2.5.1.

The Metalinguistic Function of the Language in Literary Texts Literary texts provide numerous examples of the uses of this function of the lan guage. The difference between these examples and those from non-fictional types of discourses is that whenever a term s explanation is put into a character s mouth, the authorial intention is never absent. The meaning so highlighted usually con tributes to the narrative as a way of illustrating real-life socio-linguistic ha bits. Some other times, however, the metalinguistic function of the language bec omes a narrative technique itself. In the example below the denotative meaning of a colloquial phrase is ex plained to those of a higher social status who are not familiar with the charact er s informal small talk. This is an illustration of the most direct way in which people ask for the clarification of unknown terms: 1). Liza: [ ] and what I say is, them as pinched it done her in. Mrs. Eynsford Hill: What does doing her in mean? Higgins [hastily]: [ ] To do a person in means to kill them. In the next fragment, G. B. Shaw points out the difficulty felt by some people t o explain lexical items which are commonsensical to them, yet unusual to others, and provides as an alternative to definition another procedure which is largely used: a near definition or exemplification of the type X is a sort / kind of Y, in which Y is similar to X, only it is more common, thus easier to understand: 2). The Bystander [explaining to the note taker]: She thought you was a copper s nar k, sir. The Note Taker [with quick interest]: Whats (sic!) a copper s nark? The Bystander [inapt at definition]: It s a well, it s a copper s nark, as you might sa y. What else would you call it? A sort of informer. The following examples are taken from George Orwell s novel 1984. In the Appendix to this novel, under the heading The Principles of Newspeak, the author (i.e. th e locutor) explains to the reader (i.e. the recipient of the message) all the un known terms used throughout the book. This Appendix can be considered a treatise of a new wooden language, a treatise elaborated in conformity with the rules of a scientific grammar study: 3). Newspeak was the official language of Oceania and had been devised to meet th e ideological needs of Ingsoc, or English Socialism. 4). The B words were a sort of verbal shorthand, often packing whole ranges of id eas into a few syllables, and at the same time more accurate and forcible than o rdinary language. Illustration with examples is a way of avoiding a definition difficult t o formulate or a way of getting more specific about a definition. Thus, for the B words Orwell provides a sentence made up of such lexemes in order to make his explanations clearer to the reader by means of illustration: 5). Oldthinkers unbellyfeel Ingsoc which Orwell translates into Oldspeak (i.e. con temporary standard English) as Those whose ideas were formed before the revolutio n cannot have a full emotional understanding of the principles of English Social ism. The new grammar of Newspeak is based entirely on linguistic material familiar to the reader. The B words are compounds of contemporary English words; sometimes they preserve parts of these lexemes, other times a whole idea is concentrated i nto a short lexeme which becomes very expressive in this way. Here is a succinct explanation of the way in which these compounds were formed:

before the revolution ? old Those whose ideas were formed ? thinkers cannot ? un full understanding ? believe + fully ?belly emotional ? feel English ? Ing socialism ? soc Sometimes, the linguistic devices employed by people when they mentally activate o r resort to the metalinguistic function of the language are used by writers as n arrative techniques. This happens when they intend to achieve certain effects on the readers. In the following examples, Peter Ackroyd explains the meaning of some words in a n ironically mocking manner by resorting to what common people do more or less s ubconsciously when they come across a word they are not familiar with, namely, m aking semantic associations with what they already know. The following definitio ns are provided by the main character, Plato, who is, in this book, the great or ator of the City of London, living around the year of 3700 A. D. His main preocc upation is to give public lectures on the life in the past ages. In this book, t he period from c. A.D. 1500 to c. A.D. 2300 is known as the Age of Mouldwarp. By collecting the very few and discontinuous historical documents which have survi ved the passing of the time, Plato attempts to explain to his contemporaries the ir ancestors view of the world, the concepts they used, the cultural and ideologi cal background of the books they wrote, etc. . The metaphorical associations in some of the following examples follow a rather simple syllogistic pattern, whic h used in the mental articulation of the linguistic process known as folk etymol ogy: Major premise (stated): A Minor premise (unstated): and Minor premise (unstated): Conclusion: Therefore, (A h D) associates with B A accesses C B accesses D associated with B) means the same as (C associated wit

