The poetic function is not unique to literature but a feature of many ‘everyday’ textx too since people somehow uses those poetic functions in their daily contexts. But undoubtedly, it is more dominant in poetries. The poetic function helps finding the most prominent part of the context and therefore foregrounded in readers’ mind. There are two stylistic choices involved to make people foregrounded, which are deviation (i.e. depart from the norms of everyday language) and parallelism (set up noticeable patterns of repetition). These poetic uses of language involves the sdistortion of its natural characteristics that literature, especially poetry, can be seen as ‘organized violence committed on ordinary speech.’ (Eagleton, 1983, p.2)
Deviation can be extracted from the text at the level of lexically, semantically, grammatically, graphologically or even the genre of the text. Graphological deviationis closely related to phonological deviation since it is authors sometimes use some thing we do not expect to see in normal written text in order to provide some information about how the text sounds when it turns into spoken language and being spoke aloud. For example, ‘Oh Noooooooooooooo, dis life no easy’. Normally, we are not expected to see the ‘no’ with 14 letter ‘o’ together in a written word. Also, the ‘dis’ means ‘this’ in Jamaica, which means some words could help capturing speakers’ regional and social origins. In terms of semantic deviation, it is associated with the use of figurative language, such as metaphor and simile,etc. It includes some rare, dialect or foreign words and neologisms in order to outstand the particular part from the surrounding text. For instance, see the example in Appendix 1. Metaphor implies that the writer uses ‘is’ instead of ‘like’ or ‘as’ such word to link up or replace the analogies. In Appendix 1, the writer stated that ‘Happiness is a river bank’. She linked up happiness and river bank these two similar analogy objects without using ‘like’ or ‘as’ but linked them up with a ‘is’. Therefore, it is a metaphor. Furthermore, lexical choice is another means to be foregrounded which includes some rare, dialect or foreign words and neologisms in order to outstand the particular part from the surrounding text.. For instance, a musical group in New York, The Gregory Brothers, uses the term ‘songify’ to characterize their artistic creation of song. ‘Songify’ means the action of taking a TV news report or ant normal video featuring speech and turning it into a song using auto-tune. This word can still be found in urban dictionary nowadays. From the above-mentioned example, it shows that the process of coining a new word can somehow be regarded as literary.
About genre deviation, it associates with one type of speech and writing are deployed in other genre. For example, it is an advertisement written in the form of letter between close friends. It helps attracting readers’ eyeballs much more than traditional advertising texts.
‘Whereas deviation might be characterised as “unexpected irregularity” in a text, parallelism is “unexpected regularity” (McIntyre, 2003, P.4). Parallelism consists of three types generally, which are: phonological, grammatical and semantical. Firstly, phonological parallelism combines the same or similar sounds (Janet Maybin & Michael Pearce, p.9). In Appendix 1, the poet uses repetition of similar vowel sounds to produce assonance in the poem. For example, ‘crowd’ rhymes with ‘loud’ (both sounded /aʊ/); ‘overhead’ rhymes with ‘unread’ (both sounded /ɛd/),etc. The rhymes and repetition of rhythmic patterns help producing the foot and metre of the poem. Secondly, grammatical parallelism repeats the phrase and/or clause structure. For example, ‘the more we do, the more we can do; the more busy we are, the more leisure we have.’ is a quote from William Hazlitt which consists repetition of phrase structure. Thirdly, semantic parallelism involves the repetition and sometimes extension of the meaning of words, phrases and images (Janet Maybin & Michael Pearce,p.9).
