Metaphor and grammar in the poetic representation of nature
Study of the need for an ecological critical discourse analysis. Characteristics of the features of the metaphorical vocabulary in ecological critical discourse analysis. Analysis of specifics of the grammar, expressions and meanings in the clause.
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Lingnan University
Metaphor and grammar in the poetic representation of nature
Andrew Goatly
8 Castle Peak Road, Tuen Mun, Hong Kong
Abstract
This article is based on two assumptions which have already been evidenced in the literature of environmental discourse analysis. The first is that the normal congruent active material process clause (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004), if the empathy hierarchy (Langacker 1991) is imposed upon it, tends to represent humans as acting in a unidirectional way upon a passive environment (Goatly 2002, 2007). The second is that much pro-environmental discourse, such as the Worldwatch Institute's reports, for the most part adopts this grammar and thereby undervalues the power of nature as a force independent of humans but with power over them (Goatly and Hiradhar 2016). This article builds on work already done in Goatly (2000, 2007) and Goatly and Hiradhar (2016) on non-congruent grammar, co-ordination, along with personification and other forms of metaphor, to represent the human-nature relationship in ways which are more in keeping with modern science, and more helpful from an ecological viewpoint. The poetic texts discussed are taken from Wordsworth's The Prelude, Edward Thomas' Collected Poems and Alice Oswald's Woods etc. Besides the use of grammatical co-ordination and metaphor/literalisation to blur the human nature boundary, they illustrate the use of nominalisations, ergative verbs, the activation of tokens and existents, the emphasis on nature as sayer and experiencer, rather than goal, which is a grammar (and use of metaphor) quite different from the patterns in so-called environmental and news discourse.
Keywords: environmental discourse analysis, metaphor, personification, poetic texts
МЕТАФОРА И ГРАММАТИКА В ПОЭТИЧЕСКОМ ИЗОБРАЖЕНИИ ПРИРОДЫ
Эндрю Гоутли
Университет Линнань
Тхюньмунь, Гонконг, 8 Castle Peak Road
Данная статья основана на двух положениях, которые уже были доказаны в литературе по анализу экологического дискурса. Первое -- это то, что в активных предложениях с конгруэнтной функцией (Halliday, Matthiessen 2004), человек предстает как исполнитель однонаправленных действий, совершаемых им над пассивной природой (Goatly 2002, 2007). Второе положение заключается в том, что в большинстве случаев в экологическом дискурсе, как, например, в сообщениях Института всемирного наблюдения (Worldwatch Institute), где такая грамматика используется, недооценивается сила природы, которая не зависит от человека и способна властвовать над ним (Goatly, Hiradhar 2016). Автор опирается на уже проведенные ранее исследования (Goatly 2000, 2007, Goatly, Hiradhar 2016), в которых показано использования неконгруэнтных грамматических форм, различных видов метафор для описании отношений между человеком и природой в русле современной науки. Автором проанализирован ряд поэтических текстов, среди которых «Прелюдии» Уильяма Вордсворта, избранные стихотворения Эдварда Томаса и поэтический сборник Элис Освальд «Woods». Исследование показало, что, помимо грамматического согласования и метафор, используемых для размывания границ между человеком и природой, в них встречаются субстантивация, эргативные глаголы, очувствление символов. Подчеркивается, что природа способна говорить и чувствовать, что существенно отличается от приемов, используемых в экологическом и новостном дискурсах.
Ключевые слова: экологический дискурс, метафора, персонификация, поэтический текст
1. The need for an ecological critical discourse analysis
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently warned us:
Human influence on the climate system is clear, and recent anthropogenic emissions of greenhouse gases are the highest in history. Recent climate changes have had widespread impacts on human and natural systems. Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, and since the 1950s, many of the observed changes are unprecedented over decades to millennia. The atmosphere and ocean have warmed, the amounts of snow and ice have diminished, and sea level has risen. Each of the last three decades has been successively warmer at the Earth's surface than any preceding decade since 1850. The period from 1983 to 2012 was likely the warmest 30-year period of the last 1400 years in the Northern Hemisphere, where such assessment is possible (medium confidence). (http://ipcc.ch/pdf/ assessment-report/ar5/syr/AR5_SYR_FINAL_SPM.pdf retrieve 28/7/2015)
The consequences of global warming could be disastrous: extreme weather, causing droughts, heatwaves and floods, and the resulting loss of life, infrastructure and agriculture. Melting permafrost would release methane (a far more dangerous greenhouse gas than CO2), multiplying these threats.
In these circumstances pro-ecological Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) should be prioritised over anti-capitalist, anti-sexist, anti-imperialist, and anti-racist CDA. As a contribution to ecological CDA this paper asks how vocabulary and grammar represent ecology/the environment and the ways humans relate to it. It demonstrates that so-called environmental texts reinforce an unhelpful representation, emphasising human power over nature, and treating nature as natural capital. However, its main purpose is to demonstrate that poems by Wordsworth, Edward Thomas and Alice Oswald represent nature in alternative ways, more conducive to ecological and human survival.
2. Foundations of the study: summary of some work on vocabulary and grammar in ecological CDA
This section summarises work on the mismatch between standard lexico-grammatical representations and modern scientific theory, and possibilities of using metaphor and grammatical modifications to improve this representation (Goatly 2007). It begins with metaphorical vocabulary and then turns to grammar.
