Chapter 9 Language and Literature

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Chapter 9 Language and Literature

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Title: Chapter 9 Language and Literature

1
Chapter 9Language and Literature
2
1. Style and Stylistics

Style variation in the language use of an
individual, such as formal/informal style

Literary style ways of writing employed in
literature and by individual writers the way the
mind of the author expresses itself in words

Stylistics studies the features of situationally
distinctive uses (varieties) of language, and
tries to establish principles capable of
accounting for the particular choices made by
individual and social groups in their use of
language. (Crystal 1980)

Stylistics is the study of varieties of language
whose properties position that language in
context. For example, the language of
advertising, politics, religion, individual
authors, etc., or the language of a period in
time, all belong in a particular situation. In
other words, they all have place.

Stylistics also attempts to establish principles
capable of explaining the particular choices made
by individuals and social groups in their use of
language, such as socialisation, the production
and reception of meaning, critical discourse
analysis and literary criticism.

Other features of stylistics include the use of
dialogue, including regional accents and peoples
dialects, descriptive language, the use of
grammar, such as the active voice or passive
voice, the distribution of sentence lengths, the
use of particular language registers, etc.

Many linguists do not like the term stylistics.
The word style, itself, has several
connotations that make it difficult for the term
to be defined accurately.

However, in Linguistic Criticism, Roger Fowler
makes the point that, in non-theoretical usage,
the word stylistics makes sense and is useful in
referring to an enormous range of literary
contexts, such as John Miltons grand style,
the prose style of Henry James, the epic and
ballad style of classical Greek literature,
etc. (Fowler, 1996 185).

In addition, stylistics is a distinctive term
that may be used to determine the connections
between the form and effects within a particular
variety of language.

Therefore, stylistics looks at what is going on
within the language what the linguistic
associations are that the style of language
reveals.

Literary Stylistics Crystal (1987) observes
that, in practice, most stylistic analysis has
attempted to deal with the complex and valued
language within literature, i.e. literary
stylistics.

The scope is sometimes narrowed to concentrate on
the more striking features of literary language,
for instance, its deviant and abnormal
features, rather than the broader structures that
are found in whole texts or discourses.
For example, the compact language of poetry is
more likely to reveal the secrets of its
construction to the stylistician than is the
language of plays and novels.

10
Levels of analysis

Sound effects
Vocabulary
Phraseology
Grammar
Implicature

11
2. Foregrounding

The 1960 dream of high rise living soon turned
into a nightmare.

Four storeys have no windows left to smash
But in the fifth a chipped sill buttresses
Mother and daughter the last mistresses
Of that black block condemned to stand, not
crash.

The red-haired woman, smiling, waving to the
disappearing shore. She left the maharajah she
left innumerable other lights o passing love in
towns and cities and theatres and railway
stations all over the world. But Melchior she did
not leave.

14
2.1 What is foregrounding?

In a purely linguistic sense, the term
foregrounding is used to refer to new
information, in contrast to elements in the
sentence which form the background against which
the new elements are to be understood by the
listener / reader.

In the wider sense of stylistics, text
linguistics, and literary studies, it is a
translation of the Czech aktualisace
(actualization), a term common with the Prague
Structuralists.
In this sense it has become a spatial metaphor
that of a foreground and a background, which
allows the term to be related to issues in
perception psychology, such as figure / ground
constellations.

The English term foregrounding has come to mean
several things at once
the (psycholinguistic) processes by which -
during the reading act - something may be given
special prominence
specific devices (as produced by the author)
located in the text itself. It is also employed
to indicate the specific poetic effect on the
reader
an analytic category in order to evaluate
literary texts, or to situate them historically,
or to explain their importance and cultural
significance, or to differentiate literature from
other varieties of language use, such as everyday
conversations or scientific reports.

Thus the term covers a wide area of meaning.
This may have its advantages, but may also be
problematic which of the above meanings is
intended must often be deduced from the context
in which the term is used.

18
2.2 Devices of Foregrounding

Outside literature, language tends to be
automatized its structures and meanings are used
routinely.
Within literature, however, this is opposed by
devices which thwart the automatism with which
language is read, processed, or understood.
Generally, two such devices may be distinguished,
deviation and parallelism.

