Text Meaning Context:

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PETER LANG

Frankfurt am Main · Berlin · Bern · Bruxelles · New York · Oxford · Warszawa · Wien

Text – Meaning – Context:

Cracow Studies in English Language, Literature and Culture

Edited by

El˙zbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska Władysław Witalisz

Advisory Board:

Monika Coghen (Jagiellonian University, Cracow) Hans-Jürgen Diller (Ruhr-University, Bochum) Marta Gibi ´nska-Marzec (Jagiellonian University, Cracow)

Irene Gilsenan Nordin (Dalarna University, Falun) Christoph Houswitschka (University of Bamberg)

Zenón Luis Martínez (University of Huelva)

El˙zbieta Ma ´nczak-Wohlfeld (Jagiellonian University, Cracow) Terence McCarthy (University of Bourgogne, Dijon)

Andrzej Pawelec (Jagiellonian University, Cracow) Hans Sauer (University of Munich)

Olga Vorobyova (Kiev National Linguistic University)

Volume 4

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PETER LANG

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften

Grzegorz Szpila

Idioms in

Salman Rushdie’s Novels

A Phraseo-Stylistic Approach

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Bibliographic Information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek

The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data is available in the internet at http://dnb.d-nb.de.

Reviewed by El˙zbieta Ma ´nczak-Wohlfeld and Wolfgang Mieder

Cover Design:

The publication was financially supported by Jagiallonian University, Cracow.

ISSN 2191-1894 ISBN 978-3-631-63740-1

Internationaler Verlag der Wissenschaften Frankfurt am Main 2012

All parts of this publication are protected by copyright. Any utilisation outside the strict limits of the copyright law, without

the permission of the publisher, is forbidden and liable to prosecution. This applies in particular to reproductions, translations, microfilming, and storage and processing in

electronic retrieval systems.

www.peterlang.de

(Print) ISBN 978-3-653-02169-1 (E-Book) DOI 10.3726/978-3-653-02169-1

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In memory of my mother

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Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the Institute of English Philology at the Jagiellonian University in Kraków, whose financial assistance made this publication possible.

I would like to thank Prof. Elbieta Chrzanowska-Kluczewska, Prof. Elbieta Maczak-Wohlfeld and Prof. Wolfgang Mieder for their support and invaluable critical remarks on the manuscript of this book.

My great debt of gratitude is to Ann Cardwell, for proofreading my book and for being the best friend.

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Abbreviations

1. Salman Rushdie’s works

H Haroun and the Sea of Stories IH Imaginary Homelands

S Shame

MC Midnight’s Children

G Grimus

MLS The Moor’s Last Sigh SV The Satanic Verses

GBHF The Ground Beneath Her Feet

F Fury

SC Shalimar the Clown

EF The Enchantress of Florence LFL Luka and the Fire of Life

2. Dictionaries

CCDI Collins Cobuild Dictionary of Idioms CDS Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang

CIDI Cambridge International Dictionary of Idioms DAI A Dictionary of American Idioms

DEI Dictionary of English Idioms EP English Phraseology EI English Idioms

HAID Harrap’s American Idioms Dictionary LDEI A Learner’s Dictionary of English Idioms

LID Longman Idioms Dictionary

ODCIE Oxford Dictionary of Current Idiomatic English, vol. 2: Phrase, Clause

& Sentence Idioms

OI Oxford Idioms Dictionary for Learners of English TDAI NTC’s Thematic Dictionary of American Idioms

WDI The Wordsworth Dictionary of Idioms

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Introduction

“Language upon a silvered tongue affords enchantment enough” (SC 75) says the emperor Akbar with reference to Mogore dell’Amore’s talent to charm not only the Great Listener but also less important individuals with words and stories woven out of words. Humans are born to use language, as Aitchison notes, but besides communication they employ it for a variety of reasons, one of which is simply enjoyment (2007: xi). Salman Rushdie, however, does not seem to deploy language for the pleasure of enchantment, and neither does Mogore dell’Amore. Both the writer and the character in SC see an end to the linguistic means, either spoken or written. Rushdie does not believe in the pure aesthetics of language, as he says in an interview, adding that for him the use of form has meaning (Chauhan 2001: 49).

This is seen in the words of Uccello di Firenze, whose purpose behind his captivating narrative is to cajole the emperor Akbar into believing and trusting him.

For Rushdie, his purpose is to go beyond the form to achieve his pre-conceived aims regarding the message(s) communicated via his texts, as well as the no less important objective of establishing his personal literary style with its specific aesthetic value. To my mind, both the writer and one of his fictional characters are extraordinarily successful in their not so different ways.

With regard to the linguistic aspect of Rushdie’s novels, a further character, this time the narrator of GBHF, encapsulates the writer’s approach to the language used by observing “tales [are] told not in plain language, but adorned with every kind of extravagant embellishment and curlicue, flamboyant, filled with the love of pyrotechnics and display” (GBHF 387). Thus Rushdie provides the perfect description of his own works. Although not every reader will enjoy his novels in their entirety, it would be impossible for anyone to deny his extraordinary use of language. An assessment of Salman Rushdie’s novels, an appreciation of his artistic inventions, and an attraction to his linguistic flair provoke a very personal reaction in each and every reader of his prosaic creations. Having said that, and personal tastes aside, the author’s language invites analysists, especially stylisticians, to examine the very many ways in which Rushdie speaks to the readers.