In terms of sociocultural approach, it moves beyond the text itself and defines literature as an ideological discourse with a particular political purpose. Terry Eagleton once pointed out that in the 17th and 18th Century ‘literature’ meant ‘polite writing’ and essays, sermons, philosophy and history have all been included in the English literary canon. He rejected that there is something about true literature would evoke a particular quality of aesthetic response in the reader. He argued that every text can be read poetically. And there is no common factor nor intrinsic essence to ‘literature’ but should take account into social and ideological factors in order to understand the role of literature in society. The literary canon has been ‘fashioned by particular people for particular reasons at a particular time’(Eagleton, 1983,p.11). Furthermore, in Eagleton’s point of view, what counts as literature is ideological since it takes within ‘an often invisible network of value categories’, connected, together with particular ‘modes of feeling, valuing, perceiving and believing’, to the power structure and power relations of the society in which we live (Janet Maybin & Michael Pearce,p.12). It relates closely to the needs of the times and priorities of powerful social groups within society and embodies social values and helps to disseminate them. For instance, the polite manners and taste in literature helped binding the middle and upper classes after a period of civil war in 18th century. To sum up, the question of what counts as literature, in Eagleton’s point of view, depends on how the society values the works of writing based on particular social and historical reasons. More directly, what counts as literature is in fact an ideological decision (Eagleton 1983).
In terms of cognitive approach, it focuses on the mental processes of readers, but not writers. It is not about how the writers write or organize the text, but about how the readers view the text (Maybin et al, 2006). It argues that what distinguishes the literary from the non-literary stressed on how reader reads instead of how the writer writes. A professional, Widdowson, suggests we use the language as a set of directions which points us towards an external, verifiable reality when reading ‘non-literary’ ‘conventional’, ‘normal’ texts. These texts can be re-ordered or reformulated without changing their meaning substantially, since they still refer indexically. A reader of non-literary texts ignores the aspects which do not seem to serve a pragmatic purpose and in literary texts, our attention is drawn into the text itself. Widdowson also claims that in literary texts, the Grice’s Maxims are not expected to be followed since the maxims require the text should be relevant, not misleading, give not too much or too less information and clear. But poets usually flout these maxims in order to make the poem more poetic. To conclude, cognitive approach focuses on the interest in the construction of individual ‘reading’ – how the context influect or affect the readers’ minds when they read ther literature, which is further developed in cognitive poetics.
Cognitive sometimes shares the same belief with the inherency approach that ‘deviation’ is often a characteristic of texts widely regarded as literary but it is somehow a different kind of deviation. According to Guy Cook, what distinguishes literary from non-literary texts is discourse deviation instead of liguistic deviation. Cook uses the term ‘discourse’to refer to the patterning of language at the linguistic level and the level of the text structure, and also to the world it creates within the literary work. In Cook’s words, literariness can be adequately defined only in relation to the interaction between the language of texts and the reader’s prior knowledge. The necessary and sufficient conditions for identifying literariness are met when deviations at the level of language and text (text schemata) challenge / disrupt readers’ schemata and result in schema-refreshment. According to Elena Semino, the term schema is generally used to refer to ‘a portion of background knowledge relating to a particular type of object, person, situation or event. And she uses the term ‘schema refreshment’to define the phenominon that readers’ background knowledge and expectations are disrupted by literary discourse and thus, their schemata are being challenged and changed. The activation of schemata resulting from repeated exposure to similar objects or situations enables us to make predictions and draw inferences, which are sometimes frustrated in the process of comprehension of advertising texts. Schema theory therefore implies a postulation of meanings as “not contained within the text, but as constructed in the interaction between the text and the interpreter’s background knowledge” (Semino, 1997 ,p.124 emphasis mine). For instance, in William Blake’s poem, ‘Auguries of Innocence’, he uses ‘to see a world in a grain of sand and a heaven in a wild flower’to bring out the concept of people could see a great principle from some little things. The metaphor meaning cannot be found in the contextual meaning but only in readers’ perception.
Cook most interested in the interaction between the existing worldview of the reader and the language and worldview of the text whereas Semino focuses on how metaphors result in discourse deviation where the normal positive and negative expectations of a particular situation and objects are reversed. The reversal of usual expectations result in schema refreshment is thus, an example of discourse deviation.