Deviation corresponds to the traditional idea of
poetic license the writer of literature is
allowed - in contrast to the everyday speaker -
to deviate from rules, maxims, or conventions.
These may involve the language, as well as
literary traditions or expectations set up by the
text itself.
The result is some degree of surprise in the
reader, and his / her attention is thereby drawn
to the form of the text itself (rather than to
its content).
Cases of neologism, live metaphor, or
ungrammatical sentences, as well as archaisms,
paradox, and oxymoron (the traditional tropes)
are clear examples of deviation.

Devices of parallelism are characterized by
repetitive structures (part of) a verbal
configuration is repeated (or contrasted),
thereby being promoted into the foreground of the
reader's perception.
Traditional handbooks of poetics and rhetoric
have surveyed and described (under the category
of figures of speech) a wide variety of such
forms of parallelism, e.g., rhyme, assonance,
alliteration, meter, semantic symmetry, or
antistrophe.

21
3. Literal language and figurative language

Friends, Romans and Countrymen, lend me your
ears
Anthony in Shakespeares
Julius Caesar

22
3.1 Simile

O, my luve is like a red, red rose,
Thats newly sprung in June
O, my luve is like the melodie
Thats sweetly playd in tune.
Robert Burns
(1759-96)

23
3.2 Metaphor

All the worlds a stage,
And all the men and women merely players
They have their exits and their entrances.
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages
William Shakespeare
(1564-1616)

24
3.3 Metonymy

There is no armour against fate
Death lays his icy hand on kings
Sceptre and Crown
Must tumble down
And in the dust be equal made
With the poor crooked Scythe and Spade.
James Shirley (1596-1666)

25
3.4 Synecdoche

They were short of hands at harvest time. (part
for whole)
Have you any coppers? (material for thing made)
He is a poor creature. (genus for species)
He is the Newton of this century. (individual for
class)

Name the kind of trope
The boy was as cunning as a fox.
...the innocent sleep,... the death of each day's
life,... (Shakespeare)
Buckingham Palace has already been told the train
may be axed when the rail network has been
privatised. (Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993)
Ted Dexter confessed last night that England are
in a right old spin as to how they can beat India
this winter. (Daily Mirror, 2 February 1993)

27
4. Analysis of literary language

Foregrounding on the level of lexis
Foregrounding on the level of syntax word order,
word groups, deviant or marked structures
Rewriting for comparative studies
Meaning
Context
Figurative language

28
5. The language of poetry

Little Bo-peep
Has lost her sheep
And doesnt know where to find them
Leave them alone
And they will come home
Waggling their tails behind them

29
Fair is foul and foul is fairHover through wind
and murky air

Hark! The herald angels sing
Glory to the newborn King!

Long burned hair brushesAcross my face its
spiderSilk. I smell lavenderCinnamon my
mothers clothes.
30
5.1 Forms of sound patterning

Rhyme
Alliteration
Assonance
Consonance
Reverse rhyme
Pararhyme
Repetition

Rhyme
two words rhyme if their final stressed vowel and
all following sounds are identical
two lines of poetry rhyme if their final strong
positions are filled with rhyming words.
Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall
All the kings horses and all the kings men
Couldnt put Humpty together again

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Alliteration repetition of the initial consonant
of a word
Magazine articles Science has Spoiled my
Supper and Too Much Talent in Tennessee?
Comic/cartoon characters Beetle Bailey, Donald
Duck
Restaurants Coffee Corner, Sushi Station
Expressions busy as a bee, dead as a doornail,
good as gold, right as rain, etc...
Music Blackalicious' Alphabet Aerobics

Assonance Repetition of vowel sounds to create
internal rhyming within phrases or sentences
The sound of the ground is a noun.
Hear the mellow wedding bells. (Poe)
And murmuring of innumerable bees (Tennyson)
The crumbling thunder of seas (Stevenson)
That solitude which suits abstruser musings
(Coleridge)
Dead in da middle of little Italy, little did
we know that we riddled some middle men
who didn't do diddily. (Big Pun)

Consonance The repetition of two or more
consonants using different vowels within words.
All mammals named Sam are clammy
And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each
purple curtain (Poe)
Rap rejects my tape deck, ejects projectile /
Whether jew or gentile I rank top percentile.
(Hip-hop music)

