Chapter 9
Common Language
Corpus, creativity and cognition
This chapter takes further debates concerning the nature of
literary language and the presence of literariness in a range of discourses
by exploring the extent to which everyday conversational discourse displays
literary properties. The author argues that studies of literary discourse,
and of the continuities between literary and non-literary discourse, have
tended to focus on written language or on representations of spoken
discourse in fictional or dramatic dialogues. This emphasis has made for
questionable connections between literature, literacy and the written
language because it assumes that spoken language is no more than a less
patterned version of written language. Using the Cambridge and Nottingham
Corpus of Discourse in English (CANCODE), the author shows how verbal
inventiveness is pervasive in ordinary talk. The chapter concludes that
common, everyday language is far from being either everyday or
common – on the contrary, it is pervasively “poetic”.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction: Writing and literary language?
- 2.CANCODE data
- 2.1Punning and playing
- 2.2Morphological inventiveness: New words for old
- 2.3Echoing and converging
- 2.4Pattern-reforming and pattern-reinforcing
- 2.5Summary
- 3.Literary language: A brief history of definitions
- 3.1Inherency models; deviation theory and self-referentiality
- 3.2Socio-cultural models
- 3.2.1Presentationality
- 3.2.2Preliminary conclusions
- 3.3Cognitive models
- 4.All language is literary language
- 4.1Pleasure and verbal play: Risks and rewards
- 4.2More CANCODE data
- 5.Developing a socio-psychological aesthetics
- 6.Questions for research: Linguistic and literary theory
-
Acknowledgements
-
Note
-
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