Stylistics

Analysis of Point of View

I was not disappointed. The house — a substantial but essentially modest

suburban villa —was furnished with voluptuous grandeur in
approximations of various styles, predominantly those of several Louis,
with late nineteenth and early twentieth-century additions. Heavy
coloured glass ashtrays of monstrous size and weight rested on inlaid
marquetry tables of vaguely Pompadour associations. At dinner we
drank champagne from ruby Bohemian glasses: the meat was carved
at a Boulle-type sideboard. ‘Regency’ wallpaper of dark green and
lighter green stripes was partially covered by gilt-framed landscapes of
no style whatever. The dining-room seemed dark, as dining-rooms often do.
In fact all the rooms seemed to repel both light and weather; they were
designed to keep one’s thoughts indoors, resigned and melancholy. I
thought of listless Saturday afternoons, when I pictured Oscar relaxing
in one of the turquoise silk-covered bergères, with foot-stools to match. I
thought of Dorrie taking a nap in her shell pink bedroom with the
extravagant expanses of white shag-pile carpet. All the windows would
be closed, of course, the smell of a substantial lunch still heavy on the
air, slightly obscured by one of the two or three weekend cigars. Upstairs,
the nap finished, and the light already beginning to fade, I imagined
Dorrie switching on the vaguely baronial gas fire and pulling the satin
curtains. Throwing a handful of flowery cologne over her throat and
shoulders, she would change into a patterned silk dress, taking a clean
handkerchief and tucking it up her sleeve. It would not be quite time
for tea, but as relatives were expected she would start her
preparations in the kitchen, transferring home-made cakes and biscuits
on to dishes with gold rims, and laying cups and plates, interleaved with tiny

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napkins of écru linen, on the trolley, knives and spoons tinkling, to be
wheeled in effortlessly at the right moment. For she was daintily houseproud.

A) Schema-oriented language

The house was furnished with voluptuous grandeur in

approximations of various styles, predominantly those of
several Louis, with late nineteenth and early twentieth-
century additions.

B) Value-laden or Ideologically slanted expressions

a) substantial but essentially modest suburban villa

b) furnished with voluptuous grandeur

c) Heavy coloured glass ashtrays of monstrous size and weight

d) turquoise silk-covered bergères

e) shag-pile carpet

f) vaguely baronial gas fire

C) Given vs new information

1) They were designed to keep one’s thoughts indoors, resigned and

melancholy.

Given (they) New (thoughts indoors, resigned

and melancholy)

2) I thought of listless Saturday afternoons, when I pictured Oscar

relaxing in one of the turquoise silk-covered bergères, with foot-
stools to match.

Given (I) New (listless Saturday afternoons;

relaxing in one of the turquoise silk-covered bergères, with foot-stools
to match)

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 3) I thought of Dorrie taking a nap in her shell pink bedroom with the
extravagant expanses of white shag-pile carpet.

Given (I) New (taking a nap in her shell pink

bedroom with…)

4) I imagined Dorrie switching on the vaguely baronial gas fire and

pulling the satin curtains.

5) Definite/indefinite articles: the house, a Boulle-type sideboard, a

handful of flowery cologne, a patterned silk dress, etc.

6) Anaphoric pronouns: I imagined, I thought, we drank, she would

start her preparations, etc.

D) Deictic expressions related to place

a) on inlaid marquetry tables

b) a Boulle-type sideboard

c) shell pink bedroom

d) in the kitchen

E) Deictic expressions related to time

a) late nineteenth and early twentieth-century

b) Saturday afternoons

c) At the right moment

F) Socially deictic expressions

a) The socially used deictic expressions are as follows: I, she, her, etc.

b) Dorrie, Oscar.

G) Internal representation of a character’s thoughts

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 a) Verbs of perception & cognition: I imagined, I thought, rooms
seemed, I pictured, etc.

b) Verbs related to factivity: I was, the house was, the meat was, she
was, the relatives were, etc.

c) Modal verbs: it would, she would, windows would, etc.

d) Adverbs related to factivity: in fact, etc.

H) Event coding within or across sentences

a) Heavy coloured glass ashtrays of monstrous size and weight

rested on inlaid marquetry tables of vaguely Pompadour
associations.

b) The dining-room seemed dark, as dining-rooms often do. In fact all the
rooms seemed to repel both light and weather…

c) Upstairs, the nap finished, and the light already beginning to

fade… etc.