Comparing the above-mentioned approaches, all of them have their shortcomings. Eagleton (1983,p.5) points out that ‘one person’s norm may be another’s deviation’. There are difficulties to measure reliably and consistently as different people have different ideas of what is normal and what is a deviation from the norm. Also, this approach only focuses on the specific patterns of language such as deviation and parallelism, and disregard the context, such as time, place, and culture. It is hard to fulfill the requirements of poetic functions among the non-poetry context such as prose or great essays which contains literary value. Among the sociocultural approach, different social and/or history background towards different people would have different interpretations of ‘literature’. Though ideological factors may indeed be the criteria determining what literature is, it seems to be not concrete and specific enough to explain contemporary phenomenon. According to cognitive approach, though Semino claims that background knowledge and the possibilities for schema refreshment vary from reader to read and this approach is lack of attention to contextual issues, another professional Jeffries(2001) augues that literature doesn’t always have to be ‘schema refreshing’ because readers from minority social groups may experience literary impact when their point of view and experience is actually represented and reinforced. On the other hand, there are varieties of what count as literature and how to define the notion of literary value. For example, jokes, word-play such non-referencial uses of language categories were prototypically excluded from the category and this makes what people generally say is literature is not actually captured in Widdowson’s definition.
To sum up, sociocultural approach is the least convincing approach for analyzing literary and/or literary creativity because it looks beyond the text itself and defines literature as an ideological decision within ‘an often invisible network of value categories’ or specific political purpose. It involves particular ‘modes of feelling, valuing, perceiving and believing’ that consist varieties for different people. Some works have been valued across history regardless of the change in perception of literature. Cognitive approach, to some extent, is more convincing then the sociocultural one since cognitive approach looks into the text itself (discourse deviation, metaphor, and schema refreshment), the cultural (multiculturalism) and the historical (nationalism and colonization) context. In terms of creativity, it is more creative that no matter how the writers’ write, it depends on the readers’ interpretation. Readers would have a greater imagination space and more flexible definition towards what counts as literary. However, Widdowson claims that the term literature just seems to be a label marked for the text, it is not reason to have unlimited possibilities for a text to be a literature. Last but not the least, the inherency approach is comparatively the most convincing approach. It helps measuring the literariness of the text systematically. Though someone may say it restrained from poetic functions and resulted in the non-poetry work is hard to be included as literature. However, this approach is undoubtedly the most objective approach and more consistent results can be generated. In order to analyze literary creativity effectively, cognitive and inherency approch should both be used among the information that we had about literature at this moment. Since there are lots of varieties in these three approaches and lead to the problem that it is hard to list out some common factors to analyze and what count as literature is a ever-changing concept. People should look forward to a new and better approach which could replace or improve the above-metioned approaches in the future.
Appendix 1
Happiness is a River Bank by Pauline Oliver
Happiness is a river bank
Far from the maddening crowd
A place to sit cross-legged, gazing far
Perchance to think out loud
Sailboats harness wind's mighty power
Seagulls' aerial ballet overhead
Water sparkling blue, light's dainty dance
Thoughts of poems still unread
To reach the other shore it seems
No more than a step or two
Yet in truth a barrier exists
This flowing 'Creeksea' river blue
Happiness is a river bank
Temptation - the opposite shore
When you find that place called happiness
What's not to want but more
Appendix 2
A clothing advertisement from Moussy (F/W 2009)
Appendix 3
Excerpt from ‘Auguries of Innocence’ byWilliam Blake(1757-1872)
To see a world in a grain of sand
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand
And eternity in an hour.
References:
Semino, E. (1997) – Language and World Creation in Poems and Other Texts, London: Longman.
Janet Maybin and Joan Swann (2006) The Art of English: Everyday creativity, Palgrave Macmillan: The Open University, P. 3-46.
Sharon Goodman and Kieran O’Halloran (2006) The Art of English: Literary Creativity, Palgrave Macmillan: The Open University, P. 3-45.
Eagleton, T. (1983) Literary Theory: An Introduction, Oxford, Blackwell.
Cook, G. (1994) Discourse and Literature: The Interplay of Form and Mind, Oxford, Oxford University Press.
