Book reviews 297

Words at work. Lectures on textual structure. Harlow: Longman, 1986. 138 pp. E 5.95.

Reviewed by Ronald LAND

Words at work is a collection of eight studies about textual structure which Randolph Quirk first gave as lectures at the National University of Singapore in 1985 and 1986. In these essays the author - a highly experienced specialist in old and modem English grammar and English literary studies - sought to assemble the most important and illuminating results of recent research into communication and the structure of discourse.

The first essay, entitled ‘Basics of communication’, discusses “our depend- ence in any communication on our assumptions about the kind, degree, and limits of knowledge Seld in common between author and addressee” (‘p. 73). Communication, written or oral, actualizes profound interactions between the semiotic system of language and the worid, inciuding wide-spread cuiture- bound conventions and other pragmatic conditions.

Essays II-V explore different aspects of textual structure, such as: conven- tions implied in beginning a text or a conversation starting from an assumed base of what is called ‘shared knowledge’ (II: ‘Strategies of beginning’), the various ways in which texts provide the addressee with locational (III: ‘Location and the creation of a world’) and temporal (IV: ‘Time and tense’) orientation. In chapter V (‘Organisation: Content and presentation’) the author exposes the other basic parameters of textual organisation, such as rhetorical devices (triadic arrangement, end-focus), theme-rheme relations, cross-reference, repetition and paraphrase, transitional procedures and other devices insuring textual coherence. The complexity of the relations between content and presentation is illustrated by an example taken from a text about artificial intelligence.

Essay VI (‘Seeking co-operation’) deals with the importance of eliciting co- operation and the various means (linguistic and pragmatic) we dispose of to do so. Essay VII (‘A sense of the appropriate’) presents the factors determi- ning the selection of words and grammatical structure, features of register, style, and other varieties of language. In essay VIII (‘Facing constraint’), finally, various problems of constraint in language use (some of which come close to the concept of appropriateness of the preceding chapter), are brought up, especially those concerning air and marine communication.

The whole study provides a profusion of clear examples taken from spoken

communication, English literature, advertising texts and journalism, without

* Correspondence address: R. Landheer, Rijksuniversiteit vendakstraat 30,2313 PZ Leiden, The Netherlands.

Leiden, Faculteit der Letteren, Duy-

298 Book reviews

neglecting the important role visual and pictorial accompaniments or cues may play in textual messages.

Obviously ‘Basics of communication’ is one of the most fundamental essays. No communication whatever is possible without something like ‘shared knowledge’. Therefore textual organisation mainly implies three kinds of elements, as Quirk‘ points out: intratextual, extratextual and intertextual constituents. The first ones represent our knowledge of linguistic elements, categories and relations; the second ones refer to features of the world around us; the third to other texts (in the broadest sense). Nothing wrong with it, of course, but this reviewer thinks the author missed the occasion to link these relevant factors to some other current issues in linguistics, particularly the complex relations between competence and performance, or rather those between linguistic competence and other kinds of competence, communicative or cultural. Although Quirk’s triadic analysis could have been put in a theoretical framework, joining recent discussion about the relevant factors of language and communication, the author leaves this point aside. Thus, talking about inference and citing several instances of “unidiomatic” (p. 22) and other deviant texts and utterances, Quirk might have argued (and indeed this must be his position) that they are not ‘performancial’ at all, but proceed from real competence factors. Texts of all kinds (literature, science, advertising, as well as isolated texts like slogans, aphorisms, etc.) do not only display intratextual constituents (that appeal to our linguistic competence), but also extratextual and intertextual constituents, referring to our communicative, pragmatic or cultural competence. Let’s take, in addition to Quirk’s English examples, the following simple French utterance:

- Je depense, done je suis. ‘I spend, therefore I am.’

Clearly this may be seen as an (intratextualj anomaly, a rhetorical, interpret table deviance (cf. Landheer (1984)). But its real and total meaning cannot be inferred from the content and the interrelations of the words in question. If we don’t take into account the existence of Descartes’ adage ‘Cogito, ergo sum’ (in French: ‘Je pense, done je suis’, i.e. ‘I think, therefore I am’), i.e. the intertextual constituent, nor the fact that the utterance is not pronounced in Cartesius’ seventeenth century, but in our own consumer society (the extra- textual constituent), we quite miss the meaning of it. The surface aspects of ‘normal’ utterances as well as those of ‘deviant’ utterances are rarely exclusive- ly a matter of language norms or language deviance, nor a matter of purely individual options, but basically the resultant of intricate universal intuitions about word-world relations. It is certainly one of Quirk’s merits to have stressed this point, although it is surprising that in this context he avoids any allusion to the competence-performance discussion in linguistics.

Book reviews 299

Another topic in which our communicative competence plays an extremely important role is the notion of appropriacy, especially dealt with in the seventh essay, but almost a kind of leitmotiv in Quirk’s study. The necessity to make “the language of every discourse appropriate to the occasion” (p. 104) and the need to master the “varieties of appropriate language” (p. 107) are of primary importance indeed. It may seem strange, however, that a rather detailed passage about discriminatory language use has been ranged in the chapter about constraints on language use (VIII), instead of the cne that deals with appropriacy (VII). He gives some striking examples of “current linguistic practices to which feminists not surprisingly object” (p. 129), like the following:

- Sharing our railway compartment were two Norwegians and their wives.

and

- My ambition is to have . . . mothers and children.

a family show. People would bring their wives,

Apparently nationality names and a word like people can easily be taken as implying males only . . . Quirk speaks in this respect of “deep-seated . . . built-in linguistic constraints” (p. 13 1). owever, this reviewer really does not see any constraint here, but simply m ifestations of sexist discourse, or, to put it more gently : of inappropriate language use! Quirk himself must have been aware of this, because he states in this connection that “if it is desirable to improve physical behaviour, it is necessary to improve the linguistic behaviour which refers to it” (p. 129). Well, constraints can hardly be c habits and behaviour are, indeed, changeable and even impro