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The language in fiction

9.4.1 Fictional prose and point of view

According to Mick Short (1996), we need at least three levels of discourse to

account for the language of fictional prose ( i.e. a novel or short story), because there is
a narrator-narratee level intervening between the character-character level and the
author-reader level:

Addresser 1 ——— Message ——— Addressee 1

(Novelist) | (Reader)

Addresser 2 ———Message ——— Addressee 2

(Narrator) | (Narratee)

Addresser 3 ———Message ———Addressee 3

(Character A) | (Character B)

This diagram only accounts for the novel “in general” in the sense that all three
levels, and all three participants are needed to explain how the novel works as a form.
But any particular novel may neutralise some of the distinctions, multiply others, or do
both at the same time. The fact that there are six participants in the basic discourse
structure for the novel automatically means that there are more viewpoints to be taken
into account in the novel than in other genres ( e.g. poetry). But the opportunities in
particular novels for multiplying the number of viewpoints to be considered, and related
to one another, are myriad. It is thus hardly surprising that the novel has become the
genre where writers have explored viewpoints extensively.

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 I-narrators The person who tells the story may also be a character in the fictional
world of the story, relating the story after the event. In this case the critics call the
narrator a FIRST-PERSON NARRATOR or I-NARRATOR because when the narrator
refers to himself or herself in the story the first person pronoun I is used. First-person
narrators are often said to be “limited” because they don’ t know all the facts or
“unreliable” because they trick the reader by withholding information or telling untruths.
This often happens in murder and mystery stories.

Third-person narrators If the narrator is not a character in the fictional world, he

or she is usually called a THIRD-PERSON NARRATOR, because reference to all the
characters in the fictional world of the story will involve the use of the third-person
pronouns, he, she, it or they. This second main type of narrator is arguably the dominant
narrator type.

Schema-oriented language Viewpoint is also schema-oriented. It is worth noting

that different participants in the same situation will have different SCHEMAs, related to
their different viewpoints. Hence shopkeepers and their customers will have shop
schemas which in many respects will be mirror images of one another, and the success
of shopkeepers will depend in part on their being able to take into account the schemas
and points of view of their customers.

Besides indicating viewpoint by choosing what to describe, novelists can also

indicate it by how it is described, particularly through expressions which are evaluative
in nature:

ex. 9-25

She opened the door of her grimy, branch-line carriage, and began to get

down her bags. The porter was nowhere, of course, but there was
Harry...There,

on the sordid little station under the furnaces...

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 In this passage from D. H. Lawrence’ s Fanny and Annie, the value-laden
adjectives grimy and sordid in grimy, branch-line carriage and sordid little station under
the furnaces help mark the description of Morley railway station as being from the
viewpoint of Fanny, who clearly disapproves.

Given vs New information At the beginning of a story, we should thus be able to

predict that narrative reference to everything in the fiction except items generally
assumed by everyone in our culture (e.g. the sun) must be new, and hence should
display indefinite reference. This is what happens, for example, at the beginning of
Thomas Hardy’ s The Mayor of Casterbidge.

ex. 9-26 One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth century had reached
one third of its span, a young man and woman, the latter carrying a child, were
approaching the large village of Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot.

The first mention of the man (and by implication the woman ) and the child have
indefinite reference ( a young man and woman, a child ) because we have not met them
before. As a consequence, we tend to get a distanced “bird’ s-eye view” of the
characters. The nineteenth century has definite reference because Hardy can assume
that his readers will already know what the phrase refers to. But note that even in this
straightforward description, the village of Weydon-Piors gets definite reference for its
first mention, encouraging us to pretend to ourselves that we are already familiar with it.
Hardy is thus “positioning” his readers as people who are familiar to some extent with
the village (and hence the area) but not the characters.

Deixis Because DEIXIS is speaker-related it can easily be used to indicate

particular, and changing, viewpoint. In the following example from The Secret Agent, we
see Mrs. Verloc’ s actions from Mr. Verloc’ s viewpoint:

ex.9-27 Mr Verloc heard the creaky plank in the floor and was content. He waited.

Mrs. Verloc was coming.

