Stylistic issues of the syntactical whole in artistic prose (on the example of Sinclair Lewis’s "Babbit")

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Lviv Polytechnic National University

Stylistic issues of the syntactical whole in artistic prose (on the example of Sinclair lewis's “Babbit”)

Zhorniak N.Ye.

The analysis of types of sentence conection within the text establishes a peculiar trend of syntactic stylistics. The sequence of sentence members, the sentence structure completeness or incompleteness and the ways sentences are combined within the structure of a suprasyntactic unit convey additional emotionality and expressiveness to the text as a whole and to each separate sentence. Furthermore, a range of the syntactic stylistic devices are accomplished not in a single utterance but within the context of a group of successive utterances, a paragraph or even an extract expressed by two or more paragraphs. Natural and well-arranged connection between sentences is achieved by means of different lexical and syntactic techniques, such as repetition, the definite article, the personal and demonstrative pronouns, the use of proper chunks and exponents, synonymic substitutions and other means.

Literature review. The notion of style is treated not in the same way by different people. Carter believes that style is generally dependent on linguistic levels [3, p. 27]. Due to these levels every text and writing is different from the other, hence every genre is different. Haines is of the view that the study of style is the study of distinctions: looking at what was said against what might have been said [5, p. 43]. Style is also called a variety. It is referred to as the manner of expression which is different in various contexts. Style, being a versatile field, is defined depending on one's field of study.

Style is involved in both, spoken and written, literary and nonliterary types of language but it is particularly associated with written form of the literary texts. Leech further elaborates that style is the dress of thoughts [6, p.134]. It is the way of the writer to convey the message to the readers. It is upon the writer and the way he makes his text understandable that the meanings are conveyed. Style or stylistic variations may also be analyzed in linguistic terms for example sentence types, phonological devices, lexical varieties, morphological varieties, rhetorical terms, semantic terms, and even semiotic terms and utterance.

Thus, the aim of the article is to consider the issue of the syntactical whole as stylistic means in artistic prose and to analyse its main peculiarities in the novel “Babbit” by Sinclair Lewis.

Results and discussion. The term syntactical whole is used to signify a span of utterance larger than a sentence. In most cases it contains a number of sentences interdependent structurally (normally by means of tense-forms, pronouns, connectives) and semantically (one definite thought is coped with). It is typical for such a span to be also characterized by the fact that it can be withdrawn from the context without losing its relative semantic independence. This is not to be said of the sentence, which, while being a representative of a complete syntactical unit may, however, not has the quality of independence. A sentence from the stylistic point of view does not necessarily express one idea, as it is defined in most manuals of grammar. It may express only part of one idea. Thus the sentence: “It was with the manner of a Good Samaritan that he shouted at a respectable-looking man who was waiting for a trolley car, “Have a lift?” [7, p. 43] if extracted out of the context will be distinguished as a part of a larger span of utterance where the situation will be clarified and the purpose of verbal expression more unimpaired. [1, p. 210].

Here is the complete syntactical whole:

“It was with the manner of Good Samarian that he shouted at a respectable-looking man who was waiting for a trolley car, “Have a lift?” As the man climbed in Babbitt condescended, “Going clear down-town?” Whenever I see a fellow waiting for a trolley, I always make it a practice to give him a lift - unless, of course, he looks like a bum”.

“Wish there were more folks that were so generous with their machines,” dutifully said the victim of benevolence.

“Oh, no, tain't a question of generosity, hardly. Fact, I always feel - I was saying to my son just the other night - it's a fellow's duty to share the good things of this world with his neighbors, and it gets my goat when a fellow gets stuck of himself and goes around tooting his horn merely because he's charitable”.

The victim seemed unable to find the right answer” [7, p. 43].

So, according to I. Galperin, the syntactical whole may be defined as “a combination of sentences presenting a structural and semantic unity backed up by rhythmic and melodic unity. Any syntactical whole will lose its unity if it suffers breaking” [4, p. 257].

One should be aware of the principles on which the determination of a syntactical whole can be maintained. With a view to deeper understand this issue, it is first of all necessary to extend our understanding of the term utterance. I. Arnold considers that “any utterance from a stylistic point of view will serve to denote a certain span of speech (language-in-action) in which we may observe coherence, interdependence of the elements, one definite idea, and last but not least, the purport of the writer” [1, p. 59].

The point is the objective that the writer sets for himself, which, consequently, is to make the desirable influence on the reader.

So the aim of any utterance is a carefully premeditated impact. Syntactical units are connected to achieve the aspired effect and it is often by the manner they are connected that the effect is secured.