Reverse rhyme C V C
Coca-Cola Hoola hoops
Such storms can bring you to the brink of all you
fearRestore what faith you can in faded hopes
and feel
Pararhyme (Frame rhyme) C V C
Each sturdy steed-like soldier ranked the
fieldWith fearsome faces seldom seen defiled
Rich Rhyme C V C
What does it avail you to prevail in every
affairWhen nothing youve gained can be regained
as spiritual fare

Repetition
Words, words, words. (Hamlet)
This, it seemed to him, was the end, the end of
a world as he had known it... (James Oliver
Curwood)
We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on
the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields
and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills
we shall never surrender. (Winston Churchill)
What lies behind us and what lies before us are
tiny compared to what lies within us. (Ralph
Waldo Emerson)

38
5.2 Stress patterning

Iamb 2 syllables, unstressed stressed
Trochee 2 syllables, stressed unstressed
Anapest 3 syllables, 2 unstressed stressed
Dactyl 3 syllables, stressed 2 unstressed
Spondee 2 stressed syllables
Pyrrhic 2 unstressed syllables

39
5.3 Metrical patterning

Dimetre 2 feet
Trimetre 3 feet
Tetrametre 4 feet
Pentametre 5 feet
Hexametre 6 feet
Heptametre 7 feet
Octametre 8 feet

40
5.4 Conventional forms of metre and sound

Couplets a pair of lines of verse, usually
connected by a rhyme. It consists of two lines
that usually rhyme and have the same meter.
Whan that Aprille, with hise shoures soote,The
droghte of March hath perced to the rooteAnd
bathed every veyne in swich licour,Of which
vertu engendred is the flour(from Geoffrey
Chaucer Canterbury Tales General Prologue)

Quatrains Stanzas of four lines
Tyger! Tyger! burning bright
In the forests of the night,
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
(from William Blake, The Tyger)

Blank verse lines in iambic pentametre which do
not rhyme
Ye elves of hills, brooks, standing lakes and
groves,
And ye that on the sands with printless foot
Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
When he comes back you demi-puppets that
By moonshine do the green sour ringlets make
Whereof the ewe not bites and you whose pastime
Is to make midnight mushrooms, that rejoice
To hear the solemn curfew by whose aid,
Weak masters though ye be, I have bedimmed
The noontide sun, called forth the mutinous
winds,
And 'twixt the green sea and the azured vault
Set roaring war - to the dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove's stout oak
With his own bolt...
(from Shakespeare The Tempest, 5.1)

Sonnet The term sonnet derives from the
Provençal word sonet and the Italian word
sonetto, both meaning little song. By the
thirteenth century, it had come to signify a poem
of fourteen lines that follows a strict rhyme
scheme and specific structure.
One of the most well known sonnet writers is
Shakespeare, who wrote 154 sonnets.
The proper rhyme scheme for an English Sonnet is
a-b-a-b / c-d-c-d / e-f-e-f / g-g

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
(a)Admit impediments, love is not love (b)Which
alters when it alteration finds, (a)Or bends
with the remover to remove. (b)O no, it is an
ever fixed mark (c)That looks on tempests and is
never shaken (d)It is the star to every
wand'ring bark, (c)Whose worth's unknown
although his height be taken. (d)Love's not
time's fool, though rosy lips and cheeks
(e)Within his bending sickle's compass come,
(f)Love alters not with his brief hours and
weeks, (e)But bears it out even to the edge of
doom (f) If this be error and upon me
proved, (g) I never writ, nor no man ever
loved. (g)
(Shakespeare's Sonnet 116 )

ROMEO If I profane with my unworthiest hand
This holy shrine, the gentle fine is this
My lips, two blushing pilgrims, ready stand
To smooth that rough touch with a tender kiss.
JULIET Good pilgrim, you do wrong your hand too
much,
Which mannerly devotion shows in this
For saints have hands that pilgrims hands do
touch,
And palm to palm is holy palmers kiss.
ROMEO Have not saints lips, and holy palmers
too?
JULIET Ay, pilgrim, lips that they must use in
prayer.
ROMEO O, then, dear saint, let lips do what
hands do
They pray, grant thou, lest faith turn to
despair.
JULIET Saints do not move, though grant for
prayers sake.
ROMEO Then move not, while my prayers effect I
take.
(from Shakespeare Romeo and Juliet)

