Stylistics routledge English Language Introductions

Macbeth:
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow,
Creeps in this petty pace from day to day.
(
Macbeth,
V.v.19–20)
Here, three occurrences of the temporal adverb ‘tomorrow’ are tied together with
the coordinating conjunction ‘and’ to form an Adjunct. As the play draws to its
conclusion, the grim inevitability of its denouement is signalled in this sequence of
repetition, delivered here with an almost laboured monotony. The inexorability of
the passage of time is picked up again at the end of the sequence with the repetition
of another temporal adverb in the Adjunct ‘day to day’. Thus, grammatical structure
works to create temporal ‘book-ends’ around the main Predicator (‘Creeps in’) and
Subject (‘this petty pace’) elements. The stylistic effectiveness of this configuration
can be tested simply by pulling it apart; the following ‘unravelled’ version has little
impact and nor does it seem to make much sense:
This petty pace creeps in from day to day
Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow
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D E V E L O P M E N T

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This point leads to another issue about grammatical patterning which concerns
the positioning of various elements of clause structure in a particular text. Imagine
the Subject, Predicator and Complement elements of a main clause as the hub around
which satellite structures, principally Adjuncts and subordinate clauses, can be placed.
In the Shakespeare example, Adjuncts are placed on either side of that hub. In such
situations, where the weighting of elements on either side of a Subject and Predicator
is balanced, we use the term 
equivalent constituents
to explain this stylistic technique.
However, the following sequence, which is the opening two lines of Michael Longley’s
poem ‘The Ghost Orchid’ displays a rather different pattern:
You walked with me among water mint
And bog myrtle when I was tongue-tied . . .
(Longley 1995)
The two Adjunct elements, filled by the prepositional phrases ‘with me’ and ‘among
water mint and bog myrtle’, along with the subordinate clause (‘when I was tongue
tied’), come after the hub of the clause. 
Trailing constituents
is the term used in
stylistics for units which follow the Subject and Predicator in this way.
Finally, to the reverse technique, where Adjuncts and subordinate clauses are
placed before the main Subject-Predicator matrix. When this occurs, the initial
elements are known as 
anticipatory constituents
. Here is good illustration of the prin-
ciple at work in a piece of narrative description from Joseph Conrad’s novella 
The
Secret Sharer
. The anticipatory constituents have been highlighted:
On my right hand
there were lines of fishing-stakes resembling a mysterious system of
half submerged fences . . . 
To the left
a group of barren islets had its foundations set in
a blue sea . . . 
And when I turned my head to take a parting glance
, I saw the straight
line of the flat shore . . . 
Corresponding in their insignificance to the islets of the sea
, two
small clumps of trees . . .
(Conrad 1995 [1912]: 1)
These initial elements serve to orientate each sequence of unfolding description within
the spatial perspective of the first person narrator. In their analysis of the grammar of
this same passage, Leech and Short (1981: 83–9) note how the description is etched
with meticulous detail in such a way that we are able to construct in our mind’s eye
the whole topography as perceived by the passage’s lone human observer.
Illustrating grammar in action: Dickens’s famous fog
Thus far in our developing model of grammar, short illustrations from literary texts
have been used to illustrate each of the various categories introduced. In order to
show how a range of devices of grammar can work simultaneously in a text, it will
be useful to close this unit by focussing on a slightly longer passage. Much beloved
of stylisticians because of its foregrounded patterns of language, this text is the second
paragraph of Charles Dickens’s novel 
Bleak House
, reproduced here with sentences
numbered for convenience:
11
111
11
111
S E N T E N C E S T Y L E S : D E V E L O P M E N T A N D I L L U S T R A T I O N
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(1) Fog everywhere. (2) Fog up the river, where it flows among green aits and meadows;
fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the water-
side pollutions of a great (and dirty) city. (3) Fog on the Essex Marshes, fog on the
Kentish heights. (4) Fog creeping into the cabooses of collier-brigs; fog lying out on 
the yards, and hovering in the rigging of great ships; fog drooping on the gunwales of
barges and small boats. (5) Fog in the eyes and throats of ancient Greenwich pensioners,
wheezing by the firesides of their wards; fog in the stem and bowl of the afternoon pipe
of the wrathful skipper, down in his close cabin; fog cruelly pinching the toes and fingers
of his shivering little ’prentice boy on deck. (6) Chance people on the bridges peeping
over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog all round them, as if they were up
in a balloon, and hanging in the misty clouds.
(Dickens 1986 [1853]: 49)
Rather than attempt to tease out every significant stylistic feature of this famous para-
graph – such an undertaking would on its own take up a whole unit and more – we
shall restrict ourselves to analysis of just five noteworthy grammatical patterns in this
text. Commentary on these patterns will be kept brief.