Let us take the following paragraph for analysis:

"On the other side of Babbitt lived Howard Littlefield, Ph. D., in a strictly modern house whereof the lower part was dark red tapestry brick, with a leaded oriel, the upper part ofpale stucco like spattered clay, and the roof red-tiled. Littlefield was the Great Scholar of the neighborhood; the authority on everything in the world except babies, cooking and motors. He was a Bachelor of Arts of Blodgett College and a Doctor of Philosophy in economics of Yale. He was the employment-manager and publicity-counsel of the Zenith Street Traction Company. He could, on ten hours' notice, appear before the board of aldermen or the state legislature and prove, absolutely, with figures all in rows and with precedents from Poland and New Zealand, that the street-car company loved the Public and yearned over its employees; that all its stock was owned by Widows and Or- phants; and that whatever it desired to do would benefit property-owners by increasing rental values, and help the poor by lowering rents. All his acquaintances turned to Littlefield when they desired to know the date of the battle of Saragossa, the definition of the word "sabotage," the future of the German mark, the translation of "hinc illoe lacrimoe", or the number of products of coal tar. He awed Babbitt by confessing that he often sat up till midnight reading the figures and footnotes in Government reports, or skimming (with amusement at the author's mistakes) the latest volumes of chemistry, archeology and ichthyology" [7, p. 39].

This paragraph consists of six sentences, all more or less independent. The first sentence is, however, somewhat separated and the most general one - it represents the new character of the novel who is going to be described and the place he lives in. The next five sentences give the description of Howard Littlefield. These five sentences show a considerable degree of semantic interdependence. This can be traced from the use of the following cluster of concepts associated with each other: “the Great Scholar”, “a Bachelor of Arts”, “a Doctor of Philosophy”, “publicity counsel”. Each phrase is the key to the sentence in which it occurs. Actually, each sentence describes a different angle of Howard's activities, sometimes not at all logically connected. The only thing that interweaves them is the notion “Howard Littlefield” mentioned in the first sentence. This row of unconnectable elements is used to create a humorous effect.

In most cases, though not always, the syntactical whole coincides with the length of the paragraph. It is the usual way with descriptions, though with narration the new syntactical whole may take place in the middle of the paragraph.

The main idea is that the syntactical whole is a unit which can be subtracted from the text without losing its relative semantic independence [2, p. 13].

Thus, a syntactical whole can be incorporated in a single sentence if the sentence is created under certain conditions of this compositional unit. From the point of view of their semantic unity most epigrams are supposed to be syntactical wholes, though they may miss the general structural requirements. All in all, the shorter the syntactical whole is, the more independence it has. It is especially characteristic of philosophic meditations of the authors. For example, most of Oscar Wilde's witty expressions can be excluded from the literary works and it will do little, if any, harm to the plot, though without them the story would lack its zest. So we may say that this type of syntactical wholes (consisting just of one sentence) are used mostly to add some special flavor to the text.

Syntactical wholes are not always easy to recognized. Because of individual peculiarities in incorporating ideas into a graphical (and that presupposes both syntactical and semantic) unity, there may be vast variety in the layout of syntactical wholes and of paragraphs, grading from what can be called clearly-marked borderlines between the syntactical wholes to almost indistinguishable semantic shifts. In point of fact, it is often from making a comparison between the beginning and the end of a paragraph that one can assume that it contains separate syntactical wholes. syntactic stylistic paragraph novel

It is worth mentioning that the paragraphs in the artistic prose style do not always maintain the qualities of unity and coherence as is the case with paragraphs in other discourses, particularly in the scientific one.

The novel “Babbitt” consists of thirty-four chapters each containing from two to seven parts. Each chapter depicts one aspect of the life of its main character George F. Babbitt and the background - his native city Zenith, his family, office, hobbies, social life, attitude towards religion, his rebellion. The first sentence of the chapter is usually the key-sentence. No principles of contrast were discovered - the description of the backgrounds and Babbitt himself are shown in a parallel way as addition to each other. For example, in the first chapter the awakening of Zenith is followed by the scene which describes Babbitt's typical getting up.

If to survey the novel on its higher, macro level, three main syntactical wholes were discovered - the pre-rebellious period (chapters I - XXII), the rebellion itself (chapters XXIII - XXXII) and the reconciliation (chapters XXXIII - XXXIV). As we may see, they are not of an equal length - the first one is the biggest. Sinclair Lewis gives us the detailed account of the circumstances and types of environments that caused the protest. But on the lower, micro level of the text each chapter consists of two syntactical wholes - one depicting Babbitt himself and the other describing his environment. They hardly ever go one by one, in most cases these syntactical wholes are intermingled.

