Language, Literature and Critical Practice: Ways of Analysing Text (Interface Series)

229 Pages·1989·1.61 MB·English

by  David Birch

LANGUAGE, LITERATURE AND
CRITICAL PRACTICE
Ways of Analysing Text
The INTERFACE Series
‘A linguist deaf to the poetic function of language and a literary
scholar indifferent to linguistic problems and unconversant with
linguistic methods, are equally flagrant anachronisms.’—Roman
Jakobson
This statement, made over twenty-five years ago, is no less relevant
today, and ‘flagrant anachronisms’ still abound. The aim of the
INTERFACE series is to build bridges between the traditionally
divided disciplines of language studies and literary studies.
The Series Editor
Ronald Carter is Professor of Modern English Language at the
University of Nottingham. He is National Coordinator of the LINC
(Language in the National Curriculum) Project 1989–1992.
Contemporary philosphical, cultural, political and sociological
influences have had a crucial impact on the way in which we approach
and understand texts. Language, Literature and Critical Practice
examines the major consequences of these influences on textual
analysis and the role of language within it, and provides an overview
of developments in language-centred criticism in the twentieth century.
Using a wide-ranging variety of texts David Birch reviews and
evaluates an equally wide-ranging variety of approaches to textual
commentary, introducing the reader to the fundamental distinction
between ‘actual’ and ‘virtual’ worlds in critical practice, arguing for an
unambiguous relation between critical practice and theories of
language, and elucidating the critically important practices of how texts
mean.
The Author
David Birch is Professor of Communication and Media Studies at
the University of Central Queensland, Australia. Previously he taught
ii
at Murdoch University in Western Australia, and at the National
University of Singapore, having completed his doctorate at the
University of York, England.
LANGUAGE,
LITERATURE AND
CRITICAL PRACTICE
Ways of Analysing Text
DAVID BIRCH
London and New York
First published 1989
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or
Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to
www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.”
Reprinted 1991, 1993, 1996
© David Birch 1989
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be
reprinted or reproduced or utilized in any form or
by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now
known or hereafter invented, including photocopying
and recording, or in any information storage or
retrieval system, without permission in writing from
the publisher.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publication Data
available
ISBN 0-203-97684-3 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0-415-02941-4 (Print Edition) (pbk)
For See Kam
Contents
SERIES EDITOR’s INTRODUCTION TO THE x
INTERFACE SERIES
FOREWORD xiv
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS xv
LIST OF TEXT ANALYSES xvi
Preface 1
1 How texts mean: reading as critical/political practice 5
Language as showing 5
Martin Heidegger
The play of meanings 7
Jacques Derrida, Paul de Man, William Empson, Harold
Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman, Christopher Norris
Interdiscourse/Intertextualities 14
Michel Foucault, Michel Pecheux, Edward Said
The negotiation of meanings 16
Georg Lukacs, Pierre Macherey, Louis Althusser, Mikhail
Bakhtin, Valentin Voloshinov
Feminist criticism 18
Kate Millett, Elaine Showalter, Barbara Godard, Luce Irigaray,
Jacques Lacan
Language, text, coherence 20
Marianne Dekoven, Alec McHoul
Classifications, realities and textual analysis 25
M.A.K.Halliday
Politically committed analysis 29
vii
Deirdre Burton
Textually constructed realities 33
Beng Huat Chua, Harold Garfinkel
Relevance 34
Walter Ong. Tanya ReinhartH.P.Grice, Gunther Kress
2 Language, literature and scientific fictions 44
Scientificity 44
Formalism/Structuralism 45
Ferdinand de Saussure, Louis Hjelmslev
Idealization/Actualization 46
Ferdinand de Saussure
Scientific fictions 49
Ferdinand de Saussure, Louis Hjelmslev
Structures and meanings 50
Ruqaiya Hasan, Samuel Jay Keyser, Stanley Fish, Walter Nash, Peter
Barry
3 Reading literary texts: traditions, assumptions, 56
practices
Literature as moral discipline 56
Donald Davie, T.S.Eliot, James Reeves, F.R.Leavis
Literature as traditional orthodoxy 62
James Reeves, Alan Rodway, T.S.Eliot
Text-in-itself relevance 64
Samuel Coleridge, I.A.Richards, Jonathan Holden, Christopher
Ricks, Merle Brown, John Ruskin, W.K. Wimsatt, Monroe
Beardsley, T.S.Eliot, Wallace Stevens, Cleanth
Brooks, F.W.Bateson, James Reeves, Susan Sontag
Reading ‘with’ the text 76
John LockeT.S.Eliot, Donald Davie
Centres of text and fixed points of meaning 82
Richard Webster, Simon Stuart, T.S.Eliot, I.A.Richards, Bernard
Dauenhauer, Marshall McLuhan
viii
4 Reading texts closely: language, style and the ‘buried 87
life of words’
Language-aware analysis 87
William Empson, N.F.Blake
Literary paradigms 91
I.A.Richards, William Empson, Christopher Ricks, F.R.Leavis
‘Entering’ the text 94
William Empsonm, I.A.Richards, F.W.Bateson, F.R.LeavisLeo Spitzer
Language, text, context 98
Winifred Nowottny, M.A.K.Halliday
Language, text, communication 105
Henry Widdowson, Ronald Carter, Michael Lofaro, Geoffrey Leech
Literary language and literariness 109
Paul Sawyer, Ronald Carter, Walter Nash, Terry Eagleton, Roman
Jakobson, Jan Mukarovsky, Geoffrey Hartman
5 The linguistics of text: structures and strictures 116
Stimulus, response, function 116
I.A.Richards, Michael Riffaterre, Roman Jakobson
Structural relations of meaning 121
Roman Jakobson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roland Barthes, Vladimir
Propp, A.J.Greimas, Samuel Levin, Eleanor Cotton
Reading and rereading 127
Tzvetan Todorov, Roland Barthes
Myths, structures and archetypes 128
Northrop Frye
Situation and culture-dependent meanings 130
Bronislaw Malinowski, Benjamin Whorf, Edward Sapir, J.R.Firth
Generativism and textual analysis 132
Noam Chomsky, Robert Hodge, Gunther Kress, William
Bennett, Jonathan Culler
Functionalism and textual analysis 137
M.A.K.Halliday, Henry Widdowson, Ronald Carter, John
McH.Sinclair, Roger Fowler, Michael Hoey, Robert Hodge, Gunther
Kress, Tony Trew
ix
Textlinguistics and discourse 143
Manfred Bierwisch, Teun van Dijk, Jens Ihwe, Robert de Beaugrande
Critical linguistics 148
Roger Fowler, Bob Hodge, Gunther Kress, David Birch
Afterword 165
Paul Ricoeur, Roger Fowler
NOTES 168
BIBLIOGRAPHY 174
INDEX 203