As a consequence, Salman Rushdie has been chosen for this analysis due to his

“certain verbal dexterity that defines [him] as a great writer” (Reder 2000: 199).

Little, mirabile dictu, has been written about his language so far. References to his linguistic creativity can be found within critical essays and books which focus predominantly on the substance, not the purely linguistic form of his works, although the relationship between the former and the latter are eloquently acknowledged. Many critics have referred to Rushdie’s language and style, describing his novels as “feats of linguistic inventiveness” (Dutheil de la Rochère 1999: xxiii), with SV being praised for its “language and artistic creation”

(Bardolph 1994: 209), S evincing Rushdie’s “Joycean experiments in language”

(Tikoo 1992: 62), MC and SV commended for their “linguistic exuberance”

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(Harrison 1992: 33), H demonstrating Rushdie’s “continual play of language” (ibid:

10), MC, S and SV deemed “innovative” linguistically (ibid. 120), GBHF defined as

“linguistically creative” (Concilio 2006: 135) because it exemplifies a

“florabundant flourish of language” (Gonzalez 2005: 146), and SC characterized by

“Rushdie’s trademark exuberance of style” (Teverson 2007: 107) amongst others.

One of the aspects that define Rushdie’s linguistic finesse is his use of phraseological units, and this includes idioms. Not only does Salman Rushdie make frequent use of them, but he also deploys them with an eye to bringing to light and life their many-faceted nature and putting them to specific functional uses. The abundance of idioms in his novels as well as the writer’s exploitation of their semantic, functional and stylistic potential justifies the choice of Salman Rushdie’s prose for a stylistic examination.

This choice is behind the description of the idioms in Salman Rushdie’s prose works in this book, which has five primary aims: three relatively specific and two rather more general. With regard to the former, the first specific aim is to analyse the actualizations of idioms in all Salman Rushdie’s eleven novels. A detailed scrutiny of the forms presupposes a discussion of the idiomatic presence in texts in general and in Rushdie’s books in particular, that is the identification of idioms in the fabric of a given text is based on what is called in this book phraseological or idiomatic reading. The identification of idioms is a sine qua non for a presentation and examination of idiomatic actualizations, and includes idioms’ canonical forms as well as their modified shapes. As to the second aim, the book describes the formal characteristics of the idioms deployed by Rushdie. This description is complemented and completed by a characterization of their contextual functionalizations. An analysis of the functions of the idiomaticon employed by Salman Rushdie in his books aspires to exhaustively cover all the purposes to which the novelist puts the idiomatic phraseology in his works. The third specific aim is to speculate as to the reason(s) behind the idiomatic use, with the book attempting to ascertain the governing function(s) of idioms in Salman Rushdie’s novels vis à vis his employment of figurative language in general, as well as his treatment of language as a mode of artistic expression.

As regards the two more general objectives, which by no means can be divorced from those mentioned above, I essay to explain what is meant by phraseo- stylistics, a sub-branch of linguistic and literary stylistics, which provides the tools with which to examine the use of idioms in a novel and in addition demonstrates how other phraseological units may be investigated. On the other hand, I try to establish how a stylistic analysis of literary texts can inform the knowledge of the form, semantics and pragmatics of idioms as a phraseological category. Limited and genre-bound as my linguistic material may be, the analysis of idioms in the present book is corpus-based, so by default it highlights the authentic use of idioms, reflecting not only the general tendencies of usage but also revealing genre-specific and author-specific features.

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Introduction 17

Phraseological units – called in the present book phraseologisms or phrasemes as a general term – are not only plentiful in language and omnipresent in communication, they are also extremely varied as a class. An analysis of all the types of phraseological units will not be embarked upon in this book due to their diversified characteristic features. Only one type of phraseme has been chosen to be examined from a phraseo-stylistic perspective, namely idioms. The choice of idioms has been made for a number of reasons. Firstly, idioms are central phrasemes, they are the prototypical phraseological units and show the most idiosyncratic features within phraseologisms. Secondly, idioms form a comparatively homogenous group of units as far as their textual identification is concerned. Thirdly, they are a phraseological group that has been relatively well studied, a fact which has resulted in a wide literature on the subject, and in consequence this allows me to draw on the numerous characteristics of idioms, incorporating the latter as tools in my analysis of their use in Salman Rushdie’s works and prose writing in general. Fourthly, it is idioms that offer the most interesting material for a stylistic analysis as they most eloquently participate in the formation of meanings, functions and stylistic effects. Last but not least, they are abundant and conspicuous in Salman Rushdie’s prose, which is the linguistic corpus for my phraseological analysis.

The book begins therefore by discussing the main issues of phraseology. By defining phraseological units, elaborating on the syntactic, semantic and pragmatic features of idioms, the first chapter characterizes from a linguistic point of view and specifically a phraseological perspective the units of language which will be the subject of the phraseo-stylistic analysis in the later chapters. Chapter 1 does not claim to be an exhaustive examination of English phraseology or phraseology in general, as many issues related to the non-prototypical classes of phraseological units are omitted as well as many aspects of idioms are not elaborated upon or even touched upon as they are less relevant to the stylistic analysis of the idiomatic material in question. This section does not aspire to redefine phraseology and yet again establish new classes of phraseological units dependent upon their characteristic features, or recategorize them to serve a particular purpose in the analysis. There is one exception, however, with the introduction in Chapter 1 of the term “idiomateme”, a term on which the theoretical deliberations and practical analyses are based to a large extent. The idiomateme of an idiom is understood as a network of formal and semantic relations that may be evoked by each instance of an idiom’s use. In my description of Rushdie’s idioms the idiomateme plays an important role in accounting for both the formal shape and semantic content of idioms as well as the functions whole idioms, as well as their constituents, perform in the larger context of their embedding.