2.1 Metaphorical vocabulary in ecological CDA
The importance and problem of metaphor for ecological CDA is evident in the word environment itself. In its meaning “surroundings” it instantiates the metaphor IMPORTANT IS CENTRAL, suggesting that humans are central and thus more important than nature. More positively, metaphor can be used to blur the human-nature boundary by exploiting the metaphor themes LANDSCAPE IS HUMAN BODY and HUMAN BODY IS EARTH in the lexicon of English.
It is quite common to personify natural landscapes. Firstly, we can use parts of the human body as metaphors, e.g. face “front slope of a hill or mountain”, mouth either “estuary” or “entrance to a cave”, backbone/spine “central row of hills or mountains”. Secondly, actions performed on the landscape can metaphorically be actions on a human body, often violent, not environmentally-friendly: gash “deep trench”, rape “environmental destruction”. Thirdly, verbs and adjectives normally used for humans can describe landscape: bald/bare can mean “without vegetation”, virgin “unused, uncultivated”. One of the advantages of such personification is that it portrays environmental destruction in terms of morality (for example, rape of the countryside) (Harvey 1996: 389).
The converse is dis-personification. Types of soil or rock can be applied to humans, often evaluatively, as nouns or adjectives: grit “bravery”, clod “stupid person”, flinty “severe and hostile”, craggy “strong rough and attractive”. Landscape gives metaphors for the human body and its parts: contour “shape of the body”, tract “connected tubes in the body” or furrow “lines or wrinkles in the forehead”. Physiological processes may be associated with earthquakes and volcanoes: eruption “pimple or spot, such as acne, that suddenly appears on the skin”, tremor “nervous shaking of the body”. Adjectives can indicate physical state, physique or character: parched “extremely thirsty”, rugged “rough and strong”.
Both these metaphor themes blur the human-nature boundary, and problematize the distinction fundamental to our categorisation processes. Metaphor is, indeed, a means of undoing the naturalised categories imposed by the languages we speak (Goatly 2011).
Metaphor is also involved in another technique for blurring the human-nature distinction, the use of a word metaphorically and literally in the same text, what has been called `literalisation' (Goatly 2011) or `situational triggering' (Semino 2008). For example in Macbeth Duncan first uses guest metaphorically of a bird, a house martin, and then literally of himself:
The guest of summer
The temple-haunting martlet
We are your guest tonight. (Macbeth Act 1, Scene 6, 3--24)
Table 1 Transitivity and Processes in Hallidayan Grammar
|
PROCESS |
MEANINGS |
PARTICIPANTS |
EXAMPLE |
|
|
Existential |
existence |
Existent |
There are 6 moons of Uranus (Ext) |
|
|
Relational |
states, relationships |
Token, Value Carrier/Attribute |
Peter (T/C) remained a teacher (V/A) |
|
|
Material |
actions, events |
Actor, Affected, Recipient |
Snow (Act) blocked the road (Aff) Jane (Act) aave me (Rec) a waffle (Aff) |
|
|
Mental |
Perception emotion thought |
Experiencer, Experience |
The cat (Ex...cer) saw the bird (Exper. ..ce) Mat (Ex...cer) hated dogs (Ex...ce) He (Ex...cer) decided to go home (Ex...ce) |
|
|
Verbal |
speaking, writing communicating |
Sayer, Receiver, Verbiage |
Paul (S) told Mindy (R) he would go home (V) Deirdre (S) whistled |
In this table, and henceforth, participant-referring phrases will be underlined and process-referring bolded.
2.2 Modern science and the need for grammatical modification
The English language in its most simple material process grammar represents the world in ways reflecting a worldview based on Newtonian physics, rather than on modern scientific/ecological theory. (For analytical purposes henceforth I shall be using Hallidayan, Systemic Functional Grammar; see Table 1 for the relevant terminology.)
Newtonian dynamics concerned itself with the laws of motion (Prigogine and Sten- gers 1985: 62). By concentrating on changes involving movement (rather than chemical or evolutionary changes), Newton represented objects as basically passive or inert until acted upon by external force. This representation transferred to our dealings with nature, and, operationalised during the Industrial Revolution, caused many of our current ecological problems. Human external Actors apply force to an apparently inert nature, separate from us.
Three aspects of 20th century science challenged the Newtonian worldview. Firstly, relativity theory undermined the belief in the existence of permanent things:
Indeed it is not possible in relativity to obtain a consistent definition of an extended rigid body, because this would imply signals faster than light... Rather... [this has] to be expressed in terms of events and processes (Bohm 1980: 123--124).
Secondly, the second law of thermodynamics and the theory of entropy challenged the idea that natural objects can be completely controlled: it is impossible to make an engine which continuously transforms heat into an equivalent amount of mechanical work. So the energy in the universe is spontaneously being lost, or dissipated.
Thus the “negative” property of dissipation shows that, unlike [Newtonian] dynamic objects, thermodynamic objects can only be partially controlled. Occasionally they “break loose” into spontaneous change (Prigogine and Stengers 1985: 120).