Free verse styles of poetry that are not written
using strict meter or rhyme, but that still are
recognizable as poetry by virtue of complex
patterns of one sort or another that readers will
perceive to be part of a coherent whole.
The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the
window-panes,The yellow smoke that rubs its
muzzle on the window-panesLicked its tongue into
the corners of the evening,Lingered upon the
pools that stand in drains,Let fall upon its
back the soot that falls from chimneys,Slipped
by the terrace, made a sudden leap,And seeing
that it was a soft October night,Curled once
about the house, and fell asleep.(from T. S.
Eliot The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock)

Limericks
The word derives from the Irish town of Limerick.
Apparently a pub song or tavern chorus based on
the refrain Will you come up to Limerick?
where, of course, such bawdy songs or Limericks
were sung.
Limericks consist of five anapaestic lines.
Lines 1, 2, and 5 of Limericks have seven to ten
syllables and rhyme with one another.
Lines 3 and 4 of Limericks have five to seven
syllables and also rhyme with each other.

Variants of the form of poetry referred to as
Limerick poems can be traced back to the
fourteenth century English history.
Limericks were used in Nursery Rhymes and other
poems for children.
But as limericks were short, relatively easy to
compose and bawdy or sexual in nature they were
often repeated by beggars or the working classes
in the British pubs and taverns of the fifteenth,
sixteenth and seventh centuries.
The poets who created these limericks were
therefore often drunkards! Limericks were also
referred to as dirty.

Limerick poems have received incredibly bad press
and dismissed as not having a rightful place
amongst what is seen as cultivated poetry. The
reason for this is three-fold
The content of many limericks is often of a bawdy
and humorous nature.
A Limerick as a poetry form is by nature simple
and short limericks only have five lines.
And finally the somewhat dubious history of
limericks have contributed to the critics
attitudes.

50
Limericks by Edward Lear

There was an Old Man with a beard,Who said, It
is just as I feared!Two Owls and a Hen,Four
Larks and a Wren,Have all built their nests in
my beard!

There was a Young Lady whose chin,Resembled the
point of a pinSo she had it made sharp,And
purchased a harp,And played several tunes with
her chin.

52
5.5 The poetic functions of sound and metre

Aesthetic pleasure
Conforming to a form
Expressing/innovating with a form
Demonstrating skill, intellectual pleasure
For emphasis or contrast
Onomatopoeia

53
5.6 The analysis of poetry

Info about the poem poet, period, genre, topic,
etc.
Structure layout, number of lines, length of
lines, metre, rhymes, sound effects, etc. plus
general comment on the poem

54
Easter Wings, by George Herbert (15931663)

Lord, who createdst man in wealth and store,
Though foolishly he lost the same,
Decaying more and more,
Till he became Most poore
With thee
O let me rise
As larks, harmoniously,
And sing this day thy victories
Then shall the fall further the flight in me.

55
E. E. Cummings (1894-1962)

l(a
le
af
fa
ll
s)
one
l
iness

r-p-o-p-h-e-s-s-a-g-r                       wh
o   a)s w(e loo)k   upnowgath
                  PPEGORHRASS
                      eringint(o-   aThe)l
             eA                  !p
S
         a                           (r
  rIvInG                         .gRrEaPsPhOs)

        to   rea(be)rran(com)gi(e)ngly
  ,grasshopper

57
6. The language of fiction

From realism to modernism

58
6.1 Modernist literature

Modernist literature is defined by its move away
from Romanticism, venturing into subject matter
that is traditionally mundane--a prime example
being The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock by T.
S. Eliot.
Modernist literature often features a marked
pessimism, a clear rejection of the optimism
apparent in Victorian literature.

A common motif in Modernist fiction is that of an
alienated individual--a dysfunctional individual
trying in vain to make sense of a predominantly
urban and fragmented society.
However, many Modernist works like T. S. Eliot's
The Waste Land are marked by the absence of a
central, heroic figure.

Modernist literature transcends the limitations
of the Realist novel with its concern for larger
factors such as social or historical change this
is largely demonstrated in stream of
consciousness writing.
Examples can be seen in Virginia Woolf's Kew
Gardens and Mrs Dalloway, James Joyce's Portrait
of the Artist as a Young Man and Ulysses, William
Faulkner's The Sound and the Fury, and others.

