Speaking like a good guy: speech carniyalisation algorithm
The problem of depicting good, bad characters through their speech self-presentation in the original American Western novels, analysis of the syntactic code. Methods of cognitive linguistics and textual analysis along with traditional syntactic theories.
| Рубрика | Иностранные языки и языкознание |
| Вид | статья |
| Язык | английский |
| Дата добавления | 04.03.2018 |
| Размер файла | 24,7 K |
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Speaking like a good guy: speech carniyalisation algorithm
Problem-setting and recent papers survey. The problem of linguistic analysis of personal speech peculiarities belongs to those of paramount importance both in cognitive and linguo-psycho - logical studies (works by I. Arnold; A. Babushkin; M. Bakhtin; D. Bell; A. Brudny; S. Chatman; T. van Dijk; G. Fauconnier; J. Humes; Yu. Karaulov; G. Lakoff; I. Morozova; V. Vinogradov; J. Weisgerber; R. Wodak etc). Any homo Ungualis invoices ideas in speech accordance with the way the latter are formed in their minds. While dealing with the artistic prose, one can usually single out three types of communicants: the author, his/her characters, and the audience made up by the readership.
In no narration are authors impartial to the events they are describing. Voluntarily or not, they manifest their ideals, moral standards and in general express their concepts of good and bad directly in the personage parties of their characters, or indirectly, by means of structural organization of their characters' speech.
The protagonist of the author's ideas in fiction as a rule reflects the moral frame of the author codified in the literary work. «Speech has an author, who conveys in it his thoughts and feelings and chooses words and sentence structures for the purpose» [17, p. 414]. Hence, we shall argue that the author's personal ideals, moral and ethical concepts of good or evil, are expressed in the speech of his/her characters. In spite of there existing a vast amount of research dedicated to the problem of verbalisation of mental processes in speech (V. Avrorin; L. Bloomfield; N. Chomsky; V. Karasik; G. Lakoff; A. Luria; V. Vinogradov; L. Vygotsky; W. Wundt etc), a great number of questions have not yet received a proper linguistic treatment.
Task-setting. The urgency of this paper is motivated by the anthropocentric orientation of contemporary linguistics and follows from the cognitive needs to disclose the hidden mechanisms of verbalising mental concepts on the level of speech. The object of work is the original literary dialogue in the American western novel. The subject is syntactic peculiarities of the main characters' speech in the American western.
The main objective of this investigation consists in finding a syntactic code of the positive personality in western as demonstrated in the good cowboy's speech party. The immediate tasks of the work are predetermined by its objective and can be outlined as: disclosing the meaning of the «concept of the positive» in the western; analysing the concept of the positive in the American western within the framework of carnivalisation theory; working out criteria of analysis of the syntactic portrait of a literary character; determining the main speech peculiarities of the main positive and negative characters in the western novel and deducing syntactic algorithms of their speech portraits; contrasting syntactic speech algorithms of the main positive and negative characters.
Practical research. Conceptually, we follow I. Morozova who in the course of her investigations has arrived at the conclusion that mental structures of one's mind are iconically reflected in the syntax of one's speech [3].
The samples for analysis (6,000 speech patterns) were taken from the original American novels in the genre of western by consecutive selection. The choice of «western» as material for investigation was motivated by the fact that this genre of literature gives a strict and rigid subdivision of characters into `good' and `bad' boys, (i. e. those who manifest positive and negative moral values), hence creating practically an ideal area for linguistic research. J.G. Cawelti, a well-known scholar in the field of literary semantics and cultural studies, terms western stories «stereotypic» due to the predictability of the storyline where the good guy in the end mostly gains the upper hand over his enemies or rivals [7]. F. Emery and D. Martin, in their turn, stress a psychological impact made by the «western» genre upon common Americans and the role it plays in shaping their general mindset and understanding of good and bad [9].
We take a concept of the positive in western as given by the literary critic N. Silivestrov in his study of «western» as a genre. «To be a real man in the Wild West meant to be a leader, a hero, for whom it was possible to kill, but never to betray» [4, p. 32]. Thus, the positive character in the western should display characteristics of a leader, be loyal, noble, kind and honest. Moreover, `honesty' in the western can be fore-grounded as a leading feature of the main character's image. In all western novels, the main character is opposed by the so-called `main scoundrel'. The latter manifests a concept of the negative as the author understands it. Together with the positive character they represent an `adjacent pair', which is built on the contrast of moral standards.