As Rushdie’s idioms are considered from three general perspectives: lexical, phraseological and figurative, it is essential to define their place in the figurative mode through their deployment in Rushdie’s prose, as well as determine their

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position with reference to other phraseological classes employed by the novelist.

Therefore, apart from the issue of phraseological and idiomatic saturation (in terms of a statistical assessment and the perception of their functionalization), Chapter 2 addresses the contribution of idioms to the creation of Rushdie’s figurative style and their interaction with other exponents of Rushdie’s figurative language. It also addresses other phraseological resources to do justice to the writer’s wide application of fixed expressions.

Chapter 3 treats idioms as stylistic means representative of lexical material with which a literary text may be built. Idioms are viewed as a group of foregrounded elements in the novels by Salman Rushdie, evinced by at least two common techniques via which they are brought into relief, namely, deviation and parallelism/repetition. These as well as other techniques are discussed in more detail in the last chapter of the book. Chapter 3 also contains a section on the incorporation of phraseology into a study of stylistics, the result of which is a postulated sub-branch of stylistic studies, namely phraseo-stylistics. Certain ways are considered in which phraseology, including idioms, can be examined as an essential component contributing to the final assessment of a work of literature.

Finally, the chapter enumerates a number of reasons behind the choice of idioms as lexical means in literary texts, with Rushdie’s works serving as apposite examples.

This last section in the chapter juxtaposes idioms with other phraseological and non-phraseological tools, explaining why inherent or textually relevant features of idioms make them the perfect choice not only in the conveyance of particular senses, but also in the performance of particular functions, and in the creation of stylistic effects.

The analytical parts of the book – Chapters 4 and 5 – examine two aspects of idiomatic actualization: the formal transformation of idioms in Rushdie’s works and the functionalization of the idioms deployed by the writer. Chapter 4, apart from providing a detailed account of the types of idiomatic actualization and modification found in the novels under consideration, defines and elaborates upon the concepts of phraseological/idiomatic reading and that of phraseological/idiomatic identification. The former proves useful in identifying figurative loci which can be interpreted by the reader as potentially containing idiomatic references. Phraseological identification refers to the problems in establishing the concrete idiomatic manifestations with reference to the base forms of idioms as well as their idiomatemes.

Chapter 5 goes beyond the form of the idioms used by Rushdie in that it scrutinizes the novels with the aim of establishing the links between the idioms and the meanings they carry, the functions they perform and the stylistic effect they have on the readers. Thus, it explores the relationships between the idiomatic loci in the novels and the content of the novels as the referents of the idioms. It discusses the textual positions of idioms with reference to what is referred to by them. It explores the relationships established between the actual meaning of the

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Introduction 19

idioms and the literal interpretation of the same word sequences. It considers in detail the functions performed by idioms used both canonically and non- canonically. The last two chapters introduce various categories of analytical tools which can be utilized in the process of, first, accounting for the physical actualizations of idioms (Chapter 4), and, second, demonstrating the particular functions of the idioms in Rushdie’s novels (Chapter 5). The tools could hopefully be reapplied in phraseo-stylistic analyses of other works as well.

The analysis of Rushdie’s idiomaticon in action does not reveal a new phenomenon in literature. That is to say, his novels and the use of the idioms or phraseology, in a broad sense of the term, deployed therein are not unique in that they are only a manifestation of an old tradition where writers put phraseological use to multifarious purposes in their literary work, a tradition that is by no means a recent innovation (Mieder 1997: 145). It is difficult to question the fact the

“improvised speech and premeditated literary composition alike rely on a huge store of institutionalized utterances” (Mackenzie 2000: 179), or to query the observation that “novelists or poets are, by definition, creative in their approach to the language, including the subversion of well-known expressions” (Prodromou 2003: 42). Nevertheless, each and every actualization of a phraseological unit is a novel occurrence inasmuch as its embedding is unique. The actualization is unique as regards the idiom’s situation in a particular literary (writing) genre, its form in relation to the established norm and accepted usage, as well as its employment in relation to the prototypical and artistic, creative use. The uniqueness of idiom usage is reflected as well in the idiom’s meaning in relation to the semantics of the embedding context, in which the idiom may realize various shades of its base meaning, the formal and semantic links between the idiom and the other components of the literary language of a particular piece of writing, semantic relations which may go beyond the immediate physical anchoring, as well as its structural role in building the cohesive and coherent fabric of the literary piece. An analysis of individual uses leads to a description and assessment of an individual authorial style with or without reference to that of other writers and other genre styles. Thus the questions asked with reference to the use of phraseological units in particular works of literature have to be more specific. Apart from the general question as to if phraseology is used amongst other lexical means, we should ask:

what kind of phraseology is deployed, how it is used and why. In the process of finding answers to such queries, we must scrutinize the diversified nature of the phraseological units employed by a writer, the forms they take and the purposes they serve in relation to the text and the concept of the literary language of a writer.