Logico - mathematically formulated, this syllogism can be represented as : If (A ? C) and (B ? D), Then (A + B) ? (C + D) But the mental associations do not stop here. Once a new pair of signs is found (C + D) it automatically forms a unit that is interpreted in the light of the lo cutor s experience of life, i.e. (C + D) ? E. From this it follows logically that (A + B) ? E, as well. Although the two minor premises of the syllogism are not stated (i.e. A=C, and B =D), the identity relationship between their two terms is highly humorous to the reader due to the fact that in everyday speech people do not associate these fa miliar terms in the same way, although the commonsensicality of the association is undeniable. In other words, the fact that (A + B) ? E is highly humorous. 6). biographer: from bio-graphy, the reading of a life by means of lines. A fortune teller or palmist. A+B: (bio) + (-graphy) If A (bio) = C (life) and B (-graphy) = D (line) Then (A + B) bio-graphy = (C + D) life + lines But (C + D) life + lines ? E (fortune-telling). Therefore (A + B) bio-graphy ? E (fortune-telling), and the persons involved in each of the two practices do the same thing: biographer = fortune-teller / palmi st.

7). brainstorm: on certain occasions the amount of anger or anxiety in the brain was believed to cause a violent change in the weather. Here, the syllogism is differently articulated, but the final result is as hilarious as that in the previous example. The word storm automatically assoc iates with weather, a word in the same semantic area, and, by means of contingen cy, it makes the word brain to associate with anger or anxiety, and this leads t o the association of anxiety or anger with weather. More schematically: A (brain) + B (storm) A (brain) ? B (storm as negative change, both in A and D) ? D (weather) Which means [A (brain) + B (storm)] [B (storm) + D (weather)], where [A + B] translates anger and anxiety, and [B + D] translates negative chan ge in the weather, between the two there existing a relationship of similarity. However, the cause-effect relationship between [A + B] and [B + D] is added to t his logical argument by the locutor to increase the comical effect of this proce ss of mental gliding from one meaning to another; it is not suggested by any relat ionships between the terms in it. 8). CD: an abbreviation of uman faculties. cold dirge , a form of music designed to calm or deaden h

Here, the reader s mental play guided by the writer translates as follows: CD is t he abbreviation for Compact Disc. But the term cold dirge is brought on stage as it is a familiar term to the lexicographer Plato, who does not know of compact di scs. Both disc and dirge are associated with music. As dirge has death-related c onnotations, the CD, meaning compact disc, is made to carry these connotations t o the reader, too. If the association between the adjectives cold and calm and t he extreme dead is made, as they share a common [- Action] seme, the final defin ition follows naturally. However, it is humorous to the reader both because he i s guided to make these associations and because they sound unexpectedly commonse nsical. Other examples of such interesting mental gliding are illustrated below: 9). daylight saving: a technique by which light was stored in great containers an d then taken through underground pipes to the residences of Mouldwarp. 10). ideology: the process of making ideas. The work was generally performed in s ilence and solitude, since great care was needed in their manufacture. Certain a rtisans were chosen for this occupation at an early age and were trained in ment al workhouses or asylums. They were known as idealists, and were expected to pro vide a fixed number of ideas to be exhibited or dramatised for the benefit of th e public. 11). language laboratory: a sterile area where language was created under strict experimental conditions. New complex words or phrases were bred from existing ph onetic and semantic systems before being tested upon a group of volunteers. Ther e was of course always a danger of contamination or leakage; we believe that the re were occasions when rogue words were accidentally released into the community , sometimes causing hysteria or fever. 12). literature: a word of unknown provenance, generally attributed to ste. 13). logic: a wooden object, as in log table. litter or wa

14). psychotic: a person in communion with his psyche or spirit, who sometimes sp oke as if by inspiration.