In the process of creating national symbols, the images of heroes and their foes gradually lose their individual peculiarities and become puppet-show, carnival masks which are easily identified by their stereotypical characteristics. Carnivalisation as a term was introduced into linguistics by M. Bakhtin, who claimed that «carnival gave way in the language to a variety of symbolic and sensorial forms [5, p. 47]. Despite its wide use in language studies, this term hasn't acquired an unequivocal treatment in linguistics. Today, the events going on in the real life find their reflection on the language stage as well, carnivalisation of the surrounding world triggering carnivalisation of the language itself [2, p. 78]. Within the framework of our research, carnivalisation is understood as intentional typesetting of the character's speech which can be easily recognized and pinned down both by the readers and listeners. The characters become recognizable just by their typical speech characteristics.
We find this approach quite motivated and to the point in disclosing concrete regularities of representing and prophesying syntactic speech standards of the main positive and negative characters in the American western. A carnival in itself and almost a legendary black-and-white narration where good and bad are counter-put in an eternal mortal struggle, western is an ideal field for speech carnivalisation in the written text.
At the present stage of work we have tried to find an algorithm of syntactic speech organization of the two opposing main characters in the western novels. We have tried to unmask the carnival displayed to the reader and to expose on the cognitive level true associative links between the character's speech and its perception by the audience - both virtual and real.
The term algorithm is usually defined as a totality of fixed mathematical operations directed at solving a certain problem [18, p. 120]. We shall use this term for the purpose of establishing a certain grammatical matrix for marking the good guy and his social and psychological opponent and telling one from the other.
Table 1 looks at the main speech portrait peculiarities of the main positive character in the western. In the process of analysis, we used the sentence structure classification of I. Morozova who classifies sentences with one primary predication structure as simple and those with two or more primary predication structures as compound or complex sentences. Sentences with secondary predication structures, a chain of homogeneous members, or a prolonged direct address are, hitherto, treated as complicated [3; 14]. From the point of view of their communicative loading, sentences in dialogue fall into declaratives (stating a fact), interrogatives (asking for information), and imperatives (urging the interlocutor to carry out an action) (the same opinion is shared by M. Blokh [6]; V. Ghak; R. Long [12]; J. Lyons [13]; R. Zandvoort [16] etc).
syntactic speech novel
Table 1. Syntactic speech features of good cowboys in the western novels
|
No |
Sentence type |
Usage frequency, % |
|
|
1 |
Simple sentence |
65.2 |
|
|
2 |
Compound and complex sentence |
21.4 |
|
|
3 |
Complicated sentences |
13.4 |
|
|
4 |
Declarative sentences |
64.9 |
|
|
5 |
Interrogative sentences |
11.7 |
|
|
6 |
Imperative sentences |
23.4 |
Examples to illustrate table 1
1. She swung around, her eyes growing wide. «Are you hurt?» «No,» he (Grigsby) answered dryly. «They shot like a woman.» (Rigsbee L.L.)
The sentence presents one subject-predicate nucleus and belongs to the class of simple sentences.
2. «You folks always toughen up when it comes to shooting my guts,» he neered (Hyks) (Thomps C.).
Boasting an adverbial clause of time `when it comes to shooting my guts', the sentence is complex.
3. This mount's seen dust, and dirt, and rock of all the tracks hundred miles around from here. He'll find the way.» (Davis D.)
The chain of homogeneous objects `'dust, and dirt, and rock of all the tracks hundred miles around from here' necessitates considering the sentence complicated.
4. «About time some of my friends were showing up,» Dick remarked jovially (Payne S.)
5. Lomax asked explosively. «All the rest I can understand now. But why plant the money on me? Tell me, Ted! Why?» (Напіпд В.)
The underlined remark is information-seeking and, thus, interrogative.
6. Wait here. Not a sound! (Bochmann J.)
The sentence is a command and belongs to imperatives.
In the result of analysis, we have come up with the following findings. Leading positive cowboys use mainly structurally simple sentences, their relative frequency amounting to about 65.2% (while simple sentences are used in ca 56.5% in the literary dialogue, according to the recent linguistic research [14]). Good guys' remarks are basically positive and grammatically finished. Compound and complicated sentences make up 21.4% and 13.4%, correspondingly. It is noteworthy in this aspect that the characters under analysis display an evident preference for non-elliptical sentences, using them in 42.3%, in contrast to their average frequency of 38% in literary dialogue.