This book hopes to respond to the questions posited by phraseo-stylistics by examining as exhaustively as possible the interaction between phraseology and the literary language of Rushdie’s prose. By so doing it demonstrates that the writer’s use of idioms is not a functionless ornamentation but a complex network of

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relationships between the idiomatic component of the English language and its situation in the literary context.

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Chapter 1 Phraseology: a study of word combinations

1.0 Phraseology and phraseological units

Rushdie’s mental lexicon is no different from either that of another writer or that of the man in the street as far as its structure is concerned. Their lexicons are inventories of memorized lexical items which are stored and available for use.

These items are not only single words but also combinations of words, as ideas and concepts that need to be given representative physical shapes may be worded in two basic ways, viz. they can be expressed by dint of lexemes or by means of phrases (Bréal 1964: 296). Both words and phrases, understood as combinations of lexemes, are ready-made lexical resources which the user chooses from his mental dictionary where they are stored as single units to be deployed in building larger syntactic structures governed by the rules of a language (Dobrovol’skij 1997: 22- 23; Munat 2002: 144; Taylor 2002: 540). Both words and word combinations are the building blocks of constructions which are made according to the open-choice principle, whereby the combinatorial restrictions of a language are responsible for the production of well-formed syntagmas (Sinclair 1991: 109). Some lexical material stored in the mental lexicon may take the form of a complete syntactic unit, such as a sentence, or even a combination of sentences, such as a text, which may or may not be grammatically regular. The retrieval of such units may be either in their full or partially reduced forms. Such ready-made constructions are pre- determined choices to which the language user resorts for meaning, treating them as established constructs, as combinations of meaning with form, regardless of their form, related to their lexical content, the number of words and their syntactic arrangement. When they choose to use not words but word combinations, the idiom principle is at work (ibid. 110), which means that the process of word collocation does not take place at the level of phrase or sentence formation but has already been completed and the products are learnt as words clusters and reproduced as prefabricated chunks by the user (Blake 2008: 45; Falk 1973: 37; Francis 1965:

217)¹. Both principles operate in language but in the context of the combinatorial potential of words it may even be claimed that the idiom principle is more important in language than grammar (Lewis 2005: 9; cf. Conklin and Schmitt 2008:

74). I will call such fixed word combinations phraseological units.

The lexicon is enriched by derivational processes operating on words as well as other processes, such as borrowings and calques, which increase the number of lexical items in a given language (cf. Fleisher 1997: 1). Phraseological units, as products of syntactic processes, whereby words are put together according to the

1 Cf. Castillo Carballo for dichotomies similar to that of the open vs. idiom principle (1997- 1998: 67).

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productive grammar rules of a language at a given point in time, are a kind of derivation (Sled 1959: 216) or coinage created whenever the need arises for a new lexical representation (Kuiper 2007: 93). Thus free word combinations become unsegmentable units in the process of fusion (Peters 1983: 80; cf. Katamba 2005:

77). As phraseological units are built out of the available single words, they can be designated as secondary nominations (Fleischer 1981: 431; Hümmer 2006b: 38).

From the present synchronic point of view, however, many phraseological units violate such syntactic rules, although most of them represent regular grammatical patterns, which is further proved by there being numerous constructions that are their homonymous non-phraseological counterparts (Falk 1973: 37; Fernando 1996: 42; Gläser 1988: 266; cf. Krzyanowska 1999: 21).

Phraseological units come into being as nonce formations, when a given concept is assigned a multiword representation. Such a unit may or may not become accepted by the speech community; when it is routinized, that is to say selected as the preferable exponent of meaning from amongst potential semantically synonymous syntactic patterns (cf. Hopper and Traugott 1993: 65), it is used as a socially familiar and conventionalized signifier for concepts relevant to the community and it becomes institutionalized – fully accepted and relatively stable syntactically, semantically and pragmatically (Barkema 1996a: 132; Bauer 1983: 48; Grant and Bauer, 2004: 44; Lipka 2002: 6, 112; Lipka, Handl and Falkner 2004: 8, Sonomura 1996: 66-67; cf. Nenonen 2007: 309). The process of institutionalization may in terms of time in the case of individual phraseological units and the degree of institutionalization as a social phenomenon hinge upon the frequency of use and the widespread acceptance of the form (Rodríguez- Arrizabalaga 2004: 493). As a consequence, such a formation may enter the lexicon of a language as a legitimate lexicalized member (cf. Bussmann 1996: 279;

Katamba 2005: 74). At the same time, once a free combination stabilizes not only in terms of its meaning but also in terms of its lexical composition and grammatical contour, it becomes fossilized, fixed or fixated with individual lexemes losing their primary, rather than derived senses (Marret 2004: 494; Saeed 2003: 60). The process of freezing is responsible for the ungrammaticalness and lexical idiosyncrasy of many phraseological units, as such freezes need not conform to the productive rules of syntax or word collocability when analysed synchronically (Wray 2002: 33).