One might be surprised that in a study about ‘words at work’ the topic of figurative and especially metaphorical language is scarcely treated. There are only some marginal and scattered remarks about metaphor, for instance about the desirability of “[slustaining a metaphor (and more particularly avoiding a mixture of metaphors)” (p. Il5), and about the metaphor of “temporal location” (p. 58), accounting for “interactions between temporal and spatial expression” (ibid.), and especially the expression of spatial measure in terms of temporal measure (cf. light-years and the etymology of a word like journey). But nowhere has been stressed the essential role metaphorical concepts play in the structuring of discourse. Thus, for instance in the essay about ‘Location and the creation of a world’, this topic and some reference to the insightful study about metaphor of Lakoff and Johnson (1980) would not have been out of place.

One would also have expected in a study about textual structure some remarks about the important noLion of isotopy, since the very illuminating

300 Book reviews

studies concerning this topic written by scholars like Greimas, Eco and Van Dijk (almost surpassed quite recently by Rastier). Quirk only speaks of “the lexical structure of communication” (p. 114 sq.; i.e. an appropriate and cohe- rent selection of words; internal lexical harmony, and the like), and the possibility to read (part of) a text “in two ways” is also mentioned (p. 116), but no allusion at all is made to the notions of syllepsis (cf. Riffaterre (1980)) and (double) isotopy and to their interest in the cohesion of texts. Introduc- tion of these notions would have interested those who are “professionally involved in the analysis of language”, without being of non-interest for “other professional communicators” (text on the cover).

Still another correction may be useful. It concerns the notions of ‘logical conditional’ and ‘pragmatic conditional’, exposed in the essay ‘Seeking co- operation’. As an example of a logical conditional is given: ‘If you now examine your own copy of this book, you will see (. . .)‘; an example of a

atic conditional is: ‘If you remember, I introduced in my first lecture a tion (. . .)‘. These two conditionals are similar inasfar as they function as

_.I^_ directives to the addressee (pp. 102403). The different IEVWGGU ih~i 1ies,

according to Quirk, in the fact that the logical conditional ‘If x, then y’ (in contrast with the pragmatic one) permits the inference ‘If not x, then not y’: ‘If you don’t examine your copy, you won’t see . . .‘. This statement may seem true in our ordinary logic and in our day-to-day discourse practice, but it

be noticed that it is an oversimplification: ‘If x’ is a so-called sz.@cient tion and the inference ‘If not x, then not y’ is only correct with a

necessary condition: ‘If and only if x’. Perhaps it would not have ry or even useful to give this rather technical detail, if language

consumers were not so often manipulated, for instance in advertising and other kinds of ‘persuasive’ language, by this insidious transition from the sufficient to the necessary condition: ‘if you buy x, you will be happy’, clearly s eed to buy x, to be happy’ . . .

In spite of these little shortcomings (the lack of an index might also be considered as one of them), Quirk’s book is quite a valuable an study. We must not forget that this publication is, in fact, a collection of lectures: Obviously an audience has other requirements than readers. In any case Words at work can be recommended to anyone who appreciates a remarkably lucid and readable overview of some major problems of commu- nication and textual structure.

eferences

Eco, Umberto, 1984. Semiotica e filosofia de1 linguaggio. Torino: Greimas, A. J., 1966. Skmantique structurale. Paris: Larousse.

Giulio Einaudi.

Book reviews 301

Lakoff, George and Mark Johnson. 1980. Metaphors we live by. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

Landheer, Ronald, 1984. Aspects linguistiques et pragmatico-rhetoriques de l’ambigu!t& (Thesis). University of Leyden.

Rastier, Francois, 1987. La timantique interptitative. Paris: Presses Universitaims de France. Riffaterre, Michael, 1980. ‘Syllepsis’. In: Critical Inquiry 6: 625-638. Van Dijk, Teun A., 1981. Studies in the pragmatics of discourse. The Hague: Mouton.

as a science. Bloomington, IN: Indiana Univer-

Reviewed by Petr PIT’HA*

In order to enjoy the book under review, one should not read it merely as a technical text, but rather enter into a dialogue with its author, whose views are wise and tolerant, although he holds a very firm position. V, presents here his linguistic credo. In a most comprehensive way, he explains the basic foundations of our discipline, and it is remarkable how he changes what appeared as well-known banalities into profoundly new insights. The book, however short, is a summary of a lifelong work and experience in research. Though the ideas, as presented here, seem to be radically new, they can be recognized as natural descendents of the author’s previous concerns and insights (especially in what is known as the ‘depth theory’), in which he embraces computer science as -well as large domains of the humanities.

In the first chapter, the author states that in the development of modem linguistics, one theory emerges after another and that nowadays a large number of theories compete with each other; since the individual theories cannot be integrated into a single whole, this diversity does not document a growth of incontestable knowledge. Also, empirical progress is of an uncertain value if it cannot be included in such a whole. Yngve’s firm standpoint is that a single domain of science should be handled by a single theory and that the abundancy of linguistic theories which (directly or polemically) take their point of departure in transformational grammar and their claim to constitutte the only adequate framework of linguistic description, can only be understood as a crisis in linguistic thought.

In a situation where the need of a new paradigm for linguistics is clearly felt, the author proposes to reconsider the very substance of the assumptions

* This review was written during the author’s stay at the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Wassenaar, Holland.

Correspondence address: P. Pit’ha, Faculty of Mathematics and Physics, Charles University, Malostranskk namesti 25, @S-l 18 00 Prague 1, Czechoslovakia.