Language and Literature current issue

Unnatural conversations in unnatural conversations: speech reporting in the discourse of spiritual mediumship

Wales, K. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

Despite the popular attraction of spiritualism in contemporary society, the discourse of spiritual mediumship has attracted little attention from linguists or stylisticians. One of the practical reasons for this is probably the lack of material in the public domain. On the basis of a recording of a whole session between a professional medium and her client, this article looks at the reporting strategies used by the medium to convey alleged messages from those who have Passed Over: messages which are central to the claims of spiritualism and hence to the authority of the medium. It will be argued that the common accepted formalist terminology of speech representation is inadequate, failing to do justice to the blended spaces of this world and that Beyond and to the medium’s role as ‘intermediary’. Four types are illustrated (interpreted, relayed, dictated and unmediated speech). The methodology proposed might offer a useful approach to the complexities of speech presentation even in This World.

Time- Lessness, simultaneity and successivity: repetition in Beckett's short prose

Paton, S. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

This article focuses on the ways in which Samuel Beckett’s short prose work Lessness constructs the idea of timelessness through formal means. It shows how stylistic features such as the exceptionally high levels of repetition and parallelism, omission of tensed verbs, and omission of connectives and subordinate clauses, work to remove time from the form of the text. In Jakobsonian terms these formal features are seen to replace the forces of successivity — movement in time and narrative progression — with a radical simultaneity. The article then deals with the problematic form of successivity created by the repetition which structures Lessness (in which the first 60 sentences are repeated in a different random permutation to create the text’s second half). Employing Genette’s (1980) terminology, the article shows that although the second half of Lessness does result in an increase in ‘narrative time’ (reader time), it does not result in any parallel increase in ‘story time’ (time within the fiction), and this is because the second set of sentences necessarily conveys the same timelessness as the first. Whereas Esslin (1986) reads this repetition as an economical way of showing that the text’s situation will last into infinity (i.e. in time), this article suggests that the repetition is necessary to show that the fictional situation is timeless and cannot possibly progress. Furthermore, the article ends by showing that the final sentence of Lessness closes off the text’s capacity for infinite regeneration by creating a strong sense of closure in form and content.

The year's work in stylistics 2008

Gavins, J. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

Book Review: Investigating Classroom Discourse by Steve Walsh, 2006. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 188 ISBN 0415364698 (pbk)

Zotzmann, K. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

Book Review: Literature, Metaphor, and the Foreign Language Learner by Jonathan D. Picken, 2007. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, pp.v + 174 ISBN 978023506954 (hbk)

Cheung, K.Y. M. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to Narrative by David Herman (ed.), 2007. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. xiii + 310 ISBN 978 0 521 67366 2 (pbk)

Macrae, A. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

Book Review: Corpus-Based Language Studies: An Advanced Resource Book by Tony McEnery, Richard Xiao and Yukio Tono, 2006. New York: Routledge, pp. xx +386 ISBN 0415286239 (pbk)

Straaijer, R. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

Book Review: The Body in Flannery O'Connor's Fiction by Donald E. Hardy, 2007. Columbia, South Carolina: University of South Carolina Press, pp. ix + 188 ISBN 978 1 57003 698 9 (hbk)

Moreton, E. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:00 PDT

Book Review: Language in Literature: Style and Foregrounding by Geoffrey Leech, 2008. Harlow: Longman, pp. xii + 222 ISBN 978 0 582 05109 6 (pbk)

Jobert, M. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

Book Review: How to Read Texts: A Student Guide to Critical Approaches and Skills by Neil McCaw, 2008. London and New York: Continuum, pp. viii + 163 ISBN: 978 0 8264 9288 3 (pbk)

Sorensen, E. P. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

Book Review: On Criticism by Noel Carroll, 2009. London and New York: Routledge, pp. 210 ISBN 978 0 415 39621 9 (pbk)

Forceville, C. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT

Book Review: The Language of War by Steve Thorne, 2006. London and New York: Routledge, pp. vii+104 ISBN: 0 415 35868 X (pbk)

Pack, J. L. — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 04:55:01 PDT