ENGL 503: Graduate Introduction to Linguistics

INSTRUCTIONS FOR TERM PAPERS

READ THIS ENTIRE PAGE CAREFULLY; PRINT IT OUT AND CONSULT IT FREQUENTLY AS YOU WORK ON YOUR PAPER.
 

Note: More guidance is forthcoming: some general ideas for aspects of language to analyze, and examples of term papers from previous quarters.

Preface: Interpreters of literature face the problem of subjectivity: can a text mean whatever you want it to mean? Is one interpretation more defensible than another? Defenses are often drawn from the biography and social context of the writer, the period/style/school of the poem, dominant sociopolitical themes of the writer's times, etc. Surely word choice and some aspects of structure are brought in. However, absence of detailed and explicit knowledge of the structural, contextual, and social uses of language can limit the defense of an interpretation and open the interpreter to accusations of subjectivity or of twisting the work to fit a social or ideological agenda. Being able to point to very specific aspects of the text's language and apply concepts tried and true in analysis of everyday language can provide a very solid foundation for many aspects of an interpretation, and can also lead to a completely new, different, richer, or clearer understanding of the work. I have taught full courses in linguistic analysis of literature in the past with great success. Students were awed by the value of linguistics as an interpretive tool, and numerous students decided that such a course should be a requirement for English majors. A good number of the (12-20-page) term papers they wrote for these classes were publishable or had the seeds of a publishable analysis. With this paper, you will have an opportunity to taste the usefulness of this particular application of linguistics (which is called stylistics) to one of your true loves: literature.

• Task: To apply concepts of linguistics in literary analysis
• Objective 1: To explore the relation between explicit knowledge of language structure and use, and the defense of literary interpretation
• Objective 2: To demonstrate superior graduate-level skill in writing formal English
  
  
• Specifics of task: Use aspects of the structure/use of language in an excerpt of a literary text to develop and, importantly, defend an analysis and interpretation of the text. See example abstracts of papers below. If prose, the text should be between 1,000 and 1,500 words, in order to be able to detect patterns. If drama, choose an act or scene of similar length. A poem would be challenging, and success would depend very much on the particular poem. Short poems can be very rich; long poems might better reveal patterns, but be overwhelm in other ways. Think about choosing a poem if you feel that you are understanding the material well in the first few weeks of class, and, especially, if particular course topics bring one to mind. You will have occasional homework exercises applying the current topic to short pieces of literature of various genres.
  
  
• Content/organization requirements:
  • The first part of your paper must introduce your "mission": What text are you going to analyze; what linguistic aspect of the text are you going to analyze; what is your analysis or interpretation of the text, which you will defend using linguistic analysis? In this first section, you should also bring in some brief information regarding scholarship of others regarding your text, but this should be very sparse -- just enough to give relevant background for your approach to the text. Maximum 20% of your paper.
  • The great bulk of your paper (at least 80%) must be devoted to your analysis. When these papers are weak, it is usually because the student adheres closely to a typical literary-analysis task, without bringing in enough explicit and detailed linguistics. You have plenty of opportunities in other classes to write the former kind of paper; this is intended to be a VERY DIFFERENT experience.
  • Style: writing style in linguistics has two main characteristics: (1) the highest value is placed on conciseness and clarity, not stylistic flair and prolixity (lots of words). Be as complete and as detailed as you can in as few words as possible. (2) Linguistics articles and books are rarely one, continuous piece of prose. They are divided into sections, and frequently have subsections of the sections. This is a requirement for your paper. You will see examples in the model papers I put on Blackboard.
    
    
• Sources: You must cite in your text and list in your Works Cited list at least FOUR scholarly sources. The text you are analyzing must be in your reference list, but it does not count as a scholarly source; hence, it does not count towards the four. The sources must be peer-reviewed. Do not use Google Books or similar sites that give samples of a book. The crucial bit you need may not be included in the sample. NOTE: Our library has an extremely limited collection in current linguistics, and probably next to nothing in stylistics. If you need books or articles not available through Kennedy or through databases, use LINK+, which delivers books much more quickly than Interlibrary Loan. Journal articles are delivered by ILL electronically, and are therefore considerably more likely than a book to arrive quickly.
  