From the semantic point of view, phraseological units become lexicalized or idiomatized, which means their sense is no longer derived from their constituents elements and their arrangement in a syntagma; the relationship between both the lexical selection and syntactic pattern and the meaning may be entirely lost, recoverable by etymological research only (Bauer 2004: 53, 65; Bussmann 1996:

216-217, 279; Lipka 2002: 113; cf Brinton and Akimoto 1999: 12-13; Castillo

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Chapter 1: Phraseology 23

Carballo 1997-1998: 71).² Although the term “idiomatization” is sometimes used with reference to lexicalisation, as well as fossilisation, I would prefer to use the former only with reference to the emergence of highly specialized meanings of no longer transparent or semi-opaque expressions due to the process of demotivation (Brinton and Traugott 2005: 47; Brinton and Traugott, 2007: 4, 6; cf. Bauer 2007:

119-120; Brinton and Akimoto 1999: 12-13, 225; Forgács 2004: 137; Kastovsky 2004: 204-205), and the latter to the emergence of any specialized meaning with a degree of irregularity (cf. Lipka 2002: 111). Lexicalization can be viewed as the ultimate stage in the constitution of the form and meaning of word sequences, the finalization of which is the codification of phraseological units in dictionaries as a single unit roughly on a par with other monolexemic lexical units or compounds (cf. Béjoint 1989: 1; Lipka, 2002: 112; Sonomura 1996: 64). We may also use the term “phraseologization” to refer to collective processes that turn a free syntagma into a phraseological combination (Hahn 2006: 4).³

Such phraseological chunks are abundant in languages, due to their universal character as a linguistic phenomenon (Gottschalk 1975: 143; cf. Colson 2008: 192 ff), and are used in equal measure in both speech and writing, although variation is exhibited in their internal lexico-grammatical structure, length, and function (Crystal 1995: 163). The study of such fixed phrases, referred to as phraseological units, is called phraseology⁴, which is either treated as a sub-branch of lexicology (Gläser 1988: 271; Kühn and Wiktorowicz 1991: 71) or as an independent linguistic discipline (Langlotz 2006a: 7; Palm 1997: xi; Tokarski 1971: 150) located between lexicology and syntax (Gläser 1977: 87; cf. Nattinger and DeCarrico 1992; Stubs 2001, for different views). Phraseology as a term may on occasion be abandoned in favour of the study of formulae, where, however, the term “formulae” refers to all conventional expressions that include both single word and multiword signifiers (Pawley 2007: 3). I prefer to think of phraseology as a study of conventionalized multiword combinations; hence, on the one hand, no single lexemes are considered here to be phraseological units⁵, and, on the other, the term “formula” has for me a different signification in phraseology, that is its pragmatic sub-category. By the same token, I do not use the term “formulaic language” or “formulaic sequences”, both of which frequently appear in recent studies of fixed combinations of words (Wray 2002, 2009) and are regarded as equivalent to and as an umbrella term for multiword combinations of words (Nuccorini 2006a, 2006b), to cover the same area as the term “phraseology”.

2 For the different uses of the term lexicalization see Himmelmann (2004). Cf. his remarks on the use of the term idiomatization to refer to one type of lexicalization.

3 Phraseologization is one of the two ways in which phraseological units came into existence, the other being phraseological derivation (Ptashnyk 2005: 83; see section 4.3).

4 Cf. Bussmann’s use of the term “idiomatics” (1996: 217).

5 The exclusion of single words from the domain of phraseology is common in the literature (Sendek 2007: 49).

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Phraseology when used as a technical term in linguistics is further subdivided into: the discipline whose subject matter is phraseological units (phraseological research) and the set of phraseological units in a language (the phrasicon) (Burger 1998: 11; Fiedler 2007: 15; Fleischer 1997: 3-4; Gläser 1986: 50). Throughout this book I will use three specialized terms – “phraseological unit”, “phraseologism” or

“phraseme” – to designate any word-combination that phraseology would make an object of analysis.⁶

When considering the vast literature on phraseology it is striking that there should be no single feature or a combination of such that would characterise solely phraseological units and set them apart from non-phraseological units of language.

This is so because scholars cannot unanimously decide once and for all what elements of language should be labelled as phraseological and they do not agree on the defining characteristic features of phraseological units. Indeed, many characteristics that may be assigned to phraseological units may be attributed to non-phraseological units as well. This leads to differences between sets of language units analysed in phraseological studies and, to compound the matter, the sets examined by different phraseologists do not overlap; hence it is impossible to provide defining characteristics for units of different linguistic status under one hyperonymous term – “phraseological unit”. Also the units of language analysed may bear different labels plus their features may be assigned different names.

Although they seem to be the same they are not defined in a similar manner, nor are they attributed identical status amongst the characteristic features of such units, not to mention the fact that the terminology differs from scholar to scholar, including the seemingly unambiguous term “phraseology” itself (cf. Kosek 2008: 13 ff.). The ambiguity both of the terms in phraseology and the criteria which are applied in the study of phraseological units has led many scholars to write about the confusing use of terminology and the conflicting usage of defining and characteristic features of phraseological units. This has lead to a terminological chaos in the discipline (Krohn 1994: 15; Langlotz, 2006a: 2; Wray, 2002: 8).

Although many treaties on phraseology, regardless of the main focus of their analysis, in defining this particular branch of study as well as the unit of their analysis, discuss at length the historical background to their own examination of phraseology, I am not going to offer in this book a comprehensive review of what has been achieved in phraseology so far in terms of the analyses of separate linguists or linguistic schools. I rather wish to present the main ideas behind phraseology and phraseological units with all their complex structures and to discuss the place of idioms in the discipline, as well as the differences between them and other phraseologisms. While examining all the features of idioms I will

6 As far as the latter term – phraseme – is concerned, see Arabski, yda, Warcha and Gumul (2009), Chlebda (2001, 2003) and Piirainen (2008), for more details.

