Linguistics
From a book called The Structuralists, from Marx to Levi-Strauss, edited by Richard and Fernande DeGeorge, that I purchased while on vacation in order to do some heavy reading - the following excerpt is from Roman Jakobson's "concluding statement" at a conference on style held at the University of Indianna in 1958 and subsequently re-printed in 1960 in Style in Language by MIT Press. Jakobson's essay was refreshing after first trudging through Structuralism via Marx, deSaussre and (cringe!) Freud. Once breaking into Structuralism ala Linguistics/Poetry it was a bit easier for me to understand. I also wish that there were still conferences held at universities dedicated to this thing called "style". Unless I missed the boat entirely, or wasn't intelligent enough to attend the classes, I hadn't a single clue there even was such a thing. I should also admit that I picked the book up based solely on the beautiful image on the cover, and was curious how Marx related to the famed San Francisco denim pioneer (not to mention the sticker on the cover told me the price was only a cheap $4.20 - it seemed like the world was telling me to purhcase this book) and feeling pretty uneducated in the realm of language and linguistics, and having forgotten all the Structuralism I almost learned in college, it was a wonderful purchase. And, should any of you ever find yourself on Main Street in downtown Vancouver, just a block or two past the junkies on Hastings, I implore you to enter into Solder & Sons Cafe and Bookshoppe --- what you will find is a 200 square foot room with two walls of books, a great assortment of handmade magazines, a tiny bar for coffee, and a single table with two chairs and a scrabble board: heaven! And, right next door is Tyler's bike shop, Super Champion. Give him a large and hearty hug for me, if you do.
"Why do you always say Joan and Margery, yet never Margery and Joan? Do you prefer Joan to her twin sister?"
"Not at all, it just sounds smoother."
In a sequence of two coordinate names, as far as no rank problems interfere, the precedence of the shorter names suits the speaker, unaccountably for him, as a well-ordered shape of the message.
A girl used to talk about "the horrible Harry."
"Why horrible?"
From a book called The Structuralists, from Marx to Levi-Strauss, edited by Richard and Fernande DeGeorge, that I purchased while on vacation in order to do some heavy reading - the following excerpt is from Roman Jakobson's "concluding statement" at a conference on style held at the University of Indianna in 1958 and subsequently re-printed in 1960 in Style in Language by MIT Press. Jakobson's essay was refreshing after first trudging through Structuralism via Marx, deSaussre and (cringe!) Freud. Once breaking into Structuralism ala Linguistics/Poetry it was a bit easier for me to understand. I also wish that there were still conferences held at universities dedicated to this thing called "style". Unless I missed the boat entirely, or wasn't intelligent enough to attend the classes, I hadn't a single clue there even was such a thing. I should also admit that I picked the book up based solely on the beautiful image on the cover, and was curious how Marx related to the famed San Francisco denim pioneer (not to mention the sticker on the cover told me the price was only a cheap $4.20 - it seemed like the world was telling me to purhcase this book) and feeling pretty uneducated in the realm of language and linguistics, and having forgotten all the Structuralism I almost learned in college, it was a wonderful purchase. And, should any of you ever find yourself on Main Street in downtown Vancouver, just a block or two past the junkies on Hastings, I implore you to enter into Solder & Sons Cafe and Bookshoppe --- what you will find is a 200 square foot room with two walls of books, a great assortment of handmade magazines, a tiny bar for coffee, and a single table with two chairs and a scrabble board: heaven! And, right next door is Tyler's bike shop, Super Champion. Give him a large and hearty hug for me, if you do.
"Why do you always say Joan and Margery, yet never Margery and Joan? Do you prefer Joan to her twin sister?"
"Not at all, it just sounds smoother."
In a sequence of two coordinate names, as far as no rank problems interfere, the precedence of the shorter names suits the speaker, unaccountably for him, as a well-ordered shape of the message.
A girl used to talk about "the horrible Harry."
"Why horrible?"
"Because I hate him."
"But why not dreadful, terrible, frightful, disgusting?"
"I don't know why, but horrible fits him better." Without realizing it, she clung to the poetic device of paronomasia.
The political slogan "I like Ike" /ay layk ayk/, succinctly structured, consists of three monosyllables and counts three diphthongs /ay/, each of them symmetrically followed by one consonantal phoneme, /..l ..k ..k/. The makeup of the three words presents a variation: no consonantal phonemes in the first word, two around the diphthong in the second, and one final consonant in the third. A similar dominant nucleus /ay/ was noticed by Hymes in some of the sonnets of Keats. Both cola of the trisyllabic formula "I like / Ike" rhyme with each other, and the second of the two rhyming words is fully included in the first one (echo rhyme), /layk/-/ayk/, a paronomastic image of a feeling which totally envelops its object. Both cola alliterate with each other, and the first of the two alliterating words is included in the second: /ay/-/ayk/, a paronomastic image of the loving subject enveloped by the beloved object. The secondary, poetic function of this electional catch phrase reinforces its impressiveness and efficacy.
As we said, the linguistic study of the poetic foundation must overstep the limits of poetry, and, on the other hand, the linguistic scrutiny of poetry cannot limit itself to the poetic function...
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(Gosh golly! Spell check had a field day with that. Apparently only about 25% of those words are recognized as real words. Paronomastic I can understand, but sonnet? I think about yesterday - what happens when the dictionaries can't even remember what the words mean? That is sad.)