Modernism as a literary movement is seen, in
large part, as a reaction to the emergence of
city life as a central force in society.

Many Modernist works are studied in schools
today, from Ernest Hemingway's The Old Man and
the Sea, to T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, to
James Joyce's Ulysses and A Portrait of the
Artist as a Young Man.

62
It had been an easy birth, but then for Abel and
Zaphia Rosnovski nothing had ever been easy, and
in their own ways they had both become
philosophical about that. Abel had wanted a son,
an heir who would one day be chairman of the
Baron Group. By the time the boy was ready to
take over, Abel was confident that his own name
would stand alongside those of Ritz and Statler
and by then the Baron would be the largest hotel
group in the world.
63
Abel had paced up and down the colourless
corridor of St. Lukes Hospital waiting for the
first cry, his slight limp becoming more
pronounced as each hour passed. Occasionally he
twisted the silver band that encircled his wrist
and stared at the name so neatly engraved on it.
He turned and retraced his steps once again, to
see Doctor Dodek heading towards him.
Jeffrey Archer The Prodigal Daughter
64
There is the Hart of the Wud in the Eusa Story
that wer a stage every 1 knows that. There is the
hart of the wood meaning the veryes deap of it
thats a nother thing. There is the hart of the
wood where they bern the chard coal thats a
nother thing agen innit. Thats a nother thing.
Berning the chard coal in the hart of the wood.
Thats what they call the stack of wood you see.
The stack of wood in the shape they do it for
chard coal berning. Why do they call it the hart
tho? Thats what this here story tels of.
Russell Hoban Ridley Walker
65

Sir Tristram, violer damores, frover the short
sea, had passen-core rearrived from North
Armorica on this side the scraggy isthmus of
Europe Minor to wielderfight his penisolate war
nor had topsawyers rocks by the stream Oconee
exaggerated themselse to Laurens Countys gorgios
while they went doublin their mumper all the
time nor avoice from afire bellowsed mishe mishe
to tauftauf thuartpeatrick not yet, though
venissoon after, had a kidscad buttended a bland
old isaac not yet, though alls fair in vanessy,
were sosie sesthers wroth with twone nathandjoe.
Rot a peck of pas malt had Jhem or Shen brewed
by arclight and rory end to the regginbrow was to
be seen ringsome on the aquaface.

The fall (bababadalgharaghtakamminarronnkonnbron
ntonner-ronntuonnthunntrovarrhounawnskawntoohoo
hoordenenthur nuk!) of a once wallstrait oldparr
is retaled early in bed and later on life down
through all christian minstrelsy. The great fall
of the offwall entailed at such short notice the
pftjschute of Finnegan, erse solid man, that the
humptyhillhead of humself prumptly sends an
unquiring one well to the west in quest of his
tumptytumtoes and their upturnpikepointandplace
is at the knock out in the park where oranges
have been laid to rust upon the green since
dev-linsfirst loved livvy.
(from James Joyce Finnegans Wake)

67
6.2 Fictional prose and point of view

I-narrators
Third-person narrators
Schema-oriented language
Given vs New information
Deixis

Schema-oriented language different participants
in the same situation will have different
schemas, related to their different viewpoints.
Shopkeepers and their customers will have shop
schemas which in many respects will be mirror
images of one another, and the success of
shopkeepers will depend in part on their being
able to take into account the schemas and points
of view of their customers.

Morley railway station from viewpoint of Fanny
She opened the door of her grimy, branch-line
carriage, and began to get down her bags. The
porter was nowhere, of course, but there was
Harry... There, on the sordid little station
under the furnaces... (D. H. Lawrence Fanny and
Annie)
? unfavorable.

Given vs New information narrative reference to
everything in the fiction except items generally
assumed by everyone in our culture (e.g. the sun)
must be new, and hence should display indefinite
reference.
One evening of late summer, before the nineteenth
century had reached one third of its span, a
young man and woman, the latter carrying a child,
were approaching the large village of
Weydon-Priors, in Upper Wessex, on foot. (Thomas
Hardy The Mayor of Casterbidge)

Deixis reference by means of an expression whose
interpretation is relative to the (usually)
extralinguistic context of the utterance, such as
who is speaking
the time or place of speaking
the gestures of the speaker, or
the current location in the discourse.
Examples of deictic expressions in English
I, You, Now, There, That, The following,
Tenses

Because deixis is speaker-related it can easily
be used to indicate particular, and changing,
viewpoint.
Mr Verloc heard the creaky plank in the floor and
was content. He waited.
Mrs. Verloc was coming.