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focus on those which I deem especially pertinent in a discussion of phraseo- stylistics and their use by Rushdie in his novels.⁷

When we look at phraseology as a sub-discipline of lexicology and yet at the same time a discipline in its own right, three main issues surface. These concerns are raised in connection with the general approach to a study of phraseological units: firstly, the separation of phraseology from lexicology; secondly, defining the characteristic features of phraseological units, and in so doing determining what is a phraseological unit as such, and thirdly, dividing all the phraseological units into more or less precise groups on the basis of the stringent criteria selected. As yet, there is no “comprehensive and generally accepted definition” of phraseological units, which means that there is no agreement on the criteria that phraseological units should meet with reference to single-word units as well as other phraseological units, criteria which may not be considered sufficient (Knappe 2004: 6). This leads to a plethora of different phraseological taxonomies based on different theories and criteria. I do not intend to provide in this chapter, nor indeed in the book, any entirely new approach to phraseology, as this is not my aim and also because it seems enough to adapt the available theories of phraseology to the needs of my study. I will try to specifically focus on the most widely accepted views on phraseology, on the divisions within phraseology which serve to single out one group of phrasemes from all the other phraseological units, namely idioms, and especially, to concentrate on idioms as a class of phraseological units, which are the main focus in the phraseo-stylistic analysis of Rushdie’s idioms. My discussion of phraseology will not lead to a new understanding of phraseology, though a new formulation of phraseological matters would be as justified as any application of the existing views to any linguistic material, which is the aim of the present book.

This is because there is no single approach to phraseology but as many approaches as linguists dealing with that level of language organization, not to mention lay views, which surprisingly may be more uniform. All in all this justifies the opinion of Lewicki that there is no one phraseology, but that there are many complimentary approaches revealing the multifaced nature of the discipline (1974: 151).

1.1 Phraseology and lexicology

Phraseology is a relatively young sub-discipline of linguistics. It is believed to have been born with the work of Charles Bally not as an independent linguistic branch but as a component of lexicology (Daszczyska 1983). The reason for the inclusion of phraseology in the wider field of lexicology was the fact that, firstly, phraseology, in whatsoever sense of the term operates with lexical units either as units in their own right or as building blocks in larger constructions and, secondly, the view

7 For relatively recent reviews in English of particular schools, approaches and phraseologists which are more or less exhaustive see, for instance, the following: Cowie (1998); Fernando (1996); Howarth (1996); Moon (1998); Pawley (2007); Sick (1993); Sonomura (1996).

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that phraseological units bear more than a fleeting resemblance to prototypical lexical units – lexemes.

The postulate that phraseology be given independent status as a linguistic discipline and phraseological units be separated from lexemes is based on the claim that the former units are considerably different from the latter and that an examination of such units requires a new set of analytical tools, which in consequence would lead to the formulation of a phraseological theory.

The emergence of phraseology from lexicology as a science studying “the structure, meaning, and use of word-combinations” (Cowie 1994: 3168) clearly happened not as a natural process of phenomenon creation but through the good offices of lexicologists and phraseologists, who wished to delimit the realms of their interest. This was achieved via the specification of the distinct features characterizing the units under scrutiny in the respective disciplines. The establishing of phraseology as a separate linguistic discipline can be traced back to the initial observations concerning the structure of language and its independent building blocks (words) which apart from being described in their own right were seen as constituents of fixed syntagmatic combinations.

While some linguists considered such combinations within the study of words (lexicology), with some locating phraseological units in the area between syntax and lexicology, some relegated the examination of word combinations to the study of syntax and, naturally, yet others demanded that they be studied within a separate discipline (cf. Bauer 2007: 13; Gläser 1977: 87, 1986: 13; Kühn and Wiktorowicz 1991: 71; Lipka 2002). More often than not phraseology has been approached from the lexical and lexicological perspective. That is most evident in definitions of phraseological units which operate with the term “word” (less qualified as

“lexeme” or “word forms”), the basic term in lexicology (cf. Doroszewski 1973:

23; Ullmann 1957: 30; Ullmann 1964b: 29). This term appears in all manner of phraseological definitions, be they more or less scientific, and which, at least on the surface, shows the relation between words and phraseological units, or indicates that phraseology was initially perceived as a derivative from the study of words. As the English literature of lexicology and phraseology rarely uses the term “phraseological unit” (with the exception of Gläser 1998b), we have to make do with definitions of such terms as “phraseologisms” (Burger 1998; Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen 2009; Fleischer 1997; Gläser 1986), “received expressions” (Barkema 1994); “collocations” (Talmy 2003), “groups of words” and “phrases” (Bréal 1964), “set expressions” (Arnold 1973), “set combinations” (Zgusta 1971), “fixed expressions” (Alexander 1987; Carter 1987; Glucksberg 2001), “phrasal lexemes”

(Lipka 2002; Pawley 1985), “multiword units” and “lexical phrases” (Gramley and Pätzold 1992), “multi word units” (Moon 1997), “fixed expressions and idioms”

(Moon 1998a), “phrasal lexical items” (Kuiper and Everaert 2000), “phrasemes”

(Dobrovol’skij and Piirainen 2005; 2009), “idiomatic expressions” and

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“conventionalized multiword expressions” (Fernando 1996) amongst many others,⁸ which either refer to the concept of phraseological unit as a unifying term or, not that infrequently, to a specific subcategory of phraseological units – idioms.