Lineally the sentence length in the speech parties of good cowboys doesn't exceed 7-8 word-forms.
E. g. «1We 2shall 3move 4westward,» said Rio Jim. (Thomps C.)
The example above is lineally and structurally typical of a good cowboy's speech organisation and is grammatically expressed by a short, non-elliptical positive simple affirmative sentence of the declarative type.
To sum it up, we claim that the good guy is speaking confidently. He's responsible. He gives orders. Hence, he tends to statements (64.9%) or imperatives (23.4%). All of them are clearly built, transparent, final. His questions are mostly special, i.e. asking for new information. They make up only about 11.7%.
The algorithm of the good cowboy's speech presented below is built up in accordance with the traditional understanding of algorithms as «abstract entities», «mathematical models» [10], and sets of rules that govern the transmission process starting with the data input and presupposing a number of stages and successive states, which result in a certain final pre-determined output [1; 8]. This definition allows us to represent the results of the carried-out linguistic analysis in the form of algorithm, or syntactic model-formula of a good cowboy's speech (see Fig. 1). The indices here stand for the average frequency of the linguistic phenomenon in the speech parties of good cowboys. For the purpose of making the algorithm more wholesome and representing the general tendency, the data are given in round numbers.
Table 2. Syntactic speech features of bad cowboys in the western novels
|
No |
Sentence type |
Usage frequency, % |
|
|
1 |
Simple sentence |
48.2 |
|
|
2 |
Compound and complex sentence |
38.1 |
|
|
3 |
Complicated sentences |
13.7 |
|
|
4 |
Declarative sentences |
67.3 |
|
|
5 |
Interrogative sentences |
20.6 |
|
|
6 |
Imperative sentences |
12.1 |
Examples to illustrate table 2
1. «Why not?» Harper was saying. «You all want homes. Can you find a more beautiful country than this?» (L'Amour L.)
Both of the underlined sentences are simple as they have only one primary predication structure each.
2. «Once I can move from here, I'll set a match to that house» (Davis D.)
The bad cowboy's remark contains an adverbial clause of time which makes the sentence complex.
3. «Haw-Haw,» explained Mac quietly, «I ain't going after Barry. I'm going to make him come after me.» (Brand M.)
The underlined sentence is complicated due to the secondary predication structure represented by the complex object with the infinitive ` `him come'.
4. Starbeau whistled, «Ya don't know whatcha up to, cowboy» (West Ch. G.).
Starbeau informs his opponent about his unawareness of what his cheek might bring upon his head. The sentence is declarative.
5. «If Barry comes to me, ain't he the one that's breakin' the law? If I kill him then, won't it be in self-defense?» (Mac) (Grey Z.).
Here two interrogative sentences follow each other, showing Mac's reasoning expressed by conditional clauses. His remarks demonstrate lack of confidence and over-dependence on circumstances.
6. «Start prayin' The deep, thick voice of Mac Strann broke in: «Start prayin', Haw - that Barry is left for me to finish.» (Brand M.)
The command to start preying is an imperative to Mac Strann's partner in the set-up against Barry. The data obtained show that the bad guy's speech is both structurally and lineally complicated and prolonged, with the main scoundrel using simple sentences only in 48.2%, and compound or complex sentences in 38.1%, correspondingly. The average number of complicated sentences remains practically the same as that of the positive character, 13.7%. It should be noted here that the negative personage tends to complex, but broken constructions, like:
You… you… just if you happen to cross my way. Well, you'll be sorry about it. (Tuttle W.C.)
The relative frequency of different communicative sentence types also differs quite significantly from that of Mr Nice Guy (the depicted embodiment of the author's concept of the positive in the novel).
The leading negative character uses minimum imperative sentences (12.1%) in favour of declarative and exclamatory types,
e.g. And you can ride right out of herd (Tuttle W.C.),
and conditional complex sentences, sounding suggestive and hesitating:
e.g. Perhaps I could do it if things go right (Haning B.).
While both good and bad guys prefer in their speech declarative sentences, the distinctive feature of the main scoundrel's speech is putting questions. He seems to be subconsciously finding himself in a dependant position. His interrogatives are mostly rhetoric and often follow each other in a chain. Big bad boys sound as if doubting their own ideas (interrogatives make up about 20.6%). Their remarks are lineally long, but structurally broken, testifying to their lack of confidence and duality. As a rule, an average sentence comprises about 10-12 word forms.