73
6.3 Speech presentation

Direct speech (DS)
Free indirect speech (FIS)
Indirect speech (IS)
Narrators representation of speech acts (NRSA)
Narrators representation of speech (NRS)

(1) He thanked her many times, and said that the
old dame who usually did such offices for him had
gone to nurse the little scholar whom he had told
her of. (2) The child asked how he was,and hoped
he was better. (3) No, rejoined the
schoolmaster, shaking his head sorrowfully, No
better. (4) They even say he is worse. (Charles
Dickens The Old Curiosity Shop )

75
6.4 Thought presentation

Narrators representation of thought (NRT)
Narrators representation of thought acts (NRTA)
Indirect thought (IT)
Free indirect thought (FIT)
Direct thought (DT)
Stream of consciousness

He will be late, she thought. (DT)
She thought that he would be late. (IT)
He was bound to be late! (FIT)
He spent the day thinking. (NRT)
She considered his unpunctuality. (NRTA)

He will be late
77

Stream of consciousness
Filthy shells. Devil to open them too. Who found
them out? Garbage, sewage they feed on. Fizz and
Red bank oysters. Effect on the sexual. Aphrodis.
(sic) He was in the Red bank this morning. Was he
oyster old fish at table. Perhaps he young flesh
in bed. No. June has no ar (sic) no oysters. But
there are people like tainted game. Jugged hare.
First catch your hare. Chinese eating eggs fifty
years old, blue and green again. Dinner of thirty
courses. Each dish harmless might mix inside.
Idea for a poison mystery. (James Joyce Ulysses )

78
6.5 Prose style

Authorial style way of writing recognizable
across a range of texts written by the same
writer
Text style linguistic choices which are
intrinsically connected with meaning and effect
on the reader
Text style of a book
Text style of a writer

79
6.6 Analyzing the language of fiction

Lexis/vocabulary
Grammatical organization
Textual organization
Figures of speech
Style variation
Discoursal patterning
Viewpoint manipulation

80
7. The language of drama

Drama as poetry
Drama as fiction
Drama as conversation

81
7.1 Analyzing dramatic language

Turn quantity and length
Exchange sequence
Production errors
The cooperative principle
Status marked through language
Register
Speech and silence

Turn Because conversations need to be organised,
there are rules or principles for establishing
who talks and then who talks next. This process
is called turn-taking.
Two guiding principles in conversations
Only one person should talk at a time.
We cannot have silence.
The transition between one speaker and the next
must be as smooth as possible and without a
break.

Ways of indicating that a turn will be changed
Formal methods for example, selecting the next
speaker by name or raising a hand.
Adjacency pairs for instance, a question
requires an answer.
Intonation for instance, a drop in pitch or in
loudness.
Gesture for instance, a change in sitting
position or an expression of inquiry.
The most important device for indicating
turn-taking is through a change in gaze
direction.

The rules of turn-taking are designed to help
conversation take place smoothly. Interruptions
in a conversation are violations of the
turn-taking rule.
Interruption where a new speaker interrupts and
gains the floor.
Butting in where a new speaker tries to gain the
floor but does not succeed.
Overlaps where two speakers are talking at the
same time.

Minimal responses Responses such as mmmm and
yeah.
These are not interruptions but rather are
devices to show the listener is listening, and
they assist the speaker to continue.
They are especially important in telephone
conversations where the speaker cannot see the
listener's eyes and hence must rely on verbal
cues to tell whether the listener is paying
attention.

There is some evidence that women tend to use
minimal responses more than men, and this is a
possible reason why, in mixed conversations, men
talk more than women. With the encouragement of
these minimal responses, men often continue to
talk, and without the encouragement of these
minimal responses, many women will stop talking.

Story-telling within a conversation is indicated
by some kind of preface. This is a signal to the
listener that for the duration of the story,
there will be no turn-taking.
Once the story has finished, the normal sequence
of turn-taking can resume.
Young children, in learning about this
convention, have to be asked not to interrupt
when someone is telling a story within a
conversation.

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7.2 Analyzing dramatic texts