A modern ecological theory, such as James Lovelock's Gaia hypothesis (Lovelock 1988), recently endorsed by geophysicists (Goatly 2007), both supports these challenges to the Newtonian worldview and represents a third. Lovelock believes the earth, Gaia -- including the atmosphere, the oceans, living things, the rocks and minerals of the crust -- functions as one large organism. The living sub-systems of the Gaia system actively and continuously work to keep the environment suitable for life. Gaia theory implies the first challenge to Newton since Gaia is a set of interacting processes. And it obviously reinforces the second challenge, because the earth goddess Gaia is not passive, but constantly organizes and regulates herself.
Table 2 Grammar, expressions and meanings in the clause
|
Traditionally |
fishermen |
caught |
100,000 tons of fish |
a year |
in the North Sea |
|
|
Circumstance (temporal) |
Participant (Actor) |
Process (Material) |
Participant (Affected) |
Circumstance (temporal) |
Circumstance (locational) |
|
|
Adverbial |
Nominal Subject |
Finite Verb |
Nominal Object |
Adverbial |
Adverbial |
Moreover, Gaia theory makes a third challenge: human and other systems of the biosphere are interdependent, and not separate, so exploiting nature as a resource becomes an obvious threat to the well-being of the human race as part of it.
Our problem is that English grammar (and any Standard Average European language) typically structures reality according to a Newtonian worldview. Consider the ordinary sentence `Fisherman traditionally caught 100,000 tons of fish per year in the North Sea', analysed in Table 2. This encourages us to think in ways which are Newtonian in essence, but according to modern science, misguided in three ways.
1. The division into nouns, referring to permanent things -- fisherman, fish, the North Sea -- and verbs, referring to processes -- catching. It would be more scientific to think of fish, fisherman, catching, and the North Sea as four interacting processes.
2. The division into the Actors who apply force or energy, the fishermen, and the inert or passive Affected, the fish. Representing the fish as inactive ignores feedback within the Gaia mechanism, as though cause and effect only operate in one direction. Actually, the fish and their commercial value cause the fishermen to catch them.
Note, also, that the subject participant (the fishermen) performs the action volitionally, while the object participant (fish) is non-volitional. The choice of subject participant is partly determined by the empathy hierarchy (Langacker 1991) -- the following kinds of entity take the role of subject participant with decreasing likelihood:
speaker > hearer > human > animal > physical object > abstract entity
This hierarchy accounts for the following data:
The dog chased me. I was chased by the dog.
I chased the dog. ?? The dog was chased by me.
This last clause is unlikely because the subject referent, the dog, is lower in the empathy hierarchy than the speaker.
Speakers, hearers, humans, and animals, the probable subject agents, are capable of volition, whereas, commonsensically, physical objects and abstract entities are not. This increases the likelihood that subject referents (Actors) will be exercising volition.
Consequently, the empathy hierarchy reinforces the following prototypical representation of a material process clause: a human volitional Actor acts upon a passive (perhaps non-human) Affected.
3. This sentence marginalises the `environment' or location circumstance, suggesting the North Sea is either powerless, or is not affected. However, catching so many tons of fish obviously changes the North Sea's ecosystem. This too denies the interrelatedness stressed by Gaia theory.
We need a grammar which constructs a worldview which better reflects modern scientific/ecological theory, and I have suggested elsewhere (Goatly 2007: 306--315) structures and grammatical resources which could be used in this way. These include the following:
Location Circumstance as Actor.
Instead of marginalising the environment by referring to it in a location circumstance, we have the option of turning it into a subject, or Actor.
Ants are crawling all over the bed ^ The bed is crawling with ants.
The environment, the bed, becomes a participant in the process, not separate or in the background.
Ergativity
An increasing number of verbs belong to the ergative paradigm (Halliday 1994: 163-- 172), for example, sail, tear and cook (see Table 3).
Table 3 Ergative clause patterns
|
Intransitive/Middle |
Transitive/Effective |
|||||
|
MEDIUM |
PROCESS |
INSTIGATOR |
PROCESS |
MEDIUM |
||
|
The boat |
sailed |
v. |
Mary |
sailed |
the boat |
|
|
The cloth |
tore |
v. |
The nail |
tore |
the cloth |
|
|
The rice |
cooked |
v. |
Pat |
cooked |
the rice |
The difference between ergative and non-ergative verbs is that when two participants are involved, i.e. Actor + Affected or Instigator + Medium, in transitive/effective clauses, the clause extends in a different directions: with non-ergatives to the right, with ergatives to the left. Compare John ate/John ate the grape with the ergative the climate changed/humans changed the climate.
Middle ergative verbs, without an object, represent changes to a participant, the Medium, as self-generated. For example, `the door opened' suggests the energy for this process originated in the door. This reflects the second thermodynamic challenge to Newton. `Occasionally [objects] “break loose” into spontaneous change' (Prigogine and Stengers 1985: 120). Incidentally, in Australian aboriginal languages ergative middles also reinforce the identity between people and things (Muhlhausler 1996: 123).
Nominalisation
Nominalisation represents processes as nouns. By blurring the process/thing distinction, nominalisation can suggest that things are in fact processes, reflecting the first scientific challenge to Newton. Moreover, nominalisations often exclude reference to agents or external causes, suggesting, like middle ergatives, a self-generated process.
However, in ecological discourse, ergativity and nominalisation are double-edged. By obscuring human agency they may avoid telling us who is responsible for destroying the environment (Schleppegrell 1996).
