Transcript From Roger Fowler, Linguistic Criticism, 1996

What is Linguistic Criticism? (From Roger Fowler,
Linguistic Criticism, 1996)
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Not simply criticism of language, but
criticism using linguistics.
Model of analysis based on ‘functional’
rather than ‘structural’ linguistics
The model is based on the theory that the
forms of language in texts reflect-and in
turn shape-the purposes of communication,
and the social dynamics of cultural
interaction and cultural knowledge.
Modern critical ideas which form the
argument for a linguistic approach to
literature:
-Defamiliarization
-Foregrounding
-Point of view
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Granting priority to language and taking a
good deal of notice of it. “The novelist’s
medium is language: whatever he does,
qua novelist, he does in and through
language’ (Lodge, Language of Fiction,
p.ix). It follows that whatever the writer
‘does’ can be shown by analysis of the
language. However, method tends to be
eclectic and untechnical.
Distinction between two ways of
studying literature ‘linguistically’
- Linguistic description claims to be
technically superior because it is explicit,
systematic and comprehensive.
- The literary criticism of language may be
prejudiced if the critic makes up his mind
in advance of the text as ‘evidence’.
Habitualization and
defamiliarization
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Habitualization is a basic tendency in the
psychology of perception. If experience is
habitual, perception becomes automatic and
uncritical. As for language, meanings become
firmly established in the minds of members of a
society in so far as they are coded in
conventional, often used, and familiar forms of
expression. Habitualization is staleness of
thought of language.
Habitualization and
defamiliarization
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Verbal art, for Shklovsky, employs uses of
language which ‘defamiliarize’ experience,
restoring freshness and critical alertness.
How can language and literature promote
defamiliarization?
Foregrounding
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Uses a visual metaphor to explain a
linguistic technique.
In painting, this would be any devicecontrast of hue or lightness, greater detail
or linear precision, ..or whatever which
causes some part of a composition to be
perceived as standing out as a figure
against a less determinate background.
What is foregrounded in language?
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In poetic language foregrounding achieves
maximum intensity to the extent of pushing
communication into the background as the
objective of expression and of being used for its
own sake; it is not used in the services of
communication, but in order to place in the
foreground the act of expression, the act of
speech itself. (Mukarovsky, Standard Language
and Poetic Language, p.19)
Point of view
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Is the position taken up by the speaker or
author, that of the consciousnesses
depicted in the text, and that implied for
the reader or addressee.