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 Ling 131: Language & Style
 

Topic 1 (session A) - Levels of language: Linguistic levels, style & meaning > Intertextuality

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Session Overview
How Writing Happens ...
Levels of language
Language levels - just a metaphor
Levels of language & advertising slogans
Intertextuality
 
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... More on Intertextuality

Allusion, parodies and pastiches are all forms of intertextual connections affecting meaning, and parodies and pastiches usually involve fairly complex links, acting at more than one linguistic level, between the two texts. Below is a well-known nursery rhyme (first published in 1806 in Rhymes for the Nursery) and a pastiche of it by Lewis Carroll More about Lewis Carroll, from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. We have highlighted the changes from the first to the second version.

Twinkle twinkle little star,
How I wonder what you are!
Up above the world so high,
Like a diamond in the sky!

(Ann Taylor 1782-1866)
(Jane Taylor 1783-1824)

five stars
Moon with the bat in front of it

Twinkle twinkle little bat!
How I wonder what you're at!
Up above the world you fly!
Like a teatray in the sky.

(Lewis Carroll 1832-98)

In pastiche and parody the similarities are as important as the differences. The similarities establish the connection between the two texts. The differences produce the humorous effects.

The similarities involve:

  • the grammatical structure: it is almost identical, apart from the changes in lines 2 and 3,

  • the lexis: it is identical apart from the words marked,

  • the sound structure: because the words are repeated, it is trivial to note that the sounds stay the same too, but note that the rhyme scheme stays the same (AABB) even though the actual rhyme used in lines 1 and 2 changes, and

  • the graphology: both poems use exclamation marks at line ends (though Carroll uses more and varies their position from line to line).

The humour comes from changing 'star' and 'diamond' to 'bat' (which forces the grammar and sound changes at the end of line 2) and 'teatray'. Bats, although we might also wonder at them, are connotatively very different from stars. Many people don't like bats, and so the cosy relationship between parent and child in the original is subverted. We also get a resultant semantic oddity because:

  • we don't normally associate bats with twinkling (though they do change direction rapidly, which is an effect not unlike twinkling in some respects), and

  • comparing bats with teatrays seems ludicrous (even though they may both seem like flat objects when seen from a distance against the light), whereas the comparison between stars and diamonds seems appropriate.

Nursery rhymes, with their obvious patterns, appear to be used by adults to help young children derive pleasure from language patterning and language play, and they are effectively our first introduction to poetry. The sort of pastiche which Carroll produces is clearly related to the sorts of jokes young children make up themselves ('Baa, baa green sheep, Have you any grass?') and helps to teach children (and us) about how intertextuality and humour works.

Note: The examples of intertextuality we have talked about all involve some later piece of writing being connected to an earlier text which it refers back to. Sometimes, though, for particular readers the relationship might be the other way round (for example if you happen to come across the Lewis Carroll lines first and the ones by the Taylor sisters second).

What would the consequences be, do you think? Does this sort of intertextuality have the same sort of status as the kind we have been referring to?

Once you've given these questions some consideration, check out our response

Our Answer

 


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