Animation or Personification
Besides using metaphorical vocabulary in the dictionary of English which blurs the distinction between humans and the landscape, grammar modification can represent nature as less than inert, as animate.
First, we can metaphorically reconstruct Experiences in mental process clauses as though they were Actors in material processes, termed `activation of Experiences'. For instance, I noticed the river ^ the river arrested my gaze.
Second, we can metaphorically reconstruct relational and existential processes into material ones, termed `activation of Tokens /Existents', making nature active rather than static. For example: There are five trees in the valley/five trees are in the valley ^ Five trees stand in the valley.
Besides these specific activations, there are general patterns of animation and personification: natural things, traditionally considered inanimate and non-volitional, may become subjects of verbs normally used for living things (animation) or humans (personification), e.g. the echoes died, the wind complained.
Co-ordination
Besides these grammatical `metaphors' the use of co-ordination can suggest that the human and non-human belong to the same category. For instance in the lines from Edward Thomas
And I and star and wind and deer
Are in the dark together the human, astronomical, meteorological and animal are not only listed together but are joint subjects of the predicate `are in the dark together`.
Table 4 Natural participants in clauses
|
Participant |
Examples |
Number |
% |
|
|
Affected |
Droarams that improve the environment: metals are recycled: values that protected animals and habitats |
127 |
48 |
|
|
Actor transitive |
the forest now provides the villaae with food: different species of coral build structures of various sizes |
36 |
13.5 |
|
|
Token-Carrier |
water is becoming scarce: thev Trabbitsl are also responsible for serious erosion problems: |
32 |
12 |
|
|
Medium middle |
phytoplankton have increased: their Tcorals'l shell or skeleton may even start to dissolve: |
14 |
5.5 |
|
|
Experience |
whv worry about a few thousand rare species that no one has ever heard about?: enjoy excitina and diverse nature: |
13 |
5 |
|
|
Actor intransitive |
a tree falls in the forest: a lona-sufferina waterway that flows through the nation's capital: |
12 |
4.5 |
|
|
Medium effective |
40% of veaetables...were grown in home and community aardens: compostina ...builds up soil nutrients: |
5 |
2 |
|
|
Other |
28 |
10.5 |
Table 5 Natural participants in nominalisations
|
Participants |
Examples |
Number |
% |
|
|
Affected |
the degradation of our shared environment: forest management: control of our atmosphere, land, forests, mountains and waterways: |
167 |
78.5 |
|
|
Medium |
climate stabilization: oil spill: soil erosion: |
9 |
4 |
|
|
Actor intransitive |
flows of minerals: saltwater intrusion: land subsidence: |
8 |
4 |
|
|
Experience |
attention to the environment: knowledge and information about weather: |
7 |
3 |
|
|
Actor transitive |
climate shocks: drouaht strikes: impacts of GM soy: |
5 |
2.5 |
|
|
Other |
17 |
8 |
Tables 4 and 5 indicate that nature is predominantly an Affected, both in clauses, 48%, and even more in nominalisations, 78.5%. Natural elements as Transitive Actors and Tokens-Carriers have some significance in clauses, but natural elements in the other categories are negligible.
The most common nominalised phrases are climate change (59 times), land use (23 times) and air pollution (10 times). With land use the unstated Actors are obviously humans, and an external Actor or agent is responsible for air pollution. However, climate change nominalises an ergative verb, which makes the Medium more powerful, and, problematically, might also excuse those changing the climate, the Instigators, from some of the responsibility.
3. Most important processes by which nature is affected
The figures in Tables 4 and 5 show that verbs and their nominalisations assume a (human) power over nature. In places the report even presumes that humans create natural products:
meat, egg and dairy production; chicken production; farmers who previously produced small quantities of low-quality honey; etc. etc.
Apparently bees, chickens and cows contribute little to this process!
Patterns of interaction with the environment also stress human power over nature. Firstly the environment, especially land and water, is used by humans:
land use (23 times); water usage (3 times); water use (3 times); the use of mangrove areas; cereals that were used for animal feed; etc.
Use is very often a matter of consumption:
meat consumption (2 times); fish consumption per person; water consumption, etc.
This consumption usually refers to eating and feeding:
corn and soyabean are fed to animals, animals are fed to us; cereals that were used for animal feed; people in industrial regions still eat much more meat; etc.
Another kind of human domination of the environment is the extraction of minerals: to extract precious metals; the extraction of oil, gas and coal, etc.
Human use of the environment often leads to excessive exploitation:
exploit the turtle population; commercial fish stocks are fully exploited; severe overexploitation of sturgeon; etc.
The effects of this human use, consumption, and exploitation are negative on ecology. Degradation:
land degradation (3 times); ecosystem degradation (2 times); human induced soil degradation; etc.
Or pollution:
air pollution (10 times); pollute the air, atmosphere, soil or water, etc.
Or more severely, destruction;
habitat destruction (2 times); the destruction of planet earth; companies that were destroying Indonesian rainforests; etc.
SOTW envisages the solutions to environmental problems as more human action on the environment. It needs to be managed:
water management (3 times); river basin management; forest management; etc.
Negative effects need to be prevented by preserving or saving it: preserving all life in all its forms; preserving an ecosystem and its services intact. etc. save the planet; saving coral reefs; etc.