15). sleeping car: an example of the belief that inanimate objects, when not bein g employed or exploited, reverted to a dormant state. See sleeping bag and sleeping tablet . 16). transcendence or trans-end-dance: the ability to move beyond the end, otherw ise called the dance of death. The fear of death, in the Mouldwarp period, was p art of a great fear of life. 17). wisdom teeth: it was believed that the source of human characteristics of be haviour could be found in various organs of the body. Courage was identified wit h the heart, for example, and memory with the brain. It would seem, then, that w isdom was located in the teeth. 18). words-worth: the patronymic of writers who had earned their high position. I n a similar context we have Chatter-ton. Many Mouldwarp writers were compared to inorganic substances, such as Ore-well, Cole-ridge and Gold-smith. Some writers were considered sacred, as in Pope and Priestley. Some were feared as Wilde or Savage while others were celebrated for their mournful or querulous style, among them Graves, Bellow and Frost. Unfortunately, no specimens of their work have s urvived. The humorous effect achieved by Peter Ackroyd in the examples above is also a re sult of a combination of a scientific method and a scientific linguistic style u sed in the formulation of these dictionary-like definitions with the underlying message that Plato s way of distorting the truth by drawing absurd assumptions on the margin of truncated historical and cultural documents may be similar to what some of our contemporary historians do when interpreting documents of our past ages. What is more humorous is that behind these definitions there is a seed of bitter truth about the state of affairs in our contemporary mercantile society. Some of these definitions can be considered extended metaphors [e.g.-s (6), (8), (10), (12), (13), (16) and (18)]. The main characteristic of the definitions or explanations in the examples abov e is that the meaning of compounds is interpreted as a sum of the meanings of th e component parts; the meaning of simple lexical items and of derivatives, such as literature, logic, psychotic, ideology, is a merely impressionistic etymologic al interpretation of their morphological root. That is why they can be considered examples of folk etymology. Below there is another illustration of the humorous effect achieved by Peter Ack royd in The Plato Papers based on the same means of using the metalinguistic fun ction of the language as a narrative technique along with the stylistic device o f playing upon words: 19). But the most hilarious examples of Freudian repartee took place when his par tner, Oedipus, appeared on the stage. This fall guy or straight man may have been so me relic of the old pantomimic tradition, since he wore loose white robes and di splayed that glum expression characteristic of the pantaloon. He also adopted a peculiarly rapid and sliding walk known to devotees as the Freudian slip . What makes it possible for such a definition to be given to the semantic unit Fr eudian slip is mainly the polysemantism of the noun slip, a noun among whose mea nings are that of an act of sliding a short distance or of falling by sliding an d that of a small mistake. To this there is added the method of separating the t wo elements of this unit and trying to recover the meaning of the unit from the sum of the meanings of the two terms. Using an unexpected meaning for a word and creating a whole context in which this meaning gets motivated, thus sensible, i s part of the creative talent of a writer. In the examples analysed hitherto, the metalinguistic function of the language h as been illustrated by focusing only on the meaning of a lexical item in each ca se. However, in everyday conversations there are far more numerous situations in

which some meanings have to be defined more precisely lest the linguistic commu nication between people fail. Explanations are provided about the referential me aning of a certain phrase or sentence, or about the speaker s intentions, feelings or attitudes when uttering it. In these cases the metalinguistic function of th e language overlaps with the referential function, with the conative one, or wit h both. The next example is an illustration of such an overlap: 20). [about a glass paperweight] What is it, do you think? , said Julia. I don t think it s anything I mean, I don t think it was ever put to an y use , said Winston. Here the sentence I don t think it s anything is ambiguous. Although it refe rs clearly to the object in front of the speakers, it may have some other meanin gs as well: It s not valuable, What it is is irrelevant to me, besides the meaning selected by Winston: It is something completely useless. In order to avoid Juli a s confusion about what he meant, Winston feels that he has to be more specific. This is the conative function of his explanation. Moreover, being a rephrasing o f the initial formulation, his explanation is partly metalinguistic in function. A similar situation is exemplified below: 21). [Julia speaks to Winston.] It s all off , she murmured as soon as she judged it safe to speak. mean. What? Tomorrow afternoon. I can t come. Some time before this conversation, Julia and Winston decided to see eac h other someday, a day which at the moment of this conversation happens to be to morrow. Her remark It s all off shows Julia s expectations that Winston would unders tand the referent of it, which is the important event upon which they have mutua lly agreed to take place tomorrow. Realising that this remark might be too vague , she gives him a hint about its meaning. The repeated failure in her attempt to make herself understood without being too specific (as they are afraid of being overheard) makes her give Winston a full explanation. The linguistic exchange above unfolds three functions: the referential (informin g Winston about something), the conative (Julia s intention to get her message thr ough to Winston), and the metalinguistic (It s all off means I can t come tomorrow afternoon.). In this situation, as in the majority of cases in everyday speech, the meaning o f an utterance is totally dependent on the larger linguistic context. The same s entence may be used in various situations with various meanings. This is mainly due to word polysemantism but also to the number of functions that a sentence as a whole may develop. Tomorrow, I