With the use of specific examples, discuss the ways and means in which writers of literary English break accepted conventions of language. What do you think are the purposes and reasons for such an effort and how justified are the actions of such writers?

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With the use of specific examples, discuss the ways and means in which writers of literary English break accepted conventions of language. What do you think are the purposes and reasons for such an effort and how justified are the actions of such writers?

Intriguingly enough, the only way I can make Selina actually want to go to bed with me is by not wanting to go to bed with her. It never fails. It really puts her in the mood. The trouble is, when I don’t want to go to bed with her ( and it does happen ), I don’t want to go to bed with her. When does it happen? When don’t I want to go to bed with her? When she wants to go to bed with me. I like going to bed with her when going to bed with me is the last thing she wants. She nearly always does go to bed with me, if I shout at her a lot or threaten her or give her enough money.

(Martin Amis,  Money,1985, p 34)

Lexical and grammatical repetition on this scale would probably receive a black mark in a school ‘composition’. The traditional model of good writing requires variation and if one has to refer to something more than once, rules in English requires one  to find alternative ways of describing it.

But sometimes writers as Martin Amis have to break accepted conventions of language to create that certain effect and  it hardly needs to be pointed out that the frustrations and contradictions of the narrator’s sexual relationship with Selina are made more comical and ironic by the repetition of the phrase “ go to bed with”.

Every language has rules for combining sounds and words and linguists have pointed out syntagmatic and paradigmatic relations between words.  Firstly, a language has rules for the way words are syntactically combined in phrases or sentences; for example, English is a ‘determiner adjective noun’ language.(Graddol, Leith and Swann: 1994, p73-75). Secondly, words have paradigmatic relations with other words which could grammatically and semantically replace them.  These syntagmatic and paradigmatic rules are often exploited and broken in literary language. In fact, rules governing the sound system (phonology), the writing system (graphology), word structure (morphology), grammar and paragraphing, can all be broken, individually or in combination to achieve certain effects. Here are some examples.

I must work fast, faster than Scheherazade, if I am to end up meaning – yes, meaning – something. I admit it: above all things, I fear absurdity. And there are so many stories to tell, too many, such an excess of intertwined lives events miracles places rumours, so dense a commingling of the improbable and the mundane!  ( Rushdie, 1982, p 11 )

In the above extract, the way Rushdie addresses the reader as an intimate friend is an unusual and striking aspect of his style. The aberrant starting of a new paragraph with And contravenes traditional written conventions, but is in keeping with the highly colloquial and rather chaotic opening of the novel. This chaos is echoed when Rusdie breaks the graphological convention of putting commas between the listed items in the last sentcnce.

Linguistic analysis known as stylistics try to pinpoint a number of language features commonly found  in artistic uses of English. One key idea used by stylisticians is the notion that literary language is different from everyday language because it draws attention to some property of the language itself, and highlights or foregrounds it.  Foregrounding can occur when particular language rules are played with, or broken. (Maybin and Mercer,1996, p166)

Fog everywhere….Fog on the Essex marshes, fog on the Kentish heights. Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwhales of barges and small boats. Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners, wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers of his shivering little ‘prentice boy on deck. (Dickens, 1850, p 1 )

Here, Dickens omits the main verb from each clause, painting a scene in the present tense, drawing the reader into the actual context of the novel. The clauses describing the fog build up and accumulate to create the effect that there is not a corner, nor a person, that can escape its stifling damp and cold. Dickens highlights particular qualities of the fog ( and the legal system), by breaking syntactic rules to catch and focus the reader’s attention right at the beginning of the novel.

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Below is another extract from the book “Ulysses” by novelist James Joyce where none of the sentences apart from the narrative ones, are grammatically correct or complete by strict standards. Yet one is drawn

to the characters not by being told about them, but by sharing their most intimate thoughts, represented as silent, spontaneous streams of consciousness.

On the doorstep he felt in his hip pocket for the latchkey. Not there. In the trousers I left off. Must get it. Potato I have. Creaky wardrobe. No use disturbing her. She turned over sleepily that time. He ...

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