Or reversed by restoration:
restoring ecosystems like forests and wetlands; restore Earth's systems; the restoration of public and marginal lands; etc.
To sum up: humans act on a passive nature, by using and exploiting it and therefore degrading, polluting and even destroying it, and the solution is more human intervention and action on a relatively powerless nature.
3.1 The representation of active nature
However, though mainly represented as powerless Affecteds, in 13.5% of clauses natural elements are powerful transitive Actors (Table 4). These clauses mostly represent nature as providing and supplying goods/services to sustain and support human populations:
Provide
the ecological systems that provide us with fresh water, soil, clean air, a stable climate
pollination and dozens of other ecosystem services; ecosystems provide essential services; the services that ecosystems provide to humans; etc.
Sustain, support, supply
the ability of the planet's ecosystems to sustain future generations; ecosystems support human well-being; the 60 billion livestock animals that now supply the world's meat, eggs and dairy products; etc.
Indeed nature is often represented in terms of economic units such as assets, money or capital:
earth's natural capital (3 times); natural assets; common assets, and eco-system services; the world's common biological wealth; environmental bankruptcy; etc.
Note, too, under the heading provide, the repeated word services. The suggestion is that, in accordance with neo-liberalism, the way to save the planet's ecology is to make it marketable as an asset valued in monetary terms. (For arguments against this `natural capital agenda' see Monbiot 2014 and Harvey 1996: 152--155).
To sum up. Analysis of these grammatical patterns and the most commonly used verbs in clauses and nominalisations shows clearly SOTW's depiction of nature is predominantly anthropocentric. Nature is used by humans, and if over- /mis-used the resulting environmental destruction is important simply because it threatens nature's ability to provide humans with necessary resources and services.
4. Nature poetry
As a contrast, let's turn to poetry and its grammatical representation of natural elements. Firstly we can quantitatively compare SOTW with the Collected Poems of Edward Thomas and Wordsworth's The Prelude.
4.1 Sayers and actors in state of the world contrasted with Edward Thomas and Wordsworth
In Edward Thomas 31.5% of natural element participants in clauses are Actors/Sayers; in SOTW the total is 23.5% including Mediums. Of these there are no Sayers and more than half, 13.5%, are transitive Actors, mainly those supplying or providing goods and services to humans.
Table 6 Actors and Sayers in Thomas' poems and State of the World
|
Experiences |
Transitive Actors |
Intransitive Actors |
Sayers |
TOTAL Actors + Sayers |
||
|
Thomas |
10.5% |
10.5% |
15% |
6% |
31.5% |
|
|
SOTW |
5% |
13.5% |
10% |
0% |
23.5% |
Actors
In Thomas natural elements are more frequently intransitive Actors (15%) than transitive (10.5%), and the figures for animals and birds in Wordsworth are even more different (9.2% intransitive, 0.7% transitive (Table 7, column 2)). These figures give an opposite pattern to that in SOTW (10%, if we include ergative middles, to 13.5%). While natural elements in SOTW 2012 have to make an impact and benefit humans to be Actors, in The Prelude natural elements' actions are worth describing, quite apart from any effect on entities beyond themselves.
The eagle soars high in the element That lowly bed whence I had heard the wind Roar and the rain beat hard
Landscape, as a proportion of participants, also figures quite frequently in The Prelude as an intransitive Actor or Medium (Table 7, column 4). The following passage describes the young Wordsworth ice-skating, and the the last nine lines illustrate a dynamic interaction between humans and nature, as though the skater's movement makes him aware of an energy inherent in the banks and cliffs:
So through the darkness and the cold we flew,
And not a voice was idle; with the din Smitten, the precipices rang aloud;
The leafless trees and every icy crag Tinkled like iron;
and oftentimes,
When we had given our bodies to the wind, And all the shadowy banks on either side
Came sweeping through the darkness, spinning still The rapid line of motion, then at once Have I reclining back upon my heels,
Stopped short; yet still the solitary cliffs Wheeled by me even as if the earth had rolled With visible motion her diurnal round!
Ergative verbs are prominent here: sweep, spin, wheel, ring and tinkle.
Landscape Actors in intransitive clauses give us an example of a second kind of pro-ecological grammatical modification. The examples below promote what is literally a location circumstance into an Actor (or perhaps Sayer).
... and all the pastures dance with lambs
... the broad world rang with the maiden's name
The land all swarmed with passion
My soul,
A rock with torrents roaring
Compare these with `lambs dance in all the pastures', `the maiden's name rang through the broad world', `passion swarmed over the land', and `torrents roared around/ over the rock'.
We have been looking at the way landscape features as Actor in intransitive clauses. However, in The Prelude landscape is an Actor 50% more in transitive clauses than intransitive (Table 7, column 4), and it is this active nature of the landscape in Wordsworth which sets it apart from landscape as commonsensically conceived. Typically mountains feature as these transitive Actors:
I had seen ....
The western mountain touch his setting orb A huge peak, black and huge,
As if with voluntary power instinct Upreared its head.
And mountains over all, embracing all.
