LITERARY USE OF LANGUAGE AND NON LITERARY USE OF LANGUAGE

DISTINGUISH CLEARLY BETWEEN THE LITERARY USE OF LANGUAGE AND THE NON LITERARY USE OF LANGUAGE

 

Literature can be defined as anything in print. Thus timetables, catalogues, text books, etc., may all be regarded as literature.

But when we talk of literature we speak of it in a deeper sense. Thus another way of defining literature is to limit it to ‘great books’, i.e., books which are notable for their literary form or expression. These books are selected on aesthetic grounds or for their intellectual eminence or the general force of presentation.

Unlike most kinds of writing, literature is not concerned merely or primarily with the communication of facts. For instance, one would compare a piece of writing about London from an encyclopedia with a poem ‘Westminster Bridge’ written by Wordsworth. The purpose of the former is to give as many facts about London as possible, whereas, words worth wanted to communicate feelings, not information. Thus, while a piece of writing from the encyclopedia is literature in a broader sense, the poem is literature in the fuller and deeper sense.

We could therefore say that ‘literature is writing which expresses and communicates thoughts, feelings and attitudes towards life’.

But then, one can argue that there are other kinds of writings which also perform the same function, for e.g., advertisements and journals. However, according to R.J.Rees, such writing is not literature in the true sense because it lacks one of the qualities that make serious literature i.e. permanence. The advertisement writer and the journalist is concerned only with people of his own time…

The novelist on the other hand or the poet hopes that his works will be permanent.

One way of understanding literature is by considering its special use of language. Language is the medium, which the writer uses to communicate his/her thoughts and visions. Thus language is a material out of which literature is made, just like stone or metal is a medium of the sculptor, paints of the artist, sounds of the musician. However, we should realize that language is a creation of human beings and thus undergoes changes in the course of time. Writers using language record their experiences of life and what they have thought and felt about those experiences of life which have most immediate and enduring interest for all of us. We can then say that literature is fundamentally an expression of life expressed through the medium of language.

Here we have to distinguish the ‘literary’ use of language mainly from the ‘scientific’ language on one hand and the everyday use of language on the other hand. Literary example is connotative in nature, while scientific language is denotative in nature. Literary language abounds with ambiguities permeated with memories and associations. It has its expressive sides and conveys the tone and attitude of the writer instead of merely stating what it says.  Literary language is self referential and tries to draw attention to itself – all kinds of techniques have been devised to draw attention to it, for e.g., metre, alliteration etc.

Not all linguistic durations are considered as literature. If one says that literature is a special kind of language in contrast with ordinary language, then we must first ask, what is this ordinary language? There is no single normal language shared equally by all members of society. Any language consists of highly complex range of discourses differentiated according to class, religion, gender, status, etc and which cannot be neatly unified into a single homogeneous linguistic community. One person’s norm may be another person’s deviation.

According to De Quincey, all that is literature seeks to communicate power, whereas all that is not literature seeks only to communicate knowledge. Thus De Quincey’s distinctions divided writing into literature which serves a didactic purpose and literature which has no end beyond itself. ‘A poem must not mean but be’. There are texts which exist to state an argument, record facts or convert to an opinion but it is literature of the second class which is ‘real’ literature. It belongs to the domain of fine arts. Poetry, drama and fiction when treated artistically cannot like didactic literature be proved right or wrong. They are subject to their own laws which are apprehended not by decisive reason but by intuition, imagination and esthetic sense. Both kinds of literature may be concerned with truth but they arrive at it in different ways – the first by judgment, and the second by intuition.

According to R. J. Rees, good literature is that which has originality. He says ‘of course no work of art can be original through and through. To find an original subject for example for a novel would be almost impossible task since writers have already dealt in one way or another with almost every imaginable situation, but the novelist may nevertheless see an old idea or story in a new light’. None of Shakespeare’s plays were original in the sense that the stories and characters were created, so to speak, out of nothing. Hamlet and Macbeth were real historical characters, Othello was in all probability a character invented by an Italian novel-writer; but the plays Shakespeare made out of these figures were truly original in the sense that they showed old characters and stories and situations in a new and fascinating light. Most good literature is traditional and original at the same time.

It must be remembered that the central themes of all literature – life, love and death – are in themselves unchanging; so are most of our ideas about these great subjects. Yet writers continue to discover new ways of looking at them and will continue to do so as long as mankind exists. Originality then consists not in inventing themes but in seeing and expressing the old unalterable themes in a new way.

This is also what Pope meant when he said ‘True wit in nature to advantage drest; / what oft was thought, but ne’er so well exprest’.

If there is now a tendency to overvalue originality in literature and the other arts, there is an equal tendency to undervalue the quality of technical skill or craftsmanship. Writing is not only a matter of ideas and inspiration, but also of practice and technique. Pope in his Essay on Criticism says: “True ease in writing comes from art, not Chance; / as those move easiest who have learnt to dance”.

In conclusion, one can only say that it is not possible or desirable to come to a definite conclusion about what literature is. 18^th century critic Boswell asked Dr. Johnson, “Then, sir, what is poetry?” Dr. Johnson replied: ‘Why, sir, it is much easier to say what it is not. We all know what light is, but it is not easy to tell what it is’.