  
• Grading: I do not grade on content alone. I do not consider it a good idea to pass a graduate student out of an English MA course if s/he does not have above-average writing skills, including being able to use the language of the intellectual discourse community proficiently. For those who aspire to a career teaching undergraduate writing, these qualifications are paramount (despite what current trends may favor). Organization at the level of the paper, the section, the paragraph, and the sentence is also taken into account, along with clarity of expression, sophistication of sentence structure* (by which I mean structural variety and complexity, not fancy wording), tone, and attention to formal grammar, formal usage, and punctuation. A paper with excellent content, but with major flaws in these other areas, will receive a grade considerably lower than that which the content warrants. Editing Tips, Editing Tips, Editing Tips.
  
  *This includes effective information structure, which we will study a good deal in the syntax and information structure portions of the course.

Schedule of dates:

• Tuesday, Jan. 24th: Hand in a short (1-1.5 page) Proposal in which you describe either one text you have chosen or a small number of candidates, the aspect of language in the text you will look at, and 1-3 ideas you have for how you will analyze your text. Typed, submitted electronically in .doc or .docx format (do NOT zip; and no PDFs. I will make comments using the Word comment function). Follow the formatting requirements marked § in the list below. Your submission must be sent to my Inbox by 4 pm that day. Do NOT miss class because your proposal isn't finished.
• Between Feb. 6th and 16th: A required office visit to discuss your paper. This should not be your only office visit, but is a minimum. I will make available a calendar of appointments you can sign up for. If you do not make this visit, you will lose 5% of your term paper grade,
• Thursday, Mar. 8th: Papers due. I will reserve three extensions. You cannot request an extension until 8 am of the day the paper is due. First come, first served, going by the date/time "stamp" of your e-mail message.

FORMATTING REQUIREMENTS

• Title page: At the top of your first page, either right- or left-justified, put your name, the date, and the title of the course. Do not put this on a separate cover page. NO report covers.
• § Two-sided copy: In the interests of saving trees and reducing the weight of my "grading goods," I strongly encourage you to print out your paper double-sided. Most printers have settings for this; if yours doesn't, it's not difficult to figure out how to stack the paper so that it comes out correctly on the second round of printing. Run trials.
  
  
• USE THIS CHECKLIST as you prepare your paper. Check it again when working on your final draft. Not conforming to these formatting requirements will cost you points.
  • ____ I have examined and followed the project instructions on the relevant course web pages.
  • ____ The paper is divided into sections with subheadings; it is not one, continuous essay.
  • ____ My pages are numbered either in the top right or lower right corner. §
  • ____ My paper is double-spaced, not 1.5 space. §
  • ____ My margins are 1" all around; no more, no less. §
  • ____ My paper is about 10 pages long (minimum 8, maximum 12), excluding bibliography and any appendices.
  • ____ The paper is in 12-point Times, Times Roman or Times New Roman font. (Use of any other font is unacceptable; your paper will not be graded.) §
  • ____ I do not skip a line between paragraphs; I indent new paragraphs. None of my paragraphs takes up most or all of a page.
  • ____ None of my graphics (tables, charts, graphs, images) (if any) takes up more than a quarter of a page. §
  • ____ I have avoided "widows" and "orphans" (that is, a page that ends with the single line of a new paragraph or with a new section subtitle. Break to a new page if this is going to happen.
  • ____ My bibliography is presented according to MLA format.
  • ____ I have included an appendix if appropriate.*
  • ____ I have visited Dr. Rubba's Editing Tips page on her website and made sure my paper conforms to the requirements given there. §
  • ____ I have taken the paper through at least two drafts and have carefully checked spelling, punctuation, and grammar. I have used my own eyes as well as a spell-checker. (Do not use grammar checkers. Half the time, their suggestions are wrong).

