Written Discourse Three

1. Simple, Logical Steps

Again, we seem to come back to Grice’s Maxims regarding what is expected and what is ‘good’ writing. The continuing assumption is that ‘good’ writing is the desired outcome, and I’m still not sure that the case for that has been sufficiently argued. It goes back to the Gender unit in Sociolinguistcs and the ‘conversational shitwork’, which presupposes that your ‘typical’ male conversationalist actually wants the conversation to progress in the same manner as your ‘typical’ woman.

At the moment I am, perhaps ill advisedly, reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, and a lot of this stuff links fairly directly to Persig’s musings on Quality and its essential indefinability. ‘You know it when you see it.’ Dunno that I completely buy that, either.

In terms of the first activity, most of the clues I look were from words like the and their (suggesting a predefined selection) as well as obvious linking and referential words/phrases like however and above. If felt like was putting it together at the intra-sentence level – I was taking my clues from individual words and phrases – not that I was trying to emulate any overarching structure. Like putting together a jigsaw by looking at the edges of the pieces to see which fit together, rather than worrying about what the whole picture was meant to look like.

(Note to self – that’s a nice simile. I like it. Remember it for later).

It is of course entirely possible that the bigger picture (ha!) concerns were operating at a level I wasn’t entirely aware of at the time.

I can’t let Monsieur Rigolo go past without mentioning my other favourite Frenchman, M. Tourette –

2. Reading

It’s hard for me not to make comparisons to fiction throughout these readings. The narrator in Zen… is unreliable, and Hoey’s point that “the writer’s realities in this case… are only accessible through the language he or she uses,” (p33), and that, in essence, is the whole point of the Unreliable Narrator – he constructs the reality he shows to the reader in such a way that it differs from the objective truth (however you wish to define objective truth). When done well, the reader should only become aware of the narrator’s unreliability over time because of the inbuilt assumption that they’re telling the truth (and we’re back to Grice again). It’s an issue of trust.

Similarly, but differently, is McCarthy’s claim that, “ if a discourse organizer does not already have its lexicalisation in the earlier text we expect it to come later in the text and are on the lookout for it,” (DA for L Teachers p77). Perhaps, but only if the reader trusts the writer and, to a degree, themselves.

Have you ever watched something like The West Wing with someone who just doesn’t get it? My sister is a bit like this; we have to keep hitting pause every thirty seconds because she doesn’t understand some reference a character just made and she assumes she’s missing some information (either from earlier in the episode or from her own general knowledge). She doesn’t trust either herself or the show’s writers enough to realize that she’s not meant to have that knowledge just yet; if she just held her horses and listened for a bit an explanation will no doubt be forthcoming.

So these rules of discourse can be broken for effect, like most rules of language can be broken for effect. You just have to have an understanding of what the rules are and why you’re breaking them and, crucially, your audience needs to share that.