It is worth mentioning that most definitions of the phenomenon, which we could extend to refer to all phraseological units, actually refer to idioms without specifying their relation to other fixed expressions that do not surface in the definitions. The reason for this is the fact that, although the potential of words to combine in discourse and enter the lexicon was documented more than half a century ago by Firth, the focus since then has been solely on word combinations which from the present perspective can be called idioms.

There are, however, definitions of words, which, when used in interpreting the definitions of phraseological units, would lead to circuitous interpretations. Here I refer to the understanding of words as minimal units of meaning. Such a definition of word is postulated, for example, by Harley, who calls all minimal meaningful units in language “listemes”, as they have to be stored in the user’s mental lexical lexicon as combinations of sound and meaning in arbitrary unions (2006). So the idiom kick the bucket is a type of word, called a listeme, consisting of other listemes which are also stored holistically in the user’s lexicon. In Harley’s understanding of words, phraseological units, I believe, are those units of meaning whereby the semantics resulting from a combination of other listemes is unpredictable and as such are kept as whole untis in the mental lexicon. Phraseolo- gical units are then new listemes and their production is a result of listeme formation.

Pinker also makes mention of listemes with reference to all chunks of linguistic signs which have to be stored whole in the mental lexicon of a speaker’s mind (1999). Such listemes are also called by Pinker words that contain other words and are defined as stretches of sound separated by pauses – which we would call phonetic and, derivatively, graphic phraseological words. In the process he distinguishes two kinds of word, in other words two senses of the term. Words in the second sense comprise larger units of language which have to be stored in the lexicon in the same way as words in the phonetic/graphic sense of the term.

In the same vein in speaks the work of Lyons where he classifies expressions in a language into lexically simple and lexically composite, with the latter built from the former according to the regular grammatical, combinatorial rules of the language (1995: 50-52). Lexically composite expressions are phrasal expressions, also known as phrasal lexemes, which are not words, but are lexemes. An example might be pass muster, which is lexically simple as its meaning is not determined on the basis of the elements it contains. Lyons does not, however, comment on the word status of the constituents of lexically simple expressions.

8 See Wray for comprehensive lists of terms used to describe phraseological units/formulaic sequences (2000a, 2000b, 2002).

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Phraeological units as polylexical units may be divided into two classes according to the structural criterion: propositions are sentence-like word combinations and nominations are syntactic phrases which are, syntactically speaking, parts of sentences (Gläser 1986, 1988, 1998b). Consequently, phraseology will comprise units which display a whole range of syntactic forms: ranging from complete sentences and clauses (proverbs, slogans, maxims, sententias, etc.), through incomplete sentence patterns which have to be filled with concrete lexemes in discourse, to syntactic phrases (collocations and idioms). The domain of nominations will clearly make use of only those particular syntactic forms which are allowed in the construction of phrases in a language. As the main focus in this book are nominations, we will not go into detail concerning the structure of propositions and in consequence all word combinations which are not phrases will be excluded from the study. The structural affinities between the two groups are not to be overlooked as exemplified by the transitional area between “pure”

nominations and “pure” propositions: Glaser’s reductions of propositions. As long as those function as phrases and require structural integration into a sentence, they will be counted as nominations and classified accordingly as idioms or collocations.

The above division emphasises, although less clearly than in the case of the structural dimension, the functional differentiations between propositions and nominations. Roughly speaking propositions have specific pragmatic functions.

Nominations, on the other hand, are in the main used to describe the phenomenal sphere of people’s lives.

The most distinctive group positioned closest to idioms is that of collocations (also referred to as “fixed combinations”, “recurrent combinations”, “close constructions” in Kavka 2003: 14). The concept of collocation is believed to go back to Palmer (1933) and Firth (1951).⁹ This proximity reflects the very close relationship between idioms and collocations, so close that the intercategorial distinctions might be blurred altogether or perceived in terms of their scalar properties, though there are scholars who view the boundary as clear-cut (Forsgren 1997). Collocations are defined as the habitual occurrence of two or more words, in which the choice of lexical items is lexically and not semantically conditioned and which are in the most part semantically transparent (Béjoint 2000: 213; Cowie 1994: 3169; Stubbs 1998: 400). Collocations are combinations of words which are recognized as natural strings by native speakers. Collocations that are categorized as phraseological units are lexical in nature unlike grammatical collocations, which belong to syntax (Benson 1985: 61-62). Collocations occur in all manner of syntactic forms and show differing degrees of variance and idiomaticity (Nation 2001: 317). Collocations comprise word combinations that are both semi-literal and fully literal as well as combinations which are more or less variable (Fernando

9 For a comprehensive review of collocation literature see Nesselhauf (2004).

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1996; cf. Fellbaum 2007: 7-8). They may allow a wide spectrum of lexical variants, or they may be classified as more or less figurative, depending on the meanings of their constituent parts and the latter’s contribution to the overall meaning of the collocation. Collocations form a borderline between open collocations as Cowie calls them, which are “freely recombinable”, and combinations of a more fixed nature, most frequently represented by idioms (1983: xiii). Prototypical collocations are referred to as “restricted collocations”, a term which covers the more or less restricted choice of habitually co-occurring lexemes (Cowie 1983: xiii;

Moon 1997: 43).¹⁰

Collocations are often contrasted with idioms, with some referring to them as

“non-idioms” (Fernando 1996), whereas others call them “semi-idioms” (Cowie 1983: xiii). Both terms emphasise their relationship to idioms themselves. The terminology here may be confusing as well as the term “collocation” either may be used loosely to cover different types of word combinations, including phrases and clauses with regard to their structure as well as idioms (Crystal 1995: 163; Hussein 1990: 127; Nation 2001: 317), or, as is the practice in this book, applied specifically to word combinations distinguished as clearly as possible from idioms.

