пользователей: 30398
предметов: 12406
вопросов: 234839
Конспект-online
РЕГИСТРАЦИЯ ЭКСКУРСИЯ

The relevance of norm and deviation from norm in decoding stylistics.

Norm is a statistical concept, referring to what is statistically average. Deviation refers to the divergence in frequency from the norm.

This problem is fast becoming the major focus of interest in stylistics because much of the expressive affective or aesthetic emphasis added to the cognitive information conveyed by a text depends upon it.

A writer doesn’t possess the extra-linguistic means of stressing his meaning such as intonation, loudness of voice, gestures. What is implied is that his means of adding emphasis to information conveyed is a special organization of material, including various types of deviation. The deviation is not the only basis, or rather that there is a sort of interaction between deviation from some general norm and creating a new norm specific to each given text. Neither regularity in itself, nor any particular instance of creating linguistic prominence by deviating from it will be stylistically relevant, unless it stresses something important in the meaning of the text. When the poet deviates from the usual semantic relations characteristic of the given language this reflects his looking at things in some new way.

According to the Information Theory the efficiency of a system in the transmission of a message and the informational value or weight is measured in terms of degrees of predictability. The greater the unpredictability, the higher the informational value of a signal. Literary language tends to be high in information value, with its unusual metaphors and striking turns of phrase.

A code means a system of signs and rules of combining them that is used to transmit messages through a given channel. The notion of a set of rules implies also constraints disallowing some combinations, and these have not yet been discussed. Many meanings are expressed not by separate signs – words – but by the way they are employed in various codograms, that is combinations of signs. And this way implies not only rules but constraints and this is how the signal redundancy is ensured.

According to I. V. Arnold, basic to all rules and constraints are the grammar rules. For example, English nouns can take a plural form (bell-bells) and be preceded by articles (the bell-a bell). This, however, is not the case with all nouns. There are several meaningful constraints. Mass nouns and abstract nouns take zero articles and do not have a plural form. These constraints may be meaningfully broken in their turn. When they are broken, the words where this deviation occurs are reclassified, they change their meaning, mostly their lexico-grammatical meaning and also may acquire additional expressiveness: thus the mass noun sand by taking the plural form receives the meaning of «a vast expanse of sand» - desert.

A deviation may have a comical effect. It is well known, for instance, that some proper nouns are plural invariables: the Alps, the Andes, the Himalayas. The break of this constraint is occasional and sounds funny (one Alp).

A code consists of rules that may be kept and may be broken. When the breaking of rules results in the appearance of a new meaning and/or additional expressiveness it should be called deviation, whereas the main rules and restrictions of arranging the code constitute its norm.

On the other hand, there are some rules which are rigid and if they are not observed the result is not a change of meaning but nonsense. For example, some types of inversion are emphatic, others are impossible.

The importance of deviation lies in compelling the reader’s attention and helping him to see what is or not important in the text. Everybody knows that it is possible from part of sequence (a sentence, a line, a paragraph) to predict with greater or lesser accuracy the succeeding features and this is what makes elliptic decoding sufficient for the reader. M. Riffaterre points out that it is natural for the decoder to disregard a high percentage of what the text contains and reconstruct the whole from the few words he actually perceives. To be noticed by the reader the important elements have to be repeated or unpredictable. The unpredictability may result from breaking the norms of linguistic code.

In what follows attention will be concentrated on the relevance of norm and deviation from norm in decoding stylistics.

This is a problem fast becoming the major focus of interest in stylistics because much of the expressive affective or aesthetic emphasis added to the cognitive information conveyed by a text depends upon it*. This emphasis constitutes the information of the second kind, which in its interaction with that of the first kind (cognitive) determines style.

As a writer does not possess the extra-linguistic means of stressing his meaning such as intonation, loudness of voice, gestures, his ),means of adding emphasis to information conveyed is a special organisation of material, including various types of deviation.

Nor any particular instance of creating linguistic prominence by deviating from it will be stylistically relevant, unless it stresses something important in the meaning of the text.

To clear up this crucial point we shall need the support of the notions described in the previous lectures. We must return in more depth to the notion of the code. As stated in the theory of information, a code is a system of signs and rules of combining them, that is used to transmit messages through a given channel.

A code, therefore, consists of rules that may be kept and may be broken. When the breaking of rules results in the appearance of a new meaning and/or additional expressiveness we shall call that deviation, whereas the main rules and restrictions of arranging the code constitute: its norm.

On the other hand there are some rules which are rigid and if they are not observed the result is not a change of meaning but non-sen.4e

The violation of one rule may be individual, occasional, creating an unorthodox meaning of a word or a whole sentence. This brings us to еру - so-called semi-marked structures.

The following example is a famous case of linguistic deviation in poetry 'a grief ago'(Dylan Thomas). The normal combination would be a minute, day, year ago. The poet, as G.Leech puts it, has gone beyond the normal range of choice. The word grief, being placed in a position normally taken by nouns denoting time, receives itself a temporal expressive meaning (a few cigarettes ago, two wives ago). Two more examples by the same poet are: all the sun long and all the moon long. Here the words sun and moon acquire the additional meaning of "time full of light".The importance of deviation lies in compelling the reader's attention and helping him to sec what is or is not important in the text .

To be noticed by the reader the important elements have to be either repeated or unpredictable.


22.12.2014; 01:17
хиты: 143
рейтинг:0
Гуманитарные науки
лингвистика и языки
языки
для добавления комментариев необходимо авторизироваться.
  Copyright © 2013-2024. All Rights Reserved. помощь