Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Question 4:what can we say about the graphology of the poem?
(Refer to units A2 and B2 when undertaking these activities)
How is the poem as language ‘on the page’ formally organised? What impact does its
visual arrangement have on other levels of language? In particular, how does the
graphology of the poem complement (or interfere with) its grammatical organisation?
Question 5:what can we say about vocabulary and word-
structure in the poem?
(Refer to this thread and to units A2 and B2 when undertaking these activities)
Are there any individual words or word-structures that are foregrounded? Does
anything deviate from the ordinary, and if so, how does it intersect with other levels
of language like sound and rhythm?
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Question 6:in what other ways might the poem have been written?
(Refer to unit B3 and to any other units of the book which contain rewrites and
transposition exercises)
How might the poem read if its basic stylistic organisation (at any level of language)
were altered? In particular, what would happen if its grammatical structure were
rearranged into a more linear representation?
Summary
This unit has interrogated a single text using a set of questions which draw on material
from a number of units in the book. Other questions could of course be asked of 
the same text. The poem’s organisation as 
narrative
represents one such line of inquiry.
It is noticeable, for instance, that the conjunction ‘before’ near the start of the poem
signals a so-called ‘previous to given time’ relationship. This means that the later 
event (the comber turning into a breaker) is relayed first and, in an inversion of nat-
ural narrative ordering, the earlier event (‘water and sunlight contain . . .’) is relayed
second. However, developing further this sort of angle requires a fuller account of the
organisation of narrative. Providing such an account is the remit of the next unit.
A SOCIOLINGUISTIC MODEL OF NARRATIVE
This unit makes some practical suggestions for exploring further the structure of
narrative. It draws upon one particular model of narrative: the framework of 
natural
narrative
developed by the sociolinguist William Labov. Labov’s concept of narrative
structure, which has already featured in this strand (A5), has proved a productive
model of analysis in stylistics. After a brief sketch of the model, some narrative texts
will be introduced and some practical activities developed around them.
Labov’s narrative model
The enduring appeal of Labov’s model of natural narrative is largely because its
origins are situated in the everyday discourse practices of real speakers in real social
contexts. Working from a corpus of hundreds of stories told in the course of casual
conversation by informants from many different backgrounds, Labov isolates the
core, recurrent features that underpin a fully formed natural narrative. Six key
categories are rendered down from this body of data (Labov 1972: 359–60). Each of
these categories serves to address a hypothetical question about narrative structure
(‘What is this story about?’, ‘Where did it take place?’ and so on) so each category
fulfils a different function in a story. Table C5.1 lists the six categories, the hypo-
thetical questions they address and their respective narrative functions. The table also
provides information on the sort of linguistic forms that each component typically
takes. With the exception of Evaluation, the categories listed on the Table are arranged
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Table C5.1
Labov’s model of natural narrative