Idioms, as the other major category of phraseological units, show collocability in a broader sense: the predictability of the co-occurrence of lexical items within idioms – in their standard forms – is relatively high and this is supposed to mark the otherwise unclear dividing line between collocations and idioms (Crystal 1995:

162).

As regards the two major borderline classes of phraseological units:

compounds and proverbs, their status as part of phraseology is often debated.

Compound words are granted the status of multi-word units (Moon 1997) or simply words (Carstairs-McCarthy 2002; Minkova and Stockwell 2001), considered to be pure lexemes. Moreover, Moon claims that they are the least interesting group of multi-word items, with which it is difficult to agree, especially as she does not give any reason for them being unworthy of phraseological study (they represent, for example, a wide range of semantic operations, as well as manifest different degrees of idiomaticity, see section 1.3.3.1) (1997: 45-46). However, I would agree with Moon considering compounds as multimorphemic words, whose creation thus belongs to word-formation¹¹ (cf. Donalies 2006: 340, 2008: 308, 2009a: 7; Fiedler 2003: 109). The tendency of compounds to form non-separable morphemic structures as observed by Pawley makes us believe that the outer shape of compound words is only their conventional form as they function entirely as single lexemes (1986: 108-110). Also compounds are the results of word-formation processes, specifically compounding, which is not how other multi-word units come into existence and the term itself cannot be applied to the historical process of

10 For more on collocations see, for example, Gledhill (2000).

11 Cf. Chapter 8 in Bauer for similarities and differences between compounds and syntax and morphology (2003).

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idiom formation (Bauer 1983). It has to be said that the characteristic features of compounds, such as spelling conventions and word-formation operations, may be manifest in the use of phrasemes as well. Nevertheless, many scholars regard compounds not only as phraseological units, but oftentimes call them idioms, due to their inherent features such as irregular semantics and fixedness of pattern. The link between compounds as words and phraseological units as syntactic phrases is emphasised by Carstairs-McCarthy, who distinguishes a class of phrasal words which function as single units but have a phrase-like structure (cf. “reduplicating syntax” of Minkova and Stockwell 2001: 11), thus representing features of both compounds as single units and phraseological units as they exhibit a phrasal character (2002: 67-68).¹²

Phrasal verbs have also been discussed variously with regard to their position vis a vis other phraseological units. Phrasal verbs have additionally been linked with prepositional verbs, which have also been defined in terms of their phraseo- logical nature. Both these two groups of multi-word expressions have as their main element a verb (they are verbal groups and their syntactic function is that of verb phrases). The difference between them is at least twofold. Both phrasal verbs and prepositional units consist of more than one element, a verb plus particles, which in the case of phrasal verbs are adverbs, many a time homonymous with prepositions, such as about, across and up (give up, set about, back off), and in the case of prepositional verbs are prepositions, such as for, on and in (cling to, recoil from, swarm with). The structural feature is complimented by a semantic characteristic, namely phrasal verbs are in most cases opaque semantically – idiomatic, whereas prepositional verbs never are. When we disregard the phonological and syntactic differences between phrasal verbs and prepositional verbs, we can conclude that both are phrasal lexemes by virtue of them mandatorily containing two simple lexemes (in the case of phrasal-prepositional verbs, such as go up against, come back to, look forward to – three), which have to be used in combination to retain their lexically simple meaning. Phrasal verbs and compounds are similar to each other as well as to idioms as their lexical and syntactic structure obscure the motivation which renders them idiomatic (Blake 2008: 46; Goatly 1997: 103;

Katamba 1993: 307-308; Palmer 1981: 82). It has to be observed that many phrasal and prepositional verbs form part of certain idioms, for example, give up the ghost, go off at a tangent, let off steam, put sb on the active roster amongst other phraseo- logical units. With regard to the present analysis, however, I do not intend to include phrasal verbs in the domain of phraseology.

Propositions as a group are internally diversified as well. The group consisting of sentence-like expressions includes proverbs, commonplaces, maxims,

12 Minkova and Stockwell claim that the distinction itself is not at all easy to make and go as far as posing a question as to whether the differences are worth noting (2001: 11). The difference between compounds and syntax-driven idioms as lexical items is manifested in Katamba (2005: 76, 81).

Text Meaning Context:

PETER LANG

Text – Meaning – Context:

Cracow Studies in English Language, Literature and Culture

Volume 4

PETER LANG

Grzegorz Szpila

Idioms in

Salman Rushdie’s Novels

A Phraseo-Stylistic Approach

In memory of my mother

Acknowledgements

Contents

Abbreviations

Introduction

Chapter 1

Phraseology: a study of word combinations

1.0 Phraseology and phraseological units

1.1 Phraseology and lexicology