Misrepresenting Writing Pedagogy As Linguistic Theory

Martin & Rose (2007: 188-9):

Pike's notion of little waves on bigger ones is very important for understanding information flow since rhythm in discourse may have several layers. In the 'repercussions' phase of her second Incident, for example, Helena introduces her husband's agony with our hell began and then proceeds to spell out his suffering. In doing so she frames a layer of information inside one phase of her story; and as we've seen her story has been framed as a larger wave (My story begins… to I end with a few lines…) and beyond this her story in relation to Tutu's exposition is a still larger pulse. We can use indentation in the first instance to outline something of the relation of these larger waves of information to the smaller ones:

The South Africa Broadcasting Corporation's radio team covering the Truth and Reconciliation Commission received a letter from a woman calling herself Helena (she wanted to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals) who lived in the eastern province of Mpumalanga. They broadcast substantial extracts:

My story begins in my late teenage years as a farm girl in the Bethlehem district of Eastern Free State. ...

After about three years with the special forces, our hell began.
He became very quiet. Withdrawn. Sometimes he would just press his face into his hands and shake uncontrollably. I realised he was drinking too much. Instead of resting at night, he would wander from window to window. He tried to hide his wild consuming fear, but I saw it. In the early hours of the morning between two and half-past-two, I jolt awake from his rushed breathing. Rolls this way, that side of the bed. He's pale. ice cold in a sweltering night - sopping wet with sweat. Eyes bewildered, but dull like the dead. And the shakes. The terrible convulsions and blood-curdling shrieks of fear and pain from the bottom of his soul. Sometimes he sits motionless, just staring in front of him. I never understood. I never knew. Never realised what was being shoved down his throat during the 'trips'. I just went through hell. Praying, pleading: 'God, what's happening? What's wrong with him? Could he have changed so much? Is he going mad? I can't handle the man anymore! But, I can't get out. He's going to haunt me for the rest of my life if I leave him. Why, God?' …

I end with a few lines that my wasted vulture said to me one night: 'They can give me amnesty a thousand times. Even if God and everyone else forgives me a thousand times — I have to live with this hell. The problem is in my head, my conscience. There is only one way to be free of it. Blow my brains out. Because that's where my hell is.'

The term 'wave' is used to capture the sense in which moments of framing represent a peak of textual prominence, followed by a trough of lesser prominence. So discourse creates expectations by flagging forward and consolidates them by summarising back. These expectations are presented as crests of information, and the meanings fulfilling these expectations can be seen as relative diminuendos, from the point of view of information flow. The term periodicity is used to capture the regularity of information flow: the tendency for crests to form a regular pattern, and for the hierarchy of waves to form a predictable rhythm. Discourse, in other words, has a beat; and without this rhythm, it would be very hard to understand.

Blogger Comments:

[1] To be clear, here Martin & Rose misunderstand the text. As the clause our hell began makes plain, it is the suffering of both Helena and her husband that Helena "proceeds to spell out".

[2] To be clear, this is writing pedagogy masquerading as linguistic theory; that is: this is a proposal for how to write misrepresented as a proposition of how language works. Proof that it is not a model of language can be ascertained by trying to apply periodicity to spoken language (or written dialogue).

[3] To be clear, the beat of discourse is phonological, with salient syllables identifying the potential foci of information that the speaker chose not instantiate, and tonic feet identifying the actual foci of information that the speaker chose to instantiate.