets, like some South African and feminist poets, and some modernist poets experiment with a lack of punctuation to show that they refuse or defy the authority of ‘The System’. In this case Patel might m ight have decided not to use punctuation because he is protesting the unfair and racist authority of the apartheid regime regi me in South Africa. Because punctuation punctu ation is part of the ‘laws of language’ t hat govgovern communication, when a poet refuses these laws he or she is suggesting that Laws in general may be unfair and arbitrary and that they curb the natural creativity of people. In this way refusing to use punctuation becomes part of the overall message they are communicating of rebellion and de fiance. The poet then has to use other poetic techniques to enrich his or her writing. Please note that the fact that th at some poets do not use punctuation punctu ation and grammar gram mar correctly DOES NOT MEAN that you that you can can decide not to use correct grammar in your writing! Think Thi nk about Patel’s Patel’s poem and whether you think thi nk it is effective effect ive as it is or whether he might have used punctuation to good effect, like Owen does. If you take punctuation away, you need to rely on other poetic techniques and linguistic features to communicate your concerns; does Patel do this effectively? Is the simplicity of the poem itself effective – if so, why? These are all questions you will need to ask and answer when you come to analysing literary texts. 104


Looking at the language features of an extract from a novel or a play or a poem is an easy way to begin to understand the meaning the author is trying to create in his or her text and to recognise how the author creates that meaning. Remember that we use to write poetry write poetry – – they are therefore one and the same thing at heart. Language language to is just used more evocatively and intensely in literature than it may be in other forms of writing, although this is debatable debatable (consider (consider manipulative advertisements advertisements and sensational sensational news headlines). You should take the knowledge and skills you have gained through the various units in this t his module and apply them to your your study of literature in t he other English modules and you will find that your ability to understand both the texts and the author’s techniques are greatly enhanced.

CONCLUSION We We hope that this chapter has demonstrated demonstrated how language langu age works within with in texts and in particular contexts, and that you have a better understanding of how to go about textual analysis. The skills involved in language analysis may be applied to texts of any kind, from the most basic and mundane ones to those which represent the pinnacle of literary achievement.

References Carter, R., Goddard, A., Reah, D., Sanger, K. & Swift, N. (1997) Working with Texts: A Ne w York: York: Routledge. Core Introduction to Language L anguage Analysis, London Analysis, London and New Horne, F. F. & Heinemann, G. (2006) (20 06) English Cape Town: Oxford University English in Perspective, Perspective, Cape Press. Wainright, J. & Hutton, Hutton, J. (1992) (1992) Your Own Words, Walton-onThames: Thomas Nelson Words, Walton-on-Thames: and Sons.

Glossary Here is a list of some important terms used in this Unit. If you try to fill in the missing definitions it will help you to understand and remember them. Com pare your definitions with those given in the general Glossary at the end of this Study Guide.

text alliteration assonance onomatopoeia evocative unequivocal apathy colloquial simile

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metaphor personi fication discourse discourse analysis genre studies standard English non-standard English

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Appendi App endices ces

APPENDICES Appendix Appe ndix 1 The International Phonetic Alphabet

Appendix Appe ndix 2 Acoustic phone phonetics tics

Sounds are noises and as will be apparent when we analyze each sound, there is a measure of movement of speech organs and air when sounds are produced. Sounds are transmitted through airwaves ai rwaves from one person to another. Acoustic Acoustic phonetics therefore is concerned concerned with measuring measur ing the t he movement movement as well as the vibration qual ity of the air waves. Today we have a lot of machines and a nd computer programmes which wh ich look at the physics of speech and the digital dig ital processing of speech. If you want to be a speech scientist, acoustics phonetics phonetics would be one of the areas you would study st udy.. If you want to read more on acoustic phonetics, read Ladefoged, P. (1995) Elements of Acoustic Phonetics. Phonetics. Auditory Phonetics Phonetics

The sounds sounds we we produce produce are received received by listeners and processed for sense and meaning. Auditory phonetics is concerned concerned with the study of how the sounds are perceived. If you think about it, the ear is an organ with drums, canals, and tubes etc which processes the sounds received. These are then transmitted to the brain. Auditory phoneticians study these processes closely, to understand the intricacies and challenges related to hearing. So if you pronounce a sound incorrectly, the brain will pick it up and process it the way it’s it’s been delivered and understand it as such. Again Ag ain speech therapists would read a lot on auditory phonetics. phonetics. ENG1502/1

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Study Guide for ENG1502

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