One more peculiar feature of the author's style is that each syntactical whole on the micro level contains a kind of key-word which is usually put in the capital letter. For example, the frequency of the word “car” in the first two chapters is much higher than the frequency of all other words. The key notion of chapter IV which deals with business affairs is “Vision” and “Ideals”. Chapter XXXI is most interesting from this angle because its key-word is “Trouble”, and in chapter XXXII “whispers”. In chapter XXXIII the key-word “surgery” has a symbolic meaning - with the removal of Myra's appendicitis Babbitt's thoughts are gone and so are the troubles in his life. The last chapter serves as a kind of an epilogue - all the aspects of Babbitt's life are given the last stroke of brush of the artist.

Conclusions

To conclude, it is worth mentioning that the analysis was based on the novel “Babbitt” by Sinclair Lewis. The results showed that, first of all, on the macro-level, syntactical wholes mostly do not coincide with the paragraphs. It is especially characteristic of Babbitt's monologues. His most prominent feature is changeability of mood, so just in the middle of one idea appears another and that causes the occurrence of a new syntactical whole inside the paragraph. However, when it comes to the descriptive type of narration, the length of the paragraph is in most cases equal to the length of the syntactical whole.

References

1. Арнольд И. Стилистика современного английского языка. Ленинград, 1973. 303 с.

2. Куровская Е. Синтаксис и стилистика. Автореферат дисс. ... канд. филол. наук. Киев, 1982. 25 с.

3. Carter R. Language and Creativity: The Art of Common Talk. London: Routledge, 2004. 255 p.

4. Galperin I. Stylistics. M.: Higher school, 1977. 376 p.

5. Heines J. Introducing Stylistics. London: Routledge, 1992. 288 p.

6. Leech G. Language in Literatue: Style and Foregrounding. London: Pearson Education, 2008. 222 p.

7. Lewis S. Babbitt. M.: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1962. 456 p.

8. Oxford Concise Companion to English Literature / Ed. by Margaret Drabble, Jenny Stringer, and Daniel Hahn. New York, 1996. 394 p.

9. Жорняк Н. Є. Стилістичні аспекти використання синтактичного цілого у художній прозі (на прикладі роману Синклера Льюіса «Беббіт»)

Summary

The paper considers the issue of the syntactical whole as stylistic means in artistic prose. Different approaches to the term “style” are dwelt upon. Syntactical stylistics is the main conductor of emotions in the written type of language, so, correspondingly, any change of form will inevitably cause a slight modification of meaning. Sinclair Lewis's novel “Babbit” was chosen to illustrate how syntactical whole performs its stylistic role in prose. In Sinclair Lewis's “Babbitt”, on its higher, macro level, three main syntactical wholes were discovered and they were not of an equal length. Each syntactical whole on the micro level contained a key-word which was in most cases in the capital letter. In descriptive type of narration, the length of the paragraph was in most cases equal to the length of the syntactical whole. All the syntactical wholes on their micro level are arranged by means of parallelism.

Key words: style, syntax, artistic prose, syntactical whole, paragraph, stylistics, stylistic device.

У статті розглядається проблема синтаксичного цілого як стилістичного засобу в художній прозі. Проаналізовано різні підходи до поняття «стиль». Синтаксична стилістика є головним провідником емоцій у письмовій формі мови, тобто будь-яка зміна форми неминуче призведе до незначної зміни сенсу. Для ілюстрації прикладів того, як синтаксис виконує свою стилістичну роль у прозі був обраний роман Сінклера Льюїса «Беббіт». У романі на вищому макрорівні було виявлено три основні синтаксичні цілі, які не були однакової довжини. Кожне синтаксичне ціле на мікрорівні містило ключове слово, яке було написано з великої літери. У описовому типі оповіді довжина абзацу здебільшого дорівнювала довжині синтаксичного цілого. Усі синтаксичні цілі на мікрорівні побудовані за допомогою паралельності.

Ключові слова: стиль, синтаксис, художня проза, синтаксичне ціле, абзац, стилістика, стилістичні засоби.

В статье рассматривается проблема синтаксического целого как стилистического средства в художественной прозе. Проанализировано различные подходы к понятию «стиль». Синтаксическая стилистика является главным проводником эмоций в письменной форме языка, поэтому любое изменение формы неизбежно приведет к незначительному изменению смысла. Для иллюстрации примеров того, как синтаксис выполняет свою стилистическую роль в прозе, был избран роман Синклера Льюиса «Бэббит». В романе на высшем макроуровне были обнаружены три основных синтаксические целые, и они не были одинаковой длины. Каждое синтаксическое целое на микроуровне содержало ключевое слово, которое в большинстве случаев было написано с большой буквы. В описательном типе повествования длина абзаца в большинстве случаев равна длине синтаксического целого. Все синтаксические целые на микроуровне построены с помощью параллельности.

Ключевые слова: стиль, синтаксис, художественная проза, синтаксическое целое, абзац, стилистика, стилистические средства.

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