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 In addition to the perception and cognition verbs heard and waited and the
indication of his inner mental state ( was content ) we can see that Mrs. Verloc’ s
movement towards her husband is viewed from Mr. Verloc’ s position (coming). The fact
that the events are only seen from Mr. Verloc’ s viewpoint is strategically important at
this point in the novel. He does not realise that his wife is about to kill him.

Chapter 9 language and literature > 9.4 the language in fiction > 9.4.2 speech and thought
presentation

9.4.2 Speech and thought presentation

(1) Speech presentation

According to Short (1996), the speech presentation continuum may have the following
possibilities:

1) Direct Speech (DS)

2) Indirect Speech (IS)

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 3) Narrator’ s Representation of Speech Acts (NRSA)

4) Narrator’ s Representation of Speech (NRS)

Moreover, with the DIRECT SPEECH (DS) we have what the character said in its fullest
form, and as We move from 1) to 4) the speech contribution of the character becomes more and
more muted.

There is, one further category which can occur, which is an amalgam of DS and
INDIRECT SPEECH (IS) features and is called FREE INDIRECT SPEECH (FIS). It comes
between DS and IS on the speech presentation cline:

NRS NRSA IS FIS DS

The following example from Charles Dickens’ s The Old Curiosity Shop can be used to
illustrate most types of speech representations.

ex. 9-28

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 (1) He thanked her many times, and said that the old dame who usually did such offices
for him had gone to nurse the little scholar whom he had told her of. (2) The child asked how he
was, and hoped he was better.

(3) “No,” rejoined the schoolmaster, shaking his head sorrowfully, “No better. (4) They
even say he is worse.”

The schoolmaster’ s words in quotation marks serve as an example of DS. Typical IS can
be seen in sentence (2): The child asked how he was ... It gives us the propositional content of
what the child said, but not the words she used to utter the content. But in He thanked her many
times ... at the beginning of (1) we do not even know what statements the schoolmaster made, let
alone what words he uttered to make those statements. All we know is that he repeatedly used
the speech act of thanking. As a consequence, this part of the passage can be seen as a summary
of a longer piece of discourse, and is therefore even more backgrounded than an IS
representation would be. Mick Short called this minimalist kind of presentation the NRSA.
Another possibility of speech presentation which is more minimalist than NRSA, namely a
sentence which merely tells us that speech occurred, and which does not even specify the speech
act(s) involved, e.g. We talked for hours. This is called NRS.

The FIS usually occurs in a form which appears at first sight to be IS but also has DS
feature. The clearest example of FIS in this passage is the second half of sentence (2): ... and
hoped he was better. ( The first half of the sentence The child asked how he was ... is clearly IS,
giving the propositional conent of the utterance but not the words used. ) Although it is certainly
not DS, it does have some of the flavour of the words which the child used. The reason for this is
that althought it is coordinated to the IS of the first part of the sentence (which leads us to expect
it will have the smile status), it omits the reporting clause, which can be easily deduced from the
context. A more explicit version of it would be ... and said that she hoped he was better.
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 Thought presentation The categories used by novelists to represent the thoughts of their
characters are exactly the same as those used to represent a speech.

ex.9-29

a. He spent the day thinking. ( Narrator’ s Representation of Thought: NRT)

b. She considered his unpounctuality. (Narrator’ s Representation of Thought Acts:

NRTA)

c. She thought that he would be late. (Indirect Thought: IT)

d. He was bound to be late! (Free Indirect Thought: FIT)

e. “He will be late”, she thought. (Direct Thought: DT)

As the effects associated with NRT, NRTA or IT are roughly the same as those
associated with speech presentation, we only talk about two types of thought reprsentation here,
i.e. DT and FIT.

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 Direct thought DT tends to be used for presenting conscious, deliberative thought. In the
following example from Dickens’ The old Curiosity Shop, Dick Swiveller, who has been
dangerously ill for some weeks, has just regained consciousness:

ex.9-30

“I’ m dreaming,” thought Richard, “that’ s clear. When I went to bed, my hands were
not made of egg shells; and now I can almost see through’ em. If this is not a dream, I have woke
up by mistake in an Arabian Night, instead of a London one. But I have no doubt I’ m asleep.
Not the least.”

Here the small servant had another rough.