Weather is the most important transitive Actor (Table 7. column 5), but, whereas landscape seems to act on other natural objects, weather affects humans and the poet in particular. The very opening of The Prelude demonstrates:
Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that whilejt fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy itjbrings
In another famous passage the boy Wordsworth feels the wind (and grass and rock) supporting him as he climbs steep crags:
I have hung
Above the raven's nest, by knots of grass And half-inch fissures in the slippery rock But ill sustained, and almost (so it seemed)
Suspended by the blast that blew amain,
Shouldering the naked crag... .
In sum, what distinguishes the Actors in The Prelude is the energy of natural elements usually regarded as lifeless--weather, water, and even landscape.
Sayers
Sayers are totally absent from SOTW 2012. In fact, the report expects the United Nations Environment Program `to serve as the voice of the environment'.
By contrast Edward Thomas and Wordsworth see nature as a communicator. Almost two-thirds (47/72) of natural element Sayers in Thomas are birds. For instance:
This was the best of May -- the small brown birds Wisely reiterating endlessly
What no man learnt yet, in or out of school. (`Sedge Warblers')
Sayers in The Prelude are associated with both animals and birds (Table 7 column 2) where 10.7% of the natural elements, and also rivers and streams (column 3) 5.8%. Let's look at some examples of animals and birds first:
By the still borders of the misty lake,
Repeating favourite verses with one voice,
Or conning more, as happy as the birds That round us chaunted.
The heifer lows, uneasy at the voice Of a new master; bleat the flocks aloud.
As for bodies of water as Sayers, Wordsworth is, by his own admission
.... a spoiled child... in daily intercourse With those crystalline rivers, solemn heights,
And mountains, ranging like a fowl of the air.
Indeed, in Wordsworth's ideal world, human interference should not inhibit their powers of communication:
Table 7 Participant roles as a percentage of all noun phrases within natural categories in The Prelude
|
Animals/Birds |
Water |
Landscape |
Weather |
Plants |
||
|
Actor Trans |
0.7% |
5.8% |
4.8% |
22.6% |
5.8% |
|
|
Actor Intrans |
9.2% |
6.2% |
3.2% |
24.8% |
9.7% |
|
|
Sayer |
10.7% |
5.8% |
1.1% |
3% |
1.8% |
|
|
Experiencer |
4.6% |
1.2% |
1.4% |
0.75% |
1.1% |
|
|
Experience |
19.8% |
4.6% |
4.4% |
3.8% |
6.9% |
|
|
Affected |
19.8% |
9.3% |
16% |
16.6% |
15.5% |
NB The percentages do not add up to 100, because the 100% includes participants in relational and existential clauses, and non-participants, e.g. NPs in post- or pre-modifying structures or adjuncts.
The famous brook, who, soon as he was boxed Within our garden, found himself at once,
As if by trick insidious and unkind,
Stripped of his voice ...
4.2 Nature as Experience rather than Affected
Just as natural Sayers affect human consciousness so do Experiences, which are twice as frequent in Thomas as in SOTW 2012 (10.5% compared to 5% in Table 6). For example,
All things forget the forest Excepting perhaps me, when now I see
The old man, the child, the goose feathers at the edge of the forest,
And hear all day long the thrush repeat his song_(`The Green Roads')
And in Wordsworth we see a significant representation of nature as Experiences in birds and animals (19.8% in Table 7 column 2) and plants (6.9% in column 6).
At leisure, then, I viewed, from day to day,
The spectacles within doors, birds and beasts Of every nature
see that pair, the lamb
And the lamb`s mother, and their tender ways
In Thomas the affective mental process responses to Experiences of nature are crucial, in, for example, these lines from `November'.
Few care for the mixture of earth and water,
Twig, leaf, flint, thorn,
Straw, feather, all that men scorn,
Pounded up and sodden by flood,
Condemned as mud4
Another loves earth and November more dearly Because without them, he sees clearly,
The sky would be nothing more to his eye Than he, in any case, is to the sky;
He loves even the mud whose dyes Renounce all brightness to the skies.
In this and the previous section we have shown that in Thomas and Wordsworth nature, especially birds, animals and water are more serious communicators than their counterparts in SOTW 2012 and therefore figure more as Experiences to which we pay attention. In SOTW, by contrast, they are never Sayers, and the ratio of Experiences to Affecteds is much lower.
Thomas and Wordsworth emphasise that nature can speak to us as a Sayer or affect us as an Experience. Being receptive to nature's messages as Experiencers gives us a direction for our scientific and technological advances different from exerting material power over an affected nature.
4.3 Activation of Experiences, Tokens
Upgrading Experiences to Actors is widespread and stylistically significant in The Prelude. It applies most obviously to plants, landscape and weather. In a more common- sense syntax the following clauses would be mental, though paraphrasing into such syntax (attempted in brackets) can be problematic:
Till the whole cave, so late a senseless mass,
Busies the eye with images and forms
Boldly assembled
(cf. I saw the whole cave...)
Oh there is blessing in this gentle breeze,
A visitant that while it fans my cheek Doth seem half-conscious of the joy it brings From the green fields, and from yon azure sky.