E. g. Harper's head came up sharply and his eyes leveled at Bannon. «Have 2you 3ever 4been 5over 4he trail 7I 8suggest, 9my 10friend?» (L'Amour L.)
As shown above, Harper's remark represents a comparatively long, complex interrogative sentence. It contains an emotionally coloured adverb of frequency `ever' and a self-centred parenthetical sentence suggest' which makes the remark milder, on the one hand, and gives the speaker a more knowledgeable air, on the other. The noun `friend' aims at coming on closer terms with the stranger he is talking to and, thus, throwing dust of the faux friendly terms into his eyes.
Basing on the afore-mentioned principles, we have built up an algorithm of the bad cowboy's speech:
Conclusions. The research undertaken results in the following. The two developed algorithms show that both structural complication and communicative aim of the utterance have concept - differentiating potential in the speech portraits of leading characters in western novels. However, it is not so much the generally prevailing sentence type that is of highest importance here, but the syntactic parameter showing the striking difference between the types of characters under analysis. It operates as a relative index in the literary dialogue altogether, but functions as a key factor in the conceptual understanding and estimating the speakers on a deep cognitive level. One can deduce that the syntactic structural complication of the speech portraits of the two opposite character types reflects deep-lying hidden psychological processes of perceiving the surrounding world by human. The appealing model of speech behaviour of the positive character goes hand in glove with the psychological theory of the «message matrix» suggested by D. Lewis [11], where surface simplicity grants better understanding the speaker's message. And it is quite clear that we take in those better whom we understand better. Hence, the author's protagonist sounds convincing, and his message is effective. We can also assume that psychologically the concept of inner `positiveness' of the speaker is associated with the so-called «primary, or basic knowledge» (after T. Slama-Cazacu [15]) which is cognitively understood on the level of inner associations between one's speech peculiarities and one's shape of mind.
The perspectives of the paper we see in studying the speech of female characters as well as in comparing national peculiarities of verbalising `positiveness' in different languages.
References
1. Bakhtin M.M. Problems of Dostoevsky's Poetics / M.M. Bakhtin; [Ed. and transl. Caryl Emerson], - Minneapolis: Univ. of Minnesota 1984. - 452 p.
2. Blokh M. A Course in Theoretical English Grammar / Blokh M. - M.: Vyssh. shkola, 2006. - 424 p.
3. Cawelti J.G. Adventure, Mystery and Romance: Formula Stories as Art and Popular Culture / Cawelti J.G. - Chicago, 1976. - 378 p.
4. Church A. On unsolvable problem of elementary number theory [Electronic resource] / A. Church // American Journal of Mathematics. - Vol. 58. - No. 2 (Apr., 1936). - P. 345-363. - Access Mode: http://phil415.pbworks.com/f/Church.pdf
5. Emery F. Psychological Effects of «Western Film»: A Study in Television Viewing / F. Emery, D. Martin; Univ. of Melbourne, Dpt of Audio-Visual Aids, Studies in MassCommunications. - Melbourne, 1997. - 47 p.
6. Gurevich Yu. What is an algorithm? [Electronic resource] / Yuri Gurevich // Microsoft Research. - Technical Report MSR-TR-2011-116, July 2011. - Access mode: http://research.microsoft. com/pubs/155608/209-3.pdf
7. Lewis D. How to Get Your Message Across / Lewis David. - LDN: Blueberry, 1996. - 222 p.
8. Long R. Sentence and Its Parts: A Grammar of Contemporary English / Long R. - Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1980. - 534 p.
9. Lyons J. Semantics: in 2 vol. / Lyons J. - Cambridge: CUP, 1977. - Vol. 2. - 1977. - 540 p.
10. Morozova I. Gestalt Analysis as a Means of Language Personality Identification / Iryna Morozova, Olena Pozharytska // Language and Identity: University of the West of England. - Bristol, United Kingdom, 18-20 April 2013. - P. 161-162.
11. Slama-Cazacu T. Stratageme comunicationale si manipularea / Slama-Cazacu T. - Bucuregti: Polirom, 2000. - 215 s.
12. Zandvoort R. A Handbook of English Grammar / Zandvoort R. - London: Longman, 1975. - 367 p.
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