* An appendix is appropriate if your work is short enough to append to the paper, if you have done counts and want to present your full results along with the summaries in the text proper, or if you need to write a longish synopsis of the work your piece is taken from in order for the reader to understand its context (e.g., a novel or short story).

Samples from former stylistics papers

These samples are from full-length papers (between 12 and 20 pages). Also, they were written for a course which was devoted entirely to stylistics.  Therefore, they will look very ambitious to you, and rightly so. I include them here to give you an idea of how linguistics can be applied in literary studies. Your paper is to be more of an extended exercise than a paper of the sort exemplified here. Copies of these papers will be made available on Blackboard.

"Bruised Lilies: Women and Flowers in Song’s 'Ikebana'"

"Understanding a poet’s use of metaphor is essential to interpreting her poem. Poets use metaphor in various ways to explain, question, elaborate, extend and connect ideas. Cathy Song employs all of these metaphorical deviation strategies in her poem “Ikebana.” Through extending, elaborating, questioning, and composing the conceptual metaphors WOMEN ARE FLOWERS and WHITE IS PURITY, Song illuminates and questions societal expectations about women. More specifically, Song uses the conceptual metaphors WOMEN ARE FLOWERS and WHITE IS PURITY to introduce new metaphors that challenge both Japanese and American cultural assumptions about female beauty standards; female roles in society; female artificiality; female sexuality as a gift to males; male force, sexual and otherwise; and the notion of white in connection with female purity."

"Punctuation and Meaning: Stops and Clausal Adjuncts in Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom!"

"This paper examines William Faulkner's written discourse presentation in a randomly chosen, approximately 1730 word selection from Miss Rosa's story as narrated by Quentin Compson in Absalom, Absalom! Punctuation is the focus, specifically Faulkner's use of clausal adjuncts and other point indicators (periods, commas, semicolons, dashes). Regularly occurring patterns as well as deviations from standard text-grammar punctuation rules ... will be noted, because these usually foreground discourse elements, inviting reader interpretation."

"Mountain Language and Turkey: A Study on [sic] Language Repression"

"The purpose of this paper is not to figure out why [atrocities such as the Holocaust, Pol Pot's Killing Fields, and the like] occurred, but to explain how language control and language repression play roles in these events ... [t]he main emphasis in this play is the role of language and language policy on [sic] a minority population, in this case the 'mountain language' speakers. The 'state language' speakers deny the 'mountain language' speakers access to their language. Those who speak the 'mountain language' are sent to prison for failing to follow state policy ... [i]dentifying a minority population through the language that they speak, Pinter exposes a strong link between language and identity."

"Are These Actual Miles?"

For a class exercise intended to seek evidence of minimalism in Raymond Carver's "Are These Actual Miles?", a student examined sentence structure and lexicon (words) in the story, doing counts of occurring structures and words in order to find patterns. Evidence of minimalism is found, but the student makes a good argument against the notion that minimalism of form entails minimalism of meaning or reader involvement:

• "Carver focuses our attention on [characters] Toni and Leo through his minimal style. He has left much to the reader's imagination, specifically elements which are not especially relevant to the story itself. Another way of expressing this idea is to say that Carver relies on the reader's use of inference to formulate the world which surrounds the main story line. Carver also depends on the reader's use of inference in creating emotionally intense scenes."
• "We, as readers, must rely on our knowledge of how it feels to wait for something and then be disappointed in order to understand the emotional impact of the scene ... [t]he scene invokes our frames of the emotional trauma of rejection. Carver never tells us how Leo is reacting or feeling, and so we must depend on our own experiences and situations we've witnessed to create Leo's emotional state. We don't feel what Leo feels, but Leo feels what we would feel if we were in his situation." [What she means here is that the reader projects her/his own responses onto the character; this can trigger a strong connection to the character and the story.]
• "Carver uses minimalist style to great effect ... through relating incidents without much commentary, he trusts the reader's powers of inference to create the emotional impact of the story."

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