(cf. I enjoyed (the breeze fanning my cheek)
my favourite grove,
Tossing in sunshine its dark boughs aloft,
As if to make the strong wind visible,
Wakes in me agitations like its own
(cf. I fear my favourite grove/my favourite grove worries me)
Another significant pattern in Wordsworth and Thomas is the activation of Tokens or Existents (2.2), making nature more active than static:
The garden lay
Upon a slope surmounted by a plain
Of a small bowling-green; beneath us *stood
A grove
There rose a crag,
That, from the meeting-point of two highways Ascending, *overlooked them both
Instead of `being at the top of an eminence or slope or two highways, the plain or crag `surmounts' or `overlooks' them, and in this environment even stood seems to take on more energy. Such activations partly account for the high percentage (16%) of landscape as Affected in the Prelude (Table 7).
Similar activations of Tokens in Thomas include:
The fields beyond that league close in together And merge [cf. `are together and indistinguishable']
The road, the wood that overhangs [cf. 'is above']
And *underyawns [cf. `is below'] it
A white house *crouched [`was in a low position'] at the foot of a great tree.
Typically paths and roads are not just positioned next to a place or between two places but run, mount, or take you from one to the other:
Where the firm soaked road *Mounts beneath pines
On all sides then, as now, paths *ran to the inn;
And now a farm-track *takes you from a gate.
4.4 Personification, co-ordination dissolving the human-nature distinction
Some activations of Experiences/Tokens/Existents above have been asterisked, to indicate personification or animation, problematizing the human-nature boundary. LANDSCAPE IS HUMAN BODY, discussed earlier, is a specific sub-set of such personifications. Personification is particularly common in Thomas, whether of light:
When mist has been forgiven And the sun has stolen out,
Peered, and resolved to shine at seven
Or plants
On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns.
Or weather
All day the air triumphs with its two voices Of wind and rain:
As loud as if in anger it rejoices
Sometimes the personification is used very subtly, as in `Aspens':
Over all sorts of weather, men, and times,
Aspens must shake their leaves and men may hear But need not listen, more than to my rhymes.
Whatever wind blows, while they and I have leaves We cannot other than an aspen be That ceaselessly, unreasonably grieves,
Or so men think who like a different tree.
Literalisation is quite complex in these lines. They confuse the literal with the personifying metaphor by co-ordinating the trees with the poet, `they and I' and `we', and using predicates that apply metaphorically to one and literally to the other: `have leaves' (metaphorically sheets of paper) and `cannot other than an aspen be' are both literal for aspens and metaphorical for the persona; and `unreasonably grieves' is literal for the persona, metaphorical for aspens. Literalisation is clearly at work here.
Blurring the human and natural by co-ordination is also particularly common in Thomas. In earlier lines from `Aspens' we have:
And trees and us -- imperfect friends, we men And trees since time began; and nevertheless Between us still we breed a mystery.
`Breed' suggests they belong to the same species. Or, another example:
kind as it can be, this world being made so,
To stones and men and beasts and birds and flies,
To all things
4.5 Summary
We can now summarise the findings of section 4. In terms of a comparison between SOTW and Thomas/Wordsworth:
¦ Nature is more frequently an Actor/Sayer than an Affected in Thomas / Wordsworth than in SOTW.
¦ In Thomas and Wordsworth there a large number of natural Sayers, whereas there are none in SOTW.
¦ Among the natural Actors Thomas and Wordsworth have a higher ratio of intransitive to transitive, and SOTW the reverse, though landscape and weather are important transitive Actors in Wordsworth.
¦ Nature as Experience is much more common in Thomas and Wordsworth than in SOTW.
In addition, we noted the following pro-ecological techniques in Wordsworth and Thomas:
¦ Frequent use of the ergative middle in Wordsworth.
¦ Widespread activation of Experiences, Tokens and Existents.
¦ Personification (literalisation) and co-ordination to blur the human-nature divide.
5. Analyzing individual poems by Edward Thomas and Alice Oswald
The poet Shelley claimed `poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world'. We can best appreciate the ways in which poetry uses language to legislate an alternative representation of nature by looking at whole poems.
Table 8 July by Edward Thomas
|
Naught moves but clouds, and in the glassy lake |
1. |
Intransitive Actors -- Er- |
|
|
Their doubles and the shadow of mv boat. |
gative Middle |
||
|
The boat itself stirs only when I break |
2. |
Nominalisation of nature as |
|
|
This drowse of heat and solitude afloat |
Transitive Actor |
||
|
To prove if what I see be bird or mote, |
3. |
Experience |
|
|
Or learn if vet the shore woods be awake. |
4. |
Experience |
|
|
Long hours since dawn grew, -- spread, -- and |
5. |
Personification |
|
|
passed on high |
6. |
Activation of Existents |
|
|
And deep below, -- I have watched the cool reeds hung Over images more cool in imaged sky: |
7. |
Experience |
|
|
Nothing there was worth thinking of so long; |
8. |
Experience |
|
|
All that the ring-doves say, far leaves among, |
9. |
Say er |
|
|
Brims my mind with content thus still to lie. |
10. |
Verbiage of birds as Transitive Actor / Instigator -- verb made Ergative |
|
|
11. |
Dis-personification |
||
|
12. |
Literalisation |
Some of these observations are obvious--the ergative middle (1), the common occurrence of nature as Experience (3, 7, 8) and the personification (5). But 2, `the drowse of heat' is interesting as one likely interpretation would make `heat' an Actor/Instigator and `drowse' a nominalisation of the verb to drowse. This verb is normally simply intransitive, but this interpretation would make the equivalent un-nominalised clause ergative effective-- `the heat/solitude causes me to drowse'. Similarly, the verb brim (10), normally simply intransitive, is turned into an ergative effective verb. Compare the more normal grammar of `My mind brims with all that the ring doves say.' Moreover applying brim, a verb literally used of water to the mind (11) (12), blurs the distinction between human persona and the literally brimming lake on which he is floating, a literali- sation or situational trigger in Semino's terms. As for (6), the verbs `grew' `spread' and `passed' are a kind of activation of Existents, equivalent to `came into existence', `established its existence' and `ceased to exist', respectively (see also note (2) in the next poem).
