Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Feature 1
A key stylistic feature is the way the central noun ‘fog’ is elaborated (or perhaps more
accurately, ‘un-elaborated’) throughout the passage. It is a resource of grammar that
nouns commonly enter into combinations with other words so that any particular or
special quality they possess can be identified and picked out. Thus, in a phrase like ‘the
thick grey fog nearby’, the grammatical slots around the word ‘fog’ are filled up by a
determiner (‘the’), two adjectives (‘thick grey’) and an adverb (‘nearby’). However,
none of the available slots are thus filled in the passage and this marked absence of
grammatical modification makes the central noun, ‘fog’, emerge as stark, undifferen-
tiated and (literally) undetermined. Its characterless quality is reinforced by compar-
ison, in that many other nouns in the passage receive precisely this sort of grammatical
modification: eg. ‘green aits’, ‘waterside pollutions’ and ‘a great (and dirty) city’.
Feature 2
A popular interpretation of this passage is to see it as a text with ‘no verbs’. This is
not strictly accurate, however, because only in the first three sentences and in part
of sentence (5) have verbs been excised completely. In any case, there are plenty of
verbs in the numerous subordinate clauses in the passage. A more rigorous stylistic
description would therefore stipulate that the passage displays a restricted verbal
development in its main clauses. In the opening sentences, the Predicator element
has been ellipsed completely, and this takes with it all sense of verbal process. Later
in the passage, from sentence (4), part of the Predicator element is offered, but signif-
icantly, one key element is omitted. This element, known as the 
finite
, is often
expressed by auxiliary verbs and it serves to provide, among other things, tense,
polarity and grammatical agreement with the Subject. By offering only the main
verbal component in ‘lying’, ‘creeping’ and ‘pinching’, Dickens effectively splits the
Predicator in two so that we get a sense of ongoing process, but no indication of
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D E V E L O P M E N T

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tense. Trying out the tag tests developed in unit A3 is revealing in this respect. Applied
to the sequence ‘Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs’, the tag test would
pick out ‘Fog’ as Subject without any trouble, but the absence of a finite verbal particle
creates problems in choosing a tense for the tag:
Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs [wasn’t it?/isn’t it?]
Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs, [so it is/so it was]
So while these clause patterns indicate both a basic verbal process and the location
of that process, they offer no indication of tense, a consequence of which is that it
is difficult to establish a time frame for the events narrated. Whereas the fog’s
omnipresence in the spatial context is well grounded, there is little sense of concrete
anchoring in the corresponding temporal context.