“Very remarkable!” thought Mr. Swiveller. “I never dreamt such a real cough as that
before. I don’ t know, indeed, that I ever dreamt either a cough or a sneeze. Perhaps it’ s part of
the philosophy of dreams that one never does. There’ s another—and another—I say, —I’ m
dreaming rather fast! “

The humour of the account comes from the fact that Mr. Swiveller thinks that he is
dreaming but we know that he is thinking rather deliberately as he comes out of his coma. His
rather fast dreaming is merely everyday reality impinging on his consciousness, as the
intervening sentence of narration makes clear.

DT has the same linguistic form as the soliloquy in drama, which is notoriously
ambiguous as to whether the character involved is thinking aloud or talking to the audience. In
the novel there is no audience to talk to, and so thought presentation must be DT’s, sole purpose.
However, DT is quite often used to represent imaginary conversations which characters have

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with themselves or others, which is presumably why it so often has the flavour of conscious
thinking.

Free indirect thought In the following brief example of FIT from Julian Barnes’ A
History of the World in Chapters, Colonel Fergusson is lying on his deathbed, annoyed with his
daughter, who is reading a religious pamphlet while waiting for him to die. The Colonel, an
atheist, is annoyed because he cannot comprehend his daughter’ s belief in God:

ex.9-31

It was a provocation, that’ s what it was, thought the Colonel. Here he was on his
deathbed, preparing for oblivion, and she sits over there reading Parson Noah’ s latest pamphlet.

The reported clauses in the first sentence and the first half of the second sentence are in
FIT. They contain a mixture of Direct and Indirect features, as we can show by “translating”
them first into IT and than into DT:

1) The Colonel thought that it was a provocation that while he was on his deathbed,
preparing for oblivion, she was reading Parson Noah’ s latest pamphlet. (IT)

2) “It is a provocation, that’ s what it is,” thought the Colonel. “I’ m on my deathbed,
preparing for oblivion and she sits over there reading Parson Noah’ s latest pamphlet.” (DT)

In this example we can see the typical effect of FIT. We feel close to the character,
almost inside his head as he thinks, and sympathise with his viewpoint, This “close” effect is
more or less the opposite of effect of FIS, which makes us feel distanced from the character is
often a vehicle for irony.

How is it that FIS and FIT have such markedly different effects? One reason is that
although DS can reasonably be assumed to be the norm for speech presentation, it is much more
difficult to hold the same view for DT. The thoughts of others, unlike their speech, are never
directly accessible to us. We can only infer what people might be thinking from their speech,
actions, facial expression and so on. It is thus much more plausible to think of IT as our norm for

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thought presentation. In this ease, the use of FIT constitutes a move away from the norm
towards the character end of the scale, whereas FIS constitutes a move in the opposite direction.

Stream of consciousness writing The term STREAM OF CONSCIOUSNESS was

originally coined by the philosopher William James in his Principle of Psychology (1890) to
describe the free association of ideas and impressions in the mind. It was later applied to the
writing of William Faulkner, James Joyce, Virginia Woolf and others experimenting early in the
20th century with the novelistic portrayal of the free flow of thought. Note, however, that the
majority of thought presentation in novels is not stream of consciousness writing. The examples
we have discussed above are not stream of consciousness writing because they are too orderly to
constitute the free association of ideas. Perhaps the most famous piece of stream of
consciousness writing is that associated with Leopold Bloom in Joyce’ s Ulysses. Here he is in a
restaurant thinking about oysters: eg

Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found them out? Garbage, sewage they feed
on. Fizz and Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis. (sic)He was in the Red bank this
morning. Was he oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh in bed. No. June has no ar (sic)
no oysters. But there are people like tainted game. Jugged hare. First catch your hare. Chinese
eating eggs fifty years old, blue and grain again. Dinner of thirty courses. Each dish harmless
might mix inside. Idea for a poison mystery.

This cognitive meandering is all in the most free version of DT. It is also characterized by a
highly elliptical sentence structure, with as many grammatical words as possible being removed
consistently allowing the reader to be able to infer what is going on. The language is not very
cohesive, and breaks the Gricean maxims of Quantity and Manner. But we must assume that
apparently unreasonable writing behaviour is related to a relevant authorial purpose. It is the
assumption that Joyce is really cooperating with us at a deeper level, even though he is
apparently making our reading difficult, that leads us to conclude that he is trying to evoke a
mind working associatively.

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