Table 9 The Mill-water by Edward Thomas
|
Only the sound remains Of the old mill; |
1. |
Process noun |
|
|
Gone is the wheel; |
2. |
Activation of Existent |
|
|
On the prone roof and walls the nettle reigns. |
3. |
Personification -- Actor intransitive |
|
|
Water that toils no more |
4. |
Personification -- Actor intransitive |
|
|
Dangles white locks |
5. |
Personification Instigator effective |
|
|
And, falling, mocks |
6. |
Actor intransitive, |
|
|
7. |
Personification -- Sayer |
||
|
The music of the mill-wheel's busy roar. Pretty to see, by day Its sound is naught Compared with thought And talk and noise of labour and of play. |
8. |
Personification Nominalisation of verbal process |
|
|
Night makes the difference. In calm moonlight, Gloom infinite |
9. |
Actor transitive activation of Token (?) |
|
|
The sound comes surging in upon the sense: |
10. |
Actor intransitive, Activation of Experience |
|
|
Solitude, company, -- When it is night, -- Grief or delight |
11. |
Literalisation |
|
|
By it must haunted or concluded be. Often the silentness Has but this one |
12. |
Personification -- Actor intransitive, Activation of Experience |
|
|
Companion; |
13. |
Personification 11. Literalisation |
|
|
Wherever one creeps in the other is: |
14. |
Animation |
|
|
Sometimes a thought is drowned |
15. |
Literalisation 16. Actor transitive |
|
|
By it, sometimes |
Activation of Experience |
||
|
Out of it climbs; All thoughts begin or end upon this sound, |
17. |
Concretisation 18. Literalisation |
|
|
Only the idle foam |
19. |
Personification |
|
|
Of water falling |
20. |
Actor intransitive |
|
|
Changelessly calling, Where once men had a work-place and a home. |
21. |
Personification -- Sayer in verbal process |
Nettles (3), night (9), and, more often, water (4) (5) (7) (21), its foam (19), and the sound of water/mill wheel (8) (12) (13) (14) are personified (animated) in quite straightforward ways. They are usually represented as human Actors, or as sayers (7) (21). As Actors they are transitive/effective (5) (9) (16), or more often intransitive (3) (4) (6) (10) (12) (20), reflecting patterns we observed in the previous quantitative analysis of Wordsworth and Thomas. But less simply, we might consider that when the sound of water is a (personified) actor (10) (12) (16), this is equivalent to the activation of experiences -- the sound impinges on the consciousness of an experiencer, `surges in upon the sense' (10). Sound is a process noun (1), like a nominalisation, and as a noun it can be recoded as an Actor. Night is activated too, changing from token/circumstance to actor--compare `Night is different'/'It is different at night' with `Night makes a difference' (9).
The poem also illustrates interesting uses of literalisation or situational triggering. The sound of the water is metaphorically a companion (11) echoing the literal company which it haunts or ends (concludes), thereby blurring the human-water boundary. In a similar blurring the water, which can literally drown, metaphorically drowns human thought (15), suggesting it materially affects the mental process of cognition. And the thought in the brain can metaphorically climb out of this (sound of) water, literal in context (18). By these literalisation techniques, humans and human thought processes are confused with water and the sound of water.
Table 10 Sonnet by Alice Oswald
|
towards winter flowers, forms of ecstatic water, |
1. Personification passim |
|
|
chalk lies dry with all its throats open. |
2. Activation of Token |
|
|
winter flowers last maybe one frost |
3. Activation of Existent? |
|
|
chalk drifts its heap through billions of slow sea years; |
4. Intransitive ^ ergative |
|
|
rains and pools and opens its wombs, |
effective. |
|
|
bows its back, shows its bone. |
5. Actor intransitive and |
|
|
both closing towards each other |
self-directed transitive |
|
|
at the dead end of the year--one |
6. Activation of Token |
|
|
woken through, the others thrown into flower |
||
|
holding their wings at the ready in an increasing state |
7. Past participles |
|
|
of crisis. |
8. Present participles |
|
|
burrowed into and crumbled, carrying |
7. Past participles |
|
|
these small supernumerary powers founded on breath: |
||
|
chalk with all its pits and pores, |
||
|
winter flowers, smelling of a sudden entering elsewhere |
9. Experience |
|
|
10. Nominalisation |
Most obviously this poem exploits of the metaphor theme LANDSCAPE/EARTH IS HUMAN BODY. All the italicised vocabulary personifies the chalk in this way (1). `Pits', a conventional metaphor for small depressions in the skin, reverses the metaphor. Even `supernumerary' personifies, as it usually refers to a temporary employee or extra member of a socia...
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